YMMV / Seraphic Blue

• Anvilicious: This game is constantly in the player's face with its nihilistic characters trying to convey that a society that promotes abuse, overly cold pragmatism, and treating people like tools can suck all the joy out of life. This causes some (like Er) to sink into depravity and causes others (like Vene) to live half-heartedly. These two show that a sufficiently bad society and parenting can potentially be worse than Eldritch Abominations, but the ending shows that people can overcome this, albeit gradually.
• Complete Monster: These four help make Gaia the depressingly bleak world that it is:
  • Ende is the Gaia Cancers' Practitioner, working with Er in her plan to destroy all of Gaia. An excessively sadistic bully taking the form of a small child, Ende takes advantage of his kind's Kill One, Others Get Stronger function to send them out to be slain by the heroes, while also exploiting people's traumatic pasts and telling them to commit suicide. Taking in the Kursk family after sensing their negative energy in order to help him in his scheme, Ende, under the orders of Joshua Kursk, manipulates Georg Roseburg and Morgan Douglas into commencing the War of Liberation between the Ground and Fezzite as a way to break Benedicta Fezzite's spirit and activate the Lamentation of Gaia, accomplishing this task by sadistically dropping a child off a skyscraper. Throwing away Georg and Morgan after their purposes have been served, Ende assists the Kursks in acquiring Disastia's Core by destroying the city of White Wings for standing in their way.
  • Siegbert Ansbach is a researcher for the CMGC who's placed in charge of raising Vene as Gaia's savior for the Seraphic Blue project. In truth a Psychopathic Manchild who views life as a game, Siegbert places Vene in complete isolation, forbidding her from outside contact or showing emotion. To condition her into accepting death and discard her benevolent behavior, Siegbert gave Vene kittens as birthday gifts, allowing her to grow attached to them before forcing her to kill them, a process of which he repeats for decades. With Siegbert's abuse leading to Vene developing a hatred for mankind and a desire to refuse her role as Seraphic Blue, Siegbert keeps the truth about his master Er a secret for his own personal amusement, fully willing to allow Gaia to be destroyed by her hand just to keep his game interesting. Showing no loyalty or love to anybody but Er while claiming to be on the side of good, Siegbert would go on to shape Vene's life as a suicidal nihilist.
  • Georg Roseburg, CEO of Roseburg Enterprises, is the ultimate ruler of the Ground and Lake's biological grandfather. Once an upstanding family man who was consumed by greed after his medicine allowed the Fezzite government to make him a representative, Georg would go on to value his daughter Syria as his own personal trophy, threatening to cause her to miscarry her child after finding out she lost her virginity, instead abandoning her to die during childbirth. In charge of the Black Leos assassin squad, Georg sends them out to kill anybody who stands a chance against him, while killing those who fail. Partnering with Ende to gain control over Fezzite, Georg assists in the removal of the Celestial Border, manipulating the populace into supporting his war against Fezzite by painting Sera-Humans as racists and kickstarting the War of Liberation. Willing to use and discard his volunteer soldiers in order to win the war, Georg activates his ultimate weapon, the LAJ, by destroying the city of Juwess, hoping to use it to destroy the Fezzite capital.
  • Morgan Douglas is the Fezzite's Ground Executive who proves himself nothing more than a petty coward. Having originally been the CMGC Chairman who allowed Siegbert to carry out his abuse on Vene, Morgan was demoted once Vene was kidnapped by Ewan. Partnering with Ende to launch a coup against the CMGC in order to claim his position as Fezzite's ruler, Morgan launches a human genocide campaign as he participates in the War of Liberation, with full intent to burn the entire Ground to ash and rule over all of Gaia. Imprisoning Doris and Yangtze under the belief they're spies, Morgan threatens the OHG with slowly torturing the mentally challenged Doris unless Vene, Lake, and Ewan show up. Betrayed by Ende and forced to become a Gaia Cancer, upon his defeat, Morgan tries to detonate his base so that he can take everyone with him to the grave.
• Demonic Spiders: There are quite a few spread across the game, but the most notorious ones are the Imprisoners; on top of their high defenses and devastating earth magic, they cast Command Imprisonment upon their deaths, locking your characters out of all commands except normal attacks.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Vene becomes far less pleasant, to the point of snapping at those who question her nihilism, after she regains her memories of both her horrible life at Siegbert's hands and Syria's suffering at Georg's hands. Despite having the role of saving the world, she was indoctrinated into viewing life as suffering and death as mercy, thanks to Siegbert's cat-killing regimen. The two lives she did value, Lake and Ewan, end up performing Heroic Sacrifices to save the party, leading to her feeling very nihilistic all the way up to the Final Boss. Even after their spirits give her enough motivation to activate Gaia's Rebirth, she still continues to struggle with depression and suicide, though she's at least making slow progress.
  • The Kursk family members are selfish and vengeful due to their grief over Aisia's transformation and death. Additionally, Kane shows a more sympathetic side when he finds a little girl who reminds him of Aisia, only for her to be killed by Ende.
• Love to Hate: Er manages to be a memorable and horrifying villain due to her hamminess, her sheer Ax-Crazy personality, her Final Boss OST, her origins as a split personality, and her being the embodiment of the nihilism that the developer is critiquing with this game.
• Magnificent Bastard: The Kursks, Kane, Joshua, and Leona, are a loving family of Sera-Humans. With their daughter Aisia succumbing to DSHIS and turning into the Devil Disastia after being dumped to the Ground, the Kursks grew to despise not only humanity for slaying Aisia, but also the land of Fezzite for separating her from them. Recruited by Ende to assist him in achieving Er's plan to ensure Gaia's destruction, Joshua and Leona fake their deaths and take on different identities to work for the CMGC and ROBIN, respectively, with Kane working for OHG. Getting Ende to manipulate Georg Roseburg and Morgan Douglas into launching the War of Liberation in order to achieve the Lamentation of Gaia, while pitting their respective organizations against each other, the Kursks also pose as the Six-Year Commemorator, who kill anybody involved in the DLG laws separating parents from their DSHIS-infected children. Backstabbing Ende after taking his title as Practitioner and becoming Gaia Cancers themselves, the Kursks come close to achieving their dream of destroying Gaia for the sake of unborn children by separating Er from Vene and creating the world-ending dimension Aisia's Heaven.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Make no mistake: Siegbert Ansbach is a horrible person through and through. Be it murdering kittens, emotionally abusing both of his children, sometimes even physically in Fritz' case. But that's not even the worst thing he's ever done. That being knowingly enabling Er to further manifest, despite the fact she has the power to singlehandedly bring the end of the world. At this moment, all his claims of being an Well-Intentioned Extremist go out of the window, showing him as nothing but a vile Psychopathic Manchild, treating the world itself like a game.
  • Georg Roseburg refused to give medical support for his pregnant daughter and instead threatened to kill her, thus leaving her to die in childbirth. This establishes that his love for Syria is superficial and self-serving, making it so that he has no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
  • Played with when it comes to Ende, who was born on the far side of the line as a Humanoid Abomination. His worst deed is when he throws a child off of a skyscraper in order to force Benedicta into a Heroic BSoD. Even Kane had a breakdown from watching him do it, despite wanting the war in the first place.
  • Despite claiming to be an example of Evil Versus Oblivion, Morgan attempts to kill all three members of Seraphic Blue because one of them indirectly caused his demotion, thus dooming the world over petty spite.
  • Despite their tragic backstory, the Kursk family shows little remorse for starting a world war to avenge Aisia, with Kane going as far as to gloat about the carnage. Getting them to pull a Heel–Face Turn is out of the question.
• Narm: As depressing as this game is, its verbosity does lend itself to some unintentionally hilarious moments.
  • Nixon's introduction, where he turns the tables on a Roseburg representative's threats of force by pulling a gun and monologuing about his past as a bounty hunter, should be an impressive establishing moment on paper, but he goes into much more detail than necessary. It's hard for a boast to stay badass when you're telling a perfect stranger about how your addiction to drugs and alcohol led your wife and daughter to leave you, after all.
  • While Ende torturing Vene and telling her how he's going to kill her does highlight how truly messed up he is, it's also the point where the writing veers into edgy fanfic territory akin to such works as Dipper Goes To Taco Bell or Sweet Apple Massacre. See for yourself:
    Ende: "The stomach that is filled with plenty of chyme... The gall bladder that is packed with bitter juices... The liver that's redolent with a bitter taste... The urinary bladder that's filled with pee... And the intestines that are filled with shit... I shall mix them together and stuff them into your mouth. Heh. You'll then puke them all out, won't you? Buueeeeeegh! On the spur of the moment you'll shit and pee yourself... I'll then mix the puke, shit and pee, and smear them all over your pretty face...! I'll thrust my fingers deep into your mouth! I'll force everything down the depths of your throat! And then you'll puke again! I'll make sure you keep puking until you die of madness!"
  • Morgan becoming a Gaia Cancer would've been horrifying, were it not for the fact his form is called Barbara. It's... rather hard to take him seriously after this. Though this narm depends on the frequency of names in one's culture, since most of the major Gaia Cancers are given female names that originate from various European countries, especially Germany.
• Narm Charm: For as amusing as the Purple Prose can be, the game's dour and melancholic atmosphere is no less prominent for it, and its heavier moments can still hit as hard as intended. In particular, Er manages to be a fittingly memorable and intimidating villain by the end.
  • When the Kursks show up after the party deduces their involvement, all three of them show up with their wings out and wearing angelic-looking white bandages. On one hand, it's appropriately dramatic and makes sense as they have usurped Ende and become the new Practitioners. On the other hand, when you remember that they were once regular civilians, it's funny by contrast how they're suddenly wearing matching evil getups instead of their normal clothes. 
    • In addition, Leona and Kane's sprites during their battles double as both epic and slightly-ridiculous because of their unnatural posing, the glorious full detail of their white bandage costumes, and Kane's being a sudden escalation from the other two spirites, with his wings stretching across the entire top screen and drawn in such a way that they resemble large, furry tails. Imagine them having a 40-minute-long conversation with the main party while looking like that.​
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Er is not only a manifestation of Vene's worst thoughts, but the nihilism of other people too, all while having godlike power at her disposal. The result is a No-Nonsense Nemesis who is obsessed with ending the world no matter what, as well as someone who knows exactly how to mentally break down the protagonist and make Vene's already slim chances of saving the world even worse. There's also the matter of how she can keep surveillance on Lake and Vene and report to her allies about it, resulting in Paranoia Fuel.
  • The Gaia Cancers are all horrifying to look at, but special mention goes to Gertraud, which has a phallic symbol sticking out of one of its mouths.
  • The situation with the Devils/Lucifers. They're the result of normally angelic looking Sera-Humans mutating into demonic creatures. The government's response was to throw them to the surface and make the humans deal with it. Worse yet, the Lucifers can fuse with Gaia Cancers to form powerful Cancer Devils, one of which (Disastia) managed to wage a long war against humanity by herself. It also doesn't help that the game has a CG of a baby that contracted DHSIS, as well as a CG of Ofa slowly mutating.
  • We get a rather graphic CG of what happened to the little girl that Ende murdered by threw off a skyscraper.
  • Georg, Morgan, and Siegbert lean more on the realistic side of Nightmare Fuel due to their economic and political power, and their willingness to abuse it to make everyone around them miserable. Georg and Siegbert's abusive parenting methods also hit close to home and in real life, it's definitely possible for those with enough influence to get away with it while most of society is unaware of their misdeeds. These kinds of people exist in real life, unlike the Gaia Cancers and Refuse Seraphic Blue, making them scarier in a way.
• Nintendo Hard:
  • Unless you use up a lot of sphere slots for speed or turn boosting gear, expect most enemies to take actions sooner and faster than your party, even those that look bigger and slower.
  • In the mid to late game, enemies will also be more and more capable of knocking out party members (via high damage or instant death) and unleashing status hell on them.
  • In later dungeons, it's easy to run out of supplement if you don't know the most efficient routes, especially if you're trying to hunt down every item.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Being KOed in battle doesn't remove status ailments, meaning if you revive a fallen character suffering from poison, they still lose 20% of their HP when their turn arrives.
• Squick: Georg's Gaia Cancer form. Not only does it look like something H. R. Giger would be proud of but it's also rather... phallic in one of his mouths. This is fitting due to his creepy Yandere attitude towards Syria.
• Tear Jerker: Unsurprisingly, this game contains a lot of these moments. Examples being:
  • Early in the game, Nixon returns to the church where he has been taking care of angel children. When he does, he notices they're gone. As he steps out, he discovers a horrifying truth: They were forcibly fused and became a Gaia Cancer. And the group has no other choice but to kill them to put them out of their misery. And this track plays during the battle, which is usually reserved for tearjerking cutscenes.
    Nixon: I understand... The children are beyond salvation. My poor little children... to see you suffering so... We will quickly put an end to your pain.
    Ewan: Are you... sure about this?
    Nixon: It is late and the children are awake. It is my responsibility to put them to sleep.
  • Foxey's traumatic past, in which her parents were killed horrifically after defaulting on a loan they took out so that she could take dance lessons. It's her feelings of guilt about having caused her parents' deaths because she was selfish that are the saddest. As a child, she couldn't have known better, and yet, her reaction is very understandable because she was logically part of the cause, even if it was unintentional.
• That One Attack:
  • The 8-Headed Dragon has an attack called "Eight Forked Massacre" that hit random characters eight times and inflict negative status effects.
  • Void Finality certainly counts, since it plays with the player's expectations that they'll be safe as long as they prevent the enemy from spending field elements to cast their spells. And while the player can learn it too, it's Awesome, but Impractical for them due to the high TP cost and turn delay while enemies can wipe parties with it due to Health/Damage Asymmetry. Fittingly, the Final Boss is fond of using this spell.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Surprisingly, many of Er's actions, such as her secret communications with Ende's group and her damage on Gaia's Providence, are not shown onscreen or in flashbacks. Which is a shame because it would have been interesting to see how she acts when not speaking to Vene.

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