Warning: Exorcist Maiden: Resurrected is a sequel to Taima Miko Yuugi, so Late Arrival Spoilers for that game are unmarked on this page. You Have Been Warned.
Exorcist Maiden: Resurrected...(Interlude) (Yomigaeru Taima Miko, alternatively published under the title TAIMA MIKO) is a comedic Urban Fantasy H-RPG developed by "うんこモリモリ丸" originally released for PC in December 12, 2021. It is a sequel to Taima Miko Yuugi and the third game in the Taima Miko series. An English version published by OTAKU Plan released September 19, 2025 on Steam.
Exorcist Maidens have a long and storied history of slaying monsters to protect the commonfolk, with tales passing down from one era to the next. In the quaint village on Masukaki Island, a young woman named Tsugumi finds a woman named Miko who is said to be a legendary Exorcist Maiden. Only, after just recently waking up from a milennium-long slumber, she lost much of her strength in that period and forgotten all of her techniques and Mysteries she once used due to a bout of amnesia. For some reason, she awoke in a sealed cave coincidentally at the same time monsters suddenly appeared on the island, which had previously only known peace. With Tsugumi's help, Miko sets out to uncover the mystery of her own reawakening and the possible correlation of these two events.
As of February 15th, 2026, うんこモリモリ丸 announced on their blog that they will no longer be developing any more games, making Exorcist Maiden Resurrected...(Interlude) their final published work.
This game contains EXAMPLES of the following TROPES:
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Tropes A-H
- Absurdly High Level Cap: Miko's level caps at 99,999. The average first playthrough will likely finish by the time she reaches 100.
- AcCENT upon the Wrong SylLABle: Miko commonly falls into this when trying to say foreign words.Miko: [...] To the ice-covered Arc-tick, to sandy desserts, to hyahha in the case-in-ohs of Lass Veer-gust! And, of course, eat delicious foods. Chinese, Fur-ench, It-alien, even foods made of junk! All the dinners of the world!
- Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: Miss Iku subtly raises her prices as Miko spends money in her store and increases Iku's shop level. Miko calls her out on this while Iku responds that she's simply responding to the dynamic of the shifting equilibrium of supply and demand. Confused by the big words and not wanting to appear ignorant in front of Tsugumi, Miko forces herself to bite her tongue and deal with it.
- Adaptational Modesty: The Self-Censored Release replaces Miko's miniskirt with a pair of pants.
- Alien Geometries: When Miko enters Masukaki Branch School where Tsugumi used to learn, they find the place engulfed in a strange dimensional space, with the rooms distorted and rearranged in a nonsensical order while some rooms have been physically torn apart. This is despite the fact that the building looks completely normal on the outside.
- All Your Powers Combined: The Final Boss employs the ultimate attacks of each of the bosses from the other dungeons in its final phase, cycling through them one at a time.
- Amnesiac Hero: Miko wakes up in the present day with almost none of her memories save for her name and basic exorcist techniques. She needs to battle monsters in order to remember her techniques.
- Amnesiac Resonance: Flashbacks end up revealing that Miko always struggled with more complex terms and names and was a Big Eater her whole life, even when she was more serious. In addition, as she recalls more and more of her past, she makes stray remarks that echo sentiments she once said in the past, or making remarks about the past that she doesn't consciously realize she's referring to.
- Antiquated Linguistics: Because Miko is from a thousand years ago from feudal times, she tends to talk like a cross between a stereotypical samurai and an elderly person (as in, refers to herself using washi). The translation communicates this by making her frequently be a Strange-Syntax Speaker and peppering it with antiquated words.
- Apocalypse Maiden: Miko's ultimate fate should Tsugumi end up unable to break Tsubure-no-Omori's curse. Miko will birth a Monster King, and if the non-canon bad ending to Taima Miko Yuugi is any indication of what happens when a Monster King is born, great disaster will immediately follow. She's on a constantly ticking clock that she can only suspend by sealing herself unless someone finds a way to free her.
- Artistic License – History: Miko is said to have been slumbering for one thousand years, but given the game's technology level puts it around the Turn of the Millennium (as evidenced by Tsugumi still possessing a landline phone, and giving Miko a transceiver instead of a smartphone or even a flip-phone, and little mention about the internet, which hadn't picked up yet outside of a few tech-savvy people like Mayu). This would put Miko's era closer to the Heian period, but her memories resemble events and backgrounds from the Sengoku period and parts of the early Edo period, which is roughly 400 to 500 years at most.
- The Atoner: As Miko regains her memories, facing the bosses stengthened by the black mist turns her into this as she confronts her own mistakes and failures, and her part in unwittingly releasing monsters across the island from her awakening.
- Batter Up!: The Nail Bat's passive allows it to occasionally reflect ranged attacks back at the attacker. Somehow, this also includes things up to, but not exclusively, pillars of fire.
- Beleaguered Assistant: Tsugumi had the "honor" of investigating the unsealed cave that contained Miko, and nursing her back to health just in time for the Exorcist to get to work on cleaning up the monster problems that have suddenly showed up around the same time. What this actually translates to is Tsugumi effectively having to watch over Miko to make sure she doesn't do anything wacky or troublesome to the fellow townsfolk, inform Miko of the cultural norms to which the latter tends to flub it up, and is constantly being set upon to cook dinner after dinner after dinner for the Big Eater beyond belief. Just following Miko around in town has her constantly stressed out. However, Miko's attitude and way of life ultimately does help Tsugumi grow back out of her isolated shell.
- Begin with a Finisher: The black-mist empowered versions of Commander-in-Fat and Sea Bushy begin with their TP fully charged to execute their ultimate. In the former's encounter, Miko doesn't get a chance to take an action, either.
- Berserk Button: Don't mess with Miko's food, her initial burst of motivation is to slay the monsters who destroyed Tsugumi's harvesting garden and stole her vegetables.
- BFS: The Whale-Cutter Knife is a massive blade, and (maybe) the final memento of Miss Iku's late husband, it gives bonus damage against marine-type enemies like the Tuna Knife, except it allows Miko's basic attack to hit all enemies.
- Big Bad: Tsubure-no-Omori, the harvest kami, is the root cause of the monsters appearing on Masukaki Island. Much of the background conflict was driven by the people doing whatever they could to stave off widespread famine while the people cursed the harvest kami for ignoring their plight no matter what they offered it, even Miko herself, who should theoretically be a slayer of youkai, not kami that a miko would expected to be devoted to, outright curses them for their neglect. While many tried to find ways to not have to rely on it, their efforts all fell in vain due to a lack of resources all around. This culminates in the people getting fed up and trying to kill it directly. When Miko heads out alone with the intention of killing it herself in her anger, she ended up becoming its pawn as it forcibly corrupted her into becoming a mother to its unborn child, which eventually leads to the conflict catching up to the modern era.
- Big Damn Heroes: Three times, all by the same party. Anego rescues Tsugumi in the nick of time when she gets surrounded by monsters breaking into the inn, and then Ken'ya and Funga come to their rescue after. Despite how frightened they are, they ask the villagers to turn the boat around so they could rush to Miko's aid, helping her realize that she didn't need to confront her problems alone.
- Big Eater: Miko is constantly thinking about food. She needs to have an entire meal's worth of food between each fight and refuses to fight on an empty stomach. If she runs out of food, her battle performance plummets as well as halving her experience gain. Looking at the ruined garden crops depresses Miko so much she tries eating the dirt to see if there's any trace of food left in it.
- Big, Thin, Short Trio: Funga, Anego, and Ken'ya of the Uncool Exorcists, respectively make this unit.
- Bittersweet Ending: More on the bitter side this time. The monsters plaguing Masukaki are exterminated, but Miko reveals that she needs to seal herself again to prevent the monster in her womb from being born and causing further chaos, with no leads on how to free herself from its curse. This comes just after Tsugumi decided that she wanted to travel the world alongside Miko. Though they made precious memories, the reluctance to part ways causes both of them to break down in tears. Tsugumi is also the only one who knows the truth about Miko's story and her part in slaying the monsters on the island even though the Uncool Exorcists stole her credit. Still, Tsugumi becomes more resolved than ever to go out into the world for the first time, in a very long time, to keep her head held high.
- Blade Spam: The later techniques start really showing off why Miko was once a master exorcist, even outside of the Multi-hit school techniques.
- The first one she will likely remember is Falling Petals, in which she dances around hitting random targets 3 times with grace. The true version of the technique, Scattering Petals, hits four times and is nearly as powerful as her Limit Break with a near-equal cost in TP.
- Red Leaf Blade is a 5-hit combo for an economic TP cost ending with a somersault slash.
- Raging Wind is classified as a standard Slash technique, but is even faster than Quick techniques and hits all enemies multiple times. The downside is its steep TP cost. Miko dashes through the enemies at hypersonic speed with a vortex of slashes slicing her opponents up. She tells Tsugumi that when moving at such a fast speed, she only needs to tap an enemy and let her momentum carry the force for her.
- Blessed with Suck: Tsubure-no-Omori's curse renders Miko immortal, but that's because it's hell-bent on using her as an incubator to prepare her to deliver its child, this also makes her an inevitable walking Doom Magnet.
- "Blind Idiot" Translation: Thankfully averted due to a change in publishers in the aftermath of SakuraGame's poor official translation of Taima Miko Yuugi, OTAKU Plan puts considerably more care into the text to preserve the game's sense of humor and personality.
- Blow You Away: Wild Heavens is a Damage Over Time technique that summons a great gale at the end of the combat round for multiple turns to assail targets at random, dealing bonus damage to flying enemies with a greater chance to Tumble them.
- Body Double: The context behind Kago-hime who takes the form of a ghost from the "Kagome-kagome" nursery rhyme. Miko attempted to help a besieged princess escape her castle keep to contact allies to bring reinforcements. To try and improve her odds, her ladies-in-waiting take it upon themselves to don her clothes and ride out simultaneously to confuse the enemy soldiers as much as possible and buy Kagome precious time, despite knowing their odds of surviving are minimal.
- Boring, but Practical: One of Miko's most useful techniques is Charge, which simply powers up her next physical attack while generating extra TP; it's usually enough to mop up basic enemies after getting a First Move. This can even be combined with her Ultimate Technique, though it requires using Charge while already at 100 TP or else Charge is removed if she hits 100 TP after using it.
- Brick Joke:
- Shin-Octolla is a carry-over joke from Taima Miko Yuugi which had an enemy called Mechtolla, which was similarly a weaponized octopus.
- The remaining sapient aliens aboard the UFO in the safe room identify Miko as an "ero-artist", continuing their gag from the previous game of mishearing Setsuna introducing herself as an exorcist.
- Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: Miko confronted Tsubure-no-Omori on her lonesome with the intent of venting all her anger bottled within her. While she fought the monster to a stalemate and had to seal it alongside her, her body gave out while it recovered faster, leaving it free to repeatedly defile her for months on end.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Miko is a weird lady and doesn't seem like she takes much caution in fighting monsters, that is, unless she's facing a Boss Monster. Tsugumi immediately notices how much more serious she is and internally gushes over her coolness.
- Call-Back: For players who remember the deal with Nayuta's case of being Locked into Strangeness, that detail provides a vital clue about Miko's situation being impregnated with the child of a Monster King.
- Call-Forward: Scattering Petals is noted to be an oddity among exorcist techniques due to its focus in beheading, something that doesn't always apply to the monsters they fight. It's later revealed that Miko learned this technique merely by observing a stranger perform it once, and defending herself against it on instinct. When circumstances force Miko to fight the creator of this technique, she promises to the other to pass it down through Exorcist Village, despite originally being a technique used to slay men. Miko also reveals to Tsugumi that she personally created Falling Petals, the other "Petals"-class technique, refined from Scattering Petals as a less lethal version of the technique. She happily notes that the techniques, which first appeared in Taima Miko Yuugi, survived into the present day after all.
- Cerebus Syndrome: The story takes a turn for the serious once the black mist appears. The post-dungeon episodes stop being about the hijinks of Miko adjusting to the modern day or bickering with the Uncool Exorcists and exploring more of her past, showing that she has a seriously tragic history. Accordingly, this is also when her attitude begins to shift more gravely now that she has the majority of her memories, even if she tries to pretend everything will be okay for Tsugumi's sake.
- "Chan-sour" Good: With a few snapped chains, Pompadour Ichirou can restore a chainsaw his lumberjack friend gave him. It turns out modern tools can work rather effectively for exorcist work compared to a simple steel blade. At a minor penalty to Miko's Speed, her basic attack becomes a flurry of hits that can rip monsters apart.
- Changing Clothes Is a Free Action: Miko can change all of her equipment slots, barring a few specific Trinkets, at the beginning of every turn whenever she wants. This allows her to swap between Trinkets as the battle situation changes or swap Dinners before landing the final blow in case the player forgot to maximize her EXP bonus.
- Clingy Jealous Girl: Miko gets a bit huffy if she thinks Tsugumi finds someone else cooler than her so she makes a very obvious effort to try and win her admiration whenever she feels like she's losing to someone, like Tsugumi's idol, Nayuta, from the stories of the "Exorcist of Justice".
- Clothing Damage: Either the upper or lower part of Miko's outfit can get damaged in combat with increasing severity, leaving her vulnerable to H-Attacks.
- Comically Missing the Point: Almost all of Miko's books used to increase her stats are her humorously misinterpreting the text's actual subject matter and being Literal-Minded.
- She learns how to jump after picking up a Jump Weekly Magazine.
- Her Resistance stat (non-physical defense and status resistance) improves from reading a book about electrical resistors.
- Her Evasion improves from reading a book about how to commit tax evasion.
- Her Accuracy increases from reading Golgo 13 because she thinks Duke Togo is a real person and believes the book to be his memoir about his "hunts".
- Her Speed increases by reading a story about a yankii who claims to be the fastest biker ("Are motorcycles modern horses? So cool.").
- Improving her starting TP in a fight comes from reading a book about how five-star hotels receive guests, which is connects to "receiving monsters" (at the start of a fight).
- Tsugumi tells Miko to throw out a random porno mag she picked up near the lighthouse, saying that women shouldn't read it. Miko, being the Cloudcuckoolander she is, thinks it's because the titular "Maid of Hell" means it's about a devil maid from the underworld. Acknowledging Tsugumi's statement, she casually shows it to Jirou as a loophole because he's a man, who is flabbergasted by Miko shoving a pornographic book in his face.
- Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: It doesn't matter what Headless Betsushiki queued as its action, if Miko tries to use a Counter technique, it'll always answer with Hard Press first to disable her counter stance before proceeding with whatever else it originally planned to do.
- Contrasting Sequel Main Character:
- Setsuna was more of The Gadfly and loves to tease Mayu for fun. She also talked big about being an "Exorcist of Justice" but was still very much a rookie without much real fighting experience despite her talent. Miko is more of a free-spirited ingenue, being very earnest and pure of heart who immediately warms up to Tsugumi (not just because she makes her food). A formerly powerful exorcist maiden she may have been, she still remembers a few fundamentals, but is otherwise completely clueless about how exorcist books teach the basics in the modern day, hearing it from Tsugumi. Even so, she still knows how to get serious for a boss fight and show that the power of the Legendary Exorcist Maiden is still in there somewhere.
- Mayu is abrasive, bossy, and occasionally has a laugh at Setsuna's misfortune (even if she still deeply cares about her) and is obsessed with money and penny-pinching. She's also a Covert Pervert and a Cordon Bleugh Chef who crams loads of spiciness into all of her dishes making an otherwise well-cooked (if barebones) meal. Tsugumi is a polite and soft-spoken woman who constantly worries about Miko, both when it comes to danger and trying to help her not say something weird. She's also not as bitter because while her father was injured from a monster attack, he's in a stable condition recovering in the hospital unlike Mayu who harbored a deep grudge due to both of her parents being killed by monsters. Meanwhile, Tsugumi teaches Miko about monsters doing H-Attacks with such a casual matter-of-factness that she's surprised Miko doesn't know that monsters behaving like that is common knowledge. She'll also blithely point out any obscene imagery which inevitably flusters Miko. Tsugumi also confesses that she's a terrible and clueless cook who only knows how to cook rice because a rice cooker is easy to use.
- Counter-Attack: Each Counter technique has an approximate 90% chance of activating, but cannot retaliate against ranged attacks. Against multi-hit attacks, Miko has a chance to deliver a counter on each hit, but the same is also true for enemies should Miko use her own Multi-hit technique into an enemy's counter stance.
- Cross Counter reduces incoming damage while allowing Miko to reprise with her own attack.
- Quickdraw costs more TP but preemptively counters with greater damage before she gets hit, but if she gets hit then she won't be able to attempt to counter any more attacks in that turn.
- Raised Foot Stance allows Miko to bat projectiles back at ranged attackers, but is ineffective against melee attacks.
- Banzai forgoes the damage reduction Cross Counter offers, but deals greater damage and can stave off Exhaustion for the duration of that round of combat.
- Beheading Iron Cutter is the mastered form of the Cross Counter, functioning the same way but returning each enemy strike threefold with a 100% counter rate compared to the others. It accordingly has the highest TP cost.
- Cowardly Lion: Anego is secretly terrified of monsters after a traumatic near-death brush with one in the past. She ends up rushing into the deepest part of the den to help Miko out. Also Played for Laughs when she desperately tries to find an excuse to leave Miko behind after catching up to her but has to commit when Ken'ya and Funga follow after her in turn.
- Dark and Troubled Past: You wouldn't expect an adorable, hungry airhead like Miko to have this, up until you explore the cave that Tsugumi found her in with her old tattered exorcist rags in the corner.. covered in blood. The flashbacks gradually unpackage a traumatized Knight in Sour Armor that has lost everyone she cared about, saw the worst of humanity in the warring period of Feudal Japan, and had nothing left to live for by the time she confronted the Tsubure-no-Omori, which ended in a Pyrrhic Victory by being forced to seal it alongside herself in the cave. Upon which it proceeded to defile her, explaining her torn and bloodied clothes.. and the Monster King inside her that is the new Big Bad. Miko doesn't necessarily let all of these revelations get her down, but it's clear from her change in demeanor as the game progresses that these were not good memories to recall. However, it does help her steel her resolve to make things right by the end.
- Death by Origin Story: While everyone Miko knew back in her own time would understandably be dead regardless considering she's been asleep for a thousand years, this trope comes into play when the player learns more about Miko's past in how the circumstances of the deaths of her friends and loved ones affects her even in the modern day, considering the era she originally hails from.
- Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Losing a battle simply moves Miko to the entrance of the room. She will consume the Dinner she had equipped, though. Suffering H-Criticals will give Miko little treats that permanently boost a given stat for a small amount, as the creator didn't want to fall into the pitfall of punishing players who wished to engage more with the game's explicit content.
- Death or Glory Attack:
- The Rock Sealing mystery does a tremendous amount of Earth damage, but costs a prohibitive 350 MP and subsequently drains all of Miko's MP afterward, ensuring she'll end up in a Mana Loss state. Casting it will also halve EXP gained from the fight. Note that this will still consume all of Miko's MP at the moment she remembers it and instantly casts it.
- Covering Dragon also expends all of Miko's MP after casting it, but is a rare Non-Elemental mystery. It also has an accuracy penalty.
- Didn't See That Coming: A youth without much for a way of education or wariness of the broader world in the Feudal Japan era wouldn't know about the possibility of boats becoming more advanced than military ships of the era at best, which wouldn't be able to best the tides of Masukaki Islands.. back then. What should've been Miko's Heroic Sacrifice to isolate herself and the offspring Monster King inside her by taking a one-way trip on the tides via rowboat, ends up moot because human technology advanced in a millennia for boats to casually best the tides of the isle. Thus innocents are exposed to the dangers of the Monster King when the seal breaks anyway.
- Distinction Without a Difference: When Miss Iku offers Miko a Fake Sword, Miko asks her if she's selling a knockoff, at which she specifies that "It's an authentic Imitation Katana. Beautifully done, I must add."
- A Dog Named "Dog": Miko is... a miko. Of course, her name is spelled differently (ミコ) than the characters used for the vocation (巫女), and as the flashbacks go on to show, she was the first true concept of the shrine priestess or exorcist miko in the first place, meaning the vocation is essentially named after her in this setting.
- Doomed Moral Victor: Before the Final Boss, the Hentai Missionary asks Miko why she insists on setting off alone to fight a thankless cause when her story will become lost to time, as he remembers the last times he saw Satsuki and Kagura from Taima Miko Monogatari and Setsuna from Taima Miko Yuugi. While each of the girls subvert the trope by surviving, it still applies in the sense that their deeds don't (or in Setsuna's case because she chose to attribute them to her sister instead) and they'll fade from people's consciousness despite their bravery. Miko is merely comforted that there were others like her who walked the same path before her reawakening and after her initial slumber.
- Door to Before: Because the player isn't expected to clear an area in a single expedition, there are a few shortcuts in areas to cut down the retread time. This is also due to the change in overarching exploration mentioned below in the Wide-Open Sandbox entry. This only applies to traversing the island rather than the dungeons.
- Double-Meaning Title: While the "(Interlude)" in the game's subtitle is a cheeky reference to the game's title originally being tentative, it also refers to the brief "interlude" in which Miko awakened from her slumber before she must seal herself again.
- Dual Boss: Subverted. The boss of Masukaki Branch School is a red ape and a blue wolf, but they only take turns engaging Miko one at a time while the other only occasionally attacks like an Assist Character. Miko observes that they're more wary of each other than they are of her, with the monsters' sprite quickly turning around to face the other monster when the monster in the back row acts. While they do eventually engage Miko together later in the fight, they're still checking each other until Miko finishes off one of them.
- Early Game Hell: While the difficulty can be adjusted according to the player's preference with no penalty, in general Miko will have a much harder time at the beginning due to a lack of resources for cooking food, a reliable weapon, and the necessary abilities to counter certain monsters. Unlike the previous game, the nature of the Insight system makes the game possess a sort of Schizophrenic Difficulty, as Miko seemingly remembers her abilities at random with little way to influence it. It's very possible that one player might quickly learn an ability that can trivialize earlier dungeons but lack a key ability for a later one, and vice versa for another player. As such, it isn't possible to quickly gun for the strong abilities like Setsuna could in Yuugi.
- The Eeyore: Tsugumi doesn't have a very high opinion of herself, she believes she fulfills her namesake as a silent thrush. She's easily discouraged and thinks herself weak, it's only by spending time with Miko that she realizes there's hardly anyone who could be called "strong", not even Miko herself (according to Miko's self-assessment, at least) once she recovers more of her memories and regains more of her solemness.
- Elemental Rock–Paper–Scissors: While most techniques and Mysteries return from Yuugi, they all now have distinct classifications which generally determine if they get a damage bonus based on either the enemy's traits or their predicted action.
- "Cut/Cutting" techniques deal 30% extra damage to enemies preparing to attack.
- "Multi/Multi-Hit" techniques are meant to counter smaller enemies that have higher Evasion, though it tends to be on the weaker side.
- "Hard/Full Swing" techniques are extra effective against large, lumbering monsters with an increased chance to Stun them in particular. It has a debilitating accuracy penalty when used against smaller enemies.
- "Quick/Bite" techniques deal extra damage against enemies preparing H-Attacks (implicitly because it targets the lower part of their body). They help Miko act first by possessing bonus initiative.
- "Fly/Projectile" techniques are blasts projected from the weapon at enemies, preventing them from activating Counters and dealing extra damage either to ground-bound enemies (i.e. lacks legs) or functioning as an Anti-Air attack.
- "Rnd/Petals" techniques are powerful, but hit targets randomly and have higher TP cost on average.
- "Thrst/Piercing" techniques can be slower, but often pierce defense by a given value and are effective against inactive enemies.
- "Cnt/Counter" techniques excel at damaging multiple attacking enemies, but generally don't work against projectiles or H-Attacks.
- "Thnd/Lightning" Mysteries deal extra damage to wet enemies, but generally deal reduced damage to grounded enemies.
- "Fire" Mysteries deal extra damage to furred monsters with an increased chance to inflict Burn, but are ineffective against wet enemies.
- "Earth" Mysteries excel in interrupting incoming attacks and deal extra damage to ground-bound enemies, but are typically lower damage and completely ineffective against flying enemies or enemies that cannot Tumble.
- Everyone Has Standards: Miko does a number of eyebrow-raising things, but while Jirou is explaining that he got an idea for a set of gear while he was taking a piss, Miko grows increasingly concerned when he repeatedly neglects to answer her question of whether he washed his hands afterward or not.
- Evil-Detecting Dog: Subverted. Tsugumi's pet, Pell, seems to have it out for Miko, leading to her having a comedic rivalry with it as she calls it a "dumb mutt" in turn because it always seems to bite her. However, it's far more likely that Pell was barking so much and attacking Miko when he first found her because he detected the Monster King inside her womb.
- Exact Words: Cross Counter will specifically counter enemy attacks with a basic attack, this means that weapons like the Chainsaw and Concrete Breaker can bypass their speed and TP penalties while still reaping the benefits of their basic attack by strictly relying on counterattacks. This does not apply to Miko's other Counter techniques, though.
- Extreme Omnivore: Subverted. Miko is willing to try gathering ingredients from questionable places, but she meets her match when aliens offer her an onigiri dunked in green alien goo, which for the first time her body can't handle and vomits it up. Miko can buy more of their food as it provides an exceedingly large EXP and Insight bonus (up to +2000%!), but will steadily damage her HP and MP throughout the fight.
- Failure Knight: Miko is a peerless monster slayer, there's no question about that. And yet she wasn't able to save the lives of any of the people she loved. She laments her power being worthless without the ability to truly protect anything she holds dear.
- Fetus Terrible: The offspring that Tsubure-no-Omori forcibly conceived in Miko renders her undying, and it is very much conscious despite still gestating within her. When the earthquake dislodged the rock in the sealed cave, it used her memories to create the Boss Monsters that wreaked havoc on the island. To keep it from spreading further chaos, Miko forces herself to stay on Masukaki Island to contain its influence.
- Fish out of Temporal Water: Miko is slowly adjusting to modern Japan after waking up a thousand years later, though she still sees a few things through her ancient lens. If nothing else, she finds modern fashion very cute.
- Foreshadowing:
- The description for Tsugumi's Uniform, Miko's starting gear, has Miko idly wondering why Tsugumi doesn't wear it herself. It's revealed later down the line that she's been skipping school, using a convenient (if reasonable) excuse that she needs to run the inn instead while her father is recovering away in a hospital.
- When examining the large rock in front of the Evil Nest Barrier Cave, Miko observes that it's like the rock was transported because it doesn't look like any of the rocks on the island. She summoned that rock herself by casting the Rock Sealing mystery to willingly seal herself in that cave.
- Miko's original clothes are found in bloody tatters off in the corner of the sealed cave, with her having been sleeping there in the nude for some reason despite the fact that the opening shows her entering the cave fully clothed. Tsubure-no-Omori tore her clothes apart while it had defiled her for months on end.
- If one played Taima Miko Yuugi before, the only other character in the series that had white hair like Miko and wasn't elderly was Nayuta. Turns out Nayuta and Miko are both hosts for Monster Kings waiting to be born; the white hair is a sign of the curse involved, and ends up being a revealing trait from the moment the flashbacks show that Miko used to have black hair that something is horribly wrong. The description for the Wig trinket also alludes to this aspect.
- Friendless Background: It becomes apparent that ever since the coal mine's closure and people leaving Masukaki in droves, Tsugumi never had many children her age to play with when she was younger. Tsugumi later got accepted into a prestigious school in Japan's mainland and showed promise, but was quickly overwhelmed from the culture shock of meeting city kids for the first time. Unfortunately, the one chance someone offered her to hang out together, she wasn't able to take up because it was late in the evening and she had to catch the last ferry back to Masukaki to make sure she could get home for the night, which prompted others to stop trying to reach out to her. Not wanting to worry the adults back home, she maintains a lie about her situation that only stressed her out and asked her dad if she could take a break from school. Days then turned to weeks without her attending due to anxiety.
- Gameplay and Story Integration:
- The game makes a point that you can repeatedly fight the same boss monsters over and over, given the nature of revisiting various areas for side quests that may make one curious to see if they respawn; not only does Tsugumi herself confirm it after some progress, and the game's own loading tips encourages refights, but they also unlock more memories of Miko's past without having to hunt every single boss individually. A large part of this is because the Monster King formed the bosses as abominable pastiches of people ripped from Miko's own memories, meaning they not only cannot die since they're not truly alive to begin with, but allow Miko to reabsorb her memories from them with each successive victory.
- One post-dungeon episode involves Anego getting very drunk and making Tsugumi very uncomfortable. Ken'ya and Funga feel she went too far and refuse to travel with her until she apologizes. As such, the Uncool Exorcists don't leave the village and the player won't be able to fight them for rewards until they view episode where she does.
- Miko isn't able to properly recall Scattering Petals until fighting the black-mist empowered Headless Betsushiki, when she remembers having mastered the technique back when she knew the monster in life as a human.
- Miko's body seems overly sensitive to even the lightest H-Attacks. She reveals to Tsugumi at the end of the story that she had been raped non-stop for months at the hands of Tsubure-no-Omori after being forced to seal herself together with it. Her body never truly recovered to its original state and still subconsciously remembers the overwhelming sensation whenever she's touched.
- The Rock Sealing mystery drains Miko of all of her MP and incapacitates her. This is why she became vulnerable to Tsubure-no-Omori in the first place after sealing herself with it.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation: Despite being a wind-based technique that doesn't have Miko engaging the monsters in melee range at all, Wild Heavens still counts as a melee physical attack for the purposes of activating an enemy's counter. This can be problematic because it can't be disabled at will, and causes a flurry of hits which will result in Miko getting pummeled to a pulp if it's countered.
- Genre Refugee: The Bonus Dungeon features the same UFO from Yuugi having now crashed on Masukaki Island after clearing the story. Now, the aliens themselves have become victims as their ship gets taken over by a Meat Moss spreading due to them taking an alien Unobtanium on board and it resulting in a nightmare scenario as their crew becomes infested with tentacles that turn them into drones. If it weren't for the game's light-hearted tone, it'd be more suitable in a game like Dead Space in comparison.
- Goldfish Poop Gang: Double-subverted. Principal wasn't present in the beginning of the game because he was traveling to the Exorcist Association's mainland branch to request a dispatch for the monsters that suddenly appeared on Masukaki Island. The three who took the job, Anego, Ken'ya, and Funga, are a group of strange people wearing different colored tracksuits and all wearing the distinct Domino Masks associated with perverts in this universe. Ichirou and Jirou thought they were weirdos, so Miko preemptively labels them the "Uncool Exorcists". It's double-subverted because has to Miko lose to them in a Hopeless Boss Fight in their first encounter, after which they can be found working in a marked zone of the island for her to re-challenge, or even just hanging out in Masukaki Village. By the time they're encountered again, the player will likely be able to deal with them with no issue, and Ken'ya will panic when Miko consecutively dodges all of their attacks with little effort noting that she really is on a different level than them. Defeating them hands out triple the amount of rewards compared to other Map-Quests, with Skill Points among the rewards, but it doesn't contribute EXP to any of Miko's neighbors.
- Good Morning, Crono: The game opens up proper with Tsugumi trying to get a lethargic Miko to wake up, who has no motivation to move until she hears the word "breakfast".
- Green-Eyed Monster: Miko's friend, Shiki, who was a peerless swordsman, was the adopted daughter of the head of a rather average dojo with a case of Small Name, Big Ego (whose credit is all entirely thanks to Shiki being a Master Swordsman). Because he's unable to suffer Miko's talents in swordsmanship butting into his repute, he orders Shiki to kill Miko, forcing Miko to kill Shiki in self-defense.
- Have a Nice Death: Being defeated by a Boss Monster shows an extended scene of Miko at the mercy of whatever the Boss Monster subjects her to, if the player chooses to view it. Players are not required to lose to the bosses to unlock their Skill Point bonuses and scenes in the Hentai Space, unlike normal enemies.
- Heroic Sacrifice: The entire story started and ends with Miko performing this. The first time around was an attempt to seal herself with the Tsubure-no-Omori away from any possible civilization coming across the cavern, albeit this was only because she tried to solo the kami, bit off more than she could chew, and ultimately was impregnated for her efforts. When all is said and done by the end of the game, she repeats this with the Monster King sealed in her womb, in the same cavern even, intending to rest forever and keep it contained as such. Tsugumi isn't happy with leaving things at that.
- Heroic Second Wind:
- If Miko maxes out her TP, she can unleash an Ultimate Technique that will cleanse her of all debuffs and restore her HP and MP to full. Any subsequent uses in that given fight will execute a weaker version of the technique, though, so she won't get the same power level or recovery efficacy. In most cases, she can use this even if either her HP or MP are depleted and stuck in an incapacitated state.
- Zero Rite is a subverted example. It costs barely less than the standard Ultimate Technique, but hits all enemies instead and cleanses debuffs while Miko can still use it even if Exhausted. However, it won't recover her HP or MP. It's essentially an alternate Limit Break for Miko, given that it's the most closely guarded secret of Exorcist Village that only the village heads are permitted to learn. Miko happened to see the technique in action herself exactly once, which was enough for her to be able to recreate it.
- Hidden Depths:
- For a fisherman who dropped out of school, Afro Jirou is surprisingly talented at and passionate about costume design, tailoring (especially considering the junk materials Miko gives him), and perfectly fitting Miko's size without needing to take her measurements.
- Anego gets really worked up about trying to get kids to stay in school. She also demonstrates that she can be an effective teacher and cook when showing Tsugumi how to properly prepare food.
- Hopeless Boss Fight: The first encounter with the Uncool Exorcists will end with Miko being shamefully defeated, as it's only afterwards that she learns of a method to defend against H-Attacks.
- How We Got Here: As the story unfolds, the player learns piecemeal why Miko was sealed in a cave on such a tiny island as she recovers bits of her memories in flashbacks in-between story episodes.
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: Subverted. The story makes it perfectly clear that the responsibility lies entirely at the feet of Tsubure-no-Omori's neglect to the peoples' plight and worship as the harvest kami, but the desperate conditions in Miko's time causes people to do terrible things to each other, leading some of them to even admit this to themselves. Notably, with the exception of Ushy, all of Miko's friends die at the hands of their fellow man rather than being slain by monsters.
- Hunter of Monsters: As with the rest of the Taima Miko series, the heroines' main profession is in the title. This game, however, puts particular attention on the fact that exorcists aren't always respected, particularly in Miko's original, more spiritual time. "Monsters" are a catch-all term referring to any creature or spirit that attacks humans, this can also include messengers of kami that others might worship. Miko's used to the treatment, referring to her own work as Dirty Business.
- Hyperactive Metabolism: Double-subverted. Miko eats multiple dinners worth of food while out exploring in-between fights without gaining any weight at all, but the food's recovery effects are mostly realistically gradual in the midst of combat.
- Hypocritical Humor:
- When examining the poster of Nayuta in Tsugumi's room, Miko takes a crack at Nayuta's hair joking about how she must've aged quickly (because she needs to insist that she's cuter than Nayuta for no reason in particular) because of how white her hair is, only for Tsugumi to immediately point out Miko's own hair.
- She's quick to call older women grannies and hags despite being over one thousand years old (even if she doesn't look it).
Tropes I-Z
- I Did What I Had to Do: Miko finds her adoptive father Saruhiko slain before her other guardian, Inumaru, who felt forced to stop him from allying with the ruling class samurai in order to maintain Exorcist Village's strict policy of non-intervention and neutrality, believing that the karma of that decision will result in powerful enemies many years later which may doom the village. He invites Miko to take revenge for Saruhiko's sake without any resistance or provocation, on the stipulation that she take the role as the village head, or else flee the village. She chose the latter option, unable or unwilling to raise her sword against him.
- Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: The adjustable difficulty level ranges from various levels of "Sweet" (easy) to "Spicy" (hard) and a "Just Right" normal difficulty in-between them. Beyond the "Spicy" levels are "Hentai Must Die" and beyond. The Lemony Narrator also comes with unique descriptions of Miko's reactions to each difficulty. After finishing the story, the player can toggle a proprotional EXP gain bonus for selecting higher difficulties.
- Idiot Hero: Miko is lacking a few points in common sense. She thinks a stun gun is supposed to be used on herself to keep herself awake, completely misinterprets all of the books she uses to enhance her skills, and thinks holding her dinner in front of a mirror makes it like she now has two dinners.
- Improvised Weapon:
- Thinking Tsugumi's roomba is a shikigami, she intends to take it with her to help her "clean" places of monsters. Using it as a weapon turns her basic attack into her throwing them like a discus randomly at enemies, preventing her from selecting specific targets.
- Tsugumi isn't able to use a frying pan that Miss Iku offered to help her with cooking, so Miko buys it for herself thinking the pan will help protect her against monsters' attacks.
- One of the repurposed power tools Pompadour Ichirou gives Miki is a saw, but parts of it are still broken, so the blades end up flying out of the tool at high speed when powered on. This gives it an Anti-Air property.
- Ichirou gives Miko a jackhammer that she instead uses as a Pile Bunker which bypasses enemies' defense entirely. It deals consecutive hits similarly to the Chainsaw but is heavier and consumes all of Miko's TP when attacking.
- Outside of combat, Miko can kick the strewn containers in the UFO's Elevator Action Sequence to splat the swarming P〇ssy Huggers without actually having to enter battle and risk getting ambushed, nothing suggests the player can do this unless they remember kicking the empty buckets around town (which didn't have any purpose there).
- Infinity -1 Sword: While many of Miko's weapons have their strengths and drawbacks, the most reliable one will often be the Tuna Knife due to its balanced and reliable attack stats with no glaring drawbacks and the fact that many enemies are marine-type, which gives its attacks a bonus damage modifier. It's also the closest thing Miko gets to a proper sword until Ichirou can restore her Rusted Blade and also one of the easiest weapons to gather its upgrade materials. It's one of the first weapons Miko receives from Ichirou after the Nail Bat, so it also counts as a Disc-One Nuke given the player will likely receive it around the time they explore the Sunken Ship or Dried-Up Well where marine-type enemies appear in droves. Other weapons eventually overtake it in power as its scaling begins to fall behind, but that won't be until at least your weapons reach level 150.
- Infinity +1 Sword: White Miko, the true name and form of the Rusted Blade requires the player to get the Rusted Blade to at least level 100 and Ichirou needs to be level 45 to be skilled enough to restore it. Even if the player repeats a few dungeons and hunts as many "Monster Horde" Map-Quests as possible, it will still take up until right at the end of the story at minimum, but will likely require the player to play more of the post-game to reach that point. Ichirou also makes a point that he needs more materials to craft it compared to typical weapons, but the player will likely have an excess of White Steel to forge it anyway. The blade itself is a balanced Master of All, increasing all of Miko's stats as well as her accuracy, evasion, TP gain, and critical rate while boasting excellent damage as well. Ironically, White Miko being such a masterpiece of a weapon means that even the aliens (who can make the literal +1 part of this trope for other weapons by spending a hefty sum of Skill Points) tell her they can't do much more, giving it the smallest bonus among her weapons.
- Insane Troll Logic:
- When Tsugumi asks Miko to not get her clothes wet if she wants to play in the water, Miko assures her that she'll just strip if she wants to go swimming. Tsugumi expresses concern about possibly being attacked by monsters, but Miko says with complete confidence that there's no way monsters would attack her when they see how much fun she's having.
- Making protective gear out of anchors prevents Miko from tumbling because anchors prevent ships from being carried away by tides. Calling it "Anger Armor" also means it increases her TP gain because it sounds like "anchor" and that's all they need to justify it with. Similarly, Jirou says that making armor out of lifebuoys will help Miko with HP and MP recovery, somehow.
- Insistent Terminology:
- Miko's menial side-tasks are not "chores" that the townsfolk request her for, they're QUESTS.
- Ken'ya will have you know his team are veterans dispatched by the Exorcist Association('s subcontractors' five-times removed).
- I Will Find You: Tsugumi begins her own journey to become an exorcist so she can find a way to free Miko and reunite with her.
- Knight Errant: On her father's advice, Miko wandered all across Japan helping whoever she could to learn more about people and how they live. She has a myriad of experiences under her belt... if she can recall it now.
- Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Downplayed. Miko tries to teach Tsugumi about her techniques as she remembers them, but has to hide her surprise when Tsugumi is able to discern the best combat purposes for a given technique, which she didn't realize. There are still techniques that she's the expert in instructing Tsugumi about though.
- Large Ham: Miko punctuates her points by frequently CAPITALIZING certain WORDS and often reacts in an over-the-top manner.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Miko offers to convey Anego's apology to Tsugumi after the latter got drunk one night and made Tsugumi very uncomfortable. Of course, Miko smugly uses this opportunity to humiliate Anego as much as possible in the pretext of wanting Anego to express as deep of an apology to Tsugumi, then lies through her teeth to Tsugumi's face to try and get the exorcist trio kicked out of the inn. Tsugumi already felt better, but she immediately saw through Miko's lie and confiscates all of the meals the player crafted up till this point to teach Miko a lesson, forcing players to rebuild their Dinners stock from scratch.
- Lemony Narrator: All of the game's Flavor Text for items is written through Miko's perspective, often making comments with her humorously misinterpreting the item's intended purpose or even how to use it at all.
- Lethal Chef: Miko tries to help Tsugumi with cooking, but her food is the furthest thing from edible. Not only does Miko's cooking not give her any HP or MP recovery, it also lowers either her EXP or Insight multiplier.
- Lighter and Softer: Zigzagged, as Miko's airhead personality and penchant for a Boke and Tsukkomi Routine with Tsugumi, combined with the monsters generally being more like a bother to Masukaki Island rather than an overwhelmingly destructive force as the townsfolk generally get on with their lives rather casually, makes the main story mostly on the lighter side of things. However, Miko's Dark and Troubled Past throws a wrench into the tone as Cerebus Syndrome gradually settles in, not to mention the canonical rape of Miko by the Tsubure-no-Omori that started this entire mess to begin with, culminating in perhaps the most harsh Bittersweet Ending yet. And the worst of the monsters may as well be a neck-snapping whiplash of tone into horror territory.
- Locked into Strangeness: Miko's hair originally used to be darker. Her hair turned white because of Tsubure-no-Omori defiling her and cursing her.
- Lost in Translation: The English version puts in a great effort to try and avert this as much as possible, but one quirk that couldn't be translated without confusing the players themselves is that, compared to the previous games, the menus are written in hiragana instead of katakana due to Miko's personal unfamiliarity with loanwords.
- Mana Meter: As with the previous games in the series, managing MP is equally as important as maintaining Miko's HP, as running out of MP exhausts her and makes her vulnerable. Unlike the previous games, however, her MP also affects her attack damage formulas even for non-Mystery abilities, as while her HP correlates to her hardiness and endurance, her MP is relative to her willpower and energy level. If she has no energy, she can't swing her weapon effectively either, after all.
- Meaningful Name:
- Masukaki Island was originally known as Kaki Isle. Kaki is written with the kanji for "barrier" because its tides made it effectively isolated from the rest of Japan (in an era when boats couldn't power through it). A flashback reveals that Miko implored a local to spread the word that the isle must be left alone for all eternity because evil nests there. The "masu" part that got appended to the island's name later on includes the kanji for "evil" and "nest" accordingly, specifically referring to the rock sealing the cave Tsugumi found Miko in, as it had long been believed that the rock itself sealed the evil monsters who have recently emerged on the island.
- Masukake Maru is the name christened to the ferry that carries people back and forth from Masukaki Island and the mainland, as the discovery of a coal mine resulted in a boom of activity. Once the mine closed, the island became dormant once more and the ship was set to be decommissioned before it disappeared at sea. Tsugumi's father specifically used the name for his own ferry as the main person in charge of taking people to and from the island.
- Tsugumi always believed her name referred to the silent thrush, corresponding to her meekness. Miko triumphantly shifts her point of view by instead calling her it's proper name: the Bird of Passage. This becomes a great source of strength that motivates her to find a way to save Miko from her fate, no matter how small the odds.
- Miles Gloriosus: The Uncool Exorcists, who haven't ever been seen actually exterminating monsters because they're all deathly afraid of them steal Miko's accolades for their part in helping Miko subdue Tsubure-no-Omori. Miko doesn't mind at this point because she genuinely recognizes their bravery and effort in facing such a terrifying creature, and that she owes them for taking her back so she could properly say goodbye to Tsugumi.
- Mirror Boss: Headless Betsushiki, who Miko faces in a standoff under the moonlight atop the Masukaki Condominium. It possesses direct equivalents to her exorcist techniques, while directly sharing certain techniques, such as the Quickdraw counter, Reflection of the Moon, and Scattering Petals technique players may be familiar from Yuugi. Miko warns Tsugumi that its nature as a more humanoid entity makes it more adaptable in tactics than the previous bosses, and as such, Miko needs to stay on her toes and not become complacent on relying on a single technique, as it will counter her own techniques if she acts carelessly.
- Mystical White Hair: Miko's hair is completely white in addition to having Supernatural Gold Eyes. Her hair used to be darker before she fell into her slumber, according to her. This white hair is also an indicator that she's a host to a Monster King's unborn child.
- Mythology Gag:
- Miko herself is the exorcist maiden depicted in the children's book in the intro of Taima Miko Monogatari.
- Setsuna kept her promise to Nayuta by mythologizing her as the "Exorcist of Justice", inspiring many tales and literary works about her as her way of honoring her post-mortem. Tsugumi is one such massive Fangirl of Nayuta and keeps a poster of her in her bedroom.
- "Ultimate: Sakura Blossom" is the perfected version of Setsuna's Ultimate Technique that her father mastered. "Plum Blossom" is the weaker version of the technique that Setsuna uses for most of Yuugi. She also learns Wild Heavens, Gamaguchi's Utimate Technique, Raging Wind, which was Azuma's Ultimate Technique, as well as Heavenly Upheaval, which was Gramps'.
- Kaede's Ultimate Technique, Covering Dragon, is another one of Miko's higher end mysteries. It also always expends all of Miko's MP after casting it and has a reduced chance to hit, referencing the same way Setsuna was able to defeat Kaede simply by dodging it and letting her exhaust all of her energy on her own.
- Nayuta's costume itself is an unlockable armor set, it boasts high defensive stats while increasing Miko's ACC and Critical rate.
- The boss of the Bonus Dungeon uses the original boss theme from Taima Miko Monogatari when entering its final phase.
- New Game Plus: Due to the Resources Management Gameplay aspects relating to safehouses and such, it can't truly reset the the story to the beginning, but it tries to reset every scripted dialogue event and then reset the story to right after Miko first defeats Commander-in-Fat. This causes some of the dialogue and scenes to stumble over each other and play out again in a somewhat awkward order.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!: Downplayed. In the past, Miko confronted Tsubure-no-Omori on her lonesome, rather than the planned retinue of local samurai and mystics, though Saruhiko implies they weren't going to be very helpful anyway. While her strength was able to match it, the exhaustion that followed allowed it to use her as it pleased, forcibly conceiving a child with her. This forced her to seal herself to prevent the monster from being born. While she thought she found an island that would be forever out of reach, she couldn't have predicted that ships would advance to make tides a non-issue, and the eventual earthquakes that frequently hit Japan would dislodge the seal on her cave, inadvertently releasing monsters all over the island.
- No Fourth Wall: Tutorials and tips aside, characters frequently disregard the presence of the fourth wall either for Rule of Funny, or when it comes to giving a Player Nudge.
- Having Miko examine the mirror in Tsugumi's bedroom has her poke fun at the graphical limitations preventing it from properly reflecting Miko, with Tsugumi chiding her for saying they're in a game so blatantly.
- Tsugumi herself advises Miko to abuse RPGMaker's engine with the target selection cursor's memory while fighting Kago-hime to more easily keep track of the true enemy if the player loses track of the visual clue (likely due to it being overlapped by another ghost).
- Tsugumi wonders why Miko knows how to say HP, MP, and TP and what they mean if she doesn't know English at all, Miko is surprised when she realizes this too.
- Miko keeps sliding the censor character in "P〇ssy Hugger" all over its name in confusion to the point that it nearly slips out (like calling it a "Puss〇 Hugger"), making Tsugumi panic that Miko will end up upsetting the adults.
- When Miko accuses Miss Iku of making up a sob story to get Miko to buy an outrageously priced item, Miss Iku explicitly cites the very first words of the game are a disclaimer saying everything is a work of fiction.
- Obvious Rule Patch: Once the Miko clears the Bonus Dungeon, she'll have an elevator that accesses the aliens' safe room directly, which is normally located at the very end of the dungeon before the boss encounter. However, the path to the boss room is sealed by an Insurmountable Waist-High Fence if using the elevator in the entrance. Miko lampshades that the player will have to go the long way around if they want to challenge the Superboss again.
- Old Maid: Anego is close to her 40th birthday. Naturally, she's not pleased that Ken'ya lets this knowledge slip in front of Miko.
- Overrated and Underleveled: Lampshaded in a battle conversation between Miko and Tsugumi. Miko still thinks she's Level 500 as the Legendary Exorcist Maiden until Tsugumi points out that she's only Level 2, having lost all of her power in her slumber.
- The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Lampshaded when Miko talks to Anego in town. Anego acts like she's taking a break after a day of hard work, but Miko hasn't once seen her actually exterminate any monsters. The Uncool Exorcists are actually scared of monsters, the only reason there's none around in the areas they can be encountered is because their masks scare them off, which players can take advantage of themselves once they unlock the means to purchase a similar mask.
- Platonic Co-Parenting: Miko's parents were two exorcists from Exorcist Village, Saruhiko and Inumaru, who adopted her and raised her to be an exorcist due to her prodigious talent.
- Pocket Dimension: Once again, the Hentai Space entered through the home base's toliet appears here. Alongside the usual bonus SP rewards for defeating bosses and recording various monsters' H-Criticals, unlocking more entries in this zone earns Miko additional places to set up portaloos to help her travel across the island more conveniently.
- Point of No Return: When the map has a new chapter titled "End of the Interlude", the crystal that initiates the story warns the player that there's no returning to the rest of the game until they complete the final chapter.
- Poison Mushroom: One post-boss event is about Miko offering to help Tsugumi in the kitchen, in which she prepares boar meat by charring the outside to a crisp while the insides are still raw, and considers sashimi edible without bothering to gut the fish or cure the meat properly. Apparently, she knows what food poisoning is, but eating these... things hasn't affected her with it. The player then receives five "Miko-style Roast" and "Miko-style Fish" which penalize either her EXP gain or her Insight bonus when equipped as her Dinner. And no, you can't sell them to Miss Iku either.
- Pokémon Speak: Funga can say little else than "fun", "gah" or some combination of the syllables.
- Porn with Plot: The majority of the porn is typically not mandatory to engage with, but it's basically impossible to get through the game without Miko being affected by at least one H-Attack, if only because of the Hopeless Boss Fight. Most of the porn is irrelevant to the story, anyway.
- Power at a Price: Each of Miko's buffs carry some detriment in turn to balance their usage consideration.
- Deva's Strength increases her Attack at the cost of her Speed with greater resistance to Burning.
- Vajra's Shield increases her Defense at the cost of her Attack with greater resistance to Stun.
- Fuujin's Feet increases her Speed at the cost of her Defense with greater resistance to Tumble.
- Iron Will increases her Resistance at the cost of her TP gain and cleanses any debuffs.
- Raijin Arms increases her Exorcism power while doubling the MP cost of her Mysteries and making her clothes less likely to get damaged.
- Heavenly Upheaval skyrockets her TP gain while draining her HP and MP every turn for a brief period.
- Pungeon Master: The creator themselves crammed so many puns in this game it's inevitable that some get Lost in Translation.
- A major one is that Miko interprets Mayu's "HYAHHAAA TIME!!" as "Transient Dream of 100 and 8 Exorcists", or "Hyaku-Hachi-no-Taimashi-no-Mu".
- The Thundapalooza mystery is named after the American rock festival Lalapalooza, but the "La"s are replaced with the kanji character for "thunder" that can also be read as "Ra", and the sound of drums are heavily associated with thunder in Japanese mythology.
- Rape as Backstory: It's not until the very end of the story that Miko reveals she exhausted all of her strength trying to subdue Tsubure-no-Omori, and while she was at least partially successful, it also made her powerless to resist it after being forced to seal herself together with it. She tells Tsugumi that she endured this for months.
- Reluctant Fanservice Girl: Miko is completely taken off-guard because monsters weren't perverts back in her time apparently, as such, she's completely clueless about such lewd acts and H-Attacks.
- Resources Management Gameplay: In addition to exploring monster-infested territories, Miko needs to keep an eye out for gathering ingredients for managing the garden harvest next to Tsugumi's home so she can maintain a healthy supply of food to make longer treks. Tsugumi will refill Miko's bag with a few Onigiri, but she won't be able to fight long without scouring for some ingredients herself. She also needs to make sure to engage with the shopkeeper and artisans in town to keep improving their services as well as continuing to hone Tsugumi's cooking skills as she cooks a wider variety of meals for Miko. To gather the resources necessary to take on the "Hentai Must Die" difficulty in New Game Plus, it's important to unlock all of the huts scattered across the island to maximize resource production.
- Running Gag: Miko constantly struggles with loanwords by turning it into some kind of malapropism.
- Self-Censored Release: The game as sold on Steam has all of its R-18 content removed. The publisher has a patch to restore the original content, if you know where to look.
- Serious Business: Applying the Rule of Three to comedy is seriousnote . When Tsugumi tells Miko about the "Exorcist of Justice" using a pun on "slivy-ivy" while climbing a cliff face, Miko excitedly repeats it to impress Tsugumi by acting like her idol Nayuta. She then does it a fourth time... and Tsugumi, irritated, immediately grumbles that she ruined the joke by overdoing it.
- Sex Is Violence: Monsters thirst for mana, they drain it from exorcist maidens by lewdly attacking them.
- She Knows About Timed Hits: Much like the previous game, the characters directly talk about game mechanics to teach the player. It's exaggerated a bit more than last time due to Miko being a Large Ham stressing game mechanics either by highlighting the key text in gold or SHOUTING it in full capitalization. In addition, there are more involved field mechanics, so she and Tsugumi go into each of them with a higher relative frequency.
- Shout-Out:
- The Insight system in which Miko must recall her techniques in the heat of battle depending on her choice of nourishment, her level, and the strength of her foes is a direct reference to the Spark system from Romancing SaGa.
- While trying to think of a way to motivate (trick) Miko into doing chores that the other villagers need her to do for them across the island, Tsugumi mutters this to herself.
- The Uncool Exorcists call their Signature Move the "H-Stream Barrage", an obvious reference to the Black Tri-stars' famous "Jet Stream Attack" a trio-coordinated attack that's difficult to counter.
- Among the books Miko can find is a Shonen Jump magazine, "Duke Togo's Hunt", and a book series to help Miko break into safes called Lupan-Sensei.
- Just like in Yuugi, the highest tier Evasion-boosting Trinket is an oblique reference to Mickey Mouse called "Danger Mouse's Ear". Accordingly, the Trinket costs a whopping 100k yen to craft when most cost 2000 or 5000 yen.
- The Octo-Priest's H-Attacks and H-Criticals reference Katsushika Hokusai's Dream of the Fisherman's Wife, the Ur-Example of Naughty Tentacles. It's attack name also references the original title of the ukiyo-e blockprint, Tako to Ama. Though, like many later works that homage it, it's not exactly consensual here unlike the original...
- Wild Heavens' description says it conjures a huge tornado to "rip and tear".
- Keeping with the series tradition, one of its hardest difficulties is named "Hentai Must Die".
- Skill Scores and Perks: Compared to Yuugi the passives acquired from books are all exploration-related or basic stat increases rather than techniques or Mysteries, becoming Dump Stats for spare SP after getting the more vital passives, so she doesn't need to spend SP to unlock abilities to use in battle compared to Setsuna. Each of her techniques are classified under a specific trait or type which also tends to dictate what state it's most effective to use against a certain monster type or action. Her Mysteries are classified by elements. Repeatedly using abilties of a given trait make it slightly stronger through the increase of its mastery level.
- So Last Season: As enemies and bosses alike get higher level, as well as the player toggling harder difficulties, they begin to pull out new tricks they previously did not possess to throw off Miko's strategies.
- Space Whale Aesop: The aliens learn to respect endemic life and treat it with dignity after their attempt to weaponize the local octopus fauna creates an Eldritch Abomination when it fuses with an object that could've provided their world with unlimited energy, they have to beg Miko to help them erase their sins. Afterward, they open a shop where Miko can trade in extra Skill Points for unique goods and services, which they say is a literal way in which they can learn and adapt from their mistakes the way humans do.
- Stepford Smiler: For all of her silliness, Miko lived a pretty rough life having seen the some of the worst of humanity in the war-torn feudal Japan. Even so, when her memories return to her, she is still able to smile because she's found people dear to her she wants to protect that drives her to fight. One of her rarer expressions is a wistful simper.
- Suddenly Always Knew That: Parodied. When Miko boards the UFO, she somehow knows how to read the script in the vessel's logs, stating that it's the language of Zeta-Reticuli. Tsugumi is confounded by the implication that aliens have been around Earth that long.
- Take Up My Sword: Not by Miko's request, but by Tsugumi's awakened desire to help Miko in return. She gets the motivation to resume her education so she can become an exorcist herself and find a way to free Miko from her curse.
- Those Two Guys: The two fishermen brothers, Afro Jirou and Pompadour Ichirou are responsible for crafting and upgrading new armor and weapons for Miko respectively. Between their hairstyles and casual speech, they're implied to have been former yankiis, given that the first weapon Ichirou offers Miko is a bat with nails hammered into it.
- Tragic Monster: When revisiting dungeon locations affected by black mist, Miko cryptically alludes to the monster's past before a flashback shows why they ended up the way they did. They each possess physical traits that resemble their original human appearance. The fact that for all of them, their ignoble fate was the result of them trying to perform an altruistic deed which further compounds the tragedy.
- The Boss Monster underneath Masukaki Shrine, Commander-in-Fat, was a farmer showing Miko advanced agricultural method to increase crop harvest so that their people would no longer have to wage wars just to feed their own. War broke out on that very same soil, and while he pleaded with the soldiers to wait for the harvest so everyone could be fed, a random soldier impaled him in the stomach. In addition, Gaki are youkai who commonly manifest due to death by starvation, and Commander-in-Fat has an infinite amount of Gaki nesting in its stomach.
- The Boss Monster of the resurfaced Mysterious Sunken Ship—Masukake Maru, Sea Bushy, set sail on a risky journey to mainland Asia to open up trade so they could bring back more ways to enrich their people and find more ways to feed them as well. Before he left, he confessed his love for Miko and proposed to her. Even though she shot him down, he was determined to return to her regardless. Miko finds his shipwreck sometime later, washed ashore having returned to her as he wished to, even in death.
- Atop the Lighthouse lies Kago-hime, whom Miko attempted to help the princess Kagome ride in the cover of darkness to help her breakthrough an enemy army's encirclement to reach allied forces to try and save the castle. Kagome recognizes her castle as a cage, stifling, yet safe from the world, but she's determined to leave to try to protect the others still inside. Her ladies-in-waiting offered to don her clothes to attempt to deceive the enemy and lay down their lives for her. The flashback ends with a wordless Jump Cut of the castle keep Kagome stayed in, now in ruins. As a result, the normal version of Kago-hime's boss fight revolves around trying to find the real Kago-hime, while the revisited fight shows the birdcage plainly while all of the ghosts crowd around it to protect it.
- In the Dried-Up Well is the crudely named Seventit Mother Leech. When Miko heeded a request of some villagers to exterminate a "monster" in their well, she finds a physically deformed woman named Haruhi tending to infants who were abandoned by those same villagers who couldn't afford to feed their children and left them to die thinking it would be preferable to letting them starve. Disgusted and outraged, she attempts to help Haruhi as much as she can, but Haruhi's body is unable to nurse the seven infants due to malnourishment. Miko tries to gather some fish for her, but when she steps out the villagers take it upon themselves to finish their job themselves. Haruhi, believing the men were resolved to kill their own children, played up her physical deformity by pretending to be a child-eating monster and invoke a Papa Bear instinct in them. Miko returns and finds Haruhi a bloody mess. Despite being the victim, Haruhi believes she was able to appeal to the goodness in the men's hearts to now properly care for their children. She ended up becoming the most grotesque of the Boss Monsters, a gigantic leech with seven udders which continue to spew leeches who eternally hunger for mana to suck out, with what appears to be a face permanently fixed with an expression of sorrow crying Bloody Tears.
- Headless Betsushiki was a Master Swordsman named Shiki whom Miko befriended by chance while visiting the capital. Shiki became caught between her duty to her family, who ordered her to kill Miko due to her indirectly threatening their dojo's reputation, and what she truly desired in seeing a kindred spirit in Miko. Miko tried to convince her that the man was unworthy of her devotion and skill in both his character and severely lacking in sword skill himself. In the end, she forced Miko's hand, but was at least able to have a final heart-to-heart conversation with her with Miko promising to pass down her legacy through her techniques.
- The Red Ape and White Hound encountered in Masukaki Branch School were Miko's adoptive parents and guardians, Saruhiko and Inumaru, having taken her in as a feral child and teach her humanity while training her to become a highly-talented exorcist. Both of them admit they wouldn't be alive without the other reining in each other's tendencies to strike a balance, but their ideologies clash on how to move Exorcist Village forward past an age of turmoil. Feeling his hand forced, Inumaru slays Saruhiko before he irreversibly places Exorcist Village as an ally to any political entity which may garner them dangerous enemies in the future. Miko flees the village, unable or willing to take revenge. They appear as the school's Boss Monsters because they taught her everything she knows about humans. It is unknown what became of Inumaru.
- Truth in Television: If Miko gets tangled up in the Cucumber Monk's cuvierian tubules, Tsugumi suggests having Miko use Fresh Water on herself, saying that the threads' stickiness is a reaction from the surrounding sea water. There are scientific publications researching the correlation of the adhesiveness of cuvierian tubules and saline levels of water, among other factors.
- Tulpa: The Boss Monsters from the dungeons are all based on people from Miko's past because the monster inside her formed them using her memories, this is also why she woke up with amnesia and reclaims her memories each time she defeats them.
- Underground Monkey: Played straight. It typically doesn't change the monster's abilities unless they turn into one of the Elite Mook variations, which is more common when entering dungeons affected by the black mist.
- Unstable Equilibrium: While most boss fights are generally manageable, suffering a single misfortune such as Miko getting restrained or exhausted will make regaining her foothold in the fight a very steep hurdle, even with the use of her Ultimate Technique for a Heroic Second Wind. It's very easy to end up in a Cycle of Hurting of Miko cleansing herself of any debuffs and restraints only for one of the adds in a boss fight just to do it again. Conversely, good control of additional variables in a fight like mopping up adds makes bosses far more straightforward. It's usually when Miko needs to refresh her buffs that complications arise.
- Video Game Flamethrowers Suck: Played with. The Flamethrower is one of the weapons available to Miko. It sprays fire randomly among targets and requires her to use 15 TP for her basic attack. Like most of her other modern tools, its function doesn't apply to the majority of Miko's Techniques. However, it is also an MP-free method of applying fire damage, which can also help boost her Fire Mastery accordingly and can do respectable fire damage against a single target vulnerable to it since her most accessible fire-elemental Mystery is strictly AoE.
- Voice with an Internet Connection: Thanks to Tsugumi handing Miko Granny Shiver*, she can keep in contact with Miko while she explores. To protect Miko's dignity, it also somehow automatically cuts her connection if she gets into a... sticky situation. The Lemony Narrator describes it as "the considerate Granny Shiver's modest kindness".
- Was Once a Man: Subverted. The Boss Monsters aren't the direct result of humans being corrupted into monsters, but they are based on people from Miko's memories given a twisted form.
- Wide-Open Sandbox: Downplayed. However, unlike the previous games, the game map is the island itself and points must be traveled to manually rather than picking a zone and traveling there immediately through an overworld map. Eventually, Miko can have portaloos installed to help her fast travel across the island.
- Wild Child: Miko had always possessed her Supernatural Gold Eyes, unlike her white hair. Her future adoptive parents found her during a request to exterminate a monster, which confused them when they came across a feral child. It also happens that the maimed warriors nearby were her handiwork, and she eviscerated them with just her nails. Her hair was terribly disheveled and she wasn't able to speak at all for years.
- With This Herring: Miko says the blade she was sealed with was supposedly crafted by a master swordsmith, but even the best sword would rust if left in a cave for a thousand years.
- World's Best Warrior: Exorcist, rather. Miko has a rather strong claim to it as the creator of multiple techniques passed down through Exorcist Village. She mastered multiple techniques and instruction under Saruhiko and Inumaru's guidance much faster than they expected, learned how to perform Scattering Petals just by defending against it once on instinct, and she learns all of Ultimate Techniques from the previous game's exorcists as regular abilities, Covering Dragon (Kaede's ultimate), Wild Heavens (Gamaguchi's ultimate), Raging Wind (Azuma's ultimate), Zero Rite (Nayuta's ultimate), and Ultimate Upheaval (Setsuna's grandfather's ultimate), all of whom are already exceedingly skilled in their own right. Her main foe is also not just a Monster King but a kami in its prime as well, which she manages to defeat almost entirely on her lonesome (even if the first attempt had disastrous consequences). In comparison, Setsuna had killed a Monster King when it had just been born.
- Yōkai: There's a greater emphasis on the enemies in this game being directly inspired by youkai compared to the previous games, such as monsters that also happen to be monks, as well as other classical youkai such as the tanuki and their signature enormous testicles, or the Jorogumo. They run the range from Dirty Old Man to Cute Monster Girl.
- You Wanna Get Sued?:
- The Danger Mouse's Ear as mentioned in the Shout-Out entry references Disney's precedence for trigger-happy legal action (including the fact that crafting this Trinket costs 100,000 yen)
- The boss of the sunken UFO is Shin Octolla, Tsugumi worriedly calls the game out for blatantly ripping off the movie and worried that someone will get upset about it.