Big Bang Age

"My name is Zanma Rouga. I am the man who will conquer Japan."

Also known by its Japanese name Daibanchou, Big Bang Age is a strategy RPG H-Game from the fine people at AliceSoft, makers of Rance series. In fact, the game plays very much like a prototype of the strategy battle system seen in Sengoku Rance, but has its own nuances and tweaks to fit the differences in the setting.

It is an unspecified year in the 21st century and the world is a very different place. Eleven years before, a giant hole of pure evil opened up in the middle of the Japan and completely reshaped the landscape, turning it into something altogether more squarish. Along with this "Hell Hole" came giant black crystals called B-Crystals that radiated a mysterious energy that was later named B-Power. Children all across Japan were exposed to this B-Power and became Special Beings with various different superhuman powers. Law and order broke down, people fled in terror, Japan was cut off from the rest of the world. So, just another day at the office for the Alicesoft writers. Anyway, about a year later one man rose up and brought Japan under his heel. He formed a Student Union to impose some sort of order on the nation. He was successful and there was peace for a time.

Flash forward to the present and the order this man established is in ruins. The country has been divided into warring factions, the Student Union is a mere shell of its former self and empires are carved out by the most powerful Special Students, those kids from the past decade all grown up. Into the picture walks Zanma Rouga, a mysterious transfer student to a school in Tokyo that has fallen on hard times. On his very first day, in front of everyone, he swaggers up to the front of the class and declares that he will be the one to conquer Japan.

Tropes used in Big Bang Age include:

• Absurdly Powerful Student Council: Taken to its logical conclusion. They don't just run the school. They run the country.
• After the End
• Artificial Human
• The Atoner: Surprisingly enough, Akito. He winds up on the streets with nothing to his name until he gets taken in by a kind old man who helps him get his legs back. Then he joins Wolf Fang. Camilla Bathory also ends up trying to atone for her crimes, as does Tomoka though her crimes are somewhat less heinous.
  • Idagawa Ren, of sorts; much like Rouga, he is trying to conquer Japan, however, years ago, his best friend, Hokuto, died in battle so Ren could escape, Ren blamed himself for not being strong enough to protect his comrade and then became a Death Seeker so he could meet with his friend again, he is also the only unit in the game that has no fewer than THREE different ways to die besides falling in battle:
    • If you enter Senna's route, he and his whole gang gets murdered by Kamui
    • If you have have Kyouko on your team and enter Kunagi route, she'll gut Ren in the chest with a knife and kill him, he has no objections, in fact, he incentivates her to kill him
    • Lastly, if you at any point station him in Abashiri, Kyouko will kill Ren while he is thinking about his deceased friend, and Kyouko's husband, Hokuto, he does not put up a fight at all or even talks to Kyouko in this occasion, even though she just stabbed him in the chest and left him to die in the middle of the street.
• Authority Equals Asskicking: The main requirement for becoming a banchou is a high level of B Abilities so the banchous of various schools are among the strongest fighters you can recruit. The actual Student Council Presidents tend to zigzag in terms of actual power level.
  • Averted with the Cat Banchou, which is one of the weakest units in the game.
• Baleful Polymorph
• Barehanded Blade Block: Done by Rouga against a berserk Senna.
• Berserk Button: Calling Rouga an eggplant head without being a cute girl.
• Big Brother Mentor: Gou to Rouga.
• Blind Idiot Translation: Not the fan translation itself, but Alicesoft was horrific in its Gratuitous English translated titles for the soundtrack. For instance, "Holy Flame" becomes "Holly Frame".
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Vampirism seems to do this to people. Some cases are less obvious.
• Brother-Sister Incest: Averted by the two in question not actually being brother and sister. Much brainwashing was involved. And then there's Iori/Senna. And Kendo/Kyudo.
• Bruce Lee Clone: Say it with us now ? Daigo.
• But Your Wings Are Beautiful: Pretty much everyone aside from the Holy Flame faction like Marishia's wings.
• Captain Ersatz: Several characters.
  • MacGyver
  • Camilla Bathory
  • Ninjacaptor Zakuro
  • Sparn
• Childhood Friends: Heita and Yuuki. It isn't explored deeply, however, due to both being minor characters after the school chapter.
• Church Militant: The Holy Flame.
• Class Representative: Typically characters with the Honor Student ability.
• Creator Cameo: One of Alicesoft's music composers, Shade, makes a cameo in one of Igarashi Koumi's character check events. His credits include much of the Rance music as well as Big Bang Age's.
• Creepy Child: Kinako Tsukuyomi.
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique: Heita's Decade Knuckle, so named because it shaves 10 years off his life span and if he uses it too many times in-game he will die.
• Defeat Means Friendship: The typical way to acquire allies.
• Delinquents: A handful form Rouga's initial allies and the standard troops for independent factions.
• Departure Means Death: It's a good idea to listen to Sonnet when she tells you to station her in Forestland because if you put her anywhere other than Forestland or Shinjuku she'll die after several turns. Though you can't clear her if you don't. This also factors into Sparn's character clear.
• Doujinshi: The popular fighting game Big Bang Beat, which also has its own page on this very wiki.
• Expy: While being a parody of Parn from Record of Lodoss War, Sparn also bears a suspicious resemblance to Rance.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Chaos mode is not called that for its difficulty, but because it is chaotic and makes no sense. You get every character that you've cleared (even the mutually exclusive ones) and fight against every power at once. The four enemy factions have been replaced with the characters designed to be hated and portrayed in a more comical light. For example, Murata is unpopular with men so he instead leads a gay rape army. Not the most sensible setting.
• Extremity Extremist: Several major characters. Played with in Rouga's case since he is described using kicks and other moves in the writing but, due to Limited Animation, only uses his hands in gameplay.
• Femme Fatalons
• Final Death: The game's as mean as Fire Emblem in this regard--0 HP means permanently gone.
• Freaky Is Cool: Daigo attempts to invoke this as Devil Daigo to impress Aya, but it has the complete opposite effect.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: The reason why you have a fighting chance despite one of the opposing factions having access to tanks.
  • Actually, it's not that they're tanks. It's that they're tanks that have their armor boosted because otherwise a special student is more or less a match for one.
• Green Rocks: The B-Crystals give vastly different special powers to humans and eventually became an accepted form of currency in Japan.
• Guide Dang It: You'll need one if you want to recruit pretty much all of the characters, nevermind clearing their star events.
• Harder Than Hard: Chaos Mode is called that because it's chaotic, but it still has even more zones to capture per territory, units that are a good three times stronger and enemies can attack your capital on the first turn with units like Jeanne and Viral. Also, everyone's abilities are stuck at their default level, so here's hoping you weren't going to depend on characters like Hitani Mario or Negishi Nanana. And yes, the game does give you a warning that it hasn't been adequately play tested, balanced and might therefore be buggy or unwinnable.
• Hermaphrodite: Iori
• Hot-Blooded: Naturally, the guy with the red hair and the man who wants to be a man.
• Hot Chick with a Sword: Senna.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: There are a couple of these teams spread out among the various factions.
• Improbable Weapon User: A kickboard. A kickboard.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Heita gives up on Sanae early on after he sees she is in love with Rouga. Rouga gets angry at him for giving up so quickly, considering his stated goal of becoming more manly.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Benishibuki Daimon is actually a really nice guy, all of his star events consist on him doing good actions.
• Justified Tutorial: Instead of throwing you in off the deep end, the first part of the game is a tiny, school-sized sandbox where you can play around and learn the basic mechanics before facing Akito. Then it gets more complicated, the map grows in scale and you have to deal with enemies who fight back. Then, and only then, do you get the opening movie.
• Karma Houdini: Murata from the PGG takes advantage of Ginjou Tomoka's submissive nature and kills her if you don't recruit her, raises the taxes of all regions controlled by the PGG, and is overall a huge jackass who EVERYONE on the PGG hates, and he gets away with it with only a punch from Rouga. When you play through Chaos Mode, however ...
• Les Yay: There's some definite heaving teasing between Ulruka and Camilla while clearing the two. In the end any attraction is more or less limited to Ulruka. The latter seems to fall in love with Rouga instead.
• Level Up At Intimacy 5
• Lighter and Softer: Senna's route in comparison to Kunagi's:
  • The Sealed Evil in a Can that is behind the Nightmare Eyes gets glossed over, then dies before he can wake up.
  • Despite finding out the whole truth behind the NPI's methods, they get portrayed more sympathetically.
  • Aside from Kunagi and Millar there aren't any particularly depressing moments unique to this route.
• Living Shadow: Kyoichiro's B-ability.
• Loads and Loads of Characters: 91 playable characters, including the ones that just happen to have unique sprites and no dialogue whatsoever, plus generic recruitable students that can be used to handle logistical issues in a pinch.
• Lolicon: Ijuun Tamari, his reason for joining is the same as Francine, except he does notice that Yuki is actually a girl
• Lost Forever: Kunagi and Senna are mutually exclusive shortly after the National Chapter sets in. There are no fewer than four sets of mutually exclusive minor characters from the early game as well, as well as characters that you can only get in certain routes and events that are easy to miss if you don't catch them in the 10-turn window that they are available.
  • It's specially bad early in the game, since with the exception of the Ijuuin Tamari and Francine, and Yamamoto Burai and Tsukuyomi Kinako, whoever you don't recruit will probably get blackmailed into helping the current Big Bad, Brainwashed, raped or outright killed, sometimes even a combination of 2 or more of them.
    • Doumoto Mizuki and Negishi Nanana: Whoever you do not rescue gets horribly gangraped and is never heard from again.
    • The Nanakishi and Erika's gang: Whoever you don't recruit gets blackmailed by Akito to work for him
  • The whole District chapter can be a massive player punch:
    • At around turn 11 or so, Aya gets captured by Ren's gang; didn't save her? She gets killed.
    • Kyouko gets her daughter kidnapped and then gets gangraped by Ren's gang (Although it's unlikely the man himself had anything to do with this, since he was best friends with Kyouko's deceased husband) if you do not defeat her before such event happens, and if you do defeat her, well, she's not recruitable.
    • [[spoiler: Kongoumaru Sanzou and Idagawa Ren are the bosses of the two factions currently at war on Toukyou, and also the bosses of the District chapter, although you can only fight one of them, and that sets your route (Sanzou/Senna and Ren/Kunagi); the other one gets brutally murdered by Kamui.}}
• Love Martyr: Millar
• Mad Scientist: Tsukuyomi Kibito is this until you snap him out of it
• Magikarp Power: Heita starts off fairly strong but is quickly outclassed (as in, start of the National Chapter quick) by characters actually worth using; that is, until he transforms into Super Heita. Boosted stats, new type advantages AND a super attack - he's got 'em all.
• Mascot Mook: The Haniwa can be seen in all walks of life as they are in every Alicesoft game. Haniho!
• Meaningful Name: Rouga means "Wolf Fang", which is exactly what his faction calls itself.
  • The Nakanishi sisters are named Kendo and Kyudo, they fight doing exactly that.
• The Messiah: Camilla. No, really.
• Mildly Military: The PGG.
• Musical Assassin: Mario Hitani kills people with the power of... country music?
  • If his attack animation is anything to go by, it's more like a heavy guitar case with a machine gun hidden inside.
• Negative Space Wedgie: The Hell Hole.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: The red and white color scheme of Senna's outfit is evocative of the uniforms worn by shrine maidens, but it's cut into a Badass Cape/Sailor Fuku combo. Now add the mandatory katana and you've got a Samurai/Miko/Japanese Schoolgirl combo.
  • Kunagi wears a modified qipao, can transform into a wolf or materialize ghostly wolf claws to fight, and is the heir to a powerful dark arts tradition, making her a Ninja/Wizard/Anime Chinese Girl/Werewolf
• Nonstandard Game Over: Happens if you lose the duel against Erika's gang.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: For the past 11 years Gou has been keeping a sixth Sacred Student Button and recharging it with his own powers. When he's done it turns out he's almost as strong, if not stronger, than Rouga. Weakest man in the world indeed!
• Physical God: Emperor Moo, who can power a city by riding a bike hooked up to a generator. Or sink island into the city as he pleases. Naturally, he won't do it in combat for you, but he's still a powerful unit with an attack advantage against everything and lots of stamina.
• Recurring Riff: Elements of the main theme, "Dash! To the Truth", are used in many songs, especially the fight songs.
• Rescue Sex: Aya. Since she was pumped full of aphrodisiac by her captors, the sex was part of the rescue.
• Red Baron: Many characters of note have epithets like "Akito of the Dark".
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Strip away all the dogma and this is essentially the Holy Flame's mission. When the Hell Hole opened, one of the first groups of people to be blamed were foreigners living in Japan, especially since many of the monsters that appeared afterwards originated in western mythology. The persecution turned violent and many of the dead were members of the Holy Flame themselves so, when the tables finally turned, it became their mission to not only close the Hell Hole but kill all the Japanese.
• Rock Beats Laser: The typical result of someone going up against a tank.
• Screw Yourself: Senna has sex with Iori at one point.
• Sequence Breaking: It's possible to charge into and capture the Holy Flame capital of Nagazaki befure Rusheld starts to even move if you're quick about it. Hitani Mario and his Flashy also helps a lot. The dialogue the game gives you is what happens if you just charge right into the base before Rusheld collapses. Rusheld will probably still take back Kumamatou, though, but this leaves you the possibility of beating the Holy Flame before they can do any real damage to you.
• Shotacon: Francine. Her motivation for joining Wolf Fang came after seeing Yuki.
• Shout-Out: Saito Amon's E-Gyro is a combination of Yu-Gi-Oh! and Beyblade.
  • You can occasionally encounter enemies named Acguy.
    • Likewise, there is a character named Abao Aku.
  • Harami's last name, Ariake, is also the location of the Tokyo Big Sight which hosts Comiket, the world's largest market for Doujinshi, something that she loves to collect.
  • Kyudo keeps a collection of Earth Ironman Kyodai manga (A reference to Space Ironman Kyodai. It was the first ending that Lucky Star parodied.)
• Shorttank: Benkei. The gigantic suit of armour's mostly for show since her B-Ability is Super Strength.
• Spiritual Successor: Of Daiakuji, a previous Alicesoft game.
• Stalker with a Crush: Mitamazuka Youki to Touma Kanata, and although its kind of hard to tell, it does bother him.
• Student Council President: Sanae.
• Sugar and Ice Personality: Ulruka.
• Sweet Polly Oliver: Yuki Naruse
• Timed Mission: You have 99 turns once the National Chapter starts before the game ends. Have fun. The District Chapter also runs on a time limit, after which the PGG sends tanks to wipe you out. Yep, the same tanks that you have absolutely no trouble against in the National Chapter.
  • The School Chapter gives you 26 turns to find Akito's base (otherwise he comes and ends the game), and even then after you find him you only get around four turns before the Sensouji Pep Squad comes in and crushes you.
• Torture Always Works: It does, but that doesn't mean you're going to get something useful out of the victim.
• Tsundere: Morisawa Marine. Kaen to some extent as well, but she's usually just a complete doormat around Rouga.
• Our Elves Are Better: Sparn certainly seems to think so.
• Our Vampires Are Different
• Variable-Length Chain: Where Erika of the Chain got her nickname.
• Victorious Childhood Friend: Kunagi and Rouga appear to have been dating

for some time.

• We Cannot Go on Without You: Non-hero example. If Kyudo ever dies during combat, Kendo loses her fighting spirit and leaves your side. Also contains the standard version whereby, if Rouga or any of the main heroines are killed in battle, the game ends. Once you clear Kyouko's fifth star, her very young daughter joins the fight - if Yuuna is killed, her mom loses the will to fight and quits the team. Since her stats are so low, the temptation might be to just never send her into combat, but she's as good at collecting income as her mom and has the power to reduce enemy counter chance by HALF, often more of an effect than her mom on people with a high counter chance.
• Where Are They Now? Epilogue
• White-Haired Pretty Girl: Kunagi.
• Winged Humanoid: Marishia.
• Word Salad Title: Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Hawaii is in Japan. So are Transylvania, Dream Island and MOO!
• World's Strongest Man: Inverted. Gou is the WEAKEST MAN IN THE WORLD.
• You Lose At Zero Trust

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In this country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the women.