Video Game / Blue Archive

Experience. Girls. Firefights. Dazzling days. Fantasy. The Academy City. You. Your students. Your story together. ^note From left to right: Sunaookami Shiroko, Kuromi Serika, Takanashi Hoshino

Welcome to Kivotos, Sensei. Kivotos is a massive city, home to thousands of different academies. This is where you'll be working from now on. It's bound to be very different from the place you call home. You might find it a bit difficult to fit in at first... but something tells me you will adjust in due time. After all, you were chosen by the General Student Council president.

—Rin Nanakami, General Student Council Vice President

Blue Archive is a tactical RPG with gacha elements, developed by Korean studios Nexon Games (formerly NAT Games) & MX Studio, and published in Japan and China by Yostar Games and internationally by Nexon. It was first released in Japan on February 4th, 2021, with a full global release, covering multiple language version, on November 8th of the same year and in China on August 3rd, 2023.

You awake as a "sensei", after seeing an unknown yet familiar girl in your dreams. You are tasked by the Vice President of the General Student Council of the sprawling academic city of Kivotos to find the GSC's missing president... who evidently foresaw your coming before her disappearance and established the Federal Investigation Club "Schale" for you to manage, and several tools you can use on your mission, most notably the strange tablet-PC-like device referred to as the "Shittim Chest" and its helpful AI companion, Arona. With this in hand, you begin recruiting students from Kivotos' many, many schools to aid you in helping restore normalcy to Kivotos generally, and along the way, hopefully, find a clue as to what happened to the GSC President... and what, precisely, she wanted you to do.

Gameplay is done on an isometrically-viewed battlefield. You fight by using students you've recruited as units in a formation of 6, with 4 taking the lead and 2 acting as support. Students move, based on their classes and the ability to use cover, and attack automatically. The player, aside from arranging the party itself beforehand, triggers the girls' "EX Skills" based on the EX charge currently available and the skills available (three out of the selection of available girls being available at any one time).

The animated adaptation of this game, "Blue Archive: The Animation" by Yostar Pictures and CANDYBOX, begin airing on 8 April 2024 on TV Tokyo, with Ani-One Asia broadcasting the episodes on Youtube.

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Blue Archive contains the following tropes:

A-B

• Abnormal Ammo:
  • Maki shoots paint from her machine gun during her EX Skill.
  • Izumi (Swimsuit) throws a coconut that ricochets to multiple enemies, dealing slightly less damage upon successful ricochets. That coconut also stuns enemies for a short time.
  • Honorable mention goes to Hifumi, who throws just a Peroro plush against the enemy to damage one, in spite of having actual incendiary grenades.
  • In-Universe, the Engineering Department of Millennium modded a gun to fire tabasco sauce because they often eat pizza and they thought it would be convenient to have a dispenser for the sauce. Only later did they realize it was Neru's weapon they should have repaired in the first place, thus they desperately try to prevent her from firing it. After The Reveal, Neru is obviously mad at them. At least the modifications enabled Neru to bypass bullet-proof gear used by a couple of gangsters trying to get back at her...
• Absurdly Powerful Student Council:
  • The General Student Council has authority over the whole central Kivotos, while individual schools have their own student councils, which are basically the political head of the school's region in all but name.
  • It is important to note that the General Student Council, while technically being the managers for the infrastructure required for Kivotos to function, does not have direct power over individual school's student council and its member, while most schools look down at GSC as an organization due to their inability to manage Kivotos in its time of need before Sensei's arrival. In fact, SRT Academy and SCHALE is specifically made by the former GSC President to circumvent this limitation by being outside GSC's authority. Conversation with various character revealed that the former GSC President was a "superhuman" who was able to garner the trust of everyone, which is presumably how GSC was able to perform its functions compared to the state it is currently.
• Achilles' Heel: Subverted. The story makes a point that destroying a student's halo is essentially the only feasible way of killing a student with brute force... but their halos are confirmed to be intangible. It's noted that any method to "break a halo" is not too different from a method to kill (essentially making it an euphemism of sort in most cases), and when the existence of a bomb that could specifically destroy the halo is revealed, it is treated as almost otherworldly technology that's unheard of in Kivotos.
• Always Accurate Attack:
  • For student Skills, if the attacker's Accuracy stat exceeds the target's Evasion, said target cannot evade it unless their hitbox is outside the selected area. An inversion can happen from the fact that AOE attacks can miss even if the target's hitbox is in the skill’s radius, due to the Accuracy-Evasion difference being in favor of the latter.
  • Specifically targeted debuffs, even if missed due to the target's evasion, still apply. Damage-over-time effects also count.
• Ambiguously Human: All of the human-looking cast. Some have elven ears, some have animal ears, some have wings or glowing eyes (or both), but all of them have distinct angel-like halos of various shapes and colors, often related to the school they're in. Oh, and also, did we mention they're all virtually bulletproof (but you, yourself, are explicitly not so) and it takes something like a tank round to knock them out or threaten their lives in one shot?
• Anti-Debuff: Status ailment removing one is a common one. Natsu can remove a status ailment from herself via EX skill. Chinatsu (EX Skill level 3), Rumi and Mari can remove a status ailment upon casting their EX skill on an ally. Incapacitated unit also loses all of their status effects as well.
  • Most raid bosses and rarely present event bosses have innate Crowd Control Immunity, making them unaffected by those CC effects such as Taunt, Stun, and Fear. Increasing the Crowd Control Resistance of a unit grants them a chance to be unaffected by CC effects, and the inflicter's CC Power stat reduces its chance.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Sweeps. It skips previously cleared battles, saving up a lot of time while netting mission rewards without any penalty. For events, bonus rewards get preserved for later sweeps (so long as you fulfilled the requirements for the bonuses).
  • In the Maze stage scenario, when your units stand close to triggerable Boss and Mook units (means that they assault any adjacent enemy, should their turn start) simultaneously, all non-Boss enemy units assault first, leaving Boss unit as the last and Final Battle in a mission. This allows the players to potentially recover their students during the battle and makes it much easier to fulfill the "Acquire S Rank [x] times" requirement.
  • Recent "quality of life" updates allowed:
    • To skip the previously mentioned Maze stages' battles (barring Boss unit) at a cost of inability to control the students during the battle (so it is recommended to have heavily overgeared, overskilled and overleveled students for effective usage of this mode).
    • Ability to select specific skill cards of students at the start of the battle (absent in Tactical Challenge), which significantly reduces the amount of resets and allows for more precise battle planning overall.
    • Skipping battles in Tactical Challenge, instead of being Forced to Watch your team getting steamrolled by bad RNG.
• Anti-Regeneration: Downplayed. "Recovery Boost Down" is a debuff that reduces healing received, but cannot affect shielding buffs. Some of the highest difficulty Total Assault raid bosses like Shiro and Kuro can inflict their version on permanent uptime.
• Arbitrary Weapon Range:
  • Most students prefer to get closer to the enemies and then start shooting them. Offensive EX or Basic Skills also have a specific range limit, yet AOE skills can damage further than that by their own mechanic or by simply aiming closer to the range limit.
  • Mutsuki's New Year variant has an EX Skill that damages enemies in a large fan-shaped area, but closer targets can get away from her EX Skill area.
• Armor-Piercing Attack:
  • Hasumi's EX Skill, Armor Piercing Shot, doesn't ignore defense stats, but with the right circumstances, it’ll deal absolutely ridiculous damage to one enemy.
  • The Defense Reduction status ailment has various sources: Maki's Basic Skill, Akane's EX Skill, Swimsuit Azusa's Sub Skill, etc.
  • Some students (Karin (Bunny Girl), Shun (Young), Toki) can directly bypass a chunk of the enemy's defense stat with their EX Skills.
  • The Defense Penetration status buff is also present, allowing any attacks to ignore a part of the enemy's defense.
• Artificial Stupidity: Since the player can't directly control the movement or placement of their students outside of specific skills, there are times when the AI will pick very questionable places to set up, like a sniper dashing up to a piece of cover directly in front of the enemy, or the tank running off into a corner and failing to draw any fire. While the AI is usually passable in PvE missions, it's absolutely abysmal in PvP, since you don't even get to control the use of skills and the AI is clearly not programmed to have students fight other students, so victory can come down to which side executed their skills in the least incompetent fashion.
• Ascended Glitch:
  • In Insane difficulty, Kuro had a mechanic which deals 999,999 true damage to anyone that has a movement speed status ailment and is hit with an attraction ride. However, that included anyone that has the movement speed status ailment - including Kuro itself. The bug became a feature, but got balanced out - it deals 600,000 damage instead, which is still quite a solid amount.
  • Players discovered that if Hatsune Miku's EX skill is used right before entering Chesed's boss room, the Striker party will be displayed lining up in front of the boss during the cutscene at the start of the fight. This has since become an official feature of the cutscene so the player can see their party during it without having Miku (though, unlike the bug's version, there is motion blur added), and several other raids since then have included cutscenes displaying the player's party standing off against the enemy.
• Automatic New Game: Upon booting up the game for the first time, the prologue automatically starts: players have to meet the General Student Council, help fight off a gang of delinquents trying to break into Schale's headquarters, activate the Shittim Chest and meet Arona before the game finally lets you into its main menu.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • Hina's EX Skill can wipe out an entire wave of enemies by itself, especially ones that are Explosive-vulnerable; Hina is infamous for being able to push stages and other multi-target content that is fifteen levels or more above her. But the skill is hampered by its absolutely absurd cost of 7 charges; by comparison, most students hover at around 3 or 4, and heavy AoEs are often 5. As a result, she is typically relegated to auto-attack duty while other girls cycle through EX skills - fortunately, the rest of her skills are quite suited for such a role, given sufficient investment. Her EX is only practical in content where there's some downtime to charge up (such as in main story mission content, or events with similar design), and even only kind of.
  • Ayane's EX Skill heals multiple girls at once, with one of the highest values for multi-target heals in the game, but each individual student is still healed less than they would be by a single-target skill at the same level (e.g. Chinatsu's healing a better amount and, at higher levels, removing an ailment from the target). There's also a delay before it actually sets off as her drone flies in to drop a medkit over the targeted area, and it doesn't draw students into the area like e.g. Fuuka's skill, so it's quite easy to mistime it and have one or more of the girls move out of the way just as it's dropping. That said, if you land it right, it's probably the most efficient multi-target heals in the game outside of Koharu's Holy Hand Grenade.
  • Kayoko has one of the game's few long-lasting "hard" crowd control abilities in her EX and normal skill both causing a fear effect (which makes an opponent run away and stop attacking). Nifty, and against certain bosses quite useful for keeping the damage under control, but her EX version costs 6, when many students have abilities that cost a lot less and can inflict the useful hard CC known as "passed out on the floor", especially on lower-health mooks. She's sadly considered one of the absolute worst units in the game, despite her character being widely liked (and her personal story is significantly more down-to-earth and relatable, compared to some of the romantically-charged ones).
  • Nonomi likewise has a great ability for clearing crowds, with a wide range and decent power behind it, hampered by her tendency to hang out as far back as possible, leaving enemies in most encounters just out of her range unless you can force her to move forward with something like Fuuka's skill.
  • Yuzu, despite being a shy gamer, has one of the highest critical damage rates of all students. Her enhanced and sub-skills allow her to boost her critical damage which is further boosted by her unique weapon and Ako's EX skill, making her useful for raids with higher difficulties. The problem is that her skills and UE need to be maxed out in order to see her full potential.
  • As the first tactical support unit in the game, Hifumi (Swimsuit) summons a tank onto the battlefield with her EX skill. It's undoubtedly awesome to see her roll up to deal heavy amounts of sustained AOE damage, but its skill cost of 10 renders it unbelievably hard to use in normal rotations (remember that Hina is already hard to use at 7!) and leaves her lagging behind more conventional support options like Karin and Kotama. Following tactical support units have a significantly cheaper cost than her and show varying levels of success for it, with Cherino (Hot Springs) being a good unit hampered only by a lack of challenges to showcase her biggest strengths, Sena is a highly effective support buffer, and Iroha being a dominant force in PvP and the Perorodzilla raid.
  • Ui in her swimsuit alt is this. Sure, she has skills which has effectiveness buff for piercing students, much like how swimsuit Hoshino and new year Kayoko buff them with explosive and mystic in their skills respectively. However, unlike the other two which has ways to be used more effectively (Hoshino can be used as tank and has effective buff range and duration, and Kayoko has a cost of 2 to buff mystic students faster), she suffers from having a cost of 4 as well as her EX skill forcing students to move onto her to get the buff. She also suffers from being left out on most teams due to mechanics of raids that need to follow and requires her slot to be replaced. Even with that, she is still a good buffer for raids that need her slot.
• Bad Future: The GSC President's words to Sensei implies the existence of a dark future that threaten Kivotos, and only Sensei could help avert it. The 4th PV also reveals alternate possibilities to certain moment in the game's main story arcs had Sensei not intervened. Most importantly, the antagonists of Volume F are alternate version of Shiroko and Sensei that came from one such future, where Sensei was attacked and fell into a coma while the Foreclosure Task Force members loses their lives until only Shiroko was left.
• Beach Episode: Timed events like Summer Sky's Wishlist, Head Prefect's Vacation, Abydos Resort Restoration Committee and Momoyodou's Franchising Plan are present with new outfits for certain students as well.
• Beware the Nice Ones:
  • Sensei is one, even if they've got some... kinks. Dare to piss them off by acting bad or causing too much trouble, then Sensei is going to either lecture you for hours or call others to lecture you.
  • Noa is generally polite, but as poor but deserving Koyuki finds out, she won't hesitate to use her photographic memory to remind you of your promises and screw-ups down to the last letter.
• Big Ball of Violence: When your unit moves onto a non-boss enemy unit (or vice-versa) with the "Skip Battle" function turned on, the automated battle will appear as a cloud dust of fighting, and it will show the battle results with which group is victorious.
• Boobs-and-Butt Pose: Karin in her bunny suit during her security mission, who couldn't change her pose due to the mission requiring her to keep track. Her Live2D shows her butt in a close-up, then Karin looks back, flustered. Sensei "liked the view".
• Book Ends: The beginning of the Make-Up Work Club story arc in Volume 3 starts with Sensei meeting the namesake club to improve its grades. The end of the story arc shows the exact same members falling behind on their grades again for the exact same reasons (sans Azusa who played hooky with Hifumi), forcing them to reform the Make-Up Work Club under Sensei's direction again.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Serina is just a mere 1-star healer, but she's considered to be the best healer in the game due to how good she is at her role, has a low Skill Cost of a mere 2, and how easy it is to raise her.
  • Momoi stands out amongst the "wave-clearing" students. There are other flashier skills, but she boasts cheap Cost, a large range, decent damage, and exceptionally fast casting time.
  • Serika has no flashy skills at all, reliant on her auto attack damage alone, yet her skillset is geared towards boosting her damage output.
• Boss Battle: Present in almost every part of the content. Although, if you defeat the boss, the mission doesn't end, as you have to defeat the rest of the enemies. Unless you are fighting difficult "Challenge" missions in timed events, where defeating the boss immediately ends the battle and hands you victory.
• Boss in Mook Clothing: In most missions, the bosses have basically the same appearance as the normal mooks that infested the mission. They also have name additions: "Swift", "Calculating", "Ruthless", etc.
• Boss Vulnerability: Most bosses are always vulnerable, but some of them have quite interesting exceptions:
  • Some of the Event Challenge bosses have abysmal health stats and a lot of defensive boosts to boot. Those specific missions have a mechanic, whereupon defeating numerous or specific enemies (or upon waiting a certain time) they'll receive very potent status ailments that help your students to defeat the boss quicker.
  • Chesed has an innate damage resistance of 90%, effectively reducing damage intake 10 times. Upon defeating 4 waves of enemies in the boss room, Chesed's core opens, increasing incoming damage by 900% (fully negates the natural damage reduction). Although this vulnerability lasts only 20 seconds, then Chesed simply closes its core and starts summoning new waves until your allies defeat another 4 waves to open its core again.
  • Hod shares Chesed's Heavy armor and innate damage resistance of 90%. Hod can also summon erosion towers that have 80% damage resistance. To increase their damage intake by 300%, a sufficient amount of Crowd Control status effect has to be applied, and its efficiency is directly proportional to the enemies' CC application duration (in Insane difficulty, the enemy's CC Power stat multiplies the duration to balance out the huge CC gauge capacity increment of 50% compared to Extreme).
  • Hieronymus has solid defense and hitpoint stats and innate damage reduction of 60%, which is negated by the presence of the Green Relic which increases Hieronymus' damage intake by 55% if completely healed (their HP pool increases as the difficulty does). The second phase adds a Red Relic, which can also be healed to cancel all upcoming skills cast by Hieronymus, including the Total Party Kill.
    • Insane difficulty introduces a purple-colored Relic, which upon destruction significantly reduces allies' health recovery ability, but increases their attack stat and reduces Hieronymus' DEF by 1500 (which is more than half of its DEF stat) - presenting a trade-off for your allies between damage output boost at a cost of survivability. Fortunately (or not) it is not targeted by auto-attacks or basic skills. Those gameplay advantages in Insane difficulty are mitigated by the sheer amount of HP Hieronymus has - 24 million hit points and the absence of the Red Relic which canceled Hieronymus' party wipe attack (in return for it not automatically wiping the party in that difficulty).
  • Perorodzilla, while being a mix of "always vulnerable" and "wait them out", has an absolutely gigantic healthpool, the highest defense (even higher than Binah, the previous record holder), and no means of reducing its resistance besides your own tools of doing it. But, it summons creatures called Perominions. These creatures can also attack, but Perorodzilla itself takes all of the damage that those Perominions take, even if they have 1 HP left (and until Perorodzilla swallows them back, they are immortal). It means that AOE attacks become necessary - as if you hit multiple Perominions, you basically hit Perorodzilla multiple times with one attack. When its Groggy meter is filled (with swallowing back Perominions that have less than 50% of their HP), Perorodzilla drops 5 Broken Perominions, which have less DEF stat and also reflect all the taken damage back to Perorodzilla - the time you unleash all of your firepowers in this 20-second window, after ending which Perorodzilla inhales them back.
  • Gregorius is a unique case, as their health pool easily outperformed previous record holders - 140 million HP in Insane difficulty (220 million in Torment difficulty). However, that inflated healthpool is compensated by multiple downfalls that players can and will take full advantage of:
    • Quite mediocre defensive capabilities - only 1000 DEF, however the Evasion stat is also the highest among other bosses - up to 800 in highest difficulties
    • Gregorius duplicates all present status ailments onto all Choir Members (Example, if Gregorius was hit by 37.7% DEF reduction and 39.1% Evasion reduction, all Choir Members' DEF and Evasion will also be reduced by 37.7% and 39.1% respectively).
    • Gregorius will take the same amount of damage the Choir Members take (making the battle strategy somewhat similar to Perorodzilla).
    • Amount of Choir members is very large and they are grouped up (allowing AOE attacks to hit even more targets, stacking up already large damage output)
    • Gregorius' incoming damage will increase upon having the right amount of status ailments (and the incoming damage increment is also replicated to all Choir Members, leading to some EX skills doing ridiculous amount of damage).
• Bottomless Magazines: Downplayed; everybody has to reload sooner or later, but they never run out of extra ammo to replace what they've expended. Skills, likewise, are governed only by a recharging set of action points, so e.g. Mutsuki can throw her bag full of explosives at a group of enemies even if she's already thrown it at and detonated it on an earlier group.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: Not quite as bad, though far more literal. A typical student's shopping list could include ammo and bombs, and there's even a relationship episode where Sensei spends the entire time buying bombs with Mutsuki.
• Break the Cutie: Terror Shiroko. In her original timeline, Hoshino died, Serika disappeared, Ayane fell into a coma before eventually being taken off life support, and Nonomi suffered a fate so terrible it was left unsaid. It was enough to awaken her as the god of death, Anubis. But even in this state, she couldn't bring herself to kill Sensei. And then the Chroma found them.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: The game has rankings for its PvP and raid modes, which incentivizes players to spend money for additional gacha rolls and resources to build the ideal teams to reach the highest ranks and win the corresponding rewards. Being a Nexon game, there are quite a few mechanics designed to get players to spend money to stay on top:
  • The gacha rates for a 3-star character are an abysmal 0.1% normally and 0.7% on a banner, and while you can guarantee to get a banner character after 200 rolls, it's going to set you back at least $300 USD.
    • For a more detailed analysis (in CAD), assuming you use the 9.99 monthly pack to get around 10 rolls worth, you'd saved up at least another 20 rolls and a half worth from grinding and saving the excess from the monthly pack, you'd still need to spend well over 100$ CAD to even reach HALF the amount of rolls needed for pity.
  • The Bounty maps where you can farm upgrade materials and resources require tickets to play, of which you only get two of each per day for free. However, you can buy additional tickets over the daily cap for premium currency.
  • Eligma and Eleph, the resources needed to upgrade the rarity of a character, are rather hard to come by and the most reliable method of obtaining them is to roll dupes in the gacha.
  • Character levels cannot exceed the player's account level, and the only way to increase the account level is by spending stamina to run maps. Of course, one can use premium currency to buy stamina refills to boost their own account level much quicker, allowing them to level up their characters to match.
  • All this being said, the game is very much tuned to be playable for players who don't pay a cent; even the higher-end raid bosses are entirely defeatable so long as you Play Every Day (with a threshold of usually less than half an hour a day). If you want to place at the very top of the competitive PvP leaderboards, however... be prepared to shell out in order to stay at the very tip top of the advancement ladder.
  • Lampshaded in several cutscenes where Sensei responds to the current overwhelming threat by...pulling out his credit card.
• The Bus Came Back: After being absent since Volume 1, the Abydos Task Force make a surprise return in Chapter 3 of Volume 3, in full Masked Mizugi Gang gear, to help out their old 'leader' Hifumi.

C-D

• Call-Back: In Volume F, during the flashback sequences that show the backstory of Shiroko and Sensei from another timeline, Sensei would show just to what extent they're willing to take in order to save their students, best exemplified by this quote that is the exact same as the present timeline Sensei when they asked Black Suit for a method to reach the Ark of Atra-hasis, and is told about the life-threatening risks it entailed.
  Sensei: Whatever methods it may be. No matter the cost.
• Calvinball: "Mushiqueen", the trading card game Kaede and Pina love so much, is... bizarre. At first you'd assume it's just a straightforward parody of Kouchuu Ouja Mushiking, but watching people play quickly reveals that the game is a mess ranging from Un-set style nonsense like dancing around the table to power up your cards, to rules deliberately designed to emulate the over-the-top drama of card game anime over any kind of sensible balance. And apparently, being good at karuta improves your skills at it, somehow. Even in-universe, people who don't play it on the regular have no idea what's going on. Fittingly for the game's central theme of youth, it's effectively the infamous "playground Yu-Gi-Oh!" format, but treated as a serious game with major tournaments.
• Cap: Present as to limit the efficiency of certain ailment-incurring mechanics. Critical chance, Damage variance, and Defense down are capped at 80%.
• Central Theme: Responsibility. Whenever characters throughout the game's story come under the spotlight, be they students and adults, people of authority and average civilians, do-gooders and bad guys, it is often that the choices they make and the consequences that follow get examined, and it's very often that a lot of incidents our heroes resolve are a result of someone's irresponsibility, most notably immoral adults, misguided kids, or even people who try do something good only for things to go bad instead. Fittingly, Sensei sets an example for their students as what ideal adults should be: those who take responsibility—be it for all the choices made, the power they wield, and for the children who would come to live in the world made by the adults who went ahead of them.
• Cerebus Syndrome: Despite the game being set in a Lighter and Softer universe, some of the story arcs can still take a rather serious turn.
  • Volume 1 turns when Kaiser convinces Hoshino to turn herself into them in return for forgiving Abydos' debt. However, it quickly turns out that Kaiser double-crossed her, using Exact Words to initiate an operation to wipe out Abydos permanently while at the same time basically enslaving Hoshino as a test subject for Black Suit.
  • Volume 2 turns when Aris briefly goes berserk and accidentally injures Momoi. And to make things worse, it's later revealed that Aris is actually the leader of the DIVI:SION, a faction of renegade robots programmed to wipe out all organic life in Kivotos. Aris is shocked about this revelation, and not wanting to hurt her friends, agrees to surrender to Millenium authorities to be dismantled and destroyed.
  • Volume 3 turns when it is revealed Arius wants to assault Trinity with the objective of assassinating Seia and Nagisa. It just goes downhill from there when Arius tries to sabotage the Eden Treaty signing and Saori shoots and critically wounds Sensei. And then when Saori is defeated, she begs Sensei to save her friend Atsuko from Beatrice, who wants to sacrifice the girl for some mystical ritual.
  • Volume 4 turns when it's found out that the Valkyrie Police School is dirty, illegally accepting weapons from Kaiser in return for doing Kaiser's dirty work. In addition, it's revealed that Kaya is secretly plotting to overthrow the General Student Council and disband SCHALE.
• City of Adventure: The game takes place in Kivotos, a city built entirely around and servicing a great number of schools and their students, and the "adventure" is handled by the armies of students and delinquent gangs packing heat. It's hinted that Kivotos is roughly the size of the United States and Canada combined.
• City of Everywhere: While its general aesthetic is that of a modern Japanese city, several elements from other cities of the world exist in Kivotos. Buildings in Trinity's region take on the architecture of early-modern Europe, and the Elizabeth Tower is visible from the campus; the area governed by Hyakkiyako looks like a traditional Japanese city; and one background even features New York's One World Trade Center. This extends to the climate and environment as well: Red Winter's wintry climate mimics that of Russia, while Egypt-themed Abydos is a sea of desert.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The damage and defense types are color-coded: Explosive damage and Light armor are red, Penetration damage and Heavy armor are yellow, Mystic damage and Special armor are blue, Sonic damage and Elastic armor are pink. Each damage type is most effective against the defense type of the same color.
• Combat Medic: A few Strikers can heal allies in the battlefield, emptying a Specialist slot in the team and allowing more flexibility in the teambuilding. They also pack some damage, though it's usually small compared to specialized damage dealers.
  • Shimoe Koharu, while wielding a sniper rifle, tosses a Holy Hand Grenade that damages enemies and heals allies upon explosion. Her enhanced skill increases her attack power as well.
  • Saiba Midori is mostly focused at damage dealing, but her Basic Skill can recover some HP for the most wounded ally.
  • Mari, while being in a Specialist slot, has a Basic Skill that deals little damage to the enemy. Her EX Skill removes a status ailment while providing a decent shield, considering that she has a decent Healing stat.
    • Her Track variant (which is a Striker) can heal a very large amount of HP to all surrounding allies due to her high Healing power and a large multiplier to work with in emergencies^note if the target is heavily wounded, then her Sub-Skill will recover even more HP).
• Cores-and-Turrets Boss: Chesed can activate nearby turrets that target the furthest enemy, in order to pick off the backline damage dealers.
• Cowardly Boss:
  • Kaitengers in Bounty stages—they run away if a significant chunk of their health is gone. They stop running at the end of the stage map.
  • Chesed, upon encountering any intruders, covers its core and starts summoning mechanical soldiers to deal with them.
• Crapsaccharine World: While the setting of the game is clearly Lighter and Softer in tone than its contemporaries, Kivotos still has its dark side, as the city is plagued by a very powerful criminal underground, fueled in part by failed students and in part by others settling in to "fill the cracks". Attacks and robberies on businesses and students (usually by delinquents) are a daily occurrence, necessitating the various schools forming what are essentially self-organized vigilante militias for protection. (Now, it's worth pointing out that these crimes are, seemingly, virtually never fatal because all the residents are just so hard to kill, so there's a certain casual attitude to the whole situation, but it's still there.) Not to mention, there are forces outside of Kivotos that have their own agendas for the city.
• Creator Provincialism: Mostly averted. Although made by a Korean game developer, all the characters (including students from Russian and Chinese themed Academies) and writings are in Japanese. Even the vehicles' steering wheel is on the right instead of left. That said, some incidents in-game are inspired by Korean internet culture. For example, during Head Prefect Hina's Summer Break, Gourmet Research Society tries to sell grilled corn when there is a fight, inspired by real events on a Korean website in 2009.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Most students are fairly useful in most content of the game, but some of the students are extremely specialized for certain enemies:
  • Chihiro's skills are particularly tailored for only a single gamemode: Hod Total Assault. Her EX Skill, while being quite cheap, is completely useless under most circumstances: its cast time is really long, damage is underwhelming and only a single target is affected by it, and it's long stunning perk affects only Heavy (aka Yellow) armored targets. Hod, on its own, has Heavy Armor (and its summoned erosion towers also have Heavy Armor), is one of the few raid bosses that is actually taking any effect from Crowd Control (if Crowd Control duration hits the limit, Hod or Erosion Towers take 300% more damage), making Chihiro the most useful student against this particular boss.
  • Shizuko and Shimiko are the only students that can deploy cover in the battlefield. Its usefulness is questionable, as the cover is immobile, and the block rate under the cover is RNG-reliant (not only by simple blocking chance, but also the fact that someone else might go under the deployed cover), leaving you to choose specific students with good mood (primary factor for block rate) or wasting 3 cost for deploying the cover for no survivability boost. On Total Assault boss Shiro and Kuro, both students are exceptionally good at dealing with Shiro's large rolling bombs on the lane, as the rolling bomb will deal significantly less damage to obstacles (such as covers), and if the rolling bomb cannot crush the obstacle, it will bounce back at Shiro, increasing its Groggy Gauge while saving the team from getting heavily damaged. Against Kuro, both students can deploy obstacles on the way to block the massive incoming damage inflicted from theme park rides.
  • "Effectiveness"-type buffs. Those buffs allow to literally deal more damage to the enemy (works as a straight damage multiplier), and the temporary version of them have quite long durations with high multipliers in most cases. However, that implies that the attack type will be effective against the target's defense type, meaning that the ally's attack type has to deal double damage to the target's defense type by default. If it isn't, consider the Effectiveness buff as entirely useless. Kayoko (New Year ver.) is being used extremely frequently in raids with Special Armored targets (boosting the damage output by up to 134.6%), but almost never used in any other raids (Light or Heavy armored) due to lack of other impactful capabilities.
• Critical Hit Class:
  • Ako's EX Skill basically turns any DPS unit into this. A maximum of 90.6% increment in critical damage and decent boost in critical chance makes a damage dealer hit with them absolutely cracked.
  • Any DPS unit that has Critical Damage-boosting enhanced skills count by default. Izuna, Aru, Yuzu are common examples.
  • Supporter-role students, however, don't benefit from Crit Damage boosts much, their offensive skills not being great enough to make use out of these buffs; Kotori for instance has a Passive and Sub-Skill that heavily boosts her critical damage, but the lack of Crit Chance-boosting equipment makes those skills useless.
  • Yuzu currently has the highest base critical damage value of 240% (all other students have 200%). Her equipment, sub and enhanced skill further boost that. Due to this, her non-critical attacks are quite weak despite having very high attack power; the damage multiplier on her EX Skill is quite low (594%), and she reloads every time she shoots, giving her a slow attack speed.
  • Queen of all critical-reliant students is Mika, all of whose auto attacks crit. Aforementioned critical damage-boosting supporters can improve her potency even further.
• Cultural Translation: One of the possible gifts Sensei can give to their students is a book whose Japanese title is "Guns, Cuteness, and Youth". In the global version, this is changed to "Guns, Charm, and Zeal", turning it into a reference to Guns, Germs, and Steel.
• Damage-Increasing Debuff: There are status effects that force an enemy to take more damage than usual. Comes in three types:
  • Increased Incoming Damage, works as a damage boost for enemies against the target with this debuff.
  • Defense reduction, decreases DEF stat, also decreasing overall effective HP.
  • Crit DMG RES reduction, decreases Critical damage absorption of a target. Has no effect if target does not take a critical hit.
  • There are also specific debuffs that, instead of directly making the target take more damage from an incoming hit, take more damage by other means:
    • Crit RES reduction, making the target more likely to take a critical hit instead of a normal one.
    • Weakness Detection, making the target take additional damage equal to portion of an inflicter's ATK upon taking a hit.
    • Evasion reduction, making the target more likely to get hit from incoming attacks.
• Damage Over Time: These debuffs come in multiple types, but they just deal damage without any additional effects. The damage itself scales off of the student's attack power and type (and can be altered in real time if a status effect that modifies ATK is applied).
• Damage-Sponge Boss: Any Total Assault boss is basically this, and each of the bosses require unique strategies for defeating them.
  • Perorodzilla has highest combination of DEF and HP stats (6000 defense and 22 million HP), making it the sturdiest boss that was encountered in Insane difficulty. However, it deploys Peroro Minions that duplicate damage intake to Perorodzilla.
  • Goz currently has the highest amount of HP in Insane level difficulty - 30 million HP, and it is backed up with high Crit Resistance (500, to be exact) to significantly reduce the amount of incoming critical hits.
  • Gregorius' healthpool left the previous record holders in the dust (140 million HP in insane difficulty, compared to Goz with 30 million). However, specific mechanics of the battle end up with Gregorius taking gigantic amount of damage.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Forming a hypercarry setup with one student using her own flashy skill for devastating effect ends up with you dumping a massive amount of investments on all of the required students beforehand, reallocating the forces and skills in precise timing and accuracy to massively increase the performance of the said student, while the rest of the team being almost purely on support and tanking role. Mess it up, and you have to restart; pull it off, and the results will be exceptionally awesome and satisfying.
  • Hasumi is a prime example: Her skill set makes her useful against a single Heavy-armored enemy. But to make her deal over 2 million damage in one EX Skill cast, you need to: 1) completely upgrade her skills and her unique weapon; 2) upgrade the buffers' skills; 3) she has to land a killing shot against an enemy to trigger her basic skill and sub skill (which means, there have to be more than 1 enemy), which insanely boost her critical damage and chance; 4) in the span of the 13-second duration of her Basic Skill, you have to trigger her costly EX Skill; 5) use the buffers' skills on her (mainly Kotama and Ako) to further overinflate the damage output; 6) somehow make sure to weaken the enemy's damage resistance (if any); 7) be lucky enough for her to actually land a critical hit. Against the Chesed Total Assault boss, she is a really solid choice.
  • Mutsuki is another one: having a Basic Skill giving massive damage every 20 seconds is surely great, but it is set in a fixed distance from her. However, her attack range is noticeably greater than the mine deployment range. The solution is easy as it sounds and hard to implement at the same time: repositioning her closer to enemy might be quite a challenging task under certain external restrictions, but when using an external repositioning skill, you can set Mutsuki onto the specific spot which allows her Basic Skill to land its mines right on top of the enemy... but that means dedicating the entire slot for that student, which usually might be restrictive for team compositions. Another solution is to shorten her attack range, and currently, only Tomoe is capable of doing that: her EX Skill besides that also grants additional movement speed, crit chance and critical damage increment—yet this method is also restrictive for teambuilding while affecting everyone else in the EX Skill range as well, potentially leaving allies in a cramped position for enemy AOE skills to wipe them.
• Draw Aggro: There are a few status effects that can force combatants to target one enemy.
  • The Taunt type of Crowd Control effects makes anyone inflicted by it attack the inflicter.
  • "Focused Target" is a CC effect that makes their enemies target specifically the unit that is inflicted with this. If multiple targets have the Focused Target status effect, none of them take priority - their enemies will damage the closest "Focused Target". Unlike Taunt, is not considered as Crowd Control, but can affect anyone that is immune to Crowd Control. Has both "buff" and "debuff" forms, but their functionality is pretty much the same, although the unit with the "debuff" version takes additional damage from enemies that have skills that deal additional damage to targets with status ailments.
    • Perorodzilla is currently the only one who can draw enemies' attention to itself (and other Perominions that have more than 50% HP left) via "Focused Target" in the status buff version.
    • Cherino, Izuna (Swimsuit), Noa, and Sakurako can draw allies' attention to one enemy by applying Focused Target. Cherino can do it without taxing the cost gauge and focuses assault only to one enemy with the highest ATK, and only every 40 seconds.
• Dual Wielding: Yuuka and Neru are one of the few examples that use two guns in combat.
• Dying Town:
  • Kivotos itself was in rather dire straits until Sensei arrives. Without the General Student Council President, the GSC is locked out of city's main control system and public services begin to break down with massive spikes in crime as a result. It's not until Sensei receives the Shittim Chest and reactivates the Sanctum Tower that things start to stabilize.
  • The Abydos district, once the largest and most populous district in all of Kivotos, has been rendered into a Ghost Town thanks to rampant sandstorms and desertification burying most of the city under sand. What few residents and students are left cling on to the remaining habitable areas of the district even as the sand and Abydos' creditors steadily encroach on them.

E-L

• Easily Forgiven:
  • In Volume 1, Sensei forgives Problem Solver 68 for accidentally destroying Serika's place of work and even an entire city block, because they know it was accidental. Sensei even parts ways with them on somewhat good terms.
  • In Volume 3, Chapter 4, Sensei is quick to accept Saori's frantic request for their help in rescuing Atsuko, despite Saori having spent the past two chapters as their enemy and even being the one to shoot them in Chapter 3. They go so far as to turn down Saori's offer of attaching an explosive collar to ensure her loyalty, smashing the detonator and offering help regardless, solely because Saori is a student in need.
• Enemy Mine:
  • Problem Solver 68 and Abydos' Foreclosure Task Force are forced to work together against the Gehenna Prefect Team despite having a fight earlier. While the Abydos students want the 68 to be punished for blowing up a ramen restaurant, they are more angry that not only did the Prefect Team launch an unprovoked attack and invade their territory without announcing themselves, but the Prefect team is using the excuse of arresting the 68 as a cover for their real goal: kidnapping Sensei.
  • Near the end of Volume 1, Gehenna and Trinity, two powerful academies who are usually rivals, join forces and help the Task Force and 68 battle the Kaiser PMC so the task force can rescue Hoshino.
  • The same thing happens at the end of Chapter 3 of Volume 3, with Sensei rallying the two Academies' forces against the Arius Branch's own assault teams, plus their hijacked army of Justina Saints.
  • A third instance shows up in Chapter 4 of the same Volume, this time with the Arius Squad leader Saori begging Sensei for help in rescuing the Squad's 'Princess' Atsuko from being sacrificed by their school's headmistress and Gematria member Beatrice.
• Elite Mook: Generally present everywhere, and some students (on Hard Mode stage and some events) are the ones as well. They have larger healthpool and attack power, also possessing some additional skills to stall or wipe your advancing forces.
• Everyone Is Armed: Every student in Kivotos goes to school while also carrying their personal firearm. Granted, for the girls this is a bit more like going to school "armed" with something between a Nerf gun and (at the very worst) a taser.
• Everything Fades: In battle, almost every enemy end up entirely disappearing after being defeated. This includes living creatures, various machines and even littered covers around the map.
• Exact Words: In order to save Abydos Academy and her friends from its mounting debts, Hoshino agrees to quit the Abydos student council and join the Kaiser Corporation in exchange for wiping out the debts. When Kaiser invades and tries to destroy Abydos, Hoshino protests this wasn't part of the deal, to which Black Suit tells her that he is fulfilling his promise of wiping out Abydos' debt by destroying the Academy.
• Fanservice: Present quite a lot and everywhere - in Recollection Lobbies, their alternative outfits, during gameplay, etc.
• Foxy Vixen: Quite a couple pretty girls have "foxy" features, including Izuna and Wakamo. Both have swimsuit variants as well, and both of them have really fluffy tails.
• Frills of Justice: Mashiro during a summer vacation wears a frilly black swimsuit. It does different kind of justice as Sensei said.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: After completing Volume F of the main story and Plana officially joins Arona in the Shittim Chest, you can occasionally find Plana either with or instead of Arona when entering the campaign screen. She'll even say your given name aloud just like Arona does.
• Gameplay Grading: Present almost everywhere. Minimum Rank is C, while maximum is S. The battles themselves consists of these requirements: “Clear” (win the battle), “Complete under X seconds” (which is always shorter than the given time limit) and “All students survive”. The first requirement has to be completed in order to gain rewards and open new missions, although it is possible to get one star and still fail to clear the mission by keeping all students operable while failing to complete the mission in the time limit. S rank is required for sweeping and claiming extra rewards.
  • For specific "Maze stage"-type missions, the above-mentioned battles always included. Requirements for multiple battles: “Clear the mission (Defeat the "Boss" unit, required to clear the mission), “Acquire X number of S Ranks” (so you have to have multiple perfect battles with requirements mentioned above), and “Complete in X turns”. Note that if any student gets knocked out, they will not be present for the next battle until the entire mission is finished. Same as above, S rank is required to sweep the stage and claim extra rewards.
  • Rare exceptions include Bounty stages, which are the same as the normal battles, but time restriction is lighter, requiring 5 minutes to end the battle, and 150 seconds to get a higher rank (instead of normal 120). Another exception is "Item Retrieval", which revolves around a single enemy with Special Armor type in Urban environment, cannot attack, but revives itself 4 times with each next revival ending up with the enemy being tougher - requirements are basically: defeat the enemy 1 time (B rank), 4 times (A rank) and 5 times (S rank, possibility to sweep the stage). Time limit is far stricter than usual - requiring 30 seconds to knock out the enemy (time resets upon revival).
• Geo Effects: Stages are separated into Urban, Field and Indoor maps, and each student has different preferences for each, potentially getting a damage buff, none, or even a debuff depending on which they are sent out on. Combined with the Damage/Armor Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors, and building the right team for each stage can get a little complex.
• Glass Cannon: Aris, having one of the highest base ATK stats in the game also has the lowest HP pool, requiring a good protection. When well invested, she packs a powerful punch, deliverling a massive damage to anyone standing in the way - her railgun's auto attacks and EX skill go through the targets while also bypassing the covers.
• Go-Karting with Bowser: As the head of Schale, Sensei has the power and authority to command any students from all of the schools. Hence, you can have students from different schools or clubs working together even if they are rivals like Abydos' Foreclosure Task Force and Gehenna's Problem Solver 68.
• Gondor Calls for Aid: During the events of the Final Volume, Sensei sends out a call to all their students to rally to defend Kivotos from the invasion of the False Sanctums. Practically every school and student Sensei had ever helped answers the call and unites under Sensei's command. Even traditional enemies like the delinquents decide to team up with SCHALE to help defend the city.
• Gradual Regeneration: A status buff that replenishes target's Hit Points every 4 seconds with the potency depending from the caster's Healing power. Affected by target's Recovery Boost stat.
• Graphics-Induced Super-Deformed: In cutscenes and other character interactions, each character is represented by a still image with highly detailed art and only a few alternate facial expressions, while in gameplay and other animation-necessary scenarios they're turned into lesser-detailed chibi designs.
• Grenade Launcher: A few students wield this type of weapon. Their poor accuracy, low evasion and slow attack speed are somewhat compensated by their auto-attack’s AOE damage. Yuzu and Chise are notable examples.
• Guns in Church: Literally. All students of Trinity’s church-going Sisterhood wield guns. Hinata in particular not only uses a handgun, but also carries a huge suitcase packing a mounted grenade launcher she busts out in her EX Skill.
• Health/Damage Asymmetry: Present everywhere except Tactical Challenge.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: Players can name the Sensei. In a rather unexpected bonus, you can also add a pronunciation guide for Arona to say it.
• Hit-and-Run Tactics: In gameplay, some Special slot students like Saya (Casual) and Hiyori will briefly appear in the battlefield to perform the triggered EX skill animation with the following damage output, and then immediately leave or disappear from the battlefield.
• HP to 1: During "Immortal" special status effect, no matter how much damage is taken (and the amount of damage dealt will still be shown), the affected unit will have 1 HP left without being defeated. Currently, Marina and Junko are the only playable students that have this status effect.
  • Perominions that are summoned by Perorodzilla also have this status effect. But Perorodzilla takes all the damage that was dealt to Perominions, making their existence for Perorodzilla as a unique form of Fate Worse than Death - the longer they are on the battlefield, the more time it gives to enemies to deal additional hits.
• Hollywood Hacking:
  • Averted in Volume 2; Veritas is unable to access Millenium's airgapped security system and are forced to manipulate Millennium staff into installing a Hardware Trojan.
  • Subverted in Hare's first relationship story, in she makes fun of portrayals of hackers in movies while doing the exact same things herself.
  • Special Operation: Decagrammaton has Decagrammaton somehow managing to hack a completely airgapped Millenium computer network with no visible means of interface, but it's pointed out and treated as a sign of Decagrammaton's vastly superior technology rather than normal.
• Holy Hand Grenade:
  • The name of Koharu's EX Skill, dealing moderate damage to enemies while healing allies in the designated area.
  • Suzumi's EX Skill has "Holy Flash Grenade", but instead of healing allies, it stuns the enemies if the EX skill is level 3 for quite some time.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: The second Millenium arc has Mr Avant Garde and Toki. Both are later defeated out of gameplay.
• Hypocritical Humour: When the Abydos Task Force shows up to join the Gehenna Prefect Team's attack on one of Arius' flanks late in the third chapter of Volume 3, Hoshino waves off Hina's calling her "Abydos Council Vice-President" and insists that she just call her "Hoshino"... only for Serika to point out that she just called Hina "Committee Chair-chan" instead of her name, asking if she even remembers what it is. Before Hoshino can reply, Hina interrupts to tell them to cut the chat and get ready.
• Immune to Bullets:
  • One of the first rules of Kivotos's world that you learn is that everyone who live in this city are, to human standards, absurdly durable; being shot with hollow-point rounds from modern firearms is, to them, roughly the equivalent of a normal human having small rubber bouncing balls thrown at them. You need to start getting into the territory of Flak 41s and tank-mounted guns to talk about weapons that can seriously threaten these girls in a single shot (and even then, early in the story, Serika is hit with a Flak round and is only really knocked out, winded, and in need of a little rest afterward). It's implied in-story (and shown in gameplay) that, with enough effort, small arms rounds can threaten the girls to an extent, but it takes a lot of it to get there; a later chapter features a character having an entire magazine of 5.56x45 from an M4 emptied at point blank range directly into her head, and another character involved estimates that this will, maybe, keep the victim unconscious for an hour.
  • While not often highlighted, even the animal and robot people who live in Kivotos can also survive being hit by a bullet. Even so, they are obviously not as strong as students, and one was complaining that they could've been killed after being hit with a silver bullet.
  • A letter written by Hoshino implies that a student can be killed if their halo is destroyed. In fact, "destroying a halo" is treated as an euphemism for death when it comes to students, and although the denizen of Kivotos are durable, they are not immortal, and can still die from cases such as constant damage, illness, hunger, thirst, abnormal temperatures and falling from extreme heights. There also exist an attempt to make a weapon specifically for destroying a student's halo.
• Improbably Female Cast: All the residents of Kivotos (who aren't robots or sapient canines or sinister, obsidian energy beings) are humanoid girls.
• Interservice Rivalry: The larger academies have this in spades.
  • Gehenna has the main rivalry between Pandemonium and the Prefect Team. Pandemonium considers Prefect Team to be a threat to their power, and does everything possible to limit their influence, while the Prefect team sees Pandemonium as Obstructive Bureaucrats who keep getting in the way of their mission to protect Gehenna. That's not even getting into the school's borderline rogue clubs like the Gourmet Research Society and Hot Springs Club, who cause all sorts of trouble while pursuing their own interests.
  • Trinity has the divide between the Tea Party and the Sisterhood. While the Tea Party are the official leaders and main power of the Trinity campus, the Sisterhood is large and powerful enough to remain independent of the Tea Party's control. This has led to a cold war between the two sides as they quietly vie for supremacy.
  • Valkyrie Police School has the Public Security and Public Safety Bureaus. Public Security is universally considered the more prestigious organization as they carry out most of the actual police duties, while Public Safety is mostly relegated to community service and nonviolent offenses. This leads to members of Public Security seeing Public Safety as a dumping ground for incompetent students while members of Public Safety vie to at least secure some of the action and glory Public Security enjoys.
• iPhony: The A-Pod Pro gift, a set of wireless earphones that is said to be quite popular in Kivotos but also quite expensive.
• Kids Versus Adults: A common type of conflict in most of the main and event stories, the adults most often being a Corrupt Corporate Executive or members of a certain organization all For Science!
• Koan: Kivotos is said to have seven koans that date back to ancient times. The only one that has been mentioned so far is the fifth: "Can we prove that anyone has ever reached paradise?"^ExplanationNo one alive has ever seen paradise and if it was paradise, logically, someone who has seen it would not want to leave. Therefore if someone came back to tell people about paradise, it wouldn't be paradise.
• Last Stand: Volume 3, Chapter 4, Episode 23. While Sensei and Arius Squad are left to rescue Atsuko from Beatrice, Mika blocks off the reinforcements on her own to prevent them from aiding Beatrice, buying enough time for her allies to take the latter down. Sensei made it in time to rescue her.
• The Leader: You can set a specific student in the team as the representative. This option is purely cosmetic, but it allows you to indicate the team setup in maze stage missions by looking at the unit leader.
• Loophole Abuse:
  • Used by the Kaiser Corporation to justify invading Abydos Academy. The Kaiser President points out, since Hoshino gave her resignation letter from Abydos and the Foreclosure Task Force, but it was never officially approved by the General Student council and thus illegal, Abydos is technically ownerless and Kaiser has the right to take over their territory. However, this logic is used against them when Sensei points out they, the club advisor, never signed the resignation letter, which means Hoshino is still a student of Abydos and thus Kaiser's invasion is still illegal.
  • Arius uses this to their advantage when they insert themselves into the Eden Treaty. Since Arius was a part of the original First Council that formed Trinity High School, that allows them to hijack the Eden Treaty and trigger the manifestation of the Justina Saints when they trick Trinity and Gehenna into attacking each other. Sensei then counters this by pointing out that since the Eden Treaty was written by the General Student Council President who would also officially act as a mediator to enforce the terms of the treaty, SCHALE and by extension Sensei also has the same power since the GSC President granted SCHALE all of her privileges and authorities before she disappeared. Thus Sensei is able to take control the Eden Treaty and banish the Justina Saints.
• Luck-Based Mission: In terms of getting top scores to get higher ranks, both Total and Grand Assault are heavily prone to "Crit Malding" strategies, which essentially boils down to building a team that maximizes critical hit damage in order to defeat the boss as fast as possible. However, this often requires players to score multiple critical hits on the boss in a row, which obviously requires perfect RNG. Naturally, it can take players hundreds of retries and hours of playtime to get that perfect crit run, if it even happens at all.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me:
  • Hoshino uses her EX Skill by charging forward while shooting her shotgun, all while holding her shield in her left hand which she drops immediately after ending her charge. She also gains a Shield status effect based from her Healing.
  • Natsu and Tsubaki also use shields as well, but in gameplay they seem to not use them, even though Tsubaki's EX Skill is called "Deploy Tactical Shield", and Natsu's skill animation shows her hiding behind her shield while drinking milk that restores her HP.
  • The “Shield” buff grants additional HP for the target, its HP based mostly on the caster's/source’s Healing stat and will inherit the target's armor type. Unlike normal healing, it cannot be recovered by healing methods, mostly lasts a limited time, can affect targets with full HP, cannot be stacked, and is not affected by the target's Health Recovery stat.

M-R

• Magically-Binding Contract:
  • Trinity has a special law where any agreement made under its secret Commandments is magically binding, and anybody who breaks the agreement will immediately be punished by the spectral Justina Saints.
  • Volume 3 also reveals that Gematria takes agreements very seriously and will not violate one no matter how much against their interests it is. This is the reason why Black Suit was forced to give up Hoshino to Sensei when Sensei reveals they never officially approved Hoshino's resignation from the Abydos Student Council.
• Magikarp Power: A lot of students upon just being unlocked and having little upgrades have inferior capabilities, compared to those who are good off the shelf. But once properly invested and geared, they become a very nice addition for teams—even outperforming some of the "more convenient" ones.
  • Haruka is a famous example. At a low amount of stars, basic gear and low skill levels, she gets wrecked rather quickly as other Tanks can at least evade incoming attacks as well. But upon being properly invested with Unique Equipment, good skill and gear levels, she becomes an exceptionally sturdy unit that has her own offensive capability against Light-armored enemies.
  • Combined with This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman, some of students that were easily replaceable, saved as a last resort, or even absolutely unusable in most content become powerful against certain raids in Insane difficulties. Kayoko against Hod, and Kotori against Shirokuro, Binah and Kaiten are some examples.
• Maximum HP Reduction: Rarely present, mostly during timed events. As it said, reduces HP capacity of an affected unit. Tanking units suffer from this the most.
• Meaningful Name: The game's title, Blue Archive, gets a Title Drop in Vol. 3 Ch. 3 Episode 19. This comment in the same video explains it why best:
  Kirbylittle: "This episode is really great for many reasons, but I think one of the biggest ones is that it really makes you realize what the meaning behind the title is. Blue, as stated by the creators, has a lively energy and a youthful feel to it, and the Japanese character for blue 青 is present in the word for youth 青春. Hence, as Hifumi puts it, this game is about “The story of [their] youth!!”
  We’ve been getting a lot of hiccups along the way, like with Mika almost killing Seia without knowing why, Arius committing terrorism, Hoshino being essentially abducted and becoming a guinea pig, and so forth. However, in the end, it’s all part of their youth, and that’s why we—as the Sensei—must guide them forward. People make lots of mistakes during adolescence, and that’s why it’s important to have someone to guide you the right way—a good adult to do so, preferably."
• The Medic: There are plenty of students from strikers and specialist slots that can heal the allies on the battlefield. Some of them instead of healing can grant a shield based from their Healing stat, and the casted shield ignores the Health Recovery debuff.
• Miko: Serika wears this type of outfit on a part-time job during New Year event. Her shrine maiden blessing comes from her skill set aimed to reduce critical damage intake of allies.
• Mook Maker: Chesed is most notorious for this, constantly producing waves of mechanical soldiers during battles against it.
• Morale Mechanic: Exists as Terrain Mood, making students that perform poorly on one terrain quite effective on another; it affects their final damage output, block rate and block bypass rate when they take cover. Students with poor affinities can still be used, but better choices might be available.
• Motifs: Each of the schools have a motif that fits the type of students that go there.
  • Abydos High School is named after one of Egypt's oldest cities, with its students being subtle references to Egyptian gods (ex. Hoshino's shotgun is named "Iron Horus") and being located next to a desert.
  • The Arius Satellite School gets its name from Arianism, an infamous heresy that denies the divinity of Christ, fitting for a school that has split off from the religious Trinity. Moreover, its students subscribe to a philosophy of nihilism: their logo has a skull to represent the ultimate end of life, their motto is "vanitas vanitatum, et omnia vanitas"^meaning"vanity of vanities, all is vanity", based off Ecclesiastes 12:8, and their weapons are undecorated and devoid of individuality in comparison to every other student's.
  • Gehenna Academy has a demon motif, with many of their students sporting demon horns and/or wings and featuring a vaguely Putting on the Reich aesthetic (with a few, like the Pandemonium Society, veering much closer to World War II-esque Wehrmacht uniforms); many of them utilize classic German firearms from the World Wars. The Pandemonium Society also has access to a Hindenburg-like dirigible, while Iroha drives a Tiger I tank she calls "Toramaru."
  • The Hyakkiyako Alliance Academy is a Japanese-style school where the students wear traditional Japanese clothes and the town the school is located looks like a old era Japanese city like Kyoto. Most are also themed after various sorts of Japanese yokai or other supernatural beings, and the school itself is named for the idea of the Hyakkiyako found throughout Japanese folklore and old literature.
  • The Millennium Science School, as the name suggests, is a school that focus on STEM education, with some students using high-tech devices like drones in their skills. One prominent very recently admitted Millennial even uses a science-fiction-esque railgun as their weapon. Its first name, "Millennium", is also a reference to the seven unsolved mathematical questions known as the Millennium Problems.
  • The Red Winter Federal Academy has a Soviet Russian motif, since everyone wears winter jackets and ushanka fur hats, their student council president (tries to) behave like a typical Soviet leader, and their school's microclimate is decidedly subarctic.
  • The Shanhaijing Senior Secondary School is a Chinese motif school where the students wear Qipao uniforms and have Chinese restaurants located near their school. The students themselves are also largely based on various animals sourced from the actual Shanhaijing.
  • The Trinity General School is a Christian-themed religious school, with many of their students featuring angel wings or wearing crosses and nun habits. They also have a British theme with some students using British guns and one of the school's most powerful club being the Tea Party. Fittingly enough, Trinity has a deep and abiding rivalry with Gehenna.
  • Valkyrie Police Academy references the Norse Valkyries, angel-like women who survey battlefields and carry the spirits of fallen warriors to Valhalla—one could say the policegirls survey scenes of crime (and given the many gun-toters in the city, it’s almost always a battle instead), and their logo is a collection of strips in a diamond shape that resemble a pair of wings folded over each other, which is also what Valkyries are usually associated with.
• Named Weapons: The vast majority of the guns used by the girls are recognizable real-world firearms, but rather than either try to license their real names or go the A.K.A.-47 route, those that get identified by name at all are given unique names suiting the wielder's personality, e.g. the quiet bibliophile Shimiko and her SCAR-H, the "Library Ruler", the strict and logical Yuuka with her SIG MPX "Logic & Reason", or the Blood Knight Tsurugi and her twin Winchester 1887s, "Blood & Gunpowder". It's Hoshino's that gives you the first hint at what might be "really" going on in Kivotos, however; when we see it at the end of Volume 1 of the main story, we see on its case that it is named "Iron Horus".
• No Casualties Run: Invoked: one of the requirements for S-ranking an individual battle or three-starring a stage is completing it without losing any students.
• Non-Entity General: The Sensei you play as. According to the developers, this is explicitly so that the player can place themselves in the role.
• Non-Lethal K.O.: If one of your squad member loses all of her HP, she'll be airlifted out (presumably by a GSC-provided helicopter). This is also... assumed to be the case with the delinquent girls you fight. Since you are never shown as destroying a halo, the girls you KO are almost certainly okay, if a little knocked around.
• No Self-Buffs: Averted. All students have Enhanced skills, which already buffs them. Although, some of their skills cannot affect them (like Natsu's thrown pie cannot ricochet to herself; Ui cannot target herself).
• No-Sell: False Sanctum version of Perorodzilla has a whopping 80 millions of hit points during its final cinematic battle. Considering that the previous record was Insane Hieronymus' 24 millions, and given that the nominate difficulty of that event would be Hardcore, clearly the party given to Sensei would be impossible to beat it. Indeed, Sensei's squad doesn't get to beat it; Kaitenger does.
• One-Gender School: All schools are shown to have only female students.
• One-Hit Kill: Obviously present if your students have high investment in them to immediately incapacitate a mook in a single auto-attack, and this makes Level Scaling absent in this game (to the point that the higher the opposing enemy's level is, the tougher it is to activate additional hidden stat boosts).
• Order Versus Chaos: The never-ending tensions between Trinity and Gehenna effectively take this form, even if some at Trinity would insist it's actually good against evil. Trinity is well-ordered, preaches harmony above all and is incontestably the preppiest school in Kivotos, but its bright and polite exterior hides massive amounts of political machinations, and students there can prove surprisingly nasty if their façade cracks. In contrast, Gehenna is a complete mess that takes pride in freedom before anything else, for better or for worse. There is no school uniform whatsoever, it's the single biggest source of delinquents in the game, even their most harmless-sounding clubs have a penchant for mass destruction, and it's a running gag that there's maybe four or five people with functioning common sense in the entire school, but they shine in their honesty and dedication to what they truly value... even if that often quickly turns to mayhem.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: If two or more characters' skills have nearly the same use, one of them becomes a more desirable pick than the other depending on how fast/powerful/supportive/cost efficient it is.
  • When Ako was released, all other Specialists who were used for boosting Crit Damage via their sub skill were left at places where their other skills could be used for specific content (they were used there anyways, yet their Crit damage boosts allowed to go outside of their niche).
  • Most Piercing-type students are overshadowed by Iori, as her skill allows for both AOE and powerful burst single-target attacks.
  • Yuzu was used in Urban Binah and Hod raids due to her absolutely busted crit damage stats. After Kazusa's release, some players preferred to choose the latter one, as her damage output was more consistent, while being backed up by insanely potent ATK buffs and 1773% multiplier on her EX skill.
    • Mika, during her own release, easily overshadowed most Piercing-damage Strikers; she's got an extremely high multiplier (15 times the attack power; can be doubled up depending on target's amount of HP), unique and powerful damage bonuses, and all of her attacks deal critical hits. Also, she can take a beating with her high hitpoints and evasion.
• Mythical Motifs: Not only are the schools loosely based upon various biblical and mythological motifs, various students also possess design motifs associated with specific divine or demonic beings depicted in said motifs. They are shown to be related to the "Mystic" that every student is said to carry, according to Gematria.
• Panty Shot: Present during gameplay. Some EX Skill animations also expose their undergarments to view, like Hifumi tripping over in her own.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: When the Foreclosure Task Force decides to rob a bank, they disguise themselves by wearing ski masks over their head (a makeshift paper bag in Hifumi's case) while still wearing their recognizable school uniforms and their student tags which has the name and the logo of their school out in the open. The ski masks also don't cover their halos, which have an individual distinct pattern for each student. The Problem Solver 68 girls (barring Aru) immediately recognize who the robbers are.
• Play as a Boss: Some playable students are present in various missions and event stages, although their stats noticeably differ from their playable variant (and usually they have more HP if encountered as a boss).
• Police Are Useless:
  • While Kivotos does have a police force as part of the General Student Council, at the time you arrive it's completely ineffectual to the point where each academy takes it upon themselves to organize their own armed school clubs to maintain public order. It later becomes clear that the bigger academies are, if anything, micro-states unto themselves and prefer this arrangement, Trinity and Gehenna in particular.
  • Played straight with Valkyrie Police Academy, whose main police forces are notoriously slow to react to crimes, leaving the barely competent Public Safety Bureau to try and pick up the slack.
    • In Chapter 4, they are constantly beaten down and humiliated by SRT without Sensei guiding them. And on Valentine's Day, Wakamo manages to escape from them multiple times. It got so bad that even students from other schools make fun of their inability to stop her and Kanna resorted to making a deal with Kaiser just to get some decent equipment for the force. Though to be fair to them, Valkyrie is constantly fighting against some serious heavyweights while being saddled with terrible circumstances (e.g. the disappearance of the General Student Council president which indirectly led to an extremely large increase in crimes without warning, lack of budget and manpower while also being saddled with obsolete gear, the removal of SRT who was supposed to be the ones to deal with said heavyweights instead of them). Events and character stories shows that they aren't that incompetent, it's shown when they aren't fighting against monstrous powerhouses like Wakamo, or the elite special forces like SRT, they are actually able to do their jobs pretty decently.
    • It is later revealed that, this was intentional, on the part of Kaya. She had intentionally sabotaged Valkyrie by stripping them of all funding and equipment, while also using the FOX platoon to commit crimes behind the scenes. Her actions would destabilize the safety of Kivotos, dragging Valkyrie's name through the mud while promoting Kaiser Security at the same time. This was done for the purpose of making the transfer of power to Kaiser easier.
    • In Volume Final, it's finally subverted when Kanna saves Sensei after he gets betrayed by Kaya and the GSC is imprisoned by Kaiser. Valkyrie then joins up with the Rabbit Platoon in the nick of time to defeat Kaiser. In the next part, they help with the evacuation of the citizens and the protection of the headquarters when it comes under attack.
    • In Volume 4 part 2, they undergo heavy Redemption Promotion when they finally decided that enough is enough and rebels against Kaya and Kaiser's tyrannical reign. They arrive as The Calvary once again, helping Sensei and Miyako stop Kaiser and the FOX platoon from detonating a nuke in a small town. This time round, their level of competency has skyrocketed. Effectively running circles around Kaiser's elite forces despite them being saddled with old obsolete weapons. After fighting with them, Miyako admits that she is greatly impressed at much better they have become compared to before.
• Power at a Price: Sensei's credit card, which is said to give them an incredible power at the cost of their life and time, all while making an allegory of what happens to those abusing their credit cards in real life. In-story it allows them to call upon any student they want from the player's list of recruited students, and it's so alien that even Gematria required meta-cognition to comprehend its scope.
• Powerful, but Inaccurate: No matter how high the damage is, no matter how large the area of effect is, even if the target is within said area—if the target's evasion is higher than the attacker's accuracy stat, the target will have a chance to ignore incoming damage. Especially exasperating in PvP, as specialized evasion tanks can dodge basically everything, if blessed with luck.
• Public Domain Artifact:
  • The "Shittim Chest", the tablet the GSC President left for you before her disappearance and which only you have the password to^note "We thirst for the seven wailings. We bear the koan of Jericho." and which you use, in-universe, to manage Schale business and coordinate the girls in fights. The name lends itself to obvious jokes to modern Anglophones, but if you look up which "chest" was made of the wood known to Antiquarian Israelites as "shittim"...
  • The name of the city gets in on this, as well. It's Kivotos, which is a Greek word meaning... ark. As in, both Noah's Ark and the other "ark" discussed above.
• Quirky Miniboss Squad: Problem Solver 68 take this role for much of Episode 1.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Each major volume of the main story focuses around a group of such students who seek out the aid of Schale and Sensei in particular.
  • Volume One focuses on the Abydos Foreclosure Task Force... who are a ragtag bunch inasmuch as they are the five remaining students at the school, and consist of a quiet second year who has a tendency to suggest high crime as a solution, a lazy slob of a third year who possesses one of the most powerful "Mystics" in all of Kivotos and has a closet and past full of skeletons, a well-meaning and hilariously wealthy second year, a far-too-firey-and-gullible-for-her-own-good first year, and a demure, nerdy, earnest first year who has to try and ride shotgun on this pile of incorrigibles. The adventure focuses on their efforts to save the school from repossession and total, permanent dissolution.
  • Volume Two focuses on the Game Development Department of Millennium, which consists of a hyperactive gamer first year, her put-upon illustrator twin sister, their heavily shut-in club president, and their brand new recruit, an ancient humanoid android whose amnesia prevents her from remembering the purpose of her creation. Together, they need to prove to the guiding student council of Millennium that their club still deserves to exist... by making one of the greatest video games ever.
  • Volume Three focuses on the Make-Up Work Club, an ad hoc gathering of students at danger of failing out of Trinity General School altogether. They consist of a nervous, slightly neurotic first-year whose main problem focusing might be her obsession with "adult" literature, an airheaded, highly attractive second-year who is not nearly as vapid as she first seems, but has her own reasons for her behavior, another second-year who is a mysterious transfer student, a rarity at Trinity, and having to tag along is a diligent second-year who actually has decent grades but has been trusted by the Trinity student council, the Tea Party, to help the students not fail. All of this unfolds against the backdrop of an upcoming treaty signing between Trinity and their long-time rivals, Gehenna. And the club's public purpose is a smokescreen. The true purpose of the club is to put all the students that Nagisa, head of the Tea Party, suspects of being spies or general problems into one club with the hope of having a good excuse to expel all of them, so as to ensure they don't disrupt the Eden Treaty. The maneuvering of the Tea Party, however, may conceal something even more sinister at work... and it might fall to a group of apparent screw-ups to prevent disaster.
    • In Chapter 4, for a twist, the focus shifts to the Arius Squad after their headmistress decides to abandon them for their failure (not that it would have mattered even if they succeeded) and takes their kind princess figure as a Human Sacrifice in a ritual that may well bring an end to Kivotos. In this Enemy Mine situation, you team up with the last chapter’s main antagonist that near-fatally shot you but is now the one who begged you for help, a meek sniper who’s usually Prone to Tears, and an apathetic girl toting a rocket launcher, all willing to venture into the hidden school district of Arius to rescue their friend. And, after a series of unfortunate events, a certain Tea Party member moves in the background out of vengeance against that same squad who manipulated her…
  • Volume Four centers around RABBIT Squad of SRT Special Academy, a squad of first-year girls trained to act as high-tech elite operatives that tackle terrorist threats on the level of Kosaka Wakamo… except the academy has closed down, leaving these girls who protested its closure with only one objective: bring it back, despite being penniless and homeless. The squad consists of a no-nonsense self-appointed and eventually mutually approved leader, a hothead who works by the books of her training, a Shrinking Violet sniper who wishes she could turn off her social invisibility, and their Mission Control who has a thing for explosions. In the background, their seniors in the FOX Platoon move with their own agenda, and the GSC’s Defense Office head likewise has her mysteries…
• Red Herring: In the early stages of Volume 1 of the main story, even a vaguely genre-savvy sensei will likely begin to suspect that the desertification of Abydos's microclimate and the resulting loss of increasing parts of the district to sand has been engineered by the Kaiser Corporation somehow, since Kaiser is consistently the beneficiary of the desertification and land abandonment, and could take over the whole district. Both the Kaiser PMC director and Black Suit express apparently sincere surprise at the suggestion that the climate change was planned and don't seem to know what caused it; the Kaiser director in particular acts like it's simply a fortunate turn of events. However, there is some implication that whatever Kaiser is looking for in the desert is linked to the change, so Kaiser might know what's causing it, but has no direct hand in it happening.
• Relationship Upgrade: Adds a lot of practical benefits besides the obvious ones: Relationship Stories with a benefit of a premium currency, Live2D to decorate the lobby and extra stats to squeeze out additional performance from the student. The presence of bond gear for particular students will cause a decent power spike, so it is generally worth to upgrade the relationships to higher levels.
• Russian Reversal: "Nesno wons", 99th soundtrack. Considering Red Winter's cold climate and Russian motif, and the hot spring resort being built in a snowy landscape, the soundtrack title is quite fitting once you read it backwards.

S-Z

• Saving the Orphanage:
  • The game's first story chapter involves Abydos High School, whose vanishingly small student body is struggling to pay off a colossal loan or risk having its campus seized by loan sharks. Naturally, the moment Sensei gets involved, things dramatically escalate as a conspiracy comes to light.
  • Volume 2 involves Sensei helping out the Video Game Development Club in Millenium High School, which risks getting shut down by the student council due to the lack of members and failing to make any new video games, which is the entire purpose of their club's existence.
  • Volume 4 starts off some time after SRT Special Academy has closed down, causing a group of its first-year students known as RABBIT Squad to lead a demonstration against the closure.
• Self-Insert Fic: Sensei, the protagonist, has no actual appearance in-game, so many players have to design their own appearances for Sensei.
• School Clubs Are Serious Business: Every playable character is in some sort of club and some of them take their membership in said clubs very seriously.
• Sentry Gun: Utaha summons her "Thundergun" onto the battlefield. It can serve mainly as a distraction or as a little damage backup. Her cheerleader variant takes this trope even further in that it is her sentry that does the auto-attack, not herself.
• Shielded Core Boss: Chesed, one of Decagrammaton's prophets. The core will be exposed for 20 seconds right during Groggy phase, and the Groggy gauge is filled by 25% every time you defeat an entire wave of summoned mechanical soldiers.
• Short-Range Long-Range Weapon: Note that snipers in Striker slots have to stay rather close to the enemy to shoot them (the shooting distance can be covered by usual advancing in less than 5 seconds).
• Shotguns Are Just Better: They definitely have quite some advantages over other firearms. Even if the wielder has poor evasion, short range, it is compensated by very high DEF and HP stats, high stability (thus lower damage variance) and somewhat good accuracy that is on par with assault rifles. Not the best weapon, but any striker that wields a shotgun is most likely to be a "tanking" character that keeps your backline safe. The non-dedicated 'tanks' (Tsurugi, Michiru) also have quite high ATK stats to contribute to the overall damage output of the team, while the dedicated tanks (Hoshino, Eimi) have lower ATK stat, but back it up with the presence of good survivability against incoming burst damages, or offensive skills: Haruka, upon using an EX skill called "Shotgun Blast", deals 1560% of her ATK as damage to all enemies in large area. Hoshino also stuns and knocks back the enemies with her shotgun during her "Tactical Suppression".
• Shrouded in Myth: It's never mentioned why there's such a great animosity between Trinity and Gehenna other than it's a feud that has lasted for generations. Almost nobody actually gives a reason for the hatred of the other school, other than for the sake of hating them. Atsuko is pretty much the first student to point out the absurdity of the situation, saying that they've all merely inherited a hate that is not their own. That said, it's not too difficult to infer that it has something to do with the Students of the schools inheriting the Mystics of angels and demons, respectively.
• Side Boob: Ako's shirt conspicuously displays the sides of her large chest. Her different outfits don't feature this though.
• Sniper Rifle: Mostly for the characters that deal large damage per hit. Wielders have low healthpool capacity, slow firing rate, poor defenses and evasion, but augment these with very high accuracy, large ATK stat and high damage per shot. Specialists lack the most of weaknesses of sniper rifle users, due to simply being absent on the battlefield (but, as other specialists, cannot damage enemies with auto-attacks).
• Spiritual Antithesis: To Girls' Frontline. While Girls Frontline is pretty dark, the wars are real, its characters are Ridiculously Human Robots named after firearms, and the gameplay involves deep tactical formations and decisions, this game is light-hearted, the "wars" are between girls who are explicitly bulletproof and rarely if ever seem to actually kill anyone and when things do start to escalate to even potential killing, it is treated with the appropriate gravity, its characters are Ambiguously Human with their own personalities being the emphasis, instead of being mirrors of their guns, and the gameplay is an auto-battler where the player input is limited to when the players can use the respective characters special attack and the choice to speed up and automate the special attack trigger, like in Princess Connect! Re:Dive. Blue Archive's Producer, Kim Yong-Ha, has even openly compared the game to "GFL & X-COM, but with a focus on happiness and light".
• Stat Sticks: Some of the specialist slot students are treated like this: if you don't have an extra student, the skill cost recovery is reduced; adding a random student will end up reducing the skill card rotational ability while the said student being completely useless during the run. So players ended up using certain Specialist students for backing up the raw stats for Striker students, due to Specialist slot students giving 10% of their HP and ATK, as well as 5% of their DEF and Healing to the Striker units, to make them at least more useful beyond their skill set. Karin, Iroha and Saki are one of the few ATK buffing examples - their default ATK stat is very high, with their equipment slots further increasing their ATK power, and their Sub skill boosting all allies' ATK power even further. Stat Sticks, unlike the normal buffers on the same slot, have 100% uptime (they exist for purpose of backing up the stats in the first place), affect all allies (while some buffers cannot, or apply to a single target) and have their own flashy skills that can be used in some content. The disadvantage is the fact that buffers are far more efficient and noticeable if players actually use them.
• Status Infliction Attack: Plently of students and other mooks are capable of setting the targets with status ailments that can either damage them over time, or decrease their overall performance.
• The Stinger: The two epilogues of Volume F Chapter 4, following the ending credits, count. Rin receives a mysterious letter which turns out to be from the General Student Council President, whose contents aren't shown. At the same time, Sensei finally receives the scroll from the President of Hyakkiyako that the Ninjutsu Research Club went to retrieve, stating that the effects of the Chroma are irreversible... only there was another part of the scroll that previously wasn't shown, in which the Hyakkiyako President, revealed to be Kuzunoha (the girl who previously helped Seia escape from her endless dream), implores Sensei to seek her out in order to 'save someone' from similar circumstances... that someone heavily implied to be the General Student Council President herself.
• Stripperiffic: Mainly swimsuit and bunny girl characters. They can even fight in snowy climates without getting any health problems.
• Student/Teacher Romance: The students you bond with tend to involve a lot of Ship Tease, but Kirino has something intriguing to say in one of her café chat quotes (assuming she's only stating a fact rather than trying to suggest something more with herself): there is no law prohibiting relationships between teachers and students. Make of it what you will of Sensei's romantic prospects.
• Suicide Attack: Chesed's mechanical soldiers will self-destruct after a short time, dealing massive AOE damage upon closing the distance between the enemy.
• Supernatural Fear Inducer: Kayoko has looks of a spooky delinquent, which ends up being a hassle for her. Her skill set entirely revolves around the crowd control effect known as Fear. Combined with her massive Crowd Control Power, everyone (aside from immune to CC enemies) will end up running away once she fires a pistol upwards.
• Super-Toughness: Notable among the characters in this game.
• Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: Students and enemies have color-coded damage and armor: Gray^note Normal Damage, only used by enemies, Red^note Explosive Damage, Light Armor, Gold^note Piercing Damage, Heavy Armor, Blue^note Mystic Damage, Special Armor, Pink^note Sonic Damage, Elastic Armor, and Purple^note Siege Damage, Structure Armor. Each each armor type receives extra damage from its matching damage type, as well as average and mediocre damage from other colors, barring Gray damage, which does average against all except purple armor, and Purple, which resists all except its matching color. It gets more complicated when certain students have mismatched damage and armor types, making them effective against certain enemies in a group while also vulnerable to others. Combined with Geo Effects, each team need to be carefully picked for each upcoming mission.
• Take Cover!: Most of damage dealer (and some tank roles) students specifically search for a nearby cover and run to that direction for extra protection. The cover usage rate depends mostly from their mood in the terrain - the better the mood (compared to enemy's mood), the higher is the chance that cover will take the hit. Doesn't work against area-of-effect attack for obvious reason.
• Tank Goodness: Tanks occasionally show up as enemies, from WWII-era Panzers to futuristic tanks with stealth armor. A few students allow you to call in tanks as well, such as Hifumi's summer version calling in a Crusader tank nicknamed "Crusadie", though the costs to the EX gauge are predictably massive. Those summoned tanks have really high attack power, potentially defeating a mook in one shot - fitting in high difficulty gameplays.
• Teenage Wasteland: Kivotos appears to be a very tame version of this, as all of the official positions of power in the city are run by student councils and clubs, with Sensei being the only exception. Even the antagonists are largely delinquent and dropout students rebelling against the system.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Oh, and how. A staple of nearly every Blue Archive story, where factions originally opposing one another team up and work together once there is a bigger threat being posed, much to their chagrin, such as Serika helping out Problem Solver 68 during their New Year's event story, and C&C joining forces with the Game Development Club to fight against Rio and Toki, after the two had been fighting each other, just to name a couple examples. In the Final Episode, we even see the Kaitengers, Masked Delinquent Gang, and other enemies joining forces with the rest of the cast to protect Kivotos.
• There Are No Adults:
  • With the exception Sensei, there are practically no adults depicted in Kivotos, or at least human adults. Sensei never encounters any other teachers or faculty staff in any of the academies they visit except for Shun, who is blatantly an adult and is part of the faculty of Shanhaijing's kindergarten/early elementary equivalent, but absolutely wants to be treated as a "third-year student" and doesn't like discussing her age, and the only adults they encounter are either robots or anthropomorphic animals that work outside of the schools. And then there's the memorable confrontation with Black Suit of Gematria, who also calls himself an adult, but is blatantly not human and is... difficult to classify.
  • Likewise, while some of the students mention they have parents, said parents are never seen meaningfully interacting with their children or Sensei. And that's not getting into the majority of the students don't even acknowledge the existence of their parents at all.
  • It's explained in Volume 3 that while the academies do have faculty staff, actual teachers are a rare sight, since the majority of lessons are taught through recorded lectures. Sensei is pretty much the only actual teacher in Kivotos, which is what makes them so special among the students they encounter.
• This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: Some of the released (during the specific Total Assault boss) characters' skill sets are very effective against specific gameplay mode, and quite often underperforming for other game modes:
  • Chihiro and majority of Rabbit Platoon's skills are focused on dealing with single target/tiny AOE stun effects, which is required to deal with the Hod raid boss. Saki can also be used as an attack boosting stat stick though.
  • Swimsuit Hifumi with her notorious 10-cost "Crusadie", the one who was released during Chesed raid boss being open. Performs quite poorly on her own in other game modes by that steep cost requirement alone.
  • The entire Arius Squad. All of their Strikers have Special Armor (except Hiyori, a Specialist), Explosive-type Attacks and very good affinity in Indoor Terrain. Even if they add up to the roster of scarce numbers of good Explosive attackers for indoors, they are very fitting for the indoor Hieronymus raid (which has Explosive Attacks that deal poor damage against Special Armor); Misaki's EX Skill requires the enemy to stand still and have a large hitbox, Hiyori cuts Defense in half, Atsuko will absorb (evade) incoming strikes and Saori deals critical hits. And this is while all of them are very resistant to Hieronymus' Desert Penance, which constantly damages all enemies with a moderate cooldown.
  • Higher levels of Joint Firing Drill have special conditions that make certain students essential to getting a good score. All attacks do 1 damage per hit? Both versions of Neru have EX skills that do damage over many hits. Damage Over Time debuffs are powered up? Juri suddenly becomes a top choice. The list goes on.
• Throw-Away Guns: If you look closely you can see some students like Tsurugi simply toss their weapons and pull out new ones rather than properly reload.
• Total Party Kill: Chesed and Hieronymus (except Insane difficulty) are capable of killing the entire team once their ATG gauge is filled.
• Trap Master: Azusa and the Arius Squad (the former having laid some traps to attack the latter at one point). Their mood affinity also hints it—they all like Indoor terrain (even Azusa's swimsuit variant still has great mood indoors with little change in other terrains).
• Unlockable Difficulty Levels:
  • Usually, progressing through normal missions, Bounty, Commissions, and other gameplay modes will unlock their next stages, which are tougher and demanding to pass, and as a rule, they give out higher tier rewards.
  • Completing five Normal Missions in one area will unlock three Hard Missions of that area as well, where certain student-exclusive Elephs can be obtained from there.
• Unusual Halo: All of the heroines have halos in different colors, motifs and shapes.
• Utility Party Member: A lot of students are significantly less effective at shooting enemies, but they can help by other means. Apart from basically increasing allies' stats or decreasing enemies' resistance, various student have varying support abilities: increasing team's movement speed, passive skill cost recovery, specific targeting abilities, applying hard crowd-control, etc.
• The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: The Ark of Atrahasis in Volume F, which is essentially a flying fortress 75,000 meters in the sky, protected by a quantum superposition barrier that renders it invulnerable and inaccessible from the outside. Simply reaching it is a heavy ordeal, and after you arrive there is an exhausting gauntlet of battles where you take over the Ark.
• Villains Act, Heroes React: This happens in every volume of the Main Story, where students guided by Sensei live out their peaceful daily lives (as peaceful as it gets in a city with guns and bulletproof people), only to be suddenly blindsided by whatever plot the villains have cooked up in the shadows. Even so, it's not the end for our heroes should the plans go off, so long as they have the determination to react.
  • In Volume 1, Kaiser Corporation has been trying to take the Abydos district over the course of years, in the present attempting to subdue the holdouts in the Foreclosure Task Force through proxies, not helped by Gehenna attempting to kidnap Sensei at one point. It's when Hoshino is taken by Black Suit does Kaiser attempt a full invasion of the district, but after it was repelled, Sensei, the FTF, Handyman 68 and support from Trinity fight their way and rescue their president.
  • In Volume 2, specifically Chapter 2, Aris is targeted for elimination by Seminar's president, Rio, for being a potential danger to all of Kivotos as the would-be leader of android army Divi:Sion. Though Sensei and the Game Development Department couldn't stop her from taking Aris, they and other clubs band together for a rescue, take down all of Rio's cards and even convince her that her ideals were wrong.
  • In Volume 3, Chapters 1 through 3, the Make-Up Work Club has to power through whatever tricks Nagisa tries to expel the club full of what she considers suspected threats to the Eden Treaty, but the Club manages to foil an Arius plot to assassinate her, stop the real traitor, Mika, and change the paranoiac's views for the better. The time of the Eden Treaty, however, springs Arius's full plan to destroy it and spark war between Gehenna and Trinity, which might have worked were it not for students all over holding on in whatever ways they can until Sensei rallies the students to defeat Arius.
  • In Volume F, Kaiser and Kaya (who is later backstabbed by Kaiser) work together to usurp the General Student Council, and would have imprisoned Sensei were it not for Kanna's rescue, later leading to the retaking of Schale HQ. But then the Color's forces takes that moment to invade all of Kivotos, dealing damage on a scale never seen before with little warning, even defeating Gematria. Still, Sensei and the students react as they have always done thus far, defending their city from the Color's minions, taking the fight to the skies, and ultimately stop the Color's invasion.
  • In Volume 4, Chapter 2, after a series of deals with Kaiser and FOX Squad operating in the shadows, Kaya has successfully overthrown Rin as the acting president of the GSC, while RABBIT Squad has been convinced to side with their seniors. But after Kaya's mental breakdown leading to her ordering FOX to set off an explosion that could somehow restore order, and RABBIT having a reflection on their convictions, the juniors turn on their seniors, stop their plans, and depose Kaya.
  • In Volume 5, the Nature's Beauty Club foil the upcoming festival and turn Yukari into a ghost story, having hamstrung Hyakkaryouran by transforming their president Ayame as well and demoralized Nagusa in the process from using a special rifle that could have exorcised their ghosts. It takes a heart-to-heart with Yukari and the other members, and Nagusa finding her resolve do they stop the incident from spiraling further.
• Waif-Fu: A number of the students are fairly dainty, but are no less competent than others.
  • Hina, she of four feet and seven inches, and under a hundred pounds soaking wet—swinging around a heavy machine gun larger than she is without effort, is probably the biggest embodiment of the trope of the launch cast.
  • Volume Two of the Main Story introduces Aris, a small student who wields a 200kg railgun as her personal weapon.
• War Has Never Been So Much Fun: Gunfights dominate the game and every student and school has military grade weaponry. The caveat being, of course, that nobody ever dies in these fights, so it's treated a lot more casually. The PvP mode is even framed as being gunfights-as-sport between schools.
• Weak, but Skilled:
  • Even if Sensei blacks out from a gunshot (while students can casually absorb tank rounds), Sensei's capability of leading students through various difficult missions and very often being successful makes them a power to be reckoned with, to the point that Beatrice's plan involves taking Sensei down. Sensei managed to apprehend RABBIT Squad (which had far superior firepower and tactical advantage) by leading Fubuki, Kirino and a handful of police members.
  • Support Strikers are also ones in terms of gameplay. Akane, as a common example, has the lowest attack power among the playable students, but her EX Skill lops off a huge chunk of defense from a single enemy, leaving them vulnerable to her allies' firepower.
• Weak Turret Gun:
  • Enemy turrets in missions and events are quite easy to knock out even with basic attacks, unless the turret is the main boss.
  • Utaha's sentry guns are quite squishy, having roughly the same amount of HP as she (or any backline unit) does. But since they have a large deployment range, it's possible to use them as a distraction by dropping them behind enemies who will then target them instead of your students.
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: The setting is based rather heavily on modern Japan (and specifically takes a decent few cues from the Tokyo metroplex), but is called "Kivotos" by all the residents and is implied to be absolutely massive. There's a definite possibility it isn't even on Earth.
• World of Action Girls: Kivotos is the Girls with Guns type. All playable units are high-school students from female-only schools, they all carry firearms as a requirement, and are very competent at handling them.
• Worthless Treasure Twist: Volume 2 Chapter 1 centers on Millennium's Game Development Club and their quest to find the G.Bible, said to contain the secret to developing the perfect game. When they do finally get it near the end of the story, it's a single message - the secret to developing the perfect game is love. They are understandably pissed.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Some score-chasing players prefer to let some students to get knocked out in battle (either by specific teambuilding with the lack of healers, or not healing the students, or by not cancelling the enemy's incoming skill). Usually, this is required to clean up the skill rotation—the useless EX Skill wouldn't affect the outcome of the battle much, unlike the next skill in rotation.

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We long for the seven wailings. We bear the koan of Jericho.

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