Video Game / Twisted Wonderland

Let us show you the real happily-ever-after. ^note From left to right: Kalim Al-Asim, Leona Kingscholar, Vil Schoenheit, Malleus Draconia, Azul Ashengrotto, Riddle Rosehearts, Idia Shroud

Twisted Wonderland is a mobile game developed by f4samurai and published by Aniplex and Disney, with the opening sequence done by A-1 Pictures.

Players look into the world of Twisted Wonderland as a human named Yuu, who is summoned from their original world to Night Raven College by the school's magic mirror. However, Yuu lacks magic themself and problems arise when the mirror is unable to return them to their home. They are permitted to enroll as a student until the principal, Dire Crowley, can find them a way back.

In the meantime, Yuu is tasked with bringing together the powerful yet rowdy student body of Night Raven College. Just what secrets do these students have, harbouring the spirits of famous Disney Villains?

The game was released on March 18, 2020 for Android and iOS platforms, with the story writing and character designs done by Yana Toboso of Black Butler fame. The game received an official anthology which was released at Comiket prior to the game's release. It was announced on December 20, 2021 that the game would receive an official English release in North America, which launched on January 20, 2022. This was later followed by a Singaporean and Australian release on July 3, 2023.

Volume 1 of a series of longer Twisted Wonderland anthologies with cover art by Yana Toboso and chapters illustrated by numerous popular Manga-ka was released on November 27th, 2020.

A manga adaptation of the game’s prologue and first story arc was released in March 18th, 2021, titled Disney Twisted-Wonderland The Comic: Episode of Heartslabyul and illustrated by Sumire Konoo (with Wakana Hazuki credited for composition); it ran in Monthly G-Magazine until October 18th, 2022, with a total of 21 chapters and four volumes. An English localisation of the first volume was announced and later released on July 11th, 2023. An adaptation of the second story arc was announced alongside Episode of Heartslabyul’s final chapter, titled Disney Twisted-Wonderland The Comic: Episode of Savanaclaw and illustrated by Suzuka Oda. It began serialisation on December 18th, 2022. Alongside the release of the fourth chapter on July 18th, 2023, an adaptation of the third story arc, titled Disney Twisted-Wonderland The Comic: Episode of Octavinelle, was announced for release on August 18th, 2023, with Sumire Konoo and Wakana Hazuki returning to illustrate and compose respectively.

On October 14, 2021, Disney+ announced on their Japanese Twitter account that an anime adaptation will be produced for the streamer.

On January 18th, 2022, the G-Fantasy Twitter account announced a novel adaption of the game. The novel is titled Disney Twisted-Wonderland Episode 1: Shinku no Bо̄kun (The Crimson Tyrant). Jun Hioke was in charge of writing the “episode 1” novel, which adapts the game’s prologue and first chapter.

Compare Descendants and Kingdom Hearts.

---

Tropes in this game include:

Tropes A to M

• Action Prologue: The game starts off with one where you fight against a gigantic monster before you get to the story proper.
• Adults Are Useless: Zig-zagged. In the main story, Yuu and the other students are the ones running around the school solving the conflicts of each arc, despite the fact that Overblot is an incredibly rare and grave condition that could lead to the deaths of the students and destruction of the school should the rampaging victim go undealt with. Even after multiple Overblot cases within the school year, Crowley still seems content to let the students handle each problem and goes as far as threatening them with dorm budget cuts or retention if they refuse, and the other teachers hardly show up at all. Averted in the case of Leona who after his chapter has reluctantly helped deal with the problems, though other adult students like Malleus and Lilia have yet to be seen doing anything useful in the main story.
  • Crowley's uselessness is lampshaded by the dorm heads at the beginning of the Fairy Gala event, with them pointing out that, as headmaster, he should be the one trying to fix the weather issues that are plaguing the college instead of foisting the responsibility off on them. This also happens on other occasions with pretty much the same results.
  • Crewel attempts to be of use in "Scary Monsters" by preparing to use magic on the misbehaving visitors before he is stopped and scolded by Trein, who believes that a magic-user initiating an attack on normal humans would damage the school's reputation, especially since he's a teacher. While he disagrees, Crewel relents and Crowley once again uselessly leaves the students to deal with the situation.
  • Zigzagged Trope in "Glorious Masquerade". Trein actually averts this and remained a responsible teacher and guide through and through, but being the oldest known teacher in Night Raven College means that he has limitations and still feeling the effects of aging such as when he cracked his back from having to manually weed the Crimson Flowers and he was forced to let the rest of the students handle the trek to the Bell Tower as a result while he accompanies Grim and Yuu to save the civilians in town who are also affected by the Crimson Flower infestation.
• Aerith and Bob: Most of the characters have names that we would consider normal, though there are some pretty out-there names such as Epel, Ruggie and Riddle.
• Affectionate Parody: "Ghost Marriage" serves as this to the classic Disney movie fairy tale stories of old where such fantasy is viewed in the lens of reality, along with the hilarity ensuing.
• Allegedly Free Game: Sure, it's free to download, but it's still a gacha mobile game.
• All There in the Manual: The official Magical Archives guidebook has shared some things that have not been revealed in the game proper.
  • Lilia’s hair is naturally black. The pink parts are dyed and he changes his hair color when he feels like it.
  • Idia’s blue lipstick is a natural part of his face.
  • The dorm leader of Heartslabyul picks the card symbols for the other residents and magically affixes them to their faces.
• Apocalypse How: Narrowly Averted Trope due to how these scenario's were stopped before it could fully come to be, but it comes in the motives in some of the Antagonists.
  • Type 3A: In Chapter 6, An overblotted Ortho and Idia planned to unleash all the sealed Phantoms within Tartarus onto the world and make it so that the world is overrun by them, leaving magicians incapable of handling the horde... except for the Shrouds who know how to handle them and this will leave the Shroud family as the only one capable of stopping the Phantoms and will be hailed as heroes by the world. This leaves out the fact that the magicless population have no means to defend themselves against the blot and with magicians being fairly few in percentage, it would cause the collapse of society and also humanity of Twisted Wonderland as there are only so much blot that Magicians can handle before they succumb to overblotting. Thankfully, the kidnapped students plus Rook, Epel and Yuu were able to stop this before it could fully come to fruition.
  • Type 1: "Glorious Masquerade" involves Rollo Flamme planning to have the Crimson Flowers manifest all over the City of Flowers to nourish and feed itself from the visiting students coming for the school exchange. When daylight comes if nobody interrupted the growth of the flowers by overnourishing them, the flowers will spread outside of the City of Flowers and soon, all over the world, draining the Magician's from their magic and rendering them magicless, erasing magic from Twisted Wonderland for good. While Rollo believes that there will be less suffering without magic in the picture, this leaves out the societal collapse that will occur in the long run should it happen due to how integral magic has become to the history and livelihood of the people, along with the public unrest this will cause on top of how the Crimson Flowers overgrowth can't be dealt with immediately after the fact. This was thankfully avoided as Azul, Malleus and Idia were able to reach to the Bell of Salvation in time before the flowers could spread outside the city.
  • Type 4: In Chapter 7, Malleus's plan was to stop time of Sage Island, and later extending to the world, putting everyone to sleep and making them dream of a happier version of their lives through dreams. However, as Ortho points out, this leaves out the fact that the physical bodies of everyone in the world could still perish due to lacking water and food to sustain themselves and without a physical body, the souls of the people can't stay in the mortal realm. If everyone dies asleep, there won't be any life left in the long run.
• And Now You Must Marry Me: The Ghost Marriage event begins with Idia getting kidnapped by the ghost princess Eliza, who's decided he's her ideal bridegroom no matter what he says to the contrary.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • There is an option to 'loop' or continuously run the same lesson until your AP runs out, which saves the player the pain and load time of having to manually re-enter lessons.
  • There's also the SSR gauge that tells the player how many rolls they have left until they're guaranteed an SSR card ala the Spark system from GranblueFantasy. Even better, Story Keys, which can be used in the gacha, count toward the gauge.
  • The chapter 7 update will introduce the "Easy Mode" option for players who do not have fairly high-leveled or decently built cards and characters to allow them to get through the story easily without having to worry about difficult battles.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Played for Laughs in the Happy Beans Day event story. The way the story was set-up very much painted the Farmer team in the light where it seemed like they would win against the Beasts team; they were the team we were following the whole event, Yuu was on the team, the Farmer team successfully outwitted the Beasts team and all that was left was Yuu to seize the harp before Jack, who was on the Beasts team, could catch them. It seemed like Farmers team would win — until it cuts to the next scene and reveals that Yuu was caught by Jack within an inch of grabbing the harp, thusly confirming the Beasts teams win.
  • Also ends up being the case in Ghost Marriage. Not only does Eliza get away with all the trouble she caused scott-free without ever taking personal responsibility for her actions, she has a Love Epiphany and marries the guy she had always secretly wanted (who was Chubby, not Idia), and goes on a honeymoon in the afterlife with her new husband while the main cast are left to clean up the mess in Ace's SSR Groom-For-The-Day personal story, which serves as an epilogue for the event story. But hey, at least Idia didn't have to die.
  • Downplayed in Fairy Gala. The fairies proceed with their spring welcoming festival and the main characters get the weather controlling stone back, meaning it's a win-win situation for both the good and "bad" guys.
• Batman Gambit: In "Scary Monsters", the cast devised a plan to scare the Magicam Monsters away by hinging on their habit of breaking the rules and regulations that each of the dorms had placed in regards to their locations for the sake of their social media clout, with the Magicam Monsters none the wiser and get attacked by the students who pose as the ghosts and/or monsters terrorizing the place.
• Bland-Name Product:
  • Magical Camera, an in-universe social media app, is essentially Instagram with some LINE features mixed in.
  • "Mira" the phone assistant is Siri in all but name.
• Both Sides Have a Point: When Ace tells Yuu and Grim how Riddle sealed his magic, the two of them agree that both Ace and Riddle were in the wrong. Yes, Ace stole food belonging to someone else and deserved some form of punishment; however, having your magic sealed is way too harsh a punishment for one stolen tart.
• Breaking Old Trends: Besides the Prologue, Chapter 6 is the only story chapter that doesn’t involve the Ignihyde dorm. However, Idia and Ortho are involved in this chapter because they are members of their family organization, S.T.Y.X., with Idia as the acting captain.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: Just like any other gacha mobile game, you can spend real-life currency to buy in-game currencies for easier progress and adding more playable cards to your collection.
• But Thou Must!: Sure, you can refuse Ortho's request to help him rescue Idia in the Ghost Marriage event, but he'll simply continue asking until you agree.
• Call-Back:
  • The May 2021 Happy Beans Day ~Lyre-less Brawl~ event had several plot threads that would make most sense once you read the first Happy Beans Day story. Such as Azul wanting to deal with Jade, Jamil giving Kalim a prepped lunch for the sports competition as a ploy to beat Kalim at his game, and more.
  • The Personal stories are all inter-connected and play a part in how the interactions of the boys will turn out and add in some look to what they are doing during a story or event. For an example, Ghost Groom Epel's Personal story has Epel recognizing Silver as he helped Vil for the Theater Research Club once, a reference to Silver's P.E. Personal Story.
• The Call Knows Where You Live: Every chapter starts with Yuu and Grim having a run-in with the problem facing each dorm's chapter with little to no way of backing out.
  • Ace's magic is nullified by Riddle's "Off with Your Head" and Yuu soon learns of Riddle's tyrannical nature for enforcing the Queen of Hearts' 810 rules.
  • During a lunch rush, Grim is physically manipulated by Ruggie's unique magic and trades away his food. Said incident makes Yuu and Grim realize that Ruggie was behind the string of "clumsy accidents", done for the sake of Savanaclaw's victory against Diasomnia during the Magical Shift Tournament.
  • Failing to make it into the top fifty during the exams, Grim, Ace, and Deuce are forced to work for Azul for not fulfilling their end of the bargain. This drives Yuu to make a deal with Azul themself, offering Ramshackle dorm in exchange for the freedom of the students under contract.
  • During winter break, Yuu is psychically manipulated into following Jamil back to Scarabia dorm, where they and Grim witness the dorm members' dissatisfaction with Kalim firsthand. Grim is notably tired of this trope by this point, asking Yuu to refuse Jamil's request for help and return to Ramshackle dorm, but Jamil's power of Mind Manipulation locks the duo into the chapter's conflict.
  • Catching Epel singing and being punished by Vil for interrupting his practice, Deuce overhears Epel muttering to himself that everything should disappear. He's motivated to audition for the VDC to save Epel from being forced to participate, and Grim and Ace want to audition for a chance to win the grand prize money. Despite not passing the audition, Yuu and Grim are brought along anyway because they’re the main characters and end up hosting the NRC team at Ramshackle while they train for the competition.
  • The gradual build up of Grim growing manic in the presence of heavy blot from eating 6 blot stones as of the Pomefiore chapter and the fact that Night Raven College is experiencing 5 chained overblots in a short amount of time becomes suspicious enough that someone anonymously called in S.T.Y.X to take the previously overblotted victims and Grim to the Isle of Lamentation for testings and Crowley also brought away to meet Mr and Mrs Shroud, with Idia being left in charge of the testing on the former overblot victims and Grim. The sudden development and the collateral damage that the rest of the school suffered from the unexpected attack prompted Rook to rescue Vil with Epel and Yuu coming along to rescue the victims and Grim.
• The Cameo:
  • Certain scenes in the main story have the mirror in Ramshackle dorm show Yuu scenes from the original movie the featured dorm is twisted from. For example, Alice shows up in Chapter 1 in scenes taking place in the Queen of Heart's garden, reflecting the conflict to be had in Heartslabyul.
  • At the end of Chapter 3, who should appear in the mirror but the silhouette of Mickey Mouse himself?
• Camping Episode: The "Vargas CAMP!" events, has the clubs stay in Dwarf's Mine Forest to use their survival skills for three days, without using their magic pens.
• Cast Full of Pretty Boys: Nearly every student (and even one or two teachers) is a Pretty Boy or Bishōnen.
• Cast Herd: The main characters are sectioned off into different dormitories based on who or what they're twisted from.
• Character Development: Every character goes through a bit of it at the end of their respective main story chapter, though their behaviors that caused others trouble don’t go away completely, as that would be unrealistic. Instead, they become somewhat less extreme than they were before undergoing development.
• Color-Coded Characters: Each dorm is represented with two colours found in their dorm crests and armbands:
  • Heartslabyul: Red and Black
  • Savanaclaw: Yellow and Black
  • Octavinelle: Grey and Lavender
  • Scarabia: Scarlet and Gold
  • Pomefiore: Purple and Red
  • Ignihyde: Blue and Black
  • Diasomnia: Green and Black
• Cerebus Syndrome: Starting with chapter 5 the overall plot starts to darken. Vil explicitly wanted Niege dead, and would've killed him if not for Rook's intervention. When Overblot!Vil is close to defeat, he decides to pull a Taking You with Me on everyone. It only gets worse from there.
• Costume Porn: Being a game helmed by Yana Toboso, this is expected.
  • The dorm outfits of Diasomnia, Pomefiore, Ignihyde and Heartslabyul are all extremely elaborate.
  • Event outfits tend to be very intricate. The biggest examples thus far have been the outfits from Fairy Gala, Wish Upon A Star, and Scary Monsters.
• The Corruption: Magic use generates a harmful by-product known as 'blot', similar to black ink in appearance. Blot accumulates in the caster's body and naturally dissipates with sufficient rest and minimal further magic use, but builds up more quickly with stress and negative emotion. Students have pens with magic crystals which siphon off blot and prevent it from building up in their bodies directly; use of magic causes blot to accumulate in the crystal instead. When the crystal is filled with blot beyond its capacity (or when the caster is overwhelmed by negative emotion, inevitably resulting in the same outcome), the caster enters an Ax-Crazy state known as Overblot, taking on a corrupted, more monstrous form. The only way to save an Overblot victim is to wear them out before they burn through their excess magic, lest they fully become monsters like the one in Dwarfs' Mine. Crowley explains that magicians with high amounts of magical energy need to be more careful about the accumilation of Blot than others, and considering the school is filled with some of the most powerful magicians...
• Crapsaccharine World:
  • Story vignettes imply and also hint that though the cast live in a peaceful time, they are also facing after effects of the Human-Fae war that occur centuries in the past and even among those of the same race, such as Merfolk, Fae and Beastfolk, the differing specieses are shown to clash at times such as Ruggie still being discriminated for being a Hyena beastfolk despite history saying that Scar has brought the Hyena's to become part of the community. With the story focusing on the cast's growth and time in school, this isn't brought in full focus.
  • "Playful Land" is a mobile theme park based on the Pleasure Island with all the horror it entails, but this time instead of parkgoers being turned into donkeys, they're turned into immobile puppets.
• Creepy Blue Eyes: During the second Halloween event, extremely pale blue eyes is a sign that a character is being possessed by a ghost.
• Dark Is Not Evil: The default uniform color for Night Raven College is black, and the ceremonial robes consist of dark colors. That said, no one in the cast is "evil", being at worst self-serving at the expense of another character, or carrying out morally ambiguous actions for one reason or another.
• Deadly Euphemism: The game uses "Return to be with the stars" as the term for someone dying such as the case with Ruggie's mother and Meleanor.
• Death of a Child: Happens on accident twice in flashbacks , the first being Ch. 6 with the original Ortho dying during one of his and Idia's adventures and the second being "Glorious Masquerade" with Rollo's brother incinerating himself while practicing magic without supervision.
• Demonic Possession: For a degree of demonic. In "Scary Monsters ~Endless Halloween Night~", the casts who had their own Halloween card in 2020 are kidnapped to the ghost realm along with a majority of the student body (Yuu and Grim included) and then possessed by the ghosts residing in that realm, the ghosts have to be beaten down while they still possess said character in order to end the possession.
• Did You Just Have Tea With Cthulhu: Downplayed, as Malleus isn't an eldritch abomination. Due to his very powerful presence and status, making him becoming The Dreaded, Ace, Deuce, Epel, Kalim, Jamil, Vil and Rook are surprised and slightly horrified at how Yuu easily called Malleus "Tsunotaro" without fear and had an amiable, friendly conversation with him, to a point that Malleus offered to fix the broken up stage in the stadium after they told him about Vil overblotting.
• Diegetic Soundtrack Usage: In Chapter 5, the song the characters sing for the VDC auditions is a portion of the chorus for the opening song "Piece of My World" by the band Night Ravens.
• Dude, Not Funny!: In Chapter 6, Riddle along with Vil and Azul doesn’t find Idia’s joke funny about torturing them until he takes data from their stress and blot accumulation.

  Idia: Heehee, I’m glad you asked me, First…… We will tie you to the chair, and use any possible way to examine every part of your body…. I’ll take the data of your stress and blot accumulation!
  Riddle: Huh…! Do you think you will get away from doing something unreasonable like that!?
  Idia: Nah, it’s obviously a joke. People who can’t take a joke are so scary…
  Riddle: (angrily sounds in annoyance)
  Azul: Even if it’s a joke, it’s not funny at all.

• Early Game Hell: When the Test feature was first released, most players found it difficult to reach SSS rank, as the harder battles require strong cards and specific elements, emphasizing the team-building aspect of the game.
• Ear Worm: The song Neige and the dwarfs performed in the VDC is a modern re-arranged cover of Heigh-Ho, which is considered an In-Universe Nursery Rhyme from the Land of Pyroxene. While initially looked down on by the participating group from NRC because Neige was performing a Nursery Rhyme, the nostalgia of the song, added onto Neige's good vocals, despite how out of sync some of their performances are, quickly won the staff watching the rehearsal over.
• Easter Egg: Just like every other Disney property, there are Hidden Mickeys to find in various illustrations, with at least one per art in both backgrounds and card art.
• Elaborate University High: Night Raven College's main campus is massive on its own without including the seven official dorms, many of which have castles for main buildings and grounds large enough to warrant access via mirror portal.
• Elemental Powers: The game features three elements (fire, water and wind) and a void/neutral element, which are attributed to the characters' attacks.
  • Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Fire beats Wind, Water beats Fire and Wind beats Water, with Void being neutral to every relation.
• Everything's Better with Rainbows: Scoring 'Perfect' in lessons is accompanied by three stars and a rainbow. During Dire Crowley's Special Lessons, this is guaranteed to appear.
• Evolving Title Screen: Throughout the period the Scary Monsters Halloween event is running, the title screen shows the whole cast in the Main Street celebrating Halloween. The 2021 iteration has the casts who did not get their cards yet during the first iteration of the Scary Monsters Halloween event overlooking Night Raven College.
• The Fair Folk: One of the races in the titular universe. Malleus Draconia is explicitly stated to be a dragon fae, while Lilia and Sebek are unspecified types of fae as well. Several other fairies show up in the Fairy Gala event, with the first three the player sees having Tinker Bell-inspired designs.
• Famed In-Story:
  • The Queen of Hearts, Scar, Ursula, Jafar, Queen Grimhilde, Hades and Maleficent are known in-game as 'The Great Seven' and are held in high esteem in Night Raven College. They provide the background story for each of the school's dorms, and anyone who fits a certain quality of theirs gets sorted into their respective dorm.
  • Vil and Neige are famous teen celebrities, being popular social media influencers as well as actors.
• Fantastic Racism: Not as played up as most works that feature this trope, but it's subtly present in Twisted Wonderland.
  • Lilia implies that there's some bad blood between fairies and humans in the "Wish Upon A Star" event, as well as internal conflict between the types of fairies themselves despite them being the same species. His wish is for fairies and humans to live in peace with each other. Both the Human-Fae and Fae-Fae conflicts were brought to be seen on screen in Chapter 7 via Lilia's dreams where Silver, Grim, Yuu and Sebek get a first hand sight at what Lilia had went through over the centuries.
  • The cast seem to have preconceived notions about how the species should be able to interact with each other. For example, they assume that all fairies are on the same page and therefore Malleus should have no issue infiltrating the venue to interact with the other fairies. Malleus explains that him being a fairy doesn't mean that the fairies inside the venue would get along with him, and they'd become fearful and scatter if he stepped inside. He also explains that there isn't a single type of fairy, and that he as a dragon fairy is only one subset of the many subspecies of fae that exist.
  • Kalim has some Innocently Insensitive dialogue not only from "Fairy Gala" but from "Screaming Monsters" as well where he assumes that all fairies are the same and that werewolves are the same as beastmen respectively. Despite Rook's explanation about how beastmen and werewolves are different, he doesn't seem to learn.
  • Some of the visitors, more specifically, the "Magicam Monsters" in "Scary Monsters" treat Leona, Ruggie and Malleus like novelties instead of living beings, even calling Malleus an "it" in his part of Chapter 2. Leona and Malleus are understandably pissed off.
  • Ruggie's Ceremony robe personal story implies that this exist among beastmen as well, as it is hinted that Hyena beastmen are looked down upon and considered the lowest of the rung.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Despite being set in another world with the school being based on the European curriculum (4 years of high school in contrast to 3 years), the setting still takes some cues from Japanese culture. For example, the Wish Upon a Star event is based on Tanabata while the Happy Beans Day event takes inspiration from Setsubun. They also celebrate Halloween in a way that mostly resembles our worlds way of doing so with extra steps in the form of specifically trying appease the ghosts that become visible to humans on that day.
• Fictional Currency: Twisted Wonderland uses Madol to pay for many services and expenses.
• Fire-Forged Friends: Ace, Deuce, Grim and Yuu form a friendship after all four venture to Dwarf Woodlands together to find a Magic Stone to replace the one that Deuce broke, and hang around together in every chapter following the prologue.
• Flying Broomstick: The characters are trained to use these in Night Raven academy, though some characters like Lilia don't need the broomstick in order to fly.
• Foreshadowing: In chapter 2, Kalim comments that Ruggie's magic seems familiar in function after Yuu and Grim deduce that Ruggie is behind the string of incidents in that chapter, and is about to speak of Jamil's skills before Jamil cuts him off. Fast forward to chapter 4, it's revealed that Jamil's unique magic allows him to control people in the same vein as Ruggie's.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • During the opening, if you pause during the split second Azul's eyes widen, you can see a silhouette of his Overblot form.
  • Likewise, if you pause at the shot where Azul's contracts are scattered on a table, you can see what is presumed to be an Embarrassing Old Photo of his chubbier octopus form underneath one of the contracts.
• Gameplay Roulette: While it is at core a character-raising Simulation game, the gameplay can go from Visual Novel, to battle RPGs similar to Fate/Grand Order and Magia Record, to a Rhythm Game. It's hard to pinpoint what Twisted Wonderland is supposed to be genre-wise. And let's not get into the event formats, which can go from being similar to core gameplay to unconventional like Stamp Rallies and even Cooking Simulation.
• Gameplay and Story Integration:
  • Azul's P.E. uniform story has him mention to Jamil that he isn't that good at flying with the broom yet because he had only just gotten used to walking on land during his first year in Night Raven College. Sure enough, if Azul and Jade are brought to flying lessons in-game, they can't fly as well as the other students and have nervous expressions on their faces. Even Floyd, the most athletic of the Octavinelle trio, had a nervous expression as he returns to land after achieving a "Perfect" score.
    • On the opposite end, students who are known to be athletic would fly higher than most others, and if they get a perfect 3 stars, they'll zip around the sky before returning to the ground.
  • If left on idle, each student had their own unique animations during lessons, be it History Class, Flying Class, or Alchemy and reflects on their personality or history. For an example, picking Lilia for a class has Lilia being accompanied by bats (Either as help for Flying classes or the bats popping up once in a while in History class). Ace, for another, will often be seen playing his magical pen around by putting it on top of his nose while in History class.
  • Vil's Dormitory Outfit SSR has the Curse effect on his magic, similar to his Unique Magic.
  • In the duration the "Land of Scalding Sands Al'aleab Naria" event is running, there is an in-game purchase of Stamina refill items along with a lamp that does... virtually nothing beyond being an item to commemorate having done the event itself. Jamil's Yasamina Silk SSR Personal story then reveals that Grim got scammed by a Snake Oil Salesman into believing that he was selling the actual Genie Lamp to Grim until Jamil uncovered the seller's scam and that the Genie Lamp itself is a fake Replica. However, Grim still wanted the lamp even after Jamil exposed the lie (And not wanting to make Grim sad over it), so Jamil bought it for Grim's sake after much haggling. Hence, explaining why the item existed and does nothing at the moment.
  • In "Vargas Camp ~Happenings Return~", the second "Vargas Camp" event, Grim notes that the tasks given to the Culture club students are easier than the tasks that those in the Sports club are doing in the first iteration of "Vargas Camp". In a similar fashion, the story-relevant battles are relatively easier than the previous events battles, including the boss fights with Vargas and Crewel.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: On the other hand, when fighting other playable characters in battle stages, players can still have them on your team even though they're your opponent. If taken further, players can have five of the same character fight against himself.
  • During certain chapters, even if you do win against the opponent in battle mode, once the story resumes said opponent would have won anyway.
• The Ghost: The fourth-year Night Raven College students that are mentioned but have yet to make an onscreen appearance. According to Crowley, they fled throughout the country to work on their thesis and research their own magic specialties. They are said return to the academy for the Inter-high cultural festival in Chapter 5 of the main story.
• Good Colors, Evil Colors: By default, the colors associated with Night Raven College are black and deep purples due to it being an academy attended by "villains". In contrast, Royal Sword Academy students have primarily white uniforms.
• Grey-and-Gray Morality: Almost none of the cast so far has been introduced as particularly good or bad. At least one major character from each of the seven dorms of Night Raven College has dirtied their hands for the sake of a goal or done something that could be seen as morally dubious, but their actions do not reflect the dorm or said character as a whole. In addition, many nominally 'good' characters (particularly Grim and Ace) are just as flawed and often have self-serving reasons for stopping the Arc Villain of the moment (at least in the early main story).
• "Groundhog Day" Loop: "Scary Monsters ~Endless Halloween Night~" involves the whole cast being stuck on October 31st and those who had received a Halloween card in 2020 going missing along with Yuu, Grim, and a good majority of the student body, and they all have to fix what caused time to stop or they will not be able to see the arrival of November 1st.
• Guardian Entity: All Overblotted characters are protected by a massive being that resembles the character they're twisted from, albeit with a leaking ink glass in place of a head. One can only shudder to think who the monster faced in the prologue was, other than being twisted from a Dwarf.
• Guyliner: The world of Twisted Wonderland appears to take no issue with men wearing makeup.
  • Heavy black eyeliner appears to be part of NRC's formal dress code, as every character can be seen wearing visibly thicker eyeliner than usual when dressed in their ceremonial robes.
  • Everyone appears to wear color-coded eyeliner with their dorm outfits to varying degrees of thickness. Riddle, Vil, Malleus and Lilia add eyeshadow on top of that.
  • Averted in Idia's case. It appears that Idia is wearing make-up, but the official Magical Archives guidebook has confirmed that that's simply how he looks.
• Halloween Episode: The first Halloween event in 2020, Scary Monsters, has the dorms representing different stylized monsters through their costumes.
  • Heartslabyul: Skeletons
  • Savanaclaw: Pirate
  • Octavinelle: Mummy
  • Scarabia: Wolf Man
  • Pomefiore: Vampire
  • Ignihyde: Pumpkin Knight
  • Diasomnia: Dragon^note The characters specifically describe them as being dressed as Ryuu, a type of eastern dragon.
• Held Back in School: Crowley threatens to hold the entire student body back a year during the Fairy Gala event, in a last ditch attempt to get the dorm heads to retrieve the gem that the fairies stole.
• Historical Hero Upgrade: Downplayed; the Great Seven are all Disney villains, but when Ace gives exposition on who they were in the prologue, he doesn't mention their more heinous actions, downplays them significantly, or focuses on the more admirable traits that led to those actions (admiring the Queen of Hearts for being a strong leader, for example). In addition, since Twisted Wonderland is in another world, it's unknown if the Great Seven committed the same acts as their original counterparts.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: The Action Prologue that players participate in after choosing a starter character has the participating characters losing regardless of the chosen starter for that very same battle.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: Chapter 7 has Yuu, Grim, Silver and Sebek end up seeing Lilia's dream taking place centuries before the present, during the time when the war between the Fae and humans are at it's peak. The story reveals the tragedy of how Malleus was orphaned due to humanity's greed and how the Dawn Knight, despite being a good person, is stuck in Conflicting Loyalty and can only help by aiding Lilia and the unhatched Malleus escape from Henrique's grasp without compromising himself.
• Improbable Power Discrepancy: While the Housewardens, particularly Malleus, tend to be much more skilled and powerful than the rest of the characters, the strength of the cards are roughly balanced with each other based on the rarity, for understandable reasons.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: In the Ghost Marriage event, Eliza's five-hundred-year quest to marry her ideal prince is unconditionally supported by Chubby, her best friend who adores her and wants to see her happy, even if it isn't with him. She finally realises and returns his affections after he's nearly destroyed defending her wedding to Idia, and the event ends with Eliza and Chubby leaving for their honeymoon.
• Jerkass Has a Point:This comes up a lot throughout the game. Many times the characters have genuine reasons to refuse an altruistic act. They just come off as much too harsh given the situation.
• Labcoat of Science and Medicine: The students' Alchemy class outfits, complete with protective goggles.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: The English launch released the 30 second CM trailer for Scarabia in commemoration for the relase of Chapter 4 in the English launch with said CM trailer showing a glimpse of Jamil's overblotted form at the last seconds. Thus, the trailer spoils the fact that Jamil is the Arc Villain of Scarabia right from the get go.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Much of Idia's dialogue Lampshades common Video Game Tropes and even those of Gacha Games in particular, especially in Chapter 6, in which the kidnapped students, Rook, Epel, and Yuu enter a literal dungeon full of monsters that is presented like a video game In-Universe, with Ortho being the Final Boss who controls the whole dungeon and sets traps and puzzles for the "players." For the actual players, Chapter 6 is notoriously one of the most challenging parts of the main story so far.
• Legend Fades to Myth: Implied Trope. Multiple details throughout the story and events hint that the people of Twisted Wonderland are working with incomplete information regarding the stories of the Great Seven.
• Little Bit Beastly: The titular universe is home to a variety of races, including this trope of humanoids with animalistic traits (often referred to in the dialogue as "beastmen"). Some blatant examples of this trope are the Savanaclaw members, with Leona being a member of his country's royal family.
• Logical Weakness: In "Glorious Masquerade", after Malleus casted magic in his angry outburst at Rollo for playing him like fiddle, the casts discovered the weakness that the parasitic Crimson Flowers had when the flowers slither towards Malleus when he unleashed his magic and soon withered. In spite of it's dangerous nature to magicians, the Crimson Flowers are ultimately still plants that are prone to overnourishment like any other normal plant, with Malleus overloading the magic flowers with too much magic by chance when he lashed out with magic in his anger before hand.
• Magic Mirror: Mirrors are a recurring theme in Twisted Wonderland.
  • The most prominent example is the Dark Mirror, which resembles the magic mirror from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and assigns dormitories to new students based on the 'shape of their souls'.
  • Besides the Dark Mirror, the Mirror Chamber also houses the mirror portals which lead to the dorms and other locations.
• Magic Wand: Each character (save for Grim) has a color-coded magic pen that functions like a magic wand and are used in battle. There are also magic staves, though apparently the pens and staves aren't required to use magic. Instead of magic wand, Grim is given a collar accessory due to having paws that would make holding a pen difficult.
• The Main Characters Do Everything: Yuu, Ace, Deuce and Grim are usually the ones that help solve the problems of each dorm in the main story with the assistance of the previous overblot victims and their respective dorm members. The only exception so far has been Chapter 4, as Deuce and Ace are Put on a Bus for a majority of the story and only return after the problem has been dealt with. In their place, the Octavinelle trio step up to the plate to solve the Scarabia dorm issue after their curiousity toward the Kalim situation is drawn. And it turns out that it’s a good thing that they did decide to help as Yuu and Grim prove to be helpless on their own.
• Mood Whiplash: Midway in "Glorious Masquerade", in the middle of the night, the Bell of Salvation rings and crimson flowers started to bloom all over the city, sucking magical energy dry out of the magicians in the vicinity. Rollo then revealed his true colors and plan to eradicate magic in Twisted Wonderland for good and then sent the Night Raven College students out of the way.
• Mr. Exposition: In the early chapters of the main story, Crowley, Ace and Cater explain how the Night Raven dorm and Twisted Wonderland work to Yuu and Grim. In event stories, this role shifts between the characters.
• Muggle in Mage Custody: The Player Character is a non-magical being Trapped in Another World, who is granted shelter in a Wizarding School.

Tropes N to Z

• No Hugging, No Kissing:
  • Played straight. Not only is there a rare lack of romantic tension between the cast and the Player Character, none of the characters are shown or said to have any romantic interests onscreen or otherwise, despite a few characters showing an interest in the opposite sex (or same sex in Cater and more ambiguously Rook's case). It comes off as quite odd considering the cast consists entirely of attractive guys. This is humorously lampshaded in Ghost Marriage when Deuce says that the reason they have such a tough time talking to girls (Sans the casts own mother figures and those who are known to have sisters) is because they're attending an all boys school. Ace's SSR Groom-For-A-Day personal story also sheds a light on the lack of romance for a few characters when they talk about the experiences they've had with romance in the past, or the lack of it:
    • Ace explains that he had a girlfriend in middle school but eventually grew bored of their lack of shared interests which lead to him ghosting her. Since then he had adopted a Bros Before Hoes mentality and wants to focus on getting better at magic rather than love, though the other character believe he's being dishonest and tease him in reference to the The Reason You Suck speech he'd delivered to Eliza about love just minutes earlier.
    • Jack's reason for not having a girlfriend is because Wolf Beastmen in general all chose to only cherish one person for the rest of their lives. When the time comes for him to fall in love, he also wants to spend the rest of his life with that person.
    • Deuce explains he's never had a girlfriend due to everyone, boys included (If they're not among Deuce's old delinquent friends), being too afraid to approach him during his delinquent days. The only woman he could talk to without hesitation is his mother.
    • As for Epel and Sebek, Epel's hometown lacked people his age, and he only finally met people his age when he is enrolled to Night Raven College. Sebek claims that he would rather focus on protecting Malleus than think about romance.
  • This is averted with Lilia, who is explicitly said to have crushed on Mellenoar, Malleus's mother in the past, and also had what could be described as a Pseudo-Romantic Friendship with her husband, Leverne and says that Lilia had loved them both.
• Nominal Hero: Almost every single character to a degree. Most of the cast rarely want to engage in heroic acts unless it benefits them in some way or if they’re being forced into it by Crowley.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: In contrast to the previous events where an antagonizing factor is in play, "Glorious Masquerade" introduces Rollo who schemes to rid Twisted Wonderland of magic completely and cultivated parasitic flowers that are basically a Kriptonyte to magicians as the flowers needed magic to nourish and further exposure of being drained by the flowers will render the person magicless for good, and said flowers were exterminated to extinction for a good reason due to its parasitic nature. But Rollo not only manage to find some surviving seeds and cultivated them so they would grow in a fast pace all over the city, he managed to take down Malleus a peg with these flowers. Safe to say, Rollo is the first introduced event antagonist who proves to be as threatening as the Overblots in the main story chapters and set up the Cerebus Syndrome and Mood Whiplash for the climax of "Glorious Masquerade".
• Offing the Annoyance: Played for Laughs and while it doesn’t actually happen, many of the characters attempt to invoke this when the visitors of Night Raven begin to cause destruction to the property (Knocking over the great seven statues to pose where they once stood, stealing things, picking magical flowers), physically harassing them and otherwise overstaying their welcome for the sake of MagiCam in the Halloween event story.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: After the events of the prologue, Ace lampshades the fact that the infamy from the chandelier incident is going to follow the quartet involved until graduation.
• Once per Episode: From Chapter 2 onwards, whichever dorm was featured in the previous chapter will help Yuu and Grim out in the current conflict, allowing for additional character development for said dorm after their initial conflict is resolved.
• One-Gender School: The game takes place in an all-male magic academy, Night Raven College. Royal Sword Academy is implied to be an all-male school as well, if Ruggie and Leona’s lines in Chapter 3, part 15 are any indication.
  Ruggie: It’s a school full of pompous, pampered little princes.
• Our Mermaids Are Different:
  • Azul, Floyd and Jade are mostly shown in their Apparently Human Merfolk appearances as part of their human guise, but have another form when submerged underwater. Azul's true form is octopus-based, while the twins' eel forms lean noticeably further towards the fish end of the spectrum (webbed fingers, vertical tail flukes, fins on the back of their forearms and in place of their ears, green colouration and markings extending past the hips to the torso and face) than the background merfolk depicted in the game, who all possess typical Disney merfolk anatomy.
  • While visiting the Coral Sea, Ace strikes up conversation with a security guard, asking him about merfolk culture and common myths. The guard tells him that the stereotype of all merfolk having wonderful singing voices is false, and that some of his old classmates were actually tone deaf.
• Reference Overdosed: Twisted Wonderland is filled with references, homages and shout-outs to other Disney properties as well as the original fairy tales those movies are based off of.
• Retcon: In the Japanese version at least. In the first iteration of Fairy Gala, the fashion theme was initially "Exotic", but the rerun later changes this to "Fabulous".
• Rival Dojos: Night Raven College has a rivalry with the more heroic Royal Sword Academy spanning hundreds of years. According to Trey, Night Raven College has been on a hundred-year losing streak against Royal Sword Academy, and every time someone from Royal Sword Academy appears, Night Raven College students immediately turn hostile. When Che'nya, Riddle and Trey's Childhood Friend, suddenly shows up at the second Unbirthday Party, the rest of Heartslabyul dorm chase him out angrily upon finding out that he's a student of Royal Sword Academy.
• Running Gag: The story has several.
  • Characters thinking Grim is a raccoon dog or a cat upon first meeting him, which he constantly denies.
  • Malleus never being invited to anything.
  • Silver falling asleep while performing various tasks.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: The official English translation has some characters, such as Riddle and Crowley, talk in this fashion. The official English site for Twisted Wonderland tends to do this as well, albeit to a lesser extent.
  Crowley: Truly, my magnanimity is boundless.
• Ship Tease: Averted and then Downplayed for the most part. Despite being a joseimuke targeted game, for the most part the characters are fairly neutral toward the player, and in some voice lines outright declare that they view the player as a friend. Malleus's dialogue toward the player is perhaps the closest the game has gotten to this because they don't fear him like others do. The main story of the game also slightly supports this from Yuu's side when Yuu invites Malleus to watch the VDC in the Pomefiore chapter and even late into it, when Yuu finally knew who he is, they still call Malleus by the In-Series Nickname they gave him and overall, doesn't seem to care about the fact that he's one of the strongest magician nor do they care that Malleus is a future king.
• Shown Their Work: Leona's SR Ceremonial Robes personal story reveals that the women back at Afterglow Savannah, his homeland, are stronger than the men and that women make up the roster for the guards in the palace. This aligns with real life, as female lions are the ones tasked with hunting, usually in cooperative groups, and protecting the young.
• Show Within a Show: Stage in Playful Land introduces "Wish upon a Star", which is the story of Pinocchio in all but name that is popular among the population of Twisted Wonderland as a famed children's story.
• Stop Poking Me!: Characters can have this reaction if you continue to tap on them on the home screen. However, depending on the cards, some characters can also have a positive reaction (e.g. Floyd warning Yuu off from poking him too much in his school uniform card but taking it as an invitation to play tag with them in his gym uniform), or comment on something they are currently wearing (e.g. Kalim talking about the insect ornaments' significance in his Fairy Gala couture card). Some lines of dialogue imply you’re doing more than just poking, such as tugging on their sleeves or Silver implying that you’re outright hitting him to wake him up.
• Story Arc: The main scenario follows this mixed with a bit of a Monster of the Week formula as Yuu and company go to different dormitories to solve problems caused by the respective dorm leaders. Each “arc” is separated by chapters and are around thirty parts long before that storyline ends and they move on to the next dorm. These story arcs also serve as introductions to the rest of the Ensemble Cast.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • In "Scary Monsters", a picture of Grim and the three Ramshackle ghost grew viral and led to a huge surge of visitors coming for Night Raven College's Halloween Week compared to the previous year. While it is good on paper, this also led to Night Raven College being swarmed with visitors who are rude and invade the personal space of some of the students, refusing to listen to warnings from them and acting entitled as visitors that add to the count of making Halloween Week successful, and culminate to those very visitors vandalizing the Great Seven statues in the Main Street just for the sake of getting their "Likes" on Magicam. Like any other popular attraction spot, being popular also mean that there will also be rude visitors coming to visit and bring harm.
  • Also in "Scary Monsters", most of the cast had to be refrained from hurting these very visitors terribly. Not only will someone be gravely injured, the victims will also make a claim that will potentially harm the school's reputation (And in extension, the students). For this reason, most of them had to subtly use magic so it wouldn't be seen as a blatant unprovoked assault in their effort to bring them away from the school's vicinity.
  • In the "Fairy Gala" event, the characters assume that Malleus would have an easy time infiltrating the venue for the spring welcoming celebration because he's a fairy like them. Malleus explains that him being a fairy doesn't mean that the fairies would welcome him, as they'd become fearful and scatter if he set foot inside. Being the same as someone doesn't mean that prejudices won't still exist, even if the differences between those being discriminated against and the discriminators are few. Lilia reinforces this idea in the "Wish Upon A Star" event when he explains that even fairies have difficulties joining hands and smiling despite them all being the same species.
  • Another one from "Fairy Gala", the characters assume that all fairies are the same, despite the visible differences between the type of fairy Malleus is and the fairies that are inside the venue. Malleus explains that there are many types of fairies and he's merely one type of them.
  • In the Main scenario itself, even after overblotting, the victims don't change right ahead. Change doesn't come so suddenly, just like how it takes even years for people to recover from trauma, even with the aid of therapy.
  • As hilarious as "Ghost Marriage" of an event was, the cast provided a realistic nuance to the situation they are in and each cast had different views on how to approach romance and showing reasons to why hoping for a Disney-esque Fairy Tale ending is impossible in real life. Had someone pulled something similar to Eliza in reality, many would have been confused to why you started singing out of the blue like Leona did when Eliza started singing. And like Idia, they would be repulsed at how forceful Eliza was in her pursuit of romance and pushing herself to Idia's direction. Expecting a perfect relationship from the get go and believing your partner to be just as infallible as you are can potentially result in a failed and/or a toxic relationship. At one point in the event, Trey points this out by saying the following:
    Trey: I’m just a high school boy. What do you expect from me?
  • The reason Malleus couldn't join to help the others in "Ghost Marriage" is because as a royal, proposals, even to a dead princess, isn't to be taken lightly. Unlike Leona, who is the second prince of Afterglow Savannah royalty, Malleus had already been stated to be the heir to succeed the throne of his kingdom. So unlike the royal members shown in the Disney movies a majority of the cast are twisted from, nobility and royal duties are taken far seriously in Twisted Wonderland, instead of having the status treated as something fancy to flaunt about carelessly or just a simple title. Because of this, Malleus can't just choose a random person regardless of their status to marry into the family or make a proposal, even to a dead ghost princess, lightly. There are massive political factions at large in the world of Twisted Wonderland, along with the serious political agreements and deals that had to be made for a member of the royal and/or noble family to get engaged with someone.
  • While to many it's a point of contention, Yuu having to stay on the backburner in comparison to many a protagonist in their position is actually pretty realistic. Yuu is a completely powerless human who was suddenly transported into an unknown world full of powerful mages, and the facility they are now residing in just so happens to be full of mages who are highly temperamental and prone to amoral behavior and explicitly subscribes to a "the weak must follow the strong" mentality. Not only does this make Yuu severely limited in how much they can take control of the story or even defend themselves, the environment of Night Raven College might further warn Yuu to not stir the waters unless it's absolutely necessary (such as Ch. 3).
    • Many games of this nature also tends to focus on the MC developing relationships (platonic or romantic) with a number of the characters, but aside from (currently) Grim, the A-Deuce duo and the first years, and possibly Malleus Yuu's status among the cast seems to be more along the lines of indifference and friendly acquaintanceship. While Yuu is on relatively good terms with the cast and has received respect for their involvement in the story, at the end of the day most of the cast are far more interested in focusing on their studies and working to achieve their own goals rather than becoming drawn to the magicless newcomer who is not even a part of their world. This is also why only a handful of people are actually told about the fact that Yuu is actually from a whole other world^noteAs of Chapter 6 of the main story, only Grim, the Heartslabyul group and Crowley knew of Yuu's status as an otherwordly resident while everyone else are Locked Out of the Loop in regards to Yuu's true origins beyond the fact that they are magicless.
    • Similarly, many Player Characters of the same fantasy mobile game genre at least had some aid and bonuses to help them in safely going through their stories along with some level of Plot Armor via Unique Protagonist Asset. Yuu, on the other hand, received none of the perks a regular Isekai and/or fantasy genre protagonist would have and remains a normal magicless human. ^noteThey may have Grim as their Non-Human Sidekick and the Ghost Camera, but the Ghost Camera isn't meant for combat and Grim doesn't always obey Yuu right away. Just because you are the Player Character doesn't mean that you'd automatically receive the benefits of an Unique Protagonist Asset from the get go, at least not without some divine intervention.
  • Chapter 7 reveals that Idia is temporarily banned from returning home to S.T.Y.X because his actions nearly caused the organization to be exposed to the public. Added onto how the River Lethe system is completely destroyed with little chances of recovery, the Charon squad's attack on Night Raven College are recorded by witness students and remained undeleted as a result. Idia is effectively placed on temporary exile along with Ortho as a result due to Idia overblotting nearly destroying The Masquerade that S.T.Y.X has been keeping up for centuries.
• Take That!: "Scary Monsters" introduced a group of guests who are rude, entitled and overstayed their welcome even after breaking many of the rules and ignoring the warnings of the students, and later dubbed as "Magicam Monsters" by Cater. They might as well be a jab on Avid Social Media users who similarly act like these group of guests just for the sake of getting some clout and inconveniencing others in the process.
• Technician Versus Performer: A variant happens in chapter 5, with the participating NRC group as the technicians and Neige as the performer. A good portion of the participating members had to learn dancing and singing from scratch with Vil overlooking the practice and diet in order to ensure a high quality performance when the day comes ^ExplanationThere's Truth in Television behind this, as voice actors and singers are not allowed to have anything fried or sweet as they could potentially decrease their capability to sing or perform well in voice acting. Neige, on the other hand, while he wasn't interested in winning and his performance with the Seven Dwarves are out of sync at times, the passion in them, added onto Neige's innate charisma won a good portion of the audience over.
• Temporary Online Content: While event exclusive cards are a given, the "United Exam" events has the staff's voice lines as one of unlockable items that players can get with their test coins. However, because they are only available to be bought during the period the "United Exams" are running and a few days after it ends, not collecting the staff's unlockable voice lines during the period renders them as permanently missed as they will be replaced with the newly featured staff voice lines at the next period the "United Exam" events will run. The fifth iteration of the "United Exam" events rectified this by circling the voices of the staff around every four United Exams, and adds a new voice line pack for said staff along with allowing the old voices to be bought for those who didn't get to buy them the first time.
• The Smurfette Principle: Played with. Despite the cast being otherwise entirely male, one-off female characters have shown up in a few events with varying degrees of importance and characterization.
  • In Fairy Gala, the Queen Fairy is explicitly described to be female. While she isn’t given much to do, she serves as an unintentional obstacle in retrieving the weather changing jewel needed to regulate the seasons within the school, as it was used as a decoration for her tiara.
  • In Scary Monsters, unseen female spectators^*None of the visiting spectators are given Live2D sprites but they have dialogue. show up for the Halloween event at the college. A girl mob boss shows up alongside two male ones in some of the story battles.
  • Ghost Marriage introduced Eliza who had the biggest role for a female character thus far. She was the de facto antagonist for the event, as the featured cast members were charged with saving Idia from marrying her and being spirited away into the afterlife. It proved to be no easy task.
  • Al'Ab Nariya of the Scalding Sands also introduced Najma Viper, Jamil's younger sister. This reveal took the entire fandom by storm, momentarily making the fans forget that Jamil's supposed to be the main star of this event, as everyone was at awe of Najma's introduction, characterization, and overall charisma. Naturally, she's a fan favorite up until now.
  • Ever since Najma debutted, stories and events finally showed a physical look to some of the casts relatives, such as Mrs Shroud (Idia's mother) and Melenoar Draconia (Malleus's mother) in Chapter 7, Epel's grandmother, Marja, in the "Harveston's Kelkkarotu" event and Dillah Spade, Deuce's mother in the "White Rabbit Festival" event.
• The Thing That Would Not Leave: A group of Night Raven College visitors, dubbed “Magicamonsters” by Cater, that came to the island the school is built upon after seeing it trending on MagiCam for the schools in-universe Halloween event. They’re rude, stubborn and obnoxious and overstay their welcome fairly quickly. They also refuse to leave when asked to, causing the characters to resort to using magic on them to get them to leave.
• There Are No Therapists: Considering how many characters have serious psychological issues (and the number of times said issues have led to someone Overblotting), you'd think Crowley would have invested in a student counselor or two by now. However, Chapter 6 subverted this revealing that Overblotted victims are usually handled by the local government magic institute or the magic police force. And as Night Raven College still counts as a magic institute, and one of the two magic institute in the isolated Sage Island (The other being Royal Sword Academy), it leaves the two schools the only one able to handle Overblots, as it's mentioned that the school provides counseling for those who overblotted.
• This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: Lampshaded by Kalim in chapter 4 when he reveals that his unique magic is able to rapidly fill a dried-up river that the merfolk in the group can use to hustle back to Scarabia dorm. He quips that normally his powers aren't that useful because everyone has indoor plumbing (which horrifies the business-minded Azul, who sees Madol signs at the mere mention of the words 'unlimited water').
• Title Drop: A given, considering that 'Twisted Wonderland' is the name of the in-game realm as well as the game itself. The most momentous title drop occurs near the end of Chapter 4, during Yuu's interaction with Mickey Mouse through Ramshackle dorm's mirror.
  I'm in...
  Twisted Wonderland...
• Trapped in Another World: The protagonist, Yuu, is transported to the setting of the game through Night Raven College's Dark Mirror and finds themself unable to return to their original world, and enrolls in the college as a student until the headmaster, Dire Crowley, finds a way to send them home.
• Two-Teacher School: Despite how many students are present at the school^*200 new students were being assigned to different dorms at the entrance ceremony. That doesn't account for the fourth-year students, or the students that had already been assigned to dorms previously., there are only three known teachers; Mozus Trein, the history teacher; Divus Crewel, the alchemy teacher; and Ashton Vargas, the flight teacher. Other known staff members are Dire Crowley, who acts as the schools headmaster and Sam, who runs the in-school shop. There are no other teachers mentioned or on-screen.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: The battle against Overblot!Riddle is fairly difficult, requiring players to stack up on attack and health stats early-on in the game.
• Weather-Control Machine: The various climates in both the college campus proper and the various dorms are maintained by the school fairies. The climates go haywire after the magic stone that feeds them power is stolen in the Fairy Gala event, leading to a serious case of Weather Dissonance (such as heavy snow falling in Scarabia).
• Wham Episode:
  • While Wham Shots are plenty, the beginning of Chapter 6 is packed with this, and is the Whammiest Chapter so far.
    • After an Overblotted victim recovers, the blot that left had to go somewhere. For powerful magicians, said blot are crystallized, and blot crystallization is an even rarer occurrence than Overblot itself. The black rocks that Grim had been eating? They're crystallized blot.
    • After speaking to Crowley about what had been happening, Crowley orders that Grim be captured and potentially expelled due to having harm Yuu in his blot induced mania. No longer treating him as an animal companion, but a monster on the loose. Crowley even worries that "a certain group" may even come to handle him. Grim is later captured, having managed to gain his sanity when Ortho and Idia captured him, but is unable to comprehend why he is being captured and has no recollection of ever hurting Yuu, and had since been kept in custody of the staff and prevented from seeing Yuu at all.
    • A few days after the VDC was over, the group that Crowley mentioned cryptically invaded Night Raven College and brought all of the Overblotted victims away. Even Crowley willingly surrendered capture so as long as none of the other students are harmed. For a brief moment throughout all of this, Yuu, Ace and Deuce saw Grim trapped in a cage, and they can only helplessly watch as Grim was brought away.
    • The group that brought Crowley and the overblotted victims away? They're part of the organization S.T.Y.X and are part of division "Charon", a specialized ops force that are usually meant to combat a case where it's impossible to bring the Overblotted victim back to normal. The Overblotted victims are captured not only for their recent cases, but because Grim ate the crystallized blot left from their Overblots. Oh, it also turns out that Idia is part of this organization as well, having been made the acting captain of S.T.Y.X while Mr. and Mrs. Shroud, the actual captains who sent Charon after them, are away.
  • Chapter 7 part 2 starts out as a nice but bittersweet farewell party for Lilia... but then Malleus arrived and he decided that the "gift" he'll cast for Lilia's party is to put the whole island to sleep so they can live in the sweet happy dreams that Malleus weaved for them all. Malleus overblotted in the process and this marks the first case where the overblot occurs early in the scenario.
• Wham Shot:
  • The first takes place in Chapter 3 after meeting with Malleus post-battle with Overblot!Azul—Yuu discovers that the mirror is glowing, and as they have a look, someone seems to be knocking on it from the inside, followed by a very familiar voice:
    Mickey Mouse: ... one, ... there? By the way, who are you?
  • The second is the last scene of chapter 3, as Kalim opens his eyes to reveal his Mind-Control Eyes, followed by a shot of Jamil snickering to himself.
  • In the middle of Chapter 5, we see the full appearance of Mickey himself.
  • Pomefiore ends with Yuu finding Grim at the colosseum, digging the floor to find the black stone left from Vil's overblot. Absolutely manic at the taste and complete with having Glowing Eyes of Doom. And it ends with Grim attacking Yuu in his belief that they are here to steal the stone from him before shifting towards the preview of Ignihyde.
    Grim: tHIs StOnE... iS mInEEeEeE!!!
  • Chapter 7 has the Dramatic Unmask of the Dawn Knight as the group travel through Lilia's dream and they saw a face identical to Silver's, finally revealing who Silver's biological parents are.
• What If?: Fairy Gala If is an alternate story to how Fairy Gala could have gone with a different cast and different factors in the story. To note:
  • In Fairy Gala If, the stolen magic crystal is used for the Fairy Queen's staff instead of the Fairy Queen's crown.
  • The fashion theme of the event for Fairy Gala If is "Evolution", resulting in the different choice of casts as unlike the first Fairy Gala, none of the dorm leaders are a fit to the theme that Leona suggests getting the first year students to be the ones to infiltrate the event with the reasoning that as students with much to learn and growing to do, they fit well with the theme of "Evolution" better.
  • Since the Dorm Leaders already came up with a plan on how to take the stolen magic crystal back, Crowley didn't have to call in Yuu and Grim to help out the Fairy Gala venue infiltrators like the original Fairy Gala iteration did. Instead, Ace calls for Yuu and Grim along with Epel and Deuce to help Ortho when he's stuck in his performance for the runway.
  • In the original iteration, as Leona was able to distract the fairies before they could find Ruggie, Yuu and Grim whose fairy dusts are washed off from the botanical garden's water sprinkler system and get them to escape, this allows the fairies to continue celebrating Fairy Gala without issue and the other fairies none the wiser. In Fairy Gala If, however, Jack sneezed at the last minute and busts the team's disguises to the fairies in full view due to said sneeze blowing off the fairy dusts and the projection from Ortho's own holographic feature. This prompts Silver to intervene and speak on behalf of the group in order to salvage the situation.
• Wizarding School: Night Raven College and Royal Sword Academy, both prestigious magic schools.
• World of Technicolor Hair: Multiple characters have hair colors that span an entire rainbow, from red (Riddle), blue (Deuce and the Shroud brothers), green (Trey and Sebek), teal (the Leech brothers) and purple (Chenya), none of which is treated as anything special or bizarre in the setting.

Tropes in this manga include:

Episode of Heartslabyul

• Adaptation Distillation:
  • According to Yana Toboso, the manga will tackle the Heartslabyul arc a bit differently from how it’s handled in the game. In Chapter 3, Ace only explains the Queen of Hearts' origins to Yuuken and not the remaining six founders like in the game.
  • In the game, it was ambiguous whether or not Riddle collared Yuu for standing up to him since they didn’t have any dialogues about being collared. In Chapter 12, Riddle collared Yuuken even though he’s a normal human who can’t use magic.
• Adaptational Early Appearance:
  • In the game, Cater and Trey make their official appearance in Episode 1. In Episode of Heartslabyul, Cater and Trey appear during Grim's rampage in the manga version of the Prologue.
  • In the game, Deuce makes his official appearance in Prologue 12. In Episode of Heartslabyul, he appears with Ace to meet Yuuken, where Ace answers Yuuken's question about the Queen of Hearts in the manga version of the Prologue.
• Adaptation Expansion:
  • The manga expands on what Yuuken's life was like and how he was transported to Twisted Wonderland. He was the vice captain of the Kendo club and a second year at his school.
  • The final chapter ending adds Riddle and Yuuken start all over and re-introduction themselves in a friendly matter, followed by Grim stealing a tart and Ace and Deuce having to chase after him, and Chenya continuing to watch his friends from afar, smiling.
• Cell Phones Are Useless: In Episode of Heartslabyul, it's been confirmed that electronic devices can't reach other worlds in Twisted Wonderland. When Yuuken tries to call one of his club members with his cellphone, but he can't get a signal since he's not in his original world.
• Compressed Adaptation:
  • The manga compresses most of the chapters from the Prologue that aren't important to the storyline (Chapter 6, 11-12) and only focuses on the main scenes and plots involving the Heartslabyul students.
  • The final chapter compresses the Savanaclaw preview..
• Early-Bird Cameo:
  • In the game, Jade and Floyd are fully introduced in Chapter 2, but in Episode of Heartslabyul of Chapter 2, they appear early. But they aren't fully introduced yet, and they can seen hanging out with Azul after the ceremony.
  • In the game, Ortho is fully introduced in Chapter 5, but in Episode of Heartslabyul of Chapter 8, he appears early. He makes a brief appearance with his brother Idia when Trey mentions their dorm.
• Transformation Sequence: In the manga, it adds a dark transformation sequence where Riddle transforms into his Overblot form.

Episode of Savanaclaw

• Alternate Continuity: Despite being a sequel to the previous manga, the first chapter confirms it is not connected to the Episode of Heartslabyul since Yuuken is replaced with a new Yuu named Yuuka.
• Adaptation Deviation: In a similar case to Yuuken, Yuuka also deviated from the canonical Yuu of the games.
  • Yuuka does Judo and is also The Ace of her school's Judo club contrasting Yuu's Non-Action Guy status in the games. How she is brought to Twisted Wonderland is also shown.
  • As well, like Yuuken and Yuuya before her, her gender isn't ambiguous, unlike the player character from the game.
• Adaptation Expansion:
  • The manga expands on what Yuuka's life was like and how she was transported to Twisted Wonderland. She was a member of the Judo club and a second year at her school.
• Breaking Old Trends: Yuuka is the first "Yuu" who is depicted as a female among the adaptations of Twisted Wonderland, although she's shown to be a Bifauxnen and Wholesome Crossdresser so as not to break the story.

Episode of Octavinelle

• Adaptation Expansion: This chapter reveals how students access the Octavinelle dorm which takes them in a giant bubble. In the game, it wasn't shown how to gain access and it was implied to be originally dorm with ocean scenery.
• X-Ray Sparks: In Chapter 9, Ace, Deuce, Jack, Grim, and Yuuta are fully shown in their skeletons after being electrocuted for touching a contract.

Tropes in this novel include:

Episode 1: Shinku no Bо̄kun

• Translator Microbes: In the novel, it is revealed everyone in Twisted Wonderland can use their magic to communicate with each other.

---