Demonbane

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

Kurou Daijuuji is a poor detective living in Arkham City (no, not that one). One day, he's asked by Ruri Hadou of the Hadou Financial Group to search for a magical grimoire. As Kurou searches for the book, he unexpectedly runs into Al-Azif, a pretty girl who turns out to be the grimoire Kurou is searching for. While being chased by the villainous Black Lodge, Al forges a contract with Kurou, bestowing him with powerful magic. Soon afterwards, Al also activates the Demonbane, a Deus Machina owned by the Hadou Financial Group, to combat the mechanical menace from the Black Lodge. With this, the war between the Hadou Financial Group and the Black Lodge begins....

A series by Nitroplus with Humongous Mecha and Cthulhu Mythos elements, it began as an Visual Novel Eroge for the PC, then was ported to the Sony PlayStation 2 as a non-eroge remake. A sequel action game, a prequel novel, an OVA, an Anime of the Game and a conversion to manga followed the remake.

The following tropes are common to many or all entries in the Demonbane franchise.
For tropes specific to individual installments, visit their respective work pages.

• Achey Scars: Sandalphon's face bleeds when he gets too upset about Leica.
• Affably Evil: Doctor West Until his Heel Face Turn.
• A Plague on Both Your Houses: The last words of Sandalphon.
• Alice Allusion: The entire incident with the Mirror of Nitocris.
• All Webbed Up: In Atlach-Nacha's lair.
• And Then What?: Sandalphon is asked what he intends to do after he defeats Metatron. He doesn't really have an answer.
• Animal Motifs: The Tyrant acts like a cat and has hair like cat ears.
• Anime Hair: Everyone
• The Antichrist: Master Therion, according to one of the trivia pages, translates to 666 in a magic system that assigns numerical values to letters, and he has a personality cult and vast magical ability..
• Anti-Magic: Doctor West's Dig Me No Grave.
• The Archer: Liber Legis's Sirius Bow.
• Ascended to A Higher Plane of Existence: In one ending, Kurou and Al become Elder Gods.
• Attractive Bent Gender: Kurou gets forced into drag at one point, and though we don't get to see it, even Doctor West found him hot.
• Avenging the Villain: When Caligula is killed by Kurou, Claudius goes absolutely berserk.
• Babies Ever After: The sequel plays with this, Kuzaku and Another Blood are Kuro and Al's children. However, both of them come from alternate future.
• Badass: Almost every named character.
  • Action Girl: Metatron and Elsa. Ruri later joins this trope in her route.
  • Back-to-Back Badasses: Kurou and Winfield during the battle at Innsmouth. Elsa and Ruri do this in their route versus Claudius.
  • Badass Automaton: Elsa.
  • Badass Biker: Doctor West, Al, Metatron, Sandalphon and Kurou get their chances at being this.
    • Motorcycle Fu: Done by Metatron, Sandalphon and Doctor West on three separate occasions.
  • Badass Crew: Anticross is the evil version of this.
  • Badass Grandpa: Every image we see of Ruri's grandfather points to him being this. Just look at those muscles, and that hair, and that pose! "Hadou Kozou" at that point isn't Hadou Kozou at all, but a time-traveling Kurou from the future. Yes, seriously. The sequel add Laban Shrewsbury to this trope.
  • In Ruri's route, this would have... implications. Ironically enough, this information is only revealed in Ruri's route and she seems fairly okay about the whole revelation.
    • Made less squicky by the fact that he's not related to her by blood but by adopting her father before she was born.
  • Badass Normal: Winfield. Stone and Ness get their moments as well.
  • In a weird mix of this trope and Brought Down to Badass, the Demonbane becomes this in Al's route after her apparent death, forcing Elsa to take over. True, Demonbane can't use most of it's attacks aside from its fists and Lemuria Impact, but it's still more than enough to take out at least one of the Anticross' Deus Machina.
  • Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Stone and Ness aren't as pathetic as they seem, as Tiberius finds out.
  • Little Miss Badass: Al and Etheldreda.
  • Determinator: Kurou, Winfield and Doctor West.
  • One-Man Army: Almost every magically empowered character.
  • Person of Mass Destruction: Every fighting character.
  • World of Badass: Excepting faceless civilians, everyone is this. Hell, even Stone and Ness qualify as Badass, if for no other reason than the ability to survive the kind of stuff that would kill anyone else more times than one can count, even when they are at ground zero for a lethal attack!
  • Worthy Opponent: Titus and Winfield consider each other such.
• Battle Butler: Winfield, who's a Homage to H.P. Lovecraft's father, Winfield Scott Lovecraft.
• Beach Episode: The Shadow Over Innsmouth. Obviously, it's of the Busmans's Holiday type.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: Al falls in love with Kurou because he is not like her previous masters. Unlike them, he treats her as a human and more than that, as someone important. The souls of her previous masters admit that when they were working together in the past the various pairs shouldn't have treated each other like tools.
• Beyond the Impossible: Elder God Demonbane's Athleta Aeternum ability can summon countless variant of itself in multiverse. And not just those exist in the multiverse, it can summon those that shouldn't exist as well.
• BFS: The Shining Trapezohedron, which can supposedly cut through dimensions and seal gods. The Scimitar of Barzai also counts.
• Bittersweet Ending: Almost all true and normal ending are this. This is especially true in Ruri's normal and good ending and Leica's true ending.
• Blade Catch: When retrieving the independent Scimitar Of Barzai
• Bleached Underpants: PlayStation 2 version
• Blood Knight: Half of Anticross consists of these.
• Blush Sticker: Chibi-Al Azif and Sonia, the smallest of Ruri's maids.
• Bondage Is Bad: With a name like "the Tyrant", y'think?
• Bound and Gagged: Chiaki winds up like this a few times, albeit Played for Laughs.
• Bridge Bunnies: Ruri's servants Makoto, Chiaki and Sonia.
• Brought Down to Badass: In Al's route, she temporarily dies. While she's gone, Kurou is forced to fight without her. While his performance certainly suffers, he still ends up a rather competent fighter.
• Butt Monkey: Kurou does not have much luck with the women in his life. At all.
  • Doctor West is also one, especially if you count all the times he gets "beat the shit out of". In fact, his own creation (Elsa) falls for Kurou and treats her creator like crap, her programming be damned.
• Calling Your Attacks
• Canon: The visual novel has Multiple Endings. In the sequel, it turn out that most of them occur, with exception of the bad ending. This is possible because of time-loops and alternate timelines.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: Winfield is able to go toe-to-toe with an Anticross sorcerer by virtue of the fact that he's a master boxer. Apparently boxing in Demonbane can make you superhuman.
• Chick Magnet: Kurou gets over half the women in the game to go googly eyed for him in one way or another. While being a Butt Monkey at the same time.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Al, especially in Ruri's route
• Cluster F-Bomb: Kurou and Doctor West have dialogue that could strip paint off walls.
• Combat Tentacles
• Combined Energy Attack: It's vengeful.
• Conservation of Ninjutsu: You'd think when Demonbane has the ability to summon every Demonbane that exists, could exist, could never exist and doesn't ever exist to fight alongside it, this trope would be the first thing to come into effect. Thoroughly subverted, as having infinite Demonbanes makes it truly unstoppable.
• Cool Bike: Hunting Horror.
• Cool Guns: Cthugha is a pimped-out Mauser C96, while Ithaqua is a pimped-out Mateba revolver.
• Cosplay Otaku Girl: Al seems to like changing her outfit to be "theme appropriate" to her situation quite a bit, and since the visual novel is an eroge, most outfits have a sexual theme which she lampshades without shame.
• Curb Stomp Battle: All of the Anticross vs. Master Therion. On the other hand, his death was just the beginning.
  • Anyone who fights Kurou in the finale of Ruri's route, up until the very last one.
  • Anyone who is foolish enough to go up against the Tyrant. Except Master Therion, where the joke's on her.
• Cute and Psycho: The Tyrant. Or at least, she's cute beneath all the bondage gear.
• Cyborg: Metatron, the Tyrant and Sandalphon.
• Damsel in Distress: Metatron is taken captive to be a substitute C Priestess after the Tyrant is killed by Kurou.
• Dark-Skinned Blond: Cthugha in human form is a tanned White-Haired Pretty Girl.
• Demoted to Extra: Despite being major characters, Metatron and Sandalphon are nowhere to be seen in anime adaption. Also Alison, who got a whole chapter of focus on her Character Development in the visual novel version only.
• Depraved Bisexual: Tiberius, though his preference seems to slant towards women, has some creepy affectionate dialogue for Sandalphon.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Done rather spectacularly.
• Did You Just Romance The Necronomicon
• Dual-Wielding / Guns Akimbo / Swords Akimbo: The Demonbane and Kurou when using Cthugha & Ithaqua, Kuzaku "Two-Sword"/"Two-Gun" and his Demonbane Two-Sword, and lest we forget Titus of Anticross, a four-armed sword wielding samurai.
• Dumb Muscle: Caligula.
• Dying as Yourself: Subverted. Ryuuga dies insane and hating Leica. Or perhaps that was his true self and the boy Leica knew was just a lie. Due to rejecting the idea of dying sane or at peace, he does not reincarnate into the restructured world at the end of Leica's route.
• Eldritch Abomination: A few. The likes of Dagon and Hydra don't bother anyone too much but the likes of Cthulhu cause some major brain breaking at first.
• Eldritch Location: An entire section of the city has been sealed off for being one of these. Any normal person who enters would simply die instantly.
• Electra Complex: Another Blood wants to replace her mom. To make it more complicate, she comes from an alternate future and thus is not really related to her parents in the present. And since she's a book like her mom, their genetic relationship is hard to judge.
• Ending Fatigue: In-universe version. In prequel novel, Nyarlathotep got bored of never-ending battle between Gunshin Kyoshuu Demonbane and Gunshin Kyoshuu Liber Legis (after watching it for strange aeons, even attack that destroy multiverses can be boring...). So she tweak the timeline, kicking whole events of prequel out of canon (and erase those two from reality), result in one that of the Visual Novel.
• Even Evil Has Standards
  • Most members of Anticross have contempt for Tiberius. Doctor West finds him to be an illogical abomination, and Sandalphon even resorts to Enemy Mine with Kurou to screw him over.
  • A few members of Black Lodge find excess violence rather distasteful. Titus will kill people far below his level if ordered to, but otherwise finds it pointlessly brutal. Doctor West also finds outright slaughter to be so unappealing that he defects after calling out all of Anticross at once and getting stabbed for his trouble.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: In Elder Gods ending, Nyarlathotep express its confusion at Kurou and Al as they continue to fight for humanity after ascend into Elder Gods. The narration make it clear that, to the Ancient Ones, there shouldn't be any good gods.
• Evil Counterpart: Liber Legis is the ultimate evil to Demonbane's ultimate good and they have similar but opposite attacks. Metatron and Sandalphon also have this dynamic going on.
• Evil Is Deathly Cold: Master Therion's Liber Legis' "Hyperborea Zero Drive" reduces its target's temperature to absolute zero. Also, Caligula's Kraken's main attack.
  • Ithaqua too, since all magic is technically "unholy".
• Evil Twin
  • Doctor West's "Demonpain", which can do almost everything the original Demonbane can and is even powered by some of Al Azif's pages.
  • Another Blood from the sequel visual novel is another one, being the blood edition of the Necronomicon.
• Expresssive Idiot Hair: Doctor West, similar to Sumika.
• Expy: Metatron and Sandalphon have a variant of the Blade and Evil dynamic.
• Faceless Goons: The Black Lodge mooks.
• Facial Markings: Half the people with Anime Hair, mostly those from Black Lodge.
• Fate Worse Than Death
  • The bad ending, Kurou becomes Nyarlathotep's plaything. Trapped in a timeloop, he lives in the world that became an Eldritch Location after the the destruction of Shining Trapezohedron. At the end of each loop, he will meet Al but never get a reunion with her.
  • In Al's route, they don't really bother trying to kill Tiberius. Instead, he gets sucked into the Shining Trapezeohedron. Al and Kurou couldn't see what was in there from where they were, but Tiberius certainly could. What he saw was enough to make the crazed, monstrous immortality freak actually beg for death instead of being sucked inside. Kurou simply points out that after all the horrors he perpetrated to become what he is now whatever is in there surely won't be enough to do put an end to him either.
• Faux Affably Evil: Vespasianus. Sure, he's fairly erudite and disturbingly polite for an Anticross member, but his deeds and what he'll do to accomplish them reveal it's but a thin veneer over his Complete Monster Mad Scientist self.
• Fille Fatale: Ennea
• Finishing Move: Lemuria Impact.
• Fragile Speedster: Lord Byakhee.
• The Gadfly: Ennea is quite fond of trolling Al.
• Genre Blind: Nero is indeed the most powerful among Anticross and has no problem fighting both Augustus and Vespasianus at same time. Too bad, she confront them inside Cthulhu, surround by countless Naughty Tentacles. Since Demonbane start as Eroge, it doesn't matter how powerful she is...
• Genre Savvy: The entire civilian population of Arkham City seem to be transplanted from The Big O and Bubblegum Crisis, especially given their in universe reactions to all the crazy shit that happens every other day.
• Girls Are Really Scared of Horror Movies: Invoked and averted should you decide that Kurou and Ruri will watch a horror movie. Winfield thinks that Ruri will get really scared and thus the standard scene will take place... but as Kurou and Ruri point out in utter boredom, they see this kind of thing every day and fight such monsters.
• Half the Man He Used To Be: Claudius has to be cut in half before he finally dies. And then he comes back as a zombie.
• Hair Color Dissonance: Al's light pink hair is referred to as silver.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Claudius
• Healing Factor: The strongest Deus Machinas have a self repair module and the Tyrant is also capable of a great deal of self healing.
• Heel Face Turn: Doctor West and Elsa.
  • In the sequel, Master Therion and Etheldreda. As well as Another Blood.
• Hero Insurance: Everything's paid for by the Hadou Financial Group, though that doesn't stop Kurou from worrying about all the damage done in the fights.
• Heroic BSOD: Kurou has one after he fail to save Ennea. He temporarily recovers after Al slaps some sense into him. Too bad, because he soon faces another one after Al's death, and is nearly Driven to Suicide until Winfield puts an end to that.
• Henshin Hero: Metatron, one of the Black Lodge's many enemies. She's Leica.
• Hey, It's That Voice!
  • In the anime, Winfield's voiced by Takehito Koyasu, Augustus by Norio Wakamoto, Titus by Joji Nakata, Master Therion by Hikaru Midorikawa, Claudius by Tomoko Kawakami, Nya by Ai Orikasa and Makoto by Yuu Asakawa.
  • Oh, and Kurou? He's voiced by Kentarou Itou, whose voice you might recognize as belonging to Renji Abarai, Chouji Akimichi, or War-Rock.
  • Sandalphon is voiced by the King of Braves himself.
• H-Game POV Character: Kurou is a Type II B.
• Homoerotic Subtext: Between Doctor West and Kurou, thanks to a misunderstanding on the part of the former. Neither one is happy.
• Human Mom, Nonhuman Dad: Therion is the child of Nero and Yog Sothoth.
• Humongous Mecha: The Deus Machina and Doctor West's Destroyer Robots.
  • In the prequel novel, Demonbane appears as Gunshin Kyoshuu Demonbane (War God Demonbane), particularly notable for being the largest mecha in fiction, even dwarfing Super Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. It grows so large that it pops the universe it's in, and accidentally destroys other universes by brushing against them. Of couse, its Arch Enemy ''Gunshin Kyoshuu Liber Legis is as big and as powerful.
• Hypocritical Humor: Tiberius crying rape when Al tries to remove De Vermis Mysteriis from him.
• If I Can't Have You: Sandalphon isn't crazy because Leica killed him once. No, he was always crazy and a yandere for her and thus he simply can't accept a Leica who wasn't his big sister.
• Immortality
  • Tiberius' grimoire makes him immortal as type 3 (regenerative) and type 5 (the undead)
  • Vespasianus can revive up to three times by sacrificing one of his familiars.
• Immortality Talisman: Tiberius' grimoire makes him absolutely unkillable so long as it is unharmed. As a side effect, he is a perpetually rotting corpse.
• Improbable Weapon User: Perhaps in Homage to Desperado, Doctor West arms himself with a guitar case with a built-in rocket launcher, which he shoots in the same way as that guy from Desperado.
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: Doctor West, until he pulls a Heel Face Turn.
• Insufferable Genius: Both Doctor West and Master Therion, as much as they might irritate most of the cast, are genuine masters of their fields.
• Large Ham: Doctor West THE GREAT! GENIUS! OF THE CENTURY! *guitar riff*
• Let's Get Dangerous: The invasion of the Hadou shelters after Big C is repulsed on several fronts by the combined effort of many supporting characters.
• Living MacGuffin: Nero is needed for the C Project.
• Lolicon: Makoto, one of the Bridge Bunnies, has an unhealthy degree of lust for Al.
• Louis Cypher: If a rather creepy character going by the name of Nya in a Lovecraft story doesn't set off any alarm bells something may be wrong.
• Lovecraftian Superpower: Tiberius' rather low combat abilities are based around him using his decaying body parts as weapons, such as making spears of his ribs or using his intestines as tentacles.
• Lovecraft Lite
• Made of Plasticine: People tend to blow up rather easily.
• Mad Scientist: Doctor West
• Magic Skirt: Compare the CG's of the PC version and the PlayStation 2 adaption. Al still wears the same costume, and makes the same poses, but the PlayStation 2 version no longer has the Panty shots.
• Mecha Expansion Pack: Shantak, which allows Demonbane to fly.
• Medium Awareness: Kurou and Doctor West often lampshade H-game tropes in their Genre Savvy moments.
• Mega Manning: If something belongs inside her pages, Al can use its ability once she's subdued it. Kurou also gains the support of Cthugha and Ithaqua after managing to force the pair into submission. Not that he can ever admit how he managed to do it.
• Meganekko: Leica, Nya, Chiaki and Ithaqua in human form
• Mighty Glacier: Kraken.
• Mind Screw: Al's Bad Ending. Seriously. Also one of the ultimate powers of the Shining Trapezohedron, which is to summon every Demonbane "that ever existed, could exist, never could exist, and never existed." Don't try to think about that one too hard.
• Mismatched Eyes: R'lyeh's Text and Kurou in Magius style and after he becomes an Elder God.
• Moe Anthropomorphism
  • The strongest grimoires have their own souls and can manifest themselves as young looking girls. We see the Necronomicon, the R'lyeh test, the Pnakoptic Manuskripts and the spirit of the Nameless One.
  • Seen through the lens of the Neconomicon and filtered through Al's personality, cosmic horrors also become cute girls. Namely, Atlach-Nacha, Cthugha and Ithaqua.
• Murder the Hypotenuse: Sandalphon wants to do this as well as If I Can't Have You. He's pretty messed up.
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Titus has four arms.
• Name's the Same: Winfield called Titus "Mister Bushido" long before the other one appeared.
• Naughty Tentacles: Look no further than Tiberius and Cthulhu
• Necromancer: Tiberius can and will raise the dead including other Anticross members, who retain their abilities.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Near the end Kurou manages to find a way to beat Nero without killing her. Sadly all this accomplishes is to allow Master Therion to be reborn.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: The Super West Invincible Robot Type-28 Special(s). It is/they are a varied robot series, always rebuilt and modified whenever it gets destroyed. It's usually a barrel-like thing with drills (capable of being launched), cannons, guns, missiles, lasers, etc.
• Not So Invincible After All: Tiberius boasting how he's unkillable. You will hear him scream with fear against Shining Trapezohedron.
• The Ojou: Ruri Hadou
• Only Sane Man: Crossed with Irony and Played for Laughs. Despite the Lovecraftian premise, the sillier moments of the game have Kurou bemoaning he seems to be the only one with a constantly level head.
• Perpetual Poverty: Kurou is so poor that he considers putting jam on toast and instant coffee to be living it up. He actually cries Manly Tears when Ruri offers to employ him. Averted in Ruri's routes where he becomes rich either by going back in time and becoming Kouzou Hadou and creating the Hadou fortune or by presumably marrying Ruri.
• Power Dyes Your Hair: Kurou's hair turns white when in Magius Style. The blond Leica's hair also turns white when she activates her cyborg bits.
• Power Makes Your Hair Grow: Their hair also grows to waist length or longer.
• Powers as Programs
• Power Limiter: Using Demonbane's Lemuria Impact requires the Naascal Code. On the plus side, it doesn't drain any energy.
• The Power of Sex: Kurou was able to resist Nyarlathotep's temptation that would lead to the Bad Ending because he had sex with Al.
• Pragmatic Adaptation: Demonbane's animated ending is entirely original, made exclusively for the TV series. While it appears to take after Al's good ending, instead of having her drift through space for eons, the Elder Gods Kurou and Al-Azif (from Al's true ending) rescue her and bring her back to Arkham City. The superior quality of the ending is attributed to the fact the animation staff enlisted the aid of the original work's staff for the final episode.
• Punch Clock Villain: Doctor West
• Quirky Miniboss Squad: Anticross, all of whom are named after Roman Emperors.
• Rasputinian Death: A lot, though certain instances like Caligula and Claudius stick out. The former takes a bullet or shrapnel to the eye, has an arm blown off and recovers before having to be outright exploded before dying. The latter is basically opened up from one shoulder to the opposite hip and has his intestines blown out before finally dying due to being chopped in half. Apparently the disemboweling wasn't enough.
• Really Seven Hundred Years Old: Al Azif amd Etheldreda.
• The Rival: Titus to Winfield. Sandalphon takes this trope to extreme, and only joins in on operations if he'll get to fight Metatron.
• Robot Girl: Elsa, who bypasses Do Androids Dream? by acting very human and quickly gets a crush on Kurou.
• Rocket Punch: Kraken's wire-arms.
• Rule of Cool: All magic in the Demonbane universe functions according to this principle.
• Sanity Meter: Kurou makes reference to this trope during the Beach Episode.
• Schedule Slip: The English release, so much, that among English-speaking Visual Novel readers it had the same reputation as Duke Nukem Forever.
• Screw Destiny
• Screw Yourself: Kuzaku and Another Blood, even official art potray them in questionable manner.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: The true nature of Shining Trapezohedron is a sealed universe that imprison Outer Gods like Azathoth and Shub-Niggurath.
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Kurou went through much trouble just to save Ennea. Only for her to die in Master Therion's revival.
• Shrinking Violet: Alison.
• Smug Snake: Augustus. Sure he's a smart and high-functioning villain, but in the end he allowed his arrogance to override his common sense. Vespasianus is one as well.
• Stable Time Loop: Kurou is stranded in the past with Demonbane after his battle with Master Therion and losing Al. He receives a map to gold veins from a dying Hadou Kozou, impersonates the latter, founds Arkham City on the location of the gold, takes care of the son of Kozou's wife and later Ruri (as her "Grandfather"), and arranges for Kurou to be received into the Miskatonic University and sets into motion Kurou's story (including meeting up with Al, acquiring Demonbane, etc). He then dies afterward at the hands of Master Therion. The cycle is broken at the true ends of each heroine's route.
• Stone Wall: Legacy of Gold has incredible tough armor and armed with numerous beam cannons. Now add regeneration ability when Augustus links it with Cthulhu...
• Super Prototype: Two examples.
  • The Super West Invincible Robot Type-28 Special(s) maybe weak when compared to Deus Machina, but at least it can withstand Demonbane's head vulcan guns. One of the mass production Destroyer Robot even got disabled by Winfield on foot in Ruri's route.
  • The sequel reveal that Claudius's Celaeno Fragments is just a copy of Laban Shrewsbury's, which also has girl form call Hazuki. Similar to his Deus Machina, the Lord Byakhee maybe fast, but it still can't compare to Shrewsbury's Ambrose.
• Super Robot
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: Al isn't jealous of Ennea at all. Nope. She just senses doom from her.
• Team Pet: Dunsany the Shoggoth.
• Thanatos Gambit: Nero tries this near the end. Specifically she tries to force Kurou to kill her with the Shining Trapezohedron so that Master Therion won't be reborn and Nyarlathotep's plan will be ruined permanently. Unfortunately Kurou turns out to be powerful enough to stop her without killing her.
• Theme Naming: The Anti-Cross are named after Roman emperors. Al's route reveals that Master Therion bears one too: Domitian.
• The Starscream: Augustus and Vespasianus both have aspirations of this.
• Those Two Bad Guys: Claudius and Caligula.
• Those Two Guys: Stone and Ness.
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works: The Scimitar of Barzai functions as a boomerang when thrown.
• Token Evil Teammate: In Al's route, the Tyrant helps Kurou out pretty frequently, both out of interest/attachment and because she hates Anticross for her own reasons.
• Token Good Teammate: On the other hand, the reason that Anticross views her as a traitor isn't really because she's cruel and violent but rather because she was trying to stop them.
• Token Mini-Moe: Al Azif and Etheldreda, both of whom are also Tomes Of Eldritch Lore.
  • Ennea also counts.
• Tome of Eldritch Lore: As noted above, the original copy of each grimoire appear as a young girl instead of a book. The artist actually has design human version of every tomes used by Anticross as well, but none of them appear in story.
• Tsundere: Evidently Al, but the visual novel expands this to Ruri in her individual character route.
• Two Guys and a Girl: Odd variant here. Nya seems to like trying to seduce Kurou and Master Therion, depending on her whim, and even though the latter party is aware of this, the usual jealousy one would expect is absent.
• Tyke Bomb: Metatron, Sandalphon and the Tyrant, though rather than being their primary purpose it's a useful (or rather annoying, depending on one's point of view) side effect.
• Unknown Rival: Doctor West is convinced that he's Kurou's rival, but Kurou just thinks of him as a pest.
• Verbal Tic: Elsa's "-robo" is what convinces Kurou that she really is a robot, apparently.
• Villainous Crush: To quote Nyarlathotep in Elder Gods ending, "Then I shall answer you with unforgiving hate, and unrelenting love!".
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Caligula and Claudius act like they want to kill each other. After Caligula dies, all Claudius gives a damn about is avenging his death.
• Wham! Episode: They pull this as fast as Chapter 2. The first chapter play like typical Super Robot Genre story, Kuro in Magius Style is super human who can catch and throw rocket back. Demonbane can withstand everything Destroyer Robot throwing at it (cannons, guns, missiles and lasers). In second chapter, he fight against Master Therion - who's without Liber Legis - and lose. The battle is mostly one-side to boost.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Given by Metatron to Kurou, regarding his being a Person of Mass Destruction predilections not being good for the health of the city in the long term.
• White-Haired Pretty Boy: Kuzaku.
• World's Strongest Man: The Tyrant is the strongest sorceress on Earth. Therion was conceived from her.
• Xanatos Roulette: The entire plot of Demonbane boils down to one massive Xanatos plot. And it's not by Nyarlathotep.
  • Though Nyaralathotep has a lot of fun complicating the preexisting plot For the Lulz.
• Yandere: Ryuuga aka Sandalphon.
• You Don't Look Like You: The artist took very deliberate interpretion on Great Old Ones appearance. Atlach-Nacha is a Giant Spider with human torso in place of its head. Cthugha has beast-like body in the middle of massive fireball. Ithaqua first seen as glowing red eyes in the mid of violent storm (Death Walker as called in Call of Cthulhu (tabletop game)) but is really a massive dragon.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: In Leica's route Vespasianus decides he needs Leica to be the new C Priestess and thus tries pulling this one Sandalphon.