Angst? What Angst?: Kurami barely angsts at all over being a slave, mainly bringing up how it affects her relationship with Feel rather than all the suffering she endured. Granted, the Ten Pledges presumably limit how badly slaves like Kurami are treated, but while Kurami has more than her share of unpleasant memories (which are never elaborated on in the anime's first season), she's decided not to feel sorry for herself.
Awesome Ego: Sora is impossibly arrogant, confident that there's not a soul alive that could beat him at games, aside from his kid sister. But he's not just full of hot air as he lives up all of his boasts and is an exceptional Guile Hero. The light novels make it clear that this is mostly bluster... while he does have a giant ego, it's mostly tied up in his role as half of Blank; outside of this, he considers himself worthless, useless, and unworthy of love, as well as completely and totally good for nothing other than helping out his much more brilliant and amazing sister. His low self esteem is a driving force behind why he yowls about how awesome he is so much.
"There Is A Reason", the theme song from The Movie. It's a touching and beautiful piece that almost comes off as a love song for Riku and Shuvi.
Base-Breaking Character: The main duo, particularly Sora. Fans love their knack for unorthodox and brilliant strategies, and consider them well-developed characters with realistic flaws and shortcomings. Their detractors, however, may argue that they're overpowered wish fulfillment characters, and are turned off by Sora's perverted tendencies, Shiro's attraction toward her adoptive brother, and the way they both constantly abuse Steph for their own amusement.
Broken Base: The fanservice. Part of the fanbase is fine with it, believing that it's at an acceptable level and/or is Played for Laughs enough that it can be funny. Everyone else finds it excessive, and very creepy when it comes to Shiro, who is eleven.
Crazy Is Cool: If Blank's fight against Kurami didn't tip you off on how batshit insane game rules can get, then the one against Jibril definitely will.
Sora betting his own freaking existence! Kurami outright calls him insane.
Diagnosed by the Audience: Sora and Shiro are both stated to have a "communication disorder", which is a catch-all term in Japanese that incorporates those with No Social Skills and those who have actual disorders. That said, their shared inability to function in "normal" society and their individual quirks (such as Sora displaying an attachment disorder and Shiro's typically emotionless demeanor combined with being a Child Prodigy) has led fans to theorize that they really are neurodivergent in some way.
Designated Monkey: Stephanie Dola. She's become Sora and Shiro's pet princess and personal toy and is constantly put into humiliating situations that are played for both laughs and Fanservice, but it's hard not to feel sorry for her given how hard she's trying to help Imanity.
Black Bullet as well due to both stories having a male main-character with a loli-girl sidekick; helped by the fact that they were both released during the Spring 2014 anime season.
Follow the Leader: A small number of people with exceptional abilities are, after responding to a message, summoned to another world where everything is decided with games and they group up with the lowest-tier nation in order to help them climb the ladder? Where have we heard that before?
Harsher in Hindsight: In Blank's chess match against Kurami, in which the pieces have wills of their own, Blank's pieces refuse to obey orders to sacrifice themselves, with Sora pointing out that soldiers would not willingly sacrifice their own lives unless they respected their leader or morale was high. In the movie/Volume 6, Riku(who is implied to possibly be Sora from a past life) is able to order his subordinates to sacrifice their lives when necessary. They comply, partly because they believe in Riku and partly because the situation is that desperate.
Hilarious in Hindsight: Sora uses Persona 4 (or better said, "Pers*na" to convince Shiro that they didn't go to back to Tokyo, but are in a video game, something they can handle. While the fourth Persona game (which is pictured) takes place in the small town of Inaba, the fifth game takes place in Tokyo, and has a Shut In party member who's also an avid gamer.
Les Yay: The relationship between Fil and Kurami appears to be "girlfriends" but it's more like a mother-daughter thing. The line is blurred in one of the mini episodes.
Memetic Loser: Stephanie has this reputation, as someone who isn't necessarily stupid- just lacking in gaming skills and being unfavorably compared to Sora and Shiro- but gets dismissed as an idiot in-universe and in real life, so much so that her name is used as an insult.
"No Season 2, No Life" has become a popular slogan, as despite the first season's huge popularity and it ending on a blatant Sequel Hook, there have been no news regarding a follow-up.
An image of Shiro and Stephanie in lingerie has become an infamous example of "When your parents enter your room while watching Anime".
"Just a Steph"; Sora and Shiro's Person as Verb insult towards Stephanie.
Stephanie and Kurami most fit The Woobie aspect of it, making viewers want to give them hugs. In fact, all of them to an extent, because they all have their quirkiness and individual appeal.
Schwi is not only an example of this trope (being a small, cute and innocent girl with an endearing love for Riku) but her research into "the heart" apparently led to her creating personality routines for it (such as Little Sister Heroine).
Never Live It Down: Jibril's introductory sentence, in which she speaks multiple foreign languages in an attempt to sound sophisticated, will never be forgotten.
One True Threesome: Considering Sora and Shiro's extreme co-dependence on each other, it's virtually impossible that Stephanie and Sora have a private relationship without including Shiro in the mix.
The ending of the Materialization Shiritori game in Episode 6, has Sora going outrageously far with the game. He removes the Earth's outer layers to expose the core to make Jibril fall towards it, followed by removing Coulombs Forcenote the electrostatic attraction between particles causing the entire universe to collapse now that there's nothing holding it together and unleashing a hypernova of fifty billion Celsius that rivals the Big Bang!
Episode 9 where Sora bets away his own existence in one of the most elaborate Thanatos Gambits, just to get Kurami and Feel to see that he's genuine.Explanation Each of the Reversi pieces represents a part of oneself, ranked in order of how much the player values them, and are taken away when they're captured. Sora allows Kurami to capture the piece containing his memories so she will have full access to his memories and realize that he isn't a spy for another race. This involves her also taking the piece with Sora's existence, but luckily, Shiro is able to finish the game.
Values Dissonance: Shiro, who is eleven years old, is placed in fanservicey situations on more than one occasion. This can be extremelySquicky to viewers from countries where child sexualization is one of the biggest taboos around, to the point where it's turned some people away from the series.
The Woobie: Kurami. Despite being a crybaby by nature, she's unwilling to admit how much she's suffered as a slave to the Nilvalen family- she alludes to Feel sometimes having to be distant from her for the sake of Feel's public image, but Feel's noting that Kurami cries whenever Feel takes her eyes off her might indicate that Kurami's bottling up her pain. While Kurami's friendship with Feel is definitely a bright spot in her life, she has trouble accepting it due to a mix of low self-esteem and guilt over what associating with a slave and planning on ending slavery forever is costing Feel.
The translation for the terms thrown around during the game must have required some serious thinking to get meaningful terms in English (out of Japanese) which still form the requirements of the word chain. Suffice to say, the translators did it brilliantly.
The German version instead establishes that the words used can be in any language (which is canon considering Sora specifically asks if it's okay), so Sora can use the English words "Suitcases" and "Earth's Outer Core" at one point.
In the original Japanese, Izuna speaks rather rudely but occasionally inserts "desu" at the end of her sentences to seem more polite. In the English localization, she instead uses profanity, while randomly ending her sentences with "please"(as well as "thank you" in the dub of the anime).
, is simply fantastic, both in the emotional singing and accompanying visuals.