A horrifying combination of Blackest Night and Silent Hill coupled together with the Magical Girl Genre. Magical Girl Apocalypse (Mahou Shoujo of the End or Magical Girls of the End) is a horror manga by Sato Kentaro which ran in Shonen Champion from 2012 to 2017, and was compiled into 16 volumes. It was licensed in the US in 2014 by Seven Seas Entertainment.
The story revolves around Kii Kogami, who lives a dull high school life with his bullied childhood friend. One day, a strange-looking girl appears and kills nearly everyone in the school, turning their dead corpses into zombies. With a few survivors throughout the city, Kogami escapes the school as the Magical Girls and their undead minions take over the city.
Compare Puella Magi Madoka Magica and Elfen Lied for stories about as dark. The author, Sato Kentaro, has another manga, Magical Girl Site, which also ends up having ties to the Apocalypse universe.
Tropes include:
- Agony of the Feet: When Kii loses his shoes but must keep going on the rocky ground, he eventually passes out from blood loss and infections on his lacerated feet.
- Alien Sky: A giant pentagram appears in the sky as Kii and the survivors flee the school. It shatters, releasing hundreds of Alternative Magical Girls.
- Anchored Ship: Kii promises to give Sayano a proper reply to her love confession once the whole mess is sorted out.
- Anyone Can Die: And they do. Horribly.
- Apocalypse Anarchy: Akuta declares that since the world's ending, he can kill and rape to his heart's content. He's the only one we see doing so, however. Everyone outside of the main characters don't tend to last long enough to do anything.
- Art Evolution: An oddly specific example: Yoruka's breasts. In the first couple of volumes she looks like she has two traffic cones shoved in her shirt, but the artist gradually makes them look more soft and natural.
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: In Volume 2, we're introduced to Small-Large M, a Kaiju-sized Alternative Magical Girl with an upside-down head. It crushes a platoon of soldiers, downs some helicopters, and ends up destroying the mall the protagonists are all hiding in.
- Ax-Crazy: Akuta. He doesn't even care about everything that is happening.
- Bad Powers, Bad People: Many of the Alternative Magical Girls have powers not typically related to magical girls (not to mention necromancy). The very first one, Explode M, immediately proceeds to blow up several people with a mere touch of her wand, and most others are no better: one causes gruesome deformities, one carries a staff that spews corrosive acid, one has been seen spraying poison gas, and one is even capable of possession. There's also a
One-Panel Wonder (if she can be called that...) Magical Girl that looks like a character from an 8-bit video-game who shoots a gun that rips the skin off of people. - Batman Gambit: The entire Magical Girl Apocalypse project hinted at by the Alternative Magical Girls? It's to get Kii and Tsukune together so they can have a baby, who will inherit Tsukune's own Magical Girl genes and be able to take part in a special ritual decades in the future that involves the children of an entire generation of Magical Girls. In that future, only Tsukune does not have a child.
- Beat Them at Their Own Game: Akuta is able to use Magical Girls' wands against Magical Girls to great effect. Nobody else has tried it, so it is unclear whether it is only him or whether anybody could do it. It might be because he has come in contact with a destroyed Magical Girl and been partially fused with her.
- Big Bad: Wataru Himeji is the one who caused the apocalypse in the first place, hoping to use it as part of a bid to absorb ultimate power and rule unquestioned. Actually Makabe, who kills Himeji to take over the plan for godhood in the final arc.
- Big Bad Wannabe:
- Makabe appears to be The Man Behind the Man to Himeji, as his creator but gets unceremoniously killed off by his creation when Himeji decides to take the plan to become a god for himself.
- In the finale, this gets a 180 degree flip when Makabe reveals he's still alive just as Himeji is trying to complete the ritual to become a god and kills his traitorous servant, taking the power back.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Tsukune is shaping up to be one. In her introduction she is seen as a victim of bullying and a very shy girl. Later on, Sayano tells Kii that she was being forced by Tsukune into bullying her so that Tsukune could make Kii pity her. When they go back in time, Kii also finds pictures of the magical girls in Tsukune's room ten years before the start of series.
- Later chapters really play with this trope. As it turns out, Tsukune is exactly as sweet and gentle as she appears to be; all of her evil deeds are done by an alternate personality named Asuka. That personality was implanted in her by the series' real bitch in sheep's clothing- the seemingly harmless deaf boy named Wataru Himeji.
- Body Horror: Exhange M can use her wand to switch people's limbs around. Several of her victims are seen laying on the ground because they are unable to move their deformed bodies, screaming for her to change them back.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: Puppet Master, a human of the Magical Girl bloodline that was captured and augmented using the techniques to make Alternative Magical Girls, had her memories and personality altered to serve the bad guys. Now essentially an anti-Magical Girl Magical Girl, she is The Dragon to the main villain.
- Bring My Brown Pants:
- In the first chapter, Tsukune wets herself after a magical girl massacres everyone inside the classroom except her and Kii.
- When cornered by a Magical Girl in the hospital, we see Miu wet herself immediately after Ren is killed.
- The Bully: Sayano and Miki, whose first appearance in the story has them dunking Tsukune's head in a bucket of dirty mop water. Given what Kii finds out after traveling to the past, this may be an Invoked Trope on Tsukune's part...
- The Cameo: One that could be either homage or Take That!. One of the random people murdered by the Magical Girls seems to be none other than
manga author Kazuo Umezu with his trademark striped shirt. - Cassandra Truth: When Sayano first tells Kii about Tsukune's true nature, he doesn't believe her, thinking she was making it up to get him to like her. However, after being sent ten years into the past and finding drawings and dolls of the Magical Girls in Tsukune's room, Kii seems to start believing Sayano.
- Catchphrase: "Magical..." for Magical Girls, bordering on Pokémon Speak. Only Parasite M is capable of normal speech, but that's only when she's taking control of a host. Later on, after the universe is reset, all of the Heel–Face Turn -ed Magical Girls are capable of speech, but it takes a bit for them to reveal it.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Akuta the pervert cop, literally. He becomes instrumental in destroying the parasite Magical Girl as he is the only one in the building who is actually good with a gun. He also becomes a major protagonist, if you can even call him that.
- Childhood Friend Romance: It's pretty clear that Tsukune has a crush on Kii. The villains actually intend to enforce this trope to make them have a child.
- Crossover: A four-chapter one between Magical Girl Apocalypse, Hakaiju and Versus Earth, all published in Shounen Champion. Murderous magical girls, Lovecraftian creatures and grotesque space aliens... Japan is pretty much screwed.
- Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Akuta. A disgusting pervert and not the sharpest tool in the shed, but he's a superb shot and becomes even more competent when he becomes able to use wands.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Where do we even start!? There's having your head smashed, being burned alive, forcibly levitated (along with many other people), then dropped from a large height. And that's just from the first volume!
- Cute Mute: Himeji, who is deaf and can only communicate with sign language. Only the part about him being deaf is true.
- Death by Pragmatism: When the students fleeing the school realize there isn't enough room in the car for all of them, one of the students suggests leaving Kii and Tsukune (who haven't caught up yet) behind, arguing that they'll all be killed if they don't. The next few panels have Godai realizing that a fireball is heading toward the student and the girl standing next to them. The next page sees both of them incinerated.
- Domestic Abuse: Kii's father, to the point where Kii's mother was Driven to Suicide over it.
- The Dragon: The Puppet Master (actually a brainwashed Maria) to Himeji, who has been outfitted with the powers of all the mahou shoujo and is the final obstacle to stopping Himeji.
- Driven to Suicide: Both of Kii's parents. When Kii is sent back in time, he discourages his mother from doing so, and in the reset universe, he learns that she took his words to heart and is still alive.
- Dysfunctional Family: Kii's family. Both his mother and his father committed suicide at different points before the start of the story.
- Elegant Gothic Lolita: The Alternative Magical Girls that are not horrendously deformed look like little Victorian dolls.
- Elite Mooks: The Alternative Magical Girls are by no means "mooks" even in and of themselves, but Living-Dead M can upgrade them even further by means of her staff. Further elaborated when it is revealed that they are weapons from the future.
- Enemy Civil War: Shockingly, the Magical Girls are undergoing this.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Even Parasite-M, the possessive Alternative Magical Girl, thinks Akuta is complete shit when he tries to join the Alternative Magical Girl's side out of desperation.
- Evil All Along: The true Big Bad is eventually revealed to be Himeji
- Flunky Boss: Living-Dead M is able to summon and even resurrect other Magical Girls. And buff them!
- Evil Costume Switch: The newly-risen zombies' clothes shift into black tatters very similar to the Alternative Magical Girls' costumes.
- Genre Shift: From horror to horror-action to eventually just straight-up action.
- Godzilla Threshold: The survivors realize that Akuta may be a piece of shit, but he's their best hope for survival.
- Gonk/Nonstandard Character Design: Akuta the policeman is more simply drawn/cartoonish than everyone else. Two otaku met by Kii back in 2002 are pretty Gonk-ish too.
- Good Is Dumb: The main bad guy from the future manages to corrupt Akuta over to his side and use him to get himself into the group so he can try to go to the future with them. He then reveals himself, kidnaps the comatose Tsukune, and attacks the heroes, setting back their plans immensely. To be fair, he does not speak until he reveals himself, knowing that the heroes have heard his voice before.
- Gorn
- Gravity Sucks: One of the Alternative Magical Girls, known as Attraction M, specializes in drawing victims towards her. She also has an "inverted" twin named Repulsion M that specializes in violently blasting victims away.
- Head Crushing: In the first volume, one of Kii's classmates, Arimura, gets his head crushed flat on his shoulders by a resurrected classmate who brings his fist down on it.
- The Heavy: Himeji is behind the wave of magical girls attacking Tokyo and directly responsible for all the problems faced by the heroes until the last few chapters, when his seemingly dead creator, Makabe (also revealed to be Sou Shirokane), takes up the mantle for the finale.
- Heel–Face Turn: Various Alternative Magical Girls undergo this. Notably Explode M, Attraction M/Repulsion M, and Parasite M.
- Hidden Depths:
- Sayano, who was initially perceived as a bully but is in fact in love with Kii and was apparently only a bully because Tsukune forced her to in an attempt to draw Kii's attention to herself. In light of later events, there is gradually less and less evidence to disbelieve that claim, too.
- A lot of people, in fact, considering how much backstory starts getting revealed from the trip to the past and onwards.
- Human-Demon Hybrid: This is what true magical girls are. According to the series' lore, in the past, a human made a contract with a demon; the resulting child they had together was called a witch. After witches became persecuted, a lone surviving witch went into hiding and met a man. They fell in love, married, and had a child together, which they called a "Mahou Shoujo", a Magical Girl. All true magical girls (such as Tsukune and her mother, Kotone) are descended from this single bloodline and, as a result, are not fully human.
- Humanoid Abomination: Every single Alternative Magical Girl. Justified later, as they are revealed to be genetically-engineered weapons from the future.
- Implacable Man: Alternative Magical Girls are barely phased by being killed, as they regenerate too fast for it to be an effective tactic. If you break their wands, however...
- In-Series Nickname: "Titty-chan" for Yoruka, courtesy of Akuta ("Funbags" in the Seven Seas translation).
- Kaiju: Small-Large M, an enormous Alternative Magical Girl with an upside-down head who looks like something out of a 60s anime, wielding a magical staff in the shape of a fountain pen. Using her size-manipulation ability, she can grow to such a size that she can throw trucks and swat down helicopters like they're nothing, and also shrink down to a very small size.
- Kill It with Fire: Flame Dog M's magical staff is in the shape of a dog that is able to vomit powerful fireballs.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: When Akuta is surprised that some Magical Girl have transformed into a stronger form, Parasite-M comments:Don't you even know the basic fact that Magical Girls are meant to transform? Watch some anime, you piece of shit.
- Love Confession: Sayano gives one to Kii.
- Made of Plasticine: The Magical Girls can crush people and rip them apart quite effortlessly.
- Magical Girl: The bad guys of the first part of the series. All of them are capable of horrific death and destruction, and every person they kill becomes a zombie. They are also Humanoid Abominations who can only be truly killed by destroying their wands. It later turns out that all of the Magical Girls encountered so far are fakes, while the REAL Magical Girls are part of a much more sinister plan involving time travel.
- Magical Girl Genre Deconstruction: No wish fulfillment for girls here.
- Magic Wand: The first Alternative Magical Girl encountered has a very nasty-looking wand that looks more technological than actually magical. Said wand has what seems to be a bundle of sticks of TNT arranged around it, which is pretty fitting considering that the thing is primarily used to make people and objects go boom. Others also wield staves and wands that are no less horrifying. Apparently, wands are the source of Magical Girl's powers and breaking a wand results in the permanent death of its Alternative Magical Girl. The Alternative Magical Girls' necromancy abilities also seem to be linked to their wands.
- The Man Behind the Man: Himeji seems to be taking orders from a scientist in the future name Makabe but gets bored of listening to him and kills him off, acting independently from thereon out. Ends up being played straight when Makabe returns just as Himeji thinks his plans are finally complete, killing him and becoming the final antagonist.
- Mega Manning: Akuta can gain the power of any Alternative Magical Girl by taking their wands.
- Ms. Fanservice: Yoruka Hanzawa and her gigantic breasts. Akuta becomes completely obsessed with her, and with them.
- Multi-Armed and Dangerous: One of the Alternative Magical Girls, Living-Dead M, has six arms. Four of them hold weapons that look like a cross between an axe and a scepter, and in the last two she holds a staff, which is presumably her "wand". The main weapons are used for reviving Alternative Magical Girls that were previously defeated, while the staff empowers them.
- Necromancer: The Alternative Magical Girls have the ability to raise the dead, but apparently only through physical contact with their wands.
- And then there's Living-Dead M, who has the power to raise other Magical Girls from the dead.
- Nigh-Invulnerable: The skin of one of the Alternative Magical Girls, Parasite M, is impenetrable. Her weak point is her eyes, but good luck hitting them, considering that if she blinks, it won't work. Made doubly hard since her hosts are not Nigh-Invulnerable, and if you hit the host, you kill an innocent person.
- Obviously Not Fine: During the Gravity Sucks incident, Yoruka falls roughly to the ground, coughing Blood from the Mouth, but saying she's fine. Ren later realizes that she's suffering from hemorrhages as a result.
- Off with His Head!: Happens to Godai and Kasai when they enter the fog created by Kamaitachi M. Later, Miki gets her head punched off of her shoulders by a Parasite M-possessed Miu. To add insult to injury, the head falls into a ramen bowl.
- Omnicidal Maniac: Himeji not only has the Alternative Mahou Shoujo invade Tokyo, but when his plans fail, he simply allows the planet to be destroyed before jumping to another dimension to try again.
- Ordinary Highschool Student: Before the Zombie Apocalypse, Kii led a rather dull life as a high school freshman.
- Our Liches Are Different: The Alternative Magical Girls have distinctly lich-like abilities. Alternative Magical Girls cannot be permanently killed unless their wands are destroyed (so the wand acts as a phylactery of sorts). In addition, they are also necromancers.
- Papa Wolf: Tsukune's father is a kind man willing to help a stranger, but he draws the line at said stranger going into his young daughter's room and going through her things. He firmly orders Kii to leave with a knife in his hand. He later refuses to let Sayano kill Tsukune even it's clear she's responsible for the disaster.
- Parental Abandonment: Kii's parents have both committed suicide, his mother as a result of abuse from his father, and his father in his prison cell after getting caught committing robbery. The turmoil in his family is the reason why Kii just wants to have a normal boring life.
- Sayano strongly suggests that Tsukune killed her and Miki's parents.
- Playing Possum: When a bunch of Alternative Magical Girls are teleported into the hospital, one of the patients tries playing dead to get them to leave him alone. For his troubles, he has his head melted by Acid M.
- The Power of Love: The reason the reality-changing ritual is reversible is because one of the child used isn't consummated by Kii and Tsukune out love. Instead, it is artificially made via splicing the couple's DNA.
- Puppeteer Parasite: One of the Alternative Magical Girls, Parasite M, has this as her power. The people she controls have their physical strength enhanced dramatically. Since she takes control of the brain to do so, this Magical Girl is able to speak and reason using the host's intelligence.
- Red Herring: When Kii first finds the drawings of the Alternative Magical Girls in young Tsukune's room, Tsukune's father becomes hostile and orders him to leave. Meanwhile, in the present day, Yoruka overhears Tsukune speaking to her father while acting very strangely. Kii comes to the conclusion that Tsukune and her father might have something to do with the disaster. Only Tsukune has anything to do with it. Her father is just as in the dark about it as everyone else is. Not only that, but later chapters indicate that even Tsukune's involvement is iffy.
- The Resistance: A group from the future is trying to stop the ritual involving the 9th-generation Magical Girls, and to do so, have repurposed and upgraded the Alternative Magical Girls to protect Kii and his friends while also fighting against Puppet Master.
- The Reveal:
- When Kii travels to the past, he finds drawings of all the Alternative Magical Girls in young Tsukune's room.
- The "Magical Girls" that attacked the world? They are Alternative Magical Girls created artificially in the future as weapons. The real Magical Girls are descended from a certain bloodline. And Tsukune is one of those descendants. Furthermore, the reason for the attack? So Kii and Tsukune could fall in love and have a child that doesn't exist yet, for a special ritual that involves a certain number of Magical Girls from a single generation, of which the bad guys are currently one short.
- Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: When the timeline is reset, everyone who is still alive when it happens (Kii, Akuta, Sayano, Tsukune's father, and Parasite-M) retain their memories. Those who died, such as Ren, Yoruka, and even Natsuki, later begin to regain their memories. Himeji is... A special case.
- Sacrificial Lamb: Natsuki, the girl Kii has a crush on, dies in the first chapter.
- Sacrificial Lion: Godai, the junior student who saves Kii and Tsukune at school in the second chapter, is killed (along with Kasai) in the last panel of the third chapter.
- Say It with Hearts: And stars, arrows, and other symbols. They're magical girls, after all.
- She's All Grown Up: Happens with Miu, the little girl who tags along with the group during the apocalypse. Kronos M, the time-travel Magical Girl, sent her 20 years into the past. By the time we see her again in the alternate timeline, she's 28 years old and very pretty.
- Shout-Out: A few, curiously not to other Zombie Apocalypse stories. Godzilla is name-dropped by Akuta when witnessing the devastation made by the giant Magical girl, and he also mentions John Titor when he, Kii and others travel back in time to 2002. During the time travel arc KyaryPamyuPamyu and AKB48 are also name-dropped, just to make it clear that the characters are not in 2012 anymore.
- That said, the very beginning is remarkably similar to how High School Of The Dead starts: main character is at school, looks out of the window and sees a teacher near the school's gate getting killed by a zombie/magical girl.
- Umemura holds a Baki the Grappler manga showing to Kii and talking about Baki's current fight with his father that is already begun.
- Skewed Priorities: When Akuta gets his entire arm blasted off by an upgraded Magical Girl, he comments that "[he] won't be able to masturbate like this". That's only one out of many, many similar moments on his part.
- The Slow Path: Miu, after being sent 20 years in the past.
- Soul Jar: If an Alternative Magical Girl's wand is destroyed, she disintegrates.
- Stuff Blowing Up: If you get hit by Explode M's wand, you will violently and messily explode. After getting empowered by Living-Dead M, she gains the ability to do so remotely.
- Super-Strength: The Magical Girls, as well as the people they resurrect as zombies, are UNBELIEVABLY strong.
- Time Travel: Kronos M fires blasts that apparently rip through spacetime (or so Kii puts it), and those who get hit by them are suddenly sent back 10 years into the past (20 years after she's upgraded by Living-Dead M), all the way back to the year 2002. Some try to get R&R from the situation and others explore their past childhood experiences. It's not long before the effect wears off and they go back to the present, though.
- Revealed as a crucial part of the story. In the future, an organization is gathering the human Magical Girls from the 9th generation to use as part of a ritual. In that future, one 8th-generation Magical Girl, Tsukune, doesn't have a child, and they need one more 9th-generation Magical Girl to complete the ritual. So they engineer a plot to get Tsukune and Kii together. And now, a resistance group from the future is helping Kii and gang in the past to fight off the bad guys from the future.
- Token Evil Teammate: Akuta.
- Undignified Death: Getting your head punched off is bad enough, but not enough to count as undignified. What does qualify for this trope is having your head punched off hard enough that it lands in a bowl of ramen, as poor Miki finds out.
- The Unfettered: Akuta finds himself liking what happened to the world after the Magical Girl invasion, since without law and order, there is nothing to stop him from doing whatever he wants. That being mainly sexually harassing women.
- We Used to Be Friends: In addition to Kii and Tsukune drifting apart by the time they reach high school, Kii notes that Tsukune used to be fairly close to Sayano and Miki, who bully her.
- What Year Is This?: Kii asks this when teleported back to 2002.
- Zombie Apocalypse: Anyone that gets killed by the Alternative Magical Girls gets reincarnated as a zombie.
- Zombie Gait: Averted. Those slain by Alternative Magical Girls can run and have a degree of Super-Strength.
