Basic Trope: A lighthearted show with a monstrous villain.
- Straight: The planet Lovelyon-5 is ruled over by the sparkling white, immortal unicorn-shaped goddess, Angelicorn. Everything is just a hunky-dory gosh-darn paradise... ...until the day her twisted sister, Atrocicorn, a horrid Walking Wasteland who is part unicorn, part insect, part dragon, and part demon, came out of her holding cell deep inside the planet's asthenosphere and transformed the entire Lovelyon star system into a living hell...
- Exaggerated:
- The Queen of Doom, a horrifying Eldritch Abomination, comes across Atrocicorn and just goes "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH!!!"
- Atrocicorn is a Complete Monster in a series that otherwise has slight jerks and/or well-meaning antagonists at worst.
- Atrocicorn is a mass rapist/torturer/murderer/jaywalker (and does it all on-screen) in a series supposedly meant for children, causing such a scandal that the show's producers get sacked.
- Despite taking place in a Sugar Bowl, ALL the villains are extremely dark. Not only is there Atrocicorn, there's also a demon lord who wants to enslave everyone, an empire that wants to exterminate everyone who isn't like them, a sadistic toymaker who makes his toys from humans, an incomprehensible dark god that causes people to go insane, a cult that makes blood sacrifices to said dark god, a demented rapist who has raped hundreds of women, an insane ruler who wants to destroy the entire universe, and that's just the first season!
- Downplayed:
- Not everything is perfect in Lovelyon-5; the inhabitants have their share of problems. While Atrocicorn is vile, she is not that threatening because of a combination of Evil Gloating, Nice Job Fixing It, Villain and a refusal to read the Evil Overlord List.
- The villains are scary, but in a kid-friendly way.
- The setting is a Crapsaccharine World but the villains are pure unadulterated Nightmare Fuel, with Atrocicorn being a Complete Monster Knight of Cerebus who makes the world they live in look like an unironic Sugar Bowl in comparison, still bringing this trope into play.
- The setting is Big Boo's Haunt, not exactly a Sugar Bowl, but it's mostly Defanged Horrors like you'd find in a Nintendo game or Scooby-Doo. However, the main villain is a Complete Monster whose schemes are absolutely horrific.
- Atrocicorn is much, much nastier than the usual villains in Lovelyon-5, but for this reason they are only an Arc Villain. Unlike other villains, they don't get locked in a Cardboard Prison, and they don't scamper away for the next episode: through their own actions, they get themselves unambiguously killed at the end of the arc.
- Atrocicorn doesn't accomplish that much, but she is still played as serious and intimidating, and there is a strong implication she could have done some truly horrible things if she wasn't stopped.
- Atrocicorn is only a little scary, but she notably manages to accomplish her goals and is generally much more competent than you'd expect from a kids' show villain.
- Justified:
- The villain is getting sick and tired of living in a Sugar Bowl and wants to mess things up.
- The villain was exiled to the Sugar Bowl as punishment for their wickedness, because Evil Cannot Stand Cuteness.
- The villain was sent to the Sugar Bowl in the hopes that its serenity would help rehabilitate them. It didn't.
- The villain became Ax-Crazy after being driven insane by how perfect the world they lived in was.
- The setting isn't a Sugar Bowl but a Crapsaccharine World that's not as sweet under the surface, so it really isn't surprising that there are evil things in it.
- The villain sees the Sugar Bowl as an easy target.
- Atrocicorn is all that is left of the world that was sacrificed for the creation of Lovelyon-5.
- Inverted:
- A light-hearted villain/Harmless Villain in a Crapsack World / Sadist Show.
- An All-Loving Hero or The Paragon is the main character in a Crapsack World.
- A story set in a Sugar Bowl has a Villain Protagonist.
- Subverted:
- The villain starts out as hardcore, but then suffers Villain Decay and becomes less threatening as time goes on.
- The series becomes Darker and Edgier, so the monstrous villain doesn't stick out that much.
- Lovelyon-5 isn't a Sugar Bowl, it's a Crapsaccharine World.
- Double Subverted: ...or so they thought.
- Despite the fact that Lovelyon-5 is a Crapsaccharine World, the villain is such a horrific, depraved Complete Monster that the rest of the world is an unironic Sugar Bowl by comparison.
- Parodied:
- The villain swoops down into their Sugar Bowl and dares to spill some milk, and everyone acts like it's the end of all hope.
- The villain is still a Complete Monster, but no one takes them seriously.
- The villain is so gratuitously over-the-top evil and violent that watching them reduce Lovelyon-5 to a meaty puddle of Gorn loops right back around to being Bloody Hilarious.
- Angelicorn breaks the time machine and Lovelyon-5 gets violently taken over by Adolf Hitler in front of a crowd of preschoolers.
- Zig-Zagged: Depending on the Writer the villain's either a monolithic beast of death and destruction or a Harmless Villain who can't do anything right.
- Averted:
- No overly evil villain ever comes into play.
- The story is set in a Crapsack World where monstrous villains don't stand out.
- Enforced:
- The author wishes to show that evil can happen anywhere, even in happy-fun-time places.
- Despite the cute art, the series is aimed at adults, so it has scarier villains than if it was a kids' show.
- Executives have decided to homage the old kids shows where these kind of villains were the norm.
- The show has been around for ten years, the fans have grown up, the executives have decided it’s time to get rid of the training wheels and give them what they want: "meaningful conflict" and "kick-ass action".
- It's the Big Damn Movie. The writers feel the action set pieces and big-budget beef-up needs to be justified somehow. Easier to justify it by having a "dire new villain who is a threat the likes of which the cast has never faced off before!" (as the cast will say in despair over the Orchestral Bombing in the trailer).
- Lampshaded: "Hmmm, that villain does look out of place, right?"
- Invoked: Mr. Meanie summons Atrocicorn to do what he is not capable of.
- Exploited: Atrocicorn can derive some of her power from fear and suffering. She's going after Lovelyon-5 because she knows the stark contrast between her and the rest of the planet would give her the biggest leg up — a darker, more cynical planet wouldn't be as afraid of her, preventing her from fighting at full strength.
- Defied:
- The evil villain does not want to invade the Sugar Bowl, as Even Evil Has Standards.
- The executives of Lovelyon-5 listen the pitch of a story arc with a dire new villain who is an unapologetic and irredeemable murderer who will allegedly kill Princess Sunshine to show he means business and shoot it down because they absolutely refuse to deal with the firestorm from ticked-off parents roaring about "traumatized kids".note
- Discussed: "Angelicorn is immortal, but she loses her powers from negativity. First we steal some of her children and then torture them to death on camera, then we broadcast the footage in front of her. This both weakens her and distracts her from us bombing her planet. After that's done, she will be defenseless and easier to torture and farm her crystal tears endlessly."
- "Kyle this is a fucking preschool show. Let's just steal her crown and call it a day."
- Conversed: "Every kid's show has at least one villain that would get the death penalty in real life".
- Deconstructed:
- Atrocicorn doesn't want to be evil, but thinks her vileness would cause any attempts at reformation to be rejected, and she's mostly a threat because of how how self-destructive she is over it...
- The inhabitants of Lovelyion-5 had never encountered someone as vile as Atrocicorn, so they are completely blindsided by the unspeakable devastation she unleashed upon them. Even after her defeat, Atrocicorn's arrival has left a permanent scar on the planet's civilization, with the populace now traumatized and living in perpetual fear of evil once again emerging to bring them ruin, to the point that Mr. Meanie, the Queen of Evil, and even innocent people become the victim of paranoia-fueled witch hunts.
- Reconstructed: She then becomes truly evil CUZ WHY NOT???
- Played For Laughs: In a Sugar Bowl, Atrocicorn is a Faux Affably Evil villain who commits many horrible acts played for Black Comedy.
- Played For Drama: The protagonists are just the types of sweethearts you'd expect from the Sugar Bowl they're in... Which makes the actions they take against the vilest villain more jarring... Even to themselves, as I Did What I Had to Do can only carry them so far as far as coping mechanisms go...
- Implied: The villains are all fairly harmless, bit they're all influenced by Sealed Evil in a Can that is never opened but still completely nightmarish.
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