“Guess it’s that time of year.” *Hangs up a dusty dart board with the words Nitro Chiral written around the border* “a-one, a-two, a-three” *a dart is thrown and hits the target, spraying dust everywhere* “Alright, *cough* it landed on Lamento -BEYOND THE VOID-, Nitro Chiral’s fantasy VN game about cat boys…wait *squints harder to better read * no wait, it says Slow Damage. *cough* Oh, shit.

Unlike other Nitro Chiral games that involve clones, meat monsters, and cat boys, Slow Damage is oddly realistic. Shinkoumi is what happens when Japan, in an even deeper economic recession, builds  the Ark, the artificial island from the first Patlabor movie, but did so to make a remote Las Vegas and promote economic growth. Shinkoumi then controls the yakuza clan, the Takasato Group. After years of continued youth unemployment and increased poverty, this Las Vegas turns into a dangerous New Vegas…as in the one from Fallout: New Vegas. The real big brains know what made Sweet Pool great was that it presented itself as a melancholy story about a physically sick teen who finds love in all the right (and wrong) places, but was really about Kitani Kouhei, a former yakuza right hand who must smoke his way through an early retirement while caring for his senile boss and his boss’s weird son. Slow Damage goes even further and makes the entire boat out of yakuza while curdled milk protagonist Towa is a bystander in this extravagant debtor’s prison where people die cold on the street, and no one cares. At least the local café makes great French toast.

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