Love Chart

They get a lot more complex, believe us.

Fred: Y'all have a chart or something?
Gunn: In the files. I'll get it for you later.

— Angel

Stories with a Love Dodecahedron at some point will throw in a Love Chart. It is usually simplified as much as feasible, with little portraits connected by color-coded arrows. Occasionally, some pithy or more detailed quote is put on the arrows to clarify. Sometimes such a chart is drawn up within the story by one of the characters.

See also Tangled Family Tree. Sister Trope to Model Sheet.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• After about Volume 5, hentai Boys Empire lists off how everyone connects… and in what order Makoto slept with them.
• In Fairy Tail, given Juvia's tendency to see romance where there is none and habit of Twisting the Words, she seems to believe that she's in a Love Dodecahedron, to the point where she actually made one of these shown in the 9th page of the 256th chapter. Surprisingly enough, the chart is somewhat accurate, apart from Juvia believing that all the women besides Meredy and Sherry are interested in Gray, and that, as In-Universe Ho Yay, Gray is in love with Lyon.
• Gamers! (2015): During the buildup to what ultimately becomes Keita asking Karen out, Aguri draws up a relationship chart for the main cast. While it’s fairly accurate, the series is built on Poor Communication Kills and misunderstandings, so she erroneously notes that her boyfriend Tasuku might be cheating on her with Karen and/or Chiaki (Keita’s so-called rival who does have an unrequited crush on Tasuku). She also notes that herself and Keita are “comrades,” not realizing that the other three people on the chart suspect the Odd Friendship between them is more romantic than the Platonic Life-Partners relationship it actually is.
• Genshiken includes a love chart for Show Within a Show Kujibiki♡Unbalance at one point. In a later volume, as a joke, it includes one for Genshiken itself, even though the relationships are pretty self-explanitory.
• Heaven's Lost Property features a chart. It includes the dog.
• Iris Zero features a fairly straightforward diagram at the beginning of its third volume in an omake section of sorts.
• Parodied in chapter 74 of Kaguya-sama: Love Is War which featured a non-existent love triangle between Kaguya, Shirogane, and Ishigami due to the three of them binging a shoujo romance manga and imagining they were in one.
• The first page of Kodomo no Jikan is a chart of everyone's relationships. You'll need it.
• Love Hina and Negima! Magister Negi Magi (both written by Ken Akamatsu) have at one time or another had a character draw up a chart which tallied up in numeric form the relative levels of attraction/love that a group of girls has for the series' male lead.
• Since Seven Arcs loves to tease the shippers, a relationship chart of Lyrical Nanoha is released every now and then. Of course, since Seven Arcs loves to tease the shippers, anyone not married is listed as "best friends" at best. Much pointing and laughing are probably involved here.
• After about halfway through Monster, volumes began featuring complex connection charts◊ between a mere fraction of the characters in the series… Yet there's rarely even one romantic entanglement shown.
• Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun has a few examples, both In-Universe and out.
  • Nozaki sometimes draws them to plot out his manga.
  • When Wakamatsu is trying to explain what he thinks is a love polygon between Kashima (who he doesn't know is a girl), Seo, Sakura, Mikoshiba, and Hori, he draws one to show Nozaki. However, his art isn't good enough for Nozaki to realize who the mysterious "cool guy" (Kashima) is at first.
  • The cover page of chapter 72 is a chart showing Nozaki's assistants (Sakura, Hori, Wakamatsu, and Mikoshiba) and whether or not they know the other is also a manga assistant.^note Sakura knows about everyone, and Hori and Waka know about each other, but Mikoshiba doesn't know that Hori and Waka are assistants, and they don't know he is.
  • We finally get an official one◊ in the bonus chapter 88.5.
• Ouran High School Host Club has a couple of these in the manga. Kaoru makes one, and not surprisingly Renge does, too—it doesn't include herself, though. It's the love triangle involving Haruhi.
• Two separate charts are shown in magazine scans showing the relationships of the central characters in Pokémon the Series: XY; both charts confirm that Serena has a romantic interest in Ash. Here's◊ one, but in Japanese.
• The Love Dodecahedron in Rumiko Takahashi's Ranma ½ is fairly complex. Just look at the chart◊.
  • That is a fan made one. Takahashi included one in the memorial book (Art of Ranma ½ in USA). That book also includes a chart about how the main character, Ranma, thinks about each of his rivals/enemies.
• One of these is at the front of Sgt. Frog, usually featuring every minor recurring character. It gets a bit cramped.

Comic Books

• Although it didn't appear in the comic book itself, DC Comics once published one of these for the reboot version of the Legion of Super-Heroes in poster form.
• The back of the third issue of Scott Pilgrim.
• DC's in-house advertising for Young Heroes in Love showed a group shot of the team with arrows illustrating the All Love Is Unrequited Love Dodecahedron.

Fanfiction

• One worksafe fic on the Ace Attorney Kink Meme had Apollo and Klavier invited to Phoenix's "family only" Thanksgiving get-together. Their minds boggled as what they had expected to be a very small group turned out to include "fifteen people—almost none of which had the decency to be genetically related to one another." Ema had to draw up a chart just so they could make sense of it. (One reader's rendition of it can be found here◊.)
• Miraculous Ladybug shipping is incredibly complex due to mutual secret identities, leading to such insanities as Two-Person Love Traingles. The recent prospect of getting additional Miraculous users to add to the shipping madness has in turn forced a few geometrically minded Tumblr users to try and map out the potential interactions, resulting in the Love Hypercube. What's a hypercube? It's a 4-dimensional cube. Yes. Four-dimensional. In 2-D space.
• The shipping tendencies of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fan-authors has lead more than one, or to make charts listing all well-known pairings. The latter include characters shipped with inanimate objects, or even themselves.
• Silencio has the Shipping Chart, jokingly considered to be an Eldritch Abomination. It all centers around Taylor Hebert, who is mistaken for a lesbian, has a male cape identity shipped with basically everyone under the sun, and eventually ends up in a relationship with Amy Dallon. Who says mimes aren't romantic?

Film

• Two of these are shown onscreen and described by the narrator partway through Brand Upon the Brain!, giving to the fact that viewers are not geniuses. Each only contains three people, though, and each contains the same three people—the confusion comes from factoring in one character's Sweet Polly Oliver act.
• Love Actually featured an official one on its website, and also used it as on of the promotional posters. It's also included on the DVD/Bluray release.

Literature

• The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole opens with one drawn by the title character for the main cast, which includes Margaret Thatcher in the "enemies of family" box.
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: In "The Third Wheel," Greg needs to find a date for the Valentine's Day dance but isn't sure who's already taken, so he draws out a love chart of his classmates to find who likes who. He adds about twelve people to the chart, including himself, before giving up on it.

Live-Action TV

• "The Geometry Of Love" is a comedic—yet very accurate—Instant Star Mini that is the epitome of this trope. Jaime has explained all the twists and turns of the kids' love lives to Paegan Smith:
  Paegan: Oh, this is too complicated! I mean, I'll never remember this!
  Jaime: Don't worry—we'll get you the printout.
• As a subversion of sorts (as in this case it rarely deals with actual romance), in Kamen Rider Double, the second episode of every two-ep arc begins with a chart showing the involvement and roles of every person connected to the current case being investigated, with a Previously on… narrating over top.
• "The Chart"◊ was a major plot element in The L Word.

Video Games

• Several of these have been put out for Final Fantasy VII—most in the Anniversary Book which had one for every spin-off, but the most comprehensive one was in the original Ultimania guide which even included several minor characters such as Myrna, Elmyra, and Dio.
• Used in Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, albeit more to depict character's military allegiences/family tree/secret identities, with only a few critical romantic/familial bonds depicted; several characters had Multiple Endings, after all.
• Metal Gear Solid 4 Database had one, which was criticized for being somewhat inaccurate in places, but rather memorably made it so the fanboys could no longer ignore that Volgin and Raikov in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater were lovers.
• Soulcalibur IV had a mostly non-romantic version of this, including every playable character from the game (including the bonus characters), as well as the two main swords.
• The Star Fox 64 player's guide included one of these for all the major characters.

Webcomics

• The Author of Amazoness made up one here.◊ It's fairly comprehensive too.
• Bittersweet Candy Bowl has had several official ones made by the author.
  • Official chart as of Chapter 50 here. Beware spoilers. Also in color.
  • And, recently, an update was done. This is as of mid-63, and is available in poster form.
• Played straight by Jackie Lesnick, author of Girly. Although it is currently outdated by two years, and found only on her deviantART page here.
• In Homestuck's Hivebent arc, after an explanation of the sociology of troll romance, the author gives us an animated one. Even the narration is stumped. A bit earlier, Nepeta had her shipping wall, which seems to be a Love Chart that extends into the hypothetical. Karkat also attempts to demonstrate how each kid can get a partner while avoiding human/troll pairings and Brother–Sister Incest with his Mating Diagram For Morons.◊
• Being a series based on polyamory, Kimchi Cuddles helpfully provides a diagram of the "polycule" on the characters page. It's updated regularly.
• The Love Scorecard in The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!.
• Volume 4 of the collected The Order of the Stick, "Don't Split the Party", features a rather convoluted relationship chart. Kevin Bacon is on it.
• Lampshaded in Questionable Content in this comic and the next when Faye's psychologist has to make a Love Chart with thumbtacks and string.
  • A fan made a real-life chart◊ showing the relationships between all the characters (as of strip #4284), including some who haven't appeared in over five years.
• Rain has a "Super easy-to-follow relationship chart." Page title: "Look at this mess!"
• In Shortpacked!, Robin's got one drawn up on a chalkboard in the store's stockroom to make sure things never hit Love Dodecahedron levels and overload with angst. It hasn't really succeeded.
• Sluggy Freelance:
  • Parodied in these two strips.
  • Used straight here. Of course, it's gotten considerably more complicated since then; in fact, the main point of the chart was to give a recap on everyone's relationships before the "Vampires" arc shakes things up.
• Parodied by xkcd here: a particular nerd tries to use graph theory to find the "optimal" seating arrangement. And then again, where a couple decides to have sex solely because it'll make their social group's graph symmetrical.

Western Animation

• In Steven Universe episode "Log Date 7 15 2", Peridot makes a relationship diagram of the characters Camp Pining Hearts after Steven shows her one episode, claiming it shows why Pierre and Percy make the best pairing. Though, because Peridot has almost no understanding of romantic relationships, her chart plots out which couples would be the best battle strategy.

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