Visual Novel / Baldr Sky

Clockwise from the top: Makoto Minazuki, Aki Nishino, Nanoha Wakakusa, Rain Kirishima, Chinatsu Nagisa, Sora Minazuki

"The story moves violently in the interstice of the memory."

Baldr Sky is a cyberpunk Visual Novel that takes place in a world where nanotechnology has advanced greatly and that the newer generation people have brain chips, making it easy for them to connect to the virtual space net. Baldr Sky is part of Team Baldrhead’s long running series (along with Baldr Force, Baldr Bullet and Baldr Fist). The visual novel contains elements of action gameplay with Kou piloting his simulacrum to fight. Unlike the majority of visual novels, every single character in the story is fully voiced.

Kou Kadokura wakes up and finds himself in a cyberspace battlefield controlling a giant simulacrum. He faintly recalls going to sleep in his bed at the school dormitory, but now swarms of viruses are attacking him. He later realizes that he had just suffered a brain injury and lost his memories of the past few years. His subordinate Rain Kirishima informs him that he is a lieutenant in a mercenary group and that they were chasing after the Drexler Organization, a group believed to be responsible for the tragedy "Gray Christmas" that changed Kou’s life.

The first game is named Baldr Sky: "Lost Memory" Dive1 and the second one is named Baldr Sky "Recordare" Dive2. The two games together form the complete story. If both games are installed at the same time, Dive2 will carry over saved data and also play the routes in Dive1. There is also a fandisk named Baldr Sky DiveX "DreamWorld", which contains several short side stories including the period that Kou spent training as a mercenary. The fandisk also includes different battle modes where you can use any mecha that appears in the story.

Both Dive1 and Dive2 were released as a single game in English through Steam in December 2019.

---

Baldr Sky provides examples of:

• Accidental Hero: Amazingly Gilbert ends up saving Kou's mind in Sora's route thanks to his bottomless hatred for him. The same ends up holding true for his comrades as well.

• Action Girl: Most of the female cast.
  • Rain Kirishima as the partner of Kou, and during her days in Hosho.
  • Chinatsu Nagisa for being physically fit for Simulacrums, and later being a soldier of GOAT.
  • Makoto Minazuki, who mastered Simulacrums due to her Cyberbrain Syndrome, and later as the priestess of Dominion.
  • Shizel Steinbrecher as a mercenary working for Fenrir, led by Kou's father, Eiji Kadokura.
  • Sora Minazuki in World 0, in which the roles were reversed: Kou melted after the leak of Assembler, which prompted Sora to train as a mercenary.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Eve, the most powerful biological AI ever created by man, is suspected by anti-IA people to be responsible for Gray Christmas. On the other hand, Baldr, the most powerful mechanical AI exisiting, caused people connecting to it to turn into Father Gregory. However, it's not because of Baldr itself, but Neunzehn connecting to it long before the events of the game. In the end, the trope is subverted.
• Amnesiac Hero: Kou wakes up in the middle of a battle against some viruses, with no memory of his life prior to it. After getting treatment from the doctor Noi, he starts to remembers bits of his student days, at varying degrees depending of the routes. In Makoto and Sora's routes however, he retains his memories, accelerating the plot overall.
• Apocalypse How: Regional, Societal Disruption: Assembler has caused an entire region and its surroundings to be destroyed, and changed people's opinions towards AI and nanomachines.
  • In Sora's route it is revealed that a Planetary Species Extinction event has occurred after the Assembler outflow with only plants and insects alive on the Earth's surface as well as various Ai Terminals. All other life has been annihilated.
• Armor-Piercing Response: When Kou asks Aki what she though he would do if he got mad after she told him the truth of her actions with the Baldr System and what happened to Kurihara as a result, she simply answers that she believed he would "walk away without saying a word and never contact her". Suffice to say, this hit Kou where it hurts.
• Artificial Human: Cloning people is stated at one point to be possible in Baldr Sky, but very costly and limited to a few selected people. Chinatsu has eventually her body cloned in her Good Ending.
• Artificial Intelligence: A major theme in the story with an pro-AI faction and anti-AI faction having a conflict with each other.
• Artificial Limbs: Chinatsu lost most of her body during Gray Christmas.
• Attempted Rape: Gilbert and his group are guilty of trying to rape the heroine in several routes. It’s up to Kou to stop him before he succeeds.
  • When Rain was caught by Gilbert in her route, she was planning to kill herself but Kou persuades her to wait for her rescue.
  • Gibert’s group breaks into Noi’s clinic and was going to rape Nanoha, Makoto helps Kou in defeating Gilberto and Noi releases her killer robot on the group.
  • Aki was kidnapped by Gilbert so she tries mentally escaping into the virtual net as Gilberto hunts for her. Kou saves Aki in cyberspace and Mohawk saves her in the physical world.
  • Rain also experiences this right after Gray Christmas but she kills her assaulters.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: What the Ark Project is said to be by giving up the human body and living as wired ghosts.
• After the End: Sora’s route takes place in a world where Neunzehn succeeds in wiping out humanity and the remaining people left are wired ghosts in cyberspace.
• Babies Ever After: In Sora’s ending, World 1 to 5 ends with Kou and each heroine of that route at least going to have a child. World 4 specifically shows that Kou and Aki named the baby girl Sora.
• Badass Native: Mohawk is a Native American, and working under Fenrir, the badass moniker comes with the job. Turns out to be a bit more complex. In actuality he is a designer child based on the genetic information of a long extinct tribe brought to life by a nationalist group. His genes were also altered and was raised in order to be the perfect representation of the idealized Native American warrior.
• Battle in the Center of the Mind: Kou has one where he fights against a polluted copy of himself.
• Bar Brawl: Chinatsu and Rain ends up kicking up a brawl between them and some GU soldiers. Kou eventually joins in as well. Ends up finally settling the animosity between them.

• Big Bad: Albeit there are several varying antagonists depending on the routes, the most prevalent is Father Gregory.Then, it's revealed in Makoto and Sora's route that he was merely a ghost of Neunzehn.
• Big Damn Heroes: In Makoto's route, Kou and Aki are getting overrun by viruses at the sea of Es when all of a sudden Fenrir shows up turning the whole thing into a giant furball.

• Bittersweet Ending: The majority of the endings are this, even including the character’s "good" endings.
  • Rain’s ending has Kou unknowingly killing Nanoha in stopping Assembler from activating. In the Ghost ending, Kou spends the rest of his life in self-delusion.
  • Nanoha’s ending has Assembler being stopped but Chinatsu dying in an attempted kamikaze attack. In the "Dreamland" ending, Nanoha lost her body and the world war that has erupted has prevented Kou from finding a cloning facility to create a new body for Nanoha.
  • Chinatsu’s ending has Masa dying and Ark Project occurring in order to save everyone. In the Entwined ending, Kou also lost most of his body.
  • Aki’s ending has Gungnir stopped but Chinatsu is at least mentally destroyed from being connected to Tranquilizer. Dominion’s plan failed and Makoto also dies from the fight with Kou. In the Ark ending, Kou and Aki are living as wired ghosts.
  • Even Sora’s ending has humanity being revived through nanomachines but only a number of people who became wired ghosts (along with Kou and Sora) from Neunzehn’s destruction of the world can be saved. Over tens of thousands years has also passed since then so the world has changed by a lot.
• Bizarrchitecture: Aki’s personal room in cyberspace is surreal with things such as melting clocks.
• Black Eyes of Crazy: While calling her crazy is a bit much, Seira for some reason have black sclera and has an air of detachment from everything around her, a result of just how closely she operates with AI's.
• Body Horror: Kou and Nanoha in Embrace ending. They are melted by Assembler, but are kept in a undying state after getting hit by Gungnir, and eventually lose their sense of self.
• Brain Uploading: The Project Ark is eventually revealed to be a huge exodus to the virtual world, triggered by Ark if humanity is doomed. And later in Makoto's route, it's revealed Neunzehn also uploaded himself into the Baldr system, which eventually caused the events of the series.
• Brain in a Jar: In order to save Nanoha in the Dreamland ending, only her brain was preserved in a metal box connected to a virtual reality world.
• Broken Bird: Chinatsu became bitter after Gray Christmas, believing that Kurihara betrayed her and that the AI faction is hiding the truth from everyone.
• The Cameo: DiveX has cameo characters for battle including Kageaki Minato from Full Metal Daemon Muramasa and Yukie Mayuzumi from Majikoi! Love Me Seriously!.
• Can't Live Without You: Kuu is connected to Sora and when Sora died, Kuu was supposed to disappear also. This confused Kou since Agent possesses the same ID signature as Kuu.
• Chainsaw Good:
  • Father Gregory can transform his hands into chainsaws in cyberspace and his simulacrum carries this ability.
  • The "Iron-file" virus uses it.
  • Kou may use chainsaw as an attack if he has the weapon and limit break.
  • In DiveX, Chris also uses them.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Kou’s NPC simulacrum was used to send a help signal against Dominion in Aki’s route. This same character is also the protagonist in Sora’s route.
• Chick Magnet: Kou. He already had six girls in love with him during his student days.
• Childhood Friends: Kou and Nanoha were friends ever since childhood, because his father was always drowned in work and he always spent time with her family instead.
• Climactic Battle Resurrection: Occurs in Sora’s route where practically everyone supposedly dies but comes back at the end.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Aki's mind sure doesn't seem to work like everyone else and ends up creating some really bizarre things. Get's played for drama in her own route where it is revealed that she had to fight against the memories of Kou's mother due to her being Yae's clone. She becomes quite detached from reality as a result.
• Clothing Damage: Due to an incorrect setting, after Kou beats Rain and Chinatsu in a simulacrum fight in Sora's Route, their clothes are almost completely destroyed. If Kou loses the battle, the same thing happens to him.

• Control Freak: Isao is obsessed with controlling things around him and he fears what he can't control. And if he can't control something he will go out of his way to subjugate it. Suffice to say, Rain hates him for this attitude.
• Cuteness Proximity: Rain can’t stop herself when she sees the kittens in Aki’s cyberspace. When the others find her in this state, she quickly blames that she was under a mental attack from the I.C.E.
• Cybernetics Eat Your Soul:
  • Averted with Shizel as her becoming a cyborg and being closer to machines actually brought her peace of mind.
  • Chinatsu doesn’t consider herself to be human any longer and instead to be a zombie.
  • Neunzehn is revealed to be this in Makoto and Sora's routes when the cast learn he's half-machine, half-human. As such, he doesn't hold humanity in high regard and is more familiar with machines.
• Cyberpunk: Baldr Sky depicts the events of a highly futuristic society where artificial intelligence and virtual reality became part of people's daily lives, and how they react accordingly.
• Cyberspace: The Internet in the game is a tangible, visible entity where people can walk in and move, with entire cities and countries built from the ground up.
• Death by Origin Story: Sora’s death on Gray Christmas was what triggers Kou to become a mercenary.
• Delayed Reaction:
  • Sora had one when she first met Kuu. It took her a while to realize that Kuu has the same appearance as her.
  • In Aki's route, Kou also fails to recognize his own NPC simulacrum.
• Den of Iniquity: Kou has to infiltrate a rather unpleasant sex club used by the cities elites, filled with all kinds of unsavory people and acts, in order to try and get some dirt on Anan.
• Deus est Machina: A.I. Eve and the collective A.I. from multiple worlds, who consider Neunzehn’s actions through the multiverse to be a threat, so it create "Singularity" moments across different worlds to interfere with him. Kou’s NPC simulacrum in Sora’s route was recreated by the A.I.s for killing Neunzehn.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight:
  • Makoto has a vision this happening in her route when she is killed by Kou.
  • Nanoha in Sora’s route. She gets better at the end.
• Dirty Coward: Gilberto. Other characters have mentioned that he is best at running away.
• Distant Finale: Clearing Sora's route with some additional plugins will reveal that untold centuries or even millenniums in the future, everyone managed to use Assembler to reconstruct their bodies and upload their minds to them allowing humanity to walk upon the Earth once again.
• Ditzy Genius: Aki. She's pretty much the smartest of the students, yet is incredibly lazy and unable to do mundane tasks and often Kou or Nanoha to help her.
• Diving Save: In Sora’s route, Makoto pushes Kou out of Tranquilizer’s Wave-Motion Gun and gets hit instead.
• Doomed Hometown: On Gray Christmas, Gungrir destroyed Kou’s hometown and school in order to stop Assembler’s damage from spreading.
• Doppelgänger Attack:
  • In the last route, Father Gregory’s simulacrum can make two doppelgangers in battle. Killing a fake will just cause him to resurrect it at full health.
  • Neunzehn also can create one in the final battle. The real one can also quickly turn invisible to heal himself so that the player might not realize that there is a fake.
• Downer Ending
  • Nanoha’s "Embrace" ending has Assembler activating and destroying humanity.
  • Chinatsu’s "Departure" ending has the world war occurring with Chinatsu reduced to a child mentality and Kou losing his body.
  • Aki’s "Nirvana" ending has Kou and Aki never meeting again, while Kou spends the rest of his life fighting against a mentally broken Chinatsu linked to Tranquilizer.
  • Makoto’s "Object Loss" ending has Kou dying followed by Assembler activating with people becoming wired ghosts. Makoto loses her memories of Kou’s existence.

• Dwindling Party: The end of Sora's route involves one Heroic Sacrifice after another as each and everyone of Kou's friends starts dying off to try and get him to reach Baldr. Though as it turns out, it is a good thing that Death Is Cheap for digital beings.
• Electronic Telepathy: Since all characters have a brain chip implanted in their body, they can communicate long distances without anyone listening to them.
• Embarrassing Cover Up: Kou’s excuse to Nanoha about his investigation of an illegal NPC sex club is that he is a healthy man that has needs.
• The End of the World as We Know It: Sora's route happens after a failed attempt to stop Assembler from spreading and long after the Project Ark was enacted.
• Enemy-Detecting Radar: There's a map on the upper right corner that shows where all the enemies are.
• Enemy Mine: The crew form an uneasy ceasefire with Gilbert out of all people until they can manage some way to fix their current predicament. Though neither side trusts the other as far as they can throw them.
• External Combustion: Nanoha’s parents died from a car bomb, courtesy of Naoki Kurihara, possessed by Neunzehn.
• Evil Mentor: Kurihara is this to Kou as he was in charge of Assembler when Gray Christmas occurs and somehow was able to escape despite being in center of the incident. He was good all along but was being controlled by Neunzehn.
• Evolving Attack: Attacking gives the specific weapon some EXP and that makes it better as it use less of the Overheating Meter. Use some weapons enough times also unlocks even better attacks to use.
• The Fake Cutie: Dr Noi really likes to abuse her youthful appearance to fool others into thinking she is far younger than she actually is, often for some less than savory purposes.
• Faking the Dead: Rain fakes Kou’s and her own death since the entire mercenary group they were part of was wiped out.
• Flashback: A main part of the story is told in flashbacks. Since Kou is recovering his memories, he has random flashbacks of when he was still in school.
• Fountain of Youth: Sort of. After the events of her route, Chinatsu decides to have her body cloned and brain transplanted. However she refused to stay in the vat until her body had fully matured resulting in her now looking much younger than she originally did. And given that she and Kou are a couple at this point, it is quite the source for misunderstandings.
• Fragile Flower: Nanoha tends to cry at every emotional moment.
• Future Food Is Artificial: Almost all of the food that is available to the characters is artificial in some way due to just how messed up their world has become.
• Gambit Pileup: Part of the narrative's complexity comes from there just being so many factions interlocking with their own agendas and with numerous members within those factions having additional goals on top of all those already present.
• Gamer Chick: Seira, who can micromanage hundreds of world civilizations at once.
• Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: Rain delivers this to Kou when he enters a Heroic BSoD from Father Gregory’s Mind Rape and whenever he gives up on living.
• Genki Girl: Chinatsu and Sora, the go-getter girls of the group.
• Girlish Pigtails: Sora and by extension Kuu.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: While Gilbert was never especially stable to begin with he really goes off the deep end after learning the truth that he and everyone else have become Virtual Ghosts and that the real world has been destroyed.
• Grey Goo: The general fear of Assembler is that it will run out of control and reduce everything down to nothing but sludge. In Makoto's route it happens on a smaller scale to the entire city with the only survivors being those of GOAT and Ark thanks to their reinforced buildings.
• Harder Than Hard:The game has a difficulty level going from Very Easy to Very Hard. This can simply be adjusted in the configuration menu between each battle.
  • In DiveX, there is the "Hell System" mode where the first 79 stages has a Rank Inflation that goes from F to SSS. Stage 80 has a difficulty rank of INFINITY.
• Heroic BSoD: Kou suffered from one when he remembers Gray Christmas and that he saw Sora slowly being dissolved by Assembler.
• He Who Must Not Be Seen: Neunzehn who is actually a being with multiple brains connected together into one and then mechanically enhanced.
• Hidden Depths: Underneath her rather stoic and professional façade, Rain hides a lot of emotional pain relating to her mother having joined Dominion as well as her rather strained relationship with her father. She also apparently ends up hiding her nature as quite the smug troll as evident with her interactions with Chinatsu.
• Hold the Line: Several times in the story but especially in the mind hack moments where Kou has to prevent an invasion by a swarm of viruses from destroying several layers of protective gates.
• Hologram: Appears frequently along with Holographic Terminal.
  • Kou used to have a hologram picture of Sora in his room.
  • Seira projects herself a few times as a hologram.
• Humongous Mecha: The large simulacra and viruses in cyberspace are treated as these.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: Justified since all weapons are simply programs.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: For all his big talk, Gilbert is really just an insecure little boy on the inside who is severely over-compensating for his own faults to the point that he is blind to them.
• Innocently Insensitive: Due to his amnesia, Kou ends up hurting a lot of his former friends without meaning to which leads to a lot of friction between them. This is made evident in Makoto's route where he maintains most of his memories and manages to salvage things between everyone, even the horribly jaded Chinatsu.

• Interrupted Suicide:
  • Isao in Makoto’s route. Makoto just wants some information from him though, but he eventually refrains from killing himself.
  • Rain in Sora’s route. Rain believed that the Kou she was seeing was a trick by Father Gregory, so she planned on killing herself when she was defeated.
  • Kou and Sora in the "Eternal" ending. Sora was dying and Kou was going to disappear since the link he has with the other worlds' Kou ends when he kills Neunzehn. They decide to die together using a grenade. Kuu stops them both and they find another solution.
• It's All My Fault
  • Rain blames herself for Sora’s death since she believes that Sora went to Isao to request for her school transfer. This caused Sora to be near Assembler when Gray Christmas occurs.
  • Aki feels responsible for connecting Kurihara to the Baldr system.
  • Makoto also blames herself for pulling a prank on Sora that delayed her from taking a train to leave the location of Assembler. She also feels responsible for not stopping Kurihara.
• Joke Character: Since DiveX allows the player to use every single mecha that appears in the game, that includes all the weak viruses. The weakest joke mecha is that one Nanoha uses, which is really slow and two of the her three normal "attacks" involves her tripping on the ground.
• Katanas Are Just Better: Kurihara dual wields it, both in this simulacrum and in real world. Kou also has a move where he uses iaido and in Dive X a force crash version of it.
• Kill Sat: Gungnir, a satellite programmed to shoot every lethal threat from outer space, witht the most famous exemple being Assembler.
• Kill the Ones You Love: Rain's route has Kou unknowingly killing Nanoha, the carrier of Assembler, by complete accident, thinking it was Gilbert.
• Knowledge Broker: Eddie, the acquaintance of Kou at the beginning of the story, albeit he's always killed at the beginning of the story before he can tell Kou what's going on, except in Makoto's Route where he still has his memories, and get the info early.
• Lethal Chef: Despite having good social skills, Sora is utterly horrible at cooking, and doesn't often listen to her sister's suggestions. Rain is also as bad as her. Makoto's food meanwhile is compared to something designed by H. R. Giger but apparently tastes perfectly fine.
• Limit Break: All characters and bosses have multiple limit breaks. In Dive1, they can charge up one limit break bar. In Dive2, there are two bars so the characters can use two limit breaks consecutively. Kou has over a dozen of them.
• Logic Bomb: Can prove to be fatal in cyberspace. Kou’s brain chip was damaged from one and that caused to him to suffer amnesia. Aki also used a Logic Bomb based on Gödel's incompleteness theorems to disable Baldr.
• Lotus-Eater Machine: Dominion believes that the entire world is a fake and that they have to return back to the real world.

• Mad Scientist:

• Neunzehn is known as the greatest mad scientist of the century, despite being responsible for huge technology advancements such as AI or nanomachines.

• Manipulative Bastard: Director Isao is very good a sweettalk and twisting the truth in order to sway others to his side, all to satisfy his paranoia and obsessive nature.
• Matchmaker Crush: Sora originally tried to get Kou and Rain together, but she and Kou fell in love instead, albeit it was caused by the feedback of Kuu at first.
• Matrix Raining Code: Used in the game’s opening and ending credit.

• Meido: All the heroines (except Aki) wear one a scene in DiveX.
• Memento MacGuffin:
  • The pendant Rain has is from Kou as an apology for breaking Rain’s gift pendant. In virtual space, the pendant acts as a self destruct mechanism.
  • The pendant Sora got from Kou was originally suppose to be Rain’s gift to Kou. The pendant appears in the hands of Agent and acts as a quantum dice that detects what world it she is in.
• Miko: Dominion has a priestess that directly acts under Father Gregory.
• Mind Rape: Father Gregory uses the characters most emotional moments against them.
  • For Kou, he uses NPCs of Sora.
  • For Rain, he uses NPC of her mother.
  • Gregory also uses a mental trap program "Enchanter" that shows the person the illusion of their worst nightmares.
• Multinational Team: The mercenary group Fenrir is composed by quite the wide range of individuals from all over the world. Of the named ones, apart from the Japanese Eiji, there is the Native American Mohawk and the South American Shizel.
• Multiple Endings: There are different endings depending on choices Kou makes, on time it takes for specific battle and the victory/defeat outcome of major boss fight. The titles of the good endings are the heroine’s name.
  • Rain has a good ending and "Ghost" ending that depends on the choice of whether Kou struggles to survive or gives up trying to escape.
  • Nanoha has a time specified battle when Kou has to rush to save Nanoha. Taking more than three minutes in the battle will lock out the good ending and lead to the "Dreamland" ending. Taking more than five minutes causes a Nonstandard Game Over. Finally, losing the final battle gives the "Embrace" ending.
  • Chinatsu has one divergence path choice that leads to "Departure" ending if Kou doesn’t believe in Agent’s actions. Choosing the other path leads to the good ending or "Connected Machine" ending depending of if Kou wins the last battle.
  • Aki has a good, "Ark" and "Nirvana" ending. Good ending occurs if Kou fights a time specific battle as fast as possible before GOAT prevents them from gathering information and an important choice of accepting Aki as she is. Otherwise it leads to the "Ark" ending. "Nirvana" ending occurs if Kou loses to Tranquilizer or Isao.
  • Makoto only has a good ending and "Object Lost" ending that depend on the final battle.
  • Sora only has one ending but she has an extended "Eternal" ending that shows more on the multiple worlds ending on a happier note.
• The Multiverse: Neunzehn and Sora have been struggling against each other in influencing parallel worlds. Originally, all worlds where Kou survives Gray Christmas end with Assembler activating and killing humanity. So Sora tries to send instructions to a revived Kuu who takes the name of Agent to save Kou. Worlds 1 to 5 (the other heroines’ routes) are results of the battle. In Sora’s route, Kou becomes a being similar to Agent in sending messages to himself in other worlds to make a better ending.

• Nanomachines: The technology is advanced enough to that it can accomplish things ranging from human cloning and slow body repairing.

• Neural Implanting: Having a brain chip in the human body allows characters to transfer documents and programs. There are even virtual drugs that simulate the effects of being drunk and being in love.
• Never Gets Drunk: Thanks to her cyborg body, Chinatsu can chug down bottles of vodka without any trouble. Or so she says at least.
• New Game Plus: Beating one route carries over all the weapons levels, force and plug-ins that the player acquired.
• Non-Player Character
  • Kuu is a NPC that took the appearance of Sora. Her data was later used by Ark to mass produce other NPCs.
  • There is a NPC that took Kou’s appearance. Aki had to freeze him up because he was trying to hit on random girls.
• No Social Skills: Aki, big time. She cannot talk easily to people and doesn't know how real life works despite being a genius in programming.
• Kissing Cousins: Kou and Aki are second cousins and can be a potential couple. It gets weirder when it's revealed she's actually a clone made from the cells of Kou's mother, Seira Tachibana and their father.
• No Warping Zone: In cyberspace, characters can instantly "move" to any location they want unless there is a restriction placed in that area.
• Not So Above It All: Seira is for the most part almost completely unflappable and has a constant air of artificiality and detachment around her, and yet at the end of Aki's route where she get's herself a new body she is shown to be not that different from Aki. The shear absurdity of her behavior compared to her usual demeanor is enough to send both Kou and Aki into uncontrollable laughter.
• The Nudifier: Father Gregory drops Aki into a mysterious pool of liquid that dissolves clothing.
• Pistol-Whipping: Mohawk does a pistol whip with a bazooka out of all things, using it as a bat.

• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Eiji takes down an entire platoon during the illegal NPC sex club raid.
• Older Than They Look: None of the characters look any older than they did in the flashback of during the school days but the worst cases are Noi and Makoto.
• Ominous Pipe Organ: Used for Father Gregory and Dominion.
• Omnicidal Maniac: Neunzehn was tasked in the past to create world peace and save the planet from destruction, and eventually came to the conclusion that killing mankind is the best and fastest way to do so.
• One-Man Army:
  • Eiji Kadokura, as seen in Aki's route when he personally destroys numerous simlacrums to rescue his son.
  • Kou also qualifies as he personally takes down numerous viruses by himself in several battles.
• One Game for the Price of Two: Dive1 contains the first three routes of the story, while Dive2 contains the last three. To be fair, Dive1 and Dive2 are very long and each takes more time to complete than a typical visual novel.
• Our Souls Are Different: Humans have wired ghosts that separate them from NPC in cyberspace.
• Overheating: Kou’s simulacrum can continue to use different weapons in a combo until his Overheat Meter is filled up. Then he has to wait for the meter to fall back to zero. Limit Breaks can go over the meter and there is one limit break that allows Kou to continue using weapons even pass the meter.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: It is clearly obvious that Makoto is Dominion’s miko, but Kou doesn’t figure it out until her route when she is unmasked.
• Parental Abandonment:
  • Kou’s father stopped visiting him after his mother died.
  • Rain thought that her mother was killed by her father Isao and their relation has been strained ever since. Isao was willing to let Rain die just to succeed in invading Ark.
  • Nanoha’s parents died from a car bomb.
• Parental Incest: While Aki is not a clone of Kou’s mother, Kou slept with Aki believing that she was one.
• Piggyback Cute:
  • Kou gave one to Rain (whom he thought was Sora) when she injured her leg after Gray Christmas. He couldn’t see so Rain used neurojack for him to look through her eyes.
  • In Rain’s good ending, their positions are reversed where Kou injured his legs and Rain used his eyes to see.
  • In DiveX, Kou gives one to Rain in World 7, after Rain was injured from Chris’ collapsing lair.
• Playful Hacker: Rain is a great hacker, but Makoto is even better as she can easily break in any location due to her Electronic Brain Syndrome.
• Point Build System: The "Force" credits that you get from battle lets you buy weapons and plug-ins such as higher health.
• Power Trio: Kou, Chinatsu and Masa in the flashbacks. They participated as a team in a simulacrum tournament.
• Pretty Little Headshots: The US Assembly member will die from this kind of headshot even if Kou saves him from the mind hack.
• Psychic Link:
  • Kou and his NPC simulacrum have a link that that he used in Aki’s route when Dominion blocked his Electronic Telepathy. Kou made his NPC sent the distress signal instead.
  • In DiveX, it shows that Sora also has this link with Kuu when she can feel where Kuu exactly is.
• The Quiet One: Makoto rarely talks in full sentences, if at all, and the times she does talk she does it with a very quiet voice. Apparently she has trouble putting her thoughts into words. Online however this changes drastically.

• Reflective Eyes: In Sora’s route, it is used in one of Kou’s dream to show that perspective was from Sora and not Kou.

• Replacement Goldfish:
  • After Gray Christmas, Kou suffers a head injury, causing him to be unable to use his eyes and ears. He mistook Rain for Sora when Rain used neurojack to help him.
  • In "Ghost" ending, Kou again believes that Rain is Sora and forgets about Rain’s existence. Rain goes along with this because she loves him so much that she just wants to be with him.
• Retraux: Aki’s personal level in cyberspace resembles old 8-bit games.
• The Reveal: It is eventually revealed that Father Gregory is actually an alternate digital version of Kurihara.
• Running Gag: The VN has a recurring joke with people not knowing that the door to the dorm is manual rather than automatic, leading them to walk face first into it.

• Schrödinger's Butterfly: Mentioned a few times in the story. Several places in the virtual net resemble real life so much that some characters question if the their world is real. In Sora's Route, it took Kou a while to realize that he was trapped in cyberspace.
• Sealed with a Kiss:
  • Rain’s "Ghost" ending, doubling up as a sad reveal that the Sora Kou sees is Rain.
  • Kou and Sora in the "Eternal" end.
• Second Love: Since Kou’s first true love is Sora, any other girl he ends up with is this.
• Sense Loss Sadness: As a result of her cyborg body, Chinatsu have had most of her senses dulled or outright missing. That is until it is revealed that it is not a fault of her body at all as it should have all the functions of a normal human body, but rather is some kind of mix between a psychological issue and some kind of hidden fault of her original body, i.e. her brain.
• Sexbot: The pirate NPCs that were illegally created from Kuu’s data. Therefore this annoys Kou since they look like Sora.
• Short-Range Long-Range Weapon: Mohawk at one point decides to use a bazooka against Gilbert at point blank range. The later is quick to point out that using it at such close range will most likely kill both him and the nearby Aki as well. Mohawk simply responds with that he doesn't care. He then proceeds to smack Gilbert with it like a bat before revealing that it was out of ammo.

• Sinister Minister: Father Gregory, the main villain of the game, is a priest attempting to destroy the world in order to reach the "true world", believing the current one to be fake, and consider the AI as gods.
• Sinister Scythe:
  • The "Sentence" virus use one.
  • One of Kou’s weapon and limit break.
  • Sora's and Kuu's simulacra use a bow-like weapon that also acts as a scythe.
• Skippable Boss: All battles can be skipped in the game.
• Sleepy Head: Aki, who can fall asleep while even standing.
• Spider Tank: Tranquilizer
• Spin Attack:
  • The "Clown" virus uses this attack.
  • Kou has a limit break where he swings around a laser sword.
• Spit Take: In Sora's route Noi gives Kou some food and a beer after he wakes up from retrieving data about Neunzehn, Siera's hologram suddenly shows up right before him, the surprise of which causes him to spit beer all over.
• Split Personality: Kurihara and Makoto in Sora's route show signs of this but it they were really being controlled by Neunzehn.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: Sora believes this is the relationship she has with Kou. In the worlds that Kou doesn’t die on Gray Christmas, she dies instead. She tried searching for a world where she and Kou are together, but did not find one. It’s not until World 7 and the Eternal ending that this becomes subverted.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: Agent, who randomly appears and disappears in front of Kou.
• Subordinate Excuse: Rain is following Kou because she loves him.
• Super-Strength: Thanks to her cyborg body Chinatsu is effortlessly able to do things such as lifting entire cars.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: After the rather young looking Nanoha learns that the much older looking Rain is just one year older than her, it leads to the following line after the latter asks what's wrong:
  "N-No! Not at all! Certainly not experiencing crushing despair over the difference in out assets despite us only being one year apart! No ma'am!"
• Sympathy for the Devil: In Sora's route when Kou tells Gilbert the truth about their situation, he can't help but feel bad when even such an absolute bastard such as him is so distraught by their current state.
• Taking the Bullet: In DiveX, Marcus who was mercenary in Kou’s group took the hit for Kou and died instead. This caused Kou to realize he was too soft in battle and he stopped showing mercy.
• Talking to Themself: In Sora’s route, almost everyone thought Kou was talking to himself but he was actually talking to Kuu.
• Techno Wizard: The appropriately named Wizards, people with extraordinary computer skills that seems to work near literal magic, Aki being one such Wizard.
• Time Stands Still: Occurs several times on the virtual net where every single AI freezes up.
• Title Drop: "Baldr Sky" is the keyword that Kurihara used for the nanomachine capsule that he gave to Kou. When the keyword is stated, it provides data about the restoration program for the Assembler.
• These Hands Have Killed: In DiveX, Kou was depressed since the first person he ever killed was a girl younger than him.
• Three-Quarters View: The gameplay part of the visual novel is from this perspective.
• Timed Mission: Some missions have a hidden timer that might trigger a game over if the limit is passed. Taking too long on specific important battles will result in the normal ending instead of the good ending for Nanoha’s and Aki’s route.
• Tomato in the Mirror: Kou in Sora’s route is actually the NPC that Aki created and doesn’t have a wired ghost. The real Kou died on Gray Christmas in that world.
• Tomato Surprise: Sora was the brain unit that controls Neunzehn’s emotions and therefore in a sense, is Neunzehn. It is not possible to separate to her from Neunzehn since they merged completely.
• Two Siblings In One: Sora and Kuu merged into one in "Eternal" end since Sora’s body could not be recovered from being part of Neunzehn.
• Undercover as Lovers: Depending on route, Kou goes undercover with Rain, Chinatsu or Aki during the illegal NPC sex club to infiltrate without being noticed.
• Ungrateful Bastard: It turns out that the reason Gilbert hates Kou so much was due to him saving Gilbert from a couple of thugs during Gray Christmas.
• The Virus: Neunzehn transferred himself into Baldr system and people like Kurihara who link up with his data will become possessed by him and might transform into Father Gregory.
• Visions of Another Self: "Howlings" are visions of other worlds in the form of dreams.
• Wave-Motion Gun: Tranquilizer’s signature attack, which can One-Hit Kill.
• What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: Neunzehn was created for controlling the economy and fighting wars. He logically could not comprehend feelings like love so he rejected the brain unit that governs it. He later regrets his action and wants to connect back to that brain.
• Why Am I Ticking?: Nanoha is the carrier of Assembler in most routes while Anan is in Makoto's.
• With Us or Against Us: Director Isao has a really bad case of "You're either with us or you're a filthy alienist" with a stubborn refusal to see shades of grey. A lot of the problems he ends up causing is due to this mindset.
• Your Mind Makes It Real: Dying in cyberspace without a limiter will most likely cause brain death from the feedback.

---