Holo no Graffiti (often colloquially referred to as HoloGra) is a web-based miniseries by hololive, a group of Virtual YouTuber idols from COVER Corporation.
The series (which consists of short 3D animations around about 1-3 minutes in length) has a rapid-fire and very wacky tone, starring the girls of Hololive's Japanese branch (and later joined by the English and Indonesian branches) as they get roped into bizarre antics that gets progressively weirder to the point it makes absolutely zero sense whatsoever.
The series' first episode was released in May 5, 2019, and all episodes (bar some early episodes that were privated for copyright reasons) are compiled in this playlist
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This series provides examples of:
- Adam Westing: All of the Hololive (including EN and ID) and Holostars guest members play exaggerated versions of themselves, and of course it's Played for Laughs.
- Adaptational Badass: Mumei transforms all plants on Earth into photopaper, destroying the world in process. Aside from being potentially as old as humanity, she originally has not shown to have supernatural abilities.
- All for Nothing: Played for Laughs: Ayame wanted to get a library card to get some books, but she had been banned from the local library so she tried to get Subaru to sign her slip so she can get one. Then Fubuki- sorry, the "Library Card Administrator" offers her an illegal library card in exchange for Ayame becoming her guarantor. Ayame eats the illegal card, causing the Administrator to fade into a new library card which she tries to borrow a book with, only for A-chan to tell she's still banned.
- And I Must Scream: In the "Human Sushi" episode, Suisei somehow turns Sakura Miko into a sushi, who is unable to do anything other than lay still capable of only some motion. When someone eats her, they turn into that same exact sushi, with Suisei finally turning herself into one after turning every single other talent into sushi. Fortunately it's played a lot more for laughs and cute points rather than horror. This is later followed up by the "Fresh Stock" episode, where Suisei proceeds to do the same to the holoX members.
- Animation Bump: Contrast the earlier episodes (for example, Hansel and Gretel in 60 Seconds) with more recent ones (example again, The Time Has Come), and it's clear that as the series evolved in humour, so too has the fluidity in character motion.
- Apocalypse How:
- In "The Beginnings of the End", Sora wonders how the world ended, using clips from the previous episodes prior to explain how all of this even happens. This being HoloGra, it doesn't has any ounce of context...
- According to Mumei's episode, civilization has restarted 84823 times.
- Arc Villain: A first in the series where the members of holoX are concerned. It turns out that La+ told each member to go after the other girls, and they are not amused. A bit unexpectedly, it's Sora who takes it out on her.
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: In “Murphy’s Law”, Miko struggles to recall something important that she’d forgotten about, and finally remembers that she left a bucket of lava on the kitchen counter right above a pool of gasoline next to a cache of explosives just as the bucket is toppled over by a stray baseball, and then she further recalls that she also forgot to lock her front door, didn’t turn off some appliances, left her pay card in the transit ticket machine, and has an appointment with Sora that she’s missing, all of which she treats as equally terrible.
- Artistic License – Sports: In "Angel or Demon?", IRyS is losing to Towa in Chess and has already lost all of her pieces except the King while Towa still has all of her pieces. Improbability of that aside, a look at the board shows two black Bishops on black squares, which is impossible. Also, IRyS moves the White King and Towa takes it, which isn't allowed because the King has no legal moves remaining, so the game has actually already ended on a draw.
- Art Shift: Some shorts have snippets of 2D animation, such as "Human Sushi" and "This is Dope!".
- Ascended Meme: Some of the fandom memes are used whenever a certain streamer is involved:
- Whenever Suisei speaks in contralto, whoever she is speaking to is understandably scared of her. Her friends know personally of her sociopathic tendencies when she plays certain games (such as the infamous Project Winter incident that left quite an impression to her viewers).
- Korone is on the same boat. Korone has her moments where she is as out there as Suisei, and just as sociopathic. So much so that it got in a few episodes where her own Ax-Crazy behavior is shown in full.
- Botan's debut episode has her unintentionally scaring Towa despite having no malicious intent. Even when she's brandishing a model rifle. This is partly due to how her initial static portrait makes her serious and stoic-looking.
- She also proudly declares her shopping cart to be a better vehicle than Suisei and Marine's, based on her favorite use of the shopping cart in Trials Rising.
- Lamy and her love for alcohol gets referenced a few times in her debut episode; she had her alcohol stashed in the office, won't get a drink if she loses at Old Maid, and then there's the insanity that is episode 100.
- Kanata and her gorilla strength was used when Noel wants to get an Unishment, only to get a back massage from her. The results... weren't pleasant.
- Sora's Surprisingly Creepy Moments when she scares her fellow idols tends to bring to mind her notorious history with horror games where she barely flinches at the horror surrounding them.
- Bae and IRyS end up bickering like an old married couple in Japanese in one episode, both seeminlgy a reference to their constant state of marriage and divorce as well as their fluency in Japanese getting them mistaken for members of the Japanese branch.
- Ass Shove: Noel loses a game of Old Maid with Lamy (her condition for losing is no beef bowls for a month after attempting to weasel her way with only two bowls), and Subaru mocks her loss, only to have Noel's mace shoved up her ass.
- Batman Can Breathe in Space: Some shorts take place on the moon, and the girls are able to move around as if the moon has normal gravity like on Earth, and has no difficulty breathing. The character who has actually wore protection while in space is A-chan, but even she doesn't wear a full spacesuit.
- Baby Morph Episode: Mio in "A Peach for a Tale" somehow becomes a child (along with her mind being regressed to childlike innocence), and Subaru, Luna, and Flare try to entertain her.
- Beach Episode: There are a few that takes place on the beach. "Summer = Swimsuit Battle" even has some of the girls who are a Ms. Fanservice (except Towa, but they invite her anyway) doing stuff on the beach.
- Beware the Nice Ones: If Sora ever shows murderous intent or talks to you in a low and threatening tone, run for your life. Iroha, La+, and Koyori are unfortunate to experience it.
- Big Bad Wannabe: La+'s plan was to have each of the members of holox to take over hololive (except Lui, who acted on her own), but ultimately fail when the girls in the previous episodes finds out she was behind it. An unamused Sora decides to make an example of her, and one scene cut later, La+ is seen sprawled on the floor with various Noodle Implements surrounding her.
- Bilingual Bonus: Haachama has lines in “Critical Memory Lapse” that are in English and, later on, Bengali. Speaking these languages will do nothing to help you understand her dialogue, though.Haachama (in English): “I’m a potato starch for you!”
Haachama (in Bengali): “My favorite drink is carbonated judo!” - Bilingual Dialogue: In general, each talent speaks in their native tongue (either Japanese, English or Indonesian) but can still be perfectly understood by everyone else unless the skit demands a Language Barrier.
- Ina and Gura, in their debut episode Going Missing, mostly speak English while Aqua, Marine and Chloe speak Japanese, with everyone somehow understanding each other.
- The 2023 New Year's episode solidifies the convention with Risu, Moona, and Iofi speaking in Indonesian at Kanata's sushi restaurant and Amelia and Calli speaking English at the Subaru-Watame wrestling match with all of the EN branch spectating; oddly enough, Gura uses Japanese for her line and Kiara's "Fight!" cheer is in a gray zone since it's pronounced "Faito!" as an English loanword.
- Members of the EN and ID branches who're fluent in Japanese and English (and Indonesian) will often code switch between the languages depending on the situation.
- Surprisingly averted in the 2024 New Year's episode in which every single characters, including EN and ID members, are speaking fluent Japanese.
- Ina and Gura, in their debut episode Going Missing
- Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism: “Speak of the Devil” sees Towa interacting with a male devil, who, unlike her Little Bit Beastly Horned Humanoid appearance, looks far more like a traditional akuma, with a jet-black unclothed body, no hair, much longer horns, and a kabuki mask covering his face.
- Brick Joke:
- A Freeze-Frame Bonus in “Going For Broke” gives us a peek at HoloX’s finances, which inexplicably list their “fried chicken” budget as a separate expense from their “food” budget. In the subsequent episode, “Leading By Example”, La+ casually reveals that she paid Koyori a lot of money to engineer a tree that grows fried chicken.
- On a much larger time frame, *** Fishing Championship sees Aqua fish up an alligator that's 70% crab. Said chimera would pop up again just over two and a half years later in Going Missing, now grown to kaiju size and chasing Chloe. Aqua happily remarks about how big it's gotten.
- Butt-Monkey: Just about everyone except Sora ends up becoming a Butt-Monkey in at least one episode, though notable examples are:
- Both A-chan and Subaru are often the targets whenever the episode needs someone to suffer from Amusing Injuries.
- Towa also gets the short end of the stick even if she's the designated Only Sane Man in a given episode.
- Shion herself gets it worse when it comes to Amusing Injuries. She is often Korone's target and at one point got kicked off-screen by her sleeping.
- Marine herself gets the receiving end of some of the most humiliating pain whenever she's one of the main characters of the episode.
- The hololive office itself often gets blown up or destroyed in various episodes, and when it isn't the office itself, it's the windows that get smashed a lot.
- Canon Welding: "Gone Missing" connects with UMISEA, and marks the debut of UMISEA's hololive English Myth cast, Ninomae Ina'nis and Gura Gawr.
- Car Fu: Luna once drove a car and sent Haachama flying.
- Call-Back: Ayame once offers Miko a bucket of lava, to which the latter asks her to take it back where she got it from. Sakura Miko has a notorious history with lava in Minecraft to the point that she accidentally set her house on fire twice.
- Challenge Seeker: In Iroha's debut episode, after she defeats Ayame in a duel, she then seeks to fight the strongest members of Hololive. The girls who accept are Haachama, Roboco, and Noel. Sora then scolds them for going after her, and when she asks why, Iroha tells her she wants to fight the strongest member of Hololive. In response Sora declares "So, you're an enemy" with a Death Glare, stunning Iroha into silence.
- Comedic Sociopathy:
- Some girls such as Suisei and Korone tend to get sociopathic in the episodes they appear in, and it's all Played for Laughs.
- Mumei's debut episode has her equipped with a nailed baseball bat, and her mission was to destroy all printers. Not to mention civilization was destroyed and restarted 84823 times.
- Sora of all people is just as sociopathic as her genmate Suisei as she tends to have Dull Eyes of Unhappiness and Slasher Smile, especially if she has a katana. Then in episode 249, shows her as a Suspiciously Similar Substitute as Suisei (using an axe, being vitriolic with Roboco and Miko, and being unusually Ax-Crazy).
- Continuity Nod: While the series has no definitive continuity, there are minor references to past episodes, such as Aqua meeting an alligator that's 70% crab from episode 41, then meeting it in episode 172. And then 216 has Kiara Walking the Earth after losing her restaurant business in her debut episode.
- Darker and Edgier:
- Any shorts with 【Horror】 in the title will tell you it is not joking. The episodes revolving them will have some of the talents being completely unaware that there are actual ghosts in the office and no one knows or realizes it. And yes, it's definitely Played for Horror. In a stark contrast to hololive ERROR where it's intentionally atmospherically darker than this series.
- "On The Tail" acts like a typical shenanigans of the idols with Suisei and Miko arguing over a broken pair of 2002 sunglasses, and Miko chasing after Suisei. And then, it gets dark very quickly when Suisei finds herself running in desperation through the city, into the woods, a (presumably) beach, then a shrine hall, all while fearing the ringing of bells that might indicate that Miko is near. Then she's on a train track, getting chased by a train, and a pair of arms about to surround her, which mind you, don't belong to Miko. She wakes up seeing Miko asking if she was okay, and then she accidentally breaks a pair of 2002 sunglasses, to her horror. And yes, the rest of the episode is definitely played for Horror.
- Deadly Dodging: In "The Loco Motive", after being tired of Kanata's refusal to ride her train, and throwing a miniature train (with Nodoka in it), Miko tries to attack her, only for Kanatan to dodge her, resulting in Miko falling out the window.
- Death Is Cheap: Aside from the fact that multiple talents have died repeatedly and shown up unharmed in the next episode, "Reaper What You Sow" shows that Calli can temporarily take someone's soul and put it back later, which is treated as being no different than simply knocking them out cold with a blunt object.
- Denser and Wackier: If you thought the idols were a bit loose during their streams, then this series cranks it up to eleven.
- Depending on the Writer: The shorts will oftentimes depict the Only Sane Man as Not So Above It All with the Cloudcuckoolander of the group being the Only Sane Man. Sora for example is the most normal of the group (unless you don't count her Dull Surprise reactions in horror games), unless she's part of a short where shenanigans ensue where she's prone to freaking out, and Suisei's Comedic Sociopathy is downplayed to look more normal out of everyone (excluding her debut episode) and prone to such silliness herself (such as taking a test to be smarter than AkiRose with Matsuri).
- Destination Defenestration:
- In "The Perfect Cover-Up", Okayu asks Polka where she left a handheld console (which is currently broken on the table). Polka responds by throwing the table out the window, and then Okayu decides to ask AkiRose, who nearly rats her out until Polka throws her out the window as well. And then Korone found out Polka broke her handheld console and throws Polka out the window.
- "Fly Me to the Moon" is what happens if you turn this into a game. First, Watame gets thrown out the window and into the pavement by Botan, then Noel throws Marine through a wall and she lands head-first into another building, and Kanata throws Haachama so hard, she breaks the ceiling and shatters the moon. And they are all individually scored by A-chanAnd the scores are.
- Didn't Think This Through: In "Forgetaburger", Kiara's attempt to set up a "Phoenix Burger" restaurant to boost her brand revenue was destined to end in disaster as soon as she sets it up inside the Hololive office, not realizing the consequences of the only potential staff members being the other talents with their own quirkiness and various degrees of incompetence. On top of this, she gives all of her orders excessively long and complicated names which, as she finds out the hard way, even she can't remember. Add Okayu's impulsive suggestion to substitute the burger patties with onigiri into the mix, and it's no wonder the enterprise goes bankrupt within less than a day.
- Door Roulette: In "Scot Free", Noel flips the door several times, each time showing a different location, including an infinite mirror version.
- Dragon with an Agenda: Lui has a literal agenda where she tries to make profits for holoX. Her agenda really has nothing to do with La+'s plan to take over hololive or defeating its key members.
- Drop the Washtub: In "Rain, Rain, Fall Away", when Lui points to Kobo that she put a lighthouse on top of the office nowhere close to the sea, the latter is hit with a sudden washtub. And another one when she claims to be the strongest shama in her town while not being in her town. And when Marine comes in claiming to be an expert, she is hit too when Lui reminds her she's not a real pirate.
- Early-Bird Cameo:
- The first generations of ID and EN appear in episode 188 watching Subaru wrestling Watame, with each member later getting their own individual debut episodes.
- The 2023 New Year Green Room Interview features Advent and ReGloss represented as shadow characters in black with a TV screen of the talents as the head.
- Early-Installment Weirdness:
- Haachama was one of the sanest characters within the shorts themselves before she became as crazy as everyone else.
- In the case with Miko, the first couple of episodes used her old model up until 2021, where she transitioned to using her new design full-time.
- Earth-Shattering Kaboom: Moon-shattering, to be precise. "Fly Me to the Moon" has Kanata breaking the Moon apart by throwing Haachama at it.
- Epic Fail: All over the place. Special mention goes to when Gura tosses a jar full of her loose teeth up at the ceiling of the office for good luck... only for it to inexplicably fly sideways and fall into a bucket of dirty water she'd been cleaning her trident in earlier. Rule of Funny is about as close to an explanation for this as you can get.
- Flat "What": "The Perfect Cover-Up" has Polka giving one (in English, no less) when she learns that the handheld she broke, which she thought was Okayu's, actually belonged to Korone.
- Forced Transformation:
- Matsuri transforms into a dog, and the ones who understands are Korone, Fubuki, and Mio. They would explain what's going on, but decided not to because it's funnier.
- La+ gets turned into a Komodo Dragon for some reason, and can't seem to recognize Koyori when the latter is speaking to her. Yet she can recognize Nene's voice.
- Forgotten Fallen Friend: When Subaru breaks her neck and dies (she gets better) while trying to help pull Towa out of a barrel she’s trapped in, nobody reacts appropriately at all. Towa is only annoyed that Subaru won’t be helping her any longer, Polka is merely unsettled by the presence of a corpse and doesn’t seem to care that it’s her friend, and Nene & Miko completely ignore her body when they enter the scene.
- Formula-Breaking Episode:
- Instead of the idols portraying themselves in their workplace, “Survival of the Fittest” casts them as prehistoric animals (still looking like humans in modern clothing) in a parody Nature Documentary.
- “Help! We’ll Be Fired!” is three times as long as a standard episode (at 6 minutes and 20 seconds, counting the outro) and significantly more down-to-earth. While still a comedy, the idols’ fear that they’re about to be laid off is treated as a serious concern, and it includes a heartfelt and genuine speech from Aqua about what being an idol means to her.
- Funny Background Event: In “Murphy’s Law”, Miko is too distracted by trying to remember her tasks for the day to notice anything around her, which begins with Korone asking her to help open a jar and suddenly escalates into space aliens invading the office and goofing around.
- Furry Reminder: In "Gawr Gura Gnawing", Gura gets a tooth knocked out by Flare, and promptly collects it to put in a jar as proof of her existence. The jar contains a lot of loose teeth, a reference to the fact that sharks regenerate any teeth they've previously lost.
- Fusion Dance: After Lui hatches from an egg, there are multiples of her, and they fuse with each other as they get older.
- Genius Ditz: Koyori's debut episode has her getting frozen while trying to make a mind control potion. She even made a telepathy potion in the event that something like thus would happen, and asks Miko and Mio to unfreeze her.
- Genius Loci: The Earth turns out to be sentient in episode 249 when Sora dodges an attack by Roboco that sets the Sakura Miko tree on fire, which ends up heating up the Earth. The Earth complains about the heat and uses an air conditioner to cool itself, freezing the planet on the surface.
- Get-Rich-Quick Scheme: In “Going For Broke”, Lui scams Aki into buying ¥100,000 worth of baran garnish (the plastic grass used in packaged sushi containers) by falsely claiming she’d be able to resell them at a profit to rich Arabs who view them as a fashion statement. Judging by her behavior in the following episode, “Leading By Example”, Aki realized she’d been had pretty quickly.
- Good Angel, Bad Angel: In "Angel or Demon?", IRyS gets self-conscious when touched by Kanata and arrogant when touched by Towa.
- Hangover Sensitivity: In "The Hangover”, Akirose arrives in the office with a rather nasty one. Her mental incarnations are trying to get her to recover, but they cause her to overexert herself even worse. Then Nene arrives to the office holding a bass she caught, and jumps around in circles with it, until Akirose could not bear the smell, and pukes, shattering the second window in the office (she broke the first window with a Three-Point Landing).
- Homage: "holo☆gra" is an entire episode done in the style of Lucky Star. Hilariously, the sheer clash between the usual HoloGra surreal rapid-fire comedy and the chill Seinfeldian Conversation style of the episode puts it pretty squarely in
Bizarro Episode territory. - Human Popsicle: Koyori accidentally spills a drip of a drug she made in her debut episode, which freezes her solid. As she explains, the drug in question is a "can telepath when frozen" kind, which comes in handy when Miko and Mio find her in her frozen state and use the sun to thaw her out.
- I Am a Humanitarian: Suisei runs a sushi bar, and whenever someone orders a sushi from her, they become a roll of sushi themselves. She then turns herself into sushi after eating Sora.
- I Just Want to Be Special: Sora wants to have a quirk because she was jealous of Pekora, and so Watame tries and fails to help her in doing so, but Subaru thinks she's perfectly fine as she is. She then decide to become a piano Marine was playing, and the ending screen reveals that her head became the piano in question.
- Implausible Deniability: In “The Perfect Cover-Up”, when Okayu asks Polka what happened to her game system that she left on a nearby table (which Polka has, unbeknownst to her, accidentally broken), Polka screams, throws the table out the window, and then tries to insist that “there’s no table around here”.
- In the Dreaming Stage of Grief: When Ayame thinks Fubuki turning into a kaiju is just a dream, she decides to go to sleep while Fubuzilla rampages. Then she wakes up to find that she's in a wasteland for some reason.
- Ironic Fear: Ina, who has tentacles growing out of her, claims to be afraid of tentacles.
- Kaiju: Towa, Rushia, and Ayame encounter Fubuki becoming a kaiju, and Ayame insisting that they're dreaming. Meanwhile Towa and Rushia were attempting to appease her.
- Keep It Foreign: Shows up in the English subtitles for "The Perfect Cover-Up", where Polka's Gratuitous English "What" is translated as "¿Qué?".
- "Last Supper" Steal: The 2021 Christmas episode has a bunch of the idols finish up a year-end quiz game with Sora hosting, and afterwards everyone is served a bowl of soba noodles along with other foods. Sora takes one bite from her bowl and immediately spits it out because the broth it was supposed to be in had been swapped to barley tea. The scene then transitions to a mock-up of the Leonardo da Vinci painting with Sora in the middle as Jesus and the other idols present taking the place of each of the Twelve Disciples mimicking their postures in the painting as accusations over who did it are thrown around. The one in Judas' place is Shion.
- Literal-Minded: In "Everything Is Evil", Haachama seems to think that money laundering involves physically cleaning the money, complete with an Imagine Spot featuring her washing bags of yen with a washboard.
- Mama Bear: Sora shows up in "Choose Your Battles Wisely" to stop Noel and Roboco from attacking Iroha, telling them off for bullying the new girl... only to then turn this on Iroha when she finds out Iroha had been trying to defeat the strongest members of Hololive and bite off more than she could chew. Then in "Leading By Example", she leads the rest of Hololive in confronting La+ over all the things she's had HoloX do to sabotage the other generations during their introductory episodes.
- Megaton Punch: Shion, Kanata, and Pekora decide it's a good idea to try and tickle Korone in her sleep. Their attempts result in Shion getting punted across the room and Kanata uppercutted into the ceiling.
- Me's a Crowd: Blame the Heat Wave has multiple versions of Ayame present in the office because of the heat, much to Flare's concern.
- Mistaken for Murderer: In "Reaper What You Sow", Shion walks in on Calli surrounded by a seemingly lifeless Noel, Aki, and Lamy. Panicking, Shion tries to escape from Calli who in turn attempts to explain the situation, leading to an aerial chase over the city that somehow gets Ayame involved before Calli eventually has to temporarily reap Shion's soul to get her to calm down. Only after Shion regains consciousness does she finally take a closer look at Noel and notice that the latter is still alive, but smashed out of her mind. Turns out everyone except Shion and Ayame had been in a drinking contest earlier, and by the time Shion had walked in on them, Calli was the last one standing.
- Mood-Swinger: Suisei asks Kanata if she would like to ride the "unsurly Suisei Train", and the latter asks her if she wasn't being cheerful just a minute ago. Cue in a low and threatening tone and Dull Eyes of Unhappiness "No mood lasts forever".
- Mundane Made Awesome: Whenever the girls engage in an activity, expect them to go out of their way to go absolutely over the top as possible. For example, Suisei throwing a boulder in place of a baseball.
- My Instincts Are Showing: In "Gawr Gura Gnawing", Gura bites down on Flare's arm, claiming she can't fight her instincts and that she's "eating to live". Mel comments that Gura shouldn't be eating people.
- Negative Continuity: With very little exception, all of the episodes aren't connected in any way and anything crazy that happens to either the girls themselves or the office get reverted back to normal on the following week's episode.
- No-Dialogue Episode:
- The episode "Danger: Do Not Wake!" consists of Korone sleeping, and the shenanigans of her fellow idols. Hilarity Ensues when some of them tries to prank her while she's sleeping while others (Marine, Kanata and Shion) get punished for it.
- The episode "You Belong" has Aqua avoiding people. From Reine, Moona, and Risu in the office, to Chloe and La+ on the street, to Calli and Mumei in an alley, and Noel and Flare having a conversation. Then she hides in a trashcan because of her Shrinking Violet personality. Shion notices this and even decides to hang out with her.
- Nobody Loves the Bassist: In Sea of Band-its, when Marine comes up with an idea to form a band out of Umisea, Chloe reveals she can play the Bass Guitar, but no one cares and completely ignore her, causing an angry and frustrated Chloe to slam the the Bass onto the ground.
- Not So Above It All: Sora is often portrayed as the Only Sane Man in the shorts she appears in, but even she was allowed to let herself as loose as the other girls. For example, making a real katana out of origami and claiming it to be part of a story she wants to draw, or outright becoming a piano.
- Not What It Looks Like: "Reaper What You Sow" has Shion stumble upon a seemingly lifeless Lamy, Aki, and Noel while Calliope is standing over them, and she concludes that Calli reaped their souls and was coming for her next. One aerial chase and temporary soul-reaping later, she finds that they were all just sleeping off a heavy drinking binge. Calli had simply been the only one who wasn't passed out drunk when Shion had walked in on them.
- Obvious Beta: Luna didn't get Shubaru Days tested enough for bugs and playability, resulting in Game Breaking Bugs, bad glitches, and game balance. It results in failure at launch because Luna says it's early access. It results in the game being put in bargin bins.
- Only Sane Man: A-Chan has no time for the idols’ silly antics, and is often exasperated or downright enraged by the damage they end up doing to the office.
- Subaru similarly spends most episodes with a non-verbal Flat "What" expression. She's slightly more likely to cut loose than A-Chan, though.
- Poor Communication Kills: Literally in "Reaper What You Sow", after a fashion. Shion thinks that Calli killed Lamy, Aki, and Noel, and flees in terror as the reaper pursues her with the intent of clearing up what is clearly a miscommunication. After Shion tries to blast her with magic (and summons Ayame who is easily defeated), Calli is eventually forced to reap her soul for real... temporarily. Turns out Calli beat the other girls in a drinking contest and Shion found them after the rest had passed out, but because Shion refused to listen, Calli was forced to essentially knock her unconscious.
- Prima Donna Director: Watame in "21st Century Sheep" is depicted as this making odd demands by ordering Lamy and Kanata around, to the point that Kanata doesn't understand her Motor Mouth demands right until they hit the deadline. The episode ends up being revealed to be an Imagine Spot by Marine, and Watame dislikes being shunted into that role.
- Product Placement: Curry Meshi vs. Hololive is this for Nissin Curry Meshi as it has the girls obsessed with eating the stuff and no, it's not a normal episode. It's as crazy as any other episode with the Curry Meshi mascot making the girls go crazy by eating a cup. Then Subaru goes in a Big Damn Heroes way why defeating the mascot in a fight. Well, that's assuming the mascot had a chance to fight back.
- Product-Promotion Parade: A good portion of HoloGra episodes are stealth commercials for upcoming concerts and merchandise. One good example is the follow-up to the Human Sushi episodenote , "Fresh Stock'' note , which ended up being a commercial for hololive sushi themed merchandise.
- Put on a Bus: Coco's final appearance is prior to her graduation, and wishes her genmates to continue on without her.
- Pun: When Mel finds a castle to live in which turns out to be a trap by Fubuki to lure vampires, Mel tells her she is not a vampire, but an umpire. Cue Stunned Silence on Fubuki's part.
- Rainbow Puke: During Gura's official debut, Okayu ends up spewing the rainbow when she sniffs on Gura's trident that she had been previously stabbing poop with.
- Random Events Plot: The shorts breathe this trope with no overarching plotline or consistent narrative to follow, with each episode telling its own self-contained story revolving around the girls goofing off in the Hololive office in over the top ways, and Rapid-Fire Comedy laced with memes and pop cultural references. Even the episodes that end up being stealth commercials are equally zany and generally have no tell that they're advertisements until the very end (although references generally appear around the midpoint).
- Running Gag:
- Every once in a while, the hololive building gets destroyed regardless of context involved. A less destructive variant is that in pretty much every episode some form of damage happens to the office, either by putting a large hole in the wall/ceiling/floor, destroying office furniture, or breaking the windows, all of which is usually done by someone getting violently thrown in a random direction.
- Watame being the target of the various predator animals in hololive.
- Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: In "Sin Chronicle Is Nutritional" Subaru has a vision of a future hololive generation consisting solely of bread. Wanting to avoid it at all costs, she starts a sequence of events that end up leaving Noel and Kanata unavailable for streaming, causing A-chan to improvise and inaugurate a bunch of bread-related products as a new generation.
- Serious Business: Anything the girls do that the plot requires will have them take nearly everything seriously.
- Shout-Out:
- The series loves making references to other anime series that are airing at the time and kaiju movies such as Shin Godzilla, and in the case of Roboco, western films like Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
- In "Verbal Pek", Pekora uses a Peko Note to inflict Verbal Tic to those whose names are written in it to "pekome the god of a new world". It backfires.
- In "Fubuzilla vs. Pigeotaurus" La+ grows similar to Ultra Series.
- Slice of Life: Due to its Random Events Plot structure, each episode has an idol enjoying their time before getting into the shenanigans and antics from their fellow idols.
- Sore Loser:
- Noel does not take her loss well when she loses to Lamy at Old Maid. She then shoves her mace in Subaru's ass for mocking her.
- Mel eats one of Choco's homemade chocolates which causes the eater to gain some of Choco's attributes, and proceeds to play a video game and roll on the floor in frustration when she loses. Choco wonders if she acts like that, and Subaru more or less confirms it.
- Straight Man: While not every episode has one, for the mass majority of episodes someone will act as the Only Sane Man reacting to all the wild antics and Insane Troll Logic arguments that pop up. The straight man tends to be a different person every episode and just because they were a straight man one episode doesn't mean they won't be a wacky character in the next.
- Super-Speed: In "Need for Speed", Suisei travels around the world so extremely fast in her cardboard train that Kanata nearly dies.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
- While trying to pull Towa out of a barrel, Subaru loses her balance, falls over, and dies from a broken neck- certainly an accident that can happen in real life, but precisely the sort of Amusing Injuries you’d expect a character to survive in a silly show like this.
- In “Critical Memory Lapse”, the members of Generation 1 all panic after realizing they have a concert that night that they aren’t prepared for, but brighten up as they decide to cram as much practice as possible into their remaining three hours, with heroic music playing in the background. Cut to three hours later, and the girls clearly haven’t learned a thing, having been too stressed to actually get anything done.
- Surreal Humor: The series basically runs on this with majority of its episodes centering around the idol of the short and the shenanigans surrounding them or if they started it.
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute: In episode 249, Sora of all people is the unhinged psychopath wielding an axe while belittling Roboco and Miko, who mind you are her genmates and good friends with them, making her a near carbon-copy of Suisei. Especially the "unhinged psychopath weilding an axe" part that Suisei is extremely well-known for.
- Sustained Misunderstanding: Suisei and Aqua are in the office where Suisei thinks about eating okayu (rice porridge) while Aqua thought she meant Okayu their cat friend. Cue the latter thinking Suisei wants to eat Okayu and not the rice porridge.
- Take That!: "Bugs Many" is a satire on the recent trend of AAA game development. Luna gives Miko a Subaru-themed dating sim to play in order to trick her into debuging the game for free for her. All the heroines are Subarus with cliches attached to them, the rest of Gen 2 are paid DLC despite being on the cover and title screen, the game is a buggy mess, game balance is far too skewed in the player's favor resulting in no challenge or sense of accomplishment, and when confronted about the game's problems, Luna gives the excuse that the game is "early access". The ending naration notes the game was released without fixing any of its problems, predictably flopped, and hit the bargain bins the next month.
- The Paranoiac: Suisei in "On The Tail". She keeps running as far away from Miko as possible over a damaged pair of 2002 glasses, yet the bells from Miko's clothes keep ringing in her head...prompting her to run further away from the shrine maiden. And when she thought she's safe, she has to look behind to check if Miko's still trailing her, and if she is, she just runs further away. The cycle then repeats.
- Tough Love: In the episode with the same name, Botan invokes this on Polka by throwing her off a cliff so that she gets tougher, despite Polka pointing out she isn't Botan's child, and Botan keeps throwing her off the cliff only for Polka to get up that same cliff multiple times. Botan reaches her Rage Breaking Point, and Polka had her hands bound and a bamboo as a restrain on her mouth.
- Tranquil Fury: A first for Sora when the other girls involved in the previous holoX episodes finds out La+ was the mastermind, and she takes Ayame's sword with these words: "hololive is all about its friendly atmosphere, understand?"
- Tsundere: Sora of all people reads cliché Tsundere lines as a type B in "How to Invoke a Kaiju"
- Unexpectedly Dark Episode: Any animated short with "[Horror]" on it's title is this, given that the majority of the animated shorts are between Slice of Life and Surreal Humor. "And Then There Were None" and "Movie Appreciation Night" take place at night with most of the office lights turned off, with "doppelganger ghosts" attempting to supposedly replace the real members.
- While the English title "On the Tail" doesn't have "[Horror]", the Japanese title of the episode had its equivalent on its title.
- Unexplained Recovery: Occasionaly, members would end up getting killed (Polka getting vaporized by Luna for example), only to return in a later episode alive and well without any explanation given.
- Verbal Tic: Pekora and Luna have very noticeable verbal tics which are exaggerated to exteremes here. Pekora's involves adding "peko" at almost every word in her sentence (usually at the end) while Luna's involves Elmuh Fudd Syndwome (English) or "nanora" (Japanese). This episode actually has them switch theirs.
- Visual Title Drop: "You Belong" has this for Holo No Graffiti as a whole as actual wall graffiti.
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot: The series does not shy away from the girls vomiting at some point. However, it's often portrayed as sparkles and rainbows in in most anime.
- Mio and AkiRose have done it at least once.
- "This Is Dope!" starts off with Koyori accidentally freezing herself. After Mio and Miko thaw her out, she throws up a stream of rainbow-colored capsules.
- Wingding Eyes: When Aki is fooled by Lui’s Get-Rich-Quick Scheme in “Going For Broke”, $ symbols appear in her eyes.
- Wrestler in All of Us: Subaru, surprisingly enough. She is often shown putting Watame in wrestling holds, including one that was original. note
- Zombie Apocalypse: An accidental case where Ollie serves her sushi to serve customers. Risu tries one and begins to become a zombie. Then A-chan tries one and becomes one too. Then Indonesia gets struck by the zombie apocalypse because Ollie's sushi was popular.
