Master of Martial Hearts (2024)

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Action Girl: All the girls in the tournament, though Miko is arguably a Faux Action Girl. Considering Miko's "role", though, she may have faked it.
And That's Terrible: One knows Female Fighting Tournaments Anime is a terrible idea when the loser is always made a sex slave...for syndicate regulations, apparently.
A Friend in Need: How Aya gets herself mixed up in the tournament: her new friend Miko has disappeared, and she wants to find her.
Apologetic Attacker: Aya's teacher Azusa practically telegraphs all her moves while she begs Aya to either block or stay down. If only Aya studied her chemistry textbook...
Bait and Switch Credits: That opening is so charged with upbeat optimism, and the closing mellow and dreamy. You just know this tournament is going to end in a proud victory!
Berserk Button: Messing with Haruki like Rei or talking bad about him in Aya's presence will get you beaten like a rug in no time. Also, never try to dissect what makes Aya tick; it's not very conducive to living.
Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Miko and the Honma siblings. And boy, do they enjoy rubbing it in Aya's face during The Reveal.
- Similarly, Kumi Honma seems to be an average Hot Mom who just happens to not be able to speak due to damage to her vocal chords. She's actually an horrifyingly broken woman who pretty much "groomed" her children (the aforementioned Honma siblings) to seek revenge for the immensely cruel Dark and Troubled Past that Aya's parents inflicted on her.
Bolivian Army Ending: The series ends as Aya prepares to end the cycle of revenge by summarily executing Natsume's mother Kumi.
Broken Aesop: The show is supposed to criticize the Panty Fighter genre via having the Action Girls who lose tortured and mind-raped into sexual slavery, but at the same time it packs so much Fan Service and the plot is so clumsily handled that the "message" is completely lost at the end.
Calling Your Attacks: Suma-sensei calls out the formula of common chemicals; whether or not this is to add power to her attack, she also does it to purposely communicate them to Aya.
Catgirl: Aya out-Moes Rin the Meido with a costume that adds cat ears and tail.
Chekhov's Classroom: Suma's insistence that Aya study her assigned chemistry lesson. Subverted; though it would've provided clues for the battle, Aya failed to study, and her confusion at trying to recognize the called attacks distracts her from simply reading body language.
Complexity Addiction: The entire tournament done for revenge by Miko, Natsume and Haruki against Aya's mother Suzuko, is so complex, long and, in many ways holding itself in inane future predictions; it probably works in fairy dust and Bellisario's Maxim to its atomic level.
Clothing Damage: All women's clothes in this world must be made out of tissue paper when they fight.
- At one point a girl gets punched in the shoulder and her skirt explodes.
- At another point, Aya actually punches a girl's in the gut. Her butt actually rips through her pants as a result.
- This might actually be a function of the tournament — before Aya was a contestant, her clothes seemed a lot more durable.
Cute Mute: Haruki and Natsume's mother, Kumi, cannot speak at all and communicates through sign language. It's because she had her vocal chords torn off during her Sex Slave times.
Cycle of Revenge: The sole reason why the Martial Hearts Tournament was born and still exists. It more or elss goes like this: the father of the Kazuki sisters (Yumi and Kumi) killed the parents of Suzuko and Shigeyuki Iseshima. The two set up the tournament as revenge, managing to get the Kazuki sisters enslaved; later, Shigeyuki killed Yumi himself. Kumi, in the meantime, escaped and killed Shigeyuki, then was reunited with her children (Natsume and Haruki) and "grooming" them to get her revenge on Suzuko and Aya... Which they plan to do, alongside Yumi's daughter Miko, via reviving the tournament to ger Aya enslaved. And in the end, after Suzuko kills the three and is pretty much lets herself die, Aya is strongly impled to have killed Kumi herself.
Darker and Edgier: What less charitable viewers may see. While the work could be seen as a type of deconstruction, the fact that they use sex slaves as punishment, handwave registration, law and money, Take That after Take That at the fanbase and the rather heavy handed Downer Ending, it can come as an inmature "Deconstruction" of a typical Anime genre.
Death Equals Redemption: Aya's mother Suzuko.
Downer Ending: And HOW! There's nary a character who is not dead, insane, in some kind of slavery, or worse.
Empty Shell:The losers of the tournament are transformed into mindless sex slaves and sent into slavery. Every. Single. One.
Evil All Along: Aya's "friends" (Miko and Natsume) and love interest (Haruki). Plus Haruki and Natsume's mom Kumi.
Fair Cop: One of the Daimonji sisters, Yuu.
Fan Service: Up to Eleven.
Fan Disservice: The 5th OAV has the rest of the martial tournament participants, all of them very pretty women in heavily damaged clothes, as maddened Empty Shells with Frozen Smiles and Mind Control Eyes... after having been brainwashed into Sex Slaves for losing. No wonder Aya is shocked at the sight.
Gainaxing
Gambit Pileup: Infodumped in the last episode: The Daimonji sisters helped organize the tournament but wanted Aya to join them, but they were being manipulated by a man who looked like Natsume's brother Haruki. Except that boy turned out to be a body double for the real Haruki who was working with Natsume and Miko who were secretly acting as Aya's friends. And they were trying to get revenge in the name of Haruki and Natsume's mother Kumi (who lost her vocal chords and was made into a Sex Slave when she lost the last tournament to Suzuko, who in turn entered because Haruki and Natsume's grandfather had started the whole damn thing) and, in Miko's case, to avenge her mother/Kumi's sister Yumi, killed by Aya's late dad Shigeyuki when Miko was a little girl.
Good Scars, Evil Scars: Kumi has scars on her neck, coming from when she had her vocal cords torn out.
Hand or Object Underwear: Aya covers herself while fighting at the pool after one punch takes off her bikini top.
Hand Signals: How Kumi, Natsume and Haruki's Cute Mute of a Hot Mom, communicates with people.
Healthcare Motivation: Rei enters the tournament to get the money she needs to fund her Ill Boy brother's treatment.
Heroic Resolve
Hypocrite: Miko blaiming Aya for destroying the other contestans life and mind after defeating them...when she and the others were the ones who literally Mind Raped them to idiocy after they were too weak to defend themselves. And also reconstructed said tournament for vengeance in the first place.
Hot Teacher: Azusa Suma, Aya's teacher.
Idiot Ball: Well done Haruki, go in a fist fight with the near unstoppable Fighter... with guns.
Idol Singer: Rin-chan invokes Meido and Magical Girl in her act.
Insane Troll Logic: The explanation of Miko, Haruki and Natsume for the Tournament is so mindblogging stupid it would leave the viewers in the same capacity as the former contestants.
James Bondage: Haruki is held hostage.
Killed Off for Real: Everyone that appears in Fight 5, except Aya. Heavily believed to be the case for Kumi, given her role in the series.
Kill'Em All: Holy God does it ever.
Kimono Fanservice
Kick the Son of a Bitch: Really, one can't help but to cheer at Suzuko dishing the oh so very deserved brutal beatdown on Natsume, Miko and Haruki in Chapter Five.
Kubrick Stare / Slasher Smile
Love Triangle: A particularly cruel Type 4 involving Aya (a), Haruki (b) and Miko (c).
Made a Sex Slave: This is what happens to everyone who loses a Martial Hearts tournament.
Mama Bear: Aya's mother, Suzuko Iseshima. She's a Retired Monster who faces her own ghosts when the children of two women that she horribly wronged in the past target her daughter and want to subject her (Aya) to the same crap that their moms went through.
Male Gaze: Yes. The shower scene in episode two, where the camera spends a full minute crawling up Aya's naked body so that she can say one word is possibly the best example.
Meido: At a theme cafe, no less.
Miko: Miko. No one comments on the unoriginal, Meaningful Name.
Missing Mom: Miko's mother Yumi, who was killed by Aya's father Shigeyuki.
Misplaced Retribution: The ending.
Mood Whiplash: Back and forth and back and forth!
Naughty Nurse Outfit: Another of the Daimonji sisters, Emi.
No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Carried to its logical conclusion by Aya versus Ryu in the finals as well as Aya beating up Rei after she loses Haruki as a hostage..
Not Just a Tournament: A big time (and convoluted as hell) case of this. Every girl who loses the tournament is Mind Raped into an Empty Shell state before being conditioned into sexual slavery and sold. The entire thing is being conducted as a Cycle of Revenge by the children of two sisters (Kumi and Yumi Kazuki) who wound up on the losing end of a similar tournament organized by Aya's father Shigeyuki, which Aya's mother Suzuko won. The three cousins want the same thing their mothers got put through to happen to Aya as revenge against both of her parents, and they don't care about what happens to the other contestants...
Obfuscating Stupidity: Aya's mother Suzuko for certain, as she remains just as lethal and unforgiving as stated, despite it being years since she had to fight.
Panty Fighter
Playing to The Fetishes: Every flavor represented. Lampshaded at a fast food McDonalds Bland-Name Product named "Moe".
Psychic Powers: Ryu Geturei is not just an Action Girl, but a psychic who uses her mind-reading to her advantage in the fights. She had actually learned that Miko was a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing and tried to warn Aya, but that went horribly wrong.
Qipao: Worn by Ryu Geturei, the infamous "lady in red"
Retired Monster: Suzuko Ichisima. A former Dark Action Girl, she used to partake in a girls-only Street Fighter Expy, under the direction of her husband-to-be Shigeyuki. Doesn't help the fact that the girls she beat up and defeated ended up tortured, maimed and sold into sex slavery (Like it happened to Haruki and Natsume's Cute Mute mother, and to Miko's mother). However, with the Platonic Heart closed for the time being, she settled as the average, if slightly overprotective mom, raising her daughter Aya on her own after Shigeyuki's death. Under the mask, she's still as plucky and dangerous as she used to be... and when Aya is directly targeted by the revenge-seeking Natsume, Miko and Haruki, she goes out for blood.
Revenge by Proxy: The whole point of the series, e.g. having Aya beaten, mindraped and possibly sold into sexual slavery as a final Screw You! to her still living mother and her currently dead father, responsible for having dealt this very same fate to Kumi (the still living mother of two of the villains) and Yumi (the dead mother of the remaining one).
Selective Obliviousness: When the villains appear, they reveal that the whole Martial Hearts tournament was a plot to get revenge on the main character because her parents hurt their parents by holding the original Martial Hearts tournament. They recreated the same event that permanently scarred their parents, including the part where losers are sold into slavery, in a plot to get revenge on someone who had no knowledge of the original event.
Sempai-Kohai: Aya and Natsume, with some Girls Love implication, though the latter turns out to be a huge ruse.
Sexy Stewardess: One of Aya's opponents, Rei.
Starter Villain: Series starts off with Rei fighting Miko. She becomes Aya's first opponent.
Stepford Smiler
Surveillance as the Plot Demands: While Aya's is explained by being done by Miko and the rest, it never makes sense how they recruit the rest of the girls, except for the Hand Wave explanation below. The requisites for enter are, after all, kind of limited for most of the population.
Talking Is a Free Action: Plenty of time for Trash Talk.
The Call Knows Where You Live: Apparently if there's an open spot in the tournament, any girl who has made a wish and can fight gets a text message inviting them. Subverted with Aya, as she was the true target all along.
The Power of Friendship: So subverted. And deconstructed in detail by the final opponent. And actually averted since it never existed in the first place and this work is not that kind of genre.
"The Reason You Suck" Speech: Battle 5 is basically made up of this, from the lady in red Ryu who brutally strips Aya's psyche bare which inadvertantly flips Aya into "pure evil" and impossible for the psychic to read. Cue the most brutal unforgiving beatdown in the whole contest. After Aya wins, she basically lives in this trope at the hands of Miko, Natsume and Haruki as they reveal the Martial Heart was a massive plot for revenge against Aya for her parents' sins against their mothers. . And just as Aya is about to be killed by her "friends", Aya's own mother Suzuko shows up to deliver a speech of her own, revealing the true circ*mstances of the Martial Hearts while casually killing Haruki, Miko and Natsume with one hand.
Fighting Dirty: Aya's first opponent, Rei, used various tricks including turning the street lights off and using hostages.
Unperson: After Miko withdraws from the tournament, the only people who seem to remember her existence are Aya and Natsume.
Villains Never Lie
Was It All a Lie?: Yes, yes it was.
Well-Intentioned Extremist: Aya summarily executing Kumi puts her into this territory, since she wants to make sure the cycle of revenge that has driven this series is finally put to an end.
Wham! Episode: Battle 5. Just... Battle 5.
Wrench Wench: Megumi Shimoyama.
You Bastard: Begins subtle, with the depiction of an Otaku audience at a Moe Idol show, watching the Panty Fight.