Loveless/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Complete Monster: Holy CRAP, Seimei, you're a shithead.
  • Die for Our Ship: Poor Yuiko. She's constantly bashed for having a crush on Ritsuka, even though she never acts on these feelings. She even encourages Soubi and Ritsuka's relationship from the beginning (earning a She Is Not My Girlfriend reaction from Ritsuka). However, she is somehow seen to a threat to their relationship, and fanfiction turns her into a Complete Monster hellbent on destroying their relationship.
  • Draco in Leather Pants: It's hard to find a male character who DOESN'T go through this, but Ritsu, Nisei, and Seimei are the most frequent. While not villainous, Soubi is often stripped of his flaws to become a saint in Fanon.
    • Semei is given this treatment often. The manga-ka is TELLING the reader he's a psychopath!
  • Fridge Horror: Seimei and Nisei had split up to attack the school for the Sentouki. While the latter had been in a fight with Ritsuka and Soubi (previously Midori and Ai), Seimei was left to his own agenda. Although he's the Sacrifice of the two, he somehow managed to cause the majority of the problems listed in Crapsack World above. In other words, it may very well have been him who destroyed part of the Old School and injured others. The question is how? with a dose of with what?. It's unknown who injured the unnamed four people, but there was not enough time for Nisei to attack and wound four people by the time he reached Ritsuka, Midori and Ai. He reached them pretty quickly - even before the announcement that there was an intruder. After the fight with Ritsuka and Soubi, he was also unconscious, then taken captive. This goes back to the fact that the only other person who could have done all that damage was Seimei.
    • It could very well be that the book Seimei recounted so offhandedly in volume 8 was actually a retelling of what happened to Mikado in volume 10.
    • Related to the universe itself - losing your ears and tail. This troper was watching and then it hit her that new non-virgins must experience some sort of phantom limb syndrome the same as real-life amputees. For people who lose their ears consensually it must not be that bad - but what about those (like Soubi) who were raped? The phantom limb syndrome would only serve as a physical reminder that they were assaulted.
  • Ho Yay: Ooh boy, where do we start? Soubi and Ristsuka, Soubi and Kio, Soubi and Seimei, Soubi and Ritsu-sensei (one-sided, admittedly).

Yayoi: Aoyagi Ritsuka. He's pretty. Like a girl.

  • Jerkass Woobie: For some, Misaki. Yes, she treats Ritsuka terribly after Seimei's death, but then again Seimei wasn't the nicest person towards her, and more than one person were on the floor when she got Hidden Depths in volume 5.
  • Mind Game Ship: Any ship involving Seimei.
    • People who ship Seimei and Ritsuka as a normal couple are known to be part of the Misaimed Fandom, seen below.
  • Misaimed Fandom: While Seimei was, in fact, first portrayed in a positive light by Ritsuka as a caring older brother who is unfairly murdered, he is shown in later chapters to have faked his own death to avoid his execution. It Gets Worse when it's revealed that he was going to be executed for being a murderer. And to top it all off, he does all of this just to sadistically test his brother's love for him. While this recieved a Squick reaction from some fans, others loved Seimei even more, making him into, horror of horrors, The Woobie.
    • Though Ritsuka might seem to be an Unreliable Narrator, the things he described about Seimei were in fact accurate, though only toward him. Seimei did do all those kind, caring things for him, regardless of his actual intentions, regardless of how he acted toward anyone else, etc. Ritsuka was simply describing Seimei exactly from the things he did around Ritsuka himself. It's a bit hard to explain, but he's not entirely unreliable (as Seimei really does only care about him, though not necessarily out of love), though he is a bit the type to only believe what he wants to believe, which Soubi has noticed. In terms of Seimei, some fans do enjoy the complexities of his character and do like him more for not actually being the kind, caring older brother, but for being so different from the rest of the cast, and for being an exceptional villain.
  • Needs More Love: It's ignored by most yaoi fangirls for its complex story and lack of gratuitous Fan Service, while it's sometimes snubbed by more serious shonen-ai fans, who make assumptions based on the Shotacon and cat ears. To make matters worse, the fanfiction makes the story seem based entirely on Shotacon and S&M.
    • There are some of us out there who gave it a shot and were quite frankly disturbed by certain elements of the story despite enjoying the admittedly tasty, if muted, fanservice and delightfully complex romances.
      • There are also fans who were just as disturbed that aren't in it for the romance, or the romance alone. There are fans who actually enjoy the story and understand that it goes far beyond being a typical romance story. There's a reason one of its genres is Psychological. The plot of this series wasn't meant for just romance, so people looking for a Fan Service series are not going to find they're looking for here. That was not its intention. Romance is included, but is not the only focus. The romance also has a powerful habit of tying into the psychology part of it.
  • Ron the Death Eater: Yuiko is a constant victim of this. If she was male, though, she'd probably be part of an OT3.
    • This has reached such extremes... that a now infamous scanlator team kept calling Yuiko "stupid", "bitch", "slut" and saying "why don't you kill yourself now" in their foot notes.
  • Tear Jerker: When Natsuo and Youji are called back to school, and they genuinely don't want to leave Soubi and the others. Even Soubi appeared saddened when he found out. Thankfully, both boys come back to live with him again.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The virgins-got-cat-ears thing really could have been used much more. It would have made for some interesting stories, and it would be fun to see how it affected society.
  • Viewer Gender Confusion: Many characters count, thanks to the abundance of Long Haired Pretty Boys and the occasional tomboyish girl. Yurio is surely the worst offender, though.
    • Natsuo might be an example as well. Come on, someone else must have thought Natsuo was a girl.
    • Nisei is far too pretty to be a man.
    • Raise your hand if you thought Yayoi was a Schoolgirl Lesbian for Yuiko, not a dude.
  • What Do You Mean It's Not for Kids?: The cute art style and fairly non-explicit relationship between Ritsuka and Soubi leads a lot of young teenage girls to read it - often completely missing the point that the series, and in particular Ritsuka and Soubi's relationship, is supposed to be quite disturbing. (After all, Ritsuka is twelve years old, and Soubi is pushing him into a romantic relationship because Ritsuka's own brother told him to.)
    • Can tie into Moral Dissonance once young fangirls start thinking that a child's relationship with a masochistic pedophile is just adorable.
  • The Woobie: Ritsuka. Holy LORD, Ritsuka.
    • Soubi too, especially once his backstory comes into play.