Kaito is a frequently bullied student whose magic powers are discovered by fellow wizard Marie. She convinces him to move into an orphanage full of other wizards, both so he can experience a less toxic environment and so other wizards can make sure that he's using his powers properly. However, the bandits, the anti-wizard cult, and the consequences of the Magic War threaten to upend Kaito's new life.
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This game contains examples of:
- Addled Addict: Ether medicine is highly addictive and can give the user magic powers. However, the medicine can drive them mad and turn them into monsters. Worse yet, if the user doesn't keep taking it, they'll run out of ether, lose their powers, and go blind. In Act 11, Asha betrays Kaito and steals the Black Pearl shard in the hopes that it can provide an alternate ether supply to her.
- Ambition Is Evil:
- The Magic Academy tried to use the Black Pearl to start a world war to increase their influence. They went as far as using the Black Pearl to transform their students into a monster army.
- Remy's family wanted to take advantage of the Crystallization Strife by having Remy's brother infiltrate the magic researchers while Remy infiltrates the army, allowing them to benefit no matter which side wins.
- Anti-Grinding: Characters get less EXP if their level is higher than the enemy's. However, this only applies to character levels, since spells require repeated usage to fully grind.
- Apathetic Teacher: Marie is supposed to be a teacher at the former magic academy, but she doesn't do anything about Kaito being bullied until she confirms he's a wizard. In this case, she gets involved with him not to stop the bullying, but because she needs to keep on eye on other wizards. It's implied her apathy is due to her own experience as a bully victim, where no one would help her.
- Apologises a Lot: Due to being a bullying victim, Kaito apologizes if he thinks he even slightly offended someone else.
- Asshole Victim: Remy's profile states that she poisoned her family. However, additional scenes showed that they wanted to have Remy infiltrate the army while her brother infiltrates the magic researchers so that the family comes out on top no matter who wins the Crystallization Strife. It's implied that Remy killed them both because she's the least favorite child and because she couldn't tolerate their evil ambitions.
- Bittersweet Ending: Most of the monsters in the region have been exterminated and Noelle is turned back to normal, but Michelle erases Kaito's memories and everyone's memories of him in order to prevent his magic from transforming Noelle into a monster again. Additionally, Michelle's associates are still trying to get rid of the Black Pearl in order to remove magic and monsters from the world, but it's unknown if they will succeed. Fortunately, Asha is allowed to bring Kaito out of his coma so he can rejoin society with a clean slate, but the glossary states that Asha ran off for unknown purposes afterwards, prompting the Magic School remnants to hunt her down.
- Boring, but Practical: The passive skill, Cure Condition, makes the user immune to ailments while lowering their attack. While it slows down DPS, it's a good way to avoid wasting turns on curing ailments with Refresh and the slot normally used for Refresh can be changed for a different skill.
- Cruel to Be Kind: One of the kids working for the bandits helps the party escape, in exchange for them helping him take revenge on the bandits for killing his parents. Asha double crosses him and tells him not to try to take revenge, since the bandits probably know about his plan and because revenge won't improve his life.
- Crutch Character: Marie starts at level 7 and her healing spell is the same as her primary element, making her an efficient healer with high enough stats to deal with the first dungeon. However, she isn't available in the second dungeon, making it harder to manage the resources needed to heal. She rejoins by the fourth dungeon, but Kaito and Nina are closer to her level by then.
- Dark and Troubled Past:
- Kaito lost his parents during the Crystallization Strife and was bullied in school. As a result, he wants to uphold the current status quo of being friends with the wizarding community.
- Similarly, Marie was bullied for standing out in school too much and was forcibly transformed into a monster by the previous leaders of the Magic School.
- Nina lost her family and friends on the Night of Black Snow due to them transforming into monsters, forcing her to kill them in self-defense.
- Asha was a child spy who was forced to take ether drugs by the Western Kingdom. As a result, she is addicted to the drug's ability to grant her magic and will do anything to maintain her powers.
- Remy was seen as nothing more than a political pawn to her parents and she was traumatized by being one of the few survivors in her squad. She also killed her family to prevent them from succeeding in their evil ambitions.
- The Anti-Wizard Coalition is made up of people who suffered from the war between the Magic School and the Western Kingdom, leading to their village being overrun by monsters. Remy is able to negotiate with them by promising to fight the monsters that are infesting their lands.
- Deletion as Punishment: Subverted. In order to prevent his magic from transforming Noelle into a monster, Kaito has to erase all his memories, which translates to all the save files being deleted. However, after the credits, it turns out the save files are just fine.
- Dysfunction Junction: All the party members have issues.
- Kaito seems like a typical Nice Guy protagonist, but due to being bullied for so long, he's very desperate to hold on to his current friendships. In the ending, he admits that he wants to confirm Noelle's current status not because he wants to save her, but because he fears that if people discover he turned her into a monster, he'll lose all his friends. However, he ultimately sacrifices his memories in order to save Noelle.
- Marie can act friendly, but it becomes clear that she doesn't have much empathy for others and is quick to lose her patience if people ask her too many questions.
- Nina suffers from the trauma of the Black Snow incident, where she had to kill her family and Kaito's parents after they transformed into monsters. She also has trust issues when it comes to strangers, though in the case of Asha and Marie, she's actually correct to be suspicious of their ulterior motives.
- Asha is a shady information dealer who is willing to work with criminals. She is also addicted to ether drugs and feels that she has no identity without her drug-induced magic, leading to her betraying Kaito in order to obtain the Black Pearl shard.
- Remy wants to be a good ruler to the people of the third district, but the trauma of being on the battlefield stunted her social skills, so she has a hard time understanding the intentions of other people.
- Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Fire is good against lightning, lightning is good against ice, and ice is good against fire. White and black magic are good against each other.
- The Exile: In Act 4, Kaito is forced to use magic to defend himself from a bandit, but did so in public. While Marie manages to erase the witnesses' memories, the orphanage expels him as punishment for drawing unwanted attention to the local wizards.
- Final Boss: In the final dungeon, Kaito tries to send his magic into Marie to help her regain her memories, but this causes her to transform into a chimera, making her the last story boss.
- Forced Transformation: The Black Snow incident caused many people to be exposed to the Black Pearl's power. Many of them transformed into monsters while others gained magic while maintaining their human form. Since magic is based on memories and emotions, it's possible to revert transformations by removing memories from all parties involved in the transformation.
- Glass Cannon:
- Kaito has the best attack growth and can greatly boost the damage of the party's spells with his Mana Stream spell, but has fairly low HP and defense.
- Asha has high speed, can buff her attack, and can quickly refill the party's MP, but her defenses are low.
- Guest-Star Party Member: In the third level, Kaito has to escort Noelle, a non-wizard, out of the clock tower. She has a weak offensive skill and some skills to control enemy aggro, but doesn't gain EXP.
- HP to One: The party members can learn an equippable passive skill, Mercy, that makes it so a finishing blow knocks the enemy down to 1 HP.
- Human Sacrifice: The village in Act 15 sacrifices people to a dragon in order to stave off its wrath and gain its blessing. In reality, they mistook a hot spring geyser for a dragon and most of the sacrifices survived, only to wander to far off lands because they don't want to be accused of disrupting the status quo.
- Inside a Computer System: The reason the game goes to a "Terminal" segment between each act is because all the acts are footage of the past being shown to the Kaito of the present, who is hooked up to a computer to test what happens when his memories are restored.
- Jerkass to One: Marie is a jerk to everyone due to her lack of empathy, but she'll at least try to be polite as long as she can maintain her patience. However, she's especially disdainful of Remy, who she sees as an inferior replacement to Sora as a military leader. The fact that Remy is usually oblivious or uncaring of Marie's insults only serves to increase the latter's ire.
- Kill the Ones You Love: During the Night of Black Snow, Nina's family and their friends (who happened to be Kaito's parents) transformed into monsters. Nina awakens her magic and kills them in self-defense.
- Lack of Empathy: Marie has a lack of care for most people and only befriended Kaito because she was interested in his magic. When Noelle transforms into a monster, Marie only responds in a bored tone and mocks Kaito for failing to play his role. Later on, she states that she wants to work on a cure for Asha's condition not because she's invested in the latter's life, but for the sake of scientific curiosity.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: Michelle erases Kaito's memories along with most people's memories of Kaito in order to prevent Noelle from transforming into a monster. This is because magic is based on thoughts and emotions, and Kaito's magic is what caused Noelle to transform into a monster in the first place. It's implied Michelle did the same to Marie in order to reverse the latter's monster transformation, which explains why Kaito's restoration of her memories transformed her into a monster again.
- Leaked Experience: Averted. Characters only get EXP if they're in the active party, but later enemy formations are designed so that the player will have to rotate characters to account for Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors.
- Limit Break: At level 15, characters gain the ability to use awakened magic. Once they use enough MP in one battle, they will glow and can spend their awakened status to cast a stronger version of one of their spells.
- Mad Scientist: Marie has a secret lab underneath the Old Magic School, where she experiments on monsters in order to learn more about magic. She also has the stereotypical mad scientist trait of being more interested in her research than interacting with people and doesn't particularly care about the monsters she experiments on. Fortunately, she's mostly using her experiments for benevolent goals, since she's researching ways to turn monsters back into humans. Unfortunately, she's willing to unleash monsters in the city to set up a chain of events that will allow her to further research this topic.
- Mirror Character: Kaito and Asha seem like complete opposites, with Kaito being a naive Nice Guy and Asha being an unethical information dealer whose friendliness comes off as dishonest. However, the two are shown to have subtle similarities, since both cling to magic as the only thing that gives them self-worth. In Kaito's case, he sees magic as both a way to be useful to others and to maintain his friendships in the wizard community. In Asha's case, she was raised as an artificial wizard and has a serious case of ether drug addiction, so she can't imagine a life without magic. Both are willing to do selfish things to maintain their standing as mages, since Kaito wants to make sure no one discovers that he accidentally turned Noelle into a monster while Asha is willing to betray the party to claim the Black Pearl shard for herself to maintain her power without ether drugs. They end up diverging in their character development in the ending, since Kaito is willing to give up his magic and friendships to save Noelle while Asha betrays the Magic School remnants and runs off, implying that she refuses to cooperate with them further because they're trying to remove magic from the world, which she still clings to.
- "Not So Different" Remark: In the ending, Marie learns that Kaito is looking for Noelle for the sake of keeping track of anything that could expose that he transformed her into a monster rather than to save her. She states that Kaito is similar to her in being selfish and deceiving their friends.
- Save the Villain: Justified with the Anti-wizard Coalition. The party can't afford to kill them without drawing ire towards all wizards, so they settle for non-lethally defeating the coalition members. Later, they exterminate the monsters near the coalition members' homes in order to make peace with them.
- Secretly Selfish: Downplayed with Kaito. In the ending, it's revealed that Kaito knew all along that Noelle transformed into a monster and cared more about confirming her whereabouts than actually saving her, since he was afraid that if the public found out about Noelle, his current life will be disrupted. However, he chooses to give up his memories in order to transform Noelle back into a human, showing that he's willing to put his own desires aside if there actually is a viable way to save Noelle.
- Skill Slot System: Characters can equip five skills, but each slot only allows certain elements and the fifth slot can only be used for common skills.
- Stone Wall: Remy has the least attack, but the most HP among the party members. She has defensive skills like drawing aggro from an enemy and setting up barriers to reduce damage.
- Superboss: In the Terminal, the player can use all party members to challenge EX versions of story bosses, who have higher stats or new skills to compensate for their old weaknesses.
- Surprisingly Creepy Moment: Despite the cute artstyle and the initially optimistic first arc of Kaito joining the wizard community, the story is quite dark due to the Black Pearl overloading people with magic powers to turn them into monsters. There are also plot elements like unethical human experimentation and drug addiction.
- Title Drop: In the ending, Michelle reveals that Re:Kuroi is the name of the project to restore and erase Kaito's memories.
- Tragic Keepsake: Kaito's piano tuner is the only thing he has left of his father. Nina manages to find a second tuner from Kaito's father in the bandits' hideout, which the latter intended to give to Kaito before he was transformed into a monster.
- Tyke Bomb: The Western Kingdom experimented on Asha and several other kids by forcing them to take ether drugs. This either turns them into monsters or into artificial mages who depend on the drug. Some of those who remain human got recruited as spies to infiltrate the Magic School.
- Unskilled, but Strong: Kaito is a total novice at combat magic, but his attack growth is high and he has the strongest AOE spell. He doesn't know how to creatively apply his magic outside of battle, and thus isn't that useful outside of fighting monsters.
- We Cannot Go On Without You: If any party member gets KOed, the battle is lost, even if the enemy team is wiped out.
- Weak, but Skilled: Remy is the weakest of the party offensively and she never goes on missions alone because of her defensive specialization. However, she has a lot of military experience compared to the other party members. In battle, she's has an autopassive that allows her to use the Mercy mechanic without taking up an entire spell slot, showing that she's the most skilled at non-lethally subduing human opponents. She can also turn an enemy's attack against themself by inflicting Misfire, effectively using their own strength against them rather than using her own middling offensive power.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Marie unleashes the underground monsters into the city as part of her plan to make people appreciate the wizards fighting the monsters, put Kaito in a situation where he's forced to learn the truth behind his magic, and convince him to erase his memories and everyone's memories of him to save Noelle. The last part serves as a way to research how to reverse all monster transformations induced by black magic.
- Villainous Legacy: The game has no active Big Bad because the evil factions of the past are either inactive or neutralized. However, their actions still have lasting effects.
- The Magic School originally used the Black Pearl to create a monster army and rebel against the Western Kingdom. After the Magic War, the Magic School underwent its own civil war, resulting in damage to the Black Pearl that caused the Night of Black Snow. This caused people in the northern mountains to transform into monsters. The surviving faction of the Magic School is trying to find a way to erase magic from the world to prevent monster transformations and misuse of magic.
- The Western Kingdom used ether drugs to create their own magical child soldiers, but this leads to the children becoming addicted to the drug or turning into monsters. In the present, one of their former spies, Asha, is still suffering from ether addiction. However, it's implied that the treaty with the Magic School put an end to the use of ether drugs by the Western Kingdom, though the drug itself is still in circulation in the black market.
