Visual Novel / Slow Damage

A torn wound and a desire.
^{Clockwise from right to left}  Towa, Rei Izumi, Takuma Murase, Kei Madarame, and Ryou Fujieda

"The human heart is soft, like a fistful of fine sand. So you must be very careful with how you handle it."

Slow Damage is a Japanese Boys' Love Visual Novel developed and published by Nitro+CHiRAL, making this their fifth work. Nitro+CHiRAL's scenario writer, Fuchii Kabura, returned to work on this game alongside artist Uiro Yamada, who has been credited as staff on previous Nitroplus titles.

The first press edition released in Japan for Windows PCs on February 25, 2021, though customers who ordered through the official Nitroplus Online Store received the game on February 17, 2021. The visual novel has been picked up for an official English-language translation by JAST BLUE, which was released on November 14, 2022.

Slow Damage takes place at some point during the 21st century in the fictional ward of Shinkoumi, which was previously known as Tokyo Waterfront City No. 13. The country is in the midst of a recession and, in an attempt to resolve these economic troubles, the government repurposed this area as a large-scale casino resort due to its historic prosperity. This ward is governed by the corrupt Takasato-gumi, whose only interest is their own financial gain.

The story follows Towa, a resident of Shinkoumi who lives his life in a carefree and apathetic manner, showing no concern for his future. The only thing that captures his interest is painting— more specifically, painting the innermost desires of other people.

A manga adaptation illustrated by Misaka Niumu which covers the events of the prologue and the common route began distribution on July 7, 2020 and ran for 11 chapters before concluding in 2021.

Slow Damage also has a spin-off called Slow Damage: Clean Dishes which focuses on a different set of characters but still takes place in Shinkoumi.

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Slow Damage provides examples of the following tropes:

Tropes #-D

• 20 Minutes into the Future: Inverted. Slow Damage takes place years after the 2020s, although everything about the setting is very much just like the early 2020s in Real Life. The only thing that's remotely futuristic is how the characters use a 7G internet connection (whereas as of real-life 2023, the fastest existing connection is 5G).
• Abandoned Warehouse: In Chapter 2 of Rei's route, both Towa and Rei get knocked out and are taken to a warehouse that also happens to be the hideout of the violent Hapless Children responsible for the Assault Parties.
• Absurdly High-Stakes Game: In Rei's route, where Sakaki invites Towa to play a game of poker with him. If Towa wins, he gets 300 million yen in cash, which is the exact amount needed to pay off the remainder of Rei's (more specifically, his father's) debt; though Rei's life is still forfeit if he loses the upcoming Moneymatch. If Sakaki wins, Towa has to do one favor for him, though it's never revealed what favor he has in mind, even if the player lets Sakaki get the upper hand.
• Accidental Hand-Hold: There are two instances in Taku's route when he and Towa accidentally touch hands, which causes Taku to flinch and act strange, much to Towa's confusion.
• Accidental Murder: According to Sakaki, Maya and Towa accidentally fell down the stairs, which resulted in the former's death and the latter's amnesia. The truth, however, is that Towa inadvertently pushed Maya down the stairs while trying to fight her off, as she was trying to kill him.
• Accidental Truth: When Eiji starts posting unpleasant rumors about Taku in his blog, Towa confronts him about it. Eiji brushes it off and shrugs that while he sometimes posts about things that aren't actually true, he assures Towa that the rumors will die down eventually if there is no proof to back it up... except that his posts are a lot more accurate than anyone would like to believe. And since almost nothing slips past Eiji, he may have actually known that he was posting facts all along.
• Age-Gap Romance: Taku (46) and Madarame (39) are 20 years and 13 years older than Towa (26), respectively.
• All There in the Manual:
  • Mizuno's real family name is Kirihara, but it's only in the credits where his first name is revealed to be Nozomu. The player will also be informed of his full name in Fujieda's route.
  • The official artbook reveals some interesting tidbits about the characters:
    • Sakaki, Toono and Kaga have tattoos on their backs. While Uiro Yamada never drew how the tattoos would look, she confirmed that Sakaki's tattoo is the image of the Akasagarbha Bodhisattva◊, Toono's tattoo is the image of the Kongōyasha Myōō◊, and Kaga's tattoo is the visage of the goddess Kannon/Guanyin◊.
    • While Mei's age isn't specified, she is confirmed to be older than Towa despite them sharing the same height during the time they were held captive in Euphoria. This has something to do with Towa's stunted growth, likely from the less-than-stellar treatment he was receiving from both his mother and her clients.
    • The owner of Tajima's used to be a nightclub hostess in her youth and previously lived in the Aoyama district.
    • Both the owners of Yanagawa Café and Tajima's are well-acquainted, even though they're never seen interacting in the game.
• Ambiguous Time Period: The narration tells the player about how Japan fell into a heavy recession in the 2020s, though it doesn't specify what year the story is currently set in and deliberately leaves it vague by mentioning that the story now takes place in the year 20XX.
• Anti-Climax: The trope is lampshaded by Madarame in his route when he comments that the ambush on the Takasato-gumi went a lot more smoothly than he had expected.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • The player, especially in their first playthrough, will not have an easy time figuring out how to complete an Interrogation without getting a Non-Standard Game Over at least once. The game itself is even aware of this and will offer the player the option to lower the difficulty after they have bungled an Interrogation at least three times. However, once the player has completed the entirety of the game and decides to start a second playthrough and opts to replay the Interrogations instead of skipping them, they are now shown which dialogue option will increase or decrease the character's Euphoria and Madness levels and which Clue is the correct one needed to conclude the Interrogation.
  • Upon replaying a chapter that was already completed once, the player is given the option to skip the Exploration and the Interrogation segments entirely. And should the player skip the Explorations but not the Interrogations, the game makes it that all the Inspirations that can be acquired by then are present in the palette; thus all Inspirations are available as dialogue options during the Interrogations.
  • The player is allowed to start from a chapter (which they have already completed at least once) of their choice, sparing them the hassle of having to always play from the very beginning just to get to the route they want.
• Arc Words: If an Interrogation is successfully completed, there is a key phrase that will confirm to the player whether they achieved Euphoria or Madness with Towa's models.
  • Euphoria: "I see. Now I understand completely."
  • Madness: "You're going to fall apart at this rate."
• Artistic License – Medicine: Downplayed. Towa is described to be in bad shape many times in the story, with both Taku and Rei repeatedly expressing concern over how unhealthy Towa's lifestyle is. In reality, however, Towa's body would already be faring much much worse from how much he smokes and drinks on a near-daily basis since he was a teenager.
• Awful Truth: Everything, and we mean everything about Towa's childhood is filled with nothing but horrible revelation after horrible revelation. This is why Taku doesn't want Towa to ever remember his past as he worries that Towa will not be able to handle it well, and his fears are far from unfounded. When Towa manages to recover his memories in the final route, the truth breaks him both mentally and emotionally that he would have killed himself had Fujieda not stepped in at the last moment and motivated Towa to give life a second chance.
• Bare-Handed Blade Block: Catch, to be precise. During a fight with one of Toono's more Hot-Blooded men, said henchman attempts to attack Towa with a knife. Towa catches him off-guard by grabbing the blade with his barehand, causing his palm to bleed.
• Big Fancy House: The Euphoria mansion is a large estate where everything inside it is of the finest class and quality. Even in its current dilapidated state, anyone who steps inside can tell that it was once a grand and majestic place.
• Bittersweet Ending:
  • Downplayed in Rei and Taku's Euphoria endings, where both love interests resolve their conflicts for good, and Towa gets to live a happy and content life with them, though the fact remains that Towa will never learn of his past and fully come to terms with his childhood trauma, especially in hindsight of The Reveal in Fujieda's route. What mitigates this is the events of the After Story drama CDs showing that while Towa doesn't get to have closure with his past, his relationship with both Taku and Rei is still helping him heal to some degree.
  • In Madarame's Euphoria ending, both he and Towa finish off the Takasato-gumi before leaving Shinkoumi to travel Japan and eventually the world, living life as they please. This means that Towa leaves his old life behind, and he chooses to permanently break ties with Taku and Rei and never sees them again.
• Black-and-Gray Morality: Given that Slow Damage takes place in what is essentially a Vice City, anyone who has lived there long enough is guaranteed to have a checkered past, one way or another. Even the more morally good characters carry serious hardships which haunt them and bleed into their actions and viewpoints.
• Bland-Name Product: One of the signs in the Nightlife District reads "Pizza Not" (a.k.a. Pizza Hut).
• Blasting It Out of Their Hands: In the climax of Taku's route, Towa manages to stop Toono from putting a bullet in Taku's head by shooting his gun, with the force causing him to drop the firearm.
• Bloodier and Gorier: Zigzagged. Slow Damage is darker and more mature in its portrayal of its themes compared to its predecessor, with elements of both Psychological Thriller and Psychological Horror placed at the forefront of the story. There's also a lot of bodily and bloody harm involved as well, many of which are both narrated and shown in detail. That being said, the gore factor is taken down a few notches in Slow Damage compared to the last four Nitro+CHiRAL games, partly due to its more realistic setting. Case in point, there's no disembowelment, cannibalism, bestiality and amputation involved, with the previous games having at least two of them included in their bad endings.
• Blunt "No":
  • When Ikuina asks Towa if he could be a model for his paintings, Towa doesn't even take a second to think it over before declining Ikuina's request.
  • When Rei, who is still recovering from his beatdown, asks Taku if he can still attend the Christmas party at Roost, Taku doesn't hesitate to refute his request twice. He finally relents the third time when Towa expresses interest in going to the party... but only if he comes along as well to keep an eye on the other two.
• Body Horror:
  • Rei's Madness ending has him "doll up" Towa with various modifications: he tattoos over Towa's missing eye, bifurcates Towa's tongue, gives him an additional set of stylized scars all over his body, and adds an array of corset piercings across his back.
  • In their "euphoric session", Asakura cuts up Towa's back to sew a pair of white metal rods welded together to resemble angelic wings onto the latter's flesh.
• Both Sides Have a Point: Taku and Fujieda have opposing viewpoints about whether Towa should learn more about his past or not. Taku argues that Towa is better off not knowing about his childhood since what he went through then was nothing short of traumatic, and Towa's mind may not be able to recover once he remembers everything. Fujieda counters that Towa still has a right to know and he's the one who chose to look into his past, his memories are potentially the key to a hidden truth that has been haunting Shinkoumi for a long time, and that even though what Towa could discover may be distressing, it could still provide him the closure that he had unconsciously (yet sorely) needed. Neither is in the wrong with their arguments.
• Brawler Lock: One CG in Fujieda's route has him and Sakaki engage into this stance at one point whilst fighting each other.
• Breaking Old Trends:
  • All the previous Nitro+CHiRAL protagonists either have no memory of their parents (Akira), lost their parents when they were still young (Konoe and Youji) or were only adopted by people who then left some time afterwards (Aoba). Towa would fit into the former two criteria... but there's also the additional part about how said parent was nothing but abusive to him and also serves as the Greater-Scope Villain of the story, making Slow Damage the first visual novel in the franchise to have one of the protagonist's parents play the role of the villain (even if a posthumous one) in the narrative.
  • It's a staple that in route-specific circumstances, and mainly in the bad endings, that the protagonists of any Nitro+CHiRAL visual novel will be subjected to rape. But Slow Damage is the first to feature such a topic in the main character's backstory.
• Breather Episode: Downplayed. Rei's route tackles plenty of serious themes and wouldn't be considered a lighthearted plot by any stretch. But even when taking into account the part where Rei is forced to risk his life in Moneymatches to pay off his father's debt, the stakes in his storyline are nowhere near as high as that of Towa's other love interests. Additionally, the majority of the drama in Rei's story comes from either his father or his inner conflict regarding his identity, rather than from any disagreement between him and Towa, the latter of which there is a great deal of in the other routes.
• Bridal Carry: In the drama CD covering the aftermath of Taku's storyline, Towa insists that Taku carries him around the house whenever he can, and it's one of his ways of asking for the other to dote on him. Towa jokingly notes that he also wishes to test Taku's strength as the latter became more fit from working out during his time behind bars.
• The Butler Did It: In Fujieda's route, the one who has been sending the mysterious packages to Towa and killing all of his leads is none other than Sakaki. He qualifies as the "butler" in the trope because he is also revealed to be Maya's right-hand man, and all of his actions in the final route are his attempts at fulfilling Maya's Last Request.
• Butterfly of Death and Rebirth: This trope is utilized in Taku's Madness ending. Although it's nothing more than a hallucination, the butterflies (and various other winged insects) that Towa and Taku see in their drug-induced haze symbolize the tragic juxtaposition between their shared illusion and the reality around them. At the moment, they feel nothing but bliss, yet their mind and body are slowly rotting away as they descend further and further into insanity.
• Bystander Syndrome: The trope is brought up a few times in some of the narrations, such as how most of the people in Shinkoumi have become accustomed to looking the other way whenever they see either a dead body or someone else in trouble, because the city is just that dangerous to live in and they would rather keep their heads on their shoulders and not risk getting in too deep on something they can't get out of.
• Calling the Old Man Out:
  • It's saying how much of a deadbeat Rei's father is when the normally friendly Junko and Honami are doing their utmost to not beat the shit out of him. Taku is only barely trying to remain polite, but even he's visibly irked and is unable to stop himself from giving the man a subtle jab by telling him to reevaluate how he's doing as a parent. Even Towa is not too fond of him either, to the point of punching the man in the face without warning and dragging him to Rei's final Moneymatch to get it through to the other just how much Rei is risking for his father's sake even though he isn't deserving of such a sacrifice.
  • The one and only time Towa got to stand up to his mother was shortly after he learned that Mei had died and that Maya had something to do with it... though the outcome of that confrontation nearly became the last straw for Towa's sanity had his mind decided to not suppress the memory.
• Can't Live with Them, Can't Live Without Them: This trope is Towa and Madarame's relationship in a nutshell. Towa always gets pissed off whenever he thinks about how Madarame is able to see right through him no matter what, something that has been the case both then and now. And yet it's precisely because of this reason that Towa also finds himself drawn to the other man.
• Captain Obvious: Played with. Fujieda, upon being faced with the threat of death, tells Towa that he is euphoria, a statement which Sakaki mocks out of the assumption that Fujieda is stupidly saying something everyone already knows. Towa, however, is able to pick up on what Fujieda meant to imply with those words.
• Cast Full of Gay: Slow Damage is a Boys' Love visual novel after all, so it should only be expected that its characters aren't opposed to being in a relationship with the same sex. However, among the main cast, Rei is the only one to be explicitly confirmed as gay. Towa doesn't mind going out with either sex but highly prefers men over women, Taku had never fooled around with men before (until Towa), it's never revealed if Madarame ever had any sexual relations with women or with other men, and even when taking Fujieda's previous line of work into consideration he can only be considered Ambiguously Bi at best. The exact sexualities of some of the supporting characters (such as Kotarou and Mayu) aren't explicitly defined either, with the player only being certain that they don't mind sleeping with other men.
• Caught the Heart on His Sleeve: When Taku is no longer able to keep quiet about his growing affections for Towa, he stops the latter from going to Toono by grabbing his shoulder. It then takes a bit more prodding from Towa for Taku to confess his feelings outright.
• Central Theme: Scars, of both the physical and the mental kind. This is reflected on the stories of both Towa's clients and love interests, especially Towa himself.
• Cerebus Call-Back: The game officially starts with the page quote appearing across the screen, accompanied by the image of an hourglass. At first, the line seems innocuous and reflects the nature of the gameplay, where one must be careful what to say to reach to a person's innermost depths as the human heart is no more fragile than sand. However, it becomes a lot more sinister in context after it's revealed to be Maya's words to Towa about how the human heart can be controlled and manipulated much like how sand can be shaped and molded in all kinds of ways.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • The Explorations are one of the most important elements of the gameplay in Slow Damage. Whenever Towa interacts with any of the other characters whilst walking around Shinkoumi, if the player chooses the correct option, they will obtain an Inspiration— which is a fragment of the response of the character they interacted with. The Inspirations will eventually come in handy as additional dialogue options during an Interrogation.
  • The painting that Towa sees in Tajima's. He wonders why it's even there as it doesn't fit the aesthetic of the shop, never mind the fact that it just features a completely black background. It's actually a bright and colorful painting that Towa saw in his childhood, and is the same painting that inspired him to take up art. Only in the Golden Ending does Towa see the painting for what it really is, which fills him with emotion and it hits him that after overcoming his trauma, he has both literally and metaphorically begun to see the world in a different way.
  • The bunny plushie that Towa keeps in his room, which Rei lampshades as something that someone like Towa would usually not keep around, and Towa himself even questions why he felt like buying it. It's hinted that it subconsciously reminds him of Mei's bunny doll, which he receives in a package in Fujieda's route. Said toy would then play a key role in Towa's investigation of his past.
  • There's a literal example of the trope in Taku's route. Near the climax, Towa knocks one of the Takasato goons unconscious before taking his gun. It eventually comes in handy later when he uses it to shoot the gun off of Toono's hands before the latter could land a fatal shot on Taku.
• Cherry Blossoms: In the finale of Taku's Euphoria ending, cherry blossom petals are falling in the background when Towa and Taku reunite after the latter's release from prison.
• Color-Coded Characters: To sum up, each character has a unique Color Motif based on the color of their Smoke.
• Commonality Connection:
  • In their routes, one of the reasons Towa feels a unique kind of attraction to either Rei or Madarame is because of their love for fighting and their predisposition towards violence, both of which the player knows Towa possesses in spades.
  • In Fujieda's route, both he and Towa believe that they're like fire and ice and there's no way that they would ever get along. However, as they get to know each other more, they come to realize that they're more alike than they first thought. This causes their relationship to improve and allow them to grow closer.
    From the moment I first laid eyes on Fujieda, I was sure that we'd be incompatible. But as it turned out, we had more in common than I ever would have imagined.
• Company Cross References: A lot of Nitro+ references are littered throughout Slow Damage.
  • If the player listens closely, they can hear some background tracks from Nitro+CHiRAL's previous works playing in certain areas of the game.
    • Togainu no Chi: At the diner where Towa, Taku and Rei would often hang out and eat.
    • Lamento - beyond the void -: At Krishna, the restaurant where Mizuno works at.
    • sweet pool: At an unnamed bar (besides Roost) where Towa would occasionally drop by for some drinks.
    • DRAMAtical Murder: At the warehouse where the climax of "Chapter 2: Brother" takes place.
  • In Kouou Street, one of the electric billboards features an image of Youji Sakiyama from one of sweet pool's promotional posters◊.
  • The poster on the building that towers over the Deathmatch area shows an official artwork of Akira.
  • Mayu's room features merchandise of various Nitroplus' heroines such as Saya, Petrushka, Franco il Nero, Miyuki and Aoi. There are Nendoroid boxes for Clear and Mink as well.
• Conditioned to Accept Horror: Anyone who grows up in Shinkoumi or at least has lived there for long enough has gotten used to the fact that it's a lavish cesspool where poverty is rampant and crime lurks in every corner. It reaches the point that many citizens have learned to turn a blind eye to the danger around them as long as it isn't happening to them.
• Confession Triggers Consummation:
  • Taku and Rei's Euphoria endings have both love interests admit that they have fallen in love with Towa, which leads to them having sex shortly afterwards.
  • While a confession also happens in Madarame's route, the player must achieve the Euphoria outcome in his final Interrogation before the consummation can happen.
• Contemplate Our Navels: Taku has one such moment when he and Towa hang out at the seaside park, talking about how human life is short and death is an inevitability for everyone.
• Content Warning: The player is greeted with a warning upon opening the game. In the Japanese release, the warning starts with the statement that the game contents sex, violence and gore, which is par for the course for all Nitro+CHiRAL games. The English localization modifies the warning by adding a statement that the game also has flashing images in case the player is photosensitive, and also specifies what mature themes will be featured in the story.
• Continuity Nod: In the fourth After Story drama CD (which is the sequel to Fujieda's route), the first track starts with Fujieda suggesting that he and Towa go to the mainland and visit an amusement park. This is a reference to the conversation they had in the short story from the official artbook.
• Crapsack World: The visual novel starts by narrating how Japan's economy fell to an all-new low, leading to a massive spike in both unemployment and suicide rates. This led to Shinkoumi's establishment in an attempt to remedy the disastrous effects brought forth by the recession. However, various issues led to Shinkoumi being governed separately from the rest of mainland Japan. Years later, and Shinkoumi has since become a city where no one is truly safe, whether or not they have any trouble with the Takasato-gumi.
• Creepy-Crawly Torture: In one of the Explorations in Taku's route, one of Towa's run-ins with Inada will have the latter tell Towa about a new drug that has been spreading around, which is said to have notably gruesome side effects where the user will hallucinate bugs attacking them both from the inside and the outside, causing them to panic and claw at their own body. The player will get to see the effects first-hand in Taku's Madness ending, and it isn't a pretty sight.
• Cue the Sun: The very last scene of the Golden Ending ends with a shot of the bright sun in a clear blue sky, signifying the beginning of a new chapter in Towa's life and how he has begun to see the world in a completely different way after his entire conflict with his past is resolved.
• Darker and Edgier: While still overall colorful, Slow Damage uses much darker colors compared to DRAMAtical Murder, takes place in a city ruled by crime, and is completely front-and-center with its themes of mental trauma and bodily harm.
• Dashed Plot Line: Slow Damage is divided into "chapters", with each one focused mainly around either one of Towa's painting models or his love interests (with the former group providing more significance to the latter group's storyline).
• Dead Person Impersonation: In the climax of Fujieda's route, Towa pretends to be Maya in order to distract Sakaki from killing Fujieda. It's by that point that the player will have to make critical choices that will net them either the Euphoria or the Madness ending, both of which shows what happens whether or not Towa becomes too absorbed in his performance that he "turns into" Maya for real.
• Den of Iniquity: On the outside, Euphoria looks just like any other luxurious nightclub. In secret, it was a place where the most privileged customers (and those they invite) could fulfill their deepest and darkest desires, no matter what kind of desire that was. In doing so, they get to have their way with the people held captive there, and children weren't an exception.
• Destroy the Abusive Home: A variation of the trope occurs in the Golden Ending, where the mansion Towa spent his torturous and harrowing childhood in ends up being obliterated for good. Not by Towa's actions, however, but completely by other extraneous forces, as it was a mysterious explosion (which is assumed to be from gas leak) that caused the mansion to get swallowed up by a sinkhole.
• Doctor's Disgraceful Demotion: After Taku is tried and convicted for his association with Toono, both he and Towa expect that he may never be able to resume his job as a doctor again. However, the After Story drama CD subverts this; in spite of what happened, the public is still looking forward to having him reopen his clinic. Taku is then left ruminating for a while on whether he really should go through with it given all the crimes he had committed, even though said crimes were done under duress. But in the end, he decides to officially reopen the clinic.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: It's rather easy to liken Maya and the establishment she runs to a cult.
  • Every client who goes there has one goal: to achieve happiness. Exactly how? By getting to satisfy their most sinful desires.
  • The children and all other captives that the aforementioned clients subject to their wicked fantasies can be compared to the human sacrifices that a cult would offer for whatever twisted ritual they had in mind.
  • Both Maya and Sakaki, her most devoted supporter, spoke of Mei in an extremely bitter and resentful way because, in their words, she tried to "lead Towa astray" and "corrupt his being". This is eerily similar to how cult members would speak of someone that has either left their group or tried to convince one of their own into leaving.
• Doorstopper: Slow Damage is one of Nitro+CHiRAL's longer visual novels alongside Lamento - beyond the void, requiring at least 50 to 60 hours for the player to complete the entire game by achieving every ending and acquiring all CGs.
• Dragged into Drag: A sinister example of the trope happens in Taku's route when Toono has some of his favorite hostesses doll up Towa, with his intention being to intimidate Taku into completing his task out of the fear that Toono will lay his hands on Towa otherwise.
• Draw Aggro: In the climax of "Chapter 2: Brother", both Towa and Rei are left at the mercy of a group of unhinged Hapless Children. Towa sees that Rei is already in bad shape and may not last for much longer if he's subjected to another No-Holds-Barred Beatdown, so he puts on an aggressive front to provoke Rei's attackers into beating him up instead.
• Drone of Dread: This is heard throughout the entirety of "Control", which is fitting since the track only plays in the scenes featuring Maya.
• Drugs Are Bad:
  • Rumors soon start to spread around Shinkoumi about a new illegal drug spreading around the city. Naturally, its effects are anything but harmless, with those who ingest it end up becoming disoriented and berserk. It's soon revealed that this is no mere rumor, since Taku is blackmailed by Toono into manufacturing the aforementioned drug.
  • Taken to a disturbing conclusion in Taku's Madness ending, where he drugs Towa and keeps him in a basement in a twisted attempt to protect him. While locked up, Towa is administered with psychedelics to the extent that his mind becomes completely addled and he starts to see things that aren't there, namely insects.
• Dysfunction Junction: It's expected for the cast of a Nitro+CHiRAL game to have their fair share of issues, and Slow Damage is no exception.

Tropes E-I

• Earn Your Bad Ending: The tricky nature of the visual novel's choice system makes it that while it's hard enough to get the Euphoria ending, it's even harder to achieve the Madness ending since one has to make sure — on top of monitoring the character's Madness level — that their Euphoria also does not drop too low lest they get a Non-Standard Game Over.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: In the Golden Ending, Maya and Sakaki's plans are ultimately thwarted, and Toono gets Killed Offscreen)— which results in the Takasato-gumi's dissolution. With the mainland authorities stepping in, Shinkoumi is likely to undergo a heavy reform. Taku and Towa reconcile, and Taku turns himself in to atone for being an accomplice in Toono's schemes. Rei's debt with the Takasato-gumi is no longer an issue, and he plans to make amends with his father. Madarame — who never had any deep-seated troubles in the first place — still lives his life how he wishes, with Kotarou mentioning that the man plans to leave Shinkoumi and travel around. And most importantly, Towa gains closure after remembering his past and resolving all the conflicts involved with it, and finds happiness and fulfillment with Fujieda, someone who understands him, knows and empathizes what he has been through and has resolved to care for and support him every step of the way.
• Erotic Asphyxiation: In one of their sex scenes, Madarame starts to choke Towa in the middle of the act, though this only arouses Towa even more.
• Every Scar Has a Story: When Towa sees Fujieda's scars, he realizes that there's a lot more to the man than he first assumed. Fujieda later admits that he thought the same when he first saw Towa's scars and already felt back then that they may be more alike than they realize.
• Evolving Credits: Once the player starts Fujieda's route, the opening sequence will soon play like always. But if one pays close attention, some things are changed: the love interests are introduced using different sprites and some of the CGs used are different from before. Lastly, the color of the back of the pocket watch changes from gold to crimson, and the visage reflected on it is no longer Towa's, but Maya's instead.
• Evolving Title Screen:
  • Whenever a day ends in-game, it's marked by the game title swiping across the screen. The title color, which is red at first, will eventually change to the Color Motif of any of the love interests that Towa will end up pursuing: orange (Taku), yellow (Rei), blue (Madarame), or white (Fujieda). In Fujieda's case, however, there's an additional change of color as the story progresses. Halfway through, the white text soon gains a tinge of red, before completely becoming the same shade of red used in the common route.
  • After the player finishes at least one route, Towa's pocket watch will show up as an additional menu option that allows the player to access the CG gallery, the background music tracks and all other bonus content. Then once the player has gone through Taku, Rei and Madarame's routes, the dolls at the far left of the screen will move to the center as yet another option for the player to "pursue the truth", a.k.a. play Chapter 0, which serves as the prologue to either Fujieda's route or the common route.
  • With every route the player completes, the black painting on the center of the title screen gains more colors, and the entire screen also becomes brighter and more riddled with psychedelic hues. Once Fujieda's route is completed, the title screen undergoes a permanent change: the background of the screen (which is Towa's room) is now white and well-lit, and the painting's true appearance is now revealed. To add, the default music that plays in the menu is changed from "Nightmare" to "Joy", the latter of which is similar to the former but without the One-Woman Wail.
• Exact Words:
  • As Taku assures Towa that he had no feelings for the latter's mother, he says, "I admit that there was once a time when I admired your mother." While it's easy to miss at first, once the player completes Fujieda's route, they'll realize that Taku's statement was phrased as such because there was something in Taku's sentence that was left unsaid, that being "...before I found out about what she had been doing to you."
  • When Fujieda asks Towa if he saw the contents of his memo pad, Towa nods, which earns him a mean look. Towa reiterates that he saw it, not that he could read it, since the notes were ciphered.
• Expy:
  • Deathmatches are very similar to Bl@ster games, since it involves people getting into fistfights to either test their strength, let out some stress, or a bit of both. Likewise, the higher-ups running the city allow for it, and both have a strict rule where the participants can fight with only their fists; no blades or firearms are allowed. The only difference that Bl@ster soon became an official game, complete with sponsors and tournaments and prizes, whereas Deathmatches remain an unofficial but wildly popular sport that people engage in neither for money nor fame.
  • It's easy to see how both Kotarou and Mayu are similar to the Executioners. Both are recruited by criminal organizations to serve as their muscle to hunt down anyone who either owes money to the Takasato-gumi (in Kotarou and Mayu's case) or has broken the rules of Igura (in the Executioners' case). However, Kotarou and Mayu are much sharper tools in the shed than Gunji and Kiriwar, both of whom are dangerous albeit really Dumb Muscle. Kotarou and Mayu also properly do their job and go only after debtors who refuse to pay up, and are also on amicable terms with Towa throughout the entire game; whereas the Executioners will kill anyone — even if they weren't a rule-breaker — as long as they felt like it, and are also a pair that Akira has to avoid running into at all costs.
• Eye Scream: Towa no longer has his right eye, and covers the eyelid with a medical patch. This is because said eye got damaged when he attempted to take a shot meant for Madarame, with the bullet rupturing his eyeball.
• Facepalm: After having to help Towa relieve his forced arousal (with Towa also helping pleasure him throughout the act), Taku is frustrated, shocked, embarrassed and disoriented from the experience that he ends up burying his face in both his hands while trying to not panic any further.
• Fairytale Motif: The lyrics of "Shinjirou", the theme song for Fujieda's Madness ending, makes allusions to The Little Mermaid, especially at the part where the singer talks about them and the person they're serenading to dissolving into foam.
• Family of Choice: One of the messages Slow Damage gives is that family isn't necessarily the people you're connected to by blood relation, but the people who unconditionally care for you and accept you as you are no matter what.
• The Farmer and the Viper: In "Chapter 2: Brother", Rei saves Mizuno when he sees the latter beaten and left for dead in the streets. It turns out he had rescued the very mastermind behind the Assault Parties, and ends up becoming a victim of not one, but two of their beatdowns.
• Fast-Forward to Reunion: After Taku is sent to jail, the epilogue gives a brief description of what Towa had been doing in the following year before he and Taku meet again when the latter is eventually released.
• Firing One-Handed: Whenever a CG shows anyone firing a gun, they only do so with one hand. Then again, the trope is used realistically since the guns featured in the visual novel are standard handguns, which anyone with sufficient firearm experience can fire without having to use both hands.
• First-Person Perspective: The English release of Slow Damage is narrated in first-person, although the original Japanese release made use of third-person narration and it's only the information in the Croquis book that is told from Towa's point of view.
• Fisticuff-Provoking Comment: When Towa confronts Rei's father and asks if he knows what his son's been doing to pay off his debt, the older man's response shows how unsympathetic he is to his son's plight even though it was brought about by his own screw-ups. When he tries to deflect the blame once again, Towa is irritated enough to deck him in the face mid-sentence.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing:
  • Any player can get the inkling that things will go south the moment Eiji shows up in Sakaki's apartment and rambles on about something coming in handy while putting on a gas mask.
  • The venomously hateful tone in Sakaki's voice whenever he would speak of Mei makes it rather obvious that he played a direct hand in her death before he outright confirms it to Fujieda moments later.
• Five Stages of Grief: The opening sequence to Taku's route shows him going through denial, anger and bargaining upon seeing his mother's corpse. At present, he had already long come to terms with the fact that his mother is dead. But at the same time, he's still trapped in the fourth stage (depression), as her death still haunts him and is one of the main contributing factors for several of his personal flaws, one of them being his overly protective behavior towards Towa. Depending on whether the player gets his Madness ending or his Euphoria ending, Taku can either regress back to denial and bargaining or take a few steps closer towards complete acceptance. While the After Story drama CD does hint that his mother's death will always continue to weigh on him in some way, Taku nevertheless resolves to not let his fears or his grief make him waver in his choices any longer.
• Food Porn: Whenever the game shows a CG of food, the food in question is always drawn and rendered in mouthwatering detail.
• Forced Prize Fight: The rules of a Moneymatch are similar to a regular Deathmatch, but the participants are only those who owe a massive debt to the Takasato-gumi, and there's an additional rule in the game where the winner gets rewarded with a large sum of prize money while the loser gets killed and disposed of.
• Form-Fitting Wardrobe: Some of the characters' wardrobes (or at least their inner shirts) visibly show the outline of their torsos. This is especially the case with Junko and Honami, with their shirts clinging so tightly to their bodies that the player can see every muscle.

• Frame-Up: Kaga was killed by Toono when the infighting within the Takasato-gumi reached its breaking point, but the murder was pinned on Madarame.
• Freudian Trio: Between Rei's three Deathmatch teammates: Junko is the Id, being the most outspoken and the one who gets easily emotional; Honami is the Ego, as they're also expressive but not to the same degree as Junko; and Arata is the Superego, since they always keep calm and is never seen losing their temper.
• Full-Name Basis: In the first After Story drama CD, Taku sees Towa's newest painting and asks him what or who is the inspiration behind the painting. Towa teases him for a bit before giving his answer by affectionately whispering Taku's complete name.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: The Explorations are an integral part of the gameplay, with the dialogue helping provide the Inspirations needed that will unlock additional dialogue options during an Interrogation. Even then, none of the interactions that occur during Explorations are ever acknowledged to actually happen in the story proper.
• Ghost City: Downplayed. District A is essentially an abandoned area surrounded with desolate buildings all around, but it's also why it's the designated area for Deathmatches.
• Golden Ending: Fujieda's route is the true route of the game, but it can only be unlocked after the player has completed the good endings of all the other love interests.
• Good Cop/Bad Cop: In the Exploration and Interrogation segments, the player has to choice whether Towa will give a "Positive" or a "Negative" answer, and the nature behind both answers runs along the lines of this trope, since every now and then Towa will need to shift the tone he uses whilst talking to the person in order to either get the Inspirations or pass the Interrogation.
• Gratuitous English:
  • The opening theme and some of the ending themes include English words in their lyrics. Madarame's ending themes are sung entirely in English.
  • Heavily downplayed in the actual dialogue, where the characters only use the language when it comes to specific terms. At most, the only phrase that three characters deign to speak in English rather than Japanese is the remark of "No comment," in response to Towa asking a rather blunt and inappropriate question.
• Gray Rain of Depression: In Fujieda's route, there are two times when an emotionally harrowing scene takes place during a heavy rainfall.
  • The first time, Towa suffers an episode after his mind's active attempt to repress his traumatic memories, causing him to flee in distress to the park where he encounters Fujieda... to which he attacks the other man in a fit of blind rage.
  • The second time is when Fujieda learns the full details about Euphoria and what happened to Mei Yuzuki, and is consumed with despair before he vents his rage at Towa via an Anguished Outburst before violating him out in the open.
• The Great Depression: Japan had fallen into a massive recession in the 2020s after their hosting of the Olympics ended in catastrophic failure.
• Guide Dang It!: All of Nitro+CHiRAL's previous works made use of a straightforward binary choice system in their gameplay. On the other hand, Slow Damage's choice system is more complicated and is essentially divided into the Explorations and Interrogations. Whenever the game gets to an Interrogation where Towa has to converse with a character and get them to open up about their secrets, it's never clear which choice will lead to the good ending, the bad ending, or a Non-Standard Game Over, as the goal in each Interrogation will always differ and one's advantage in achieving the desired outcome will vary based on the decisions the player has made prior to that point. The tutorials even make sure to warn the player that the choice system can and will be tricky.
• Harmful to Minors: Right as the player starts the game, they're warned that Slow Damage features child abuse. Rei suffered physical and emotional abuse from his father when he was in middle school after his sexuality was exposed. Fujieda and Mei were horribly treated by their parents (especially their mother), with the scars on Fujieda's body as proof of the torture they inflicted. However, it's Towa who gets the lion's share of the trope, as his mother would allow all kinds of people to torment and rape him to their hearts' content and showed no remorse when she had his Only Friend killed because said friend inspired him to run away.
• H-Game: It wouldn't be a Nitro+CHiRAL visual novel if the protagonist didn't end up having sex with any of his potential love interests at some point.
• Holding Your Shoulder Means Injury: Taku falls victim to this trope twice when he gets shot by Toono on his left chest and later on his right shoulder.
• Hostage Situation:
  • In Taku's route, Towa is taken captive alongside Taku by Toono to be used as leverage in order to force Taku to complete his assigned task within a tight deadline.
  • In both Madarame and Fujieda's routes, Taku is abducted by Madarame in the latter's attempt to lure out Towa.
• Hotter and Sexier: Slow Damage has some of the characters be upfront about sex, and the game has a lot more sex scenes than in any of Nitro+CHiRAL's previous games. Even the After Story drama CDs have two sex scenes per love interest, whereas in DRAMAtical Murder, each sequel drama CD has only one sex scene for every love interest despite having a runtime that's twice as long.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: Slow Damage shows that even without the help of magic, highly advanced technology, or other supernatural and otherworldly forces, even a single human being is capable of committing a great deal of evil that can affect countless people for the worse, and that sometimes, one's worst enemy is their very own self.
• I Did What I Had to Do:
  • Taku subverts this; while explaining why he put a webtag in Towa, Taku admits that the worry he felt from seeing Towa's beaten up state after Asakura "operated" on him caused him to do the aforementioned act out of fear that Towa might get in danger the next time and Taku wouldn't know where he'd be by then. However, he doesn't make any attempts to justify himself, even remarking that Towa shouldn't forgive him for it.
  • Zigzagged in Taku's attempts to keep Towa from remembering his past. Taku doesn't take any pride or joy in doing so, and even shows some remorse when Towa confronts him about it. However, Taku still believes that Towa is better off being left in the dark, and is determined to keep his lips sealed because he knows that if he lets Towa even recall a hint about his childhood, he'll risk shattering Towa's already vulnerable sanity— a fear that's proven correct at one point, with only Fujieda's timely intervention preventing the worst case scenario from happening. Part of the reason why Towa eventually stops being mad at Taku is because he comes to understand that whether Taku's actions were objectively the right or wrong thing to do, he only meant well with what he had done.
• I Gave My Word:
  • A dark example of the trope occurs in Taku's Madness ending. Taku demands that Toono let him and Towa go back home once Taku finishes making the drug, which he promises to do so in three days. Toono agrees, and once Taku completes his task, Toono has them driven back to the clinic without any further trouble.
  • In Rei's route, Sakaki challenges Towa to a game of poker under the condition that he'll pay off Rei's debt in full if Towa wins. When Towa does get the upper hand, Sakaki keeps his end of the bargain.
• I Have This Friend: When Fujieda is questioned about his relationship with Mei Yuzuki and why he's looking for her, he responds that she's a sister of his friend and that he's acting on his friend's behalf... except that he's actually referring to himself.
• I Kiss Your Hand: In one of his rants about his sad excuse of a father, Rei starts pounding his fists against the floor to let out his rage. Shortly after, Towa is overcome with the urge to take Rei's hand and kiss his bloodied knuckles as a means to both console the other man and express his affections to him.
• I Know You Know I Know: When Towa finally agrees to paint Ikuina, he subtly lets Ikuina know that he figured out what the other has been doing to the people who would pass out on the streets.
  Towa: If I get blackout drunk tonight, you'll nurse me back to health, right?
• In Spite of a Nail:
  • Whether the player chooses Taku or Rei's route, when Towa visits Roost after recovering from his "euphoric session" with Ikuina, Towa will always notice an unusual customer (Asakura) sitting in the corner. But depending on the chosen route, he may or may not have the opportunity to interact with Asakura.
  • No matter the route taken, Madarame will always launch an attack on the Takasato-gumi.
• Interface Screw: The player may notice that the screen occasionally flickers in some scenes. While it looks like a graphical bug at first, it soon becomes obvious that the flickering only happens whenever any of the characters says the word "daijoubu" ^note  which translates into either "Are you okay?", "It's alright", and similar other sentences . The true route eventually reveals why: the word is a severe Trauma Button for Towa, which makes the flickering an Ominous Visual Glitch.
• Interface Spoiler: A mild variation: reading the content warning from start to finish will warn the player early on of what will eventually be featured in the plot of each love interest's route— albeit only in JAST BLUE's localization of the game, as the original release doesn't contain such a warning.
  This game contains references to child abuse, rape, human trafficking, suicide, self-injury, medical malpractice, drug and alcohol abuse, and gender dysphoria.
• Intergenerational Friendship: Even though they're at least 20 years apart, Taku and Rei are close and always look out for each other. They're close enough that Rei calls Taku by his nickname, and he's the only one besides Towa to do so.
• Internal Reveal:
  • The fact that Madarame is introduced as one of the main characters in Slow Damage already makes it obvious that he's not really dead in spite of countless characters in-universe talking about he had supposedly kicked the bucket. As a result, the suspense is focused on when Towa and the others will find out for themselves that Madarame is still alive.
  • Even before the final route gets unlocked, the dreams that Towa gets in the other routes aren't that subtle in hinting to the player that Towa's relationship with his mother is anything but a positive one. As a result, all the player is left with to guess are the details which explain exactly how and why.
  • It eventually becomes obvious that Mei Yuzuki isn't really Towa's younger sister when Taku confirms that Towa's real name is Haruto Sakuragi. One can also figure out that she's actually Fujieda's younger sister when Fujieda has a breakdown at the park after learning that she's truly gone. However, Towa doesn't pick up on either fact until some time later.
• Interplay of Sex and Violence: To say that this trope is a recurring theme in Slow Damage is still an understatement.
  • Ikuina's "euphoric session" has him and Towa slice each other up and get aroused at the sight of the other's wounds, although they never actually do the deed and simply have fun with the cuts on the other's body.
  • Kirihara's "euphoric session" has him engage in a bloody and brutal brawl with Towa. With each punch they deliver and receive, they find themselves more and more excited that they get a hard-on, even though they never technically engage in sex.
  • In Rei's Euphoria ending, Rei asks Towa to fight him in a duel as his way of coming to terms with who he really is. Once they've dished out enough punches and are too exhausted to keep standing, they both find themselves turned on from the experience, to which they consummate their Relationship Upgrade shortly afterwards.
  • Madarame's route exercises this trope most often compared to the other routes. Even before the climax, most of his sex scenes with Towa involve them exchanging brutal punches shortly before getting it on. In his Madness ending, they have intensely rough and bloody sex while attacking each other with a knife. Even the After Story drama CD set after the good ending confirms that they still often engage in rough play; but by then, it's completely consensual and not as brutal as before.
• I Will Wait for You: In Taku's Euphoria ending, Towa vows to wait for Taku and true to his word, he did nothing but paint and draw portrait after portrait of Taku until the day he's finally released from prison.

Tropes J-N

• Killing in Self-Defense: Towa's murder of Maya was completely accidental: she was chasing him with every intent of murdering him, and in the midst of a violent struggle, Towa managed to push her off. However, they were at the edge of the staircase at the time, which led Maya to fall and tumble down the steps. The fall didn't kill her, at least not instantly.
• Kill the Ones You Love: Taku makes a twisted attempt of this on Towa, as he doesn't want to develop drugs for Toono but he knows that if he attempts to back out, Toono will put Towa's life in great jeopardy; hence Taku decides to make things quicker and easier for Towa by being the one to personally end his life in a Mercy Kill. But in the end, he can't go through with it.
• Lap Pillow: The cover art for Volume 1 of the After Story drama CD has Towa contentedly lying down on Taku's lap.
• Last-Name Basis: In contrast to Taku and Rei, Madarame and Fujieda are addressed with their last names by both Towa and the narration. The trope also applies for any of the other characters who are introduced with both a first name and a family name.
• Last Request: Before she died, Maya asked Sakaki to see to it that Towa would succeed her and she meant this in a very literal sense as she wanted Towa to follow in her footsteps and take over her in more ways than one.
• Last-Second Ending Choice:
  • At one point in Taku's route, he will suddenly attack Towa with a scalpel to which the player has to help Towa talk Taku down via an Interrogation. No matter what choices are made, at the end of the Interrogation, the player will have to choose whether Towa will defiantly look at Taku (Positive) or just passively accept his fate (Negative). The trope is eventually subverted since either way, Taku can't bring himself to kill Towa; though the Positive choice does grant a higher Euphoria bonus whereas the Negative choice gives a Madness bonus.
  • Halfway through Madarame's final Interrogation, the player is suddenly given the option to either have Towa continue asking Madarame more questions or to stop. If the player wishes to get the Euphoria ending, they have to choose the latter.
  • In Fujieda's route, shoulder the player make the right choices in the last Interrogation, Towa will visibly struggle more with remembering who he really should be. As far as the player is concerned, the last clue the game leaves them with is Maya's words of "It's okay". But then, they're suddenly presented with yet one more Clue, which is what's needed to achieve the Euphoria ending: Towa himself.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • Near the end of Taku's route, Towa comments in amusement over how he'd have never expected Taku to be so possessive to the point that he'd prefer to kill Towa than let any other man have him. This mirrors most of the players' surprise to Taku being the resident Yandere of Slow Damage's lineup of love interests, as they expected that the role would go to Rei.
  • When Towa asks Sakaki about Madarame in Fujieda's route, Sakaki declines to answer because he no longer sees the point in beating a dead horse. In Madarame's route, the player finally gets to know more about Towa's history with the Takasato-gumi and with Madarame — both of which play an important role in the route's plot. In Fujieda's route, however, that's no longer the case and both plot points are instead put on the back burner. This, in turn, reflects Madarame's diminished role in said route, as Madarame himself shows up for only one scene and is only mentioned a few times before and after his appearance.
• Leave Me Alone!: After Towa remembers Mei, he is so overwhelmed with guilt that he spends the next few hours in his room in a sullen and nearly unresponsive mood. When Rei checks on him, Towa weakly asks Rei to leave him be.
• Left Hanging:
  • If Rei's route isn't taken, it's left uncertain whether Rei will ever be able to sort out his issues with his gender identity or not. While the matter with his father is settled in Fujieda's route, that's the only conflict from his side that's confirmed to be resolved.
  • Given Taku's ordeal with Toono, Rei's route leaves no hints as to what became of that in the end.
  • In any other route aside from his own, it's up to the player to guess if Fujieda will ever find out the truth about his sister's disappearance even without Towa's help.
• Let Us Never Speak of This Again: Taku's flustered reaction after he helps get Towa off makes it obvious that he would rather not talk about what just happened either now or ever if possible.
• Linear Visual Novel: Downplayed. While the visual novel has Multiple Endings, the player doesn't really get to decide how the plot unfolds up until the climax of each route. The most control they have over is what Towa will say to the other characters at certain points in the story, either to get them to tell him what he wants to know, or to help them get over their issues or exacerbate their inner insanity.
• Lost in Translation:
  • While the localization gives off the impression that Obligatory Swearing is at play, with the dialogue text having plenty of the characters swear quite often, anyone with a passing knowledge of the profane words in the Japanese language would know that said characters actually swear rarely, if at all.
  • When Towa and Rei have sex for the first time, Towa realizes midway that Rei had never done it with anyone before. Towa decides to affectionately poke fun at Rei with a teasing comment, which the English localization translates to "Congrats on the sex". However, the words that he used in Japanese ("童貞卒業おめでとう") would actually translate to "Congratulations on graduating from your virginity".
  • In his epilogue, Fujieda mentions that he and Towa walking on the beach together could be their first "collaborative effort" in reclaiming the childhood they never had, to which Towa asks Fujieda if he realized what he just said. What's missed here is that the word Fujieda uses for "collaborative effort" (共同作業) is often reserved for something that married couples do, which Towa (but not Fujieda) caught on.
  • Those who are not familiar with Japanese Pronouns will have certain aspects of Rei's Character Development in his route fly over their heads. Likewise, those same players may also end up missing the nuances in the scenes where Towa struggles with referring to himself with either "watashi" or "ore" in the climax of Fujieda's route, whether they get the good or the bad ending.
• Love Epiphany:
  • In Taku's route, Taku realizes that his feelings for Towa may start to run deeper than he realizes when he saw Towa nearing death after Asakura's "surgery". Towa also realizes that Taku has begun to mean more to him when he felt cold with fear at the thought that Taku died after the latter took a bullet meant for him.
  • Rei has had a crush on Towa since middle school, but that crush grows into a more serious kind of affection in his route after he sees Towa protecting him from Mizuno/Kirihara and his group.
• Madness Mantra: In Taku's Madness ending, Towa repeatedly screams and cries in both agony and pleasure about the insects that he's seeing crawl out from inside his body as a result of the drugs Taku gave him. Even the narration goes on and on about said insects in grossly vivid detail, capturing Towa's drug-induced insanity.
• Making Love in All the Wrong Places:
  • In Taku's route, his first sex scene has him help get Towa off in the first floor of the clinic; though he does lampshade that they were in a rush as Towa was insanely in heat, and once Towa has calmed down enough, they continue where they left off in Towa's studio. The second time around, they consummate their relationship on the floor even though there's a bed nearby. There's also the fact that they're having sex even though they're still under captivity and thus are risking getting caught by Toono; though this thankfully doesn't happen.
  • Towa and Madarame get it on in the Deathmatch Area shortly after beating the shit out of each other and getting turned on from the violence. This isn't the last time, as they get frisky in an alley in the After Story drama CD.
• Malicious Slander: In Taku's route, Eiji starts posting some vicious rumors about Taku, such as disappearing patients, forged medical documents production of illegal drugs, and the like, which both Towa and Rei notice and become concerned about. However, it's soon revealed that the rumors are actually facts all along, and it all traces to Taku being a debtor.
• May–December Romance: The trope applies for Taku's relationship with Towa if he is the chosen love interest, as Taku is 20 years older and is therefore old enough to be Towa's father.
• Meaningful Echo:
  • If the player achieves the Euphoria outcome of Asakura's final Interrogation, the sequence caps off with Towa telling Asakura that he no longer needs to keep hesitating. Likewise, Taku's final Interrogation is completed by achieving Taku's Euphoria, Towa muses to himself that Taku has nothing left to hesitate about.
  • While it doesn't happen in the same route, there is a piece of dialogue which is essential to helping the player get an understanding of the core of Towa's character. In Taku's route, Taku refuses to be rough with Towa during sex, reasoning that Towa seeks the violent treatment not for the pleasure, but as a means to be punished. Fujieda says something similar in his own route when he and Towa discuss their pasts and how it made them become the people they are today.
    Fujieda: By accepting the trauma others inflicted on you, you desperately cling to the last shreds of your personal autonomy. Cutting yourself was a self-destructive impulse— a punishment for being worthless.
  • In the epilogue of the Golden Ending, Towa asks Fujieda if he's fine with them living together since Towa still suffers from nightmares even after he had dealt with his trauma, and wonders if that would burden the other man. Fujieda answers that he had already prepared himself for that outcome, and Towa remembers when Fujieda made a similar statement when he told Taku that he's ready to face the consequences that may come from uncovering the truth about Towa's past.
• Meaningful Name:
  • The bar Roost is named such because "roost" refers to a place where birds would gather to rest during nighttime. Roost only opens when it's nearly evening, and as a bar, it's naturally a place where people would go to relax and unwind.
  • The chapters focusing on the love interest's stories are given their respective titles for a reason:
    • "Nostalgia": Towa and Taku have known each other since the former's childhood. Consequently, Taku is the one who would always check on Towa whenever the latter gets sick or injured. As their relationship develops further, Towa reflects on how every time Taku examines him and worries about him, it would remind him of the past and of how Taku's presence would always make him feel safe. The word also encapsulates how plenty of Taku's fears are a result of a dark time of his past, which he projects onto Towa by being protective of him, oftentimes too protective.
    • "Contradiction": Rei has struggled with his identity, since despite his interest in men and his effeminate looks and manner of speech, he doesn't truly feel like a "woman" like many mock him to be, and it was that same mocking which led him to think that he might be born with the wrong body.
    • "Immutable": The word is essentially Madarame's entire character in a nutshell. He is a Wild Card who follows no one else's rules but his own. As the word also means "unchangeable", it also reflects how between the years Towa last saw him and now, the man has not changed one bit. It also represents how Madarame, in spite of his statement about wishing to live in the present rather than the past, wants Towa to be exactly like how he last remembered him from years ago.
    • "Equal": This describes Towa and Fujieda's relationship. At first glance, they look like they have nothing in common. But later on, they realize that there's more than meets the eye as they both carry physical and mental scars that are surprisingly similar to the other's own. This allows them to eventually come to an understanding that allows them to bond and engage in a relationship of mutual support and affection.
• Mental Health Recovery Arc: Majority of Slow Damage's plot is essentially this trope, with Towa and/or his love interest coming to terms with their issues and, provided that the player achieves the Euphoria ending in each route, becoming better people from their experiences.
• Mood Whiplash: When Rei first vents to Towa about his strained relationship with his father, the tension in the scene immediately dissipates for both Rei and the player when Towa suddenly offers to "get [Rei] off" out of the mistaken assumption that some sexual release would make Rei feel less aggravated.
• Mouth To Mouth Force Feeding:
  • In Taku's Madness ending, he administers a drug to Towa through a kiss.
  • Madarame does this often to Towa in his route due to the latter's refusal to eat or drink anything out of spite for his current situation as Madarame's captive.
• Multiple Endings: Besides the Non-Standard Game Over that can be achieved if the player either makes the wrong decisions during Ikuina, Asakura or Kirihara's Interrogation or lets Towa sleep with Kotarou or Mayu, each of Towa's love interests has a unique bad (Madness) and good (Euphoria) ending, respectively.
  • For Taku:
    • Madness: Taku feels that no matter how hard he tries, he will never be able to save anyone, so he decides to focus on protecting only the people he holds dear and disregard all other scruples. He then keeps his end of the bargain with Toono before trapping Towa in the basement of his clinic, drugging him on a regular basis to ensure he wouldn't be able to escape, with the drugs causing Towa to get addicted and start seeing grisly hallucinations.
    • Euphoria: Taku comes to terms with his guilt from failing to save his mother, and he and Towa open up about their burgeoning feelings for each other. Afterwards, they plot to disrupt Toono's plans, and succeed with Eiji and Lisa's assistance. After Toono's arrest, Taku turns himself in to atone for what he had done under duress. But because of his circumstances and his cooperation with the authorities, he's given a light sentence and is even let out a year early due to good behavior, and the route ends with him and Towa reuniting.
  • For Rei:
    • Madness: Unable to find a resolution on who he really is, Rei pays his father's debt and cuts ties with him afterwards, but continues to participate in Moneymatches. He uses the prize money to pay for a lavish apartment where he keeps Towa as a prized doll of sorts, performing all kinds of body modifications on him. Towa consigns himself to his fate, not minding being treated like a plaything.
    • Euphoria: After confessing everything to Towa, Rei resolves his identity crisis. Towa helps clear Rei's debt through a poker game with Sakaki and watches Rei win his final Moneymatch. After that, Rei's father has an epiphany and wishes to turn over a new leaf; while Rei is skeptical, he does accept his father's attempts to make amends. Rei and Towa later begin to travel around Japan together with plans to go overseas in the future.
  • For Madarame:
    • Madness: Towa is still unable to comprehend the kind of person Madarame is, much to the latter's disappointment. While their plan to assassinate both Toono and Sakaki ends in success, Madarame unexpectedly takes over the syndicate and rules over Shinkoumi with an iron fist. Towa stays by Madarame's side as his right-hand man and lead enforcer. Both Towa and Madarame are still entangled in a brutal and sadomasochistic relationship, and Towa wishes to kill Madarame even if he can never go through with it, and Madarame looks forward to the day when Towa does take his life.
    • Euphoria: Towa finally understands that Madarame harbors no secrets or deep-seated issues, so there's no need to look deep into his character. The next day, they ambush the Takasato-gumi and Madarame shoots Toono dead while Sakaki is Killed Offscreen. Towa decides that he can never return to his old life and cuts ties with Taku and Rei for good before leaving Shinkoumi with Madarame to travel to foreign lands, with the two living a free and unbridled life together.
  • For Fujieda:
    • Madness: To stop Sakaki from killing Fujieda, Towa pretends to be Maya, but he gets too carried away with the impersonation and Maya's influence eventually takes over his mind. Sakaki is killed shortly after, while Fujieda loses consciousness. Fujieda is rescued by Taku and Rei, but they found no signs of Towa anywhere. A week later, Fujieda returns to the Euphoria mansion and encounters Towa, before realizing that Towa is technically alive but no longer himself, having become Maya in everything but form. Even then, Fujieda can't bring himself to abandon Towa and resolves to keep Towa close and watch over him.
    • Euphoria: Towa remembers who he really is, and the confrontation ends with Sakaki meeting the same end that Maya did. With both Sakaki and Toono dead, the Takasato-gumi dissolves and the mainland authorities step in, signifying that Shinkoumi will never be the same again. Towa and Fujieda set out to find any remaining truths they have yet to discover about Towa's history, and Towa, having finally found closure with his past, resolves to cherish his life with Fujieda by his side.
• My God, You Are Serious!: When Rei rants about how his ordeal with his father's debt is straining him both mentally and emotionally, Towa suggests to Rei with a straight face to "get him off" as a means of destressing. Rei wonders if Towa is trying to joke with him, but Towa casually says that he isn't, which then flusters Rei.
• Never Bring a Knife to a Fist Fight:
  • While it's not officially a rule, bringing firearms or any other kind of weapons in a Deathmatch is unanimously frowned upon, and anyone who's caught trying to do this gets lynched.
  • In Taku's route, when Towa and Taku's escape attempt gets impeded by Toono and his men, Lisa wounds said men with some scalpels that she managed to get from Taku's workroom beforehand. Toono then shoots her before she could attack him next, though the gunshot wound luckily proved to be non-fatal.
  • In Rei's route, some Hapless Children who also happened to be behind the Assault Parties crash a Deathmatch and attack the other fighters... whilst stealthily hiding a blade or any other sharp weapon in their hands so as to easily get the upper hand. When they go against Rei and his teammates, they end up with their faces meeting the pavement.
• Newspaper-Thin Disguise: In Taku's route, whilst eating at a diner, Rei notices that someone's been sneaking glances at him and Towa while pretending to read the newspaper. However, neither of them could see the man's face and the person just ends up leaving a minute later. Afterwards, the incident is never brought up again and the man's identity is never revealed.
• Nice Day, Deadly Night: Played with. Shinkoumi, being a Vice City that's under the watch of the yakuza, is such a dangerous place to live in that while it's dangerous to go out at night whether you're alone or not, your safety still isn't guaranteed even if you travel at daytime, and whether the area you're in is crowded or not doesn't matter.
• "No. Just… No" Reaction:
  • Taku isn't all that amused when Rei teasingly suggests that the anonymous flower deliveries are from a patient who has a crush on Taku, especially since the patient is supposedly a man in his fifties or sixties.
  • When Towa realizes that Mayu wants them to engage in some cosplaying and roleplaying during their hook-up, Towa is completely unimpressed and refuses to play along, only reluctantly agreeing to putting on a wig.
• Non-Standard Character Design: There are two distinct art styles used for all the characters that show up in the visual novel. This allows the player to discern who are integral to the plot and who serve only as background characters.
• Non-Standard Game Over:
  • If the player screws up an Interrogation, the game abruptly ends and the player has to replay the segment again.
  • A more unique variation of the trope happens if the player has Towa take up Kotarou or Mayu's offer for a hook-up, resulting in the two "Funny" endings of the game.
  • In Rei's route, it's actually possible to have Towa lose against Sakaki in their poker game, which happens near the finale. Before their match, they agreed on the following terms: if Towa wins, Sakaki will pay off the remainder of Rei's debt with no strings attached. If Sakaki wins, however, Towa will need to follow one order from him. But even if the latter scenario happens, the game ends before anything is revealed and the player needs to go through the segment once more and have Towa win for the plot to progress.
  • Fujieda's route has two Madness endings. While one Madness ending is naturally saved for the climax, the other can be achieved early on when Towa recovers his memories about Mei but is not able to get the words out (as a result of the player forcing Towa to speak rather than letting the words come to him), and his mind ends up shattering completely.
• Nothing Is the Same Anymore: After spending a few days as Madarame's captive and remembering more bits and pieces about his past, Towa no longer feels content and safe when he returns to his old home at Murase Clinic and feels that he has become a Stranger in a Familiar Land. The restlessness eventually eats at him and Taku's reluctance to tell him the complete truth becomes the final straw for him to return to Madarame.
• Not Me This Time:
  • When Towa breaks into Taku's basement, Taku assumes that Towa is also the one who broke in the day before, to which the latter says he didn't, but Taku remains skeptical. The player knows that this isn't a lie, and the real culprit is soon revealed to be Igarashi.
  • When Towa notices that the bunny doll is missing, he immediately confronts Taku about it since he had already caught Taku burning one of his packages and believes that Taku is acting behind his back again. Taku denies taking the doll, and Towa confirms that Taku isn't lying now. This lets him realize that it was Fujieda who took it.
• Not Quite the Right Thing:
  • By the time the player gets to Madarame's final Interrogation, they have already gone through the same sequence with many other characters, to which their goal is to give the right questions and responses until they can get to the person's most deep-seated desire or scar. But with Madarame, it soon becomes obvious to the player that no matter what option they take, if they question Madarame too many times, they will always get his Madness ending. This is because halfway through the Interrogation, the player must opt to not have Towa prod Madarame any further. This reflects Madarame's mental state; unlike the others, he has no secrets or hidden desires to speak of, so there was nothing about him to unearth in the first place.
  • In the common route, the player usually gets a Non-Standard Game Over by letting Towa get carried away with having his "models" enact their darkest desires on him. Therefore, it would be expected that they would have Towa be more cautious in his encounter with the vampire in Chapter 0 ^note  Which is unlocked after completing Taku, Rei, and Madarame's routes to avoid the same outcome. However, the player is actually required to achieve the Madness outcome and let Towa have the vampire go overboard in sucking his blood, as this key choice will then cause the progression of the plot to lock onto Fujieda's route; otherwise, the story will reset back to the events of the common route.
• No, You: Near the end of Taku's route, an exchange that makes use of this trope occurs during the leads' final confrontation against Toono.

Tropes O-S

• Oh, Crap!: Taku, Junko and Honami are justifiably horrified when they realize just how much Rei (or rather, his father) owes the Takasato-gumi.
• Ominous Crack: The credits for the love interests' Madness endings feature cracks dyed in their respective Color Motifs showing up in different patterns in the background. This symbolizes the fractured minds of either Towa, his chosen love interest, or the both of them.
• Ominous Music Box Tune: A music box theme plays in the background of the menu screen and is accompanied by a One-Woman Wail, giving off sense of eerie unease. Appropriately enough, the track is named "Nightmare", and it's also heard every time Towa suffers from a bad dream. On the other hand, its voiceless counterpart, "Joy", is a lot more innocent, if still a bit solemn, and sounds no different from any other children's song one can imagine playing from a music box.
• Ominous Pipe Organ: "Resolve" has a pipe organ playing in the background, helping set the atmosphere as the stakes of the plot rise to its peak in the climax of Fujieda's route.
• One-Woman Wail: Some of the tracks feature this. This trope is actually used as a plot point, since all of these tracks have something to do with either Maya's influence on Towa or Maya herself.
  • "Nightmare", true to its name, plays whenever Towa has a nightmare. Every nightmare he has involves his mother to some degree, whether it's because of something she did or something she allowed others to do to him. It's also the default background track that plays in the title menu, but is soon replaced by its voiceless counterpart, "Joy" upon completion of the Golden Ending. This symbolizes how Maya's psychological hold on Towa vanishes once he learns about his past and finally comes to terms with it.
  • "Teasing" and "Desire" play whenever Towa engages in an Interrogation with another character, and it was Maya who taught Towa how to coax and compel other people using words alone.
  • "Maya", "Control" and "Resolve" all play only in Fujieda's route, where Maya's role in the plot finally and fully comes to light.
• Only One Name: While a lot of the characters are introduced with both a first name and a family name, there are some other characters who are introduced with only either the former or the latter, with not even the liner notes or the artbook revealing their full name.
• Operation: Jealousy: Played with. Towa only agrees to become Toono's swain to give himself more freedom, which would allow him to plot his and Taku's escape. However, Towa also takes the opportunity to provoke Taku and see how he really feels about Towa by claiming that he accepted Toono's proposal purely because he didn't see any downsides to it.
• Optional Sexual Encounter: In Taku and Rei's routes, the player has the chance to let Towa hook up with either Mayu or Kotarou if their Euphoria levels are high enough prior to their run-in. If they do so, however, it results in a Non-Standard Game Over.
• Out of Focus: While Taku and Rei are still mentioned often, they fade away almost entirely during the second half of Madarame's route and are only occasionally mentioned.
• Pixellation: As per every eroge released in Japan, the original release of the visual novel has certain parts censored that the player can't see them in full detail. This is not the case in the English release, where the player now gets to see everything during the raunchier scenes of the game.
• Platonic Life-Partners: Taku and Rei have known each other for a long time. But in spite of Rei's sexual orientation, they're no more than friends and there's no hint of any romantic or sexual tension between them.
• Please, Don't Leave Me: When Towa has yet another nightmare in Taku's route, he soon senses a comforting presence in the dream. When said presence starts fading away, Towa wakes up while asking for it to not go.
• Plot-Triggering Death: Everything about the plot can be traced back to when Mei was killed, which soon enraged Towa into rebelling against Maya. This led to their scuffle which ended with Maya being pushed down the stairs, and the rest is history.
• Police Are Useless: The narration even says as such early on, partly because there are way too many crimes in Shinkoumi for them to properly deal with each and every case, and partly because their authority means nothing compared to the Takasato-gumi's.
• The Power of Friendship: Just when all things seem lost for Rei in his final Moneymatch, Taku, Junko, Honami and Arata arrive at the last minute to cheer Rei on and tell him to stand up and keep fighting. Even Towa joins in on the rousing, giving Rei his Heroic Second Wind.
• Prisons Are Gymnasiums: The After Story drama CD reveals that during the one year Taku spent in prison, he decided to make use of his time there working out to stay in good shape. By the time he's released, a few characters have observed how he looks fitter than before, and he's become strong enough to Bridal Carry Towa with relative ease.
• Psychological Thriller: What makes Slow Damage a dark story is how it vividly portrays the emotional and mental trauma the characters go through and how said trauma affects their actions. This is especially the case in Fujieda's route, where one of the main conflicts is Towa trying to come to grips with his Dark and Troubled Past, which threatens to affect his mental state for the worst.
• Questionable Consent:
  • In Rei's case, it's downplayed. The first time Towa offers to help Rei relieve some stress through sex, Rei gets flustered and quickly turns down Towa's suggestion, something the latter accepts. Later on, Towa again offers to help Rei "ease off". Despite Rei's embarrassment, he doesn't outwardly reject the offer and even goes up to Towa's room when the latter invites him. Rei also doesn't make much of an effort to resist when Towa makes his move, and Towa even notes that he would have backed off had Rei really attempted to push him away.
  • In Taku's route, Towa gets drugged with something that also happens to have strong aphrodisiac effects. Towa then comes onto Taku and demands that he satisfies him, or else he'll go outside and ask others to help him out, which causes Taku to reluctantly concede.
  • Zigzagged in Fujieda's case. When he assaults Towa in a fit of rage and grief, he clearly intends to rape Towa in an attempt to traumatize him. However, Towa had already been long accustomed to being treated in such a manner, so he ends up enjoying the experience instead.
• Rage Against the Reflection: In Fujieda's route, Towa lashes out at the sight of his own face and smashes his head against the mirror when he begins to remember more and more details about his mother. Naturally, both times end with him getting bad cuts across his face.
• Railroading: After Towa feels that he can no longer return to his old life and decides to return to Madarame, the player then has to direct Towa to Madarame's hideout via an Exploration. If they try to pick any location that strays from the path heading to District A, Towa will stay where he is, remarking that it's a waste of time. Consequently, each wrong option will disappear from the menu until only one destination remains.
• Real-Place Background: Kouou Street is heavily inspired by the streets of Shinjuku.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: Every time Towa suffers a nightmare, his dreamscape always takes place in a scarlet background with undertones of black. This is because he spent his harrowing childhood in a room that was scarlet from the ceiling to the floor.
• Red Is Violent: The color of Taku and Rei's auras become bright red in color whenever they are truly angry. When Taku's conviction takes an extremely dark turn in his Madness ending, his aura becomes a dark purplish-red.
• Red Light District: Most of the sex workers can be found in the Nightlife District, although there are still prostitutes roaming the other districts of Shinkoumi.
• Reflective Eyes: In the scene where Towa remembers how Maya really died, one CG is shown of Maya's eyes reflecting her son's shocked and horrified visage right as she falls down.
• Revenge by Proxy: After his Anguished Outburst upon getting confirmation of Mei's death, Fujieda assaults Towa in the park as an act of Misplaced Retribution. Maya, the person responsible for Mei's murder, is already long dead; and in a moment of irrational rage and despair, Fujieda lashes out at the next person who he believes is just as responsible by association alone: Maya's own son.
• Rewatch Bonus:
  • Whenever a player starts a new chapter in any route, an introductory scene plays. Said scene consists mostly of a few pencil sketches and a voiceless narration. But if the player goes through that chapter a second time, the narration becomes voiced, since by then it's already obvious who was speaking. The only exception is the very first opening narration, since it's only in Fujieda's route that the player realizes that the speaker is Maya. As such, it's only after completing all four routes that the player will finally hear the voiced version of her lines.
  • When the narration explains how Shinkoumi came to be, the game shows an image of five shadowed figures, all of whom are the most important members of the Takasato-gumi. Players can recognize the person on the center as the group's founder and the two men on the right as Sakaki and Toono. However, the identity of the two men on the left are kept as a mystery. Once the player has gone through Madarame's route, they'll eventually recognize the other two as Madarame and Kaga.
• Ridiculously Fast Construction: The countless residential buildings in District E are built in such a short amount of time because plenty of safety protocols were bypassed during construction. This makes them relatively unsafe to stay in, especially since earthquakes and sinkholes are commonplace in Shinkoumi.
• Rule of Three: In his route, there are three notable instances where Taku seems to know just where Towa is.
  • During a visit to the shrine, Towa gets lost in his thoughts for a moment and immediately gets lost in a crowd, but Taku manages to spot him just as quickly and pulls him to a less packed area.
  • While Towa is at Roost, Taku heads there to give him his new sleeping medication, saying that he figured Towa would be at the bar at that time.
  • During a shootout between Sakaki and Toono's factions, as Toono chases after Towa, Taku manages to show up right where the two are heading even when Towa didn't sense Taku following his trail before that, causing him to get suspicious. Eiji then reveals that Taku put a webtag inside Towa, allowing him to keep track of Towa's exact location at any moment.
• Running Gag:
  • Every time Towa is asked if he needs anything, he will always reply by asking for cigarettes and alcohol— a request that Rei and Taku will always firmly decline.
  • Either Towa, Kotarou or Eiji mention how freakishly sharp Mayu's eyesight is every now and then.
• Sadistic Choice:
  • Because of his debt to Toono, Taku is forced to create a dangerous drug that Toono intends to distribute around Shinkoumi. In Taku's route, Toono decides to get better assurance of the man's compliance by drugging Towa and eventually holding him hostage.
  • Rei is placed into a difficult situation after he learns that he has become a debtor thanks to his father: either he rejects the deal and lets his father be killed, or he participates in Moneymatches to earn the money needed to pay off the debt. No matter how much Rei hates his father, he cannot go through with letting his old man die. Then it turns out he was actually informed that if he refused to pay his father's debt, his father would be allowed to resume his old job in the human trafficking in industry. Rei finds this too deplorable to allow, hence he chose to pay the debt by fighting in Moneymatches.
• Sanity Meter: In an Interrogation, the player has to keep track of both the Euphoria and the Madness levels of the character that Towa is speaking to. The character's "Euphoria" is represented by the sand in the hourglass at the right side of the screen, whereas their "Madness" is shown through a jagged staircase-shaped opening at the background behind them. The tutorials at the beginning of the game explain in further detail what the player should do to succeed in an Interrogation.
• Saying Too Much: When Mizuno visits an injured Rei in the clinic, he mentions that he knew about how Rei got attacked shortly after the Christmas party at Roost. However, only a select few were informed of that, causing Towa to start suspecting Mizuno and his connection to the Assault Parties.
• Scenery Porn: Every part of Shinkoumi, from the lavish districts down to the abandoned ghost towns, is given life through the gorgeously detailed artwork in the CGs.
• Schmuck Bait: The last Interrogation in Fujieda's route makes it glaringly easy how to achieve the Euphoria and Madness endings. Once the player has progressed far enough, to get the good ending, all they need to do at the last two prompts is to not pick "It's okay." The option's description is even drawn over with distorted red lines to highlight how picking this choice is a terrible idea. Though if the player chooses the option only once out of the two times it shows up, they still have a chance in achieving the good ending. Likewise, in the final Last-Second Ending Choice given to the player, it becomes obvious which choice leads to either the bad or the good ending.
• Screw Destiny: Maya planned for Towa to succeed her, and made it her Last Request to have Towa fulfill what she believed is his fate as her replacement. In Fujieda's route, Sakaki concocts a convoluted plan in his attempt to make this a reality. In the Euphoria ending, Towa refuses to let his mother define his life and his identity, and tells Sakaki (and by extension, Maya) that they can go shove it.
• Second-Face Smoke: In one scene in the common route, Towa blows a huge puff of smoke at Taku's face to mess with the older man. In the After Story drama CD, Towa does the same thing again.
• Secret Relationship: Even a year after Towa and Taku get a Relationship Upgrade, no one else realizes that they're an item.
• Secret Room: The storage room in the clinic makes way to a basement where Taku does the more morally dubious jobs assigned to him by the Takasato-gumi. In that basement, there's another door which leads to a room where Taku keeps Towa prisoner in his Madness ending.
• Secret Test of Character: Towa exercises some Tough Love on Taku in the After Story drama CD by challenging Taku's resolve and forcing him to come to a decision about what he really wants to do with his life.
  • Taku expresses his worries about whether he should resume his job as a doctor or not, feeling that after everything, he no longer has the right to perform the duties of one. Towa then cuts his own hand without warning to see if Taku is committed to his words.
  • After an argument, Taku returns home to find Towa all bruised up. Towa lets Taku assume that he slept with someone else for a moment to rattle the older man into being upfront about his truest feelings.
• Sequel: The After Story drama CDs show what happens after the events of each love interest's route in the visual novel.
• Sequel Goes Foreign: The After Story drama CD covering the aftermath of Madarame's story takes place somewhere in South America.
• Sex Equals Love: Towa has a reputation for his promiscuity, but all of his affairs are purely physical and he has no intention of seeking an emotional attachment with any of his partners. Naturally, this changes once Towa enters a relationship with any of his love interests, and he experiences having sex for intimacy's sake for the very first time.
• Sex for Solace: A positive spin of the trope is used in Fujieda's route. Towa and Fujieda admit that their (proper) first time together wasn't really them consummating as much as it was them licking each other's wounds from all they had been through in the past few days. However, they are able to find comfort with each other, and only with each other, because of their similar circumstances, and it's obvious that feelings are nevertheless beginning to blossom between the two. For extra points, after they sleep together and confide in each other about everything, they agree to enter in a relationship when Fujieda proposes for them both to "support each other".
• Sex Is Evil, and I Am Horny: In Fujieda's Madness ending, Fujieda knows that Towa is no longer himself and his mind is more broken than ever, with Maya's influence fully taking control of his actions. Despite knowing this, Fujieda is unable to resist Towa's allure when the other seduces him.
• Sex Is Violence: This is a recurring theme in the visual novel, since to Towa, sex and violence are two sides of the same coin. Similarly, some of his partners, specifically his models for his paintings as euphoria, find pleasure in either the physical violence itself or something different in form but equally macabre and brutal in essence.
• Sexual Karma: Kotaro and Mayu's endings would not qualify as bad endings, since all that happened was that Towa hooked up with either of them, and the entire affair was mutually consensual. Even then, their endings are still a Non-Standard Game Over because it potentially affects how the rest of the plot might play out, and since Towa has yet to get together with either Rei or Taku at that point, the encounter further reinforces Towa's stance on preferring casual sex over a committed relationship.
• She Is Not My Girlfriend:
  • Whether it was because he managed to find out that much about Towa or just made a correct guess from what he observed in their interaction, Fujieda asks Towa if Madarame was his ex-lover, which Towa curtly denies even though Fujieda actually hit the nail right on the head with his question.
  • While Sakaki is introduced early on as a friend of Towa's mother, it's only in Fujieda's route that Sakaki is also revealed to Maya's adjutant, and he is insanely loyal and devoted to her. Towa even spitefully asks if Sakaki slept with Maya, though the older man is insulted at the suggestion and denies it.
• Shoegazing: All three ending themes sung by THE ANDS ("arlequin", "inside out", and "after all") are shoegaze tracks.
• Shout-Out:
  • One of the symptoms of an illegal drug that has recently been spreading around Shinkoumi is getting hallucinations of bugs crawling under one's skin, which is very reminiscent of a certain Hate Plague from another visual novel.
  • While it's also likely to be a coincidence, Slow Damage isn't the first work that had two people surnamed Sakuragi and Sakaki, respectively, meet their deaths after falling down the stairs. Of course, there's no cosmic curse involved in Slow Damage, but still.
• Shower Scene:
  • In his route, Madarame forces Towa to wash up, even "helping" him bathe. Whilst cleaning Towa, Madarame takes a closer look at the latter's missing eye.
  • After Towa lets himself get beaten up and gang-raped, then almost going through with committing suicide, Fujieda helps him wash off the turpentine and blood from his body. It eventually culminates in both men standing in the shower whilst completely undressed as they gaze at the other's scars... before they exchange a kiss, leading to them getting (properly) intimate for the very first time.
• Shown Their Work:
  • The most notorious side effect of the drugs Taku has been forced to make, which is hallucinating the sensation of bugs crawling beneath or on one's skin, may seem outlandish even to those who are aware that most drugs — be it the overdose or the withdrawal thereof — can make one act out of control in unpredictable ways. But some may be surprised to learn that the symptom, which is also known as formication, is a common side effect brought about by several kinds of drugs (from methamphetamine to steroids) in Real Life.
  • Asakura's entire story is a surprisingly accurate portrayal of someone suffering from POCD, or what is also known as pedophilia obsessive-compulsive disorder, where one harbors obsessive thoughts involving children but does not necessarily harbor any sexual desires towards children, causing the person to suffer from constant paranoia towards whether they're actually a pedophile or not.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: In the Golden Ending, Towa gives a curt and cold reply that sums up how he feels about everything that Maya had done to him then and everything that Sakaki had attempted to do to him now.
  Towa: I'm not going to become Maya.
• Smoking Hot Sex: Towa is a heavy smoker and has the tendency to take a drag after a round with whoever he ends up sleeping with. This is somewhat Played for Laughs in Taku's route when he also gets the urge to have a smoke after his first sexual encounter with Towa, but is then reminded that he had already quit, causing him to realize just how much the incident had unnerved him.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: At one point, Towa and Fujieda attempt to get their pursuers off their trail by running in separate paths at Kouou Street. Because the background track for that area is chosen at random, there's a chance the player may end up hearing the "Mint" song, which doesn't fit the mood of the scene at all.
• Staircase Tumble:
  • Maya died some time after taking a nasty fall down the stairs.
  • Sakaki meets his end by falling down the same set of stairs in both the Euphoria and the Madness endings of Fujieda's route. However, the way his death plays out is a little different in both endings: he unwittingly falls to his doom in the Euphoria ending; whereas Towa pushes him down in the Madness ending.
• Stating the Simple Solution: Deconstructed. When Taku tells Towa why he's indebted to Toono, Towa tells him that if he hates being in his current situation so much, he can just throw in the towel. Of course, doing so is easier said than done, as Taku's anguished reaction clearly indicates.
• Status Quo Is God:
  • In Rei's route, no mention is made of what happens to the Takasato-gumi, hence it is likely that the organization never underwent any dissolution and things in Shinkoumi remain as they are.
  • Downplayed in Taku's route. It's directly stated that after the mainland's investigation in light of Toono's crimes, the situation in Shinkoumi will no longer be the same as it once was. However, the Takasato-gumi still remains intact.
• Strongly Worded Letter: Email in this case, which Rei sends to Eiji in response to the latter making a second newsletter covering yet another bad rumor about Taku.
• Suddenly Shouting:
  • When a group of violent Hapless Children start beating up Towa and Rei, Towa knows that Rei may not survive if he gets beaten too hard. And so, after moments of quietly enduring their punches and kicks, Towa suddenly raises his voice to draw their attackers' attention and make them focus on giving only him a beating.
  • After Towa and Taku have a heartfelt conversation, the moment is interrupted when Towa is summoned. Taku tries to stop Towa and always speaks in a quiet and strained voice when he tells Towa to not leave and to stop "serving" Toono, only to raise his voice out of the blue when Towa stoically reminds him that he can't do anything to resist his situation.
  • When Sakaki expresses his consternation about Towa remembering Mei alongside Maya, Towa retorts by asking if it's because Towa would then remember how he loathed Maya for what she did to him and to Mei. The question causes Sakaki to abruptly exclaim in outrage at Towa's defiance towards Maya.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: In Taku and Fujieda's routes, even though Towa is in a happier place after getting together with either of them, there are still nights where he suffers from nightmares. Whether he gets the chance to confront his past or not, just because he's currently in a better state of mind doesn't mean the trauma left behind by his childhood is bound to go away in an instant.
• Symbolically Broken Object: After Towa throws Maya's pocket watch in a final and decisive act of rebellion, the scene eventually ends with a shot of the destroyed watch. This represents how Towa had finally beaten Maya's influence in a battle of will, thus effectively and completely destroying her reign over both him and Shinkoumi, since without him turning into another her, there is no way left for Maya's plans to continue.

Tropes T-Z

• Take Your Time:
  • During an Exploration, the player can go to all other available areas in any order they wish before moving to the next checkpoint.
  • In an Interrogation, however, this trope is subverted. The player only has a limited number of "turns" to ensure that the character's Euphoria and/or Madness stays within a passable level up until the player has to select a Clue to end the Interrogation. Otherwise, they get a Non-Standard Game Over.
• Taking the Bullet:
  • A near-fatal version of the trope occurred in the past. In the shootout that cost Kaga his life, Toono attempted to shoot Madarame as well. Towa intervened in the last second and lost his right eye in the process.
  • In Taku's route, Taku jumps in right before Toono could shoot Towa dead, and he ends up with a (thankfully non-fatal) gunshot wound in his chest. Then near the end, when their plan to escape the hotel gets thwarted, Taku (after getting a second gunshot wound) makes another attempt at the trope by pulling Towa behind him, though Towa senses Taku's intent and isn't having any of it. Luckily, Lisa's intervention prevents either of them from getting shot at.
• Talking in Bed: After Towa's final (in-game) sex scene with any of his love interests, both of them spend the aftermath having an intimate conversation on the bed.
• Taste the Rainbow: Each and every one of Towa's love interests are distinct from each other by both design and personality. Even by basis of first impressions alone, Taku is mature, weary and down-to-earth, Rei is young, lively and as energetic as they come, Madarame is imposing and both controlled and capricious in his actions, and Fujieda is professional and reserved as much as he is mysterious.
• Tell Me About My Mother: Towa only vaguely remembers that he was raised by his mother, that she taught him how to talk to other people, and that she died when he was still in middle school. Besides that, however, he doesn't remember her face or even her name, and the reason he never gets curious about her is soon revealed to be from his subconscious trying to keep him from wanting to know more about anything related to his past. While he never asks about her in the other routes, it's only in Fujieda's route when he starts wanting to know more about her after he realizes that she's connected to the packages that he's been receiving, but even finding out more about his mother proves to be easier said than done, and it isn't just because there are barely any records left about her. When he does eventually ask Sakaki about her, he tells Towa that his mother was kind and loving... though Towa soon remembers that Maya was the farthest thing from that, much to his shock and horror.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Both Towa and Fujieda make it clear that there's no positive feelings between them, but they are also aware that they'll get their answers sooner if they work together. As they get a better understanding of each other later on, their cooperation starts to become more of a sincere joint effort and less of a reluctant alliance of convenience.
• There Are No Therapists: Many are left suffering from the devastating effects of Japan's economic recession but are unable to find any legitimate therapy anywhere. This is lampshaded early on in the game when Taku and Rei converse about how the patients they tend to would often vent about their problems in the clinic because there's nowhere else for them to safely confide their troubles to.
• They Died Because of You: Sakaki drops this bomb to Towa near the climax of Fujieda's route, thereby revealing that Maya didn't fall down the stairs simply because she slipped. Towa (albeit unintentionally) pushed her down. Shortly after, Towa recalls the details of that event, and once it all sinks in, his first response is to let out a horrified scream.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: In his Euphoria ending, Taku is inevitably put on trial due to his involvement with Toono. However, he's let out on bail prior to his formal sentencing due to his full cooperation with the authorities, and when he's eventually imprisoned, he's only sentenced to two years and is even let out a year early due to good behavior. He gets a similar outcome in Fujieda's Euphoria ending thanks to Fujieda speaking in his defense during his trial.
• Those Two Guys: Three, actually. Whenever Kotarou, Mayu or Eiji are seen on their own, Towa would sometimes lampshade the trope by asking where are the other two; to which any of them will reply that they're not together all the time.
• Three-Act Structure: Taku and Rei's routes follow this format, since Chapter 1 focuses on Ikuina, Chapter 2 focuses on Asakura (for Taku's route) or Mizuno (for Rei's route), and Chapter 3 finally focuses on either of them. This is subverted in Madarame's route, which takes place right after the end of Chapter 1. The subversion also applies for Fujieda's route, which can only happen if Chapter 0 ends in a different outcome from the one that leads to the events of Chapter 1.
• Title Drop: This happens in one of the Madness ending themes, "Damaging You". While not quoted word-for-word per se, the nod to the visual novel's title is still rather obvious.
  When I painted you with my love
  You became the only thing I want
  You're now damaging slowly
  Damaging slowly
• Tongue Suicide: After being taken captive by Madarame, Towa attempts to bite his own tongue off, preferring to die now than stay as someone's prisoner for another second. Madarame quickly catches on, however, and is having none of it.
• Traveling at the Speed of Plot: During an Exploration, there are times where there are plenty of destinations available for Towa to explore. Realistically speaking, if Towa were to go to all of them, it would take up more than an hour of his time. But no matter what, once the player has him go to the next designated location, the plot will always proceed like always, even if the next date and time check shows that only one hour has passed.
• The Unreveal:
  • There's at least one instance in both the common route and in Taku's route where Towa gets the feeling that someone's been tailing him, but it's never revealed even in the Golden Ending who it could be. Based on what's revealed to the player by then, it was either an underling of the Takasato-gumi, Eiji or Madarame.
  • In one of the extra features which takes place in Madarame's route, Towa asks Madarame about the gunshot wound on his arm from before. Madarame mentions that he got it during one of his raids in the Deathmatch Area, but he doesn't go into any further details about who shot him. However, the liner notes hint that the attacker was Mizuno/Kirihara.
• Unspoken Plan Guarantee:
  • In Taku's route, Eiji concocts a plan that would allow Towa and Taku to escape the Grand Palace Hotel with the evidence they need to convict Toono. Eiji doesn't reveal what his plan is, but Towa guesses that it involves bombs, which he ends up being right on the money about.
  • In Madarame's route, the plan to both spook Toono in the Grand Palace Hotel and ambush the Takasato-gumi during the succession ceremony the following day is discussed in detail to both Towa and the player. The former plan goes off without a hitch, and the same goes for the latter regardless of whether the Euphoria or the Madness ending is achieved.
• Uptight Loves Wild: The hedonistic and uninhibited Towa and the austere and prudish Fujieda eventually get together in the latter's route. That being said, the trope is deconstructed as it's revealed to the player beforehand why Towa behaves the way he does and just what kind of depths Fujieda harbors. Both of them also realize that while they appear to be like yin and yang on the surface, they actually mirror each other in more ways than one, such as the kind of scars that they carry and the losses they suffered at their parents' hands.
• Urban Segregation: Shinkoumi is separated mainly into Districts A to E.
  • District A was formerly a popular entertainment district, but it had closed off since then and is now almost a Ghost Town. The only place in the district that's not completely abandoned is Deathmatch Area, where people would frequent to brawl against other fighters.
  • District B is one of the city's more luxurious spots, and is where most of the casinos, resorts, hotels, retail stores and amusement parks are located.
  • District C is also home to the Takasato-gumi headquarters and to the government buildings. The more expensive residential blocks can be found there as well.
  • District D is another entertainment district, but unlike District A, it is still up and about and has all kinds of places from stores to restaurants and whatnot. It's the largest as well as the busiest area of the city.
  • District E is essentially one big residential area for the common folk, with a few stores and certain other places here and there.
• Video Game Tutorial: Upon the first time playing Slow Damage, the player is given a tutorial to tell them how the choice system works this time, since it is different and more convoluted compared to the choice system used in Nitro+CHiRAL's previous games. Later on, they're given another tutorial telling them how Explorations work, and whether the goal of an Interrogation is to maintain the character's Madness or Euphoria level.
• Violence Is Disturbing: Even in a setting where crime, poverty and violence have become the norm in Shinkoumi to the point that the people living there have learned to just live with it, any unusual incidents where multiple victims suddenly gets cut up or beaten to half-death are still treated with grim urgency.
• Voice Grunting: During Explorations and Interrogations, both of Towa's lines and that of the character he's currently speaking with aren't fully voiced, with either character saying only a phrase or an incomplete sentence that doesn't match what they're saying word-for-word, but does match the tone of their response.
• Walking the Earth: Towa ends up traveling the country and/or going overseas with Rei and Madarame in their good endings.
• We Can Rule Together: In her final message to Towa, Maya tells Towa that they're both capable of holding the world in the palm of their hands if they wished it.
• We Used to Be Friends:
  • Igarashi reveals that there was a time when Toono and Sakaki were on better terms, but their relationship irreparably soured after Kaga's death.
  • In Madarame's route, Towa's relationship with both Taku and Rei becomes strained after Ikuina commits suicide, with the latter two worrying that Towa is starting to go overboard with his work as euphoria. This, combined with both Madarame's return and The Reveal that Taku had been keeping secrets from Towa the entire time, causes Towa to feel that he no longer belongs in his old home. This leads him to permanently burn bridges with Taku and Rei.
• Wham Line:
  • In his route, Madarame reveals something about Taku that was hinted at in the latter's own route.
    Madarame: (to Towa) That man is lying to you. After your lost your memories as a kid, he filled your head with lies. Supposedly so you could have a happy life without any bad memories... but regardless, you've been living a lie.
    (after Towa confronts Taku over what Madarame told him)
    Taku: After the accident, you looked so dead inside... so I gave you some new memories. I'd make up happy stories and tell them to you over and over. But surely there was nothing wrong with that. What you didn't know couldn't hurt you.
  • Fujieda reveals that he's been asking around about Towa because he suspects that Towa's artist name, even if it was only suggested by Rei, is no coincidence.
    Fujieda: Did you know there was once an establishment called Euphoria? When I first learned of it, I thought it was interesting, since it's the same name as you.
    • Hasegawa would soon explain just what kind of business was going on in Euphoria, and in turn, the number of nightmares that Towa had about being helpless and frightened whilst at someone else's mercy.
      Hasegawa: Maya-san always said she started Euphoria in order to provide true happiness to her customers. But in reality... it was an evil corporation designed to enable their dark desires. They were equipped to fulfill any need. They even kept minors onsite.
  • At least once in each route, Towa would mention having a younger sister... something that Fujieda casts doubts on when he looks into Towa's history.
    Fujieda: Several Takasato associates have stated for the fact that you're the leader's son. That much is essentially verified, even without official records. But no information on your sister, which means... You are the only one who seems to remember she existed.
  • While Towa knew that finding out more about his past wasn't as simple as it seemed, Eiji hints to Towa that there's something else grander in scale waiting for Towa once he finds out enough.
    Eiji: Do you know who it was that made Shinkoumi so interesting in the first place? It was Maya-san. That's why I agreed to help Sakaki with his secret plan. I want to find out what will happen to this town in the wake of the second advent of Maya-san.
  • As far as everyone is concerned, Towa and his mother got into an accident and fell down the stairs. But Sakaki reveals that what happened in reality is slightly different from what Towa was previously told.
    Sakaki: (to Towa) You killed Maya. You were the one who pushed her.
• Wham Shot: While changing from their rain-soaked clothes, Towa goads Fujieda into undressing right in front of him. While he only wished to mess with the other man, Towa finds himself at a loss for words when he sees that Fujieda's body is similar to his own— riddled with all kinds of scars.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • Towa is on the receiving end of a calling-out a few times, mostly from Rei.
    • Rei verbally gives Towa what for when he learns that Towa spurned Ikuina's floral offerings, and demands that he apologize to the other man.
    • In Madarame's route, Rei reprimands Towa in an anguished voice when Towa refuses to return home in spite of his better judgement.
  • In Taku's route, Towa calls out the other man a few times for constantly wavering in his choices and failing to muster his resolve, which helps neither himself nor anyone else.
  • Towa lashes out at Taku in Fujieda's route when he finds the other man attempting to burn the contents of a delivery addressed to him, even giving Taku two hard punches in the face for it.
• Where It All Began:
  • In this specific example, the trope is less about where and more about who it all started with. Ikuina and Asakura's twisted desires came to be because they were coerced into cutting up Towa when they were younger. Years later, if either of them gets to have a "euphoric session" with him once again, they finally find closure with their deep-seated frustrations.
  • Towa spent most of his childhood in the Euphoria mansion. It's also in that same place where he and Fujieda settle things once and for all with Sakaki (and, by proxy, Maya's ghost) in the climax of the true route.
• Working Out Their Emotions: The Takasato-gumi permitted Deathmatches in Shinkoumi because countless citizens are struggling with their lot in life and need to vent out their frustrations in some way, and it turns out that pummeling someone is a good way of doing that.
• World of Technicolor Hair: Some of the characters have realistic hair colors, but others stand out with their hair, which is colored either pink (Rei), red (Taku and Megumu Kirihara), white (Kotarou), blue (Eiji), green (Honami, Mizuno and Inada) or purple (Roost's manager).
• Would You Like to Hear How They Died?: During their confrontation, in an attempt to make a final taunt, Sakaki tells Fujieda that he's the one who took Mei's life under Maya's orders.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: In Fujieda's route, just whenever Towa finds a lead while investigating his childhood, said lead ends up getting killed either before he met them or before he could get more answers out of them. It then turns out that Sakaki played a hand in the murders of Ikuina, Asakura and Kirihara. Not because they knew more than they were allowed, however, but purely to keep Towa curious.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are:
  • If the player achieves the Euphoria outcome in Taku's final Interrogation, Taku then opens up to Towa about everything he felt. Midway through his speech, he reassures Towa that he cares for him because of who he is and not because of any relation he shares with Maya by telling him that he's nothing like his mother at all. Once the player has completed all four routes, they then realize in full that there's a hidden layer of meaning behind Taku's words.
  • In Fujieda's route, Sakaki gives Towa a Sadistic Choice: either "transform" into Maya or let Fujieda die. In response to this, Fujieda tries to reach out to Towa with only a few words to remind him that he's his own person and not a clone of his mother.
    Fujieda: You are euphoria.
• You Do Not Want To Know: Played for Drama in Fujieda's route when Towa confronts Taku about hiding his past from him and presses him for answers. Even though it further earns him Towa's wrath, Taku refuses to budge, resolutely replying that there are some things Towa is better off not knowing.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: The trope is Taku's reaction word-for-word when Towa is in so much heat from the drug Toono forcefully gave him, with one orgasm not being enough to calm Towa's urges.
• You Meddling Kids: When Fujieda and Sakaki face off against each other in the climax, the latter gives a furious rant about how the Yuzuki siblings would always get in the way both then and now.
• You Monster!: Fujieda is completely enraged when Sakaki reveals that he's the one who killed Mei.

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