Darker than Black/YMMV

Character-related:

• Alas, Poor Villain: Yoko
• Complete Monster:
  • It's pretty clear that Genma is one by the end of the series.
  • Havoc, before we meet her.
  • Daisuke does an impressive number of horrible things in the short time we see him. He sleeps with his charges (including his cousin), posts web-porn of his conquests, tries to deny it when confronted about it and when that fails, tries to blame his lovers for his wandering eye and refuses to apologize for anything he did. He apparently gets a teacher to agree to sleep with him by drugging her, hires a gang to "take care" of one of his mouthier lovers, and tasers his would-be and eventual killer after she decides to spare him.
  • Claude really has no redeeming qualities to speak of. He ends up slaughtering an entire building full of contractors who wished to live peacefully. All while wearing that evil bastard smile, no doubt.
• Creator's Pet: This seems to be a common view of Suou; some fans even think that her spotlight stealing is entirely responsible for ruining an otherwise decent plot.
  • Of course, Suou also has her fans, who thought that she gave the season a fresh approach which it sorely needed, since season 1 all over again (just substituting Amber with Yin/Izanami would have stagnated the plot.
  • And then you have the people who think that second season did stagnate the plot, and that Suou's spotlight stealing made it even worse.
• Ensemble Darkhorse: November 11 was quite popular with North American fans, at least partly due to his classy bearing and sense of humour.
• Everybody Remembers the Stripper: In retrospect, it probably wasn't the most brilliant idea to make the episode where November 11 lounges around naked be the same one where he dies -- otherwise, you end up with fan memorials that get a little mixed up.
• Evil Is Sexy: Amber
  • Amber isn't evil. She's an antagonist, but she is never shown to be evil.
• Foe Yay: Misaki and Hei, ever so much. In the second season, Mina jokes that she's saving her virginity for him.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The American fanbase loves November 11.
• Ho Yay: Shichi enjoys pretending to be a woman who was in love with Hei a little too much.
• Iron Woobie: Havock
• Les Yay: Buckets aimed at Misaki. She doesn't reciprocate much, though. In all fairness, pretty much every character has at least a little attraction for her, not just the women.
• Magnificent Bastard: Amber. No surprise considering her powers to travel through time gives her the upper hand to manipulate people and events.
• Memetic Badass: Hei, definitely.
• Memetic Sex God: Hei. C'mon, just check out those collarbones.
• Moe:
  • Yin. Seems to come with the territory when you're an Emotionless Girl.
  • Amber, played up deliberately.
  • Meena
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Daisuke posting web porn of his conquests whilst they remain ignorant of it. With badly blocked out faces. Then hiring a gang to rape Azusa AND Kyouko, with Kyouko as an unwitting accomplice, just so he can "rescue Azusa" or so she can't tell on him.
  • The callous and horrible way in which Tanya kills her other best friend/crush Nika.
  • Claude's massacre of a group of Contractors who just wanted to live in peace. Particularly since given his powers, he had no real reason to do it.
• Stoic Woobie: It sucks to be Yin.
• Too Cool to Live: August 7. Or so we thought.
  • Also November 11 and Huang.
• Toy Ship: Suou/July, who's somehow fond of her.

Seasons 1 and 2

• Alas, Poor Villain: Several of the Contractors -- Bertha and Itzhak are particularly prominent, although nowhere near as much as Nick.
  • Although we really don't know what happens to Nick. Stupid Mind Screw-inducing Gate.
• Complete Monster: Ilya Sokolov, a creepy motherfucker even by Contractor standards. Just in case he wasn't horrifying enough, he casually revealed that he had been a Serial Killer before he became a Contractor. The guy who hired him thanks Hei for killing the psycho.
  • Genma, arguably, crossed into this territory.
• Crack Pairing: Hei/Hazuki. Hilariously enough, the only shipping pair to actually get any action. That remuneration sure is awkward, huh?
• Crazy Awesome: Playing chicken with an airplane. Hei. Genma. Episode 9.
• Crowning Moment of Awesome: See Taking You with Me and Dying Moment of Awesome. Since Hei lives and breathes pure awesome, though, it can be hard to pick out specifics.
  • He pulls some seriously awesome stuff in the last episode, though, and there's some more clear-cut moments in the second season.
• Crowning Moment of Funny: Not much, but Huang slighting Mao into near-hissing only to be verbally drowned in vitriol by absolutely calm Hei might count. And there's the Private Defective team... "I'll totally sue you."
  • Kiko's very existence serves as a comedy relief element for the series. Other than Mao's nervous sweat-beads, she's the only other character who's frequently prone to over-exaggerated anime emotions, such as Wingding Eyes whenever an opportunity to make money comes around, and Expressive Hair.
    • One great Kiko moment was when she and a friend were complaining about Adaptation Decay of some unnamed series.

"I can't let that writer live!" * Pulls out pen with an over-the-top sword sound effect* "I'm writing his name in my notebook!"

• • And, after Mao wakes up in Amber's headquarters, he gives a long, dramatic monologue about how contractors always do the logical thing. When he get caught by the others for trying to non-chalantly walk out of the room, he tries to logically respond with a "Meow."
  • Then there's the time when Hei was infiltrating a restaurant and a violent, drunk customer decided he had a problem with the waiter. Result: Huge tough guy trying to beat up a cute, skinny little waiter who isn't doing that great of a job of hiding his epic ninja skills.
  • The time when a couple of door-to-door missionaries went after Hei. "Um... I just want to put away my groceries..."
    • "NI HAO!!!" (Cut from the dub)
  • "The stars are pretty."
  • Most of the OVA. It's basically an Omake parodying the main series, particularly mocking Hei's Chick Magnet status and the fact that a White Mask of Doom and a change of clothes really shouldn't be that effective of a disguise. Highlights include slightly loopy Fan Girl Mayu crushing on him due to his "sexy collarbone" and writing him into her yaoi fanfic (which Yin reads), and what is possibly the absolute silliest Reset Button in the history of fiction.
• Crowning Moment of Heartwarming: A lot of the last episode of the first season, assuming you can make any sense of it. And then there's episode 14... "Kirsi..." "No. Yin."
• Crowning Music of Awesome: Well, it's by Yoko Kanno, so what do you expect? "GO Dark" and "Deadly Work" in particular. The first OP is also impressive, even given the Narm Charm and Memetic Mutation.
  • The second OP isn't bad, either - it just has the misfortune of turning up after Howling.
• Ensemble Darkhorse: Goran, who in his less than half-episode of screentime managed to acquire a veritable real-life Instant Fandom
• Fanon Discontinuity: Some people ignore the second season entirely
• Iron Woobie:

Havoc: Promise me one thing, though. If... If I revert back to my former self, kill me right away.

• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Poor Hei gets shipped with everyone.
• Leave the Plot Threads Hanging: The complete lack of explanation for the Gates, Alien Sky, and the like generally works well enough that resolving exactly what's going on would probably be a bit of a letdown.
• Less Disturbing in Context: Just try to explain that the show isn't Gorn to someone who walks in on Havoc's "blood of children" line.
• Magnificent Bastard: Amber.
• Memetic Mutation: Post the first line of the first Opening Theme on /a/ and see what happens.
  • To a lesser extent, many fans enjoy taking a page from Mayu by jokingly fixating on Hei's clavicle. It's gotten to Memetic Sex God levels.
  • If Youtube is any indication, "UNTZ UNTZ UNTZ" has become one in reference to Gemini's trance-filled OST.
    • So it's become the musical equivalent of CandlejaUNTZ UNTZ UNTZ UNTZ UNTZ UNTZ UNTZ UNTZ UNTZ
      • Yeah, that's exactly i-UNTZ UNTZ UNTZ UNTZ UNTZ UNTZ UNTZ UNTZ UNTZ UNTZ UNTZ
  • Chinese Electric Batman!
  • Veteran's Day (11/11) has been commandeered in honor of November 11. Naked pictures ^{[dead link]} are inevitably involved.
  • I wish Hei'd rape me. ;_;
  • Hei will die. But his soul will choose to go back in time, the time when he was happiest, and he will be at season 1 first episode. Suou who loves Hei wants to be with him too and wants to be in a time when Hei'd love her, but since he already loves Yin she'll go back in time before Hei is born, and became his mother.
• Moral Event Horizon: If you somehow still harbored any sympathy for Genma, the throwaway comment in the last episode that he was the one who killed Youko and the implications of having raped her prior or even worse; after her death pushes him straight into Complete Monster territory.
• Narm Charm: The Gratuitous English lines at the beginning of the first opening should by all rights sound stupid. Instead, they're awesome, in an over-the-top, Memetic Mutation kind of way.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Nika and cockroaches - just... gah!
  • Izanami's awakening.
• Selective Squick: In general, the more squicky you find Lolicon, the less you'll like the second season. If you can ignore the subtext completely and don't mind Hei's jerkification, it's actually quite good, but for others... yeah.
• Sequelitis / Seasonal Rot: A solid few of the fanbase are very and vocally dissatisfied with the new tone.
  • Though many were somewhat mollified towards the end, when the Lolicon subtext was turned down and Hei stopped acting so obnoxious.
• Stoic Woobie: It sucks to be Yin. Or Hei.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: To the second season.
• Tear Jerker: More than you'd expect. Episode 14 is a big one.
  • The end of Episode 4, too.
  • Hei's Not So Stoic moment in the Gaiden. The worst part is that if you've watched the second season, you know she does.
  • Yin's nightmare. She keeps quietly saying Hei's name... which you quickly realize is the Emotionless Girl equivalent of screaming for help.
  • Despite being a major Mind Screw, what happens to Nick in episode 12 is also oddly emotional, especially when you remember what his dream was.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Those who do agree are generally the same people who think that Suou gets way too much screen-time and therefore like to call her "Mary-Suou".
• The Scrappy: Norio, for being a whiny, semi-delusional and just generally annoying Lolicon stalker Played for Laughs and (attempted) sympathy who hits the wrong side of What Measure Is a Non-Badass? hard.
• The Woobie: Havoc. Not bad for a reviled mass murderer who literally drank the blood of children.
  • In season 2, Genma invokes the trope in hopes that it can apply to him ("Hey, having an unfortunate past can score me some Moe points!"). ^[1]
• Woolseyism: The first two episodes make more sense and fit the tone of the rest of the series quite a bit better in the dub; in particular, they changed Jean's completely-inconsistent-with-everything-else comments about "installing a personality" to something like "Contractors have feelings too" and replaced Mao's inexplicable line about Hei's coat only being bulletproof when he wears it with an excellent Deadpan Snarker moment along the lines of "Hei doesn't just wear that coat as a fashion statement."

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1. ↑ That'd probably work better if Hei didn't have the Dark and Troubled Past thing cornered and Amber, Suo, and Yin weren't covering the Moe.