Video Game / Boktai

aka: Lunar Knights

"TAIYOHHHH!"

Bokura no Taiyou ("Our Sun") in Japan, Boktai is an action RPG series produced by Hideo Kojima. Django is a boy hoping to follow in the footsteps of his disappeared father, Ringo, as a vampire hunter. With his (not-so; see below) trusty weapon the Gun Del Sol, and the sun spirit Otenko by his side, he takes on zombies, demonic dogs, vampires, and Norse mythology-derived what have you.

The original GBA trilogy featured an interesting gimmick; each game came in a unique cartridge with a UV light detector (the UV light didn′t actually need sunlight in 99% of cases. Do you keep a UV lamp around the house or something? Even a black light or a plasma globe would work.) Django's gun is quite literally powered by the sun; sunlight is required to charge its battery. If you were starved for sunlight, the stealth element of Boktai would come into play instead. Django can sneak around and knock on walls to distract enemies, at least until you get to an in-game sunlight source or find a real-world one.

Unfortunately, this interesting gimmick proved to be the games' undoing. Playing outside in the sunlight is a bit of a turn-off (especially in places with very hot summers... like Japan). Despite decent critical reception for the whole series, the games sold poorly internationally and the third installment never left Japan. Kojima wised up and delivered a DS sequel (Lunar Knights) without the trouble of needing sunlight in the real world, though the system's double-slot feature allowed players to use the solar sensor by inserting the GBA cartridges from previous games, However, in localizations, this sequel severed ties with the original Boktai series by renaming many of the characters. It doesn't make too much of a difference, however; the characters in the Japanese version were pretty much only connected to the original series through name anyway, and the thematic elements remain intact in all localizations. Sadly, Lunar Knights ends on a cliffhanger with, so far, no sequel in sight. A Fan Translation for Boktai 3 does exist, however.

The series is as follows:

• Boktai: The Sun is in Your Hand (Bokura no Taiyō in Japan, nicknamed "Boktai")
• Boktai 2: Solar Boy Django (Zoku Bokura no Taiyō: Taiyō; Shōnen Django/"Zoktai")
• Boktai 3: Sabata's Counterattack (Shin Bokura no Taiyō: Gyakushū no Sabata/"Shinbok")
• Lunar Knights (Bokura no Taiyō; DS: Django & Sabata/"Boktai DS")

Now has a Character Page which is still under construction.

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This series provides examples of:

• 11th-Hour Superpower: Wild Bunch, a team attack between Django and Sabata. Never appears after the first game.
• Absurdly Sharp Blade: In Shinbok, Django can use swords to smash through rocks that are nearly four times as big as him. And those suckers shatter too!
• All the Worlds Are a Stage: Hel's Castle has four towers that resemble the four dungeons you had to go through and each end with a powered-up version of the boss character. The puzzles are so notably Nintendo Hard that two in the final dungeon have a "loser switch". One gives you a hint just shy of the actual answer to a math puzzle, while the other solves a sliding block puzzle in exchange for leaving a mocking plaque on the wall.
  Plaque: Here forever engraved is the name of the LOSER Django.
• Alternate History: In Shinbok, Trinity was kicked out of a Bad Future where Django had died and Ratatosk had taken over the world, and in the act accidentally broke the seal on Django's grave, leading to a branch in the timeline. Lunar Knights takes place in the future of the Bad Future that Trinity came from.
• Ambidextrous Sprite: Averted with Django and Sabata as they hold their respective guns with both hands. Played straight with Lucian, whose eyepatch will flip and whose weapon will magically switch hands, and with Django in Shinbok, the only game in the series where he wields his gun with a single hand.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: Sabata is playable for two brief sections in Boktai 2 and one in Boktai 3.
• And Then John Was a Zombie:
  • Ringo, Django and Sabata's father, was turned into a vampire by The Count rather than killed.
  • Subverted with Django, who is attacked by his father early in the second game, but purified before the transformation is complete, making him a half-vampire.
• Ancient Conspiracy: The Immortals make up one spanning the entire universe. They intend destroy the cycle of life and death across the galaxy, giving them a stationary, "pure" existence.
• An Ice Person: In Boktai 2, Zazie can usually be found asleep in the Inn. If the player makes Django wake her up twice, she will freeze him. After she wakes up, she tells Django that she's cranky because of her low blood pressure, and as an apology she teaches him the freezing spell.
• Animated Armor: A staple mini-boss of the series. Bearing particular note is Silvery White Knight.
• Anime Hair: Django's 'do looks pretty much like a beige-ish cloud.
• Anti Poop-Socking: If you stay out for a long while or overuse your Gun Del Sol/Sol de Vice, they'll overheat and you'll have to hide out in the shade for a ridiculously long time before it'll recover. If you keep going in spite of this, eventually your equipment will enter a permanent state of overheat that it won't recover from unless you turn off the game and leave it for a day or so (or mess with the time settings).
• Aristocrats Are Evil: Nearly every humanoid immortal has a title or is declared the ruler of some domain, starting with the Count of Groundsoaking Blood. The vampires of Lunar Knights are all explicitly titled aristocrats.
• Arm Cannon: Thanks to crossover content with Mega Man Battle Network, where the eponymous Mega Man comes complete with his trusty Mega Buster. Django himself can obtain the Mega Buster in Zoktai and Shinbok.
• Art Evolution: Sabata's original sprites were a mere Palette Swap of Django's, but he later got sprites better reflecting his actual appearance.
• Art Shift: Boktai DS uses a more conventional anime style than the simplistic art of the original trilogy; it got a further art revamp when being localized as Lunar Knights into Hector Sevilla & Simon Bork's less cartoony style.
• Artificial Stupidity: Numerous enemies falls under this, either by walking straight into the skylight, or walking into their own bombs, or ramming into one-another. But the armors in Boktai 3, which are midboss enemies, takes the cake for being far stupidier. Their preferred form of retaliating to getting shot is either to put up the shield for a couple seconds, to swing the sword around, or to take a swipe.
  • The Black Knight, supposedly the hardest armor, a combination of all of them, can be easily stunlocked by shooting at it directly, as long as Django has enough energy to keep shooting.
  • The Earth Armor averts it a little during its first phase by being smart enough to keep the shield up when lined up to Django and slowly inch closer to him.
• Auto-Revive:
  • In the original you could plant a combination of restorative items to create a Revivafruit that would kick in whenever your health ran out. Of course, falling down bottomless pits that resulted in an instant Game Over would not set off these fruits.
  • Zoktai and Shinbok both use the Judgement tarot card for this purpose. Lunar Knights has something similar in its Wild Cards.
  • There was also an equip item (Burning Headband) that automatically use a healing item from your inventory whenever your Life ran out while it was worn. Its counterpart (Cool Bandana) uses a restorative when your Energy was completely depleted.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Dark Loans can give you energy, but they want it paid back at an absurd rate. Unless you are desperate, or just need it to beat the Final Boss, it's best to avoid using them.
• Back That Light Up: Inverted. All of the GBA games require sunlight and the DS game can use sunlight. (There was an actual UV sensor in the cart that affected gameplay. After all, you are killing vampires in this game.) Anyone who has used a TV knows that sunlight + screen = glare. However, if you play it on the original GBA (or SP 1 with the backlight turned off), the screen and colors are best in direct sunlight.
• Badass Longcoat: Ringo and Lucian have one to contrast with the Sun-aligned heroes' crimson scarves.
• Block Puzzle:
  • This series is chock full of these. Featured in every game in the series is the Classic block puzzle, the Frictionless Ice variation, the Destroyable Block variation, a Changing-Properties block variation, and a Match the Colors variation.
  • Boktai: The Sun is in Your Hand has a Light and Mirrors Puzzle variation in Sol City, and the callback to it in the final dungeon.
  • In multiple times throughout the series, you have to use regular old mooks as blocks.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation: Klorofolun is a rather interesting translation for "Chloroform"; this enemy type would be more appropriately translated as Chloroformin' in Lunar Knights.
• Body Surf: Black Dainn. He originally is in the body of Nero, then takes over the body of Ringo, which is where he is finally defeated.
• Boss Rush: Each game has an optional segment (typically called the Arena or the like) where the player faces the game's bosses in quick succession, with better prizes for faster clear times. Harder difficulties boost the bosses' levels.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Sabata winds up like this in Shinbok. In Zoktai, Vampire Ringo was originally intended by the villains to be like this, but after drinking Django's lunar blood, which happens to prevent undeadening, he regains his own consciousness and memories.
  Black Dainn: What the...?! You got your memory back?!
  Ringo: Django, thank goodness you're safe... Your blood... The blood of Mani within you is what woke me.
• Breath Weapon:
  • In Boktai: The Sun Is In Your Hand, Garmr attacks with an Ice Breath, and Carmilla creates energy orbs from her mouth that can temporarily petrify you.
  • Members of the Bok family spew Klorofolun in Boktai: The Sun Is In Your Hand, but this is changed to dark matter in Boktai 2 and 3.
  • One of the attacks the Sea Serpent in Zoktai uses is bubble breath.
  • Blue Dvalinn is a triple threat: she can spit bubbles, ink and poison.
  • Vanargand launches a massive laser beam (of both Sol and Dark varieties) from his mouth... thing.
  • Jormungandr can breathe damaging purple smoke.
• Breaking Speech: Duke Dumas, many times in Lunar Knights. Lucian is furious that Dumas doesn't even remember that he killed his lover, and Dumas remarks that Lucian probably doesn't know the names of all of the enemies the player has killed up to that point. He does it to Aaron as well, claiming that he's really fueled by revenge for Dumas killing his father (who he does remember) rather than fighting for justice.
• Brutal Bonus Level:
  • Each game has a bonus dungeon sporting stronger enemies, multiple floors without a break, or a mix of the two.
  • The fifth shooting segment in Lunar Knights, unlocked in a New Game Plus, sics upon the player enemies that move and attack much faster than anything that the player has had to deal with before, on top of formations best handled with Ezra's underutilized shot type. An S-Rank on it is required for 100% Completion, though achieving it will require good reflexes.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Lucian's mission in the game is to hunt Dumas after he killed his lover, Ellen, then turned her into a Vampire's Bride, then shipped her off to become an android. When he finally meets up with him, he doesn't even remember it, and reminds Lucian that he probably feels the same way about everyone that he's killed. See Breaking Speech above.
• Canon Name: In the first game, players can name the protagonist anything they want. Once the second game rolls 'round, the title specifically names the protagonist as "Solar Boy Django", but the name can still be changed by the player.
• Cast of Expies: Lunar Knights has several clones of original Boktai cast members.
  • Aaron (jp. "Django") and Lucian (jp. "Sabata") are expies of the original Solar and Lunar Boy, Django and Sabata. Each of them has a Trance Mode resembling the original Sol and Black Django transformations from the original trilogy.
  • Nero the Terrenial is an expy of the little black cat named Nero from Boktai 2, reimagined as an Elemental Embodiment of darkness similar to Otenko ("Toasty" in the west).
  • Alice is basically just an older take on Zazie with rabbit ears, and even inherits her Red Baron title of "Sunflower Girl".
  • Lisbeth, with her brown hair, white blouse, and blue apron, seems like a mix of Lita and Violet; she even has hints of being a Love Interest for Aaron like Lita was for Django.
  • The vampire brides Laura and Carmilla are expies of Luxana and Doomy, the Solar Bank and Dark Loans clerks from the original three games; Carmilla pulls double-duty as a composite expy of the original Boktai Carmilla.
  • The Sunflower and its Purifex Cannon take the place of the original trilogy's Pile Driver.
• Charged Attack: Different parts of the Gun Del Sol allow it to execute this. In Lunar Knights, upgrading the Knight frame enough unlocks this capability.
• Clueless Aesop: The Lunar Knights finale gives what it thinks is a Hard Truth Aesop by insisting that all lives are precious, vampires included. This is both (A) thematically irrelevant to the ideas of vengeance and justice motivating the characters and (B) wholly undercut by waiting until the last minute, after declaring every other atrocity-committing vampire worthy of execution, to justify their boss, who's guilty of his own atrocities^note Brutally conquering the planet specifically to save vampires, giving his subordinates free reign to bedevil mankind, and making a vampire's bride of Lucian's loved one. Dumas is just as deserving of death as his subordinates if not more so, and it's a little late to start talking about the value of vampire life when Dumas is the last one on the planet.
• Comic-Book Adaptation: Taiyou Shounen Django A.k.a Solar Boy Django, a retelling with exclusive characters published by the Coro Coro Comics serial in Japan, and Singapore for the English translations.
• Continuing is Painful: In the second game, you lose 200 ENG from the bank every time you die (though thankfully any items you've used are returned to you).
• Credits Running Sequence: All three main games, however played around a bit with in Zoktai, where you run around as Nero chasing a C-Mouse shapeshifted Django instead of Django himself.
• Crosshair Aware: In the first fight with Nidhoggr, you'll know when a bomb is about to be thrown in your face by the crosshairs on the ground.
• Crossover: This Konami franchise has a close relationship with Capcom's Mega Man Battle Network. See Intercontinuity Crossover below.
• Cute Bruiser: Although you never actually see the Earthly Maiden Lita fight in the first three games, she seems to be a master of bare-hand melee combat, almost killing the main protagonist with a single punch for therapy purpose. Her several war cries are quite eloquent in that matter.
• Cute Monster Girl: The Dark Loans bank is run by a green-skinned monster girl drawn in a Chibi style.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Played straight for Django who is turned into a vampire in Boktai 2, but still remains a good guy. Sabata and Lucian also have the power of Darkness but fall more into the Anti-Hero category.
• Deader than Dead: the only way to be sure that an Immortal won't come back after defeat is to utterly annihilate its dark power with the Pile Driver or Purifex cannon, which is really a giant Pile Driver in orbit. Annoyingly enough, the Count managed to find a loophole: according to him in Shinbok, as long as even a single one of his bats survive, he can regenerate.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: In the first game, dying simply has you restart the room.
• Dem Bones: Skeletons appear in several different incarnations. Skeletons who attack with their fists, Skeleton Fencers who attack with a rapier, and Skeleton Archers who attack with a bow and arrow and sometimes break their bow by smacking you (changing their attack to the same as a regular skeleton). Skeletons regenerate after a few seconds unless killed with an elemental attack.
• Discard and Draw: In an ambush near the start of Boktai 2, Django loses the Gun del Sol, but is given the Sol de Vice, a magical gauntlet, and taught how to use it to enchant weapons with the power of the sun. Later, he's turned into a vampire and loses the ability to do even that, but gains vampiric powers instead.
• Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: If you continue to throw Solar Fruits away in front of Lita in the original Boktai, she will eventually become enraged and punch Django for half of his HP.
  • Lita nearly kills Django in Shinbok after he says he forgot who she was, though she tries to make it up by giving you numerous items. Granted she tries to justify it by calling it "shock therapy" to get Django out of his amnesia, but...
• The Dragon: Perrault, who pilots a spaceship for Lord Dumas. And later, Dumas.
• The Dreaded: The Eternals are dangers to the entire planet. Jormungandr was sealed away by the combined efforts of Solar, Lunar and Dark Children, the former two normally being enemies with the latter.
• Dual Boss: Edgar and Virginia Poe who tag-team their foes in matching Casket Armor.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: In the first game, you collect Piece of Heart-type items to increase your health, and it's your lenses that level up instead. Django and Sabata shared a sprite, the only difference they had was in coloration. Also, you have many more options to customize your Gun Del Sol in the first game than in the following games.
• Easter Egg: The first game has many little quirks that don't appear unless you play at odd hours—Sabata gets a Power-Up if you fight him on the night of a Real Life full moon, immortal ladies Carmilla and Hel get a Palette Swap if you confront them in the earliest hours of the morning, and ghouls take naps from 6 AM to 6:30 AM.
• Eldritch Abomination:
  • The final bosses of the second and third games are both horrifically powerful monstrosities called "Eternals" who are truly immortal and require an immense amount of magic to seal into dormancy.
  • Polidori's One-Winged Angel form can be best described as a fleshy mass of spikes swimming in a pool of blood.
• Elemental Embodiment: The Terrenials in Lunar Knights, the class of being to which Otenko and Nero also belong. Interestingly, War-Rock is also counted among the terennials in the bonus crossover. There's a remarkable similarity between Trance Mode and Denpa-Henkan, one notices.
• Elemental Powers:
  • Django can enchant his weapons with elemental properties to solve puzzles and deal extra damage to enemies. This includes the elements of Wind, Earth, Frost, Flame, Dark and Sol.
  • Interestingly, it's the power of the moon that allows Lunar Children to use the other elements, as the Moon is "reflective". This is how Sabata can use the Dark element, though it still involved some heavy and unpleasant interference from his aunt. The Pile Driver is said to use this power too in order to reflect The Power of the Sun onto immortals, and you can even see its symbol etched onto the mirrors when they're facing upright.
• Enemy Mine: Dumas tells Lucian and Aaron an alliance is necessary to stop the Immortals in the Epilogue. Before that, he did help them defeat the final boss Polidori from the inside. Lucian claims that when it's all over he still wants revenge.
• Energy Weapon: The Gun Del Sol can be capable of firing beams depending on the equipped parts.
• Escort Mission: Defeating the Immortal is not the end of it. Django then has to drag the coffin containing their body out of the dungeon to a position where he can set up the Pile Driver to purify them. He suffers from reduced movement while dragging the coffin and needs to combat enemies on the way out. In the meantime, the Immortal may attempt to struggle and cause the coffin to pull away if not attended to. Fortunately, completion of the dungeon often opens up a Door to Before to shorten the return trip, on top of special teleporters that can transport him with the coffin.
• Even Evil Has Standards: A scale puzzle in the third game is flooded with wisp-like Klorofolun enemies in one instance. You are supposed to leave the scales empty, and the guardians who subject you to that puzzle point out that "you can't put a weight on a soul" before stating that despite being Hel's undead, they have no love for Ratatosk and his ilk.
• Evil Counterpart: Subverted. Sabata, the Dark Boy to Django's Solar Boy, is a Laser-Guided Tyke-Bomb meant to serve the ambitions of Hel, who personally groomed him for the job, but he's developed ambitions of his own since and inadvertently becomes an ally.
• Evil Uncle: The Big Bad of the first game is Hel, the sister of Django and Sabata's mother, Mani.
• Eyepatch of Power: Lucian wears one to disguise the mutations in his eye.
• Flaming Sword: In Boktai 2, all swords can be enchanted with flame and become this. The Flamberge in particular is designed to be shaped like a flame and does even more bonus damage when flame enchanted.
• Fortune Teller: Zazie and the old sunflower girl that dies prior to Zoktai.
• Fusion Dance:
  • Django and Otenko can temporarily merge to form Sol Django. Also in Lunar Knights, Lucian and Aaron can merge with the dark and light terrenials, respectively, to enter a more powerful form, although it has a fairly short duration.
  • It's also implied in Boktai that Hel fuses with her sister, Django and Sabata's mother, Mani.
  • Edgar and Virginia Poe will also do this with their Casket Armors once they are defeated for the first time in Lunar Knights.
• Gangplank Galleon: Pirate Island in Boktai 3 is a dungeon where a majority of it takes place on a ship docked there. The boss of that dungeon, Nidhoggr, appears to stop Django from using the ship to get to the moon, and the first phase of the ensuing boss fight utilizes the ship's armaments to take down the Nidhoggr machine.
• Gameplay-Guided Amnesia: Django begins Shinbok with amnesia, mostly for tutorial purpose. This is explained by the shock of his "death".
• Generic Doomsday Villain: Jormungandr, the monster that Black Dainn is intent on releasing to exterminate the living, is a creature whose only instinct is to eat everything it sees. Justified by the fact it's the Beast of the Apocalypse, so its only purpose is to bring about the end of the world if it isn't stopped.
• Golem: There's a whole mook family of these made of clay, stone, ice, and whatever '+' is supposed to be. Muspell from Boktai is a ginormous one and can split himself into a small army of these.
• Girls with Guns: Female Guild members in Lunar Knights. Most notably Bea, who carries a homing rocket launcher.
• Gorgeous Gorgon: Subverted with Carmilla. She's beautiful, she has snakes in her hair, and she has the ability to petrify; she is a gorgon in every sense of the word, yet the game names her as a banshee.
• Gratuitous Japanese:
  • The series' signature "TAIYOOOOHHHH!" when Django charges his energy in the sunlight.
  • Sabata yells "Ankoku!"^note "Darkness!" to replenish his Magic.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Darkness, or the Will of the Galaxy-Universe, is a mysterious presence hanging in the background of all three Gameboy Advance games; the actions of each clan of Immortals are in reference to it. The fourth game does not strictly refer to this entity, but reveals a cabal or conspiracy of other Immortals^note See Retcon below about the "other" Immortals.
• The Gunslinger: Nearly all of the characters. All of the Solar Children that used the Gun Del Sol, most notably Ringo and his son Django. Sabata qualifies as well, using the Gun Del Hell. The younger Smith also falls into this category, being a master of gun making, as well as teaching Ringo how to use guns. In Lunar Knights, guild members are literally called gunslingers.
• Gun Accessories: The Gun Del Sol is, for all intents and purposes, one giant mix and match of Gun Accessories.
• Guns Akimbo: The Ninja solar guns in Lunar Knights consist of two handguns capable of rapid fire.
• Hand Cannon: The Gun Del Sol is quite a bit larger than a normal handgun, although in the second and third games, Django is able to hold it with one hand. When fully upgraded, it can unleash devastating power of each element.
• Hand Wave: One that probably didn't need explaining. Before Django tackles his first Undead Dungeon, Otenko tells him that due to flaws in space-time caused by the "undeadening" phenomenon, puzzles will be reset and enemies will respawn whenever they return to a completed dungeon. The sliding block puzzles are simply reset when you leave the room. He also explains that, since Immortals made the Blue Keys that lock important doors in dungeons, they evaporate and disappear when taken out of dungeons, meaning that Blue Keys are unique to their respective dungeons.
• Heal It with Blood: Black Django can restore his health by sneaking behind his enemies and using the Change Wolf enchantment, which causes him to viciously bite the victim's neck in order to drink their blood.
• Heel–Face Revolving Door: Sabata, over the course of the first three games. When he is first introduced, he is a villain. Then he becomes more on the hero side of Anti-Hero, then becomes evil once again. Justified in Boktai 3 as he was Brainwashed and Crazy.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • Ringo holds down Dainn in Boktai 2, so that Django can purify them both.
  • Depending on which ending you get, any combination of Carmilla, Sabata, and/or Otenko in will die following the Final Boss of Boktai 3.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: Occurs a few times in Boktai 3.
  • The prologue involves Sabata combating a mysterious beast. After a few moments of controlled combat, it soundly defeats him.
  • Django is thrust into a second battle against The Count after the Ancient Tree that he is unable to win. This leads to the introduction of Sol Trance as a mechanic, which allows Django to immediately reverse the odds in his favor.
• 100% Completion: The player gains different titles for achieving different feats including filling out different sections of the Library, or S-ranking every ranked challenge. The Grand Master title goes to players who have accomplished everything. Rather infuriatingly, getting Grand Master in Lunar Knights needs completion of the soundtrack database, and the last three tracks require a standard DS system (due to lack of the Slot-2 in the 3DS) and the GBA Boktai games to unlock.
• Intercontinuity Crossover:
  • The heroes of Konami's Boktai and Capcom's Mega Man Battle Network frequently visited each other's games for crossover content and sidequests. Unfortunately, foibles of localization meant that some of this content never made it to Western shores, but oh, man, was there a lot of it.
    • The Gun del Sol was featured as a battle chip series in each installment of the second Battle Network trilogy, and was soon joined by chips featuring Otenko and Django.
    • Django and Otenko themselves occasionally appeared in far-flung Bonus Dungeons hunting down either ShadeMan.EXE or The Count of Groundsoaking Blood, the Classical Movie Vampire of each game's world.
    • MegaMan.EXE would appear in Boktai 2 and Boktai 3 to return the favor, and Django can obtain the Mega Buster or special equipment based on specific NetNavis depending on the adventure. Some Navis became dolls for Django to decorate his house with.
    • MegaMan can also appear in Shinbok's motorcycle minigame as either a cameo or a playable character (with the right equipment).
    • The Crossover Battle feature from Zoktai, in which Battle Network players and Boktai players race to defeat ShadeMan.EXE in their own game's combat system. The Shinbok version instead could pit both players against The Count.
    • Carrying on the tradition, there were crossover sidequests between DS-era spinoff sequels Boktai DS and Ryuusei no Rock Man, but these were likewise removed in the Western releases. Each one saw the heroes have to chase down a villain from the other's world (Taurus Fire and Margrave Rymer, both of whom are Playing with Fire Bullfight Bosses, no less).
  • An old amnesiac in Boktai 2 and 3 is implied to be Solid Snake himself. In Lunar Knights, one of the items you can find is the "Cool Bandana", which will automatically use a healing item should you die and is said to have been owned by a "legendary soldier". Of course, all three GBA games and Lunar Knights were made by Hideo Kojima, further adding fuel to the speculation.
• Item Crafting:
  • The second game uses this to a degree. Django will usually find plenty of powerful weapons in the dungeons, but he can forge them into more powerful ones. However, it still calls upon the series' sun gimmick to get the job done, and you have to have a certain skill level to forge higher level weapons, and you need to be above certain levels to use them.
  • The first game has a variant in the Solar Tree; you can plant fruit in its roots, which causes other fruit to grow in it.
  • A unique variant also surfaces with regards to consumables — normally, letting certain consumables sit in your inventory for too long makes them go bad, turning them into a much weaker variant that also causes poison. However, allowing consumables to expire under certain conditions instead upgrades them into something more potent that also doesn't spoil. For instance, leaving meat in high heat and low humidity transforms it into jerky, and allowing milk to spoil in medium temperatures and humidity transforms it into yoghurt.
• It Runs in the Family: Django's entire extended family are basically nutjobs. The final boss of the first game, Hel, is Django's aunt Mani, Django and Sabata's mother being stated to be her sister. Her lover turned Django's father into a vampire who in turn bit Django and almost turned him also into a vampire. Technically Hel and The Count being lovers makes The Count of Groundsoaking Blood Django's uncle. His twin brother is basically a nihillist hell-bent on bringing Carmilla back to life after killing her in the first game in order to use her power to foil Hel's plans. And that's not even counting what happens in the third game with both of them...
• Kill It with Fire:
  • Every enemy with the frost element is weak to Fire due to the series' Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors.
  • Duneyrr will leave herself vulnerable to attack if you light a chandelier that is conveniently placed in the middle of the room.
  • Using the flame element will cause Mummies to burst into flames running around lighting any other mummies (and candle stands) ablaze. They will also insta-kill golems and damage any other mook unfortunate enough to grace its path. Then after all of that, when they die, they EXPLODE. It doesn’t help that their weapon of choice is spitting out bombs that you can bounce back at them.
• Kill Sat: Downplayed with the Sunflower in Lunar Knights. The sunflower comes complete with sunlight-channeling Purifex Cannon, but it can't reach vampires on the ground due to the sunlight-blocking ParaSOL; thus the protagonists have to fly the vampires up to the Sunflower to purify them point-blank. The Sunflower eventually gets employed in a more classic manner in the final battle with Polidori, creating an opening to allow the protagonists to destroy his true body.
• King Mook: Muspell, Iron Giant from the Inferno, is an immense iron golem.
• Konami Code: In the first game, it can be input in one room in The Abyss, rewarding the player with a Life Fruit.
• Light Is Not Good: In Lunar Knights, Perrault the seventh Terrennial, his Cool Spaceship Schrödinger, and his Fusion Dance form with Dumas have a lighter color scheme than Nero, Laplace, and Lucian's Trance Mode, but are enforcing the vampires' reign.
• Like Father, Like Son: Django and Sabata are similar to their mom and dad, Ringo and Mani, respectively. Mentioned by someone who is heavily implied to be the past Sunflower Girl.
  Sunflower Girl: You surely are the son of that man... Yer brother's like yer mum, but you're just like yer dad."
• Light 'em Up: A central theme of the series, since you actually need to provide the main character with real life sunlight via the cartridge's solar sensor in order to progress.
• Loan Shark: Dark Loans, which will loan you sunlight energy at crazy huge interest rates (800% plus principal, or nine times what you took if you don't have any sunlight) if you happen to be playing indoors. If you don't have enough energy stored in the bank by the time the payment deadline rolls around, you'll be forced to run on a treadmill until you've made back all of the energy, unless you maxed it out, in which case Doomy lets you off with a bit less.
• Locomotive Level: Lunar Knights sports one of these that features a Traintop Battle.
• Love Makes You Crazy: If Black Django comes to visit her at night to talk, Lita lets her immense crush on Django get the better of her—she'll offer him her blood and present him with her back. Attacking Lita when she's vulnerable results an an instant Non-Standard Game Over.
• Lunacy:
  • When the in-game calendar detects a full moon, the player can press A at night to cause Lunar Bugs to appear. These bugs can be absorbed to heal the player.
  • On the night of a full moon, Sabata glows purple and becomes much more challenging to battle against.
  • In a more extreme example, the Big Bad of the first game, Hel, can use the power of the Moon to turn the entire planet Undead, after the necessary energy sacrifices are in order.
• Mad Scientist: Baron Stoker of Lunar Knights who experiments on kidnapped human beings (usually women) to turn them into androids or chimaerae using forbidden alchemy. Professor Sheridan was once his assistant.
• Magikarp Power:
  • The Luna lens in the first game deals no damage at all no matter what, and at lower levels only barely make the Undead flinch even with the best Frames you have; but at level III, it can stun enemies like every other offensive Lens. Paired with a shotgun-type Frame, it's often the fastest way to remove enemies in low-kill runs and easy to punt enemies into switches without accidentally killing them.
  • The second game's use of bare hands. Understandably they start out pathetically weak, but they grow in power each time the fist "weapon" skill and the Strength stat increases, until eventually Django can punch out the Final Boss Eldritch Abomination with relative ease. No wonder Lita likes being a Bare-Fisted Monk...^note In fact, Lita's the one who gives you a sidequest to clear out enemies with your bare hands, just to show you that it's possible.
  • Aaron in Lunar Knights, courtesy of the game's Damage Cap and his possession of a rapid-fire capable weapon.
• Magitek: The Gun Del Sol, Including the weapons and enchantments from the Sol De Vice, and The Pile Driver, as well as the Coffin Bike and other interactive parts throughout the games.
• Marathon Level:
  • The Azure Sky Tower has 99 floors, which gets tiring as soon as the floor limit reaches past 30.
  • Vambery. Each of its sections of 9 has a tenth, "Boss" floor, for a max of 100. All the enemies are whatever level the floor is, so the later floors also have enemies that take forever to kill.
• The Man Behind the Man: In Lunar Knights, Dumas is treated as the main villain until he's beaten, and finally Polidori explains his role.
• Meido: Lunar Knights gives us Carmilla. Frilly headpiece and everything.
• Minigame Credits: In Boktai 1, after even-numbered playthroughs with the good ending, you get an item collecting mini-game during the credits roll. Boktai 2 features a mini-game during the credits where the player controls Nero as he chases Django in his mouse form while avoiding bats, bees, and bombs.
• Morphic Resonance: Black Django's costume resembles Sabata's, especially the slanted lenses of his goggles.
• Ms. Fanservice: Bea, from Lunar Knights. She sports a very form-fitting outfit that at once shows off her endowments, hips, and the stretch of her stomach.
• Multiple Endings: While the Golden Ending is canon, each of the GBA games features a short alternate outcome of events.
  • Boktai 1 ends with Otenko using up all of his power and being unable to maintain his corporeal form. If Django is not able to draw in enough sunlight in time, he stays gone for good. If he does, however, Otenko is revived, leading to the events of Boktai 2.
  • Boktai 2 features two alternate endings.
    • If Django agrees to accept Black Dainn's offer of joining him, Black Dainn seemingly possesses his body as well (or Django suddenly shifts sides with no explanation).
    • If Django fails to draw in enough sunlight while fighting Jormungandr, the serpent simply swallows him.
  • Boktai 3 has a grand total of five endings that occur at the end of the game, with your preferred Trance and actions taken during the final boss influencing the result:
    • The worst ending occurs on either route when Django does not draw in enough sunlight to defeat Vanargand, leading to the beast killing him and Otenko/Sabata.
    • If the player favored Dark Trance, they either save Sabata at the cost of Otenko's life^note if Sabata was not attacked during the final battle or simply lose both.
    • If the player favored Sol Trance, they either save Otenko at the cost of Sabata's life^note if Sabata was attacked during the final battle or manage to restore both.
• My Name Is ???:
  • In Boktai, you set the protagonist's name upon creating the save, but the narrator uses ??? on his introductory speech about Istrakan.
  • Boktai 2 and Boktai 3 both feature an amnesiac Solid Snake, who is likewise referred to as ???.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Each of Lucian's weapons in Lunar Knights is named for one of the Final Bosses of the original GBA titles.
  • A couple of bonus dungeons that can be accessed after clearing the first and third chapters are named San Miguel^note Setting of Boktai 2 and Istrakan^note Setting of Boktai respectively. Lucian's bonus weapons, found at the end of each one, have the names of the Final Boss associated with that area's game.
• Mundane Solution: In Boktai 2, Sabata (for the brief moment you play as him) and Black Django take damage in direct sunlight. This can be mitigated just by putting on some sunscreen.
• Name and Name: The Japanese version of Lunar Knights is titled Bokura no Taiyou: Django & Sabata. The initials of the main characters happens to be "DS".
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast:
  • The Count of Groundsoaking Blood, anyone?
  • Banshee the Deathbringer is pretty high up there.
• Near Victory Fanfare: All the games have the Pile Driver music, which gets steadily more epic as you get closer to purifying the boss.
• Necessarily Evil: Duke Dumas portrays himself this way, but it's not clear whether he even rose to the level of Noble Demon beforehand. Given that Ratatosk (or the Count), implied to precede him, was in more or less open rebellion against the Galaxy-Universe the immortals serve during the third game, it's every bit as likely that Dumas killed his lord and murdered Aaron's father to keep the Galactic Immortals happy and to destabilize his biggest local opposition in one fell swoop.
• Nerf: There's actually a series-wide example with Django. In the first game, his Gun Del Sol had arguably the fastest Shooting Frequency. Then came Boktai 2, where the frequency of the Solar Gun was a little bit lowered, but had a pretty decent attacking-speed with other weapons. Fast forward to Boktai 3, and the speed of his swordslashes was downgraded so much it got even riskier to attack the enemies up front (without using certain, faster hitting weapons) and just stick with the Solar Gun, which was improved from its Boktai 2-incarnation (thanks to it being customizable again).
• Never Found the Body: During Boktai 2, Sabata asks Smith if the latter saw his father's last moments. Smith replies that nobody did, and that Ringo's body was never found. Unsurprisingly, Ringo turns up again in the same game.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Done double duty in Lunar Knights. It turns out Dumas was using Casket Armor, the paraSOL, and bottlenecked humans all in an attempt to protect his own people from the paraSOL's Planet Eater functionality; Lucian and Aaron taking Dumas down gives Polidori a reason to fire it up.
  • Furthermore, after taking down a simulacrum of Polidori at the very top of the Vambery, a freshly revived Dumas warns them that what they just did was akin to starting a war with the Immortals, an entire race of Omnicidal Maniacs. A clear Sequel Hook if the series hadn't been effectively abandoned.
  • Django has this happen in Zoktai when he gathers the tarot cards that prevent Black Dainn from entering the Aqueduct, thus allowing him to break one of the seals preventing Jormungandr from awakening.
• The Night That Never Ends: At the start of Lunar Knights, the world is locked into eternal nighttime due to the paraSOL.
• No Body Left Behind: Both played straight and subverted. Regular enemies will typically turn to ashes when killed or some simlar variation (like how golems explode into rubble). Subverted in the case of Immortals in that they will leave a body, which you will then put in a coffin and drag to the Pile Driver where you proceed to burn their body to ashes. In Boktai 2 Ringo does this to himself after Dainn's purification to make sure he takes him down with him.
• Nonstandard Game Over: Boktai 2 is pro at this. Fail to purify Django in time, take Lita up on her offer to drink her blood while a vampire, agree to join forces with the Big Bad, or fail to draw enough sunlight when Jörmungandr swallows you.
• No-Sell: In the boss fight against the Poes in Lunar Knights, Edgar's Wind Armor is impervious to Solar Gun shots, while Virginia's Earth Armor is impervious to any blade. Thankfully, they lose these immunities after they pull off their Fusion Dance.
• Not Quite Dead: At the beginning of Boktai 3, Django is defeated by a mind-controlled Sabata and buried in a graveyard, only to be reanimated by his dormant vampire blood.
• Nothing but Skulls: In Boktai 3, the player fights the final boss on a pile of these. The body of the boss itself is also made of these.
• Old Save Bonus:
  • Boktai 2 uses passwords from the previous game in order to give Django a title with a minor bonus. Zazie will also refer to Django by his relevant title upon meeting him the first time.
  • Lunar Knights gives different bonuses for having the various Boktai games inserted in the GBA slot, in the form of reading the sunlight input. The Boktai games themselves have passwords at the end that can be used to carry over a character's rank.
  • In Mega Man Battle Network 5: Twin Leaders putting a Boktai or Boktai 2 cartridge in the w-slot would also net bonuses; 2 (3 in Japan) netting MegaMan the overpowered Sol Cross.
• Omnicidal Maniac: The Immortals, or the major portion of the race at least, are a case of playing with this trope. The Immortals are trying to actually preserve as much of existence as they can from the threat of death and decay by using the power of darkness; they call this the will of the Galaxy-Universe. Anything that refuses to convert to their race and cause is deemed a threat and they respond to these threats by completely annihilating them with ancient Eldritch Abominations called the Ancestor Pieces. In short, if they can't "save" some part of the universe, they'll wipe it out and move on to the next.
• Our Vampires Are Different: "Vampires" and "Immortals" are treated as different creatures in LK, with the former simply being earthbound variations of the latter - it's also implied that vampires have been accepted into the Earth's natural activities as another creature, which raises... interesting questions about what exactly are the plans for dealing with their morality.
• Our Liches Are Different: Aside from being able to create Skeleton enemies, Liches in Boktai 2 are given power over either lightning or fire.
• Palette Swap:
  • You have your basic enemy palette swaps for higher level and elemental variations like any basic RPG. However! In a more unusal twist, in Boktai 1, Sabata appears as a palette swap of Django, despite that the official artwork shows the differences in their appearances.
  • Carmilla and Hel will sometimes appear with a different palette between midnight and 3 in the morning.
  • Multiplayer utilizes recolors of Django to differentiate the players from each other.
  • Wearing the various Mega Man armors in Boktai 3 will change Django's palette.
• Pirate: In Boktai 3, there is a dungeon called Pirate Island, and three pirate skeletons in the Dark Castle.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Downplayed in Lunar Knights, where the Information Broker looks like Alice^note Lucian's partner, who operates the Sunflower and its Purifex Cannon in heavy, feature-concealing clothes. There are other clues suggesting an identity between them, like the Information Broker specifically refusing to charge Lucian for her services and Professor Sheridan speculating that Alice originally came from another planet that fell prey to Byron (i.e. as an alien from a doomed world, Alice may be the Last of Her Kind).
• Phlebotinum Battery: Django and Aaron are powered by the Sun, Lucian is powered by the Moon, and in a bit of a variation, Sabata is powered by a lack of sunlight.
• Planet Eater: The ParaSOL's true form is a giant space station literally named "Planet Eater Byron".
• The Power of the Sun: Rather the point of the series, really. It's what powers the Gun Del Sol.
• Rare Candy: Boktai 2 introduced a level system to the series. Django gets three stat points per level-up and can distribute them as he likes. But he can also find Tarot cards, of all things, and some of these increase a particular stat ala Rare Candy.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Dark-aligned character can easily be identified by their red eyes. This inclides every Immortal, the two doomsday beasts and Sabata, all of which act as antagonists at one point or another.
• Retcon:
  • Mostly averted in Lunar Knights, surprisingly. While the DS installment is the first game to use space and characters from space as explicit plot points, it has always been official that the Immortals came from space—it's All There in the Manual that came with the first game.
  • Played straight in one case, however, in which the ruling class of vampires have become distinct from Immortals in general. The finale even goes so far as to insist that vampires have become living beings, despite the fact that vampires cannot be killed without purification, exactly like every other Immortal.
• Right-Hand Cat: With her talents at summoning chimaerae and piloting a Humongous Mecha, Perrault is not only the Right-Hand Cat of The Dragon, but also his Battle Butler.
• Robot Girl: The vampire brides are beautiful human women who have been kidnapped and forced through Unwilling Roboticization, which includes the attendants at the Solar Bank and the store and also the seemingly more human robotic female aide to the the resident Mad Scientist.
• Rolling Attack: Golems attack by performing a rolling tackle. Luckily for the player, Inertia Is a Cruel Mistress and they can hurt themselves if tricked into colliding with walls or each other.
• Sadly Mythtaken: The final bosses of the first three games are named after three of Loki's children. While Hel and Jormungandr's depictions as a female demon and a giant snake are rather accurate to Norse mythology, Vanargandr is depicted as an Eldritch Abomination instead of a giant wolf.
• Scarf of Asskicking:
  • Django wears his father's crimson scarf, which becomes wings when he turns into a vampire.
  • Aaron's, Django's successor, also wears a scarf.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Boktai 2: Solar Boy Django has a textbook example in its Big Bad, Jormungandr. The Japan only sequel has a similar deal, except its cosmic horror, Vanargand, was sealed on the MOON. (Interestingly enough, it's called "heaven" which brings up a whole host of complications.)
• Sensible Heroes, Skimpy Villains:
  • In the first game, Banshee the Deathbringer and Hel both wear Stripperiffic outfits in battle, while all other characters in the original trilogy dress more conservatively.
  • Inverted in Lunar Knights, where Bea wears a Form-Fitting Wardrobe and Alice wears a tank-top and short-shorts, but the villains are all decked out in heavy clothes.
• Serial Escalation:
  • The original trilogy establishes that vampires are "Immortals", beings removed from the cycle of life and death and led by "Dark", "the will of the Galaxy". If living beings will not submit to the Undeadening (the premise of the first game), the Immortals will activate an Ancestor Piece to start Apocalypse How (the premise of the second game).
  • Ratatosk, Big Bad of the third game, refuses to follow Dark's orders and instead tries to Take Over the World with another Ancestor Piece buried in the moon. In Lunar Knights, a Bad Future where he succeeded, his subordinate Dumas betrayed him and became a Dragon Ascendant to make nice with the rest of Immortal society, which is taking a greater interest in the goings-on of this planet.
• Set Bonus: Equipping all armor types from a particular set in Boktai 3 will grant a unique bonus, either by extending the duration of either Limit Break or by enabling the a Charged Attack on the Mega Buster. One particular item set even reverses the debilitating effects that its individual components would bestow.
• Short Range Guy, Long Range Guy: Lucian and Aaron from Lunar Knights have this arrangement - Aaron has a solar-energy charged gun while Lucian has a sword that gets more powerful at night.
• Shout-Out:
  • The protagonist's name is a shout out to the western of the same name, where a gunslinger named Django drags a coffin (with a machine gun inside) around.
  • Sabata's name is a shout out to a film Trilogy, with the two films played by Lee Van Cleef and the third one played by Yul Brynner.
  • Black cat Nero is named after Franco Nero, the actor who played Django in the film. Doubles as Stealth Pun, as Nero means Black in Italian.
  • Ringo is named (and based) after the main character from A Pistol For Ringo. Doubles as a Stealth Pun, as Boktai's Ringo "steals" Django's Pistol.
  • Django and Sabata's dual-attack is named "The Wild Bunch".
  • ??? calls himself a Man with No Name.
  • Sartana is a reference to the film of the same name.
  • Trinity is a reference to the main character in the Trinity Duology.
  • In Boktai 2 and Boktai 3, there are three townspeople named Ennio (who keeps the Clock Tower, the in-game clock), Luis and Marcello. In order, they're named after Ennio Morricone, Luis Enriquez Bacalov and Marcello Giombini. Morricone is best known for compossing the memorable The Good, the Bad and the Ugly main theme, Bacalov composed the original Django theme song and Giombini composed the main Sabata theme.
  • Many locations are named after real cities. San Miguel is named after San Miguel de Allende in Mexico, Culiacán, Acuna (Acuña) also exist in real life Mexico.
  • One of the unlockable frames for the Gun Del Sol in the first and third game is the beatmania frame.
• Sibling Team: There are two, technically three, of these present in the Boktai series.
  • In Boktai: The Sun is In Your Hand Django and Sabata team-up to defeat the Queen of the Immortals, Hel.
  • In Boktai 2: Solar Boy Django Django and Sabata team up twice to defeat their father, who unbeknownst to them had been turned into a vampire, and later to defeat the Black Dainn, who possesses their father's body. Both fights are fashioned the same way with a few changes here and there, hence the afore mentioned 'technically'.
• Sinister Scythe: Lucian is able to get the scythe Hel, which can split into four blades forming a claw that he can use in a spin attack.
• Socialization Bonus: The Azure Tower contain the strongest of each type of Gun Frame, but you can only get ones that you have the proper seal for, with there being seven total (for each of the elements in the game). With one cartridge you're only given the Dark seal in the New Game Plus, the Sol seal after growing the Solar Tree (which takes a couple of hours in direct sunlight), and one random one (out of four) when you enter the tower for the first time. The rest you need to get by linking to someone else. What's worse, only the random one is transferable through this method - even if the other person has all seven, you'll only get one - and if it's the same type, well...
• Solar and Lunar: The series is big on this, though with a dash of Dark Is Not Evil applying to the lunar half of the trope. There's even a freaking element named Luna that's the combo of Dark and Sol.
• Spaghetti Western:
  • In Boktai: The Sun is in Your Hand, Django's motive for adventure is the same as his film's namesake: revenge. Except he's doing it to avenge his father instead of lover. While the setting is based on your average European Fantasy, Django's silent-hero personality and reason to adventure invoke the Western feeling, as well his duels with Sabata.
  • The second game, Boktai 2: Solar Boy Django. The soundtrack as a whole is inspired by music composed by Ennio Morricone in said films, as well the setting (which, incidentally, is named San Miguel, just like the town The Man with No Name tries to get some easy money in A Fistful of Dollars). A few townspeople speak with southern accent as well.
  • Boktai 3 has the Western elements toned down, but still feels vaguely like that, plot-wise. In specific, the sense of danger and nostalgia is similar to the Twilight-Era Spaghetti Westerns (the last ones made when the genre died).
  • Lunar Knights involves Lucian, whose reason to hunt vampires is pure Anti-Heroism, similar to the Spagheti Western-genre anti-hero. In specific, he wants to avenge his lover, no matter the cost. Where did I hear that before?
• Spiritual Successor: To Metal Gear: Ghost Babel, which was developed by the same staff.
• Super Title 64 Advance: The Japanese title of "Lunar Knights" is "Django and Sabata".
• Suspicious Videogame Generosity: In Boktai: The Sun is in Your Hand, Django can find the Javelin Solar Gun frame, the second best Heavy Shot guns with an S in Attack and an A in Stun, in a dungeon before Sol City. If this is obtained during the day, this trope is subverted. On the night of a full moon, however, Carmilla will appear to curse Django with Kaamos, preventing him from drawing in the power of sunlight until either a week has passed or Django heads under the Solar Tree exactly at sunrise.
• A Taste of Power: Boktai 2 starts Django off with his very high-level Dragoon Frame and enough ENE to fire a hundred times before recharging, on top of being able to one-shot enemies. Sadly, it never gets back up to 100 percent until Shinbok; its partially repaired version sucking up fifty times the ENE for half the damage, on top of being locked in (a slightly upgraded) Knight and the Sol Lens.
• Temporal Paradox: Trinity causes one of these, specifically a Grandfather Paradox, when he accidentally breaks a tombstone that was sealing Django in the Underground Prison. This leads to Django living when he, originally, should have died. Thus Shinbok is the universe where Django lives and Lunar Knights the one where he died.
• Time Travel:
  • Part of how the Doomsday Phenomenon works is that the undead can slip travel through time and recover. However, it only works in certain areas affected by the phenomenon. Essentially this is how the game accounts for Respawning Enemies.
    Otenko: It's here... Can you feel it? The presence of the Undead...We're not in the city anymore. This is an Undead Dungeon. Every time you enter an Undead Dungeon, all traps and enemy monsters return to their original state. It's all part of the Doomsday Phenomenon. Be sure to stay alert, Django!
  • Boktai 2 features a dungeon called the House of Time which allows the player to go backwards and forwards through two points in time.
    ???: This is the House of Time... a distorted time space where past and present collapse.
  • The events in Shinbok are kickstarted when a character travels back in time and causes a Temporal Paradox.
• Title Drop: Django and Sabata's use of "Our Sun!" (aka "Bokura no Taiyō!") in the first game, Lucian merely dropping the name of his game at the end of the Epilogue.
• Theme Naming:
  • Django, Sabata, Ringo, Trinity and Sartana are all named after the protagonists of Spaghetti Western films. Also, Ennio, Luis, and Marcello are named after the composers for those pictures. Nero the cat is named for the actor who played the eponymous Django.
  • Major enemies of the original trilogy take their names from Norse mythology; the Final Bosses are named for the children of Loki.
  • Lunar Knights, on the other hand, has many characters named for literary Shout Outs. The immortal villains are named for authors of vampire fiction—James Malcolm Rymer, Edgar Allan Poe and his wife Virgina, Bram Stoker, Alexandre Dumas, and John Polidori. Professor Sheridan is named for Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu.
  • The new terrenials (barring Nero) are all named after authors of children's books—Ursula K. Le Guin, Alexander McCall Smith (Otfried Preussler in the original Japanese), Tove Jannsen, and Ezra Jack-Keats (or Liza Woodruff in the original Japanese).
  • Doubling as a Stealth Pun, the Schrödinger is a Mobile Fighter operated by a cat terrenial named after the author of "Puss in Boots". The Laplace is named for Laplace's Demon, the popular name for Pierre-Simon Laplace's illustration of the notion of causal or scientific determinism^note Laplace postulated that if there was an "intelligence" aware of the place and motion of every atom in the universe, then it could know all past and future events via the laws of classical mechanics. Basically, the fighters are named for thought-experiments about knowing nothing and knowing everything.
• Thunderbolt Iron: Boktai 2 lets Django find a small meteorite which can be forged into a unique Star melee weapon, which gains power as you do and uses solar energy directly from the Solar Station reserves rather than Django's much smaller energy bar.
• Total Eclipse of the Plot: Ratatosk's plan in Boktai 3 requires a Lunar Eclipse.
• Underground Monkey: Most enemies throughout the series have a variety of elemental sub-species. Many standard enemies in each game come in a basic variety (often Dark), a variety for the four basic elements, and then a stronger "+" variant of the original element.
• Unexpected Shmup Level: In Lunar Knights, every boss fight is capped off with a ten minute long space shooter level, where the DS stylus is used to move your ship and to fire your guns.
• Unwilling Roboticization: In Lunar Knights, one of the many atrocities of the vampires is their abduction of human women to experiment on, using forbidden alchemy to turn them into Robot Girls. Sheridan's maid Carmilla and the Solar Bank attendant Laura survived this process and managed to escape.
• Useless Useful Spell: Sabata has a spell that blocks out the Sun in-game. It's completely useless because it drains his magic like crazy, yet the player can simply cover the solar sensor to attain the same effect.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: Polidori's reasoning for giving the vampires control of Earth.
  Polidori: But don't you find it all a bit pointless? Humans and vampires have fought one another since the days of folklore. Sometimes the humans are victorious, and sometimes fortune favors the vampires, but in the end they always destroy each other... A cycle with no end. What purpose could there possibly be behind such a struggle? Imagine, if you will, a utopia, free of conflict... Isn't that a goal worth working towards?
  Lucian: Heh... Are you trying to tell me that this town is some kind of paradise? Living like a slave? With a collar around your neck...? You call that a utopia?
  Polidori: The life of the individual is not the issue here. We must consider the future of this planet... of the entirety of the cosmos. Those who cannot do so have no right to govern over this world.
• Varying Tactics Boss: Perrault is fought three times in Lunar Knights, piloting the Schrodinger and intercepting Laplace's journey to the Sunflower each time. With each rematch, his Schrodinger has significant upgrades and a different moveset which may require different strategies to beat.
• Vegetarian Vampire: In the second game, Black Django can heal himself with tomato juice. Oddly enough, drinking it as Red Django causes a stomachache.
• Video Game Cruelty Punishment: The first game has a bit of gameplay-consistent Cutscene Incompetence. When Django first meets Sabata, the boy in black will shoot him. If you have killed less than 50 enemies by that point, Django will avoid the shot, but if you killed more he will try to Shoot the Bullet and get hit in the face for heavy damage.
  • From the same game, continuing to throw away Lita's Solar Nuts when she's trying to teach you how the gardening system works leads to her becoming increasingly upset, giving a subtle threat on the fourth and fifth instances, before attacking Django for half his HP on the sixth instance.
• Voice Grunting: While there is some full voice-acting during the animated cutscenes in Lunar Knights, most other instances of consists of grunts and short phrases during dialogue.
• Warring Natures:
  • Toward the beginning of Boktai 2: Solar Boy Django, Django is turned into a vampire. Although Django is eventually purified, he is stuck as half-vampire, half solar child. He continues his fight against The Undead and the Immortals, although he is given the option to join them, which, if selected, results in a Game Over.
  • Boktai 3: Sabata's Counterattack adds Sol Django. Using one "nature" more times than the other even changes the ending of the game.
• Warrior Poet: Django. In the first two games, he rarely talks, saying mostly exclamations. The few times he says more than two words he is this trope. This is subverted in the third game, where he becomes a bit more talkative and less poetic.
  Django: That day, the Black Shadow that stopped Jormungandr in its tracks... Was that father? Or...
  Lady: The infamous... Shadow Immortal?
  Django: I don't know... But when the light is strong the shadows thrown out become a deeper Darkness. The dark is scary... But around dusk, I always think the same thing... It's those dark shadows that allow the world to be so...
  Lady: Beautiful... I reckon. You're a bit of a poet, aren't you, Django?
• Weather-Control Machine: In Lunar Knights, the paraSOL is one, summoning the natural climate of another world and using it to suppress the climate of the world the game takes place on. As Lucian and Aaron are taking down vampires and freeing the Terennials from their grasp, Professor Sheridan can hack into the paraSOL and activate additional climates.
• We Can Rule Together: Black Dainn to Django in the Spiral Tower. If the player accepts, the game ends on the bad ending. If the player rejects, the boss fight activates.
  Black Dainn: Django, I'll ask you once... Join us! Become our Dark Sun!
• With a Friend and a Stranger: In Boktai 3, Django is the main character, Master Otenko is his old friend, and Trinity is the stranger.
• With This Herring: In all his adventures, Django is forced to start off his quest to stop forces capable of rendering the Earth itself undead with the clothes on his back and a banged-up solar weapon that has just enough energy to knockout a handful of Mooks without a recharge.
• Yin-Yang Bomb: In Boktai 2, Django became afflicted with vampirism, changing his entire moveset. He had to avoid the sun to keep from burning himself (unless he used sunscreen), could sneak behind enemies to drain their health into himself (Solar Fruits hurt him) and could sleep in his coffin he always carried to recharge his energy. After one dungeon, he gained the ability to switch between Human Django and Vampire Django.
• You Have Failed Me: Polidori to Dumas in Lunar Knights.
  Lucian: I thought you were just supposed to be an "observer".
  Polidori: That was my intention, yes... But my intentions have changed, now that the Duke has been defeated. I must admit, this outcome was entirely unforeseen.
  ...
  Polidori: Without the technology that we have, I would not be able to stand here before you... This is why we allowed you and your vampires to take control of this planet. However... It appears that not even the vampires are worthy enough to govern this world.
• You Killed My Father: Subverted for Django. He wants to kill the Count for killing his father, but it turns out his father is not dead, but instead turned into a vampire by the Count. Played straight for Aaron, whose father really is dead.
• Young Gun: The two brothers, Django and Sabata. They both inherited their guns from their father and aunt, respectively. In Lunar Knights, Aaron also falls under this category.

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