Video Game / Action Taimanin

Due to the nature of being an alternate continuity of the Taimanin series and many of its spin-offs, this game may contain unmarked spoilers for other works in the franchise. Please list only examples from versions that lack or reference any hentai scenes. You Have Been Warned.

Action Taimanin: Near Future Shinobi Battle is a Hack and Slash game by Gremory Games, derived from Black Lilith's Taimanin franchise, originally a series of H Games.

In the near future, Japan is plagued by demons from another world. There once existed an ancient, unspoken rule of non-interference between humans and demons, but as humanity descends into decadence, that rule is now obsolete, with the worst of the human race actively seeking out the evil secrets of demonkind. It is a dark time, with criminal syndicates of demons and humans who might as well be pulling the strings in the shadows. But those who sought the righteous path were not hopeless, because the Taimanin, a squad of supernaturally-empowered ninjas, fight to stem the tide.

Kotaro Fuuma, a ninja whose supernatural abilities are not well-suited to direct combat, takes command of a newly-formed Taimanin task force, including his mentor and Series Mascot Asagi Igawa, her energetic and childish sister Sakura Igawa, and one of his classmates, Yukikaze Mizuki, setting out to try to contain a terrorist bio-weapon before it's too late.

Unlike the visual novels, which mostly revolve around beautiful lady ninjas being defeated, then tortured until they break in a fetishized manner, Action Taimanin is about them fighting armies of bad guys.

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Action Taimanin features the following tropes:

• Action Bomb: Comes in three flavors: a bomb drone and two types of small demons.
• Action Girl: The game is filled with both experienced female ninjas and powerful female demons.
• Actionized Adaptation: More like Actionized Spinoff. It's in the title, after all.
• Adaptational Badass: As combatants in a Hack and Slash game, the lady ninjas are already much more capable of showing off their power than in the originals. However, even taking this into account, the playable Taimanin in this game are able to pull off greater feats compared to their visual novel counterparts.
• Adaptational Modesty: Due to being a T-Rated game; costumes of characters originating from the H-Game series are modified to be less overtly erotic ^note (i.e. removing the visible nipple bulges and camel toe that come with wearing a Form-Fitting Wardrobe). The IOS version takes it a step further and adds additional coverings to their suits.
• Allegedly Free Game: With all the trimmings, from a Freemium Timer to a number of mechanics designed to make you Play Every Day, to gacha systems for the various Supporters and weapons, Temporary Online Content such as costumes that can only be bought with real money. At least the playable Taimanin themselves can be directly purchased with no gambling required, though then there are packs and packs of upgrade materials for sale...
• Alternate Timeline: Action Taimanin supposedly takes place in a different universe from the mainline games, and while saying things are Lighter and Softer is perhaps a stretch, at least the default state of most lady ninjas isn't being immediately fooled and kidnapped, then raped.
• invokedAnti-Climax: The end of the "The Banquet of Darkness and Fox Hunt" story event sees the Task Force succesfully escape their enemies without too much trouble, thanks to the help of the demon twins Yuphie and Sophie. But because it went off so quickly and without trouble, the two girls complain this was too easy and they didn't have any fun, prompting a Boss Battle against them to calm them down and get them to retreat with the rest of the group.
• And the Adventure Continues: Chapter 19 ended with the Nomad's downfall. Chapter 20 and beyond decided to expand the Main Quest even further starting with the introduction of Spinel and Lapis.
• Anti-Frustration Features: Some modifiers that can appear on missions are making damage taken inflict additional debuffs. Attacks that are nigh-impossible to avoid^{One example:}The "Walker" type of boss will periodically fire instantaneous AlwaysAccurate lasers. if you weren't dodging before the attack fired, you will be hit. won't trigger those additional effects.
• Aren't You Going to Ravish Me?:
  • In Chapter 10, Yukikaze seems more jealous that she wasn't groped by the guards like her mother was than actually angry that her mother was molested (For her part, Shiranui didn't really mind).
  • In Chapter 20, in a non-sexual example, Sakuya is outraged that she isn't targeted like Sora is for killing a demon group's leader even though Sakuya was present on the scene as well.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Demons greatly enjoying battle and being big believers in Might Makes Right, this naturally apply to them, giving leadership positions based on whom can kick the most ass.
  • It's mentionned that only the most powerful of demons can claim (and hold) titles such as "King" or "Queen", to the point that there fewer than a dozen of these, and they are collectively known as "Royal demons".
  • It poses a problem to Sora in chapter 20, as the demon she killed during her Traumatic Superpower Awakening was the ex-leader of a mercernary warband, and the newly-appointed leader, Spinel, is specifically targeting Sora to prove she is tougher than the ninja who killed their old boss.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Though the task force managed to bring down Edwin Black with the help of the King of the Death Wraiths, the real winner of the game's storyline is none other than Astaroth. Since she purposely leaked Momochi's data for the entire world to see which ultimately caused the downfall of Nomad and the ensuing global turmoil that would soon follow. While Astaroth isn't called out by this and gets away scot free, the task force has to clean up the mess following the aftermath of Chapter 19.
• Big Bad: Toyo Momochi, Asagi's former right hand and the Taimanin who trained her, is the main villain of the first five chapters of the story. He steals a weaponized zombie plague from the UFS, intending to use it to start a Zombie Apocalypse in Venam, humiliating both the Chinese and UFS superpowers in the New Cold War and encouraging the rest of the world to rise up against them.
• Big Eater: Noah. She prefers to eat human food instead of outright eating humans despite being a demon, so much that she even goes into Tokyo Kingdom to find food only to run into trouble with local gang members and even the Taimanins. Kotaro is generous enough to give the young demon his lunch box to fill up her stomach.
• Bio-Augmentation: A major theme of the setting, referenced by some of the enemies. Oboro, like her original series counterpart, is mentioned to have survived death by being implanted with demonic cancer that completely replaced her human body's cells, something that turns most subjects into mindless and dangerous monsters. And genetically-engineered attack animals are one kind of standard Mook. The game also clarifies that "demonic medicine" can be used for good even if its abuse results in great evil, explaining why anyone wants to fiddle with it in the first place.
• Bittersweet Ending: The task force succeeds defeating Edwin Black and Nomad, with the organization in ruins following Astaroth leaking Momochi's data about demons and Nomad to the world. However, Black had to be spared knowing his death will lead to a power struggle within Nomad. Amused by this, Black lives to fight again another day. Even so, the Taimanins battle against evil will continue on until peace is restored.
• Black-and-Gray Morality: The UFS is an arrogant superpower penetrated from within by criminal elements like NOMAD and collaborates with opportunists to get weapons of mass destruction, the Chinese Union is a police state that packages good old-fashioned colonialism with high rhetoric about "Asia ruled by Asians" that directly evokes 1930's-40's era Japanese fascism, and Momochi isn't wrong that even the heroic Taimanin, through being government-operated, are fighting to uphold a failing status quo rather than actually making the world a better place. But their enemies are ruthless terrorists actively trying to massacre countless innocent people and spark a world war, themselves manipulated by an international criminal syndicate seeking world domination and led by an ancient evil being trying to outright destroy the world for his own twisted ends. There are even oblique references made to the events of the original games, where NOMAD was behind some of the most horrific acts of human trafficking, sex slavery, mass murder, sadistic torture, and unwilling experimentation imaginable, without getting into the supernatural elements of their evil.
• *Bleep*-dammit!: One Christmas event has the words "bastard" and "ass" censored. But not the word "rape"...
• Blood Knight: Demons are multiple races of these, being as eager for battle here as they are for sex in other parts of the franchise.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: The Death Wraiths do eat human souls, but they do so out of intense fascination towards positive qualities such as virtue and indomitable will in their souls. Chapter 17 basically puts the whole team into a Secret Test of Character to prove their worth to the King of the Death Wraiths. As Momochi himself have undergone the Death Wraiths' trials to prove his conviction, this proves that being virtuous in the Death Wraiths' eyes and losing one's way aren't mutually exclusive.
• Bolivian Army Ending: A variant. Towards the end of Chapter 20, Spinel and Lapis already had Sora, Sakuya, and Asuka cornered. Only for the task force to pop out of nowhere to turn the tables as the chapter ends in a cliffhanger.
• Break Out the Museum Piece: One of the enemies introduced in Chapter 21 is an UFS soldier wearing an extremely bulky exoskeleton. Its' description in the Monster Compendium notes that it is an older model than the others faced in the game, but it was put back into comission for being simple but effective: rather than any rocket launcher, lasers, or anything too elaborate and advanced, it simply enchances the user's strength, durability (it is a suit of armour), and gives them a minigun.
• Breather Episode: Most of the Event quests and Intimacy Events are the source of levity to balance the game's darker aspects.
• Casting a Shadow: Sakura's ninja art. She can meld into shadow, teleport between shadows, shape a strand of shadow into an animalistic visage, or use it as a bladed weapon.
• Cerebus Syndrome: Action is a departure from being a full-blown Hentai series the franchise is known for in favor of a Hack and Slash game. On one hand, the game's singleplayer campaign retains the dramatic tone with more action and fight scenes and less fanservice. Meanwhile, the side quests and character episodes (read: Intimacy Events) brings the levity to balance the darker undertones.
• Clothing Switch: Most playable character has a craftable outfit that's another playable character's basic costume, typically one closely related to them. For example, Murasaki and Emily can craft Asagi's outfit as a sign of their admiration/obsession towards her.
• The Coats Are Off: The Masked Taimanin boss ends her first phase by ditching her coat, signaling the beginning of her second phase where she has more health, hits harder, faster, and has more attacks.
• Colony Drop: When using her ultimate, Rinko teleports a meteor from space and cuts it to pieces causing the debris to rain down on the battlefield and damaging her opponents. She has a much smaller version (called "Meteor Strike") as one of her standard skills.
• Crapsack World: Much like in the visual novels, the cyberpunk environment adds to the dark atmosphere the Taimanin series is known for, with most of the entire world is ruled under the Nomad's Shadow Dictatorship, most demons exist to subjugate mankind, while few co-exist with humans. Momochi even plans to further widen the rift between humans and demons to the point of extermination between two races until leaving no survivors on either side.
• Cyberpunk: Straddling the line between this and Post Cyber Punk, due to the Taimanin's willingness to collaborate with their government, but between corrupt authorities, cybernetics and Bio-Augmentation run amok, and dangerous acts of radical terrorism intended to shake the world out of complacency while wealthy and dangerous criminals and megacorporations (with less difference and distance between them then one would hope) make nefarious plans to profit on the misery of the common people and attain world domination, it fits the bill.
• Cyborg: Many of the mook ninjas don't have the Taimanin's enhanced abilities, so they try to make up the difference with cybernetics and powered armor. Some Taimanin who lose their limbs have to make due with superpowered cybernetic replacements. Emily Simmons and quite a few Supporters are cyborgs too; mostly Super Soldiers from the UFS who're aligned against NOMAD.
• Dark Action Girl: Several of the game's bosses and playable characters, such as Oboro, Ingrid and Snake Lady, are dangerous and malevolent women.
• Darker and Edgier: Action Taimanin is a departure from the franchise's original roots as a H game, but that does not exempt it from bleak moments. While the original games kept the bad endings limited to happening to only a couple of persons (the heroines), this one has a zombie apocalypse caused by a former Taimanin-turned-traitor engulf an entire island nation in the first 6 chapters, and chapter 19 ends with the entire world plunged into massive turmoil as tensions flare up between various countries and groups in The Unmasked World.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Initially, Su refuses to acknowledge Fuuma as the task force's commander, but during a mission crisis on Kotrara Island, she grows to respect his unbreakable resolve, a characteristic she lacks. After the mission, Su is implied to have a crush on Fuuma.
• Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?: Downplayed. After Momochi's defeat, the Task Force are led into the Death Wraiths' lair to converse with their king to form a reluctant alliance against Edwin Black. The Death Wraiths agreed to the alliance, under the condition that the Taimanins have to prove themselves in a trial by combat. The Taimanins prevailed.
• Disc-One Final Boss: In chapter 5 of the Main Quest, Toyo Momochi transforms into the monstrous and gargantuan "Toyo Momochi Creature". It turns out Toyo is not done for and the task force's mission continues.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Venam is clearly designed from the ground up to invoke Vietnam, right down to its history of French colonization, conflict with the American-coded UFS, and resentment towards Chinese efforts to keep them in its sphere of influence.
• Dream Episode: In the event story, Nightmare on Christmas, Lilim takes Kotaro and friends into her Dream Land with her succubus powers. There, they run afoul of Felicia, who uses a magical ring to invade Lilim's dream world to cause havoc.
• Failure Hero: In the original five story chapters, the heroes are persistently out-run or out-maneuvered by their quarry right up until the end, failing to arrest the scientist trying to defect with a bioweapon before it is stolen and he murdered to cover it up, to take the Venamese leader into custody before he too is slain and most of his organization massacred, or to prevent the initial terrorist attack in Venam. However, they do successfully capture Oboro and kill Momochi, at least limiting the future damage they can do.
• Fighter, Mage, Thief: The first three playable Taimanin, Asagi, Yukikaze, and Sakura, respectively fit the archetypes. Asagi is a straightforward physical brawler with well-balanced stats and strong swordplay. Yukikaze prefers to stand back and blow enemies away at a distance with her twin pistols and lightning powers. And Sakura hits even harder than her sister with paired knives and a faster moveset but at the expense of her defense and health.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • A character being playable or not isn't dependant on the story in the slightest, only on whether or not the player has unlocked her ^note A character that becomes playable will usually feature prominently in the chapter/story event happening along with her release, but that's it. It is perfectly possible to play as Shiranui Mizuki in the story chapters that happen before she joins the Task Force, and Oboro and Ingrid only appear as enemies and bosses in-story, but both are playable (including against themselves if one plays the corresponding chapters)^note Ingrid does pull an Enemy Mine with the heroes in some story events, but they're always temporary..
    • Some events take it a step further by having the "Task Force" (that is, all your canon playable characters) being described as unable to take part in the action, leaving the support staff to do the job, but gameplay-wise the playable characters do not change.
  • Support Characters are in the same situation as playable ones: there are no restriction whatsoever on which Support characters can be assigned to whom, the only constraint being that the player needs to have them unlocked and aviable, leading to situations like Oboro supporting Asagi, Astaroth supporting herself, or multiple versions of Kurenai supporting Felicia.
  • Playable characters are, for the sake of balance, roughly in the same power bracket gameplay-wise, which leads to Sora Kannazuki, a teenager (and explicitly not a Child Prodigy) still studying to be a ninja being playable alongside and of a comparable effectivness to Asagi Igawa, considered the best Taimanin of her generation, or Astaroth, a demon roughly equal in power to the Big Bad of the entire franchise. Story-wise, the power discrepancies are more respected in story chapters and events (the only reason the Task Force survives their encounters against Astaroth is because she's explicitly Just Toying with Them and looking for fun rather than destroying them outright).
  • Asagi's Super-Speed move is, for the sake of gameplay, implemented as slowing down the enemies while she still gets to move at normal speed. This results in some oddities in VR missions where you fight alongside NPCs that aren't affected by the slow effect and if fighting enemies that are immune to slows, which makes them able to keep up with her even if, lore-wise, they don't have Super-Speed.
  • Some missions have the characters explicitly note they are using non-lethal force (either because they consider going all-out against normal humans to be overkill, because they are trying to not make too much damage, trying be discrete, or what have you...). Gameplay does not change in the slightest, and some enemies/bosses' defeat animations clearly show them being killed (such as the male taimanin generic bosses, who clearly breaks into dozens of pieces).
• Goldfish Poop Gang: Lilim and Minasaki, two low-ranked demons making repeated appearances through story events. The two's schemes often get them in troubles and they are annoying pranksters, but they're never a real threat.
• Hack and Slash: The main style of the game is controlling a lady ninja as she chops through hordes of bad guys.
• Heel Realization: Su Jinglei is originally a proud and patriotic servant of the Chinese Union, but after Yukikaze points out that the various nations China has vassalized chafe under its yoke, seeing first-hand the misrule in Venam, and being all-but threatened with death for her failure should she return, she decides to embrace her heritage and throw in her lot with the Taimanin instead; symbolically dressing like one of them instead of her Chinese army uniform. That said, an early event establishes she still has a decent enough relationship with her parents who support her choice.
• Holding in Laughter: During the "Special Camp of Youth and Deceit" event story, Kotaro and Su try hard not to burst out laughing at Lilim and Minasaki's hilariously bad acting.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: While the visual novels are no stranger in depicting the evil side of the human race and part of it was the reason behind the forbidden rule of interfering with the business of the demon world, Toyo Momochi, a rogue Taimanin-turned terrorist, is an example of the series' anti-demon sentiment taken to extremism levels. He is, by far, one of the few known Taimanin antagonists to commit global-scale atrocities making him enough to be far worse than Edwin Black out of all people, out of the belief of freeing humanity from the corruption by demons.
• Iconic Starter Equipment: Many of the characters' iconic weapon (the ones they are shown using the most in other parts of the franchise) are the basic weapons they start with when you acquire new characters.
• Innocent Innuendo:
  • In [Armored] Shinganji Kurenai's Intimacy Event, the sentimental music and dialogue make it sound like Kotaro and the former are about to make love for the first time, with Kotaro noting he has to touch a girl's private part for the first time... except it turns out Fuuma is about to act as her hairdresser.
  • In the Midsummer's Nightmare story event, one of the succubi is sprawled out on the floor in a bedroom in messy clothes and moans pleasurably while a Sexophone is heard in the background. Turns out she's being massaged by one of the people she and her succubus friends brainwashed. On the back, of course!
• Intimate Lotion Application: One of Maika's intimacy scenes takes place on the beach, where she asks Fuuma to put sun oil on her back. Fuuma nervously accepts, even thinking in his head this is a "surreal situation that only happens in comics and anime". Due to Maika's Tsundere nature her mood during the interaction constantly swaps between teasing and flirtatious, irritable and demanding, or embarrassing and bashful. At one point she lets it slip that she got the idea from a girl's magazine.
• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique:
  • Su tries to use these on Oboro, pointing out that her demonic body can withstand horrific tortures that would kill a normal person while burying a knife in her thigh. Kotaro, though he has had to get used to some torture in his line of work, is uncomfortable with this for moral reasons, and instead manages to crack her with a mixture of threats to hand her over to one of the two world powers if she doesn't talk and a hypothetical offer to just attribute any information she gives to a "passing bystander" and let her go. Oboro, thinking she's getting one over on him, gives him some useful intelligence on Momochi's plot, and is then led away in chains anyway, because Oboro isn't a "passing bystander" but an internationally wanted criminal and terrorist. He even points out when she's sour about being manipulated that being their prisoner is much better than anything she could reasonably expect from the great powers; she'll be fed and interrogated while locked up instead of being used for research when she isn't being tortured.
  • Zigzagged, unfortunately, in later events, where sometimes Kotaro or other Taimanin will use a few threats and blows to extract information from captured enemies in the midst of terrorist attacks.
• Jiggle Physics: The playable character's breasts are very bouncy.
• Knight Templar: Momochi's end goal is to overthrow world governments sympathizing with Nomad and the extremes he'll go to borderline from commiting high-scale atrocities like causing a Zombie Apocalypse to conspiring to reveal the existence of every demonic creature to the world, in which by doing so could lead into an all-out war between humanity and demonkind to the point of extermination to further justify his disillusionment with the current state of the world.
• Last Episode, New Character: Spinel, one of the two Post Final Bosses you fight in chapter 20, would end up becoming a supporter, and later a playable character. Lapis would soon follow as a supporter.
• Lensman Arms Race: Chinese Union and the UFS are locked in a new Cold War, having assimilated much of Asia and the New World/Oceania respectively. Now they're competing to stockpile superweapons, both conventional and, in the case of the Zombie Apocalypse plague, demonically-tainted.
• Lighter and Softer: Compared to other games of the franchise, the Taimanin usually win fights even if they can't thwart many plots. The game's atmosphere is also much lighter than what the visual novels could end up at. Kotaro is much nicer than in his first appearance, too, with many backstory events that went very wrong in the original timelines generally going right here, like Shiranui not being kidnapped and brainwashed.
• Lore Codex: The "Monsters", "Supporters", and "Weapons" tabs of the Collection gallery, on top of tracking what the player has unlocked, also comes with in-universe description and notes about them, telling their stories, how they were created, and so on.
• The Magic Versus Technology War: Severly downplayed (both sides make use of technology, and outright war hasn't erupted yet), but this is the dynamic China and the UFS have. China makes extensive use of cloning and demonic technologies (such as using zombies as fodder) to increase their military strength, while the UFS is more interested in enchancing its forces with mechanical exoskeletons and robots.
• Male Gaze: The camera is likely to focus on the Taimanin's butts during gameplay.
• Marathon Boss: This is the "Spider Queen/Queen Arachnea" gimmick in the VR mode. Even as you go up in the difficulty levels, her attacks (bar one) are fairly telegraphed and easy to manage. The problem is that she has an extreme amount of health split over three phases, and all the VR missions are on a 3-minutes timer, meaning it's entirely possible to simply not be able to kill her before the clock runs out.
• Me's a Crowd: Momochi is seemingly capable of replicating himself. His boss fights even feature mook versions of him that he can summon, and his first defeat is revealed to only be a powerful clone. With The Reveal that he's in the same boat as Kotaro and has no Taimanin Art, it's made clear that these are all well-trained body-doubles.
• Might Makes Right: Demons are big believers in this, to the point that even ones not outright hostile to humans will still want to fight the Task Force, to see how strong they are.
• Minor Major Character: Chief Yamamoto is the one who created the Task Force and put Kotaro in charge of it. He is also the one leading "Section 3", Japan's government cabinet overseeing all the country's taimanins and anti-demon forces. But because his role is more of a politician one (serving as the Taimanins' representative to other branches of the japanese government and other countries' leaderships) he only makes a couple of physical appearances in the story and events, and is mentionned in a handful of others situations.
• Mirror Match: In the Battle Arena, it's possible to go up against the same character that's currently active on the player's team, with the player's character commenting on her own predicament. This can be also possible with the playable villainesses (i.e., Astaroth, Ingrid, Oboro) in the Main Quest when fighting them in their boss battles.
• Mission Control: Fuuma follows the action from his command drone (which the player controls via the camera stick, and keeps the Taimanin appraised of ongoing developments while steering them through hacking and other indirect means of support. This changes in later story chapters, where he decides to instead offer support from the front as part of his Character Development.
• My Death Is Just the Beginning: After his death, Momochi's followers upload prerecorded videos to social media calling on the other nations of the world to rise up against the UFS and China.
• My Rules Are Not Your Rules: Player characters can only equip three useable moves at a time (four if the player has purchased a special limited-duration item) and can only swap by returning to the main menu. When the same characters are faced as bosses in missions, however, they can use their full repertoire of attacks, some of them Secret A.I. Moves.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: One story event sees Succubi do what they usually do: set up shop in an abandoned mansion and use the men residing there as slaves and servants... except the men living in that mansion were Mad Scientists using the nearby village population as guinea pigs for horrible experiment, and the succubi enslaving them actually halted their work.
• Ninja Brat: The youngest of the playable Taimanin like Sakura, Yukikaze or Sora are high school freshmen, but still as dangerous as the adults like Asagi or Murasaki.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: All over the place. For starters, there are many types of Half-Human Hybrid Taimanins, those that have vampire blood (i.e., Kurenai) or cyborgs (Asuka). Even Mooks come in different variety, from actual zombies to Nomad soldiers in Powered Armor among other things.
• Not Me This Time: A story event sees the Task Force investigating the disappearances of young men in a village and stumbling upon a group of succubi who have taken residence in an isolated mansion in the nearby forest. Sounds like succubi being up to their usual tricks, right? Actually, the disappearances were happening before the succubi showed up, and the mansion they took over was the base of operation of local Mad Scientists, who were the ones responsible for said disappearances (and whom the succubi enslaved when they took over, bringing their dark experiments to a halt).
• Not Quite the Right Thing: Chapter 19 ends with Kotaro sparing Edwin Black to avoid the Evil Power Vacuum that would follow and because Black at least understands the use of Pragmatic Villainy and good publicity unlike a great number of his underlings. Story events and the following chapters show that while it did limit the damage to a slight degree, the mere fact that Edwin Black was defeated by humans at all caused their organization to splinter into dozens of groups (and Black being too busy recovering from the wounds suffered to bring order back themselves) to the point some very dangerous equipment can be gotten by common thugs, and Astaroth releasing Toyo Momochi's data to the entire world, revealing how much demons have their hands in various governments and organizations caused tensions to flare up within and between many countries and groups. Meaning that the end result of Kotaro's decision is that on top of the global unrest that would have occured anyways, Nomad is still standing and now Black personally wants to end his life.
• Number of the Beast: Yasuna Ashigaya's supporter skill is called Harima Paper Sorcery, which deals 666% damage to surrounding enemies and deal another damage of the same calculation at a 50% chance once fully upgraded. This could be a reference to the term "Devil's luck", which refers to being Born Lucky. Yasuna, on the other hand, being a pathological gambler and is always in constant debt due to one too many losses, is actually Born Unlucky.
• Omnicidal Maniac: A variant. Chapter 15 reveals that Momochi plans to expose Nomad and all of demonkind to the entire world, of which Asagi thinks is a bad thing that will lead to an endless cycle of death and destruction between humanity and other demonic creatures until there would be no survivors left on either side. Momochi notes that she has a point, but as long as it will eventually lead to mankind rejecting demon influences, he does not care.
• One-Man Army: The playable Taimanin cleave through armies of henchmen, mutants, and other assorted mooks.
• One-Winged Angel:
  • At the end of Chapter 5 in the original story arc, Momochi overdoses on the bioweapon used to create zombies and becomes a gigantic Stationary Background Boss, which is ironically much less of a pain in the neck to deal with. He later has a less-impressive Turns Red form in a later chapter that's actually much more dangerous.
  • Kaliya, AKA Snake Lady will transform into her Naga form during the second segment of her Boss Battle.
  • Edwin Black returns to his true demonic form (an extremely tall man with four arms and white hair) for his second boss battle.
• Outside-Context Problem: The appearance of Spinel and Lapis in chapter 20 are unrelated to the Nomad, they are only after Sora because of her and Sakuya having a run-in with their leader.
• Post-Final Boss: Spinel and Lapis are the threats Sakuya and Sora face in the epilogue. As the duo are not associated to Nomad in any way, as their introduction will more or less likely pave way for a future story arc.
• Promoted to Playable: Many characters start out as NPCs or Supporters but later become playable, such as Sora or Hebiko for example.
• Rage Breaking Point: Chapters 15 & 16 sees Kotaro completely incensed at seeing Momochi and his minions abusing demonic blood, not helped by Momochi's utter Lack of Empathy and mocking the idea of friendship to Kotaro's face. Momochi ends up being one of the, if not, only Taimanin villains that is not Oboro, Astaroth, and/or even Edwin Black to make Kotaro very angry in addition to earning his hatred. Even Su's reaction speaks volumes, with the notion of Kotaro being pushed past his breaking point the end result can be downright terrifying.
• Saw It in a Movie Once: In the Intimacy Event of Maika's support version, she blurts out to Kotaro that she read in a girl's magazine that rubbing suntan oil on a girl's back is something couples do, which Kotaro himself is currently doing on Maika's back.
• Sensible Heroes, Skimpy Villains: Downplayed, as the Taimanin tend to have revealing and form-fitting clothes but the female villains tend to dress far more provocatively.
• Sequel Hook: Chapter 20 ends in a cliffhanger when the task force corners Spinel and Lapis, it is unknown what happened to them afterwards. As the introduction of the two new villains, who are completely unrelated to Nomad or even Momochi, will most likely pave way for a future storyline in the Main Quest.
• Set Swords to "Stun": Missions that have the Task Force explicitly note they are using non-lethal force don't affect the gameplay or animations at all, resulting in things like Rinko droping a meteor on their enemies to somehow not kill them.
• Sexy Backless Outfit: Almost all of the Taimanin's uniforms have their backs completely exposed.
• Shock and Awe:
  • Yukikaze's ninja art. It is overwhelmingly powerful, to the point that she requires a handgun-type limiter "Lighting Shooter" to keep it within her threshold at her current level of control.
  • Rin Uheara is nicknamed "The Volt Taimanin" for a reason, being the blue to Yukikaz's yellow lightning.
• Shows Damage: The Chapter 1 boss, the "Tempest" walker, gradually loses parts of its outer armor as its health bars go down.
• Show Within a Show: Two of them, both of which are clearly sentai-esques. Both are noted to be massively popular:
  • The first, Taima-Five, is a franchise sponsored by the japanese government, with the goal of slowly acclimating the population of Japan to the various supernatural and demonic events going on. It is Very Loosely Based on missions the Task Force took part in with characters heavily inspired by them (to the point Asagi Igawa is asked to fill in for the actress playing her character at a convention after the actress broke her leg, with no one being the wiser). Some events missions, VR modes, and their unlockeable weapons, are explicitly based on that franchise.
  • The second, Corporate Warrior Ingrid, is Nomad's answer to the above, a multimedia franchise starring Ingrid battling paper-thin Expy of the Task Force. Most scripts for it are written by Ingrid's awe-struck protegee Lina and aren't very good. Ingrid's relevant supporter Intimacy Event admits that OVAs are unlikely to be profitable in the modern climate, but Oboro could tell Ingrid wasn't happy with the skimpy outfit and silly scripts and approved it anyway, forcing Ingrid to appear in-character for company photo shoots and it worked well enough as a propaganda outlet as well.
• Sleeves Are for Wimps: Most Taimanin wear sleeveless uniforms or have detached sleeves. Rinko is a rare exception.
• Speed Blitz: Asagi's ninja art. It heightens her body and senses for a split second, allowing her to move and act sixfold within the duration.
• Spy Catsuit: Called a "Taimanin suit" in-universe. Most of them are very flattering, and tend to have fishnets over the joints.
• Succubi and Incubi: Due to the game being Tamer and Chaster, Succubi are rarely presented as any actual dangerous threat, the rank-and-file of them more akin to Ineffectual Sympathetic Villains or Goldfish Poop Gang at best. Most of them seem to tend towards being Obliviously Evil; too stupid to fully understand why anyone but a lame killjoy could have a problem with them sucking out humans' life essence when everyone involved is enjoying themselves. Even the more threatening ones are presented as Elite Mooks: dangerous and not to be underestimated, but not a great concern.
• Suicide as Comedy: In the Nightmare on Christmas event story, Nagi Momochi gets brainwashed into Felicia's servitude. Once she snaps out of it, she scolds herself for serving someone other than Kotaro and no longer sees any point in living and tries to convince Kirara to behead her and later tries to stab herself in the stomach. Kirara stops her, and while they both acknowledge they are all in a dream, Nagi vows to behead herself once she wakes up. It takes Kotaro to order her to not kill herself over such matters for her to calm down.
• Taking You with Me:
  • Cornered and half-dead from his final battle with the Taimanin, Momochi deliberately infects himself with a massive injection of the Creeping Death, transforming into a colossal building-sized demonic monster for the final battle. As a near-mindless force of destruction, what Momochi was is no more, but he wanted to kill his attackers in the process.
  • Some mooks also can blow themselves up to damage the player. Some have it be their only attack, others only use it when at low health.
• Tamer and Chaster: By virtue of being the first non-hentai game of the Taimanin franchise. It still has a lot of Fanservice.
  • While Kotaro gets plenty of Ship Tease and suggestive interactions with almost every character, nothing explicit happens (either on-screen or off) between them and he is a Nice Guy that barely even qualifies as a Chivalrous Pervert here, whereas his appearances in other games had him explicitly form a harem and having sex with the girls. In Battle Arena, and some RPGX "What If?" scenes ported directly from Battle Arena, he’s outright brainwashing and raping some of them.
  • While Edwin Black is still interested in Asagi, it is severely downplayed (helped by Black making only a couple of appearances in the story) compared to the visual novels where one of his main goals was to make her his wife/Sex Slave (and he succeeded in a few of the bad endings).
  • Likewise, the monsters' and demons' general desire to rape the Taimanin is extremely downplayed, even if still hinted at a couple of times, and they tend to lust for violence, wealth, and power more than sex.
  • By the same token, while Succubi are encountered very often and are repeatedly shown to go after (preferably young) men, sex is never described explicitly (although implied as one of the "services" the succubi order their prey to perform), and the most we actually see them do is use them as slaves and servants or scamming them out of their money while they're enthralled. It's also suggested that, in general, rather than being malevolent sadists, most succubi are actually just too stupid to fully understand how dangerous them sucking on humans' life force can be, and they outright call Taimanin killjoys for shutting down their operations since in their minds everyone involved is enjoying themselves so what's the problem?
  • The outfits worn by the characters are (relatively) tamer as well. For example, Rinko's original appearance had her nipples visibly poking through the suit, but here they are covered. Some of the mobile ports take this even further, covering up Cleavage Windows and the like.
• There Can Be Only One: In Chapters 16 to 19, Astaroth instigates an Enemy Civil War between herself and Edwin Black. But when the King of the Death Wraiths gets roped into the conflict, this becomes a three-way battle between high-ranking demons and a title fight for demonic supremacy. The destruction they caused reaches a biblical scale to the point they reduced an entire military base into a fiery wasteland.
• Time Master: Asagi has her Koujinka, which slows down time around her. But this requires her to time an enemy attack to activate the ability.
• Too Dumb to Live: The politician that Sakuya and Sora have to protect in Mission 20 does pretty much everything in his power to nearly get himself killed or making the escort mission harder. The only reason he lives as long as he does is because the demons are more interested in going after Sora than him. He's a former pro-Nomad politician who claims to have seen the light and turned over a new leaf after the database leak, but Rin's suspicious of him so he may have genuinely been trying to sabotage the Task Force.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill Muggles: Downplayed, but as their job is to protect humanity from demons, Taimanins consider using lethal force against normal humans to be something best avoided, least of all because it would be overkill.
• Ultimate Universe: Action is set in an entirely new timeline from the other entries of the franchise. As a new continuity, it further combines elements of all prior entries of the series, like Yamamoto from ZERO, Asagi being Gosha Academy's headmistress from the third game, the Fuuma clan and story from Battle Arena/RPGX, and Oboro and NOMAD working as depicted in the second game, just for a few examples.
• Undead Abomination: The Death Wraiths are undead creatures with Lovecraftian features who are drawn to the positive energies from the human souls they devoured like pure-heartedness and indomitable will. Whereas the King of Death Wraiths is a colossal, armored skeleton who stands out than the rest of his kind. Unlike most demons, the Death Wraiths aren't hostile to humans due to being empowered by the aforementioned positive qualities of humanity.
• Van Helsing Hate Crimes: Conspicuously averted by the Taimanin themselves, who have many demonic allies and all of whom are at least partially descended from demon/human relationships, not all of which were nonconsensual. One event actually sees Shiranui and two Task Force supporters fighting off a bunch of racist human gangsters who are trying to murder a town of hidden demons and steal their land in what's explicitly a hate crime.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Momochi intends to break the misrule of the two powers that have colonized the entire world, and he doesn't mind killing tons of the innocent people he purports to help while he's doing it. Notably, his mission to "liberate" Venam kills hundreds of Venamese citizens and expatriates before he's even set up the bioweapon attack. Later, his decision to reveal the existence of demonkind to humanity is portrayed as having the potential to plunge both peoples into a never-ending cycle of violence; he doesn't deny this but believes exposing the truth is worth the cost, especially if it forces Asagi to set herself up as military dictator to restore order.
• Wham Shot: The teaser for Chapter 21 has Sora and Sakuya being attacked by a seemingly brainwashed Murasaki and Yukikaze. In the actual gameplay, they turned out to be clones, as shown with their names having a question mark affixed in the dialogues.
• Zombie Apocalypse: The "Creeping Death" bioweapon, explicitly engineered to aerosolize and infect as many as possible. Some enemies are fish who've eaten infected flesh and become monsters. The Taimanin have been vaccinated, though this newly-engineered strain could still compromise them if they expose themselves to too much for too long, putting the mission on a ticking clock.

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