Literature / WorldEnd: What Do You Do at the End of the World? Are You Busy? Will You Save Us?

You'll probably be crying too.

Shuumatsu Nani Shitemasu ka? Isogashii desu ka? Sukutte Moratte Ii desu ka? ("What will you be doing at the end of the world? Are you busy? Will you save us?"), or Sukasuka, officially translated into English as WorldEnd, is a fantasy light novel series by Akira Kureno that received an anime adaptation in the spring 2017 anime season.

Five hundred years have passed since the humans went extinct at the hands of the fearsome and mysterious 'Beasts.' The surviving races now make their homes up on floating islands in the sky, out of reach of all but the most mobile of Beasts.

Only a small group of young girls, the Leprechauns, can wield the ancient weapons needed to fend off invasions from these creatures. Into the girls' unstable and fleeting lives, where a call to certain death could come at any moment, enters an unlikely character: a young man who lost everything in his final battle five hundred years ago, the last living human awakened from a long, icy slumber.

Unable to fight any longer, Willem becomes the father that the girls never had, caring for and nurturing them even as he struggles to come to terms with his new life, in which he feels the pain of helplessly waiting for his loved ones to return home from battle that his 'Daughter' once felt for him so long ago. Together, Willem and the girls gradually come to understand what family means and what is truly worth protecting.

The original Light Novel was completed at 5 volumes, and was originally published from Nov 1, 2014 to Apr 1, 2016, and Yen Press began releasing the series in July 2018. A sequel novel entitled Shuumatsu Nani Shitemasu ka? Mou Ichido Aemasu ka? ("What will you be doing at the end of the world? Can we meet once again?") or Suka Moka was announced, and started being published on Jun 27, 2016 to the present.

The anime series is available for legal streaming subbed on Crunchyroll here, and dubbed on FUNimation here.

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This work provides examples of:

• Action Girl: All the Leprechauns (at least, the older ones) qualify, as they've been raised to be weapons against the Beasts since birth. The female Regal Braves Willem knew before humanity went extinct also count.
• Action Prologue: The anime opens in the middle of a battle scene with the Beasts, showing several characters injured, dying or dead, and then jumps back to Willem's first meeting with Chtholly. (This flash-forward doesn't occur in the books, however.)
• Adapted Out: Shiantor the Lamenting First Beast doesn't get to show up or even get a mention in the anime despite being the most dreaded Beast in the light novels' setting. This is averted with her human identity, Almaria, however, but the reveal about her and Shiantor being one and the same person was also cut out as a consequence.
• Aerith and Bob:
  • Many of the characters, such as Chtholly and Rhantolk, have almost Lovecraftian sounding names. At the same time there are also names like Willem, Lillia, and Ted which sound perfectly normal. Of course this is somewhat justified In-Universe, most of the “normal” sounding names belong to humans who lived 500 years in the past.
  • The same thing applies to the Beasts; most of the revealed names are pretty exotic-sounding that the name of the 2nd Beast, "Aurora", stood out because it's actually pretty normal.
• After the End: Played with. While a lot of species survived the apocalypse, they are restricted to living on floating islands in the sky. Humanity, with the sole exception of Willem, alongside elves and dragons are entirely extinct.
• Ancient Astronauts: The Visitors were a race of wandering space travelers prior to settling down on the planet the story takes place on.
• Anyone Can Die: Plot armor is essentially non-existent in this setting.
• Apocalypse How: Easily a class 4. All life on the surface was exterminated by the 17 Beasts within a year of their first appearance. The scarred landscape surrounding Willem’s former hometown is a testament to just how destructive the Beasts were. Only those races fortunate enough to reach the floating islands survived the cataclysm.
• Artifact of Death: The holy sword Seniorious is a legendary blade capable of felling gods. Unfortunately, it’s users seldom live long and they usually suffer some tragic fate. So far it’s claimed the lives of Lillia, Chtholly, and even Willem. Lakhesh, the sword’s most recent owner, acknowledges this unfortunate fact. However, she believes that the sword itself isn’t the cause; rather it’s the situations that require the sword to be used.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The Battleship Utica mounts enough firepower to level an entire city but, as Feodor notes, the costs for firing its main gun are ruinously expensive. And as it turns out, mounting the biggest gun you can find onto an airship doesn't make for the most aerodynamic vehicle.
• Awful Truth: The 17 Beasts responsible for destroying the world are actually the original native lifeforms of the world, which had been converted into humans and other races by the Visitors in the ancient past, but reverted to their old forms when the Visitors' power could no longer handle humanity's growing population. The post-apocalyptic barren desert that covers the surface is actually their original habitat, which also reverted to its old form.
  • To elaborate, it's heavily implied that the Visitors are ascended humans that, during their space journey lose sight of their homeworld, grew nostalgic, chose a random planet then used their power to transform it and its inhabitants into a copy of their homeworld and finally spit themselves to live among them because they were too powerful to live among them without hurting them. The world simply reverted because the Visitors 'curse' grew weaker over time.
• Arc Words: "Welcome home", "I'm back", and "Who/What am I?"
• Beast Man: Describes most of the people living on the sky islands, to the point that the races that aren't Beast Men are commonly referred to as "Disfeatured".
• Being Good Sucks: A common theme in the series is just how much it sucks to be a hero. It’s a world where being a hero often involves sacrificing oneself for the greater good. Why bother going through all that hardship and misery if your sacrifice doesn’t mean anything in the end anyway?
• Bitter Sweet Ending:
  • Overlapping with Gainax Ending in the anime as it only adapted up to most of Volume 3 in the light novel series, skipping certain scenes and the final chapter that would give the adaptation a Sequel Hook. The party Willem and the Fairies accompany in their mission mostly survive and still manage to fix their own airship to get back home, but Chtholly dies saving a critically wounded Nephren and Willem, while the latter two are officially MIA. Reading further into Volume 3, however, confirms that Chtholly's efforts weren't for naught as, despite being injured, Nephren and Willem lived.
  • The final scene of the anime makes it also a bitter sweet beginning as well. It shows Chtolly's 'rebirth' with the fairies collecting her giving her a glum welcome while nonetheless happy that she's now part of their lives. This is shown in one of the final chapters in Volume 3 of the light novel, and indicated in the last chapter of Volume 5 as well.
    Older Leprechaun: Welcome, little one. Welcome to this fragile dying world with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. We're happy to have you.
  • The light novel series as a whole ends with this as well. To prevent the abolition of the warehouse and the Fairies from being used by other factions within the Winged Guard and out of it, Willem, having fully reverted back to being a Beast following his and Nephren's absorption of the Shiantor, decides to play the villain and attacks the Leprechauns in a public area to get everyone's attentions toward the fight, ending with him allowing Lakhish, who now wields Seniorious as her Dug Weapon, to stab him to the point of near death by activating Seniorious's curse, turning him into a living corpse just as Elq once was. Fast forward five years later, where, following Willem's and the Leprechaun's actions in the climax, the Fairies are now given better freedom than before and are now allowed to be as independent as they wished to be, and the series ends with a little girl named Riel, heavily implied to be Chtholly's reincarnation, meeting someone she says looks familiar to her and with Nyglattho welcoming a certain someone back with tears in her eyes.
• BFS: Carillons/Dug Weapons, the weapons used to defeat the enemies of the Emnetwihts, comprising of various talismans, are huge compared to their wielders.
• Book Ends:
  • The story starts with Willem catching Chtholly after she falls off a ledge. It ends with Willem catching Riel in almost the exact same manner.
  • The anime is also guilty of this, where Willem saving Chtholly from a fall is essentially reversed just before her Heroic Sacrifice.
  • Volume 3 of SukaMoka starts with a flashback to Elba and Nansania’s duel to the death during the civil war thirty years prior. This foreshadows the violent confrontation between Tiat and Lakhesh at the end of the volume. In both cases two former friends are now crossing swords with one another under tragic circumstances.
• Brick Joke: During Willem's weapon maintenance on Seniorious, he tells Chtholly of the various effects of the talismans that comprise the sword. The amusing part therein is that some of those talismans would have actually been useful in a few situations the characters found themselves in in earlier chapters.
• Call a Pegasus a "Hippogriff": The girls, while informally referred to as fairies, are officially classified as leprechauns, despite fitting the former term and having little to nothing in common with Real Life conceptualizations of the latter.
• Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": Humans are called emnetwihts in the series. ^note This term hasn't been used in the anime's dialogue, though it appears in the novels and in the English subtitles. It means "men of the plains" in Old English — many terms in the series are based on words from European languages.
• Cast from Hit Points: Venenum is very dangerous to its user and can easily shorten their lifespan. Willem’s degraded physical state is largely due to his overuse of venenum in the past. It also speeds up encroachment in Leprechauns, which is why those who don’t die in battle seldom live long afterwards.
• Changing of the Guard: SukaMoka takes place five years after the main events of the first series. It focuses on some of the younger girls at the Warehouse, who are now in their teenage years. It also introduces a new male main character, who takes Willem’s former role in the story.
• Child Soldiers: The leprechauns all qualify as this, with Chtholly, the oldest, being just fifteen. The Braves back when the humans were still around also count, as Willem and his old friends were teenagers when they fought against the Visitor, Elq Hrqstn, a year before the apocalypse of the surface world.
• Cerebus Syndrome: This work constantly balances on the brink of depressive science fiction and Slice of Life with attractive Love Interest and cute little girls.
• Chekhov's Gun: Willem’s Babel talisman. Originally it was just a convenient way for him to communicate while he was still learning Règles Aile’s language. He hasn’t used it since then, but still wears it as a memento. He was right to hold onto it as he later adds the talisman to Lapidem Sybilus, allowing him to apologize to the now horribly transformed Almaria, while simultaneously performing a Mercy Kill on the unfortunate beast.
• The Conspiracy: Volume 5 reveals that there is a conspiracy involving the Elpis Federation and high ranking members of the Winged Guard to seize control of Règles Aile. Their plan involves releasing captured Beasts onto the floating islands with the aim of causing a panic; allowing Elpis to seize the fairies at the Warehouse for their own weapons program. They could then use those weapons as leverage to gain supremacy over the other islands. Willem narrowly averts this plan at great cost and Elpis ultimately gets taken out by one of their captured Beasts.

• Cosmic Horror Story: Civilization’s days are numbered, with even the Visitors noting that the world is living on borrowed time. It’s not a question of if the world is going to end, but when.
• Crapsack World: The majestic floating islands are all that’s left of civilization after the 17 Beasts turned the surface into a barren wasteland. Even the small degree of safety offered by the islands is constantly threatened by attacks from the Beasts, which are usually only repelled at great cost.
• Curtains Match the Window: Numerous characters in the story have eyes that match the color of their hair. Among the Leprechauns shown, it seems that Nephren is the only exception to this rule.
• The Dark Times: Prior to the arrival of the Visitors the world was an ashen wasteland inhabited by the creatures later known as the 17 beasts. Using their powers the Visitors transformed this world into a paradise and created the races that now inhabit it. This was a complete disaster for the beasts, however, as they saw the barren wasteland in completely different light. In their view, the creations of the Visitors were unspeakable abominations that had soiled their once beautiful world.
• Darker and Edgier: The sequel. SukaMoka somehow manages to be even more depressing than the original the series. If anything it makes the ending of SukaSuka even harsher by showing that the metric ton of suffering the characters went through still wasn’t enough to protect the younger generation, who now must go through the same horrors as their predecessors.
• Deconstruction: Of Heroism. But unlike other franchises that deconstruct the morals behind heroism, Suka Suka instead asks the question of what is means to be a hero. Are they average people that just want to do the right thing (Like Willem) or people that have fantastical or tragic backstories (being descended from royalty, having learned powerful magic from family, being a demi god, having a demon sealed inside you as a child, or a dragon having destroyed your village and everyone you love in it) who are driven to fight as much as they can?
  • It also serves as a deconstruction of the typical light novel power fantasy. It’s played much more subtly than other examples in the genre. Willem was a Stock Light-Novel Hero in the past, with a steadily expanding array of abilities. In a normal light novel setting this would allow the hero to solve any problem as it arises. However, Willem’s abilities ultimately had zero effect on humanity’s fate and he failed at saving those closest to him. Going down the hero’s path only brought Willem pain and suffering. If Willem had just stayed home and lived a normal life, things wouldn’t have turned out any differently in the end. Ultimately, personal relationships with those closest to you matter more than grand efforts at saving the world.
  • The novels tend to tear apart the idea of a permanent happy ending. Any success our heroes win is at best temporary. Nowhere is this more evident than in volume 5. After Chtholly’s Heroic Sacrifice it seems like the girls of the Warehouse won’t have to fight again for the foreseeable future. However, this removes the very purpose of the Warehouse and the military strongly considers shutting it down. Meanwhile, other groups plot to get their hands on the fairies so that they can be used as weapons. In order to prevent the dismantling of the Warehouse, Willem is forced to unleash Shiantor so that the fairies can kill him and regain their purpose in the military. His sacrifice does buy the Warehouse a measure of peace...for about five years. Then Suka Moka happens.
• Developing Doomed Characters: Throughout the series, we see our heroine Chtholly grow from a soldier who was willing to die on the battlefield only Because Destiny Says So, to a girl who begins to hesitate over it because she realizes that she still wants to live her life like a normal person, to a young woman who accepts the inevitability of her tragic fate but still wants to have the life she's begun to embrace after Willem made her see how happy she is just by being with those she loved. Naturally, as true to this trope, she dies at the end of the anime (midway in the light novel series) once her character development came at full circle.
• Disc-One Final Boss: The Timmere, which are the only Beasts capable of terrorizing Règles Aile, are the main looming threat for the characters in the first three volumes. In Volume 4, Shiantor the 1st Beast is the new threat, trapping Willem and Nephren in a Lotus-Eater Machine that places them in the last days of the Emnetwhit 500 years ago. By Volume 5, the cult-like Elpis Federation are the final villains as a whole, where the narrative shifts its focus from Cosmic Horror Story to an impending civil war between various political factions in Règles Aile.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: The sounds and expressions the girls make whenever Willem treats them from venenum poisoning. The anime upped the Fanservice by making the activity look a lot more erotic than it should be. It gets even more blatant in Volume 5, where the aftermath of a massage session between Willem and some random woman is framed to make it seem like they’re having some post-coitus pillow talk.
• "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: The opening theme is performed by Chtholly's voice actress, Azusa Tadokoro.
• Doomed Hometown: Willem’s hometown of Gomag was destroyed 500 years ago like the rest of the surface.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Rhantolk and Nopht show up in the anime's opening credits first before making their official debuts in episode 7. Both also appear in the Action Prologue first before they're officially introduced later on.
  • The airship Plantaginista also appears in the anime’s prologue. However, it can also be seen later in the episode flying over Island 28.
  • The Light Novel has a few as well. For example, Ted and Navutiri are both mentioned during the prologue of the first book, despite them not being properly introduced until the fourth novel. There is also a minor bit of background info about Imps in the next chapter, a race which doesn’t appear in the original light novel but plays a major role in the sequel.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: The original light novel has more than its fair share of suffering and ultimately both of its main characters die under extremely tragic circumstances. However, Willem is Only Mostly Dead and is able to return to the Warehouse following a ten-year Time Skip. Along the way he encounters a girl who is heavily implied to be Chtholly’s Reincarnation and he is finally able return to a place he can once again call home. It even hints that the conflict with the Beasts might potentially be resolved due to Willem finding common ground Shiantor.
• Eldritch Abomination: The 17 Beasts. Also, maybe barring Elq, the Visitors as well.
• Eldritch Location: Elq’s dreamworld is full of weird Alien Geometries and other confusing features. Apparently it’s based on her memories of the Visitors’ starship.
• Engineered Heroics: The Elpis Federation unleashed several captured Aurora on Corni da Luce, by either hiring or setting up/framing the Annihilation Knights (a minor antagonist group in Volume 2) in order to exhibit their superweapon and make themselves appear as heroes.
• Evolving Credits:
  • The visions Chtholly sees in the segment where she's being turned to ice in the anime's opening changes depending on the events that would happen in the episode, much like how Angel Beats! does it. Apart from that, the colors in the title and Elq's ribbon in her segment change steadily as well.
  • Also, once Rhantolk and Nopht finally make their debut, they were added alongside everyone in the final scene of the ED credits.
• Fantastic Nuke: Opening the fairy gate unleashes a massive explosion at the cost of the user’s life. Until Willem showed up, this was the only viable strategy against the Beasts.
• Fantastic Racism:
  • The Emnetwiht (a.k.a. humans) were said to have been responsible for the calamity that forced the other races to flee to the floating islands. This is why, in some places, the Beast Man races look down upon "the featureless", or races with no animal-like physical features.
  • Humans were no better in the past, viewing other races as little more than monsters.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Règles Aile is very similar to early 20th century France.
• Fattening the Victim: Willem is very suspicious of the troll Nygglatho preparing dinner for him when he first arrives at the dormitory and accuses her of this.
• Forced Orgasm: The Pressure Point massage Willem uses to treat venenum poisoning seems to cause his patients an extreme amount of pleasure, to the point of causing some involuntary orgasm. Chtholly is mortified and muffles her moans in the pillow and Rhantolk has a series of The Immodest Orgasm. Subverted when Nopht endures the massage, she simply feels tickles and laughs instead.
• Foregone Conclusion:
  • The relationship between the central couple develops rather quickly (for a romantic anime); it makes their sad end pretty obvious.
  • The epilogue makes it clear that certain characters will survive the sequel.
• Foreshadowing: The general state of Island 38 with its collapsing infrastructure is a major hint that the rest of the islands are also living on borrowed time.
• For Want Of A Nail: A tragic example of this would be humanity's extinction. The braves managed to defeat the Visitors and kill Elq. Unfortunately their sacrifices were in vain due to a variety of factors. True World's research into recreating the Visitors' curse was unsuccessful due to attacks by misguided adventurers, the loss of key researchers to other fields, and the disappearance of Nils D. Foreigner. This failure resulted in humanity staying on its course towards extinction.
• Floating Continent: Due to the surface world being overrun by Beasts, civilization has instead relocated to an interconnected network of floating cities, (mostly) out of reach from most of the Beasts' attacks.
• Funny Background Event: A couple in episode 4 of the anime.
  • After finishing the movie at the beginning, a Pig Man sitting behind Nygglatho can be seen asleep.
  • While Tiat was telling Willem about the story behind Corni da Luce's fountain of the Great Sage, there are several couples nearby. One of these couples is clearly breaking up, where the girl slapped her partner so hard he got knocked over.
• Gainax Ending: Anime has an easy version of this. It's pretty obvious that Chtholly died, but the show does not give a clear answer about the fate of William and Nephrena, creating a false Broken Aesop. And if it was not yet difficult to understand, we see the birth of a girl very similar to someone...
• Genre Shift: The story starts out as a typical fantasy romance series, albeit one with a very dark tone. The story radically shifts following Chtholly’s death in Volume 3. It quickly becomes a Dark Fantasy with many Cosmic Horror Story elements. The later half of the light novel has often been compared to the Nier series in terms of its characters and themes.
• Ghost City: Lyell has almost been completely abandoned due to the imminent arrival of the 11th Beast. Its abandoned industrial areas give off a strong sense that the world has already ended, further cemented by the fact that Feodor and Tiat are the only characters we see in its introductory chapter. It serves as a stark contrast to the bustling city where Willem and Chtholly first met.
• Godzilla Threshold: If it looks like an island is about to fall to the Beasts, the military won’t hesitate to send it plummeting to the ground. Even the loss of an irreplaceable floating island is better than letting the 17 Beasts gain a foothold in the sky.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Averted. The reader learns that, rather is lead to believe that a human organization called the True World Re-imagination Hymnal Choir, a.k.a. "True World", was responsible for the unleashing of the 17 Beasts, which resulted in the apocalypse which wiped out all other life on the surface world. But as the reader finds out much later, they didn't. The apocalypse would have happened anyway without True World's help because the curse that kept the world in its then current form faded. In fact, one of the two factions of True World was actually trying to prevent the apocalypse, but failed. (See the Awful Truth spoiler above.)
• Growing Up Sucks: Willem feels this way on behalf of the leprechauns, because for them, being mature entails being drafted into a war against the Beasts that has already claimed the lives of many of their kind.
• Guns Are Worthless: Played with. Small arms are genuinely ineffective against Beasts, serving as little more than an annoyance. Sustained fire from heavy artillery on the other hand can damage a Beast to the point where it has to stop and regenerate, buying time for someone with a dug weapon to land a killing blow on the now weakened Beast.
• Happy Ending Override: A recurring theme in the series and even lampshaded by one character.
• Historical Villain Upgrade: Humanity is reviled in the present day for their alleged role in unleashing the 17 Beasts. Human Braves in particular are now depicted as an evil force that drove other races from their rightful homes, while in Willem’s time they were treated as heroes of the highest order.
• Hope Spot:
  • This trope crops up when Nygglatho examines Chtholly and deems her to no longer be a leprechaun, leading readers to think that the latter would be removed from active duty and allowed to live Happily Ever After with Willem. These hopes are dashed, however, when Chtholly accompanies Willem in rescuing Nopht and Rhantolk from the surface after they are stranded due to an attack by the Beasts. Tragically, Chtholly does not survive the mission. To twist the knife further, her encroachment has almost fully set in by then. As such, even if she did not accompany Willem, or survived the mission, Chtholly, as the readers and the other characters would have been familiar with, is effectively dead.
  • Related to the above spoiler, Willem managing to find the Kaliyon Lapidemsibilus, the weapon that prevents its user from experiencing mental deterioration is this as not only does Willem end up not using it anyway, but Chtholly dies in the finale, making his quest of finding the Kaliyon to prevent her from losing her memories effectively pointless.
  • SukaSuka’s epilogue leads one to believe that Willem’s Heroic Sacrifice brought an end to the Warehouse’s problems. In reality they were just beginning. The sequel reveals that the peace Willem bought lasted only two days. Elpis’s captured Beasts escaped not long after the Battle of Island 11. Not only did the Beasts completely exterminate the populations of two floating islands, but they also gained a permanent foothold in the sky. Five years later the Warehouse is once again in the same position it was prior to Willem’s arrival, with no end in sight for the Hopeless War against the Beasts.
• Hopeless War: The fight against the 17 Beasts is starting to look increasingly hopeless now that the Beasts have gained two footholds in the sky. What was once a distant threat has now become an everyday concern. Naturally, optimism seems to be in short supply.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: The Elpis Mercantile Federation tried to use Beasts as weapons against the other islands. This came back to bite them in the worst possible way when one of them broke free and killed every living thing on Island 13.
• How We Got Here: The anime starts off with the climax of the third volume, as described above in the Action Prologue, with the characters shown mortally wounded and with a blank-faced Chtholly walking forward to her own death. After that, the rest of the episode and the ones that follow it tell the story of how everything happened before it got to that point.
• Humanoid Abomination: The Visitors, or as far as one seen.
• Human Subspecies: A few of the “disfeatured” races can be classified as this. Ogres, Trolls, and Imps are said to have originally evolved from humans at some point in the past. Naturally, these races tend to more closely resemble humans and are looked down upon as a result.
• If We Get Through This…: The second half of the show has a lot of it because the dreams of William and Chtholly about their future life together are becoming more optimistic and sweet.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Nygglatho, the girls' other caretaker, is a troll, and eats human (or humanoid) flesh. She comments that Willem smells absolutely delectable, and occasionally threatens to eat the children if they break any house rules.
• Just a Flesh Wound: Almita, one of the younger girls, waves off falling down a ravine and getting an open gash on her head trying to get a ball back for the other girls to play with. Justified due to their lack of fear of dying, as having no fear of death makes them more efficient against the 17 beasts.
• Just Before the End: This is the general feeling of the City of Lyell, as it has mostly been abandoned due to the imminent arrival of the much feared 11th Beast.
• Kissing Discretion Shot: Feodor's mind conveniently draws a blank right before he kisses Tiat. The lingering warm sensation he feels on his lips afterwards all but confirms that the two of them did the deed.
• Knight of Cerebus: The Timere are the first type of Beast introduced in the story and the most immediate threat for the first three volumes. The story also takes a notably darker turn after Chtholly dies fighting them.
• Lampshade Hanging: The series is surprisingly self-aware of some of the common light novel tropes. One of the better examples would be when Nygglatho accuses Willem of being a Clueless Chick-Magnet, who can’t comprehend the fact that girls like him. Willem is not amused, telling Nygglatho that he’s not just some character acting out a common trope. It turns out he’s perfectly aware that some of the girls at the Warehouse have feelings for him. After all, he might be the first and only chance for romance that they ever get. He just doesn’t believe such feelings of love are anything more than girlish crushes, which is why he’s unwilling to reciprocate them.
• Loss of Identity: This is what eventually happens to all Leprechauns who experience a phenomenon known as The Encroachment. It's when the Visitor Elq Hrqstn completely subsumes the original's personality and takes over it as her own, effectively killing off the Leprechauns' original personality. It already happened to Ithea when she was younger, though she managed to hide the fact. Chtholly begins to experience the symptoms as the series progresses. However, as the reader learns later, Elq is "immortal yet dead", and the leprechauns are actually temporary reincarnations of the shattered pieces of Elq's soul. So in a sense, she *is* the original personality.
• Lotus-Eater Machine: The Shinator's main, and most powerful ability under its arsenal is to create illusory worlds that trap its victims in this trope. Willem and Nephren find themselves imprisoned in one during volume 4.
• Love Confession: Chtholly briefly confesses to Willem at the end of the fifth episode, as she is walking past him. She says it again, this time more definitely, at the end of the next episode.
• Love Dodecahedron: Feodor Jessman’s love life is a rather complex affair, especially given how he’s been romantically involved with at least three girls in the sequel. Tiat is his Implied Love Interest, but he’s also had a fair amount of Ship Tease with Lakhesh. His former fiancé Marguerite is also still in love with him.
• Lovecraft Lite: Despite its fantasy light novel setting, the underlying mythology of the series is distinctly Lovecraftian. The 17 Beasts and Visitors in particular seem to be heavily influenced by Lovecraft’s works.
• Low Fantasy: The present-day society of Règles Aile is this due to the apocalypse. In the past the world was a High Fantasy JRPG like setting with dragons, mages, and adventurers. However, the destruction caused by the 17 Beasts resulted in most of the advanced magical knowledge being lost. Only a few characters who were alive more than 500 years ago are capable of using such lost arts in the present.
• Mauve Shirt: Some of the crewmen on the Plantaginista are given some extra characterization in the anime. Not all of them survive the subsequent battle with the Timere.
• Memento Macguffin: The blue pendant Chtholly wears on her neck previously belonged to an older Leprechaun she looked up to back when she was still a child. The anime's epilogue shows that after Chtholly herself died, Tiat inherited it and is shown wearing it the same way Chtholly did. Both times are symbolic in that they show the older leprechauns passing over their duties to their eventual successors.
• Medieval Stasis: Averted. While much magical knowledge was lost with the fall of humanity, the technology level of society has actually advanced. Règles Aile seems to be at an early 20th century level with many instances of magitek not found in Willem's time.
• Men Can't Keep House: Shortly after boarding the Plantaginesta, which largely houses male soldiers, Chtholly discovers that it is incredibly filthy. Deciding to make herself useful, she starts cleaning up the ship, and endearing herself to the hearts of the men onboard in the process.
• Mildly Military: The Warehouse looks nothing like a military facility; being more akin to an orphanage. Of course this is due to it mostly being run by a civilian company, with only a single military officer on staff for legal reasons.
• Mood Whiplash: Feodor and Tiat’s first meeting has an air of foreboding, with Feodor thinking that nothing good could come from talking to a forlorn-looking girl on a ledge. Then their talk is interrupted by a blast of steam that sends Tiat plunging into a water tank like a complete idiot. The rest of the chapter more than makes up for this brief moment of levity.
• Killed Off for Real: A very rigid form of this for leprechauns. In a way, the Leprechauns "die" after they begin to experience Encroachment, where their original personalities are subsumed and completely overwritten by Elq's, or at least, a new blank slate from her, and the original identities of the Leprechauns are effectively "dead" in the spiritual sense. Of the characters we know, only Chtholly manages to get into some kind of astral "heaven", since she returns to Elk before the complete loss of her identity.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: A common theme in the series is how good intentions can sometimes lead to horrible tragedies.
  • In the past Human Braves fought to protect their species from the many threats it faced. They were so good at their job that the human population was able to expand to an unsustainable level. This caused the Visitors’ curse to fail; resulting in the emergence of the 17 Beasts and the destruction of the surface.
  • The Visitors created, or more accurately altered, the world and the various races that inhabited it because they were nostalgic for their long lost home-world. Unfortunately they never stopped to consider whether the “Beasts” that they found inhabiting the planet might object to having their world altered from its original state.
  • Chtholly takes out a good chunk of the Timere during her Heroic Sacrifice, rendering them unable to attack the islands for the foreseeable future. However, this also means the very existence of the Warehouse is called into doubt; with the girls there now becoming pawns in a political struggle for control of Règles Aile.
• Not Afraid to Die: By nature, the Leprechauns have little to no fear of death, making them more effective when fighting against the Beasts, and making it easier for them to accept their inevitable fates on the battlefield should it happen one day. Best shown when Almita shrugs off a big bleeding gash on her head after falling off a ravine without caring about it much. However, it seems like this may change as they grow older, as Chtholly does have conflicting feelings about dying in battle. Interestingly, while they don't personally mind dying in the battlefield themselves, they would mind if a comrade of theirs did, and would even mourn their loss as shown when Nopht mistakenly thought that Chtholly died while trying to retake the islands during episodes 4-5.
• One-Gender Race: All Leprechauns are born female. This is because they are all fragments of Elq’s soul that acquire physical form.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: Souwong describes the leprechauns to Willem as ghosts who were crafted from the souls of dead children, but they have little to nothing in common with conventional depictions of ghosts. In-Universe this is also the case. Normally spirits appear as wispy sprites that don’t really have a physical form. Which makes the human-sized Leprechauns an oddity among spirits. One of the officers stationed at the Warehouse before Willem hypothesized that Leprechauns have physical bodies because their souls came from a being with a truly massive soul. This hypothesis turns out to be correct. All Leprechauns are formed from the soul of a dead Visitor, a godlike being with a spiritual footprint that dwarfs that of a normal individual.
• Our Souls Are Different: Souls in SukaSuka are actually the shattered remains of ancient extraterrestrial beings. In some cases large soul fragments can even take physical form. The 17 Beasts are also said to have souls which radically differ from other life forms; being more akin to a collection of desires and impulses rather than a proper sense of self.
• Powered by a Forsaken Child: The leprechauns can be considered this given that they’re all created from Elq’s soul. This trope is later taken to its logical extreme with Elpis’s fairy powered weapon.
• Power Gives You Wings: The leprechauns are capable of using their venenum to create wings on their backs which allow them to fly.
• Precursors: The Visitors are the godlike beings who crafted the world the story takes place in. They divided their souls up amongst their creations long ago, leaving Elq as the sole remaining member of their race.
• Priceless Paperweight: Whilst Collon is suffering from a prolonged cold, Willem removes one of the talismans comprising Seniorious and directs Chtholly to put it under Collon's pillow, revealing that it prevents nightmares while the user is suffering from a cold. Nygglatho understandably freaks out at a piece of a priceless and ancient legendary weapon being used in such a manner.
• Questioning Title?: The title has no less than three questions to ask (What Do You Do at the End of the World? Are You Busy? Will You Save Us?). The sequel series' title is slightly less questioning (What Do You Do at the End of the World? Can We Meet Once Again?).
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The Winged Guard’s 5th Division is used as a dumping ground for unruly and incompetent soldiers.
• Reassigned to Antarctica: The position of Second Technical Officer is widely considered to be this in the military. Getting assigned to the Warehouse is usually a pretty good sign you’ve pissed off too many higher ups.
• Reality Warper: Curses are typically used to this effect. Usually they imbue objects, such as talismans, with special properties that would not be physically possible under normal circumstances. The most powerful curse casters can erase entire concepts from existence or even change the very nature of one’s being.
• Red Shirt Army: Any member of the Winged Guard who isn’t a Leprechaun or Willem. At best they can provide a useful distraction while the Beasts tear them to shreds.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Vincra the 14th Beast is currently sealed inside the dug weapon Mournen. The seal doesn’t seem to be particularly good, because it can still enthrall the mind of whoever attempts to use the sword.
• Secret Test of Character: Seniorious has a number of requirements that an individual must meet if they’re going to wield the sword. Not only must they be a tragic figure fated for misery, they must also be willing to abandon any chance of ever-changing that fate. A wielder of Seniorious sees a path to their own happiness, but chooses to reject that path in favor of becoming a Tragic Hero.
• Ship Tease: Between Chtholly and Willem. Played with in that while Chtholly definitely has feelings for him, it's ambiguous if Willem reciprocates them or not. However, the fact that in the fourth episode he rushes precisely to her, says all the same in the direction of reciprocity.
• Short Title: Long, Elaborate Subtitle: Shuumatsu Nani Shitemasu ka? Isogashii desu ka? Sukutte Moratte Ii desu ka?, abbreviated as SukaSuka. The official translation is WorldEnd: What do you do at the end of the world? Are you busy? Will you save us?
• Shout-Out Theme Naming: Many of the characters' names appear to be inspired by or taken directly from the works of H. P. Lovecraft. Examples include:
  • Chtholly - Cthulhu/Cthylla
  • Ithea - Idh-yaa
  • Nephren - Nephren-Ka
  • Tiat - Tiamat
  • Collon - Captain Collins
  • Rhantolk - Rhan-Tegoth
  • Nygglatho - Shub-Niggurath
• Standard Snippet: The classic English ballad "Scarborough Fair" is used during Willem and Chtholly's walk to the top of the city on Island 28.

• Steampunk: The present-day society of Règles Aile is a magitek variant of this in contrast to the High Fantasy world of the past.
• The Stinger: The final episode ends with one. Suowong uses his magic to attempt to locate Willem after he and Nephren go MIA through finding his heartbeat. After Suowong leaves to greet a guest who arrived, the basin of water he used his magic on begins to detect two pulses, indicating Willem and Nephren's survival.
• Sufficiently Advanced Aliens: The Visitors are strongly implied to be this.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • One of the main advantages fairies have over 17 Beasts is their ability to fly. This allows them to easily outmaneuver their much larger opponents and avoid their attacks. This is important, because not even a fairy can hope to match a Beast in terms of strength. Close quarters fighting in a confined space is therefore a worst-case scenario for a fairy. Which is probably why the airship battle went so badly for the girls, with every fairy involved ending up either dead or seriously injured.
  • Leprechauns are basically the equivalent of nuclear weapons in SukaSuka’s universe. The sheer threat of the 17 Beasts is enough to keep them in one place. However, if the immediate threat of the Beasts is removed then that doesn’t mean they stop being weapons. Beasts aren’t the only enemies that they can be used against, which is why rival political factions in Règles Aile are desperate to get their hands on the girls at the Warehouse.
• Taking You with Me: The Leprechauns have the ability to "open the Gate", a dangerous but powerful technique that lets them overload their Venenum and have it explode in the entire area they're standing on, allowing them to wipe out all surrounding Beasts that are in that area with them at the cost of their own life. It can also happen accidentally should they overuse their Venenum as well.
• Tastes Like Friendship: Where they previously were timid and showed avoidance towards him, Willem manages to win over the girls by feeding them a pudding he knew how to make from his past.
• Team Dad: Willem becomes this to the Leprechauns when he moves to the weapons facility they live in.
• Tempting Fate: The conversation between the two crewmen on the Tomorrow Grasper. How could you not expect anything to go wrong after claiming that your prototype barrier system is 100% beast proof? In fairness the two hapless Elpis soldiers probably had no clue that their cargo was Shiantor.
• Tomato in the Mirror: The Beasts were actually the Emnetwihts' original forms before the Visitors came and changed the races into their own image.
• Tomato Surprise: At the end of the first novel, it is revealed that the first beast, Chanteur, is The Daughter. At the time of publication, the series was planned to be canceled after the second volume, so the author may have put this spoiler in earlier than he really wanted to; in the anime, this scene is skipped, which seems to confirm that.
• Toplessness from the Back: When Willem has to do a Pressure Point massage on female characters to treat their venenum poisoning, he needs to touch their skin, so they lay topless on their stomach so he can work on their bare backs.
• Tragic Hero: It's a prerequisite to become a Regal Brave. One must also be this in order to be worthy of wielding Seniorious. The more tragic the background, the better Seniorious will be in combat.
• Transformation Horror: The fate of most of humanity when they reverted back to being Beasts. The horrifying process is something straight out of an H.P. Lovecraft novel, as the individual makes the transition from normal human to straight-up Eldritch Abomination. What makes it even more terrifying is that those who undergo this process are completely euphoric over the loss of their humanity.

• Walking Wasteland: Shiantor the Lamenting First Beast reduces anything within a certain radius of itself to sand. Rumors of its presence in area are enough to abort any expeditions to the surface.
• Weak, but Skilled: Emnetwihts were one of the weakest races, but still ruled over much of the land.
• We ARE Struggling Together: Règles Aile is actually a diverse collection of city-states with many competing interests. Only fear of the 17 Beasts prevents conflicts from regularly arising between the islands. With the threat of Timere attacks reduced following Chtholly's battle with them, groups such as the Elpis Mercantile Federation immediately attempt to gain an edge over their rivals.
• Wham Episode:
  • Episode 2. Almita’s fall and subsequent lack of concern for her own well-being makes Willem realize that he’s essentially become manager of a Tyke Bomb factory.
  • Episode 6. Chtholly’s encroachment is put on full display. The truth about the origin of Leprechauns is also partially revealed.
  • Episode 12. Chtholly’s Heroic Sacrifice is probably the biggest in the series. The fact that the series was willing to kill off one of its main characters came as a major shock. Even with all the foreshadowing many were no doubt expecting some Deus ex Machina to save the day. Unfortunately even with the powers of a literal god on her side, Chtholly still dies.
  • The ending of volume 4. Willem begins turning into a beast after absorbing some of Shiantor’s essence. He literally cries tears of joy as his mind and body are completely taken over by the beast.
  • The Volume 5 chapter titled “The Character of a Brave” may rival even episode 12 in terms of shock value. In what is easily one of the most emotional scenes in the series, Willem saves the Warehouse by becoming a monster so dangerous the girls have no choice but to kill him and therefore secure their future as guardians of Règles Aile.
• Wham Line:
  • "I'd really like it if you could forget ever meeting me."
  • “Within a year from that night, humanity went extinct."
  • “Shrouded in the darkness of night, surrounded by vast stretches of grey, a Beast emitted its first cry"
  • “Nearly half a year had passed since the city of Lyell was condemned."
• Wham Shot: The close-up of Almita's bloody face when Willem checks on her after falling down in a ravine after getting a terrible open head wound. It sets the tone for what is to come for the series, as well as the living conditions of the girls.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Because the girls have no fear of death and are not life forms in the conventional sense, Souwong and Ebon have no qualms with sending them into battle against the Beasts in hopes of reclaiming the surface world. Willem, who has grown to care for the girls, naturally takes issue with this.
• Wizards Live Longer: Souwong Kandel is this, from his wizard looks to the fact that he curses himself to cheat death and remove his heart.
• Will They or Won't They?: Averted. Already in the fourth episode, Willem rushes to hug only Chtholly, when he finds out that they have survived, and then in the next, she confesses to him in love.
• Winged Humanoid: The leprechauns are this when they use their venenum to create wings on their backs.

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