Zatch Bell!/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Anticlimax: The revelation of Arth's final spell. It had been hinted at for an entire arc without actually showing up, with Arth finally using it in his battle against Gorm. He casts it, and hundreds upon hundreds of BFS's rain from the sky. You'd think Gorm would be screwed, right? Nope. He promptly pulls out his ultimate spell, which summons as many black holes as Arth has swords, and the black holes suck up the swords like nothing. Needless to say, Arth doesn't last long after this.
  • Base Breaker: Victoreem. For many, he's the Ensemble Darkhorse. For others, he's just utterly random and pointless.
  • Non Sequitur Scene: Gash is noted to have horns on his head when Kiyomaro is forced to wash him after a battle. It is also noted other Mamonos have horns, yet it is never brought up ever again.
    • The demon Momon was known to let out "kikiki" like sounds, akin to a monkey, but suddenly begins talking multiple volumes later. No one questions it.
  • Bittersweet Ending: Gash becomes the Mamono King. But since the way to the human world is closed. It's possible that Gash and Kiyomaru will never see each other again (made worse by the fact that Gash will most likely outlive Kiyomaru.
  • Complete Monster: Zofis. A Freeza Expy who horribly Mind Raped both humans and fellow mamodo, both for practical reasons and For the Evulz. He expresses enjoyment in being able to control the hearts of others, and uses the fears of his followers to keep them in line. Completely selfish, petty, and sadistic, he's even referred to as being the worst of the worst by many characters. And he never shows any remorse for his misdeeds, only giving up in the end due to cowardice, which is also the only way he gets to keep his life once back in the mamodo world.
    • Clear Note was so thoroughly malevolent that Gash's ultimate spell, which destroyed only what was evil, erased everything that defined his person, leaving only his... soul, or whatever, to reincarnate as a different being.
      • The final chapter casts doubt on how completely monstrous any of the enemy characters (except the abovementioned two) really are, as the main characters are shown to have made friends with, or at least tolerated being in the same room long enough to have a photo taken with, all of them. Even Demolt showed up, making a peace sign and grinning like an idiot.
    • As far as humans go, Roberto Vile and Filler Villain Mad Scientist Dr. Hakase qualify for this. The former, claiming to be "Zofis' successor", hoped to upload the moon stone's energy into a computer system that he'd use to control people's hearts and minds in hopes of making them serve him, thus getting him richer and more powerful. When it looked like he was beaten, he deliberately read the one spell that even Zofis had told him not to use, all to destroy his enemies as payback. The latter, meanwhile, was a selfish and vengeful old man who wanted to make his demon partner stronger through the magic mirror so that he could unleash that power upon the people at the institute that had rejected him and his work. He went so far as to manipulate a lonely, fearful young girl into helping him, and then latter attempt to have that same girl, along with Kiyo and Gash, incinerated, all without the slightest bit of remorse. Amusingly, Steve Blum voiced both of them in the dub.
      • Also the Mad Scientist from Dufort's backstory, who was completely inhumane in how he exploited child Dufort's psychic powers through experiments and then blew up his lab with the kid still inside, hoping the explosion would kill him, all because he had no further use for him as a test subject.
  • Crazy Awesome: The entire series and almost every attack in it, particularly Kanchome's. Almost every single minor character has some kind of crazy attack, too.
    • And a good example of this? Sunbeam spent ten months in Africa. Immediately after he comes back...well...rock and roll!
  • Crowning Moment of Awesome: Loads and loads of this all around.
  • Crowning Moment of Funny: Kiyo's reaction when he walks in on the man in the fish costume.
    • "Just so you know, I don't usually do this kind of thing."
    • Tia learning a new spell out of anger at a mamodo that kept touching her panties.
    • Penny's Slap Slap Kiss relationship with Zatch before her Heel Face Turn.
    • Pretty much a large majority of the battle with Victoreem.
      • "With the dashing beauty of the Johnson located in my crotch!"
    • What about Zatch and Kiyo's battle against Kanchomé and Folgore in KIYO'S BEDROOM? With Suzy sleeping though the entire thing?
  • Fan-Preferred Couple: Kiyo/Suzy for those who like to root for the underdog.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Victoreem, for... well pretty much everything. On top of his generally memetic theme, that utterly batshit song, and general ham, he's voiced by none other then Norio Wakamoto. His popularity is lampshaded repeatedly in omakes and even the ending of the manga.
  • Growing the Beard: In the case of the anime, it takes a long while for the series to really take off and become something epic...until episodes 44 and 45, which features a brutal battle that Kiyo and Zatch flat-out lose. Shortly afterwards we're introduced to the stone tablets of 1000 year old mamodo in episode 48, and it just keeps going from there!
    • The series as a whole had earlier started to hit it's stride with the England arc, which, among other things, gave us our first glimpse of Zeon.
  • I Knew It!: Gash and Zeon being twins.
  • Only the Author Can Save Them Now: Against Clear Note. The rules of the tournament established throughout the story had to be completely broken to give the main characters a shot at victory.
  • Tear Jerker (Pretty big source of these, oh yes)
    • In fact, the first five episodes alone have enough crying to drown a whale and hide the city of Atlantis.
    • Dont forget the ending of the manga.
  • Viewer Gender Confusion: There can't be a single person who knew that Zofis was supposed to be male from the beginning. It doesn't help that his dub voice is noticeably similar to that of Wuya.
  • Villain Sue: Depending on who you ask, Clear Note is either a Villain Sue or an intentionally over-the-top parody of Villain Sues. He's a Bishonen Generic Doomsday Villain Diabolus Ex Nihilo who makes his completely unforeshadowed entrance by beating Brago (until then the strongest character) half to death, defeats the Supporting Leader despite the fact that said leader's skin is explicitly resistant to his powers, comes back stronger every time you beat him up, is a Hero-Killer (including one kill from thousands of miles away while critically wounded), and ultimately required what seemed suspiciously like an Ass Pull (it was foreshadowed... over three hundred chapters prior) to finally defeat. Whether all of this is annoying or darkly hilarious, again, depends on who you ask.
  • Wangst - Gash/Zatch can go a little overboard with his crying sometimes....
  • The Woobie: There are many. Sherry comes to mind.
    • Gash in his past.
    • F* ck it. The whole frickin' main cast.
    • The anime had Shion Hibiki in it's first filler arc and later Jerkass Woobie Maestro in it's second filler arc.
  • Woolseyism: Ponygon's nickname was dubbed such because he was a pony & Kiyo wanted him gone.