Main Characters: Arachnid, Caterpillar, Blattodea
The Organization's "Bugs": Recurring, Exclusive to Arachnid, Exclusive to Caterpillar, Exclusive to Blattodea
Other Characters
Related series: Jackals, Choubu no Shinobi, Himenospia
The bug-themed psychos who oppose Imomushi in Caterpillar, a spinoff to Arachnid.
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General
- Animal Motifs: All of those assassins have a arthropod motif, ranging from simply wielding weapons related to them to behaving like bugs and having superpowers. Any outlandish things they do are followed by documentary-style explanations on insects that are often far from a satisfying explanation of why seemingly normal people have such abilities.
- No Name Given: The Organization members are only known by their codenames and fake names, as they have no real names or family registers.
- Herbivores Are Friendly: The characters introduced in this spinoff tend to be based on non-carnivorous insects but no, they are assassins after all and most of them are bloodthirsty psychos too.
- Professional Killer: Some of the Organization's hitmen are cold and professional, while all the others are blood-thirsty psychos.
Firefly/Hotaruga
Firefly (ホタルガ; Hotaruga)
Imomushi's partner who gives intel for her, until she betrays Imomushi for a reward given by Ageha.- Animal Motifs: Not actual fireflies, but Pidorus glaucopis moths, which are known as "firefly moths" in Japan. She deceives people to her advantage, like how hotarugas hide among fireflies.
- Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: To the point Imomushi would've probably just accepted how Hotaruga is and spared her if she didn't keep shooting.
- Decoy Protagonist: Introduced as Imomushi's partner, only to soon betray her and get killed within the first volume of Caterpillar.
- Moe Greene Special: Imomushi kills Hotaruga by shooting her in the eye.
- The Mole: While pretending to be Imomushi's ally, she was also giving information to Paraponera.
Paraponera
Paraponera
A former UN soldier who became a wanted man after mindlessly slaughtering american troops in the Middle East. While hiding in southeast Asia, he found an orphaned baby in Burma and raised her as his daughter. Years later, Paraponera worked under Ageha's orders to murder Imomushi, but got killed by her at some point.- Acrofatic: Extremely agile despite his fatass build.
- An Arm and a Leg: Lost his left arm to a grenade's explosion while fighting Imomushi.
- Animal Motifs: Paraponera clavata ants, also known as Bullet Ants. They're rather big and agressive, plus their stings have a reputation for being able to inflict one of the worst pains in the world.
- Arm Cannon: While trying to free himself from Kumo's noose in a storage room, Paraponera swings over to a crate and shoves his artificial blade-arm on it. It gets neatly attached to a minigun, with his enemies reacting in confusion as they wonder why he hadn't been using it in the first place.
- Ax-Crazy: After his initial defeat, Paraponera becomes much more unhinged and savage.
- Badass and Child Duo: Used to have a little girl helping out with his killing sprees.
- Badass in a Nice Suit: Dresses sharply for the battles in the Ageha ship.
- Badass Normal: He has no unusual powers, but is portrayed as one of the Organization's strongest hitmen.
- Bald of Evil: Balding and evil, alright.
- Blade Below the Shoulder: Paraponera wears his gauntlets with poisoned elbow stingers more discreetly than his daughter, and since Imomushi is immune to poison, he ends up not using them much on-screen. His lost left arm then gets replaced with a launchable blade.
- Blood Knight: Only cares about fighting and murdering people.
- The Corrupter: He naturally made Dinoponera into a remorseless murderer, but he seems to have raised and treated her surprisingly well despite how much of a despicable person he is. He even named her Setsuna after a character she likes.
- The Determinator: His defining quality as an assassin, as he fights on no matter the circumstances and actually would have killed Imomushi if he didn't abruptly pass away on the spot.
- Died Standing Up: He defeats Imomushi and is about to shoot her to death, but then suddenly passes away from his injuries. The gun then goes off while she is walking away, but luckily Paraponera's still dead and pointing at the opposite direction. This also was his fate in the pilot for the manga, where it instead happened right after Imomushi killed Hotaruga.
- The Dragon: Presented as one to Ageha early on, but it turns out there's another assassin ranked above him.
- The Dreaded: Kumo and others from the Organization acknowledged him as the strongest killer in the world.
- Enfant Terrible: He was highly violent as a boy and killed his own parents for trivial reasons.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: It is left ambiguous if he really cared for Dinoponera and Caterpillar never touches the subject from his perspective at all.
- Eye Scream: The grenade Imomushi bounced back at him took his left eye, too.
- Fair-Weather Mentor: He wouldn't help Dinoponera if she couldn't keep up with him.
- Fat Bastard: Fat, ugly and balding so you know he's totally evil.
- Final Boss: The last opponent Imomushi faces in the Death Caterpillar game.
- Gonk: A case of Depending on the Artist. The Arachnid illustrator doesn't portray him that badly, but the two prequel illustrators draw him just plain fugly.
- The Gulf War: Paraponera went into hiding on Thailand after fighting on the second Gulf War.
- Guns Are Worthless: Bullet Ant here is very skilled with firearms, but that does nothing on any named characters. The guy gets a minigun out of nowhere and unloads it on Kumo, but the bullets bounce off Kumo's magical string armor and he's merely knocked on his ass. Once Imomushi comes along, stormtrooperisms ensue. When he finally gets her on gunpoint for real, his body fails him and he dies on the spot. His corpse only pulls the trigger several seconds after Imomushi stands up and leaves.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Imomushi shoots a grenade back at Paraponera, then finishes him by hitting his forehead with a throwing knife he had used to stab her leg.
- Lack of Empathy: Paraponera only used people to satisfy his thrist for battle. However, he did somehow raise a daughter. Caterpillar curiously avoids showing their relationship from his perspective despite his major role in the story, just having Dinoponera appear from out of nowhere instead as she did in Arachnid.
- Made of Iron: Is left terribly wounded floating on a river with a knife stuck on his head. Comes back with a vengeance later.
- Mighty Roar: Can stun people by screaming at them, which the narrator compares to ants stridulating.
- Near-Villain Victory: He defeats Kumo, but switches targets to Imomushi as she arrives on the scene. He then actually defeats Imomushi too and is about to execute her when he ends up passing away from his mortal injuries.
- Not Quite Dead: He recovered from his first battle against Imomushi and then watched her fight inside the Ageha group's ship.
- One-Man Army: Took on battlefields on his own, and was in fact a bad team player. Even Dinoponera could only barely follow him from behind and never quite understood how he was able to always predict the trajectory of bullets despite having no superpowers.
- Parental Substitute: Found a baby Dinoponera under her dead mother and raised her.
- Pet the Dog: His relationship with Dinoponera is mostly portrayed in a positive light. It is shown he didn't mind her being a fan of animes, as he named her Setsuna after a Sailor-Force character and rather morbidly gave a Moon Scepter toy to her that belonged to some kid of a family they were hired to murder. But ultimately he ended up abandoning her.
- Poisoned Weapons: Has blades with bullet ant venom on them. This ant's venom usually can't kill humans, but it does cause some of the most intense, searing pain ever known and it lasts for several hours while the victim suffers from side effects such as fever and nausea.
- Posthumous Character: Imomushi killed him at the end of the Death Caterpillar battle royale, but during the events of Arachnid other characters eleborate on how tough he was in his prime and Dinoponera reminisces about her childhood under his care.
- Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: He's introduced raping a woman he was sent to kill, only stopping because Imomushi kills her instead.
- Sabotutor: He was a terrible teacher to Dinoponera. His way of training the little ant was just handing her a gun and expecting her to imitate what he did, not coming to her aid if she couldn't keep up. It is implied he just abandoned her when she didn't perform up to his expectations.
- Silent Antagonist: In contrast to how he acted as a taunting scumbag to Imomushi in the beginning of Caterpillar, Paraponera goes almost completely silent when he fights Kinohadakamakiri, Kumo and Imomushi in the Ageha ship.
- Starter Villain: He is Imomushi's first noteworthy enemy in Caterpillar, and one much more danguerous than how Kamakiri was to Alice.
- World's Best Warrior: Very feared by his peers, though the prequel shows he was actually ranked 2 amongst them, with Osamushi being the first.
- Worthy Opponent: He considered Imomushi the first person he felt connected to after his first defeat to her and was really eager for a rematch.
Dead Leaf Moth/Murasakishachihoko
Dead Leaf Moth (Murasakishachihoko)
A master of disguise who is the first enemy to encounter Hanakamakiri on the ship.- Animal Motifs: Uropyia meticulodina moths, aka Dead Leaf Moths, which have incredibly detailed wings that look exactly like curled dead leaves.
- Dark Action Girl
- Master of Disguise: Disguises herself as Imomushi, a fat man and Hanakamakiri on the fly. She calls it her "Scale Powder Makeup".
- Monster of the Week: Gives Hanakamakiri some trouble but gets punched out by Imomushi when her plan fails.
- Spot the Imposter: She disguises herself as Hanakamakiri to trick Imomushi, but fails because she couldn't have known that Hanakamakiri is a crossdressing boy.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Isn't shown escaping from the ship at the end but isn't shown dead either.
Weevil/Zomushi
Weevil (Zomushi)
An insane armored guy.- Animal Motifs: Weevil beetles.
- Disney Villain Death: Riock punches him out of the Ageha ship.
- Monster of the Week: Gets close to killing Hanakamakiri, but is quickly taken down by Riock.
- No-Sell: Zomushi's armor greatly protects him from damage, and he can close it over his face, too... but it doesn't matter when Riock just punches him into the sea.
- Slasher Smile: His default expression.
- Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: As a child he loved to rip stuffed toys apart and that led to a bizarre obsession with becoming a fully armored and muscular man so everyone else would be soft by comparison.
- Would Hurt a Child: He tries to suffocate and rip Hanakamakiri apart.
Stick Insect/Nanafushi
Stick Insect (Nanafushi)
A machine gun-toting girl who can make people subconsciously ignore her presence.- Achilles' Heel: Nanafushi's power is weakened when she gets too emotional.
- Animal Motifs: Stick insects.
- Badass in a Nice Suit: Shame her classy suit gets ruined by Hanakamakiri, though.
- Dark Action Girl
- Dark and Troubled Past: Unable to understand and control her ability, Nanafushi grew mad from isolation and killed her mother. Even then nobody noticed she existed, so she flipped out for good and became an assassin.
- Defeat Equals Friendship: Not really friendship, but she's spared and taken out of the Ageha ship in amicable terms. Or maybe they just don't realize she's next to them. Interestingly, it has been hinted by the author that she'll be allied with Hanakamakiri and Alice in Blattodea.
- Monster of the Week: Gives some trouble to Riock but is defeated by Hanakamakiri.
- Perception Filter: People subconsciously ignore her existence unless she goes out of her way to interact with them. However, fridge logic indicates her power actually weakened over time — she never got caught for killing her mother despite being very emotionally unstable and yet Hanakamakiri disables her powers with just a little intimidation.
Planthopper/Unka
Planthopper (Unka)
- An Arm and a Leg: Lost his legs due to a land mine mishap while going after Paraponera in the battlefield.
- Animal Motifs: Young Leafhoppers have a gear-like mechanism in their legs that lock together to ensure they'll both move with precise synchronization, allowing them to jump 100 times their length. Rather ironic that an old man is using this ability to replace lost limbs, as leafhoppers lose it when they mature into their adult form.
- Artificial Limbs: Got mechanical replacements after losing his legs to an explosion.
- Call-Forward: He fails to keep up with Paraponera and is told it was because of his own weakness, in a parallel to Dinoponera's backstory in Arachnid where she is abandoned by her father.
- Evil Old Folks: An old and antagonistical soldier.
- Flash Step: In his case, it is flash jumping.
- Monster of the Week: Ok, the gears on leafhoppers are cool. Next.
- Old Soldier: A retired soldier who's now a cyborg assassin.
- Use Your Head: His bionic legs allow him to launch himself and perform powerful headbutts.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Isn't shown escaping from the ship at the end but isn't shown dead either.
Former Rhinoceros Beetle/Kabutomushi
The former director of the Pomario orphanage. For his successor Ran Kabuto, see the Main Characters page for Caterpillar.
- Animal Motifs: Rhinoceros and Hercules beetles.
- Casualty in the Ring: He accidentally killed an opponent in a match once, and retired because he thought it was the will of God for him to kill more people with his skills. Incidentally, a minor character in Killing Bites has nearly the same backstory.
- Dissonant Serenity: He casually killed children at Pomario as if eating snacks at night and could only nonchalantly scold Ran for breaking into his room when she found Yuki horribly impaled on the Heracles blade.
- Double Weapon: Owned the Heracles, a large double-bladed sword based on the Alligator the protagonist of Jackals wielded.
- No Name Given: Averted as his real name is Otani Hercules, in a rare case of a bug assassin in the series being named before Blattodea.
- Would Hurt a Child: Little Kabuto-girl thought of him as a father figure until she found her only friend gruesomely killed by him because he felt she was too weak.
Bark Mantis/Kinohadakamakiri
Bark Mantis (キノハダカマキリ; Kinohadakamakiri), alias Oscar Iizuka (オスカル飯塚)
Hanakamakiri's former master who attacks the boy during the Death Caterpillar game to attempt to make him his slave again.- Abusive Parents: He's made even creepier by how he's a parental figure to whom poor Hanakamakiri feels indebted or even grateful to some extent despite everything that happened.
- Animal Motifs: Bark mantises. Their coloration enables them to hide on tree trunks.
- Badass Teacher: Was the one who taught the mantis fighting style to Hanakamakiri. He's also Ichijikukobachi's master and they get along swimmingly due to the girl already having been deranged for a long time.
- Beauty Is Bad: Kinohadakamakiri is a handsome man who's an evil and sadistic pedophile. Made more pronounced by how the young Hanakamakiri was forced to kill a monstrous-looking rapist right before he was forced to live with Kinohadakamakiri.
- Character Tic: He rates everything everyone around him does, including himself when he screws up.
- Control Freak: Because he couldn't relate to others he sought to control Hanakamakiri and turn him into his mini-me.
- The Corrupter: He hoped to turn the pure and traumatized Hanakamakiri into a sadistic assassin like himself. When Hanakamakiri claims he'd like to turn Imomushi into a limbless sex slave, Kinohadakamakiri is pleasantly surprised by how he's capable of imagining that, even though it's an obvious lie.
- Dude Looks Like a Lady: Has very delicate looks, but unlike Hanakamakiri he is immediately recognized as a man.
- Elegant Gothic Lolita: Dresses in this fashion, with fanciful clothes and a hat.
- Easily Forgiven: Downplayed. Kinohadakamakiri is shown to have terribly abused and raped Hanakamakiri after adopting him, to the point the boy has a nervous breakdown upon meeting him again during the Death Caterpillar game. Even so, Hanakamakiri has just enough begruding respect for his master to only have claimed one of his eyes when they parted ways and acts polite around him while cooperating to let Imomushi find Ageha. The incident on the cruise ship ends with a badly injured Kinohadakamakiri being helped out of there by his pupil, and laughing at the ironic humiliation of needing the boy's support.
- Evil Mentor: Raised Hanakamakiri into a formidable assassin, but also frequently abused and raped the boy in order to make him as depraved as himself. Hanakamakiri was never quite brought into his influence, but is implied to have some measure of Stockholm Syndrome from the whole ordeal.
- Eye Scream: Hanakamakiri lured Kinohadakamakiri during graduation by acting like they should remain as servant and master, only to stab him in the eye and run away.
- Eyepatch of Power: Wears one over his right thanks to Hanakamakiri stabbing his eye after graduation. And it just so happens that he's friends with a very busty lady, like Sara and Kuramoto from Arachnid.
- Graceful Loser: He acknowledges Hanakamakiri's strength when the boy fights him to a standstill.
- Hammerspace: Where he presumably pulls his scythes out of.
- Heel–Face Turn: After taking a beating from his former student, Kinohadakamakiri hands over his envelope and decides to help him along. He still isn't remotely presented as a good guy, and neither does Hanakamakiri go back to him or anything after the Death Caterpillar incident is over.
- I Have You Now, My Pretty: At one point he grabs Hanakamakiri from behind and starts licking his neck. His backstory shows Kinohadakamakiri treated the boy like this as soon as he got him as a student.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Gets badly wounded by Paraponera's launchable arm blade.
- Karma Houdini: He loses an eye to Hanakamakiri after repeatedly raping and grooming the boy into becoming a gothloli assassin. However, considering how vile Kinohadakamakiri is, he can be said to ultimately have gotten away with everything by the end of Caterpillar considering he and his pupil end up having some kind of mutual respect as fighters.
- Kicking Ass in All Her Finery: A male example with his frilly goth costume.
- No-Sell: Successfully blocks a massive Spam Attack from Hanakamakiri.
- Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Regularly raped Hanakamakiri while training him, and is awfully proud of that. It is shown this is a running thing among the mantis assassins, as his own master is also a mad rapist.
- Sinister Scythe: Wields a dark blue pair like the ones used by the other mantis people.
- Training from Hell: Subjected Hanakamakiri to harsh training which involved killing crowds of people, working as a maid and regularly shoving a gordian worm-like device up his ass.
- White Hair, Black Heart: Has white hair and is a pretty awful guy.
- The Worf Effect: He's the first one to take on Paraponera inside Ageha's ship. This predictably doesn't go too well for him, and then Kumo also loses to establish the villain's threat level right before Imomushi arrives.
- You Are Already Dead: He makes blades magically pop out of people from a distance, but no damage is done for a set amount of time. He even calls the trope by name.
Fig Wasp/Ichijikukobachi
Fig Wasp (イチジクコバチ; Ichijikukobachi)
- Animal Motifs: Fig wasps, which have their stings on the end of a cord.
- Ax-Crazy: She often goes unhinged during combat and delights in stabbing men as if she's raping them.
- Dark Action Girl: A evil female assassin who fights the heroes.
- Dark and Troubled Past: She was raped when she was 14-years old, reasoned life boiled down to dominating others and stabbed her assailants to death with a pencil.
- Improbable Weapon User: She manipulates a tiny but powerful drill hooked to a length of wire, slashing and stabbing people from a distance instead of using it as a tool for traps like Alice.
- Monster of the Week: She keeps Riock busy while Kinohadakamakiri goes after his pupil.
- Phallic Weapon: Her drill wire is meant to evoke penis envy, with her maniacally telling Riock that "girls want to penetrate men too"!
- Stripperiffic: Her dress gives a generous view of her bust, especially when she's knocked over and her breasts are left exposed.
- Villainous Breakdown: Once Riock breaks through her wire gimmick and knocks her down, Ichijikukobachi pisses herself from fear and gets a wardrobe malfunction. She surrenders and gives her envelope MacGuffin to him, then cries to herself she'd rather quit her job at this point.
Stag Beetles/Kuwagata
Stag Beetles (クワガタ; Kuwagata)
Dorcus in Himekuwagata mode (top) and her cronies.
A group of four stag beetle people who hold a nasty grudge against their former teacher Kabutomushi.Tropes that apply for all of them:
- Animal Motifs: Kabutomushi has taken a wrong turn into the Lucanidae neighborhood.
- The little girl is a Dorcus rectus beetle (aka "princess dorcus/himekuwagata") who turns into a Dorcus curvidens (Kurubidensu Ookuwagata) and a Dorcus titanus (Hiratakuwagata) by aging back and forth at will.
- The guy with the Cool Shades is a Lucanus maculifemoratus (Miyamakuwagata, "miyama stag beetle").
- The red-headed girl is a Prosopocoilus inclinatus (Nokogirikuwagata, "sawtooth stag beetle").
- The bald guy is an Aegus laevicollis (Nebutokuwagata).
- Blade Below the Shoulder: Not blades, but blunt weapons shaped like various kinds of stag beetle mandibles instead.
- Calling the Old Man Out: Himekuwagata wants to prove herself to Kabutomushi and avenge her fellow students who died under Kabuto's care. Miyamakuwagata is a selfish guy who wants to get back at Kabutomushi for how she humiliated him with her supernatural strength. The other two, then... what other two?
- Curb-Stomp Battle: When Himekuwagata gets walloped into the sea, the other three take their chances at fighting Kabutomushi. Each one then gets shoved aside with increasingly less effort from her. Nebutokuwagata even goes down without doing anything!
- Dark Action Girl: The three Dorcus girls and Nokogirikuwagata.
- Hoist by His Own Petard:
- Miyamakuwagata holds Kabutomushi and flips around smashing her head on the ground until she pushes his face over hers and he gets hit instead.
- Ookuwagata attempts to throw Kabutomushi over herself, but Kabuto lands on her and starts choking her.
- Monster of the Week: Only Himekuwagata seems to become anything of a threat to Kabutomushi once she swims back to the ship and gets serious.
- Quirky Miniboss Squad: It was taking quite a while for Kabuto to have a stag opponent, so how about four at once? They're a group formed by a little girl who piggybacks on a tough man who wears shades, a girl with bangs and shark teeth and a practically spherical fat bald dude who's always grinning.
- Signature Laugh: Each one has a unique laugh, written in different fonts.
- Stripperiffic: Nebutokuwagata only has underwear on. And then there's Hiratakuwagata and her Chainmail Bikini that comes out of nowhere.
Tropes for Himekuwagata and her sisters:
- An Arm and a Leg: Kabutomushi eventually catches Hirata off-guard with the scissor function of the Hercules Horn and chops her right leg off.
- Artificial Limbs: After losing her right leg to Kabutomushi, she reappears a couple years later with an adjustable Seadog Peg Leg. And a post-apocalyptic cape too, why not.
- Ax-Crazy: Hiratakuwagata goes loose while trying to kill Kabutomushi. In comparison, her child self is bratty and her teen self is more level-headed.
- The Bus Came Back: After Caterpillar, Hime reappears as a guard for Hibarigaoka Prison in Blattodea chapter 36, like Murata implied in a Twitter Spaces roundtable interview held in 2023 when volume 6 was published.
- Catchphrase: While fighting, Hirata repeatedly asks Kabutomushi to do crazy things with her.
- Chainmail Bikini: When the dorcus girl turns into a curvy woman, her school uniform is torn apart to reveal she was wearing a Stripperiffic BDSM armor of straps. Even though the previous chapters showed she had no underwear on.
- Combat Pragmatist: Himekuwagata's visible left arm is actually fake and serves to hide that she's holding a gun in her real left hand.
- Creepy Child: She is the leader of the quartet and does all the talking, fancying herself a pro assassin. Then she goes and transforms into a crazed and scantily clad adult.
- Cute But Psycho: Himekuwagata is a cute, smug and violent kid; Ookuwagata is an Affably Evil teen and Hiratakuwagata is a curvy and unhinged woman.
- Disney Villain Death: Subverted, as Himekuwagata gets smacked by Kabutomushi into the sea (Kabutomushi's overall score: 5) but survives and makes a comeback.
- Didn't See That Coming: Hiratakuwagata gets defeated by Kabutomushi chopping one of her legs off upon suddenly using the Heracles as a giant pair of scissors, after both of the stag beetle's younger selves were so confident that she could still finish Kabuto off.
- Don't Make Me Destroy You: Ookuwagata repeatedly asks Kabutomushi to not harm her "little sister" or to surrender to her and Ageha under threat of extreme violence. While Kabuto did spare Himekuwagata as asked during training, she is of course too proud to step down during their second confrontation.
- Foil: Besides being the giant stag to Kabutomushi's rhino beetle, the dorcus girl has an ability related to her age and sidekicks who hardly do anything but look stupid in the background. There are also thematic parallels with Dinoponera, as detailed below.
- Dual Age Modes: Himekuwagata losing her innocence to extreme parental abuse caused her to develop split personalities that make her physically morph into teen and adult versions of herself.
- Given Name Reveal: She is introduced as "Hime Kuwano" in Blattodea.
- Graceful Loser: After losing a leg to Kabutomushi, who doesn't want to kill her, Hiratakuwagata gets mad and tries to stand back up, only for her own arm to grab herself by the head and smash it on the ground. Ookuwagata takes over and calmly admits defeat while explaining what's going on elsewhere in the ship.
- Going Commando: It is made obvious that Himekuwagata isn't wearing panties, but when she becomes Hiratakuwagata a Chainmail Bikini inexplicably shows up on her.
- Guns Are Worthless: Himekuwagata shoots Kabutomushi down at one point, but Kabutomushi has armored organs and doesn't get hurt much. When she tries to shoot her again Kabutomushi just counters and launches her into the sky.
- Hellish Pupils: Bright slits on the dorcus girl's pupils. In her adult form, little spikes come out of her irises.
- Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: She starts as a little girl who first appears sitting on top of a burly man.
- Kick Them While They're Down: Hiratakuwagata kicks Kabutomushi several times at one point, only stopping when Lucanus calls her to hand over her weapons.
- Metronomic Man Mashing: Ookuwagata swings the Kabuto Horn with Kabutomushi on the other end and slams her to the floor, almost crushing Gokiburi at the same time.
- Ms. Fanservice: When Ookuwagata grows into her voluptuous titanus form and rips her clothes off, no points for guessing how that is portrayed. She has a Fan Disservice aspect to her, though, since not only she was a kid with no underwear (as implied by several obscured upskirt shots) just a few minutes before, that child self is still conscious in her head.
- Painful Transformation: When Himekuwagata transforms into a teen or an adult, she suffers from severe convulsions.
- Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Even as a little girl, Himekuwagata is strong enough to lift Kabutomushi with one arm.
- The Power of Hate: They say their split personality-induced transformations are stabilized by a shared hatred of Kabutomushi.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: Hiratakuwagata has bright red eyes.
- Reused Character Design: An odd case where the character in question is from the same story. Ookuwagata is essentially a Palette Swap of Dinoponera with similar mannerisms, as if to highlight the themetic parallels between Kabutomushi's fight against the stags and the one against Dinoponera in Arachnid. Hiratakuwagata even is incapacitated from losing a leg much like Dinoponera loses from getting forced to stab her own leg, with the implication that maybe Kabutomushi could've killed Dinoponera if she had brought Hercules Horn with her to the Arachnid Hunt.
- Self-Made Orphan: Himekuwagata killed her Abusive Parents by crushing their heads into paste, or rather, it was Ookuwagata who did it when they attempted to drown her.
- Split Personality: Dorcus' transforming body is shown to be a bizarre condition caused by split personalities, with two of them assisting the dominant one from inside her mind. They consider each other sisters.
- Steven Ulysses Perhero: Himekuwagata's name is "Hime Kuwano".
- Tattooed Crook: Hiratakuwagata has a upside down cross tattoo over her chest and a broken heart under her navel, bordering on the Intimate Marks trope.
- Transformation Is a Free Action: The other three beetles stand before Himekuwagata and Kabutomushi when Ookuwagata "emerges", telling their master to not disturb her transformation.
- Villainous Friendship: She considers Ageha/Mika a friend and taught her how to control split personalities via the power of hate.
- You Killed My Father: Himekuwagata loathes Kabutomushi for killing her sister, which Kabuto doesn't even remember doing. Turns out this "sister", Ookuwagata, is really one of her two split personalities who asked Kabutomushi to dial down on all the deadly Training from Hell in exchange for her going dormant and not beating the crap out of Kabuto.
Tropes for the other three stags:
- Butt-Monkey: Much like Oki in this spinoff, Miyamakuwagata, Nokogirikuwagata and Nebutokuwagata just kind of stand quietly to the side making funny faces while Dorcus and Kabutomushi fight. When they do attack the rhino beetle, only Miyamakuwagata does any semblance of damage to her.
- Charles Atlas Superpower: Miyamakuwagata was born with a condition that made his muscles hyper developed and became a major bully over the years, but his pride was crushed once match stick cyborg Kabutomushi began humiliating him at Pomario. He dedicates himself to surpass her since then.
- Flat Character: Nokogirikuwagata and Nebutokuwagata get next to no characterization and their attempts to beat up Kabutomushi are so lackluster it's hard to believe they're her graduates.
- Satellite Character: The Dorcus gals are the only ones out of those people who matter. Miyamakuwagata does at least get a backstory, but the other two don't even get that outside of an illustration in volume 9 implying Nebutokuwagata and Nokogirikuwagata came from opposite social classes, with sawtooth girl being the dirt-poor one.
- Scary Teeth: Nokogirikuwagata has sawtooth teeth to match her bug motif.
Bed Bug/Nankinmushi
Bed Bug (ナンキンムシ; Nankinmushi), alias Kyoko Minami
A prostitute who works for the Organization. Imomushi asks her to take Hanakamakiri's virginity before they go on their mission on the Ageha cruise ship, but...- Attempted Rape: An annoyed Hanakamakiri asks that Kyoko gives him only the massage services so she wouldn't have come for nothing, but Kyoko gets him drowsy with pleasure and forces herself on him anyway.
- Bit Character: Only appears on a single gag Breather Episode.
- Epic Fail: Imomushi got scared of Hanakamakiri's equipment when she tried to have sex with him, so she asks Kyoko to do it instead. Kyoko boasts about her erotic techniques as a bed bug, which turn out to just be trying to dunk a onahole on the boy rather than proper intercourse. A flabbergasted Imomushi catches her on the act and makes her stop. This, of course, correlates to how bed bugs of both sexes have fake genitalia to deal with traumatic insemination from males.
- Exotic Eye Designs: Her eyes have lines that form a rhombus pattern.
- Series Continuity Error: Chapter 64 starts with her naked while trying to fuck Hanakamakiri. Once we see How We Got Here she suddenly has underwear on, which is especially odd given how otherwise the story was published in a seinen magazine and had no problem with showing nudity with other female characters either before and after this.
Leaf Beetle/Togehamushi
Leaf Beetle (トゲハムシ, Togehamushi)
- Animal Motifs: Themed after spiny leaf beetles.
- Animal-Themed Superbeing: Long spikes can protrude out of her entire body.
- Bring My Brown Pants: Shoichiro pretends to hit her with a lightning-fast Megaton Punch, stopping short of her face. She's so scared that she falls on her back peeing and admits defeat to him.
- Don't Make Me Destroy You: She discourages Riokku and Shoichiro from attacking her and triggering her spikes, even going out of her way to spare Riokku because he's too stupid to listen.
- Drop Dead Gorgeous: Downplayed; Togehamushi is stabbed in the abdomen and her nude body is prominently shown as she collapses and lies on the floor but she doesn't outright die. To add to her humiliation, the last we see of her is her unconscious bare butt as Riokku carries her out of the cruise ship once the incident is over.
- Eye Scream: It doesn't hurt her, but when Shoichiro defeated her she suffered a brief Power Incontinence and spikes even came out of her eye sockets.
- Full-Frontal Assault: Because of her power to pop up spikes all over her body, she doesn't bother wearing anything other than a robe.
- Heel–Face Turn: Guides Shoichiro and Riock around the ship towards Ageha after she's defeated.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice:
- Glomps Riock's face with her entire body before wrecking him with her spines, but deliberately doesn't kill him.
- Osamushi impales her navel with a rapier and she passes out for the rest of Caterpillar, much to her disbelief.
- Immune to Bullets: As her spikes instantly react to any danger, she claims not even bullets can hit her.
- Inertial Impalement: Her power is revealed when Riock attempts to punch her face.
- Monster of the Week: She's just somebody for Shoichiro to have a very brief fight against.
- Not So Invincible After All: She believes her spikes can counter anything, but freaks out and gives up when Shoichiro proves he could punch her head off before they can trigger. To make things worse, she's then stabbed in the belly by Osamushi and faints.
- Rape as Backstory: She became so emotionally repressed in an effort to avoid harming others with her spikes that she let a rapist take her to a hotel without any resistance, only to instinctively kill him anyway.
- Shameless Fanservice Girl: She's more stoic than lascivious, but walks around naked and gives deadly hugs to people with a smile. It's a kindness from the story that the girl is punished but not outright murdered for behaving like this, like what happened to the Army Ant Queen, Iroha and Ayano in other installments of the series.
- Spike Shooter: She was born with a condition that makes long spikes appear all over her body when she's emotional or threatened. It's essentially an anti-rape mechanism she has, turning her fight with Riock into a Brick Joke since it comes after he fought Ichijikukobachi, an unhinged rape victim who wanted to penetrate him with a drill.
Ground Beetle/Osamushi
Ground Beetle (オサムシ; Osamushi), alias Osamu Tsukado
The mysterious 1st ranker of the Organization, and Shoichiro old missing teacher.- Action Bomb: His death causes a nuclear explosion that kills all the guests in the ship.
- Almighty Janitor: Imagine a world where Osamu Tezuka, the God of Manga, was secretly a killer for hire.
- Animal Motifs: The Carabinae subfamily of beetles. The self-defense abilities of Bombardier beetles are specifically compared to how Astro Boy is powered by a nuclear reactor.
- Expy: Osamushi is designed after Black Jack, which is made ironic by how he's an assassin and not at all a surgeon.
- Graceful Loser: Upon losing a clash of punches and being mortally wounded, Osamu acknowledges Shoichiro's strength and tells him to leave the ship before his nuclear reactor explodes, actually bragging that he's victorious in how he's dying in service of the Organization. He dies alone but at peace, singing the Astro Boy opening theme and wishing Shoichiro well as his last words.
- Kick the Dog: Stabs Togehamushi before she does anything just to piss Shoichiro off.
- Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: An example of a fool is about to punch you in the face? Turn your arm into a shield to avert it. Continuing the bug theme, the shield has a fancy stag beetle coat of arms on it.
- Megaton Punch: He mentions he could shift his Atomic Fist into anything he wants, from the scalpel of Black Jack to the mandibles of Don Dracula and the wings of the Phoenix, but would rather finish his opponents with the weapon in its default fist shape, as Astro Boy is his dearest creation.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: He's a portrayal of Osamu Tezuka as a master assassin who supports Japan nuking itself on purpose and even willingly nukes himself, all to make the real deal spin in his grave. At least his work as a mangaka is depicted respectfully... Appearance-wise, Osamushi resembles Black Jack and not Tezuka's Author Avatar, but he does at least wear his signature beret hat.
- Nothing Left to Do but Die: He seemingly meant to disappear and commit suicide after reaching his peak as an assassin-mangaka, but when his right arm became disabled he was actually still doing derivative works of his own series in secret. Ageha took advantage of Osamushi's frustration by convincing him to help her in exchange for regaining his youth and replacing his right arm with a wondrous shape-shifting weapon. The incident on the cruise ship still causes him to die anyway, with a bizarre sense of pride, as he nukes himself for the Organization's sake.
- Older Than He Looks: Looks younger than Shoichiro due to some treatment he was given by Ageha.
- Posthumous Character: A flashback in Blattodea expands on his relationship with Kagimushi and Yamato Gokiburi.
- Punny Name: Osamushi. His actual name is also just Osamu, with a "Tsukado" surname instead of "Tezuka".
- Real Men Wear Pink: He's a powerful bishonen with pink hair who first appears after having sex with Ageha.
- Red Right Hand: Has a scar that goes over his forehead from the right and curves towards his left cheek. He also has a shapeshifting right arm.
- Shapeshifter Weapon: His right arm, named Atomic Fist (one reading of Astro Boy's original name is Iron Arm Atom), can morph into various weapons according to the wielder's imagination and has considerable range. It can even melt and spread over the floor for surprise attacks.
- Superpower Meltdown: He's nuclear-powered and eventually explodes into a mushroom cloud while singing the Astro Boy theme song, accomplishing the Organization's plan to erase all the V.I.P.s on the Ageha ship.
- World's Best Warrior: Is said to have killed more people than anyone else in the whole damn Organization.
Pscoptera/Chatatemushi
Pscoptera（チャタテムシ; Chatatemushi）
- Animal Motifs: Booklice bugs.
- Attempted Rape: Attempts to rape Hanakamakiri after drugging him to sleep, only to end up running away for six hours when the boy's own subconscious rapist urges are awakened.
- Bit Character: Only appears in a flashback from when Hanakamakiri was training under Kinohadakamakiri.
Migratory Locust/Tonosamabatta
Migratory Locust (トノサマバッタ; Tonosamabatta)
The assassin ranked 8th within the Organization. Doesn't actually appear during the Death Caterpillar incident and is only mentioned in a promotional poster for Caterpillar.- The Ghost: He hasn't actually appeared in any installment of the series so far.
- Reused Character Design: His face does appear in a bonus poster for one of the Caterpillar volumes and he looks like how Oda Nobunaga is portrayed in Choubu no Shinobi.
Swallowtail Butterfly/Ageha (Unmarked Spoilers)
Swallowtail Butterfly, Akiho Yanagi (Ageha, Yanagi Akiho)
The director of an orphanage Imomushi and her sister Mika lived in. Has become the leader of a shadowy group who's baiting Imomushi into a Carnival of Killers for their own entertainment. However, the truth is she had been killed all along by Imomushi, but not before driving Mika insane to the point the girl developed a split personality transformation based off her.- Animal Motifs: Swallowtail butterflies, relating to how she "dies" and is reborn with the goal of ruining Imomushi.
- The Baroness: A gorgeous sadist in nazi-style dominatrix clothing.
- Big Bad: Of the Caterpillar storyline. Specifically a Big Bad Friend as she's really a deranged Mika.
- Bondage Is Bad: Ageha forced a little girl to be her sex slave for 5 years.
- Cain and Abel: Mika wants to kill Imomushi because she sacrificed everything for her in vain, but ends up deliberately confronting Imomushi in a way that lures Paraponera into aiming for herself first and is fatally wounded. Imomushi, who acknowledged she deserved to die by Mika's hand, laments that despite everything Mika was still looking out for her.
- Dead All Along: The real Akiho got her head crushed into paste by Imomushi, and the one seen throughout Caterpillar was Mika transformed into her appearance.
- Drop Dead Gorgeous: After being raped and strangled by Ageha's goons, Mika is put in a body bag with a blank unblinking look on her face and is sent to the necrophiliac Shidemushi leader, who places her naked body on some kind of liquid tank. Then she turns out to be Not Quite Dead and breaks out of it.
- Dying as Yourself: Mika is mortally wounded by Paraponera after revealing her true identity to Imomushi, and dies in her normal form while glad to see her sister was still wearing the hair decoration she once gave her.
- Navel-Deep Neckline: Wears her shirt open, exposing her cleavage and stomach.
- Orcus on His Throne: Just watches the ongoing battles from a ballroom along with her attendants.
- Psycho Lesbian: Her deal as a psycho dominatrix is reminiscent of the Army Ant Queen from the main story, but Ageha has no understandable Freudian Excuse for why she's so warped.
- Putting on the Reich: Akiho dresses in a nazi uniform with swastikas and all. Chapter 44 even has her
◊ doing the pose from the cover of Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS. The symbol is censored on the volume releases, though. - Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil:
- Ageha blackmailed a young girl into becoming a sex slave to her and her mooks for kicks until they ended up (almost) killing her. Even some of the Shidemushi cleaners are disturbed by Ageha's actions when they dispose of her mutilated corpse.
- Mika wants Imomushi violated and killed because she snapped from all the abuse she suffered and feels it was all wasted because Imomushi ended up captured by the Organization and turned into an assassin instead of living peacefully. The irony is that the Organization was plotting the apocalypse, meaning Imomushi would never have had an easy life no matter what.
- Rape Leads to Insanity: After being sexually tortured for a long time and almost dying, Mika gets a split personality and physically morphs into her own abuser while plotting to murder her sister Imomushi for being unwittingly responsible for everything.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: Mika sacrifices everything so her abusers wouldn't send Miki to a reformatory, but the girl ends up being turned into the assassin Imomushi instead. She then schemes to kill Imomushi just to hesitate at the last minute and get killed off for good by Paraponera, leaving Imomushi just as hollow inside. Then the Organization turns Japan into ruins, meaning Mika's efforts for Miki to have a normal life were all for nothing from the beginning.
- Sinister Surveillance: Watches Imomushi getting hounded by assassins from a secret ballroom.
- Split Personality: The traumatized Mika started coping by visualizing Akiho as an imaginary friend who cared about her. This turned into the shapeshifting split personality condition previously seen with Himekuwagata, which ended up saving her from death when she was strangled.
- Walking Spoiler: Discussing Akiho at length reveals she is really Imomushi's sister Mika who went crazy from despair and is suffering from a bizarre shapeshifting condition.
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