Above is the video version of this review with full voiceover and editing. Considering the length, I thought it best to start doing these reviews in an audiovisual format for increased accessibility as a ton of text can sometimes be difficult to read. Below is the full script if you'd like to read it as a text review.
INTRO
Picture this. It’s October, 2022. You’re on Youtube, scrolling through recommended videos in hopes of finding new music. An intriguing thumbnail catches your eye. The art is beautiful, somber but lightened by the neon paint splattering the man’s clothes and surroundings. His smile is inviting and knowing. You listen and, following the word OP in the title, seek out the original video.
It’s jazzy, sensual, but, most of all, intriguing. The uploader is a familiar name, one you haven’t thought about since playing Dramatical Murder way back in 2015: Nitro Plus.
This was my first encounter with Slow Damage and it left a stark impression. I scoured the net for information on the game and followed Jast Blue’s updates on Twitter. As I awaited the release date, I was blessed to quickly be given something concrete. On November 14th, midnight, I bought and booted up Slow Damage, unsure of exactly what to expect, but curious about the art and music I’d investigated over the past months.
I expected a game that would be entertaining, full of problems, but ultimately a good time. I didn’t expect Slow Damage to touch my soul during one of the most difficult times of my life. I didn’t expect a heartfelt narrative about trauma, the ways a person can cope with it, and the way mental and physical scars can hurt long after they’re inflicted.
Slow Damage is a visual novel developed by Nitro+Chiral, most famously the developers of Dramatical Murder. Slow Damage had a prolonged development process but was finally released in Japanese in February, 2021, nearly 9 years after their previous game. The English release followed a year later in November.
It centers on Towa, a young man with a dark past and a single hobby: painting. His artist name is euphoria, representative of how he uncovers the desires of those he paints through euphoric episodes. Throughout the game the player gets to know Rei and Taku, Towa’s childhood friend and primary physician, respectively. Steadily they’ll also uncover the history of an old lover, Madarame, and a new man, Fujieda, who seems mysteriously connected to Towa. The game is set in the relative near future, roughly 40-60 years from our modern day, in a micronation known as Shinkomi. Governed by the yakuza, the Takasato-gumi, Shinkomi’s economy is boosted by tourism and thrills. People travel from Japan to experience the excitement of casinos, the red light district, and indulge in illegal activities in Shinkomi’s underbelly. Beneath the exciting veneer, secrets and ghosts from the past lurk.
Before I dive into the review, Slow Damage is a heavy game. This first section of the review is free of major spoilers and will largely discuss the art, mechanics, and characters without delving into upsetting material. However, later I’ll be discussing subjects such as abuse, pedophilia, child trafficking, suicide, rape, homophobia, transphobia, and self harm in some detail. Slow Damage is a beautiful game and Nitro+Chiral’s best visual novel to date. It is not for the faint of heart. If you don’t feel equipped to handle the topics of it, there’s no shame in backing out and playing another VN that’s lighter.
Additionally, the game may pose a risk for those with photosensitive epilepsy. I won’t be showing any footage of it here, but the skip function of the game involves quick, flashing images as it speeds through the game. It makes it convenient to replay or get back to a section where you missed something, but it also is a mechanic that is hard on the eyes.
Without further ado, let’s get started.
MECHANICS
Slow Damage’s mechanics are unique and interesting in comparison to other Nitro+Chiral games. It forgoes an AB choice system and instead has the player complete interrogations to determine whether they get a Euphoria or Mad ending. As a system, it’s great for putting the player into Towa’s mindset and making them feel immersed in the world. Towa’s hobby is to uncover the dark desires of others and paint the moments when they finally experience them for the first time. Players have to follow this mindset to succeed with interrogations. They need to come to understand the characters and what makes them tick by carefully paying attention to their psychology over the course of a chapter. By carefully balancing Euphoria and Madness during interrogations, players lead the characters into an ending where they understand and conquer their desires or are driven too far into the pain of their flaws and pasts.
At times this system could be kind of difficult if I didn’t have a good read on the character. On my first playthrough I found myself floundering through some interrogations, unsure of how to proceed. I’d get stuck on repeated Mad ends but I generally didn’t get outright game overs. If the player experiences a game over three times in a row, the game will offer to turn down the difficulty. This is helpful for those who struggle more with the system. The difficulty can be further circumvented through save scumming. By saving before each response, the player can see how it affects the interrogation and proceed through trial and error. As such, misunderstanding the system doesn’t get in the way of game progress. There are a variety of options, including guides, which can make it easier. But it does break immersion and shows the disadvantage of this more experimental choice system.
My biggest complaint about the interrogation system is actually the lack of voice acting. Interrogations come at a point when the characters are at their most emotional. They can no longer hold back from expressing their pain and desires. The music swells with dramatic vocals that compliment the tension and importance of the situation. Towa ripping through the scars and uncovering a desire is given dramatic animation and sound effects. Yet every time the characters speak, they’re completely silent. I’m not sure why this choice was made. The game is incredibly long with a lot of voice lines as it stands. It wouldn’t be too much to add voice acting here. This is a moderate complaint as it doesn’t outright ruin interrogations but it does lessen their impact somewhat and stands out as an absence.
Supporting the interrogation system is the exploration system. As Towa, players can wander through Shinkomi, meeting other characters and gathering inspiration which can be later used during interrogations. Like interrogations, exploration is a great form of immersion. As the player unlocks new areas they get a feel for the characters within the world, their hobbies, and the spots they hang around. A map of Shinkomi on the side during exploration helps give the player a sense of the city’s size and locations in relation to each other.
On my first playthrough I found explorations to be genuinely very immersive and a nice break from large chunks of purely reading. They offered interactivity and gave me a chance to see more of the world the game works so hard to build up. But, due to their repetition and simplicity, they can be a drag on repeat playthroughs.
The system is ultimately a net positive, but the explorations are noticeably dull the longer you play. Gathering inspiration is simple with straightforward clues indicating what a character is likely to want. Occasionally it may be unclear but, like interrogations, saving and reloading helps this issue.
Interrogations and explorations also make it very easy to miss something for players who aim for 100% completion. If a player misses one piece of inspiration, doesn't watch all the way through the credits on an ending, or misses that an ending exists in a section entirely, it can take some time to clean it up. Even after playing all of Slow Damage literally six times, I still had to spend thirty minutes fast forwarding through the game and searching for the one credit sequence I missed to get the 100% CG. This isn’t something that ruins the experience but I think it does indicate the ways these systems can at times make the game somewhat esoteric.
Interrogations and explorations are in some sense double edge swords. At their best they’re immersive and bring the player into the world and mindset of Towa himself. At their worst they’re unclear and repetitive with their requirements of the player’s time making failure and repeat playthroughs more of a chore. Ultimately I came down with a positive opinion, loving the first few playthroughs where I got to see these systems at their best even if their flaws became more apparent the longer I played.
ART
One of the most striking things, what drew me to Slow Damage on a superficial level, is its art style. The production values on display for Slow Damage’s art are truly impressive. It fits the tone of the game wonderfully, tending towards a darker palette of grays, greens, purples, and blues with shocking hints of bright pink and red.
The character designs, though simple, convey much about characters’ personalities through body language and expressions. Rei’s sunny smile, undercut, and piercings hint towards his positive outlook on life and interest in body art. Taku’s tired and somewhat stern expression reveals his tendency to worry and his fond exasperation for Towa and Rei. Madarame’s tattoos, peeking from beneath his shirt, intrigue the player and make clear his yakuza connections. His confident stance and smug smile make it clear the type of man he is. Fujieda is intentionally misleading, appearing dull and proper with his perfectly groomed appearance. Then, there’s Towa himself. The very first look at him the player gets shows his scars on full display. In combination with his messy hair, tired expression, and smoking, it’s clear he’s not mindful of his health. What exactly gave him those scars? How do they connect with the knowledge we have of his art? It creates simultaneous intrigue and apprehension.
I could say much more for each of the side characters too. Point being, each one has a great design that, even in simple clothing, serves to identify much of a character’s traits and hint the player towards who they are.
Individual CGs are gorgeous too. For one thing, there’s a lot of them. The background CGs do a lot in helping to establish Shinkomi. The player is introduced to it as a place that is dangerous, dirty, and individualistic. It’s those qualities that make it both good and bad. This is reflected in the art. The backgrounds show off bars drawing eclectic clientele, brothels, and busy business districts. The player sees how the glamor of casinos covers up the dirt of its alleyways, how beautiful buildings give way to a dangerous underbelly. The world would not be nearly as impactful as it is if not for the spectacular artwork showing it with detailed realism.
The CGs of the characters too are lovely. Though stylized, they have a tinge of realism to them. Soft shadows and variations in color combine with dramatic lighting that fits in perfectly with the environments around them. The detail and technical skill does a lot to bolster already romantic, tense, or high-impact moments within the story. It’s helped a lot by the fact that, just like the sprites, the CGs have a wide number of variations.
The art style’s prowess extends into the UI design. Players are dropped into Towa’s atelier at the start of the game and begin chapters with the first stroke of paint to his easel. When pausing, saving, changing settings, or looking through extras, each menu is contextualized as a part of Towa’s atelier. The game is accessed from his TV, saves from a photo album, and the settings are scattered among his art supplies. It’s unique and gives the player a feeling of inhabiting the world. As the story progresses, the UI and atelier changes, giving clues into Towa’s mental state and the player’s progress throughout the game. Critically, despite the UI being flashy, I never found it to cut into my user experience or difficult to navigate.
The art style is unified, each part of the character designs, sprite work, CGs, and UI coming together to create something greater than the sum of its parts. Every individual element is strong but altogether they give Slow Damage a unique and detailed visual identity. Nitro+Chiral is well known for their art but they’ve really outdone themselves with this most recent entry.
MUSIC
Just like the art, the music of Slow Damage is incredible. There’s a total of 52 tracks, not counting OPs and EDs. For tracks that are commonly repeated, there’s enough of them to prevent them from getting annoying or repetitive, a pretty impressive feat considering the runtime of the game at 40-60 hours of play. There’s also a good variety of one-off tracks that only play during certain scenes or especially pivotal story moments.
Like the art, the music helps to bolster the worldbuilding. The various district themes heard during exploration give them a musical identity alongside a visual one. District A, a rundown area that’s a shadow of its former self, is characterized by a track that is pure drums. It’s very stripped back compared to other districts. Musically it matches District A’s lack of life and glamor compared to the rest of Shinkomi. Choosing for it to only be drums was an excellent choice as it also helps represent the fighting spirit of District A, the area where people looking to vent steam participate in fights known as Deathmatches.
District B, on the other hand, is an exciting jazz track with trumpets and saxophones leading the melody. As the district contains many of Shinkomi’s casinos and entertainment, it’s a perfect fit for the high stakes nightlife that draws people to Shinkomi. Percussion is used heavily in this track too, linking the musical identity of District B to District A. It’s a great detail as District A was once a center of Shinkomi’s nightlife before falling into its current day decay. In conjunction the tracks give some hint as to what District A was like during its peak.
District C is an area containing various office buildings and upper-class housing. It’s a sparse track, identified by spacious, off kilter sounds against a leading piano. It’s quite melancholy and fits beautifully with the nighttime CG of Hagoita street. The music is representative of the isolation of this area, sparsely populated at night compared to the busier entertainment districts.
District D is the center of daily life for Shinkomi, containing backstreets, bars, and the red light district. It retains the leading brass section like in District B but is a little more laid back, representing the slightly more lowkey excitement to be found there. Vocals buried under the track and record scratches give the track a more casual identity. While tourists flock to District B, this is the home of entertainment for locals.
Finally, there’s District E. With its guitar, woodwind, and wide percussion it’s perhaps the most unique of all the tracks here. It almost wouldn’t be out of place in the Lamento soundtrack, reflecting a more natural and less developed area than the rest of Shinkomi. Later the track breaks down into a somewhat tense section, pared down with a droning synth that contrasts with the rest of the track. District E is a slightly less busy area of Shinkomi, home to clinics, cheaper residential buildings, and small businesses. It doesn’t lack the identity of the other tracks entirely through its use of brass instruments, but it shows that District E is a more personal area separated from the hustle and bustle of the rest of Shinkomi.
Other standout tracks are the jazzy, relaxed Daybreak which retains a bit of sensuality from the OP theme, il. Let’s Talk, Teasing, and Desire are tracks which play during the interrogation scenes, each building in complexity and drama over the last track. They serve as excellent backdrops to the interrogations and help raise the stakes and tension.
The musical motif of Nightmare is included throughout a variety of tracks. Its name alone already makes it clear the significance it holds but this is further bolstered by the variant Day to Day which plays during Towa’s nightmares. Nightmare associates its repeated music box melody and vocals with the mystery of Towa’s past. It goes through wonderful development throughout the game and is used in several other songs. Unfortunately I can’t say too much without spoiling some amazing plot and character development. This is the strongest instance of the game using a motif and it’s developed wonderfully in time with the narrative itself. It’s a real treat and worth listening out for while playing.
I would be remiss not to say something about the OP and ED themes too, of course. The opening, il, is absolutely wonderful and is a great tone setter for the way Slow Damage balances stress, sensuality, and excitement. The generic ending theme, Comedie, fits right at home with the other jazzy tracks present in Slow Damage. It’s especially reminiscent of the District D theme, containing a similar identity of backing vocals and scratches. Players will be hearing it a lot as it backs credits which require a watch through for game completion. Despite that, I never found it getting old. The other OPs and EDs I can’t discuss in detail without getting into spoilers. But I can say that each pair displays a unique musical identity representative of each love interest and their psychological state.
To put it simply, the music of Slow Damage is amazing. I don’t know if it’s my favorite Nitro+Chiral soundtrack of all but it’s pretty high up there! Tracks never feel out of place and always serve to increase emotion and interest throughout play. It’s truly amazing work.
CHARACTERS
The characters of Slow Damage are, as expected from Nitro+Chiral games, a colorful bunch. The four love interests and characters with distinct chapters will be discussed in the spoiler section. But aside from them, they’re joined by a great mix of villains, antagonists, and colorful side characters.
First, there’s Towa. As a main character who lacks care for others on the surface and speaks brusquely, there was a serious risk of making him unlikeable. Towa often speaks using the least number of words necessary, showing his passivity by going along with things even if they get on his nerves. He’s not easily annoyed but he does comment on the nagginess of those around him at times. Despite these qualities, they’re well balanced with more cheeky and empathetic moments. As chapters proceed, Towa opens up and reveals that he truly does care for those around him. He’s just bad at recognizing his own emotions. It’s a difficult set of character traits to balance, but Slow Damage manages to do it successfully, creating a character who is at times quite morally ambiguous and flawed but deeply sympathetic and appealing in his own unique way.
The Takasato-gumi trio of Mayu, Kotarou, and Eiji are a bright bunch. Frequently I found myself genuinely laughing at their antics. Optional ending h-scenes dubbed, “funny ends,” give the player some insight into Mayu and Kotarou. In Mayu’s case, they get to see just how far his anime obsession goes. It’s a scene that made me cringe repeatedly but it also got a ton of laughs out of me for the embarrassment Towa goes through. I won’t detail it much further as I think it’s something players should discover for themselves but suffice to say, Mayu left an impression by the time I was done with the game.
Kotarou himself is cool too. Though a bit simple as a character, Kotarou has a lot of moments of genuine emotion that reveal he’s more than his violent exterior. He’s a casual sexual partner for Towa and his frank discussions of consent were something I really appreciated. He’s easily frustrated and has some great comedic timing throughout the game regarding his temper. Even in dark moments, his interactions and friendship with Mayu, Towa, and Eiji can really shine.
Eiji is a standout member of the bunch, obsessed with information and bombs. He’s a perfect fit for the chaos of Shinkomi, spreading misinformation just for fun and reveling in the entertainment. His loyalties lie to nobody except himself. He simply wants to indulge in the city and his hobbies unimpeded. Eiji lacks the comedy of Kotarou and Mayu but in turn is much more involved in the plot. He has several moments where he gets to look cool and shine as a character. I found myself at times frustrated with him but in a way where I never forgot my interest and like of him either.
Igurashi sometimes rounds out the trio, tagging along with them. He’s a puppy dog of a man, not really cut out for the yakuza work but pursuing it with absolute loyalty regardless. With his somewhat tacky clothing and hair choices, he’s a silly but earnest character. He’s a great contrast to a cast which is often quite violent and cynical.
Separate from this group, Sakaki and Toono, executives of the Takasato-gumi, provide great tension and drive conflict in the game. They have long histories with several key characters that the player gets to uncover. This comes alongside learning about their selfish motivations, long standing rivalry, and hatred for each other. As the chapters slowly unfold, the player gets to know, and hate, them both with excellent pacing. They’re good antagonists, though both do have some weak points I’ll discuss further in.
A big part of what makes these characters amazing is not just their designs and writing but their voice acting. Even the smallest roles have excellent voice actors that play flawlessly. Every casting choice fit perfectly and really impressed me with the range of emotion and scenes on display. Slow Damage is a game with lots of high emotion so a strong cast was absolutely necessary to make the characters feel alive and real. Towa and Rei’s voice actors in particular are standouts of the cast.
Overall, the character writing of Slow Damage is excellent. I can’t say too much without getting into spoilers. But, as I hope I’ve demonstrated through these examples, the cast of Slow Damage is large and compelling. It’s balanced with a variety of characters, each with their own histories and relationships to each other. They’re often quirky and interesting on a surface level with deeper identities and motivations that can later be uncovered. And, no matter how many times I replayed, I was always impressed with the acting on display.
WRITING
In contrast to the consistent character writing, the minute to minute quality of the prose in Slow Damage varies. At many moments it’s excellent. There’s some attention to detail in character descriptions and dialogue that I found impressive. Without getting too into details, Towa has an intense fear of a very common word. Every time it’s said, the screen briefly flickers red. I thought it was a glitch at first until I connected the dots and realized there was a pattern. It’s an example of the way the writers have an eye for detail and reward the player for carefully listening out. Combined with well written dialogue more broadly and great descriptive prose and the writers have a recipe for something with both detail and breezy readability. I often found myself swept up in the game for hours, unable to pull myself away.
Something else Slow Damage does incredibly well is setup and payoff. Intrigue and hints towards future plot points are given to the player very, very early on in the game. Through building on these hints and answering some questions, but leaving others unanswered, the writers leave the player in a state of feeling both curious and satisfied. As one mystery is solved, new ones linger or are uncovered. Foreshadowing is used to great effect. There’s always enough information given to the player to begin piecing things together themself. But there’s also enough left unsaid that room is left for moments of surprise and curiosity.
Where the writing fails for me is in two areas: the repetition and the edginess. Some of the repetition is understandable. The route order of Slow Damage can vary depending on how the player approaches it. It’s necessary to repeat some prose to remind the player of things said literally 40 hours ago or to make sure they have necessary information. But there are points where the repetition becomes too much.
Although every character in Slow Damage has some level of complexity, their surface level traits are brought up extremely frequently. I’ve joked with people that if you took a shot for every time Towa smoked or drank and every time Rei mentioned sweet food, you’d be dead of alcohol poisoning before the end of Rei’s route. It’s not something that totally kills the quality of the writing but I did find myself rolling my eyes when Towa, yet again, took his sleeping pills with alcohol.
The edginess of the writing can also be a bit much at times. There are some lines I found a bit cringy. Stuff like Towa calling himself dead inside, a cog in the machine, or yet more lampshading about how dangerous Shinkomi is made me roll my eyes. It’s clear that Towa’s outlook on the world is cynical and lacking in empathy in part due to how rough his life has been in Shinkomi. But it, like the surface level character traits, can be a bit repetitive and heavy handed.
These flaws don’t ruin the prose for me by any means. For the most part I love the narration of Slow Damage and think the mysteries and revelations are paced incredibly well. But I’d also be lying if I said I didn’t notice the weaker elements while playing.
Fortunately, the routes themselves are wonderful. Two I consider good, one rough, and one absolutely stellar. If what I’ve said about Slow Damage has interested you so far, this is your chance to turn back. From here I’ll be getting into detailed spoilers and speaking with the expectation that you’ve finished the game. If you don’t mind being spoiled, feel free to proceed!
If there’s something I can say, as plainly as possible, more people should know about and play this game. It’s a deeply flawed but beautiful work of fiction that deserves its praise for the many ways it succeeds. It’s available for purchase on Jast USA and, considering the long runtime, is very inexpensive at only 22 USD. It’s also available on DLsite and DMM for 4,000 yen for those who want to play it in Japanese. I’d personally recommend DLsite. It’s a little easier to access as they accept foreign credit cards and don’t require a VPN.
With the basics laid down, it’s time to speak more directly about the meat of the game: its main characters and plot. Spoilers for here on out.
FRAISE - IKUINA
The common route of Slow Damage starts off by establishing the main trio Murase Clinic. Towa is lazy, informal, and gives into his vices. He ignores his health in favor of engaging in casual sex, drinks first thing in the morning, and will try to minimize effort as much as possible. He has a bit of a cheeky side, doing things to get on Taku and Rei’s nerves minimally. He’s not either rude or polite so much as he is brusque.
Rei is upbeat and tries to nudge Towa into behaving a bit more appropriately, discouraging his use of substances. He uses the feminine pronoun, atashi, and is established early on as having a big sweet tooth. However, there’s a bit of an edge to him through his interest in Deathmatches and body art.
Taku behaves somewhat like a mediator. As the oldest of the trio by a wide margin, he’s established as someone who worries for his employees and treats Towa in an almost fatherly manner. He gave Towa housing, a job, and tries to take care of him. There’s a hint of an overprotective side that comes to fruition in his own route.
As a dynamic it’s immediately compelling. Towa is clearly a person who is engaging in some dangerous habits but he has a support system of people who deeply care for him. On paper Towa is fairly unlikeable. But in practice, he’s balanced well by Rei and Taku’s less abrasive personalities. Towa’s charisma also gets to shine through as the route proceeds. As far as first impressions go, it’s a great idea of the dynamics players will see going into either route. It’s especially important for these characters as Rei and Taku play large roles even in routes where they aren’t the focus.
Regardless of which character the player decides to focus on, they will spend their time in the common route investigating Ikuina. The entirety of the common route serves as a preview for the larger game. Ikuina is a person of interest who Towa wants to learn about. As he unravels mysteries, he also unravels Ikuina’s psychology. The route ends with a final, branching investigation that can lead to Euphoria or Madness. As players continue the game, the mechanical systems become more complex. The common route gets players in the right mindset for the hours ahead and helps familiarize them with Slow Damage’s mechanics. It almost functions as a high quality, extended tutorial.
The quality of the common route is boosted significantly by the excellent pacing and characterization of Ikuina. It’s clear from early on that he’s not a normal person. The motif of his art centers around cutting flesh, creating convincing photos of wounds out of flowers. However, the man himself doesn’t give any outward indication towards his strange art. He works at a flower shop and speaks in a courteous, polite manner to those around him. During his first conversation with Towa where the two meet, his fixation on Towa’s scars make it clear this is more than mere art for him.
Some excellent foreshadowing into Towa’s own psychology comes after these first scenes with Ikuina. Following their meeting, the first of Towa’s dream sequences appears. It’s unclear precisely what is happening, but it’s clear that it’s something Towa is afraid of. As the player later learns, Towa met Ikuina during childhood, a childhood that has been lost due to his dissociative amnesia. The immediate occurrence of a nightmare after a meeting with Ikuina is a great detail that hints towards his lost past in a subtle way.
Ikuina was similarly affected by his meeting with Towa. When he arrives at the clinic the next day with a cut of his own, it’s clear this is more than a mere accident, despite his claims to the contrary. It’s a great example of Slow Damage’s pacing and a mark of Ikuina’s psychological desperation early on. The image of a wound Ikuina created and his fixation on Towa’s scars means the player can see a tendency towards self harm coming from a mile away. Steadily, Ikuina grows more desperate, his attacks on people in the streets of Shinkomi becoming more common over the route.
This eventually culminates in the interrogation. Ikuina is at his wits end by this point, tired and haggard with bandages all over his arms. Here the player learns that Ikuina had a traumatic incident in childhood. It led to him now desiring to cut others and be cut in his adulthood. With this broad concept and structure, the central themes of Slow Damage are established.
Slow Damage is deeply concerned with the way wounds in childhood can fester into adulthood. Ikuina carried around this trauma for years. It led to a desire to harm others and himself in a way that could not easily be dealt with. Towa, though trying to understand Ikuina, does it in his own way. He’s not a therapist. He’s dangerously enabling Ikuina and both their lives are put in danger for it. The question is clear: If Ikuina has become this damaged, what has led to Towa becoming damaged too? If this is how Ikuina is dealing with his trauma, how will Towa deal with his?
It is these questions and the theme of childhood trauma that drives the entire game. It’s excellently established right here in the common route.
That said, for all the things the common route gets right, there are things to question and critique. Chiefly, the common route deals with issues of self harm and quite directly eroticizes them. When Ikuina’s desire to cut and be cut is revealed, the first h-scene proceeds afterwards. It is displayed as incredibly dangerous- Ikuina and Towa nearly die- but still pleasurable. With such explicit displays of self harm and knifeplay, there is a risk of the game compelling or worsening urges in those who already struggle with self harm. It’s something players will need to prepare for going in and does make Slow Damage difficult to approach, even during the lighter parts of the game.
That said, I don’t think the eroticization skips over into romanticization. There is a distinction. Ikuina’s desire to cut, though displayed as pleasurable for him and Towa, clearly arises from damage to his psyche in childhood. As he gives in more to the desire, he only ends up putting himself in more danger. In this way, Slow Damage does reckon with the way that self harm is a complex and difficult topic.
In some ways, admitting self harm can be pleasurable but is still dangerous and comes from a place of deep internal injury, feels much more nuanced than wholly depicting it as bad. Self harm is a habit or even an addiction that can be really difficult to give up. To deal with self harm means to reckon with what a person gets out of it, the incredible toll it still takes, and to then work out healthier ways that fulfill needs. Self harm is in no sense good in Slow Damage, but it’s complicated. I like how it reflects that complexity, even if it leaves me with a variety of conflicting feelings regarding the responsibility of its depiction.
Like trauma, self harm is a pervasive theme in Slow Damage that will return in later routes. As far as its addressing goes in Ikuina’s route, however, it’s complex. As I said, it has serious potential to be triggering and dangerous for those with existing self harm urges. But it also depicts a very real, scary experience of hurting yourself, being enabled, and not knowing how to stop. Not knowing how to replace it with something healthier until you’ve already crossed a dangerous line.
It’s a wonderful tone setter for the VN and makes it clear just what sort of game Slow Damage is from the outset.
BROTHER - KIRIHARA
The preliminary chapter to Rei’s route, Brother, is very similar to the common route in terms of its additions to Slow Damage’s theme. This time Towa examines Mizuno, later revealed to be Kirihara, and untangles his desires to beat others and be beaten. Like Ikuina, this is a desire rooted in trauma. He was abused by his brother and now desires violence as a way to reconnect with him. However, the message lacks the strength of Ikuina.
Part of the issue is simply my tastes. Like Ikuina’s desire for self harm, Kirihara’s desire for violence is erotic in nature. His desire for his brother is somewhat incestuous which… I just can’t get behind due to my discomfort. Beyond simple distaste, he lacks a lot of the same chemistry and gradual escalation that Ikuina’s route has. Kirihara’s violence starts and ends on roughly the same level. Because he spends so long hiding behind the fake identity of Mizuno, there’s not much time spent with Kirihara properly. Much of the same issues around sexualization versus romanticization of self harm come up again here in regards to abuse.
What Kirihara adds most importantly is an explicit focus on the theme of family and fighting. These are two of the concepts most central to Rei’s route. As the preliminary chapter, Kirihara puts these themes on the player’s mind and the characters’.
As for Rei and Towa themselves, their relationship begins to develop here. Their chemistry isn’t terrible to start but it definitely is lacking. Towa often does things for Rei out of obligation or not wanting to be bothered. He regards Rei more as a coworker or acquaintance than a proper friend. Their tastes are wildly divergent and the concept of a romance between them seems like it would be difficult to write successfully. The writing does achieve a great dynamic by the end of Rei’s route but I felt a bit apprehensive here at the start. This start is a testament to the quality of their relationship’s progression.
Aside from learning more about Rei himself, the player is introduced to his friends, a group of transfemmes who are interested in body modification. Their names are Junko, Honami, and Arata. This brings up the idea of gender and gender identity without focusing on it outright yet. However, as soon as these characters are introduced, some questions appear regarding the game’s handling of them.
Junko and Honami use the feminine pronoun atashi and Arata uses watashi. Watashi has a feminine connotation in casual speech but this is not universal. It can also be gender neutral. Despite these clear markers of femininity, the translation refers to them with singular they.
I’m not going to pretend I’m well versed in Japanese. I’m not far in my learning and I’m bad at keeping consistent with my studies. I played this game in English for a reason. From what I can pick up listening to the Japanese audio, Rei’s friends are only referred to with a gendered term once. Because of this and a lack of focus on their gender identity, I’m unsure if the use of they/them in the English localization is a form of misgendering or part of positive nonbinary representation. Considering the increase in nonbinary characters in Japanese media (such as Asuka Yuta in Hoshai no Sora and Mogumo in Love me for who I am) I’m going to take an optimistic approach and read their characters as transfemme.
A big part of the reason I feel comfortable doing this is due to how excellent Honami, Junko, and Arata are as characters in their own right. As I mentioned, their gender identity is not focused on. I have given far more words to speaking about their gender in this review than the entirety of Slow Damage does. The trio simply exist and are treated with the same level of respect and normalcy from all characters around them. They’re physically strong as a part of Rei’s Deathmatch team but are sensitive and kind. They form an essential part of Rei’s support system and truly trust each other even in difficult times. It’s genuinely really sweet seeing their interactions considering how bleak the game can get at times.
In that sense, their representation is quite refreshing. Within Slow Damage, transfemmes exist and are a vital part of the world. They are celebrated and welcomed within social circles just as any other person would be with characterization that extends far beyond their gender alone. It’s a heartening kind of representation in its own right.
CONTRADICTION - REI
With these themes established around trauma, family, gender, and violence- Rei’s route begins. This route answers the established question of, “How does Towa handle his trauma?” with, “He helps others.”
Towa’s past looms large over the game. I don’t just mean that in the sense that he’s the protagonist the player embodies. He is central to the game’s events, its mysteries, and its messages. That’s why it stands out so much when he takes a comparative backseat in Rei’s route. Instead, Rei’s trauma and characterization is central.
In Rei’s route, he’s brought back into contact with his abusive father through his debt with the Takasato-gumi. Izumi Sr. has a gambling addiction and has managed to rack up 300 million yen in debt, roughly equivalent to 2.2 million USD. Following the events of Kirihara’s chapter, Rei is already shaken up. He was attacked and severely injured, leading to a resurgence of his childhood trauma.
As a child Rei was very feminine and experienced bullying. Although he got stronger and was able to face his attackers outside the home, his father posed a threat within it. Once Rei came out as gay he was temporarily kicked out, attacked on the basis of his masculinity, and rejected by his father. Some of the ways Slow Damage addresses mixing of homophobia and transphobia is pretty smart here. Izumi Sr’s homophobia interlinks with transphobia in a way that results in him dismissing his son’s actual gender identity. He denies Rei his maleness based on the idea that to love men means to give up manhood. Ideas that being gay and trans are interlinked are still an issue in the real world- such as the presumption that to be gay means you desire to be a woman or that being trans is a form of sexuality-based self hatred. I think trying to tackle this issue is insightful and displays an understanding of some of the complexities underlying homophobia and transphobia– that being the way they break from gendered norms.
Rei’s route is not all bad when it comes to its handling of gender. Considering the significance of transfemme characters in the narrative and Rei’s own focus as a gender nonconforming character, there’s some great stuff in here about how to navigate masculinity as someone who isn’t traditionally very masculine to begin with. On top of that it looks at the way masculinity is denied and how that denial creates painful experiences. What I take issue with, and what took me so long to pick apart, is Rei’s stagnation in reasserting his masculinity.
In the past, Rei dealt with the transphobic and homophobic bullying he received by becoming physically powerful and enacting violence on others. In other words, violence and success in fights are what make him feel masculine and confirm he is masculine to others. This linking of violence with masculinity continues throughout Rei’s route. Following the attack from Kirihara, Rei’s trauma resurfaced and he felt he lost a part of himself. In other words, being a victim of violence felt like a loss of masculinity. Ultimately, the solution in Rei’s route to this issue is the same as the past: confirm he can be a man through violence. Towa takes interest in him as a man and begins to think of him as a romantic partner once Rei proves he can be violent, Rei directly describes, “the real me,” as his, “manly, violent side,” and the ultimate culmination of Rei’s route is taking down an opponent in a life-or-death fight.
In some ways, the game gets it right that Rei’s more feminine qualities- liking sweets, pink hair, his feminine speech- don’t negate his masculinity. However, where it gets it wrong is this idea that to be masculine is to be violent. The solution to Rei’s trauma is not to unlearn the systemic patriarchy and homophobia that led to him feeling like he had to fight to prove his manhood. Instead, it is more of the same as Rei’s past methods of coping. Winning is what makes you a man, beating others is what makes you a man, physical strength is what makes you a man. The system itself is not wrong; Rei just needs to become stronger within it. It’s a message that lacks the otherwise progressive messages the game features around LGBT characters and even some elements of trauma. It also doesn’t develop Rei’s concepts of masculinity beyond his initial ideals of physical strength as indicating maleness. As I said, it’s a form of stagnation. What happens if he goes through another incident of being violently attacked? Will he again feel he has lost his identity due to his inability to protect himself?
One moment the game does get right is the conversation between Towa and Rei at the dessert buffet. As they converse and Rei puzzles over what constitutes manhood, he eventually comes to the conclusion that it’s unwavering conviction. This mirrors a concept that was brought up in Kirihara’s preliminary chapter- the idea of searching for something pure and untainted as an experience. As far as definitions of masculinity go, if this had been more central to the focus of Rei’s route, the messages could be a lot stronger when they come to gender. The violence and Rei’s strength still could have been a part of the message but with an ultimate conclusion that Rei's convictions towards his art, friends, and love confirm his identity.
Gender is quite a central theme to Rei’s route so this does bring down things to some degree, however, there is so much else to love here that I still come away from it enjoying it. Though the disappointment at the lack of progressive challenging of systemic ideals around gender remains.
One thing Rei’s route does excellently, full stop, is the handling of abuse. Rei’s trauma is treated with all the weight it deserves and is based in some very realistic manifestations of homophobia that will ring true for some LGBT people. It did for me at least. Rei deeply fears his father and is unable to meet him, attempting it multiple times without success. It’s a big compliment to the pacing and writing of Rei’s route that the continuous attempts to meet with his father and fleeing does not become repetitive. Each encounter is spaced out enough and each has small progressions which allow the player to feel progress despite Rei running away. He doesn’t speak to his father, but more information on their relationship and Rei is gleaned each time.
Rei’s feelings towards his father are deeply contradictory which gives the relationship depth and nuance. He admits on some level he wants to help his father with the debt, expressing care for him. Simultaneously, he runs away and screams at his father in anger during attempted meetings. Rei despises his father for the abuse he suffered as a child. Yet, on some level he desires a fatherly relationship in a broad sense. This is such a real and common experience among child abuse survivors. It can be painful to try to balance a desire for a parent in general, a relationship with a specific parent, and the trauma they inflicted.
A small detail that I think adds a lot to Rei’s route is how they eventually do reunite. Rei does not meet with his father or attempt a relationship with him until Izumi Sr. apologizes. Even after Rei agrees to try reconnecting, he does not forgive his father. Within society there’s unfortunately still prevailing attitudes that family bonds should not be severed- even in cases of abuse- and that it is the responsibility of the victim to forgive. Slow Damage wholeheartedly rejects this narrative. It is not Rei’s responsibility to reach out to his father. It is on Izumi Sr. to change and earn back a relationship with his son.
A final prevalent theme around Rei and his trauma is his issue of suicidality. The manager at Roost explicitly states that Rei may be suicidal. He seeks out intense fights and participates in body modification on others. In other words, he sees value in the bodies of others as an artist but punishes his own body through fighting. These ideas come to fruition in the two different endings of Rei’s route.
Mad endings in Slow Damage are largely h-scenes. However, they do have thematic ideas too. In the case of Rei, his deepest fears around his suicidality are that nobody needs him. He also fears that nobody cares about his trust, distrust, or opinions. The Mad ending manifests if Rei gets the confirmation that his fears are real through a failed interrogation. He kidnaps Towa, gives in fully to violence, and treats Towa as an art project. In essence- he forces a scenario where he is needed. He is the only one who can provide for Towa as a body modification artist. His suicidality manifests in the most extreme versions of modification and fighting, giving up all fears around death or morality around killing others.
Or at least… that’s the idea behind it. Frankly, the scene feels a bit out of left field in the moment. But I could say that for some of the other Mad endings as well. As a Mad ending it’s… fine. It ties into the larger themes of suicidality that Rei experiences but it does it in a way that ultimately feels like the themes get a bit lost in favor of focusing on the h-scene.
The Euphoria ending, on the other hand, is Rei understanding that people need him and care for him. In his climactic fight, there’s a cliche (in the best way) power of friendship moment where everyone’s cheers help Rei to win an impossible battle. In the ending proper, Rei pulls back from fighting and learns more about body modification as a pure art form while understanding the value of himself. What I think makes this ending especially lovely as it pertains to suicide is the small exchange he has with Towa at the very end. Rei concludes that he isn’t happy he suffered so much. He doesn’t see his trauma and pain as necessary to have a happy life. However, he is happy that he’s managed to survive it and obtain happiness despite all the struggle.
One of the most painful things about suicide is the feeling that there’s no light at the end of the tunnel. Things can get better, but there’s fear it’ll come crashing down. This is exactly what Rei experiences within his route. Everything he worked hard to build is destroyed by debt and trauma. However, he still survived. Things got worse… but they got better too. It’s a message of hope. There is a chance at recovery. It is always worth living. People care about you and there is a future out there for you. Is it optimistic? Sure. Could we use a little optimism? Always.
The second major element in Rei’s route is, of course, the romance. Though Towa and Rei’s relationship begins feeling quite distant, this changes fairly early on in Rei’s route. A bit of great writing here is the way Towa’s approach to the relationship characterizes him. Towa begins wholly uninterested in Rei, not considering him in a sexual way, before shifting to thinking of him from a selfish perspective. He cares about Rei less for who he is and more for what he could provide him. By the end, it feels like Towa has truly come to care for Rei and he makes genuine gestures of care.
Similarly, Rei’s own interest with Towa is somewhat self motivated. Although he obviously cares for Towa’s wellbeing and properly empathizes with him, Rei takes interest in Towa as an artist and art object first. Rei has been a fan of Towa since he began painting. His interest is part of what led him to Towa in the first place. Secondarily, Rei refers to Towa as a, “work of art,” and considers how he would go about modifying Towa’s scars. It’s a good starting point for both of them. They’re both a bit selfish but they can grow into something more.
This setup also means Rei’s painting holds massive emotional weight for them both. Towa has come to understand Rei as more than a mere subject. Rei has finally realized his dream of being painted by Towa. The painting is a marker of their mutual understanding and Rei taking steps to overcome his trauma.
The moment-to-moment of their relationship is great. Towa is often lazy and brusque but it comes with him having a lot of patience for other people. When Rei feels insecure about if his personality is annoying or obnoxious, Towa’s reassurance that he doesn’t care about such small qualities and his acceptance of Rei’s personality is sweet. Towa appreciates people for who they are, trying to understand them and not trying to change them.
After their main h-scene, Towa actually eats a meal and enjoys it for the first time in the game. By this point the player is likely to have experienced 10-12 hours of gameplay. The impact of Towa constantly rejecting food, struggling to eat, and not caring about his health only to genuinely enjoy a breakfast with Rei… it’s wonderful. They don’t overemphasize the point or linger on it for too long. It’s a lovely detail that shows attentiveness to writing and just how important Rei is to Towa.
Speaking of h-scenes… I should speak briefly about those. Rei’s h-scenes are largely fine. The first one is short and simple, though it’s nice to see Rei flustered. It’s the main Euphoria h-scene that’s really the star. I felt so much comfort and familiarity between Towa and Rei. There’s a bit of shyness here and there from Rei due to his lack of sexual experience. It’s not overdone and it lends to some cute and comedic moments. Towa’s shock at Rei’s lack of experience is made a lot funnier by some good voice acting and the expressions of Towa’s sprite. The immediate conversation after where Towa reassures Rei that he’ll be happy with him sexually is reminiscent of the previous scene where Towa reassures Rei about his personality. That radical acceptance of Rei as he is comes through in every moment of their relationship both in the weighty moments and in the small, romantic ones.
Just as Ikuina and Kirihara’s chapters lead well into Rei’s, Rei’s route works as a great thematic transition into the next route. Debt is central to Rei’s route and the next route, Taku’s. It also deals with one of the Takasato-gumi’s main leaders: Sakaki.
Sakaki is established as a guy who tries to have a protective, paternalistic relationship with Towa. Upon first impressions in the common route, a player may be forgiven for mistaking him as an ally. Starting with him allows the player to get a read on just how dangerous he can be, even if the extent of his ruthlessness won’t be revealed for several routes. It also contrasts excellently with Taku’s route which features Toono as its antagonist. Having two antagonists whose motivations and personalities are discovered over the course of multiple routes lends the game some level of unpredictability and variety. Even when you face Sakaki again, his motivations and behavior are radically different from this route. Though I’m getting ahead of myself here.
Sakaki targets Rei and throws Izumi Sr’s debt onto him because a Moneymatch fighter committed suicide. He lies directly and repeatedly with the player slowly uncovering information throughout the route. Rei did not request to fight in Moneymatches himself; he was blackmailed into it. The Takasato-gumi didn’t transfer the debt to Rei for no reason, it was motivated by the Moneymatches. The blackmail Sakaki uses on Rei is a threat that his father will be forced to perpetrate human trafficking again. This is a complete lie.
He’s slimy and will lie about anything to get what he wants. He does care for Towa, in some sense, but isn’t afraid to use Towa or harm those around him. Ultimately, Sakaki will do what he needs to obtain a goal while remaining cautious of his own safety.
There’s a bit of smart foreshadowing within his lies here. The first is the discussion he has with Towa surrounding human trafficking. He claims Towa’s parents had nothing to do with human trafficking despite one of them being the leader of the Takasato-gumi. At first it’s possible to believe him but, once the lies in Rei’s route are uncovered, this claim becomes dubious.
The second is the poker game he has with Towa to clear Rei’s debt. It hints that Sakaki has deeper motivations he isn’t letting anyone in on. Rei’s debt is massive. For Sakaki to be willing to clear it if Towa wins, the task he requests if Towa loses must be truly significant. It builds intrigue into Sakaki and his character on a first playthrough but becomes absolutely chilling with later context when the player learns what he wanted.
Ultimately, I have complaints about Rei’s route in some minute-to-minute cringe lines and its somewhat lackluster handling of gender. But for those critiques, so much of this route manages to shine. Rei is such a well thought out and compelling character. He’s easy to love and thematically adds a lot to Slow Damage’s ideas around trauma. His wounds from childhood run deep but they can be healed. Meanwhile, Towa may not confront his own pain, but he can assist Rei in healing. That itself is a valid approach to trauma and still helps Towa to become a healthier, more open person.
It says a lot about Slow Damage that this route, filled with themes of abuse, homophobia, transphobia, organized crime, violence, and gender, is the breeziest in the game. But trauma cannot be avoided forever. At some point its symptoms must be addressed.
DOCTOR - ASAKURA
Concepts of human trafficking and sexual trauma are brought to the forefront at the start of Taku’s route. While they were background elements in Rei’s, only brought up as a detail of the world or a threat from Sakaki, Doctor puts them front and center.
In this chapter players are introduced to Asakura, a doctor with rumors of a nasty past regarding incidents with children. He’s begun working in Shinkomi to escape the rumors he was plagued with in the mainland. Asakura generally has good chemistry with Towa. They’re both antagonistic towards each other. Towa wants to rile him up due to his perfect exterior. Asakura clearly does not appreciate the prodding but his strong reactions only encourage Towa to look deeper. Eventually, Asakura comes around and warms up to the idea of Towa as a confidant. The bar scene where he confesses some of his deepest fears to Towa and approaches speaking about his desire has great chemistry and tension.
The fear around Asakura’s past is increased by his proximity to a young boy, Hayato. It becomes increasingly clear through the route that Asakura is fixated on the rumors surrounding his past. He is terrified of hurting others and disturbed by the possibility that he could be a pedophile. I ended up reading him as having POCD, a form of OCD in which a person intensely fears being a pedophile. As a depiction of POCD, I think in some ways it’s complex and empathetic. Asakura’s psychology and the incredible pain he feels over the idea of harming those around him is given plenty of time in the spotlight. Feeding into the trauma themes of Slow Damage, the player later learns Asakura feels this way due to a traumatic incident. He’s a sympathetic character who is tormented by the fears he feels and latent trauma. However, as I’ll discuss later, there are elements that severely hurt this depiction of POCD.
The way child trafficking is spoken of is very callous but I think that’s intentional. Upon discussing and introducing Asakura, the trio of Mayu, Eiji, and Kotarou discuss if Asakura actually is a pedophile or not. Mayu makes jokes and the other two discuss it in a casual manner. It’s an extremely uncomfortable scene but that is the point. It’s a show of how callous Shinkomi and how little its residents regard human life- including the lives of children.
This discomfort is lampshaded by Towa’s own narration. He’s a character who has been established to be fairly apathetic and open to humanity’s extreme desires. He enjoys knifeplay and isn’t disturbed at all by the idea that Kirihara has some level of attraction for his brother. The fact that he is made viscerally uncomfortable by this discussion and child trafficking in Shinkomi hints to some deeper elements of his character and trauma he has endured. It also shows how disturbing this lack of care for children is.
Of course, Towa is not the only one affected by this chapter’s events and reminded of his trauma. Taku too has a complicated past dredged up by Asakura’s presence. His poor behavior in med school and his past issues of alcoholism are brought up. Just as Asakura is a doctor with too much attachment towards Hayato, Taku is a doctor with too much attachment towards Towa. Seeing him hurt is painful and reminds Taku of past incidents with both Towa and his other loved ones. It mirrors the function of Kirihara’s chapter for Rei. It shakes Taku and primes him to consider his past, his trauma, his fears, and his relationship to Towa.
For all my praise here, Asakura’s chapter is deeply flawed for how long it lingers on the idea of Asakura being a pedophile. False information and red herrings are thrown at the player repeatedly. Taku is convinced of the rumors and has a very poor opinion of Asakura. Eiji reports that Asakura went to a child brothel, something he later says was misinformation and untrue. Asakura himself denies he is a pedophile but follows it up by saying he, “[isn’t] one yet.” It’s not until the very last second, upon confronting Asakura in the hospital, that the player finds out what Asakura’s desire is. He wants to create an angel by surgically attaching wings to a human.
Because of this, the chapter is filled with uncomfortable tension. It was difficult to feel fully invested in him and his dynamic with Towa when the entire time I was worried that his desire was to abuse a child. I didn’t know where this was going or if the ending h-scene would involve fulfilling the dream of pedophilia, a truly stomach twisting concept, to say the least. This chapter takes a few hours and only reveals the reality of the situation at the last minute. There’s this tension, disgust, and fear that made it difficult for me to become invested in Asakura’s character.
I think Asakura had serious potential to be an empathetic and complex depiction of a man with POCD. To some degree it still is. But it falls flat due to the issue of pacing. Were some of the red herrings not present and were it clearer a bit sooner that Asakura wasn’t a pedophile but in fact suffering from POCD… this could have been a much stronger chapter. I’m not opposed to lingering on the question entirely. But I do think it’d be better if it wasn’t left to literally the last scene. Having a concrete reveal earlier on would have done a lot to make me feel more invested in him and given the chapter time to explore POCD in a little more detail.
This stumble is made all the worse by just how good his h-scene is. The Euphoria scene of Asakura attaching wings to Towa is one of my favorites. It’s disturbing and beautiful. Religious motifs in art are some of my favorites. That combined with gory and erotic elements makes for a very interesting contrast. It straddles the line between the beautiful and grotesque. The fact that such a vivid and impactful scene is brought down by the chapter’s pacing only makes the issue more noticeable. There is something great buried in Asakura’s chapter but it ultimately wasn’t realized. I liked him. But some key changes would have significantly improved this chapter.
With themes of getting too close to people, pedophilia, and trauma established, Taku’s route begins.
NOSTALGIA - TAKU
As a fitting tone-setter, Taku’s route begins with a nightmare. While Rei’s route involved focusing on his trauma and not Towa’s, containing only a single nightmare across hours of play, this nightmare indicates the significance Towa’s past will hold for Taku. It is central both to its themes of confronting trauma in a more direct manner and to Taku and Towa’s relationship.
With that said, it’s impossible to talk about Taku’s route without discussing his platonic relationship with Towa. Taku has known Towa since he was a young child. They have an age gap which I find personally a bit uncomfortable— 45 and 26— but can look past given the right circumstances. Unfortunately, due to Taku knowing Towa for so long the two have a dynamic that is outright paternal. Towa’s interest and attraction to Taku comes partially from the fact that he felt safe around Taku as a child. While Towa does not recall his childhood in detail, these feelings of nostalgia and being together for so long are what characterize the route. It’s uncomfortable and is something that muddles Taku’s route a bit for me. I have complicated feelings about their age gap and the amount of time they’ve known each other. But, ultimately, I came around to Taku despite the discomfort I felt.
Another element I’m not a fan of in Taku’s route is the pacing. Upon both first and repeat playthroughs, it drags. The first half focuses on the mystery of Taku and Toono’s relationship. Taku is clearly working for and being blackmailed by Toono but the details are unclear. With the Takasato-gumi leader dead, Sakaki and Toono are vying to be the next successor. It becomes evident from pretty early on that Taku is making a drug, some kind of addictive narcotic. There’s more than enough evidence to put the pieces together long before Towa himself does. As such, much of this section felt like waiting around for something to happen. As the player I knew what was going on and was just waiting for Towa to figure it out or for Toono to make a move.
Once this move does happen, Toono captures Taku and Towa in his Grand Palace Hotel. It seems promising since this conflict has been built up for hours at this point. Now the midpoint climax has happened and the situation is truly dire for Taku and Towa. The stakes were raised and I expected more excitement. But the hotel section drags with repetition. Towa gets hurt, Taku feels bad about it, Towa tells him to make a decision, and Taku still can’t decide whether to work on the drug or not. Rinse and repeat for a few hours. It’s worsened by some… truly bizarre elements of Toono’s character. Upon arriving to the hotel he forces Towa to crossdress in order to upset Taku. He ups the ante later by asking for Towa to be his lover and taunting Taku with the possibility of their sexual relationship. It’s heavy handed and dull, forcing the concept of romantic rivalry and violation even when Toono has literally no interest with Towa. It feels more like a stereotypical, repeated BL plot than something with thought and motivation behind it within the game itself. This is Toono at his weakest in terms of characterization.
That said, the route really picks up at the end. Once Taku and Towa formulate a plan to escape, the resulting action is exciting and well-paced. For all of Taku’s struggles to make a decision, he is finally resolute in escaping and doing what he believes is his duty as a doctor. That being to protect others and prevent this drug from harming any more people than it already has.
Ultimately this comes down to an armed conflict with Toono. Taku holds the gun and can choose to kill him or spare him. A trope I’m generally not a fan of is sparing villainous characters out of a desire not to stoop to their level. However, in this case I think it works. Taku’s entire route is about his principles as a doctor. He doesn’t want to harm anyone. For as fucking awful as Toono is, not killing him is about Taku sticking to his principles even in the face of grave circumstances.
Taku and Towa both have arcs regarding their trauma. For Taku, it’s the trauma of losing his mom. Following his father leaving, Taku and his mother were thrown into poverty. With the lack of money, his mother began to suffer from health issues and self-medicated through drugs. Taku himself struggled with alcoholism. He worked through med school and borrowed money from Toono to pay for his mom’s medical bills and college. Ultimately, he was unable to protect her. She died from a drug overdose. This left Taku with a great fear of losing his loved ones, manifesting in overprotective and controlling behavior. Now that his past is coming back in the form of a debt with Toono, Taku feels he must do anything to protect Towa. On a casual level, he scolds Towa about his safety and can be a bit overbearing. On a more serious level, it’s revealed that Taku implanted a webtag in Towa following Asakura’s Euphoric episode. He later attempts to kill Towa, wanting to hurt him before anyone else can.
The webtag is excellently foreshadowed. There’s a classic rule of three here where Taku finds Towa in three instances of escalating severity. Taku loses track of Towa during Hatsumoude, meets him in a park, then finds him in the Deathmatch Area with no clue or indication of where he could have gone. The first is reasonable, the second coincidental, and the third is what makes it very clear to the player something is going on.
The webtag issue and attempted murder are actions that make Taku a deeply flawed character. He is so caught up in his fears and past trauma that he is willing to outright stalk his love interest or kill him so he doesn’t have to suffer further. However, it’s something he must work past. His controlling tendencies and the fact that love involves some risk is part of his arc. Taku and Towa only get together once the webtag is revealed. Upon confronting him, Taku apologizes and promises he’ll remove it. Towa accepts this apology, but not without getting a good punch in first. In other words, Taku’s controlling actions aren’t supposed to be a fantasy or romantic. They’re annoying at best and disturbing at worst. Towa himself repeatedly expresses his hatred for them. A romance can’t happen without him acknowledging, sincerely apologizing, and regretting his actions. Towa’s trust, and love, has to be earned.
It’s a great handling of behavior that could potentially make Taku deeply unlikeable. Tracking and stalking a love interest is a form of abusive behavior. That’s without getting into the attempted murder. It’s acknowledged in the narrative and is given reason, but not justification, due to Taku’s past trauma. It makes it easy to understand him but also holds him accountable for his flaws. That’s a hard balance to strike and something I was satisfied with.
On Towa’s side of things, he’s struggling with increased nightmares and reminders of his past. The closer Towa gets to Taku, the more frequent and clear his nightmares become. While Towa’s past is never uncovered or made explicit, it is clear that Towa is a victim of some form of child abuse. It doesn’t take a genius to see that Towa doesn’t have a lot of self worth. His penchant for pain, self harm, and dangerous situations make it clear he doesn’t value his own life. While not outright seeking death, it’s clear he does not value himself or his safety. Instead of that being something put aside while Towa focuses on helping someone else, Taku forces him to confront it.
In their second H-scene, Taku treats Towa gently and refuses to give into Towa’s demands for pain and violence. It’s something Towa finds strange and upsetting specifically because he knows he’s being treated like a person instead of an object. He’s afraid of what it means to be loved.
It’s not as flashy or in depth as later routes. Towa doesn’t recall many details of the abuse. At most he understands that he was deeply afraid as a kid and Taku served as a safe haven. But he does come to understand something key: he deserves to be loved. He has worth as a person and he experiences what it’s like to be appreciated and not outright objectified. It is, plainly, a sweet scene where the care Taku has for Towa comes across in every moment. It is through that love that Towa has some potential to heal and obtain a healthier way of life.
Of course, for all the ways Taku can grow and improve as a person, there is also the risk of a Mad end. Taku has one of the strongest Mad ends in the game. Throughout the route the player learns of his trauma, the way it leads to him being overprotective, and his controlling behavior towards Towa. He snaps in his Mad end and keeps Towa prisoner, drugging him to keep him happy. Taku cares deeply for Towa but if he fails to work through his trauma it will manifest in horrible control and harm to those around him. Creating the drug for Toono and seeing Towa in pain breaks him. He ends up hurting the person he wants to cherish the most. It’s a horribly tragic Mad end with a great payoff for everything seen so far in the route. Ultimately it was my favorite of the game for its strong buildup and beautiful CGs.
Taku’s route is flawed in some ways. The dragging and repetitive pacing, the awkward age gap, and the hammy character of Toono drag it down. But, despite my horribly negative first impressions, I came to appreciate its exploration of his and Towa’s characters. Towa never learns the details of his past or the abuse he endured. Despite this, he still can heal some and grow as a person. He can be more forthright about his care for Taku and can accept the love directed to him, even when that gentle love scares him.
Unfortunately, after two good routes, the worst now approaches. The player has seen how Towa can focus on others or begin to confront his trauma. What happens when he sees regression instead of progress?
IMMUTABLE - MADARAME
I’m going to speak directly here: I really hated Madarame’s route. Slow Damage is an incredibly strong game that makes beautiful points about trauma and a person’s potential to recover or fall into despair. That’s why this route, one which features such an abusive character in a positive light, sits poorly with me.
Madarame is a member of the Takasato-gumi who went missing following an internal conflict. He is reported as dead but, as the player finds out rather soon in the route, the Takasato-gumi never found the body. In reality Madarame has been biding his time, waiting to come back to Shinkomi and take down the Takasato-gumi. He’s also been waiting to rekindle his relationship with Towa.
Madarame’s return is destabilizing for Towa. The trigger for the route itself comes from Sakaki reminiscing about the past. If the resulting clue is used on Ikuina’s route, it causes Towa himself to also consider the past and reflect on his time with Madarame and the Takasato-gumi. In response to this the player sees Towa having a fairly standard PTSD response. He seeks out dangerous sex and pain to distract him from his feelings. He has nightmares about the Takasato-gumi. He experiences psychosomatic pain in his missing eye. When Madarame sends his first sign of being alive, an old lighter he gave to Towa, it immediately makes him panic.
When Madarame finally enacts his plan to kidnap Towa, Towa’s first reaction is to attempt suicide. He’s forced to stay with Madarame because he’s tied up with a leather collar. He attempts to saw through it with a piece of glass, not caring that the glass is cutting his neck due to his desperation to escape. When Madarame stops him, he resolves to bite off his tongue. When that too fails, he tries to starve himself. Towa even describes being with Madarame as, “a fate worse than death.” All the while, Madarame strips Towa, beats him, and rapes him. Even the kidnapping itself is manufactured to produce stress for Towa. Established in previous routes, Towa is afraid of silence. Madarame traps him alone in a silent room with nothing to break it. If Towa attempts to escape, Madarame promises that he’ll track him down again.
It’s bad. It’s difficult to watch and exhausting. It’s violently abusive with no breaks. The route starts with Towa afraid and experiencing PTSD and proceeds into him being horribly abused for literal hours of gameplay.
The thing is… this may potentially be forgivable. Towa and Madarame run into Rei one night together a week or so into his captivity. Rei begs Towa to come home but Towa is so out of it that he hardly knows how to react. It’s a heart wrenching scene made all the more difficult to watch through the incredible voice acting on display. Towa escapes Madarame and returns home to the clinic. Again, he shows clear signs of PTSD, even more severe now that he’s been a captive.
He doesn’t feel like he belongs with Taku and Rei anymore. He tries to go back to old routines but continuously feels separated and different from those around him. Madarame successfully cut Towa off from his support group and managed to seed doubt in their trustworthiness. Most notably of all, Towa flinches away from Rei’s touch. His old support group, once friends he could be comfortable with, are downright unfamiliar to him. Ultimately, he decides he doesn’t belong with Taku and Rei.
Towa returning to Madarame is tragic. Rei and Towa come after him. Towa walks away while they scream and beg for him to come home, not to return to the abuse. This is what I mean when I say Madarame being so awful and a rapist could be forgivable. It has the elements of an excellent tragedy and resonance with the previous two routes.
The past two routes show how Towa has the potential to get better. This route shows how he can get worse. He can fall back in line with old, unhealthy ways of living. He accepts violent sex, rape, and horrible treatment, thinking it’s what he deserves.
In some ways it’s insightful. Part of what characterizes Towa’s relationship with Madarame is excitement. One of the pros of their relationship Madarame pitches to Towa is that he’ll never be bored. This is an unfortunate and real element of abusive relationships. The lack of expectation and the intense emotions present in toxicity can be exciting and passionate, even if it’s ultimately horrible for a person. The game hits on a real element that is difficult to talk about and can lead to individuals feeling trapped in abusive relationships.
But this potential of a tragedy is hurt by the second half of the route. While the first part was roughly three hours of Madarame torturing Towa, the latter part is focused on taking down the Takasato-gumi. The tone shift is drastic and strange.
It goes from Towa hating Madarame, literally attempting suicide to escape him… to suddenly acting like their relationship is this passionate love story of the ages. The game goes from scenes of Towa cursing, something he rarely does except when very distressed, to him relaxed by Madarame’s side. Tense music is replaced by the usual romantic songs the player is used to hearing in the previous routes. Towa is suddenly fine with silence and is willing to take Madarame’s orders to help him execute his plan.
The turning point for this is supposed to be a fight between Towa and Madarame which devolves into their first consensual h-scene. But it ultimately feels unconvincing. Towa and Madarame have fought a number of times throughout the route by this point. Madarame has enacted violence and Towa has attempted to fight back already. What about this fight is so different? I’m not convinced by the change in attitude and the idea that a single passionate fight would change Towa from calling Madarame, “a fate worse than death,” to wanting to stay with him for life.
It’s a strange route in a game that is so concerned with abuse. One moment the writing is portraying Madarame’s route as tragic. It’s sad that Towa is leaving his friends behind to go to someone who has hurt him. The next moment it’s a fun, breezy time taking down the yakuza. It’s a case of conflicting identities that trivializes the issue of abuse in the end. Madarame is abusive… and that’s exciting and enticing.
A good point of comparison to Madarame is Kotarou. Kotarou is also someone who is violent and engages in rough sex with Towa. However, where he differs from Madarame is the necessity for explicit consent. If Towa turns down Kotarou for sex, he backs off and is respectful about it and vice versa. Their relationship is violent and dangerous. But, at the end of the day, what they do is sane and consensual, even if it’s not very safe. My issue is not necessarily that Madarame is violent and that he and Towa fight. My issue is with the violation of consent.
Unsurprisingly, I don’t have much positive to say about Madarame’s route. But I do have a few things. First off, the plot to take down the Takasato-gumi is something I felt deeply invested in. For the past two routes the player has gotten to see how awful Sakaki and Toono are. Toono’s route in particular involved him breaking Towa’s arm and Towa being repeatedly beaten up by Toono’s goons. After two routes, about 20 hours, of being antagonized by these guys, seeing Towa take them down was satisfying.
Toono has much better characterization too. He’s still a slimy guy who blackmails Taku, attempts to kidnap Towa, and dies due to his own cowardice but it’s not so heavy handed as in Taku’s route. He’s extremely easy to hate and oppose but is toned down and doesn’t have strange out-of-character actions.
The scenes of Towa executing Madarame’s plans are entertaining too. Towa sneaks into Toono’s hotel in disguise and taunts him with a message from Madarame. It’s fun to see him caught off guard and to make him feel scared after all his previous bluster. Later when Madarame and Towa fight their way into the Takasato-gumi estate to kill Toono, the fight scenes are well described, fast-paced, and fun. Kotarou and Mayu play excellent supporting roles in both these scenes, tripping guards and distracting goons. With some better buildup and a slightly more likable man driving the plans, these could be standout scenes. Unfortunately, they’re undercut by all the torment that came beforehand.
Madarame’s route is a story of a man breaking Towa down and returning him to his worst impulses. It’s about indulging his desire for pain and doing everything he can to mold Towa into the person he desires him to be. It could be an excellent tragedy regarding how trauma can be dealt with by giving into old, bad habits and ways of life. Instead it’s dissonant and severely hurts the game as a whole by portraying abuse and rape as something acceptable from a love interest, without change, without apology.
It’s a major misstep that severely hurts the quality of the game overall and muddles otherwise clear and clean messages about abuse.
EQUAL - FUJIEDA
Fortunately, the best route has been saved for last. Throughout the three previous routes the player has seen Towa escalate in the severity of his PTSD symptoms. He goes from minimal nightmares, to recalling his fear of the past, to outright breakdowns. In all of them Towa ultimately doesn’t come to recall what happened to him. Fujieda’s route represents the final manner of dealing with trauma: direct confrontation of its core.
By now the player will be wondering what happened to Towa and may have come to some conclusions. Hints like Ikuina’s recounting of his trauma and Kirihara’s brother’s abuse of a child may clue the player in. So will Towa’s scars which mysteriously were at the same points of fixation, the chest and back, for Ikuina and Asakura. Fujieda’s route wastes no time in getting into these questions and is especially fast paced in the beginning.
Fujieda’s route begins with Towa receiving a package, one he ignored in other routes and allowed Arimura to throw in the trash. Upon opening it, he discovers a description of his scars and headshots of Asakura, Kirihara’s brother, and Ikuina. Immediately the dramatic irony intrigued me. Towa has not yet met these people in Fujieda’s route but I recognized them and knew them intimately. From the diary entry included, the player learns they inflicted Towa’s largest scars upon him long ago. Aside from building immediate intrigue in the player, the stakes of this information are established. Towa is destabilized by the package, becoming sick and passing out after looking through it.
One element that players may have forgotten at this point, due to it being so long since she was mentioned, is Towa’s little sister. According to Towa, she died of an illness in his childhood. She is put front and center in this route when Towa receives her stuffed bunny in this mysterious package. By this point, many of the game’s questions have been answered. What Towa went through as a child can be concluded in vague terms from previous information, the player knows how he lost his eye, and his history with Rei, Taku, and Madarame is revealed. Meanwhile Towa’s sister is a loose thread, one conspicuously dangling after all this time.
As a depiction of PTSD, I find Fujieda’s route to be genuinely lovely and deeply empathetic towards survivors. Towa is a survivor of child trafficking. As he begins to recall his past, he struggles significantly with the information he uncovers. He engages in risky sex, self harms, has worse reactions to nightmares, psychosomatic pain, and migraines. It’s painful for him and he’s doing everything he can to cope in the face of it, even if his methods are unhealthy. His pain is clear and understandable.
One excellent way the route displays its stakes is showing the player previous situations but with new, more severe reactions from Towa. His resemblance to Maya, his mother and abuser, is highlighted in Taku’s route when Toono forces him to crossdress. There it doesn’t bring up any bad reactions or hard feelings from Towa. He’s annoyed with Toono and feels the whole thing is stupid, but he washes off the makeup and moves on without incident. When Towa’s resemblance to Maya in Fujieda’s route is pointed out, he attempts to hurt himself and scar his face further to reduce their resemblance. It’s a great callback to the previous route and shows the player how much Towa fears Maya once he begins to remember her.
Similarly, Towa’s focus while painting has been established in several routes. He will nearly starve and thirst to death in pursuit of completing his painting if he isn’t taken care of. He’s single mindedly focused on it. When Towa can’t focus and even leaves in the middle of painting to continue investigating his past, it shows how hard this weighs on him. His usual distractions and interests can’t keep his focus under the pressure of his PTSD.
In some ways the route perhaps goes too far, particularly with the issue of self harm. Towa’s self harm is shown in graphic detail both visually and through the narration. Allowing that reaction to be raw and shown to the player is in some ways destigmatizing and reflects the real pain that can come from PTSD. Self harm is a difficult subject that is still taboo. Addressing it in fiction allows people to have some understanding of the pain it involves. However, to be truthful, I found myself triggered by just how explicit it is. It’s on a whole other level than even Ikuina’s route, which didn’t explicitly show self harm, just knifeplay. To speak plainly, I had some relapses while playing.
There is risk when explicitly depicting self harm in this manner of doing more harm than good. How much is too much is a blurry line that will come down to individual history, comfort, and preferences. In my case, I think the scenes of self harm from Towa were difficult to approach. But I also can’t deny that toning them down would lessen the impact and understanding the player has of his psychology. It’s something I have complicated feelings about.
A more clear cut issue with the self harm is its crossover with eroticization, just like in Ikuina’s route. Though it’s made worse here by the serious subject matter of child trafficking. Following an encounter with Ikuina and a nightmare of his past, Towa attempts to distract himself through self harm. It’s an h-scene where Towa gets off to the pain he feels. It’s a strange contrast. On the one hand, Towa is having this severe breakdown and using any sensation he can to distract himself from traumatic memory. On the other hand, the scene is clearly intended to be titillating to the player. Slow Damage seems to want to treat self harm as something serious, painful, and resulting from trauma and wants the player to have a sexual reaction to it. It’s awkward and I think undermines the point that Towa is severely suffering at this moment.
Fortunately, the other scenes do not have this uncomfortable crossover. They depict self harm and sensation seeking with a serious tone that keeps its entire focus on Towa’s psychological state without sexualizing the pain he endures.
These scenes, for their flaws, do succeed in how they emphasize the strength of Towa’s support system. The player knows by now that Rei and Taku care deeply about Towa. They just want to see him well and no longer in pain. They’ve supported him through some truly awful situations in past routes and vice versa. To see them steadfastly support Towa, even when they’re at odds and even when Towa lashes out, matters. Towa isn’t absolved fully for his actions. Neither is Taku who comes to have a very conflicting relationship with Towa early in the route. But all sides are given empathy. For all their flaws and faults, they come from pain of the past and a desire to reduce it as much as possible. It’s lovely and desperately needed in a route that is so harrowing. Towa and the player never forget that he is supported and cared for by those around him. It helps make it easier to get through the upsetting scenes and push forward in a route with such difficult subject matter. For all the pain, Towa is loved.
Towa’s past is intertwined with this route's love interest, Fujieda. Overall, I love the dynamic between Fujieda and Towa. They start out horribly opposed to each other with their behavior and appearances contrasted. Towa looks a mess and attacks Fujieda upon their first meeting. Meanwhile Fujieda appears upper class with his clean suit and slicked back hair. Their first impression of each other is repellant and their relationship is antagonistic. Fujieda steals the plush bunny from Towa, investigates him blatantly, and refuses to give clear answers about what his goal is.
Their relationship changes from outright antagonistic to transactional later. Again, this comes alongside visual symbolism. Fujieda meets Towa in the park, his hair ruffled and his face bruised. His appearance has lost its collected luster and Towa gets to see him during a moment of weakness. It’s during this moment that Towa proposes they begin exchanging information and working together. Towa is investigating his past and by extension the business of his mother. Fujieda is investigating the exact same thing. Fujieda is not as perfect as he appears and he clearly is going through it, just like Towa is. That vulnerability leads to their first moments of collaboration.
The first moment when their chemistry really stood out to me, and when the truth of Fujieda’s character is revealed, comes after they flee from the Takasato-gumi. Caught up in the rain, Fujieda and Towa flee to his condo. As they change into fresh clothes, Fujieda is revealed to be more than meets the eye. His torso is covered in burn scars and some lacerations, mirroring the way Towa’s own body appears. It catches Towa off guard and makes it clear that both men aren’t so different. It’s a little tropey but I personally loved it and the execution of it here. As Fujieda sits next to Towa in his casual clothing, Towa vents about the horrible nightmares he’s been having and the pain that this investigation has caused him. Previously Fujieda has not shown much kindness or empathy for who Towa is as a person. This changes as he genuinely promises to recover the past, Towa’s memories, and expresses care for the difficult situation he’s enduring.
It’s a wonderful progression that comes alongside well thought out visual symbolism. Fujieda and Towa’s relationship feels earned, built up over hours of gameplay until both men understand each other and the pain they’ve been through. It takes some time to become explicitly romantic which I think is a good call for this particular route.
Once they’re finally on the same page, the banter between Towa and Fujieda is at times quite funny and charming. Fujieda teasing Towa about his relationship with Madarame or Towa poking at Fujieda’s host club experience are genuinely cute interactions that got a chuckle out of me. They’re bolstered all the more by the most emotional and resonant scenes.
Perhaps the greatest scene in the game is Fujieda talking down Towa from a suicide attempt. Once Towa has recovered his memories, he sees no reason to live anymore. The pain of what has happened to him destroys him and he is overcome with survivors' guilt and despair. As he discovers, the little sister he remembers was a young girl named Yuzuki Mei. She was Fujieda’s sister and was forced into child trafficking alongside Towa. They attempted to run away together but failed. Towa was beaten and Mei was killed.
Something I think is key is the way this scene balances hope and despair. Fujieda doesn’t say simple platitudes about how life will get better or that Towa has so much to live for. He acknowledges the pain this information causes him and says directly that living with it will be hell. But, ultimately, Towa’s life is still valuable just as Mei’s life was valuable. She would have wanted Towa to live and, despite all the pain, Towa should grant that wish. I found this to be such a difficult to read scene, in a good way, and a beautiful one. Towa’s pain is acknowledged. The difficulty of living with PTSD and the reasons a person could turn to suicide are given understanding and empathy. However, despite how painful it is, Fujieda, and Slow Damage, reaffirm the value of life and the value of struggling through each day in hope of a better tomorrow. It’s beautiful and brings me to tears every time I play it.
If players are paying close attention, they’ll notice that this is coming from a deeply personal place for Fujieda. I don’t just mean in the sense that Towa is connected to Mei. At the start of the game, Fujieda says that he hopes to die once his mission to find Mei’s fate is complete. If players recall this, they’ll understand that Fujieda too has dealt with suicidal thoughts and the pain of survivors’ guilt. He didn’t start off this route with this confidence to live despite pain. It’s something he had to work towards and gained through his connection and affection for Towa. It’s under the surface and is a great reward for close attention while playing.
For all my critiques of the game and its handling of self harm, I think it manages to handle the subject of suicide excellently. It has nuance and realism of how painful life can be but ultimately resolves its message with one of hope. Life is worth living, despite the pain. Your life is valuable, even if you can’t yet understand why it’s valuable.
There was a bit of a risk of Fujieda’s route going too far into the trope of love magically fixing someone’s trauma. Romance and recovery are intertwined pretty closely here. But I’m happy to report this issue is deftly avoided. Even in the Euphoria end where Towa makes it through his trauma and comes to appreciate his life, the nightmares still continue. He still has PTSD symptoms and struggles. Fujieda can’t fix Towa. He can offer him steadfast support and love, something that enables him to heal and grow stronger.
Unfortunately, for all this praise I have of Fujieda, there is one scene which sours the route.
Fundamentally Fujieda’s route is about the pain and trauma of CSA. After Fujieda discovers that Mei has died, he has a breakdown and attacks Towa, a mirror of their very first meeting at the park. Out of touch with reality, Fujieda sees Towa as a culprit and attempts to give him, “a fate worse than death.” Plainly put, rapes Towa.
I’m not going to talk about the framing of this scene, the fact it’s replayable like any other h-scene, or whether it’s eroticizing rape. That’s honestly beside the point. The issue with this scene is conceptual. Fujieda is a character who comes to deeply care for Towa and wants to show him love and acceptance. They have an understanding due to their backgrounds and come to support each other as equals throughout the game. This scene takes a character who is otherwise very sympathetic and kind and suddenly has him rape Towa. It feels very out of left field and not in line with his established character before and after this scene. It’s random and only serves to make Fujieda unlikeable. It’s made significantly worse when Fujieda and Towa talk about it later. Fujieda refuses to apologize repeatedly.
It’s… bad. There’s no other way to say it. In a route which seems to understand the pain and suffering that CSA can cause and engages with it in a careful way, here rape is used just to twist the knife regarding how much Fujieda and Towa are suffering. And in the end, it’s not something that’s depicted as traumatizing to Towa or a reason he should resent or distrust Fujieda.
It’s really strange to have a game which is so concerned about the sexual abuse of children be so callous towards the sexual abuse of adults. It’s a blight in what I otherwise consider a near perfect character and a near perfect route. It’s one of the scenes that makes Slow Damage hardest to recommend and really hurts my opinion of the game overall.
In the end, I love Fujieda despite this scene. It’s so out of left field that I consider it an issue of writing rather than an issue of him as a character. For all its flaws, this scene does not erase all the praise I’ve given and the incredible achievements of Slow Damage as a game about trauma, even if it has a detrimental effect on it. Fujieda and Towa are still given great empathy and focus by the narrative. The way child trafficking hurts people well into adulthood and the pain of living with the knowledge of the past is given the full weight it deserves. To see Towa finally admits he’s happy to be alive in the Euphoria end… it’s beautiful and heart wrenching, in the best way.
Aside from Fujieda and Towa, Maya and Sakaki play key roles. Sakaki has already been built up in past routes as someone cautious and duplicitous. He hides his true motivations and, when push comes to shove, will hurt and threaten people around Towa to get what he wants. He claims to care about Towa and has a fatherly outlook but, as the player sees, he will use Towa to his advantage. That is taken to an extreme in Fujieda’s route. Due to Sakaki’s fixation on Maya, he grows far less cautious and more bold in his methods. He kills people close to Towa who may give him hints about his past, kills Toono, and does everything he can to force Towa to be Maya’s successor. He loses a lot of the subtlety that kept him on the line between likable and hateable. In some ways, I dislike that he loses those qualities. But in its wake the player gains an understanding of his infatuation’s intensity. Sakaki loses his sense of reason and caution when it comes to Maya. It’s not in line with how he usually acts and it emphasizes just how dangerous and threatening he is. He’s an out of control foe who has been well built up in previous routes. He’s just on another level of extremity here.
Maya also serves as an excellent villain. Even though she died long ago, the effects of her planning and how much she’s harmed Towa ring well into the present. In previous routes she’s been built up as someone who holds a lot of significance and was a key figure in keeping the Takasato-gumi together. She’s formidable and getting to understand just how much evil she perpetuated is a great payoff to the many questions the player will have about her going into the route.
That said, because of how many awful things she does and how horribly she abuses even her own son, she risks losing nuance and the realism that is often involved in abuse. She could go over the edge into a flat character who is simply evil and nothing else. This is something that is luckily avoided.
At the very end of the game Maya’s diary is found by Towa and Fujieda. They read the entry she wrote upon her deathbed, hidden between blank pages at the very end. In it she describes feeling broken, her love for Towa, and her difficulty connecting with him. Despite all the horrible things she put Towa through, she loved him. She was a horrible woman who hurt people and committed many atrocities but she too experienced her own kind of pain.
This doesn’t make her a sympathetic character. Far from it. Even with the knowledge that she had some love for Towa, neither the player nor characters in the story forgive her. Having a twisted idea of love does not absolve or excuse a single crime she has committed. What it does do is provide Maya with a level of nuance that to me feels very realistic to abuse in real life. Many parents don’t seek to abuse their children. They want to connect with them and do what’s best for them. They have pain and problems of their own. However, rather than reckoning with that, they offset that pain onto others and inflict it upon their children. Through this diary entry, it reveals that Maya’s intentions didn’t matter. She was an unforgivable villain, someone who inflicted terrible pain on others. But… she was also human. And the idea that a human could murder, abuse, and torture others is far more painful than the idea a monster could.
This scene always makes me cry. A lot. I mean full on ugly crying. It’s all the more saddening to understand her as a person and her failures. It will never make up for the pain she inflicted. She tried… but she failed. For that failure Towa and Fujieda will have to pay the price for the rest of their lives. It’s a gruesomely real depiction of abuse. When abusers fail, they only feel that pain minimally. It’s their victims, who have to live on with the suffering inflicted upon them, who experience the resulting consequences.
Fujieda’s route, and Slow Damage as a whole, is a touching love letter to survivors. It makes many mistakes and has flaws that may be insurmountable for some readers. But all throughout, it’s earnest and is desperately trying to tell a story of what it’s like to experience pain, live for pain, and eventually recover despite it all. It’s a poignant and beautiful message that I never expected to find. And for that, I’m glad I played it. Most of all, I’m glad I played Slow Damage during the circumstances I did.
READER RESPONSE
This section is very personal but I think it’s key to my understanding of Slow Damage and why it had such a massive impact on me. So, despite the vulnerability, I’m going to level with you. I’m a survivor of CSA myself. Nothing on the level of Towa, but I have a diagnosis of PTSD and suffer the effects of it to this day.
I’m used to stories of characters with PTSD dying. I’m especially used to male, gay, CSA survivors dying. People like me dying. It’s an unfortunately common trope, going as far back as some of the earliest examples of shounen ai with the manga Kaze to ki no Uta. And it’s continued with famous works such as Banana Fish, A Little Life, and many more.
I read stories about survivors in hopes of finding a kindred spirit in the text. Fiction is a way to transmit empathy for others. When I read a good story, I feel understood by the text. I don’t measure fiction by its relatability but by its capability to produce a strong, affective experience.
It’s hard when repeatedly the messages given in fiction are that lives like mine will end in tragedy. It’s hard reading through narratives where victims fight tooth and nail for survival… only to lose even their lives at the end. It’s hard to hear statements from authors where they describe the life of a CSA survivor to be one not worth living.
It’s part of why Slow Damage is so special to me. No matter what route the player takes, no matter what pain he endures, Towa’s life is depicted as one worth living. He may never come to terms with his trauma. Hell, he may regress horribly and experience more pain. But every moment, good or bad, is worth fighting for. There is not a single ending in which he dies.
I’ve felt the pain of wondering if I should go on many times in my life. When I played Slow Damage, I was going through one of the worst depressive episodes I’d had in years. I’d just started an antidepressant but it wasn’t the right fit. I was sick with side effects and desperately hoping I’d find something to help me. To read Slow Damage when I did touched me deeply and reminded me why I kept fighting.
I don’t even think I can describe the impact this story had on me. To see a story which reckons with how horrible CSA can affect a person but which still professes that yes, you should live, you should fight to live, matters so deeply. Life is painful. The past can never be erased. But healing is possible.
We need more stories like this. I mean that in the sincerest way I can. And in putting one into the world, Nitro+Chiral has created something truly beautiful and worthy of every accolade I can give it. Slow Damage is a love letter to survivors and it’s a love letter which touched my heart at its most vulnerable.
I hope that it can be that important for someone else too.
OUTRO
Thank you so much for sticking it out until the end of the video. I’ve been working quite hard on this review for months now. A big part of that was college work absolutely burying me. In some ways I feel like choosing Slow Damage as my first project was an awful decision considering how much I have to say about it and just how much I love it. Despite how much I’ve said here, I feel like I could talk for hours more. But that passion is what’s gotten me through the process, even as I’ve had to learn and struggle through it.
I am also happy to say I did find a working antidepressant for me. Things are still kind of rough but, eh. It’s life. The horrors persist but so do I.
If you’ve enjoyed this review and want to see more like it, I’ll be working on a review of Sweet Pool next. Subscribe to see that once it’s out! I’m aiming to have it done by late August, early September. I’ll be continuing to focus on VNs and BL. If you like Nitro+Chiral, there’s a good chance you’ll like what I’m doing next.
If you feel interested by what I’ve said here, likes and comments are appreciated! I like hearing other people’s experiences with media and which parts resonated with them. I hope my passion has come through clearly as I’ve spoken and I always enjoy reading interpretations and opinions from other people.
Thank you again for watching and I hope you have a well-deserved, lovely day.