Otomedius/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Accidental Innuendo: All over the place. Especially from Tita, which might not be so accidental.
  • Americans Hate Tingle: See Broken Base and They Panned It, Now They Suck below.
  • Angst? What Angst?: Castlevania is dripping with it, but Kokoro is pretty cheerful and upbeat.
  • Anticlimax Boss: Compared to her previous forms, Dark Force's final form is quite easy to fight.
  • Broken Base: Many non-Japanese fans of Konami's previous Shoot'Em Ups have a cold reception towards the series. The complaints usually aren't about the gameplay, but the amount of Gag Boobs, Fan Service and Stripperific characters. Some do have complaints about its grind-heavy but otherwise very basic Gradius gameplay to the point of considering other cute'em ups superior in this regard.
  • Crowning Music of Awesome:
    • The game has eight soundtracks to choose from. From original, orchestrated music to high-energy remixes of older Konami favorites, there's something for everyone.
    • The boss music deserves special mention, though.
    • Following tradition, the sequel has a total of eleven soundtracks to choose from, with many notable tracks that appeal to nearly every musical taste, from orchestra to techno to rock and roll. Nearly 30 musicians from all over the world did work on Otomedius Excellent's soundtrack.
  • Cult Classic: Getsu Fuuma Den was... obscure, and yet gets a prominant reference in Otomedius in the form of Gesshi Hanafuuma.
  • Ear Worm: Aircraft Carrier is in this game, too. Twice. And just like every other game this theme appears in, it gets in your brain and refuses to leave.
  • Evil Is Sexy:
    • Titi XIV.
    • Meta Lium.
    • Ruby and Cobalt.
  • Fandom Rivalry: Some Gradius fans seem to hate Otomedius for "What Konami did to Gradius". But... it's not Gradius, any more than it is Parodius, Xexex, TwinBee or ThunderCross... Most Otomedius fans, in contrast, are also fans of other Konami shooters and enjoy the numerous mythology gags and references.
  • Fanfic Fuel: Fan theories for what an ordinary human girl like Shiori is doing with a piece of Bacterian military hardware.

Shiori: "Surprised? Here I go! Good luck!"

  • Fetish Fuel Station Attendant: As hard as it might be to believe, Ryukotsuki shows more skin than anyone else in the series, barring Yoshiko (which was an accident, while Ryukotsuki dresses that way all the time).
  • Game Breaker:
    • Many of the D-Burst attacks can make very short work of most bosses.
    • Esmeralda's Pulse Laser is unintentionally, ludicrously overpowered. It ignores the damage caps obeyed by all other weapons in the game. Placing an Option inside a boss (easily done with Esmeralda's Whip options) and holding autofire will, essentially, cause the boss to die instantly.
    • In Gorgeous, Gravity Bullet (as used by Poini) was quite broken. In Excellent, it's even nastier.
  • Moe: Poini's said to be the lovable little sister of the entire squadron.
  • Scrappy Mechanic: To get new weapons added to a character's selection, you need to either make money or hope to unlock the weapon card for the first and second game respectively. This effectively forces numerous replays just to get a decent selection. The second game is better about it as weapon cards apply to all characters that can use them compared to the first game where you had to grind for each character. This is often a point of complaint in fan written reviews and articles.
  • That One Boss:
  • Theiss Titillation Theory: There is almost no way the Stripperific outfits that barely cover the breasts of some of the characters can stay on when they are flying.
  • They Panned It, Now They Suck:
    • Every major US reviewer panned Excellent quite harshly, in ways that are commonly taken to reveal none of the reviewers even liked Shoot'Em Up games and have no business reviewing one.
    • Other reviewers gave the game harsh treatment despite clearly never even playing it. For instance, Destructoid's review of the game uses only the promotional artwork and screenshots to base the entire review on, and did it in an extremely offensive way to boot.
    • This extends to the actual fanbase as well, as noted in Broken Base.
  • Values Dissonance: The name "Poini Coon" is clearly because she's meant to resemble a raccoon, much like Diol looks like a catgirl. However, her last name was changed to "Kune" in the English release as "coon" is a racial slur that the developers likely hadn't been aware of.