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I am innocent rage
I am innocent hatred
I am the innocent sword
I am DEMONBANE

Kurou Daijuuji is a poor detective living in Arkham City (no, not that one). A center of both industry and eldritch lore, it is home to Miskatonic University (not that one either), which Kurou is a former student of. The city was built up and is run by an industry group and family dynasty known as the Hadou Financial Group, led by Ruri Hadou, who works to protect the city from the forces of darkness. Her main enemy is the villainous Black Lodge syndicate, led by the charismatic Master Therion. The white-haired Beast of the Antichrist, he is the most powerful sorcerer in the whole world, and his nihilistic outlook shapes the group's destructive goals.

One day, Kurou is asked by Ruri to search for a magical grimoire. As Kurou searches for the book, he unexpectedly runs into Al-Azif, a pretty girl who turns out to be the grimoire Kurou is searching for. While being chased by the Black Lodge, Al forges a contract with Kurou, bestowing him with powerful magic. Soon afterwards, Al also activates the Demonbane, a Deus Machina owned by the Hadou Financial Group, to combat the mechanical menace from the Black Lodge and Therion, who seeks the power of the grimore for himself. With this, the war between the Hadou Financial Group and the Black Lodge begins...

A series by nitro+ with Humongous Mecha and Cthulhu Mythos elements, it began as an Visual Novel eroge for the PC, then was ported to the Sony PlayStation 2 as a non-eroge remake. In full, the franchise consists of:

  • Zanma Taisei Demonbane: "Demon-Slaying Great Saint, Demonbane", the original Visual Novel. Released in English in 2011 under the title Deus Machina Demonbane.
  • Kishin Houkou Demonbane: "Roar of the Machine God, Demonbane", the PS2 port of the Visual Novel, also the name of the Anime of the Game.
  • Kishin Hishou Demonbane: "Flight of the Machine God, Demonbane", the sequel game, with a linear story and player-controllable giant mecha battles. This is the one with the Demonbane that can summon infinite copies of itself.
  • Kishin Taidou Demonbane: "Embryonic Movements of the Machine God, Demonbane", the first prequel novel, set decades before the original game, focusing on Kouzou Hadou, Augusta Derleth (Ruri's mother), and Azrad, one of Al's past masters.
  • Gunshin Kyoushuu Demonbane: "Assault of the War God, Demonbane", the second prequel novel, continuing a few years after the first. This is the one with the infinitely-gigantic Demonbane.
  • Do Marini no Tokei Demonbane: "De Marigny's Clock, Demonbane", a Dr. West-centered interquel/prequel novel, telling of his life before coming to Arkham City, as well as dealing with the time-warping artifact known as De Marigny's Clock, one of Al's lost page sets, during the original visual novel's story.


Tropes employed in this series are:

  • Achey Scars: Sandalphon's face bleeds when he gets too upset about Leica.
  • Action Girl: Metatron and Elsa. Ruri later joins this trope in her route.
  • Affably Evil: Doctor West Until his Heel–Face Turn.
  • Alice Allusion: The entire incident with the Mirror of Nitocris.
  • All Webbed Up: In Atlach-Nacha's lair.
  • A Magic Contract Comes with a Kiss: How Al made the contract with Kurou.
  • Anachronism Stew: Even though the story took place in the 1930s according to the afterword of the novelization, the United States military somehow already has fighter jets, missiles, and nukes. Justified, since Demonbane takes place in an Alternate Timeline where alchemy was proven to exist and became an established branch of science.
  • And I Must Scream: Tiberius' final fate in Al's route. He's absorbed into the Shining Trapezohedron, forever trapped in a dimension of shrieking madness and suffering.
  • And Then What?: Sandalphon is asked what he intends to do after he defeats Metatron. He doesn't really have an answer.
  • Animal Motifs: The Tyrant acts like a cat and has hair like cat ears.
  • Anime Hair: Everyone, but Kurou stands out when in Magius Style.
  • The Antichrist: Master Therion, according to one of the trivia pages, translates to 666 in a magic system that assigns numerical values to letters, and he has a personality cult and vast magical ability..
  • Anti-Magic: Doctor West's Dig Me No Grave.
  • Ascended to a Higher Plane of Existence: In one ending, Kurou and Al become Elder Gods.
  • Attractive Bent-Gender: Kurou gets forced into drag at one point, and though we don't get to see it, even Doctor West found him hot.
  • Avenging the Villain:When Caligula is killed by Kurou, Claudius goes absolutely berserk.
  • Babies Ever After: The sequel plays with this, Kuzaku and Another Blood are Kuro and Al's children. However, both of them come from alternate futures.
  • Back-to-Back Badasses: Kurou and Winfield during the battle at Innsmouth. Elsa and Ruri do this in their route versus Claudius.
  • Badass Biker: Doctor West, Al, Metatron, Sandalphon and Kurou get their chances at being this.
    • Motorcycle Fu: Done by Metatron, Sandalphon and Doctor West on three separate occasions.
  • Badass Crew: Anticross is the evil version of this.
  • Badass Normal: Winfield. Stone and Ness get their moments as well.
    • In a weird mix of this trope and Brought Down to Badass, Demonbane becomes this in Al's route after her apparent death, forcing Elsa to take over. True, Demonbane can't use most of its attacks aside from its fists and Lemuria Impact, but it's still more than enough to take out at least one of the Anticross' Deus Machina.
  • Battle Butler: Winfield, who's a Homage to H. P. Lovecraft's father, Winfield Scott Lovecraft.
  • Beach Episode: Chapter 7 (The Shadow Over Innsmouth). The plot focusses on the gang staying at a Hadou beach resort in Innsmouth to investigate a dark magical presence. The chapter is mostly focussed on comic relief and fanservice, and even when Doctor West summons his destroyer robot from the ocean, it’s become too rusted to battle. Of course, this only lasts for the first half of the chapter, with the latter half becoming much darker when the group are forced to confront Dagon and Hydra.
  • Because You Were Nice to Me: Al falls in love with Kurou because he is not like her previous masters. Unlike them, he treats her as a human and more than that, as someone important. The souls of her previous masters admit that when they were working together in the past the various pairs shouldn't have treated each other like tools.
  • Been There, Shaped History: Demonbane and Liber Legis's final battle ends up causing the extinction of the dinosaurs.
  • BFS: The Shining Trapezohedron, which can supposedly cut through dimensions and seal gods. The Scimitar of Barzai also counts.
  • Bittersweet Ending: Almost all true and normal ending are this. This is especially true in Ruri's normal and good ending and Leica's true ending.
  • Blade Catch: When retrieving the independent Scimitar Of Barzai
  • Blood Knight: Half of Anticross consists of these.
  • Blush Sticker: Chibi-Al Azif and Sonia, the smallest of Ruri's maids.
  • Bondage Is Bad: With a name like "the Tyrant", y'think?
  • Bound and Gagged: Chiaki winds up like this a few times, albeit Played for Laughs.
  • Bridge Bunnies: Ruri's servants Makoto, Chiaki and Sonia.
  • Brought Down to Badass : In Al's route, she temporarily dies. While she's gone, Kurou is forced to fight without her. While his performance certainly suffers, he still ends up a rather competent fighter.
  • Butt-Monkey: Kurou does not have much luck with the women in his life. At all.
    • Doctor West is also one, especially if you count all the times he gets "beat the shit out of". In fact, his own creation (Elsa) falls for Kurou and treats her creator like crap, her programming be damned.
  • Calling Your Attacks: Some of this is justified due to spellcasting requiring incantations... but most of it is just Rule of Cool.
  • Canon: The visual novel has Multiple Endings. In the sequel, it turn out that most of them occur, with exception of the bad ending. This is possible because of time-loops and alternate timelines.
  • Captain Ersatz: Although there's no clean-cut equivalents and their membership numbers differ, the reputations of the Anticross's members and their overall role in the story is comparable to The Magnificent Ten. Master Therion's vague motives, overall character design, and level of power is also comparable to Big Fire himself.
  • Cerebus Syndrome: The story starts leaning towards the more Lovecraftian side of things once the character routes start.
  • Charles Atlas Superpower: Winfield is able to go toe-to-toe with an Anticross sorcerer by virtue of the fact that he's a master boxer. Apparently boxing in Demonbane can make you superhuman.
  • Chick Magnet: Kurou gets over half the women in the game to go googly eyed for him in one way or another. While being a Butt-Monkey at the same time.
  • Child Supplants Parent: Another Blood wants to replace her mom. To make it more complicate, she comes from an alternate future and thus is not really related to her parents in the present. And since she's a book like her mom, their genetic relationship is hard to judge; though it may just be that she takes more after her mom than her brother does or maybe only females can be grimoires.
  • Combat Tentacles: It's based on Lovecraft. Tentacles had to show up at some point. And given they are the limbs of Eldritch Abominations, they are very effective in combat. Cthulhu's tentacles in particular are stated to have sufficient power to One-Hit Kill Demonbane.
  • Compressed Adaptation: The 12-Episode Anime is basically a summarized version of Al's route as it left out a lot of content from the original visual novel to fit it into a short anime.
  • Conservation of Ninjutsu: You'd think that when the true, full-power Demonbane has the ability to summon every Demonbane that was, is, will be, wasn't, isn't, won't be and can't be to fight alongside it, this trope would be the first thing to come into effect. Thoroughly subverted, as having infinite Demonbanes makes it truly unstoppable.
  • Conveniently Empty Building: Even though Dr. West rampages through Arkham City with his giant robots and cause massive collateral damage all the time, he never seems to actually kill anybody, so he's Laughably Evil rather than just evil. Kurou even lampshades this by pointing out it's a real mystery how no one has been killed by the destructive fights he has with West.
    • Just to hammer home the point, this is completely subverted after he defects from Black Lodge as they put the C Project into action: countless innocents were killed by their Mass Production Type Destroyer Robots.
  • Cool Bike: Hunting Horror. A flying motorcycle with all the power of a Deus Machina.
  • Cool Old Guy: Every image we see of Ruri's grandfather points to him being this. Just look at those muscles, and that hair, and that pose! It's revealed in Ruri's route that "Hadou Kouzou" is actually Kurou, having taken up his identity after getting stuck in a Stable Time Loop.
  • Cosplay Otaku Girl: Al seems to like changing her outfit to be "theme appropriate" to her situation quite a bit.
  • Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Stone and Ness aren't as pathetic as they seem, as Tiberius finds out.
  • Curb-Stomp Battle:
    • All of the Anticross vs. Master Therion. On the other hand, his death was just the beginning.
    • Anyone who fights Kurou in the finale of Ruri's route, up until the very last one.
    • Anyone who is foolish enough to go up against the Tyrant. Except Master Therion, where the joke's on her.
    • Elder God Demonbane vs anything. Its Athleta Aeternum guarantees that, even in the exceedingly rare cases it can't overpower something itself, it can summon an infinite amount of help from other universes.
  • Cute and Psycho: The Tyrant. Or at least, she's cute beneath all the bondage gear.
  • Damsel in Distress: Metatron is taken captive to be a substitute C Priestess after the Tyrant is killed by Kurou.
  • Demoted to Extra: Despite being major characters, Metatron and Sandalphon are nowhere to be seen in anime adaption. Also Alison, who got a whole chapter of focus on her Character Development in the visual novel version only.
  • Depraved Bisexual: Tiberius, though his preference seems to slant towards women, has some creepy affectionate dialogue for Sandalphon.
  • Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Done rather spectacularly. Demonbane was specifically made for punching out Cthulhu and his buddies. Ironically, it becomes an Eldritch Abomination itself when it becomes an Elder God... but a benevolent one.
  • Did You Just Romance Cthulhu?: Al Azif is the spirit of the Necronomicon and is a romance option. The Big Bad has a similar attachment to his own grimoire, Etheldreda (aka The Pnakotic Manuscripts).
  • Dramatic Unmask: In Chapter 10 of Leica's route, Metatron's mask cracks apart and falls off her face, revealing a blue-haired Leica. The trope is inverted in the following chapter of the same route, when Ryuuga confronts her and then transforms into Sandalphon on the spot.
  • Dual Wielding / Guns Akimbo / Swords Akimbo: The Demonbane and Kurou when using Cthugha & Ithaqua, Kuzaku "Two-Sword"/"Two-Gun" and his Demonbane Two-Sword, and lest we forget Titus of Anticross, a four-armed sword wielding samurai.
  • Dumb Muscle: Caligula. His spellwork basically consists of punching things really hard.
  • Dying as Yourself: Subverted. Ryuuga dies insane and hating Leica. Or perhaps that was his true self and the boy Leica knew was just a lie. Due to rejecting the idea of dying sane or at peace, he does not reincarnate into the restructured world at the end of Leica's route.
  • Dying Curse: The last words of Sandalphon.
  • Eldritch Abomination: A few. The likes of Dagon and Hydra don't bother anyone too much but the likes of Cthulhu cause some major brain breaking at first. And then Yog-Sothoth itself is manifested and very nearly annihilates all life on Earth just from existing before taking on A Form You Are Comfortable With.
  • Eldritch Location: An entire section of the city has been sealed off for being one of these. Any normal person who enters would simply die instantly. The final battle also takes place in a succession of these, as Demonbane and Liber Legis get randomly teleported throughout all of time and space.
  • Ending Fatigue: In-universe version. In the prequel novel, Nyarlathotep got bored of the never-ending battle between Gunshin Kyoshuu Demonbane and Gunshin Kyoshuu Liber Legis (after watching it for many aeons, even attacks that destroy multiverses can be boring...). So she tweaked the timeline, kicking whole events of prequel out of canon (and erased those two from reality), resulting in one that of the Visual Novel.
  • Even Evil Has Standards
    • Most members of Anticross have contempt for Tiberius. Doctor West finds him to be an illogical abomination, and Sandalphon even resorts to Enemy Mine with Kurou to screw him over.
    • A few members of Black Lodge find excess violence rather distasteful. Titus will kill people far below his level if ordered to, but otherwise finds it pointlessly brutal. Doctor West also finds outright slaughter to be so unappealing that he defects after calling out all of Anticross at once and getting stabbed for his trouble.
  • Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: In Elder Gods ending, Nyarlathotep express its confusion at Kurou and Al as they continue to fight for humanity after ascend into Elder Gods. The narration make it clear that, to the Ancient Ones, there shouldn't be any good gods.
  • Evil Counterpart: Liber Legis is the ultimate evil to Demonbane's ultimate good and they have similar but opposite attacks. Metatron and Sandalphon also have this dynamic going on.
  • Evil Is Deathly Cold: Master Therion's Liber Legis' "Hyperborea Zero Drive" reduces its target's temperature to absolute zero. Also, Caligula's Kraken's main attack.
    • Ithaqua too, since all magic is technically "unholy".
  • Evil Twin
    • Doctor West's "Demonpain", which can do almost everything the original Demonbane can and is even powered by some of Al Azif's pages.
      • EXCEPT use the power of the pages. Can't mimic what you haven't seen, right?
    • Another Blood from the sequel visual novel is another one, being the Blood Edition of the Necronomicon. She describes herself as Kuzaku's opposite, counterbalancing his heroism with her evil.
  • Expresssive Idiot Hair: Doctor West, similar to Sumika.
  • Expy: Metatron and Sandalphon have a variant of the Blade and Evil dynamic.
  • Faceless Goons: The Black Lodge mooks.
  • Facial Markings: Half the people with Anime Hair, mostly those from Black Lodge.
  • Fate Worse than Death:
    • The bad ending, Kurou becomes Nyarlathotep's plaything. Trapped in a timeloop, he lives in the world that became an Eldritch Location after the destruction of Shining Trapezohedron. At the end of each loop, he will meet Al but never get a reunion with her.
    • In Al's route, they don't really bother trying to kill Tiberius. Instead, he gets sucked into the Shining Trapezeohedron. Al and Kurou couldn't see what was in there from where they were, but Tiberius certainly could. What he saw was enough to make the crazed, monstrous immortality freak actually beg for death instead of being sucked inside. Kurou simply points out that after all the horrors he perpetrated to become what he is now whatever is in there surely won't be enough to do put an end to him either.
  • Faux Affably Evil: Vespasianus. Sure, he's fairly erudite and disturbingly polite for an Anticross member, but his deeds and what he'll do to accomplish them reveal it's but a thin veneer over his Mad Scientist self.
  • Fille Fatale: Ennea. It isn't really clear if she's as young as she looks, but she does act very sexually aggressive at times.
  • Finishing Move: Lemuria Impact. All playable characters in ''Kishin Hishou'' has at least one finishing move.
  • The Gadfly: Ennea is quite fond of trolling Al.
  • Gag Penis: Kurou and Therion have inhumanly large members, to the point that they are almost impossible to take seriously. How the girls manage to take them in all the way to the hilt is... probably best not thought about. Fans like to speculate that it's indicative of their magical potential (with the backhanded implication that Doctor West has a tiny one due to using science over magic).
  • Genre Blind: Nero is indeed the most powerful among Anticross and has no problem fighting both Augustus and Vespasianus at same time. Too bad, she confronted them inside Cthulhu, surround by countless tentacles. Since Demonbane started as eroge, it doesn't matter how powerful she is. Then subverted later on when she kills Vespasianus in the blink of an eye and would've done the same to Augustus if it hadn't already been done for her.
  • Half-Human Hybrid: Therion is the child of the human Nero and the deity Yog Sothoth.
  • Half the Man He Used to Be: Claudius has to be cut in half before he finally dies. And then he comes back as a zombie.
  • Hair Color Dissonance: Al's light pink hair is referred to as silver.
  • Hair-Trigger Temper: Claudius. He has two speeds: about to be pissed off, and pure, screaming rage.
  • Healing Factor: The strongest Deus Machinas have a self repair module and the Tyrant is also capable of a great deal of self healing.
  • Heel–Face Turn: Doctor West and Elsa.
    • In the sequel, Master Therion and Etheldreda. As well as Another Blood.
  • Hero Insurance: Everything's paid for by the Hadou Financial Group, though that doesn't stop Kurou from worrying about all the damage done in the fights.
  • Heroic BSoD: Kurou has one after he fail to save Ennea. He temporarily recovers after Al slaps some sense into him. Too bad, because he soon faces another one after Al's death, and is nearly Driven to Suicide until Winfield puts an end to that.
  • Henshin Hero: Metatron, one of the Black Lodge's many enemies. She's Leica.
  • Hihi'irokane: Demonbane's armor is made of this, which is nearly impervious to non-magical attacks. Unfortunately, since all of its most powerful enemies are magic-based, this almost never comes into play.
  • Homoerotic Subtext: Between Doctor West and Kurou, thanks to a misunderstanding on the part of the former. Neither one is happy.
  • Hot-Blooded Sideburns: It'd be easier listing everyone who doesn't have them. Seeing how this is a Super Robot game at its very core, anything less would be preposterous.
  • Humongous Mecha: The Deus Machina and Doctor West's Destroyer Robots.
    • In the prequel novel, Demonbane appears as the "Gunshin Kyoshuu Demonbane" (War God Demonbane), particularly notable for being the largest mecha in fiction, even larger than the Super Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. It grows so large that it pops the universe it's in, and accidentally destroys other universes by brushing against them. Of course, its Arch-Enemy "Gunshin Kyoshuu Liber Legis" (War God Liber Legis) is just as gigantic and powerful.
  • Hypocritical Humor: Tiberius crying rape when Al tries to remove De Vermis Mysteriis from him.
  • If I Can't Have You…: Sandalphon isn't crazy because Leica killed him once. No, he was always crazy and a yandere for her and thus he simply can't accept a Leica who wasn't his big sister.
  • Immortality
    • Tiberius' grimoire makes him immortal and undead.
    • Vespasianus can revive up to three times by sacrificing one of his familiars.
    • The Outer Gods are suggested to be impossible to ever kill, even by Elder God Demonbane. Azathoth certainly is, considering the multiverse is its dream, and Yog-Sothoth being space-time itself means that its death would mean the end of the universe. Nyarlathotep actually can be killed, but only temporarily: there are an infinite number of universes out there and Nyarlathotep exists in all of them... it can always come back.
  • Immortality Inducer: Tiberius' grimoire makes him absolutely unkillable so long as it is unharmed. As a side effect, he is a perpetually rotting corpse.
  • Improbable Weapon User: Perhaps in Homage to Desperado, Doctor West arms himself with a guitar case with a built-in rocket launcher, which he shoots in the same way as that guy from Desperado.
  • Incest Subtext: Ruri, in regards to her grandfather. Her grandfather is the most important person in her life and it turns out that the man she falls in love with, Kurou (or at least an alternate version of him), is actually her grandfather via adoption. Even though she's not biologically related to her grandfather, the reasons why she fell for Kurou are very much the same reasons she admired her grandfather.
  • Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: Doctor West, until he pulls a Heel–Face Turn.
  • Insufferable Genius: Both Doctor West and Master Therion, as much as they might irritate most of the cast, are genuine masters of their fields.
  • Ironic Echo: A rare example that's played for laughs. During Kurou's first fight with Master Therion, when he tried to destroy Leica's church in an attempt to get Kurou to show his full power, Kurou described him as an inhuman demon without a shred of ethics, who genuinely enjoys torturing people from the bottom of his heart, like a child tearing the wings off of a butterfly... Several chapters later, he applies the exact same description to a drunken Ruri.
  • Lampshade Hanging: Kurou just loves hanging lampshades on Super Robot cliches as they show up in-story. Notable ones include Demonbane having head-mounted vulcans and Elsa having "-robo" as a Verbal Tic.
  • Large Ham: Doctor West THE GREAT! GENIUS! OF THE CENTURY! *guitar riff*
  • Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Nya loves comparing the plot to a stage play, even pointing out the different "parts" each character is playing in the overall story. The second game in particular goes nuts with this idea, explicitly calling each universe/timeline to a "story" created by the emotions and actions of the people living in it.
  • Leitmotif: Most of the major characters have one.
  • Let's Get Dangerous!: The invasion of the Hadou shelters after Big C is repulsed on several fronts by the combined effort of many supporting characters.
  • Little Miss Badass: Al and Etheldreda.
  • Living Macguffin: Nero is needed for the C Project.
  • Louis Cypher: If a rather creepy character going by the name of Nya in a Lovecraft story doesn't set off any alarm bells something may be wrong.
  • Lovecraft Country: Set in Lovecraft's fictional city of Arkham.
  • Lovecraftian Superpower: Tiberius' rather low combat abilities are based around him using his decaying body parts as weapons, such as making spears of his ribs or using his intestines as tentacles.
  • Lovecraft Lite: Despite the overtones of terror and despair that come with being a Cthulhu Mythos spin-off, this is still a Super Robot story, wherein The Power of Love and being Hot-Blooded can defeat even the Outer Gods.
  • Made of Plasticine: People tend to blow up rather easily.
  • Mad Scientist: Doctor West. Vespasianus is a little more low-key in his madness but still qualifies, once you learn exactly what he did with the Moonchild Project.
  • Magic Skirt: Compare the CG's of the PC version and the PS2 adaption. Al still wears the same costume, and makes the same poses, but the PS2 version no longer has the panty shots.
  • Mecha Expansion Pack: Shantak, which allows Demonbane to fly.
  • MegaCorp: The Hadou Group.
  • Medium Awareness: Kurou and Doctor West often lampshade H-Game tropes in their Genre Savvy moments.
  • Mega Manning: If something belongs inside her pages, Al can use its ability once she's subdued it. Kurou also gains the support of Cthugha and Ithaqua after managing to force the pair into submission. Not that he can ever admit how he managed to do it.
  • Militaries Are Useless: The United States army is completely helpless against Black Lodge's mass production Destroyer Robot army.
    • The US President eventually decided to nuke Cthulhu, despite the fact that it's above an American city. The missile ended up disintegrated before it could even detonate. And the cabinet ends up slaughtered by what's implied to be the Hounds of Tindalos.
    • Zigzagged with the battle of R'lyeh. While the navies of the world got curbstomped by the various Great Old Ones at first, they were eventually able to hold their own with the help of the Hadou Group private fleet.
  • Mind Screw: Al's Bad Ending. Seriously.
    • One of the ultimate powers of the Shining Trapezohedron, which is to summon every Demonbane "that ever existed, could exist, never could exist, and never existed." Don't try to think about that one too hard.
  • Moe Anthropomorphism:
    • The strongest grimoires have their own souls and can manifest themselves as young looking girls. We see the Necronomicon, the R'lyeh test, the Pnakoptic Manuskripts and the spirit of the Nameless One.
    • Seen through the lens of the Neconomicon and filtered through Al's personality, cosmic horrors also become cute girls. Namely, Atlach-Nacha, Cthugha and Ithaqua.
  • Murder the Hypotenuse: Sandalphon wants to do this as well as If I Can't Have You…. He's pretty messed up.
  • Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Titus, as well as his Deus Machina, has four arms.
  • Necromancer: Tiberius can and will raise the dead including other Anticross members, who retain their abilities.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Near the end Kurou manages to find a way to beat Nero without killing her. Sadly all this accomplishes is to allow Master Therion to be reborn.
  • Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: The Super West Invincible Robot Type-28 Special(s). It is/they are a varied robot series, always rebuilt and modified whenever it gets destroyed. It's usually a barrel-like thing with drills (capable of being launched), cannons, guns, missiles, lasers, etc.
  • Not So Invincible After All: Tiberius boasting how he's unkillable. You will hear him scream with fear against Shining Trapezohedron.
  • Nuclear Weapons Taboo: Averted. The US Government is willing to destroy Cthulhu at any cost. Too bad Master Therion literally rides the nuke into Cthulhu and disintegrates it.
  • The Ojou: Ruri Hadou embodies this to the point that Kurou constantly refers to her as "the princess".
  • One-Man Army: Almost every magically empowered character.
  • Only Sane Man: Crossed with Irony and Played for Laughs. Despite the Lovecraftian premise, the sillier moments of the game have Kurou bemoaning he seems to be the only one with a constantly level head.
  • Papa Wolf: Harm anyone close to Kurou... or even just threaten to harm them, and he will have your head. In Tiberius' case, he settled for nothing less than a Fate Worse than Death (though you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn't think Tiberius deserved that). So you can imagine what awaits Nyarlathotep when Elder God Kurou finds out that the Crawling Chaos has been tormenting his son, with an Elder God Al Azif as his counterpart Mama Bear. They hit the Outer God with an infinite number of simultaneous Lemuria Impacts, completely annihilating every trace of its existence in that universe.
  • Perpetual Poverty: Kurou is so poor that he considers putting jam on toast and instant coffee to be living it up. He actually cries Manly Tears when Ruri offers to employ him. Averted in Ruri's routes where he becomes rich either by going back in time and becoming Kouzou Hadou and creating the Hadou fortune or by presumably marrying Ruri.
  • Person of Mass Destruction: Every fighting character.
  • Power Dyes Your Hair: Kurou's hair turns white when in Magius Style. The blond Leica's hair also turns white when she activates her cyborg bits.
  • Power Makes Your Hair Grow: Their hair also grows to waist length or longer.
  • Powers as Programs: Spells are described this way: to cast a spell, the sorceror/grimoire/abomination imposes a new law on reality, which they can then activate as they please to achieve an effect. Of course, sorcerors are able to decode and un-write each other's spells as well, so this isn't quite as unbalanced as it sounds.
  • Power Limiter: Using Demonbane's Lemuria Impact requires the Naascal Code. On the plus side, it doesn't drain any energy.
  • Pragmatic Adaptation: Demonbane's animated ending is entirely original, made exclusively for the TV series. While it appears to take after Al's good ending, instead of having her drift through space for eons, the Elder Gods Kurou and Al-Azif (from Al's true ending) rescue her and bring her back to Arkham City. The superior quality of the ending is attributed to the fact the animation staff enlisted the aid of the original work's staff for the final episode.
  • Punch-Clock Villain: Doctor West. He's actually pretty affable when off-duty.
  • Quirky Miniboss Squad: Anticross, all of whom are named after Roman Emperors.
  • Rasputinian Death: Many of the Anticross members go out this way:
    • Caligula takes a bullet or shrapnel to the eye, has an arm blown off and recovers before having to be outright exploded before dying.
    • Claudius gets his hand blown off, then is basically opened up from one shoulder to the opposite hip and has his intestines blown out before getting chopped in half.
    • Tiberius, due to his immortality, can only due this way.
  • Really 700 Years Old: Al Azif and Etheldreda, who both count their ages in thousands of years.
    • And then there's Nya, who's actually an avatar of Nyarlathotep, an ageless Outer God.
  • The Rival: Titus to Winfield. Sandalphon takes this trope to extreme, and only joins in on operations if he'll get to fight Metatron.
  • Ret-Gone: After Master Therion's defeat, he is retroactively erased from history, and since he created the Black Lodge, it also ceased to exist (though Doctor West, being Doctor West, is still wrecking the city with Giant Robots). Considering how much damage Black Lodge did to the world in the final chapters, (killing the US President and the entire Cabinet, wiping out the entire First United States Army, and sinking much of the world's combined navy, among many others) this is definitely for the best.
  • The Reveal:
    • At the end of Chapter 10 in Leica's route, Metatron is revealed to be a transformed, blue-haired Leica.
    • At the end of Ruri's route, we see Kurou, after getting defeated by Therion and left stranded in the past, meeting a dying Hadou Kouzou, and taking up his identity, thus becoming Ruri's grandfather through a Stable Time Loop.
  • Robot Girl: Elsa, who bypasses Do Androids Dream? by acting very human and quickly gets a crush on Kurou.
  • Rocket Punch: Kraken's wire-arms.
  • Rule of Cool: All magic in the Demonbane universe functions according to this principle. Look no further than Cthugha and Ithaqua: Great Old Ones turned into firearms.
  • Sanity Meter: Kurou makes reference to this trope during the Beach Episode.
  • Screw Destiny: Therion and Nya talk a lot about being trapped in the "Wheel of Fate" and act like everything is predetermined. Kurou is the one fighting against that idea. Everything seems predetermined only because Nyarlathotep is time-looping the universe, and it's gone through who-knows-how-many iterations by this point, so Therion and Nya (and to a lesser extent, Nero) all know what's going to happen because they've seen it happen before.
  • Screw Yourself: Kuzaku and Another Blood, even official art potray them in questionable manner. This is mostly Another Blood's fault, as she does act very sexually towards anyone she comes into close contact with. It appears that she doesn't really understand the difference between romantic love (of which sexuality is an aspect) and other forms of love.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: The true nature of Shining Trapezohedron is a sealed universe that imprison Outer Gods like Azathoth and Shub-Niggurath.
  • Sealed with a Kiss: Al's route and the anime based on it conclude with Kurou and Al sharing a kiss upon their reunion in the world without Black Lodge.
  • Self-Censored Release: The PS2 version, which removes the sex scenes.
  • Serial Escalation: Elder God Demonbane's Athleta Aeternum ability can summon countless variants of itself from the multiverse. And not just those exist in the multiverse, it can summon those that shouldn't exist as well.
  • Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Kurou went through much trouble just to save Ennea. Only for her to die in Master Therion's revival.
  • Shout-Out: A very long list.
  • Shrinking Violet: Alison. The Mirror of Nitocris incident is mostly about her learning to open up a little towards others.
  • Sliding Scale of Comedy and Horror: It blends tropes from Humongous Mecha (and eroge in the original visual novel), with Lovecraftian horror, often lampshading elements of the former two.
  • Smug Snake: Augustus. Sure he's a smart and high-functioning villain, but in the end he allowed his arrogance to override his common sense. Vespasianus is one as well.
  • Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome: In Kishin Hishou, Al seem to be slighly older, borderline between young teen and little girl. Keep in mind that she's Really 700 Years Old and still look the same in the end of first game.
  • Spanner in the Works: In the sequel, if Doctor West manages to somehow defeat Another Blood in their first battle, Nyarlathotep basically goes "Well... um, I have no idea what to do in this case. Uh, here's some random comedic epilogues, choose which one you like best!"
  • Stable Time Loop: As revealed in Ruri's route: Kurou is stranded in the past with Demonbane after his battle with Master Therion and losing Al. He receives a map to gold veins from a dying Hadou Kozou and takes up his identity. He founds Arkham City on the location of the gold, takes care of the son of Kozou's wife and later Ruri (as her "Grandfather"), and arranges for Kurou to be received into the Miskatonic University and sets into motion Kurou's story (including meeting up with Al, acquiring Demonbane, etc). He then dies afterward at the hands of Master Therion. The cycle is broken in the true ends of each of the heroine's routes.
    • Another part of the loops is Master Therion being born from Nero, fights Demonbane and wins, time travels to the past to start the Black Lodge, then gets betrayed and killed by the Anticross before being born from Nero again. Both him and Nero have been trying to break the loop to no avail.
  • The Starscream: Augustus arranges a coup to overthrow Therion late in the story, and Vespasianus tries to overtake Augustus following this. It gets them both killed.
  • Super Prototype: Two examples.
    • The Super West Invincible Robot Type-28 Special(s) maybe weak when compared to Deus Machina, but at least it can withstand Demonbane's head vulcan guns. One of the mass production Destroyer Robot even got disabled by Winfield on foot in Ruri's route.
    • The sequel reveal that Claudius's Celaeno Fragments is just a copy of Laban Shrewsbury's, which also has girl form call Hazuki. Similar to his Deus Machina, the Lord Byakhee maybe fast, but it still can't compare to Shrewsbury's Ambrose.
  • Super Robot: The Deus Machina are literally "Machine Gods". Most of them are pure magic, but Demonbane is unique: it's a blend of machinery and magic.
  • Suspiciously Specific Denial: Al isn't jealous of Ennea at all. Nope. She just senses doom from her.
  • Team Pet: Dunsany the Shoggoth.
  • Temporal Paradox: Demonbane's origin was an object loop paradox. Supposedly, it was created by Ruri's grandfather Kouzou Hadou. However, it was revealed in Ruri's route that Kouzou Hadou was actually Kurou, who crashed in the past in the heavily damaged Demonbane. Since all he did was repair the Demonbane, nobody actually created it.
    • The same goes for Al's origin. Following the final battle with Master Therion, she travelled back in time to the age of Abdul Alhazred and told him about the entire text of the Necronomicon, essentially creating herself.
    • In Al's normal end, Al and Kurou were left drifting in space, but eventually encounter two unknown figures, who send them back to ancient Earth, which was ruled by the Great Old Ones. They fought the Great Old Ones for untold ages, eventually becoming Elder Gods and reclaiming the planet for its inhabitants. It was implied that the mysterious figures who sent them back were their future, Elder God selves.
  • Thanatos Gambit: Nero tries this near the end. Specifically she tries to force Kurou to kill her with the Shining Trapezohedron so that Master Therion won't be reborn and Nyarlathotep's plan will be ruined permanently. Unfortunately Kurou turns out to be powerful enough to stop her without killing her.
  • Theme Naming: The Anti-Cross are named after Roman emperors. Al's route reveals that Master Therion bears one too: Domitian.
  • Throwing Your Sword Always Works: The Scimitar of Barzai functions as a boomerang when thrown.
  • Token Evil Teammate:
    • In Al's route, the Tyrant helps Kurou out pretty frequently, both out of interest/attachment and because she hates Anticross for her own reasons.
    • After his Heel–Face Turn, Doctor West is treated as this.
  • Token Good Teammate: On the other hand, the reason that Anticross views her as a traitor isn't really because she's cruel and violent but rather because she was trying to stop them.
  • Token Mini-Moe: Al Azif and Etheldreda, both of whom are also Tomes Of Eldritch Lore.
    • Ennea also counts.
  • Tome of Eldritch Lore: As noted above, the original copy of each grimoire appear as a young girl instead of a book. The artist actually has design human version of every tomes used by Anticross as well, but none of them appear in storynote . Considering how much of a sick fuck some of the Anticross members (most notably Tiberius) are, though, it's probably a good thing they never showed up in the game.
  • Tsundere: Evidently Al, but the visual novel expands this to Ruri in her individual character route.
  • Two Guys and a Girl: Odd variant here. Nya seems to like trying to seduce Kurou and Master Therion, depending on her whim, and even though the latter party is aware of this, the usual jealousy one would expect is absent.
  • Tyke-Bomb: Metatron, Sandalphon and the Tyrant, though rather than being their primary purpose it's a useful (or rather annoying, depending on one's point of view) side effect.
  • Unknown Rival: Doctor West is convinced that he's Kurou's rival, but Kurou just thinks of him as a pest.
  • Verbal Tic: Elsa's "-robo" is what convinces Kurou that she really is a robot, apparently.
  • Villainous Crush: To quote Nyarlathotep in Elder Gods ending, "Then I shall answer you with unforgiving hate, and unrelenting love!".
  • Vitriolic Best Buds: Caligula and Claudius act like they want to kill each other. After Caligula dies, all Claudius gives a damn about is avenging his death.
  • Wham Episode:
    • While Chapter 1 has Demonbane wiping the floor with the Destroyer Robot, withstanding everything the latter throws at it, Chapter 2 immediately establishes that Demonbane is anything but invincible. Master Therion takes on Demonbane by himself (without the use of his own Deus Machina) and wins.
    • Chapter 10 (Big "C"), the final chapter of the common route. The C Plan - Black Lodge’s plan to summon Cthulhu in the Illusory Heart Mother - is put into action as the base appears for the first time and directly attacks Arkham with hundreds of Destroyer Robots. Therion and Kurou battle again, but the big twist comes when all six members of the Anticross rebel against Therion and kill him, destroying Liber Legis before turning on Demonbane. Augustus stabs Doctor West in the abdomen and Elsa escapes with him, planning to ask for Kurou's help. What happens next varies from route to route: in Leica's route, Demonbane is destroyed entirely and Leica herself is revealed to be Metatron, in Ruri's route, Demonbane survives but Kurou is completely incapacitated in the process, and in Al's route, Al dies saving Demonbane and Kurou.
    • And yet again when Nero is defeated. Nobody, not even the main characters, saw that coming.
  • What the Hell, Hero?: Given by Metatron to Kurou, regarding his being a Person of Mass Destruction predilections not being good for the health of the city in the long term.
  • World of Badass: Excepting faceless civilians, everyone is this. Hell, even Stone and Ness qualify as badass, if for no other reason than the ability to survive the kind of stuff that would kill anyone else more times than one can count, even when they are at ground zero for a lethal attack!
  • World's Strongest Man: The Tyrant is the strongest sorceress on Earth. Therion was conceived from her.
  • Worthy Opponent: Titus and Winfield consider each other such.
  • Wrong Genre Savvy: Nya seems to think this is a Cosmic Horror Story, in which the heroes are destined to lose without accomplishing anything significant, and fails to realize that it's in a Super Robot story, where Hot Blood and being determined trump everything.
  • Yandere: Ryuuga aka Sandalphon.
  • You Can't Fight Fate: In Metatron's route, Nero attempted to break the time loop by intentionally provoking Kurou into killing her, only for Therion and Nya to show up and taunt her as she lay dying. After Therion finished her off, Nya completely broke her by telling that she changed nothing, and that the exact same thing has happened 33 times already.
  • You Don't Look Like You: The artist took very deliberate interpretion on Great Old Ones appearance. Atlach-Nacha is a Giant Spider with human torso in place of its head. Cthugha has beast-like body in the middle of massive fireball. Ithaqua first seen as glowing red eyes in the mid of violent storm (Death Walker as called in Call of Cthulhu) but is truly a massive dragon.
  • You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: In Leica's route Vespasianus decides he needs Leica to be the new C Priestess and thus tries pulling this one Sandalphon.

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