Mitadake Saga
When a teacher is killed in Mitadake High School, the school's security system automatically places the building on lock-down, preventing anyone from entering or leaving...including the murderer.
Mitadake Saga is a Web Comic hosted on Comic Fury. It's based on the Byond game, Mitadake High, by Devourerofsouls, which pays homage to many animé and their stereotypes. There are plans for three overall story arcs
- Death Note Mode
- Duo
- Terminus
As you can probably work out from the first subtitle, the first arc is related to Death Note. The Byond game has a Death Note mode which replaces the killer with Kira and adds a player who has Shinigami eyes. This arc ended in March 2011
Duo is to be based on the normal mode of the game and is just about to begin. Terminus is a secret. A prequel arc, called Prelude, was planned to go in between Duo and Terminus, but it was cancelled after the creator decided that it'd make the project too long, and was too light-hearted in comparison to the other arcs.
The site can be found here [dead link] and updates on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
Tropes used in Mitadake Saga include:
- A Bloody Mess: Inverted and invoked. The Silver Haired Girl notes that the school's ketchup is odd, drawing attention to how it is drawn just like blood. In the original game ketchup could be used to make fake blood, so there's a good chance this trope will be played straight later.
- Adventures in Coma Land: Potentially. Zero is knocked out whilst fighting Keiichi and finds himself in an entirely white expanse of nothing, with no-one but him and his dead friend Zaraki around. However, whether it's really happening is debatable, as Yuki (and all the other dead students) suddenly appear too. Not to mention that when Zero gets back to reality, the "ghosts of all the dead student appear in front of Keiichi and protect Zero, but that could easily be down to Keiichi's own delusions, as he seems quite insane by that point.
- Anime Hair: Expected, considering both the comic and game's nature
- Art Evolution: The earlier art is very iffy. It continued to improve over time, with increasingly complex backgrounds, more distinct character designs, and softer shading effects.
- Ascended Fangirl: The comic's co-author, Espeh, was recruited to work on the project after her and Frosty met at college, and she contributed some good ideas.
- Axes At School: Kazu Ito is carrying around an axe. Hmm...
- Big No: Keiichi lets out a huge one stretching across several panels right before his death. One panel even has it written scattered around alphabet soup-style amid a rain of hoarded keys.
- Lampshaded by the Author's Notes underneath: Trope Unlocked: Big No
- Blinding Bangs: Keiichi Hideki's hair completely obscures his eyes
- Blood From the Mouth: Koji coughs up blood upon being stabbed
- The Cameo: Appropriately enough, three characters from the actual Death Note series appear during that arc, though mostly off-panel.
- The Chessmaster: In the Kira arc, Keiichi Hideki takes the opportunity presented by the lockdown to test out the finer points of using the Death Note, by manipulating Kazu Ito into killing two people. All without writing his name in the book itself.
- Closed Circle: The automatic lockdown provides this.
- The Corpse Stops Here
- Dead Man Writing: Zero receives a message from the Late-Daichi at the end of Chapter three.
- Death Flag: During the Kira arc, several characters Info Dump about their pasts, perhaps unintentionally giving the impression they're collecting Death Flags.
- Decoy Protagonist: Zaraki Yagami looks to be the protagonist, especially considering his goggles, but is killed by Kira fairly early on.
- Driven to Suicide: Daichi Takana's mother was swindled by Mai Saito's father, causing her company to go bankrupt, leading to her suicide. Oh dear...
- Dropped a Bridge on Him: A few characters have gotten this treatment. Zaraki Yagami was the first one introduced and was also the first one killed in the comic. Mai Saito was also killed only 12 pages after she was introduced. Anyone Can Die indeed...
- Easily Forgiven: Kazu kills Daichi because he thought he was Kira. Zero and Koji accept this excuse a little too easily. Then again, there wasn't really time to have a calm discussion about it after he finally finished explaining why he did it.
- Everyone Is a Suspect: The whole premise.
- Evil Gloating: Kira engages in this throughout the final chapter of the Death Note arc.
- For the Evulz: At the end of the Death Note arc, it's revealed part of the tragedy occured because Ryuk was bored.
- Foreshadowing: Reread through the comic and you can catch some subtle hints that you probably didn't notice before.
- Freudian Excuse: Kira's motivation is revealed in a set of silent panels, apparently, his mother went insane after being the victim of a violent crime. Too bad they took a flying leap off the slippery slope.
- Goggles Do Nothing: Zaraki Yagami - The Boy With Goggles - funnily enough, wears goggles. In the original game, this is reference to protagonists who wear goggles. Here it's...
- Hoist by His Own Petard: In the first arc, Kira is killed by the Death Note.
- Hollywood Hacking: Nana uses this to retrieve the code for the security room from the computer lab.
- In-Joke: The actions of some of the characters is a nudge at the constant rulebreaking and metagaming found in the original game.
- Info Dump: Frequently in the first arc.
- Kill the Cutie: Poor Yuki...
- Killed Off for Real: Anyone who dies. Although, a transparent Zaraki did pop up during Zero's fight with Koji.
- Late to the Party: Done with a slight twist; Duo's Prologue revealed that Shiki almost got back into the school before it was locked down, but since she'd watched a show back home first, she was just outside and had the doors slam shut in her face.
- Manipulative Bastard: The first arc's Kira.
- Meganekko: Aki Mishiba, the purple-haired girl.
- Mood Killer: In Duo's Prologue, Taku butts into a conversation about what happened in the Kira arc before it can really get started.
- Murder Is the Best Solution: Considering the source game, this occurs a lot.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Kazu has this when he realizes the people he killed were innocent.
- Nightmare Fetishist: Mizue, who excitedly wants to examine a dead body when the Lockdown occurs.
- No Social Skills: Duo introduces Taku, the Gray Haired Boy, as somebody really interested in what happened during the first arc. And who constantly bugs the sole survivor about what happened. With no regard to their Survivor Guilt or anything. His utter lack of tact makes him come off as a Jerkass.
- Ontological Mystery: The school could count, once the lockdown is activated, especially as it's implied that there's more to it than it would seem...
- Otaku Surrogate: Quite a few, especially Zaraki.
- Red Herring: The scene between Zero, Zaraki, Daichi and Mai early on in the story where everyone introduces themselves. Kira gets their names from other sources, but that doesn't stop the characters accusing each other over it
- Retcon: Keiichi's motives and plans are fairly different from the Kira Monolouge in the third page.
- Rose-Haired Girl: Shiki Yagami.
- The Scapegoat: Kira was planning to set up poor Yuki as this.
- Scars Are Forever: In the second arc, Zero has a scar over one of his eyes.
- See You in Hell: Uttered by Koji as he's about to finish off Zero, right before getting attacked from behind.
- Shy Blue-Haired Girl: Mai Saito seems to be fairly shy.
- Serial Killings, Specific Target: This is Keiichi's motivation in slaughtering the other students in the school, because he doesn't want the Kira Investigation Force to know he realized that they sent an undercover FBI agent to the school.
- Shout-Out: A fair few, though this is likely to increase as the series continues.
- Examples; Death Note, Higurashi, Tsukihime.
- Spanner in the Works: Keiichi really hadn't been expecting Yuki to survive his attack and write his name in the Death Note.
- Sole Survivor: In the Kira arc.
- Sunglasses at Night: Fairly redundant because they're inside anyway. Not that that makes them any more practical. Kazu Ito wears them.
- Survivor Guilt
- Twist Ending: Yuki, thought to be dead, manages to write Keiichi's name in the Death Note, Shiki is waiting outside the school and Ryuk gave Yuki her Shinigami Eyes out of boredom.
- Yandere: Miki is this for her brother, Koji.
- You Bastard: Taku's cheerful attitude about all the murder and mayhem going on comes off as casually cruel to his classmates... but is a good translation of Mitadake High players who don't bother acting like normal teenagers caught in such a situation would.
- You Gotta Have Blue Hair: Two characters have blue hair. They're easy to confuse for each other, which makes the fact that they interact with each other very early on, somewhat awkward.
- Almost everyone in the cast has an implausible hair colour, ranging from blue, green, purple, pink etc. There are some ordinary hair colours, like brown, black and blonde in there too, so there's a healthy balance.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: In the Death Note arc, Yuki and Kazu fall victim to this.