Visual Novel / Marco & the Galaxy Dragon

"Have you ever heard of the galaxy dragon?"

— Arco

Marco & the Galaxy Dragon is a comedic Visual Novel developed by TOKYOTOON and published by ShiraVN (a branch of Shiravune, the publishing studio that brought the Utawarerumono series to Steam) and HOBIBOX. It was released on February 28 2020.

Young piano prodigy Maruko Onda rushes back to her dressing room after a successful recital, eager to celebrate with her mother. But when she arrives, she finds the room in shambles and a pair of strange clowns holding guns to her mother’s head. They’ve come to take Maruko away, and the last thing she remembers is one of them firing at her mother.

Ten years later, Marco—the galaxy’s greatest treasure-hunter—steals the legendary Lizard Stone from under the nose of El Skeleton, a minion of the evil Astaroth. But rather than bring the Stone to her boss, Dosgoro, she decides to sell it for herself. She heads to Earth, accompanied by Arco the shapeshifting Galaxy Dragon and their pet Emergency Rations.

Selling the Stone isn’t the only reason they’re going to Earth, however. Marco wants to seek out a new treasure: the identity of the mother she no longer remembers.

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Marco & The Galaxy Dragon contains examples of:

• 10-Minute Retirement: Toward the end of the game, Gargouille gives up on opposing Astaroth after he defeats her and maims Marco. She’s eventually convinced to come back, but Marco had to wear her down by chasing her across three continents and beating her in a fight first.
• Academy of Adventure: Isezaki Academy teaches students to protect the town from mutants and alien invaders with lethal force, in addition to more mundane subjects.
• Alien Blood: Many alien characters bleed green or purple blood. Averted with Gargouille’s people and Astaroth’s clan, who have red blood.
• An Arm and a Leg:
  • When Gargouille first meets Dosgoro, she slices off his left arm to show him she means business. He’s sporting a cybernetic replacement by his next appearance.
  • Much later on, Astaroth rips Marco’s right arm off. Fortunately, Pandagraph is able to reattach the arm and save her life with a risky surgical procedure.
• Ancestral Weapon: Gargouille wields Coelacanth, a golden broadsword that’s been passed down in her family for generations.
• And the Adventure Continues: The game ends with Marco, having defeated Astaroth and reconnected with her family, returning to the stars to look for new treasures. She also wants to find Arco, who took away Marco’s memory of their time together before disappearing into a black hole.
• Animesque: Inverted in the case of the animated segments, as they use the cartoony Thin-Line Animation style, which became more common in most western cartoons from 2010 onward. Averted with the Visual Novel segments themselves though, as they instead use the typical modern Anime artstyle and is also a Japanese work.
• Anthropomorphized Anatomy: At one point Marco and Arco go inside of a Nudo to stop it from swallowing the Earth. They encounter many sentient cells and germs as they travel through the creature’s body, most of which sport ID tags. The one exception, a white blood cell, turns out to be a parasite that was controlling the Nudo from within.
• Art Shift: The animated sequences are drawn in a much simpler, more cartoonish style than the rest of the game’s artwork. Compare Marco as she appears in the VN segments◊ to how she appears in the animated segments.◊
• Artificial Limbs: Dosgoro gets a cybernetic arm to replace the one that Gargouille sliced off. He later upgrades to a gold-plated model, courtesy of Pandagraph.
• Awesome, but Impractical: In one of the animated segments, Hara (Marco’s scooter) gains the ability to fire a powerful laser from his headlight. Unfortunately, firing it even once uses up all the gas in his tank.
• A Child Shall Lead Them: The Mayor of Gold Cord is a young girl.
• Bad Guy Bar: Dosgoro runs his operations out of Club DoSGoRo, a nightclub on the Machine Planet.
• Badass Transplant: After Marco loses an arm to Astaroth, Pandagraph implants one of Arco’s teeth into the severed limb before surgically reattaching it. This causes Marco to gain some of Arco’s powers, letting her go toe-to-toe with Astaroth in the rematch.
• Baseball Episode: At one point, the heroines play a game of baseball for PE. The scene starts out comically with Gargouille’s inability to hit the ball, but it becomes more serious as Marco takes the opportunity to voice her insecurities about approaching her long-lost mother.
• BFS: Gargouille’s sword Coelacanth has a large blade. Yuuko wields a nodachi almost as long as she is tall.
• Big Bad: Astaroth is a Galactic Conqueror and Omnicidal Maniac who needs the Lizard Stone to realize his ambitions, and he is responsible, directly or otherwise, for every bad thing that happens in the plot. Even Marco’s kidnapping was done at his orders.
• Big Ball of Violence: Played for Laughs in one of the animated segments, where a swordfight between Haqua and Gargouille quickly devolves into one of these. Then Haqua notices that Marco is escaping, and promptly detaches her own head, which flies after Marco while her body continues to fight Gargouille. When Gargouille realizes what happened, she detaches her head as well, and the two disembodied heads proceed to chase each other around while their headless bodies keep fighting in the background.
• Big Eater:
  • Arco and Marco both have big appetites and are easily distracted by the thought of food. In Arco’s case, this is because she’s born from a black hole: she’s always hungry, and can clear out all the food on the ship by herself. Other characters quickly figure out that they can bribe Arco—and to a lesser extent, Marco—into doing whatever they want by offering free food.
    Sakurako: Do you get the impression these two will listen to anything if we put something in their mouths?
  • Gargouille is no slouch in this department either. The local news dubs her “Hydration Girl” after she drinks a public fountain dry.
    Gargouille: As someone born on the planet of sand, I really longed for a planet with tasty water. It’s been my dream to one day drink a bottle filled up completely with water. (looking proud of herself) And now that dream has been fulfilled.
• Big Fancy House: The obscenely rich Isezaki sisters live in a sprawling castle.
• Black Eyes of Crazy: Astaroth has blue eyes with black sclera, and he’s a remorseless Galactic Conqueror who regularly slaughters the populations of entire worlds when he isn’t destroying those worlds outright.
• Bland-Name Product: Marco is shown playing a Staingway piano in the very first scene. There’s also Galaxy Auction, which has a cat smile version of the Amazon logo.
• Boxed Crook: Marco, Haqua, and Gargouille are thrown in prison after their three-way brawl causes a lot of property damage. They escape, at which point Tera offers them a deal: enroll as students at Isezaki Academy and defend Gold Cord from alien threats, or go back to prison.
• Breath Weapon: Arco can breathe fire in her dragon form.
• Car Fu: In one of the animated segments, Marco saves a kid from two of El Skeleton’s minions by ramming the minions with her scooter.
• Celestial Body: Arco's true form contains stars and nebulae, and her tiny dragon form's mouth is shown to contain a field of stars at one point. There's also the Lizard Stone, which has a miniature galaxy swirling within its depths.
• Censor Steam: Used in an optional scene set in a public bath.
• Cephalothorax: The sapient cancer cell that Marco and Arco encounter inside the Nudo is basically a small orange ball with arms and legs.
• Chainsaw Good: Some of the loading screens show Rakka with a chainsaw. The Love arc reveals that this is her weapon of choice.
• City Planet: The Machine Planet is implied to be one. Scenes set on the planet showcase a futuristic urban sprawl that stretches as far as the eye can see.
• Combat Sadomasochist: Haqua is a downplayed example. She believes the source of her power comes from bullying others or from being bullied herself, and intentionally tries to antagonize people to power up. When the people of Gold Cord prove too nice to do either, she finds herself stumped.
• Cool Sword: Gargouille’s sword, Coelacanth, is a golden, gem-encrusted BFS that can project a Sword Beam powerful enough to slice a starship in half.
• Cuteness Proximity: Tera reacts to the herd of chibi unicorns at the zoo with a delighted Squee.
• Dada Ad: Tera made (and starred in) a pair of commercials that were supposed to be advertising how her family’s construction company will bring private jets and amusement parks to Gold Cord. What they actually depict is her emerging from a hoard of treasure while boasting about how wealthy she is. Marco is left speechless for a moment after seeing one, leading to this exchange:
  Marco: Was this commercial well received?
  Tera: Look! It’s cute right! And well shot!
• Dem Bones: El Skeleton, as his name implies, is an alien who looks like a skeleton. He has flesh and blood, but will quickly heal from even grievous wounds as long as his bones are intact.
• Depraved Dentist: Pandagraph is an alien war criminal who travels from planet to planet, practicing dentistry as a cover for her illegal medical experiments. She clearly enjoys tormenting her clients, telling them that she’ll break them into smithereens, threatening to kill them if they complain or report her, and sporting a big Slasher Smile as she begins a tooth extraction. Arco is understandably reluctant to let Pandagraph go poking around in her mouth.
• Double Tap: The heroines quickly develop a routine for killing the Love mutants. After Haqua snaps the mutant’s neck and stabs it, Marco administers "gratuitous headshots" to make sure it’s dead.
• The Dreaded: Astaroth is known and feared throughout the galaxy. Collection Joe backs out of a deal to buy the Lizard Stone from Marco after learning that Astaroth’s minions were also after the Stone.
• Dynamic Entry: Sakurako enters the plot by smashing through the front door of the soba restaurant where Ruri works and dragging her off to school.
• Earth-Shattering Kaboom: Astaroth has a ship called the planet crusher. It does exactly what its name implies, closing around a planet like a giant hand and squeezing until it breaks apart.
• Eiffel Tower Effect: Marco’s team visits France, Guiana, and Egypt when they first arrive on Earth. All we see of these locations are the Arc de Triomphe, a tepui, and the Great Sphinx of Giza, respectively.
• Epic Fail: The Mayor attempts to save Tera from the Galaxy Auction aliens with a tank. She didn’t check what was in the barrel, however, so when she gives the order to fire, all that comes out is a flag and some confetti. Her approval rating takes an immediate nosedive, and she retreats.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The Mayor’s actual name is never revealed, and everyone just calls her the Mayor.
• Expy: Several of the characters also draws parallel to those from Guardians of the Galaxy (2014):
  • Marco = Peter Quill. They're both Badass Normal Guile Hero with a mommy issue. They're both also kidnapped by the alien in their childhood and rescued by the space pirates whose leader ended up becoming their adoptive father.
  • Dosgoro = Yondu. They're both leader of the space pirate and also the protagonist adoptive father figure.
  • Gargouille = Gamora. They're both badass Action Girl with a beef against the Big Bad for slaughtering their home planet.
  • Haqua = Nebula. The Dragon for the Big Bad who is secretly planning to stab him in the back.
• Eyeless Face: Arco has no (visible) eyes in her mini-dragon form.
• Faceless Mooks: El Skeleton’s minions wear weird, tubular helmets that conceal their faces.
• The Fagin: Dosgoro bought Marco from a slave market while she was still a child and taught her to steal for him. She’s since become one of the best thieves/treasure hunters in the galaxy.
• Fake Memories: The Love mutants can insert false memories into a person’s mind, making the person think that the mutant is a dear friend. They only give their victims happy memories, however, meaning that the victim can realize they’re being tricked if they can’t dredge up unhappy memories of whoever the mutant is impersonating.
• Fakin' MacGuffin: Marco hands Dosgoro the capsule containing the Lizard Stone as part of a Hostage for MacGuffin situation. When Dosgoro later opens the capsule aboard his spaceship, he’s amused to find a half-eaten croquette inside.
• Fat Bastard: Dosgoro is an overweight alien alligator man, and is also a ruthless criminal who thinks nothing of decapitating his own henchmen and threatening teenagers to get what he wants.
• Feed It a Bomb: Arco’s plan to divert the Nudo away from Earth is to fly inside it with the ship and plant some bombs in its stomach. They’re forced to change plans when a cancer cell knocks the detonator into a pool of stomach acid.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Tera and Rakka, respectively. Tera, the elder sibling, is eccentric, proud, and fond of flaunting her family’s vast wealth. Rakka, the younger sibling, is humble, down-to-earth, and acts as the family’s self-appointed Minister of Finance to keep Tera from blowing their money on questionable purchases from Galaxy Auction.
• Foreshadowing: One of the animated segments opens on a random person with a calendar for a head. This person ends up being quite important a few hours later.
• Fungus Humongous: At one point Arco and Ruri travel to the Energy Planet, where towering mushrooms dominate the landscape.
• Galactic Conqueror: Astaroth is an alien tyrant out to conquer the Milky Way. He regularly destroys planets and commits genocide in pursuit of this goal.
• Gratuitous English: Various characters pepper their spoken Japanese lines with the occasional English word or phrase, like Collection Joe’s "Marco is best-o treasure huntah!" or the Galaxy News anchor ending his broadcasts with "Shee you next Sunday."
• Guile Hero: Marco is an ordinary girl in a galaxy full of superhuman aliens, and while she can hold her own in a fight, she’s more likely to solve her problems through trickery or persuasion.
• Hellish Pupils: Marco’s pupils morph into reptilian slits during her final confrontation with Astaroth.
• Hostage for MacGuffin: At one point, Dosgoro plants bombs throughout Gold Cord and takes Ruri hostage to coerce Marco into giving him the Lizard Stone. When Marco complies, he lets Ruri go, deactivates the bombs, and leaves without further violence. Only later does he learn that Marco tricked him.
• Human Aliens: Haqua, Gargouille and Pandagraph are aliens from three different species, and all three of them look like humans apart from their exotic eye colours.
• Human Traffickers: Large numbers of people were kidnapped by aliens ten years before the start of the game. Some of the victims, like Marco, were sold into slavery, while others were dismembered and sold piece by piece. Astaroth was behind the kidnappings.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: Arco was lonely and miserable before she met Marco. Everyone feared and avoided her because she was a big, scary dragon who frequently ate the very people she was trying to befriend. Marco was the first person who didn’t run away from her, leading Arco to recognize her as a kindred spirit and begin taking care of her.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: When Astaroth deigns to kill his victims personally, he does so by making spikes erupt from the floor to impale them.
• In the Name of the Moon: Gargouille has a little speech that she delivers whenever she’s about to start kicking ass:
  Passing Dubhe, Merak and Phecda. Until it’s bound to Alkaid… Open a hole in the scoop of the Big Dipper. The overflowing sand bites the blood of sacrifice. It shall not give even a single drop of mercy.
• Insectoid Aliens: One of Pandagraph’s clients is an alien that looks like a giant purple mantis.
• Insistent Terminology: Marco prefers the term "treasure hunter" to "thief", though she readily admits that she steals things for a living.
  Marco: If there’s anything you’d like me to swipe, give me a call. That’s the kinda job I do.
  Ruri: You’re a thief?
  Marco: No, no, no. I’m a treasure hunter.
  Ruri: You mean like… an amazing thief?
• Intelligent Gerbil: Several aliens resemble anthropomorphic animals. Dosgoro, who resembles an alligator, and Collection Joe, who resembles a mouse, are the most obvious examples.
• Intelligible Unintelligible: Emergency Rations communicates exclusively through oinks. Marco and Arco have no trouble understanding Emergency Rations despite this.
  Marco: How long before we arrive?
  Emergency Rations: (piloting the ship) Oink, oink.
  Marco: I see. Sooner than I thought.
• It's All About Me: Tera has one hell of an ego. She likens herself to the sun when asked for a self-introduction, made two commercials that exist purely to flaunt her vast wealth, and wants to protect the town of Gold Cord from aliens because an alien once tricked her into buying a worthless rock and called her fat.
  Tera: I’m not so arrogant to think I can protect all of Earth… But I at least want to protect this city! I want to at least protect my hometown! And also make sure I won’t get made fun of on galactic social media!
• Journey to the Center of the Mind: After getting her arm ripped off by Astaroth, Marco retreats into the depths of her subconscious mind. Kurosaki somehow enters her mind to bring Marco up to speed on what’s happening while she’s unconscious, and on what Marco needs to do to stay alive.
• Kinetic Novel: There is exactly one point where players can make a choice, and all that choice affects is whether the next scene—which plays out the same either way—takes place at the beach or in a public bath.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: Haqua is cold and confident the first time she attacks Marco for the Lizard Stone, but when Arco reveals her true Galaxy Dragon form, that confidence evaporates and she beats a hasty retreat. She doesn’t try to steal the Stone again until a situation arises where Arco is out of commission and can’t come to Marco’s aid.
• Lack of Empathy: By her own admission, Rakka can understand the emotions of others but cannot feel them herself. She expresses jealousy toward Tera for being able to feel such things, and while she clearly cares for her sister on some level she cannot empathize with Tera’s wish to bring their dead mother back to life with the Lizard Stone.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Marco’s inability to remember her mother is not simply a case of her being too young when she was kidnapped. It’s because Arco ate her memories of her mother, and did the same with Mitsuko’s memories of Marco.
• Last of His Kind: Astaroth exterminates the inhabitants of Gal near the start of the game. Gargouille is the only survivor, and she lives only because Haqua went behind her father’s back to spare her.
• Lizard Folk: Dosgoro looks like an anthropomorphic alligator.
• Made a Slave: Marco, along with many other children from Earth, was kidnapped by aliens and sold into slavery. It’s later revealed that Astaroth orchestrated the kidnappings, with the intention of having Marco become Haqua’s personal slave.
• Make an Example of Them: Tera defaulted on her payments to Galaxy Auction, so the aliens have her crucified in a public place. They were going to execute her via guillotine as well, but Marco showed up at the last minute to talk them out of it.
• Meaningful Name: Marco named Emergency Rations that because she intended to fatten him up and eat him if she ever ran out of food. She occasionally makes jokes about eating him when she’s hungry, much to his dismay.
• Medium Awareness: One of the animated segments has Arco go up against El Skeleton and his goons in the style of a Beat 'em Up game. Arco exploits this to One-Hit KO several Mooks by breaking their health bars in half, and pausing the “game” so she can whale on a mini-boss with impunity.
• Mineral MacGuffin: The Lizard Stone is a magical gemstone that gives whoever holds it the power of a dragon. Marco wants to sell it, and all the villains want to get their hands on it.
• Mini-Mecha: Diminutive aliens like Collection Joe sometimes ride around in heavily-armed exoskeletons that are taller than humans.
• Monster Clown: Marco is kidnapped by a pair of aliens disguised as clowns during the prologue.
• Mushroom Man: The Energy Planet is home to a race of mushroom-like creatures. Arco and Ruri slaughter droves of them to make an energy drink from their remains.
• Neck Lift: Gargouille grabs Haqua by the collar and hoists her into the air while the two of them are languishing in prison. It helps that Haqua is a lot smaller than Gargouille.
• No Shirt, Long Jacket: Dosgoro wears pants and a trenchcoat, but no shirt. This leaves his gut on display at all times.
• Non-Giving-Up School Guy: Sakurako’s first appearance has her bursting into Ruri’s soba restaurant in order to drag her back to school. She also chews Ruri’s guardian out for letting her cut classes while she’s at it.
• Non-Human Head: Calen is a girl with a calendar for a head. Or at least, that’s what she appears to be…
• Off with His Head!:
  • Dosgoro regularly decapitates his henchmen for telling him things that he doesn’t want to hear. It’s the same two henchmen each time.
  • The Galaxy Auction salesman intends to execute Tera via guillotine for defaulting on her payments. Fortunately for her, Marco manages to talk him out of it.
• One-Product Planet: There’s a place literally called the "enslavement planet". Take a wild guess as to what they sell.
• Our Dragons Are Different: Arco may look like a typical western dragon in her true form, but she was born from the heart of a black hole. She’s unique, unfathomably old, constantly hungry and capable of literally eating people’s memories much like how black holes are thought to destroy information. Arco can’t stay in her true form for long, and spends most of her time as either a tiny dragon or a humanoid girl, depending on how hungry she is.
• Our Genies Are Different: Gargouille punches out a trio of inmates that look like stereotypical genies while trying to escape from an underground prison. There’s also a fourth inmate who claims to be a genie, but is clearly a skeleton.
• Our Vampires Are Different: An alien resembling a stereotypical vampire tries to invade Earth during a montage. He’s quickly driven off when the heroines brandish a cross, garlic, and silver at him.
• Our Zombies Are Different: Spoofed in one of the Galaxy TV Dramas, where a woman is fleeing in panic from the zombie apocalypse that has overrun her town… only to discover that zombie bites are not only harmless, but alleviate cramps and back pain!
• Paint It Black: El Skeleton’s body and clothes turn black after he is made "heartless" by Ulginos. He reverts back to his original colour scheme when he breaks through his brainwashing.
• Petal Power: Haqua can appear and disappear in a shower of Cherry Blossoms.
• Planet Eater: Nudos are giant whale-like creatures that can swallow an entire planet in one gulp. Marco and Arco have to stop one from devouring the Earth at one point.
• Planet Spaceship: Astaroth’s planet crusher is a starship so enormous that it can quite literally crush a planet in its grip.
• Please Kill Me if It Satisfies You: At one point, Haqua invites Gargouille to kill her as Revenge by Proxy against Astaroth for exterminating Gargouille’s people. Gargouille nearly accepts that offer before Marco talks them both out of it.
• Pokémon Speak: Parodied with the cutesy unicorns that show up at one point. They start out saying "Unicorn", but quickly switch to punny variations like "You need corn" and "Unicorn soup". The same scene features a phoenix and a tiger: they also say "Unicorn", much to Tera’s bewilderment.
• Police Are Useless: A lone Galaxy Police officer joins the protagonists for the final battle. He gets defeated almost instantly, whereas everyone else is holding their own against Astaroth’s forces.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Dosgoro has naturally red eyes and sclera, and he’s a ruthless criminal. Astaroth’s eyes are normally blue, but they turn red in certain situations. Several other characters also have their eyes glow red whenever they’re about to get serious.
• Rei Ayanami Expy: Haqua is a soft-spoken, pale-skinned waif with short white hair and golden eyes. She rarely raises her voice and rarely shows any emotion beyond a mild frown, though she is not an Emotionless Girl and her stoicism begins to crack toward the end of the game. Her behaviour has less to do with being an alien and more to do with the fact that her father, Astaroth, is a cruel despot who thinks emotions are a weakness and is grooming her to rule the galaxy one day.
• Revenge: Gargouille wants to kill Astaroth in revenge for him destroying her planet and exterminating her people.
• Rubber-Forehead Aliens: Astaroth resembles a bald, extremely muscular man with chalk-white skin, black sclera, and snake-like appendages that sprout from the base of his skull.
• Sex Sells: The ad for Pandagraph’s dentistry clinic consists of a swimsuit-clad Pandagraph posing seductively at the beach while talking about the services she offers.
• Shapeshifter Weapon:
  • In the animated segments, El Skeleton can extrude cartoon bombs from his muscles and shoot bullets out of his nipples.
  • Arco can morph her hands into draconic claws while in her human form. Marco gains this ability after Arco’s tooth is used to reattach her severed arm.
• Shout-Out:
  • Dosgoro falls for the same Fakin' MacGuffin trick that Peter Quill pulled on Yondu in Guardians of the Galaxy (2014).
  • In one scene, Marco recalls several bad memories that reference famous scenes from Stanley Kubrick films, such as being subjected to The Ludovico Technique from A Clockwork Orange or strung up on one of the monoliths from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
  • The four-armed Heartless soldiers that Astaroth sends to attack Gold Cord are a dead ringer for the Outriders from Avengers: Infinity War.
  • The Galaxy Police officer that shows up for the final battle is a Transformer.
  • Astaroth meets his end the exact same way Thanos does in Avengers: Endgame: crumbling to dust after having his cosmic MacGuffin taken away from him.
• Show Within a Show: Snippets from Galaxy TV Drama are occasionally shown.
• Single-Biome Planet: Gargouille’s homeworld, Gal, is a desert planet.
• Single Specimen Species: Arco, the titular Galaxy Dragon, is the only one of her kind in the Milky Way.
• Skewed Priorities:
  • The Mayor wants to take down Astaroth because doing so would give her approval ratings a massive boost. Then there’s her (initial) reaction to getting snatched up by a Man-Eating Plant:
    "Stooooop!!! I can’t concentrate on my manifestoooooo!!!"
  • Rakka won’t let anyone fire the giant, anti-orbital cannons that her company built specifically to repel alien invaders, despite the fact that there’s an alien invasion going on. She’s concerned that actually using the damn things will negatively impact her company’s stock, you see.
• Sleep-Mode Size: Arco can’t stay in her true form for long. She spends most of her time as either a tiny dragon the size of a house cat, or as a humanoid girl with limited shapeshifting abilities, switching between the two forms based on her hunger level.
• Space Whale: Nudos are gigantic spacefaring creatures that look like whales and travel in pods. They’re normally peaceful, but if they get agitated they can swallow an Earth-sized planet in one gulp. Marco and Arco have to stop a stray Nudo from doing just that at one point.
• Super-Strength: Gargouille is strong enough to smash through the barred door of a prison cell, and can floor hulking aliens with one punch.
• Sword Beam: Gargouille can project giant blades of energy from her sword Coelacanth. She uses this to bisect one of Astaroth’s warships when it interrupts a baseball game.
• Tanks for Nothing: The Mayor rolls up in a tank to rescue Tera from being executed by the Galaxy Auction reps. It doesn’t go well.
• Tell Me About My Father: Marco travels to Earth to learn more about her mother, whom she barely remembers due to being kidnapped and sold into slavery at a young age. She eventually learns that her mother is Mitsuko, the kind lady she met during her first day on the planet.
• The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: Arco has the mentality of a small child while in her tiny dragon form: she’s mainly interested in food, parrots people for fun, and is scared of going to the dentist. She’s shown to be much more observant, insightful and intelligent whenever she shapeshifts into her human form.
• The Tooth Hurts: Arco develops a cavity after she and Marco save Gold Cord from the Nudo, forcing Marco to seek out a dentist. Arco isn’t thrilled with the idea, and likes it even less when she meets Pandagraph.
• This Was His True Form:
  • The Love revert to their true forms as worm-like creatures upon being killed.
  • When Marco defeats Astaroth, his body crumbles away to reveal a tiny snake.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: Two occur near the end of the game. The first one is a Mini-Game where you have to quickly click the mouse in order to win a duel, while the second is an Unexpected Shmup Level where Marco has to shoot down the planet crusher. Both of these can be skipped without penalty.
• Unishment: Dosgoro once kept Arco locked up in a gumball machine. Being the Big Eater that she is, Arco didn’t mind in the slightest.
  Arco: This is the country of happiness!
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: El Skeleton opens an oden restaurant in Gold Cord to gather information about the Lizard Stone. His clientele take the fact that the restaurant is run by a weird skeleton man in stride, having evidently seen stranger things since aliens first came to the planet.
  • Everyone's reaction upon seeing a giant space whale about to devour planet earth? Continue their daily lives as usual.
• Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: Astaroth. His no-nonsense attitude, sheer cruelty, and sadism clashes heavily with the VN cartoony atmosphere. The game becomes completely serious and devoid of humor whenever he's on screen.
• Vocal Dissonance: In one of the animated segments, the Twitter user with the cutesy Magical Girl avatar has a man’s voice.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: Emergency Rations can transform itself into whatever item Marco might need at any given moment, at least in the animated segments. In the first animation alone it becomes a music player, a pair of headphones, a head-mounted spotlight, a propeller, and a hoverboard.
• Weak-Willed: Gargouille may be a brave and strong-willed warrior woman, but she is not good at resisting the Love’s Backstory Invader powers. She gets tricked by the creatures twice in the span of a few minutes, whereas Marco and Haqua are unaffected.
• Weredragon: Arco spends most of her time in Sleep-Mode Size, but she can take on a human form as long as she’s feeling full. She’ll revert to her tiny dragon form as soon as she gets hungry again.
• Whole-Plot Reference: The plot borrows a lot from Guardians of the Galaxy (2014). The main character was kidnapped by aliens shortly after witnessing the death of their mother and raised to be a thief. The story begins with them stealing a MacGuffin from a temple on an alien world and narrowly evading agents of an evil overlord who needs that MacGuffin to subjugate the galaxy. Said evil overlord sends his daughter, a skilled assassin who secretly hates him, to recover the MacGuffin. The thief is thrown in prison along with the overlord’s daughter and the last survivor of a race the overlord exterminated, where they team up to keep the stone out of the overlord’s hands. The thief’s boss is also after them because he wants the MacGuffin for himself. And so on.
• Windbag Politician: The Mayor is introduced giving a speech about how she wants to make Gold Cord into the kind of town where you can feel comfortable eating ice cream even in a crowded city, and starts going off on a tangent about the ice cream parlor where she bought the ice cream cone that she was eating during the speech. The press then interrupt to ask her what the hell she’s talking about.
• Winged Humanoid: Astaroth’s henchman Ulginos is a hooded figure with large black wings.
• You Are Number 6: The inmates of Gold Cord’s underground prison are assigned numbers based on the length of their sentence.
  682: I’m a beast with a 682 year sentence.

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