The Familiar of Zero/YMMV

• Abandon Shipping: Many bailed on the Louise/Saito ship after Louise beats him with a whip until he falls unconscious, and Saito tries to undress her while she's sleeping.
• Angst? What Angst?: Deconstructed but not at first glance. It is only when the brainwashing effect of the summoning contract starting to wear off that Saito's Angst begins.
• Audience-Alienating Premise: The Familiar of Zero actually evolved into this trope, due to the Flanderization of its main characters from "Ordinary High School Student Trapped in Another World" and "Tsundere-ish Cute Witch" into "Perverted Jerkass" and "Psychopathic Sadistic Tsundere" respectively.
• Canon Sue: Tabitha's long lost twin sister, who seems to have been created from a checklist of Mary Sue cliches.
• Common Knowledge: Many people who thought Saito was this poor innocent Woobie were surprised to see his perverted tendencies. Though people still agree Louise is the more problematic one of the relationship.
• Crowning Moment of Awesome: Saitou goes alone against up against an army of 70,000 bloodthirsty, berserk soldiers, and dies heroically. Big damn hero, even if he was fighting them for his girlfriend and not Tristain.
  • It's not so much that he went up against an army alone, it's that he disrupted and held them off for four goddamn hours by himself.
    • And on top of that, he didn't kill a single enemy, only knocked them unconscious. Now that's what I'd like to call awesome!
• Die for Our Ship: Siesta treats Saito much better than Louise, but is loathed by fandom for that.
• Draco in Leather Pants: From what you hear or read about him, you'd think Saito would this sweet guy that doesn't deserve Louise's abuse. While he is still a Woobie, he has attempted to sexually assault Louise. This has been swept under the rug from people who feel bad for him or hate Louise more.
• Dude, Not Funny: In chapter 2 of the second light novel, Louise whips Saito (not with a riding crop, but a real whip) until he passes out from the pain, after a previous beating from the night before.
  • In another point, Louise woke up to find Saito trying to undress her in her sleep so he could rape her. Not nearly as many fans are bothered by this compared Louise's abuse of Saito.
• Eight Deadly Words: With such unlikable main characters like Louise and Saito (especially Louise), as well as terrible execution and Unfortunate Implications, many people ditched the series halfway through the first season.
• Escapist Character: While he does have to deal with Louise being aggressive towards him, Saito is a pretty lucky boy otherwise. He probably has lost count as to how many girls have fallen for him. This was once parodied in a motivational poster. https://www.deviantart.com/kermitthefrog223456/art/Saito-Is-One-Lucky-Dude-505344307
• Ensemble Darkhorse: Tabitha, Miss Lougeville, Kirche.
• Glurge: The story ends with Saito and Louise becoming lovers, and it is portrayed as heartwarming, despite the fact Louise spent the whole series abusing Saito physically without any provocation. As a result, Esoteric Happy Ending ensues.
• Macekre: Original light novels are, even though they still aren't free from occasional Fridge Logic concerning their plot, a few levels over the anime adaptation, which had quickly devolved from grey-coloured story with occasional breathers to Tsundere comedy with a lot of Fan Service and something happening in the background. Because of that, some things were slightly changed, and some cut off completely, often resulting in removing heart-warming or awesome moments just to put more female body parts in (a very prominent example being Saito's death, which was the reason why Louise's company had come into contact with Tiffania, and an important part of Louise's character development, being changed into Saito coming back a short while later on his own, and then dragging Louise to Westwood for no apparent reason; another fine example is Agnes' behaviour towards Colbert after his faux death, once again an important part of someone's character development (in this case, of two characters, even), being cut completely).
• Moe: Tabitha, so very much. To quote someone from animeblogger:

"Tabitha has taken over Siesta as my favorite character, and not just because she is channeling Yuki. She is made of pure win, I don't usually like the stoic silent types, but something about Tabitha just makes my inner moe meter go berserk."

• • Louise may also count.
• One True Threesome: Louise/Saito/Siesta is a popular pairing, likely because Louise and Siesta balance each other out. This was teased a little in the 12th volume where Louise says she would be disappointed if Siesta gave up on winning Saito so easily.
  • This is of course when shippers stop painting the other as a manipulating monster, who just wants to interrupt true love
  • Also Louise generally gets very violent when another woman so much as looks at Saito funny.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Louise usually gets this treatment in fan fiction. Done first by The Hill of Swords and then by about 99.9% of all ZnT fanfics that came after it.
  • For many this already happened after she gave up her nobility to save Tabitha and went uphill from there.
• The Scrappy: Louise and Saito both qualify, depending on who you ask.
  • Hell, Louise period. Her abusive treatment of Saito (despite being abused herself), irritating personality, refusal to own up what she does, and the fact she's the main heroine when she does barely do anything heroic has made her one of the worst Scrappies in anime history. Her character, alongside anime!Naru and Kirino, has made many people bail on the Tsundere archetype. Anime America voted her as the most annoying anime character, and rightfully so.
• Tear Jerker: Seeing Tabitha's mother for the first time; emaciated, insane and paranoid. She hurls insults and silverware at her own daughter, making it that much worse when the cause is revealed to have been a glass of cursed wine intended for Tabitha (then Charlotte). Upon realizing what was going on, she drank it herself to protect her daughter.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot
  • The anime works at a conversion ratio of three to four volumes per twelve episodes. Due to this, at least two thirds of the source material has been outright omitted, and the rest truncated or chopped up. Had the anime remained faithful to the source materials all along... well, too late now, unfortunately.
  • The manga and novels aren't immune to this criticism either. In fact, the series as a whole often comes under fire for having a terrific premise, and absolutely terrible execution. The fact that almost every character is wholly unlikeable for one reason or another (Love Makes You Crazy and Idiot Ball being the most common reasons) certainly doesn't help matters.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Louise. She does have a lot of issues, but that doesn't excuse in the slightest her atrocious abuse of Saito. She's the prime example of a Tsundere Shana Clone done completely wrong.
• What an Idiot!: Saito still hasn't figured out that commenting about large breasts (or her lack thereof) around Louise is a bad idea.
• The Woobie: You really can't help but feel sorry for Saito because of the abuse heaped upon him by Louise. Hell, even the other familiars feel sorry for Saito, and see his treatment as both a familiar and a human as horrible. Tabitha qualifies too, once you learn of what happened to her parents.
  • Louise in the light novels if you can look past her treatment of Saito. She has a huge insecurity complex.

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