YMMV / Bungo to Alchemist

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Kōyō's characterization is rather elderly-coded. Given that the actual author never got to grow old because he died in his 30s, does this mean this version of Kōyō is subtly displaying a desire to be old?
• Awesome Music: Most of the soundtrack consists of elegant orchestral music composed by the prolific Hideki Sakamoto, especially the opening theme.
• Common Knowledge: Kōyō's beef with being called a granny is usually interpreted by the fandom as hating being called old. Actually, he hates being misgendered, as the latter half of that infamous quote clearly shows (I'm quite obviously a man!); he openly acknowledges his age in his other lines. Becomes funny if you know that other Kouyou is a woman.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Some of the taints gain moderate popularity among the fandom, with the most outstanding examples being the one that looks like a sheep, which leads to numerous jokes about writers' wanting to keep them as pets, and the humanoid ones mostly liked by cosplayers, case in point the one taking the form of a hooded and masked person riding a huge slimy beast and especially a cute boy in Elegant Gothic Lolita fashion.
• Fan Nickname:
  • It's a very common practice on Twitter to shorten the authors' names into the beginning letters of the Japanese syllables they consist of in order to avoid mistaking them with real authors. For example, Tokuda can be referred to as "tkd", Izumi "izm" and Ozaki "ozk". Faction names also receive this treatment, leading to "bri" for Decadent and "snknkk" for Neo-Sensation.
  • "Tawawa" or "Tagawa" for Akutagawa.
  • "Naturalist Bows" (自然弓) to refer to the trio of Doppo, Katai and Tōson (and sometimes including Shūsei). This nickname is still in use after the release of more naturalists/bow-types.
  • "Mitanbi" (みたんび, portmanteau of Mita and tanbi (Aestheticism)) for the Haruo-Kafū-Tanizaki trio.
  • Tanizaki is frequently called "Zakitani".
  • "Discipline Granny" (折檻ババア), from Kōyō's two most infamous quotes. He has also been called "Momiji", the alternate reading of his name.
  • "Bata", "Butter" or "Kawabutter" for Kawabata.
• Fridge Horror: Children's literature authors, who manifest as children upon transmigration and identify as such. Since they're dead people brought back via magical means and aging doesn't seem to be a thing for them, one can't help but conclude that these authors are physically and mentally reverted to childhood and will stay that way forever. Ditto authors of other genre who died at ripe old ages but are transmigrated as teenagers (Musha – 90 yrs old, Tōson – 71 yrs, Shūsei – 71 yrs).
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • Has moderate fandom overlap with Tsuki ni Hoerannē, a mystery/fantasy manga with characters modeled after real-life poets.
  • Players of this game are also likely to also play Touken Ranbu.
• Funny Moments: The alternate names for the writers' Galactic Railroad movie selves, with gems such as "Dracones Dustriver" (word-by-word translation of Akutagawa's name), "Zhongdao Dun" (transliteration of Atsushi's name into Chinese) and "Hōmei Rockfield" (word-by-word translation of Iwano's last name).
  • Running an all-projectile team. Watching the enemy team get one-shotted in the free beginning turn can be quite hilarious.
  • IwantAkutagawaawardIwantAkutagawaawardIwantAkutagawaaward…
  • An entire chapter of the Café Noir event, which only consists of this exchange:
    Kawabata: Here is your coffee.
    Hakuchō: (an inordinately long ellipsis)
    Kawabata: (an equally long ellipsis)
    Hakuchō: … Thanks.
    Kawabata: … Enjoy.
  • Kawabata himself is basically walking comedy gold due to his textbook The Comically Serious tendency and his interaction with Riichi.
  • How the dual attack mechanic works makes it sound tragic – namely that Sanity is a stat and how high or low it is determines how fast the gauge that triggers dual attacks gets filled – but when the special ones trigger… most of them are the involved writers playing boke-tsukkomi to each other.
  • The fact you have no control over which costumes the writers wear during strolls – it's either randomly selected from your pool of available skins or default skins at all times. If the former setting is selected, you can very well end up with writers wearing pajamas to the bar or swimsuits in the garden.
• Game-Breaker: The bow class; they master in the game's two stats to rule them all – crit and evasion. Their only real weakness is squishiness, but even that is mostly negated by the aforementioned high evasion. Add to that the ability to get a free beginning turn without being locked to first and last like the guns, they're a force to reckon with, cruising through the dreaded crit-only enemies with relative ease, rarely needing repair, and infamously constantly trumping other classes in MVP count.
• Goddamned Bats: Compromised Ink a.k.a. that infamous crit-only monster. It's a standard blade-type in terms of attack, but it's Made of Iron incarnate with a high chance of leaving the enemy side not fully wiped out, thus affecting the overall Gameplay Grading and event point amount if it's in an event. Major Jul 2021 edit makes this monster even more annoying than it already is, as leaving any enemy un-killed now fails the delve, no exceptions.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Kyōka's absurd germophobia becomes a lot less funny in light of the 2019-2020 coronavirus outbreak. This is probably one of the reasons he's Adapted Out of the anime despite playing important parts in Shūsei's characterization.
  • Kōyō's displeasure at being called an old woman takes on a tragic tone with the fact the real author died at 37 years old.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The fact many voice actors in this game have voiced or would go on to voice other late-modern authors in other works:
    • Akutagawa is Odasaku and Kyōka is Ranpo in Bungo Stray Dogs.
    • Kafū is Dazai, Kyūsaku is Atsushi, Yakumo is Chūya in AkaSeka.
    • Tanizaki is Kyōka, Kyūsaku is Ōgai, Tōson is Yakumo in Meiji Tokyo Renka.
    • Ranpo is Isamu, Kan is Sōseki, Roka is Bokusui in Woodpecker Detective's Office.
  • Hiroshi Kamiya (Kyōka) is already best known for Levi, one of the most notorious Neat Freaks in Japanese media.
  • Then he would go on to voice Crab In Orange in the Japanese dub of Tale of Food, who is a (former) member of an alchemist-like order and heavily involved with rabbits.
  • The premise of "entering the world of books to defend it from altercations" has been played 4 years prior to this game's release in the The Illusionauts.
  • This game spawned a successor game, Namu Amida Butsu! -UTENA-, but as of the major Jul 2021 update starts to copy that game with many mechanic changes, namely elements and removal of permadeath.
• Ho Yay: Since the game has an all-male cast aside from the gender-neutral player character, this is pretty much expected. Now with its own page.
• Incest Yay Shipping: Shortly after Satomi Ton was released, the fandom started shipping him with his older brother Takeo.
• Junk Rare: This complaint has been leveled at H. P. Lovecraft for being a rainbow, yet having weaker stats than Kōyō.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Shūsei; he's most commonly shipped with his fellow Ozaki writers, especially Kyōka, but other than that, he's been shipped with even Odasaku, Ranpo, Shiga, pretty much every writer under the sun regardless of degree of canonical interaction.
• Memetic Mutation: "WHO ARE YOU CALLING GRANNY?"
  • Sai and chairs.
• Mentor Ship: Writers that have mentor-disciple relationships get shipped together frequently, for instance Kōyō and either of his fellow Ozaki authors, but more often Shūsei.
• Most Wonderful Sound: The whips have, hands down, the most satisfying attack sound. One listening to the loud, full-bodied crack will hardly convince one otherwise.
• Portmanteau Couple Name: A matter of course considering the Ho Yay and shipping amongst the fandom. The most common are KyōShū (Kyōka and Shūsei), KaJun (Kafū and Jun'ichirō), KaDoku (Katai and Doppo), SakuSai (Sakutarō and Saisei), ShigaMusha (Shiga and Musha), etc.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The limited summoning event, as each player only gets a certain amount of special bookmarks(which is the only way to transmigrate the event author) for free, which makes getting the author a Luck-Based Mission for free-to-play players. Should they want to try to get the author after they've used all of their bookmarks, the only way is to buy them from the shop.
  • The event has a certain gauge noting the chances of getting the event author which increases each time a special bookmark is used, and the author is guaranteed after reaching a certain point on the gauge. However, in order to reach the guaranteed point, one must spend money for the bookmarks.
  • There is always an event in this game; events directly follow one another with no resting period. Naturally many players feel exhausted.
  • Any event with a random-card-flipping battle mechanic. Your writers' levels, blossoming, all of that is null and void; everything that matters is your being lucky enough not to flip an enemy card. Once you do, you will lose, plus your writers will sustain hefty damage, no matter how strong they are. To add insult to injury, entering this event map requires a consumable pass, which you will have to go farm on normal maps for it to randomly drop. This kind of event was done away with after Jul 2021.
  • Costume level post-2021 major update. Its massive influence on authors' overall performance leads this to practically become more important than the author's actual level.
  • Awakening rings only go up to level 50; rather disappointing for being hyped as this game's answer to kiwame.
• Screw Yourself: Due to Atsushi's Jekyll & Hyde nature, he's shipped with himself a lot, either by way of literally splitting him into two people or otherwise.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: The title theme's melody sounds partly similar to "The Merry-Go-Round of Life".
• That One Level: Post-Jul 2021, Yo-4 Moon in the Mountains. Its difficulty is a sudden spike from previous levels, and the boss has ridiculously high HP, which almost completely relies on very high costume levels and high real levels to beat.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: it's unanimously decided that the removal of the Dining Hall is this.