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 lunatics from Arachnid who were out to ruin a schoolgirl's day and didn't appear in either Caterpillar or Blattodea.
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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. One could even say they're mad enough to actually think of themselves as bugs. Any outlandish things they do are followed by wild life documentary-esque 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.
- Professional Killer: Some of the Organization's hitmen are cold and professional, while all the others are blood-thirsty psychos.
Dragonfly/Ginyanma
Dragonfly (ギンヤンマ; Ginyanma)
- Abnormal Ammo: Her bullets are enhanced by dragonfly-like wings.
- Animal Motifs: Dragonflies.
- Cold Sniper: Literally all we saw about her is that she's a sniper.
- Death by Irony: Shortly after sniping Suzumebachi, Ginyanma gets cut down the same way by Alice.
- Dramatic Unmask: Back in her debut she was all covered up with no visible features save for googles and a beanie. Her gender and appearance are revealed when she next appears.
- Guns Are Worthless: Averted for once... is what we'd say if poor dragonfly girl hadn't been no scoped by a magical knife.
- Hoist by Her Own Petard: After using Suzumebachi's corpse to shield herself from Ginyanma's bullets, Alice is able to determine exactly where they're coming from and uses Kumoito to cut through Ginyanma's face.
- Just Shoot Him: After Alice killed Kumo, Ginyanma argued that Alice could never join them and should be killed, but Suzumebachi stated the Boss needed Alice alive. And now both him and Ginyanma are dead.
- Near-Villain Victory: Ginyanma actually had Alice dead to rights when the Boss called for her to execute the spider-girl, but then Suzumebachi's corpse jumped over Alice to block the bullet, and apparently on its own and not because of Alice's strings.
- Post-Final Boss: With Suzumebachi dead and the Boss being a noncombatant, Ginyanma was the only one left to pose a threat to Alice. But if there's anything to be learned from what little screentime she got, is that even snipers standing a half-dozen kilometers away are hardly a match for Alice.
- Put on a Bus: Briefly appears in the beginning, looking over Alice and Kumo's Rooftop Confrontation. She says she'll keep an eye on the spider girl but isn't seen again for a long time. It is when Alice and Suzumebachi do battle that she returns to blow the loser's brains out and to get killed right after.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: She barely appears in the story but Alice kills her as soon as she has the chance.
- You Don't Look Like You: Inevitable when prior to her proper introduction she only appeared in chapter 5 for a couple of panels that gave little to no idea what she looks like, other than the googles and the beanie. If anything, the silhouette shown looks like that of a man.
Praying Mantis/Kamakiri
Mantis (カマキリ; Kamakiri), alias Zheng Manxian (鄭萬軒; チョンマンテス)
An assassin who visits Alice after she killed Kumo to either take her to the Organization or kill her.- Animal Motifs: Praying Mantises.
- Blood from the Mouth: Dies upside-down with a stream of blood dripping over his eyes.
- Eyes Always Shut: How he acts before trying to kill Alice.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Alice captures Kamakiri and makes him stab his own chest with one of his scythes when he refuses to surrender.
- Monster of the Week: The very first one in Arachnid.
- My Death Is Just the Beginning: Declares that Alice has doomed herself by killing him, as she'll now be hunted by the rest of the Organization.
- Mythology Gag: A Starter Villain with Eyes Always Shut gives a My Death Is Just the Beginning speech to the hero upon defeat. This also happened in the author's Jackals once, though the Mantis that that story was another guy.
- Posthumous Character: He appears in a flashback in Blattodea, drinking tea with Kinohadakamakiri and discouraging him from punishing Hanakamakiri for preparing it even slightly wrong at all. The scene also establishes his actual name is Zheng Manxian.
- Sinister Scythe: Has a pair of scythes under his sleeves.
- Starter Villain: Kamakiri is the first Organization assassin to attack Alice after Kumo's death. She defeats him with little trouble.
- Too Dumb to Live: Walked right into Alice's web to fight her head-on, expecting her to be a mere rookie. Then again, so does everyone else...
- We Hardly Knew Ye: Shows up, fights Alice and accidentally kills himself.
Army Ant/Guntaiari
Army Ant/"Surveillance", Sara Kurokawa (グンタイアリ; Guntaiari, 黒川 沙羅; Kurokawa Sara)
- Alas, Poor Villain: Ultimately, Sara was just an innocent civilian dragged into the Organization by Kuramoto and who acted on a mixture of mind control and Stockholm Syndrome for her Queen. Seeing her turned into a brain-dead zombie can be disheartening, plus Alice has no reason to care and nobody would help her out of it.
- Animal Motifs: "Army Ant" is a term for ant species that agressively forage in massive numbers and move from place to place by using themselves as "bivouac" structures to protect their queen and larvae. In this story, that is portrayed by Sara's minions being under the spell of a zombifying sexually-transmitted virus.
- Bad Boss: She treats Kuramoto terribly. But she's just pretending and appears to be in love with her. Kuramoto seems to treat her well in exchange, but she is also manipulative and doesn't return Sara's feelings.
- Big Bad: Sara claims that she's the Organization leader. Alice finds it hard to believe, but Sara did plan the Arachnid Hunt and is the person who sends orders to Suzumebachi. However, she's actually a decoy who follows Kuramoto's orders. And both are working under Suzumebachi.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: After she first had sex with Kuramoto. However, Sara was then given a "special role" and became able to retain her autonomy. This doesn't save her from losing her mind once Kuramoto is killed.
- Card-Carrying Villain: She's constantly gloating with over-the-top expressions, chewing and drooling on scenery as she orders her zombies to rape everyone in the school. Even if she is only pretending to be the boss, it is a role that she greatly enjoys.
- Charm Person: Due to her charisma, people flock to her like ants to candy.
- Clingy Jealous Girl: When Alice and Kuramoto have their fake The Big Damn Kiss moment, Sara is shown in the background looking embarrassed and jealous.
- Crazy-Prepared: When Kabutomushi defeats her huge henchmen, Sara already has other minions for setting the floor below Kabuto to crumble and separate her from Alice.
- Cute and Psycho: Tends to look more psycho than cute, though.
- The Dragon: She serves under Kuramoto and is tasked with leading her ant army.
- Empty Shell: Even though Sara wasn't in a brainwashed state, her connection to Kuramoto still rendered her catatonic when Kuramoto died.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Even Sara sometimes gets disturbed at Kuramoto's actions and goals.
- Evil Laugh: She laughes so loudly and wickedly that it is somewhere between scary and
ridiculous. Sometimes she even has to force herself to stop. - Evil Makeover: Went from a timid black-haired mekakure girl to a psychopathic silver-haired eyepatch girl.
- Expy: Her general design makes Sara resemble a Cute Monster Girl character whom Ifuji Shinsen designed before working on Arachnid
, and that he later used in ARTHAriria. - Eyepatch of Power: Wears a very fancy-looking one over her right eye, either to hide she has Heterochromia or just to look good, considering she changed her whole appearance when running for council president.
- Fate Worse than Death: Suddenly becomes a mind-broken zombie after Kuramoto dies.
- Friendless Background: She had no friends before she met Kuramoto. Presumably she became the popular Student Council President of the school by following Kuramoto's advice and exploiting her ability.
- Happiness in Slavery: Her actual relationship with her master, Kuramoto.
- Hellish Pupils: Some characters get scary pupils when they're angry, but Sara has hers like this by default.
- Hidden Depths: She appears to be a absurdly disgusting villain, but to some extent she's acting like that to draw attention away from her beloved boss Kuramoto, whom she is jealous of for her interest in Alice.
- Humiliation Conga: Increasingly loses control over the Arachnid Hunt, then her queen dies and she loses her mind. And her clothes.
- I Control My Minions Through...: There appears to be some kind of mind control going on with the way groups of students follow her with empty gazes. As it turns out, she is able to order them around because she's Kuramoto's assistant.
- I Just Want to Have Friends: She used to be really lonely and jumped at the chance to become friends with Kuramoto.
- Just Shoot Him: When Alice finally gets captured, Sara insists Kuramoto should kill Alice or at least break her limbs, being well aware of how absurdly resourceful the spider girl is. Naturally, Kuramoto doesn't pay attention and is foiled when Alice greatly exceeds Sara's expectations.
- Landslide Election: It's never quite explained how Sara pulled it off, but Oki mentions a "gaudy festival" took place during the student council election. Sara likely exploited the Queen's Rule mind control to get elected easily.
- Maniac Tongue: She's often seen sticking her overly wet tongue out while doing evil speeches or thinking to herself, which hints at how the Queen's Rule is spread through body fluids.
- Manipulative Bitch: Tries her best to be this, but one clue of her true role is how unsubtle she is about it.
- Mark of the Supernatural: Being converted by Kuramoto and tasked to become the Student Council President somehow marked Sara with Heterochromia.
- The Minion Master: Sara has no offensive abilities of her own and has to let the brainwashed student mob do all the fighting for her.
- New Transfer Student: Transfered to Alice's school some months before her indroductory chapter and became popular enough to get elected as the Student Council President soon after.
- Non-Action Big Bad: Is no good at fighting.
- Obviously Evil: Even when she's not being a sick ham and cheese villain, Sara's silver hair, elaborate eyepatch and ever present Slasher Smile radiate malice. The students, however, just consider that beautiful and elegant.
- Oh, Crap!: When she finds out Dinoponera is looking for Alice despite not being invited to the hunt. Chapter 52 has Sara repeatedly freaking out for comedy as her plans to capture Alice fall apart. Ten chapters later, much of the same happens for drama when Alice is unaffected by Kuramoto's mind control and reluctantly kills her in self-defense.
- Only Friend: A very poisonous one to Kuramoto. But it turns out she was the one taken by Kuramoto as her servant.
- Orcus on His Throne: Spends most of the Arachnid Hunt on a security room, only leaving to set up the sex-crazed students once she realizes Dinoponera arrived at the school. Surveillance is her real job, though.
- Pose of Supplication: Drops to the floor without hesitation if her master becomes angry at her. And after Alice kills Kuramoto, Sara begs Alice to not kill her too.
- Psycho Lesbian: Implied but not really shown on-panel. Kuramoto's explanation of her Queen's Rule ability had reversed roles, you see.
- Psychotic Smirk: The first glance she shares with Alice has Sara grinning wide-eyed at her.
- Rape by Proxy: She takes Oki and Geji as her hostages and forces Alice and Kuramoto to have sex for her amusement. Although she's not too happy to see her master making out so enthusiastically with someone else.
- Red Herring: Yes, she isn't really the boss. Her supposed slave is. Sara just acts so scandalously rotten that nobody doubts her or suspects Kuramoto.
- Shameful Strip: Strips an unconscious Alice and in turn is told to grant her own clothes to her after being defeated.
- Shrinking Violet: In the past, back when she first met Kuramoto. What a transformation, huh?
- Sinister Surveillance: She watches over the events of the Arachnid Hunt from a security room.
- Smug Smiler: She's grinning evily all the darn time.
- Student Council President: Of Shouran High.
- Tragic Villain: Sara is actually just a civilian who was date-raped and brainwashed by Kuramoto, who herself was corrupted by so many traumatic experiences and the Organization. Even though Alice was willing to spare Sara despite not knowing any of that, Kuramoto's death reduces her to a completely zombified state with no known cure.
- Uncertain Doom: Sara becomes zombiefied as soon as Kuramoto dies, but a newspaper briefly seen a year later in Blattodea implies some kind of treatment is being performed to cure her.
- Undying Loyalty: Sara helps her queen, Kuramoto, out of loyalty rather than simply being under the effects of her "Queen's Rule".
- Used to Be a Sweet Kid: How could you ruin that moé, Kuramoto?
- Villainous Breakdown: A massive one when Alice outgambits and kills Kuramoto.
- Villainous Friendship: With Kuramoto.
- Villains Want Mercy: Begs Alice to not harm her after Kuramoto is killed, only for the Queen's Rule to go out of control and break her mind anyway.
- Walking Spoiler: Sara's motivations for running the Arachnid Hunt make her this.
- White Hair, Black Heart: She's a manipulative and sadistic silver-haired girl. Her hair is dyed and she was a nicer lonely person back when she had dark hair.
- Young and in Charge: This little girl claims to be the head of a crime syndicate. But she's not.
- Zombie Apocalypse: Something like it. At first, her minions are just depraved people, but she somehow controls them to the point that later there are orgies everywhere and all the male students (and even the girls) infest the school as mindless zombie-like people who try to rape any women in their sight and further spread the effect. Turns out Kuramoto is who does the brainwashing.
Tiger Beetle/Hanmyou
Tiger Beetle (ハンミョウ; Hanmyou)
A scissor wielder who ambushes Alice after she defeats Shinobu.- Animal Motifs: Tiger Beetles.
- Know When to Fold 'Em: After being kicked away by Hibiki, he uses his enhanced field of vision to dodge an attack and flee... right into Riock's killing punch.
- I Have You Now, My Pretty: He corners a half-naked Alice under his scissors, planning to kill and then rape her.
- Losing Your Head: As his head flies into a pool, he wonders what the hell just happened.
- Monster of the Week: He gets Alice in trouble and is the one who first tells her about the Arachnid Hunt's goal, but gets killed quickly and uncerimoniously.
- No-Nonsense Nemesis: After he corners Alice, he considers killing her slowly but decides he should just shoot her.
- Off with His Head!: Riock punches his head off.
- Shear Menace: Wields a large pair of scissors.
- Super-Speed: Tiger Beetles are supposed to be incredibly fast insects, but the battle narration elaborates on this guy's vision abilities instead. Doubly ironic, given that tiger beetles actually lose their vision while moving because they run too fast for their own eyes to keep up.
- Surprisingly Sudden Death: Alice and Hibiki are certainly surprised when the guy gets his head punched off from out of the blue.
- Verbal Tic: "Myo".
- Villain: Exit, Stage Left: Gets killed when he attempts to escape from Hibiki.
Digger Wasp/Anabachi
Digger Wasp (アナバチ; Anabachi)
A boy who captures Oki and Yoriko to take them to Jigabachi.- Animal Motifs: Digger Wasps.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: He has a device from Jigabachi that can be planted on people's spines to control their consciousness like Jewel Wasps do to cockroaches. Fittingly, uses it on Gokiburi and pretends he is Alice to make her obey him.
- Child Soldier: The youngest assassin shown during Arachnid.
- Cute and Psycho: Just a kid with a cap on, but is as dangerous and perverted as they come.
- Deadly Gas: Anabachi uses nerve gas to to weaken Oki, but it doesn't work on Kabutomushi.
- Flash Step: He seems to run around Oki without her noticing, but it was because he had set up a nerve gas trap to slow her reflexes.
- Monster of the Week: Incapacitates Goki but gets easily stomped by Kabutomushi just a while later.
- Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: After brainwashing Oki, he dresses her in a dominatrix outfit.
- Uncertain Doom: Kabutomushi slams his head into the floor, but it isn't made explicit if that killed him. Then in Blattodea, a still-living Jigabachi remarks Anabachi did get out safely too.
Centipede/Mukade
Centipede (ムカデ; Mukade)
An assassin who hides above the ceiling of the girls' bathroom waiting for Alice to appear.- And I Must Scream: A victim of Sasori's paralysis toxin.
- Animal Motifs: The giant poisonous centipedes he takes after prey on spiders, but the arachnids can take on them as well. All of this is irrelevant because he dies without doing anything at all.
- Camping a Crapper: How he planned to kill Alice. She never comes to the toilet, so he spends his time capturing and raping unrelated girls until Sasori gets rid of him.
- Killed Offscreen: Knowing Sasori, his death must have been a mess.
- Mythology Gag: Jackals also had a spiky-haired guy with rapist tendencies. Killing Bites further shows this is a pattern the author has going on.
- Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: It is clear enough that he raped the four unconscious Innocent Bystander girls he caught with his centipede-like ceiling attack, so when he's killed by Sasori, readers are probably not expected to care.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: This dude was just some jackass who got tortured to death offscreen in his debut chapter without even getting to attack Alice and properly be part of the Monster of the Week cast.
Media
Media Army Ants
Two men who wield large ant jaw-shaped gauntlets and are sent by Sara to kill Dinoponera and any allies Alice might have, such as Kabutomushi.They fail miserably.
- Animal Motifs: Named after the media caste of worker ants, though they're soldier ant-sized.
- Blade Below the Shoulder: More like jaw-shaped clubs below each shoulder.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: They seem to be under the effect of the Queen's Rule. One is set to restrain his enemies and the other is made to go for the kill no matter what happens. Sara can't issue any other orders to them unless her life's at risk.
- Cool Helmet: Helmets shaped like ant heads.
- Disney Villain Death: One gets the honor of being knocked out of the building by Kabutomushi, after which the second one gets kicked by Hibiki into a trap hole Kabuto was tricked into.
- Fake Ultimate Mook: Those two giant buff guys are a serious threat to a heavily injured Alice, but they're easily slapped around by Kabutomushi. After Kabutomushi falls for a trap, it is Hibiki who comes to Alice's rescue, suddenly kicking the remaining one down the same hole Kabuto fell into.
- Ironic Name: "Minor", "Media" and "Major" are terms for different sizes of worker ants, but in both Arachnid and Himenospia the author used Media for giant super-soldiers. The rapist army ant zombies, which are normal-sized people, are considered Major instead — as mentioned in post 868 of his BBS.
- Monster of the Week: They only appear so Kabutomushi can have some much needed action after being useless against Dinoponera.
- Muscles Are Meaningful: Given their performance against Kabutomushi, they don't actually mean much.
- Psychotic Smirk: It's fixed on their faces.
- Walking Shirtless Scene: They don't wear shirts.
Spoiler Character 1
Army Ant Queen, alias Ai Kuramoto
As it turns out, Kuramoto is the real Army Ant Queen who has been charged with turning the Shouran High's students into zombified drones with her ability. She actually hates Alice and wants to have her humiliated, tortured and killed.- All Women Are Lustful: She turns out to willfully exploit her sex powers to gain servants, though this is after she's corrupted by heavy childhood trauma.
- Animal Motifs: Kuramoto is the real Army Ant queen who turned the entire school into her ant colony. The specific species she is compared to are the Polyergus slave-making ants.
- Animal-Themed Superbeing: Has sex powers based on ant queens.
- Apocalypse Maiden: Kuramoto is a rape victim with brainwashing powers who is manipulated into getting herself killed to cause a Zombie Apocalypse that wipes out half of Japan's population.
- Attempted Rape: Very much a victim of this... in the past. Men trying to rape her on sight is still a regular occurrence, but while Kuramoto acts like she's helpless, her Queen's Rule ability binds to her will anyone who has contact with her body fluids. She eventually gets Alice at her mercy, while still pretending to be nice.
- Bad Boss: Kuramoto is aloof around Sara, but at least isn't as mean as she has Sara pretend she is to her.
- Beneath Suspicion: Alice did consider Kuramoto a friend and believed she was suffering under the cruel Sara. It was out of concern for her safety that Alice kept strings on her and wound up learning what they were up to.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: She acts very friendly and even motherly to Alice, but wants to enslave and break her will to lengths that even Oki from back when she first met Alice would probably be unwilling to. And she first met Sara by taking advantage of her desire to have friends and date raping her into servitude.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: Her ability is to inflict sexually transmitted mind control on people.
- Big Bad: Kuramoto was chosen by the Boss to handle the Arachnid Hunt and so she was secretly the main antagonist for its duration.
- Bond Villain Stupidity: She ignores Sara's advice about immediately killing or crippling a captured Alice, preferring to personally zombify the girl to perform excruciating torture on her later. Obviously, this goes spectacularly wrong for Kuramoto.
- Compelling Voice: The Queen's Rule gives her this power over her servants.
- The Corrupter: Sara was just a naive and lonely girl until Kuramoto met her.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Alice uses her thread to not just strangulate, but to outright crush Kuramoto's death. One could call it a Mercy Kill, as Alice previously had attempted to give Sasori a slower and more agonizing death from hanging.
- Date Rape: Just after making friends with Sara, Kuramoto brought her home, undressed and forced her to bed with a kiss. After the deed was done, Sara became twisted into the depraved ant girl we see in the series proper.
- Death by Irony: Kuramoto discovered her power by accidentally forcing her father to strangle himself until his neck broke. She dies from having her neck crushed by Alice's thread, after being unable to control her.
- Defiant to the End: Alice tries to give Kuramoto a chance to give up when she has her neck wrapped in string, but Kuramoto attempts to make the student mob stomp Alice to death anyway.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Alice doesn't resent how everyone wants to make her miserable? Let's see how she likes being enslaved and locked up in a dungeon, then.
- The Dog Was the Mastermind: Who'd think the damsel in distress was getting raped on purpose?...
- Drop Dead Gorgeous: This buxom temptress is executed by Alice in a gruesome yet eroticized way while she's only wearing underwear.
- Evil All Along: She is Sara's master, not her slave. She was only pretending to gain Alice's sympathy.
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: She can't understand how Alice would not end up hating the entire world from everything she gets put through.
- Evil Plan: Kuramoto is supposed to use the Queen's Rule to take over Japan and let large amounts of people die as a form of population control, but she also gets very interested in making Alice's life a living hell.
- Foreshadowing: It's implicit from the time Sara made 26 people rape Kuramoto that she somehow is the source of the brainwashing, which would make that a, uh, mating session with the proper queen. Her being evil and in charge of the incident is also hinted at by how unlikely it is for the boss' identity to have been revealed so soon and how over-the-top Sara acts.
- Freudian Excuse: After enduring frequent sexual abuse for a long time, Kuramoto found herself with a STD mind control ability to turn the tables with. It's no wonder she snapped and became so vengeful.
- I Control My Minions Through...: Mind control and corruption.
- Irrational Hatred: Alice trying to put a strong front despite her misfortunes and possibly being truly happy as she is what drives Kuramoto horribly mad, to the point she wishes to humiliate, torture and then kill Alice rather than just converting her to a slave.
- Kick the Dog: Wants to break Alice to pieces just because, of all things, she's still trying to be optimistic.
- Killed Mid-Sentence: Alice kills her mid-sentence while Kuramoto herself was trying to prevent Alice from speaking her killing command. Really, there's no way Alice could've been shut up fast enough.
- Kiss of Death: The Queen's Rule is mainly spread through saliva, so this trope is part of her ability. Kuramoto actually avoids having sex with Alice when she realizes they can just have a drawn-out french kiss instead, but it doesn't work because Alice spits out all the saliva.
- Living Aphrodisiac: As a child her powers ran wild and caused her to be raped even by her own parents, who wouldn't turn submissive to her on the spot until she realized it was a thing she could do. This isn't seen at the time she's a teen, with her having to directly seduce and kiss people to turn them into zombies.
- Maniac Tongue: She gradually reveals herself as the direct source of Sara's manneirisms.
- Manipulative Bitch: Kuramoto befriends Alice and soon disappears for Alice to get stuck on the school looking for her.
- Mark of the Supernatural: She can bestow a special role upon her soldiers, which then gain Heterochromia and become more self-aware.
- The Minion Master: Like Sara, she has no fighting abilities of her own, but she does have a horde of servants under her command.
- Ms. Fanservice: Spends the latter parts of the story in her underwear until she drops dead from a crushed neck.
- Non-Action Big Bad: Depends on what kind of action we're talking about.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Before the Arachnid Hunt, Kuramoto looked over Alice's background and sadly noted they're both unfortunate and abused by everyone around them. At the time she talked to Alice over it, she was expecting the girl to expose all of her hate and ressentment and hoped they could be friends. Instead, Alice acted like nothing was wrong, which infuriated Kuramoto.
- Orcus on His Throne: Averted. She spends a good amount of time watching over Alice's growth and gaining her trust.
- Outgambitted: Tries to brainwash Alice, only to find out Alice had her on a literal leash all along.
- Psychic-Assisted Suicide: She first realized her power by unintentionally making her father choke himself to death.
- Rape and Revenge: She was sexually abused from an early age and learned to use her bug ability to turn her assaulters into zombie-like servants, plotting to use them to take over Japan out of grief.
- Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: A target of this trope and someone who can exploit it to get everyone else raped and under her control.
- Rape Leads to Insanity: Some bizarre trait of Kuramoto's body made her a rape magnet from childhood for everyone she knew until she killed her father by accident and got hired as an assassin. Predictably, it took that much of a toll on her mind.
- The Reveal: Kuramoto is the real Army Ant and Sara is her servant.
- Self-Made Orphan: Hard to blame her, though. And it's not like she knew telling her father to drop dead would work that well.
- Shadow Dictator: Kuramoto is who really controls the Student Council while letting Sara enjoy her newfound popularity from becoming the apparent President. It's shown that Kuramoto even brainwashed some of the school's staff to do her bidding.
- Shameless Fanservice Girl: On a blogpost regarding Kuramoto in Arachnid chapter 25, Murata wrote that the most appealing aspect of breasts to him was how anxious women felt about them. So in the story she is supposedly insecure about her large chest and is harassed and raped over it for maximum woobie moe points. But then it turns out Kuramoto is actually a seductive villainess who tries to rule over a rape apocalypse, which "reduces her charm by half" and means she's Evil and that it's Totally Ok to horribly murder her...
- Sinister Surveillance: She watches Alice's battle against Sasori from the school's security room.
- Tragic Villain: Besides the Rape as Backstory deal that distorted her so much, Kuramoto was essentially groomed by the Organization just to end up killed for their latest depopulation bomb scheme. She ends up giving in to her hate for Alice and gets gruesomely killed, all while Alice doesn't know a thing about what she went through.
- Used to Be a Sweet Kid: But people preyed on her body even then, and this eventually corrupted her.
- Villainous Friendship: With Sara, though she doesn't seem to treat her very warmly...
- Walking Spoiler: Discussing the latter parts of the story reveals Kuramoto is a villain and that Sara is just her decoy.
- Woman Behind the Woman: The actual Queen is her and not Sara.
- Zombie Apocalypse: The transformation of people into mindless, drooling and blank-eyed "rape zombies" turns out to be her ability. Only she and Sara can control them. Her goal is to cause a nation-wide pandemic, which does come to pass even after her death.
Spoiler Character 2
Strepsiptera/Nejirebane, alias Yoriko Tajima
So casual about nuking Japan on purpose...
The true leader of the Organization who spends her free time as a high school student, hanging out with Alice and Oki and putting them through the wringer that is the Arachnid Hunt. A 100 years-old girl needs a thrill every now and then, you know.- Abusive Parents: Yoriko's parents fought over who was to blame for her not growing properly and eventually began taking it out on her.
- Acquired Poison Immunity: Enough for Sasori's instant death poison to only leave her on a period of suspended animation, thanks to the same "Adaptive Mutant" ability Imomushi demonstrated in the prequel.
- Animal Motifs: Strepsiptera females, which never grow past their larvae form and spend their lives as parasites inside wasps.
- Animal-Themed Superbeing: Her twisted-wing parasite motif gives her poison immunity, some form of agelessness and telepathy powers that let her control minds.
- The Bad Guy Wins: She dies, but the army ants do cause the death of most of Japan's population like she planned. She also manages to be a horrible influence on Alice, convincing the girl she could never have a normal life even if her family wasn't murdered by the Organization.
- Been There, Shaped History: Yoriko has been running Japan's politics for most of the 20th century and beyond.
- Big Bad: As the Organization's leader, she is the Hidden Villain of Arachnid and the Greater-Scope Villain of Caterpillar. However, the ending of Caterpillar implies she was trying to kill somebody worse than her who had infiltrated the Organization. Blattodea reveals that person is an alternate universe version of Serena from Himenospia.
- Big Bad Friend: To think she kept calling Goki untrustworthy and called out Dinoponera for her screwed up takes on friendship...
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: Yoriko is really sociopathic to ridiculous extremes, as she gets Hiroshima and Nagasaki blown up on purpose like that would make Japan seem cool and makes a plaything out of Alice while still considering her a friend to the very end. Even the reasoning behind her goal of population control through mass catastrophes is ultimately ill-defined.
- Compelling Voice: Yoriko can use mind control on whoever accepts to be Suzumebachi.
- Depopulation Bomb: She's big on curbing overpopulation with major disasters, to the point of being responsible for the atomic bombings on Japan during World War II. Her reasoning for this isn't ever really explained, though.
- Didn't See That Coming: Had some close brushes with death through the story due to circunstances she couldn't predict, such as Goki getting captured by Anabachi. Yoriko did know Sasori was nearby when she and Alice got attacked, but didn't expect to get smacked from nowhere by a mechanical stinger. She also doesn't expect a dead Suzumebachi to save Alice's life or Kabutomushi arriving to blow her off the school's rooftop, either.
- Disney Villain Death: Number of people Kabuto-ed out of the Shouran Highschool: 4. Kabutomushi did say Yoriko wouldn't die just from falling for 3 meters. It's a case of Hoist by Her Own Petard, as Yoriko had just dropped Alice off the building.
- Dissonant Serenity: Much unlike Sara, Yoriko is very gentle when she introduces her true nature to Alice. Of course she also looks a little sly about it, but wouldn't you too if you secretly were a yakuza boss and an ageless telepath?
- The Dog Was the Mastermind: Who'd think some random delinquent girl is a centenarian mafia leader?
- The Don: Of the Organization.
- The Darkness Gazes Back: First depicted as a pair of creepy omniscient wide eyes staring from out of the darkness.
- Evil Plan:
- The Death Caterpillar game was meant to lure a bunch of traitors, politicians and V.I.P.s who obstructed the Organization into a ship and kill them all to thwart the plans of Serena Cervantes, but it's pretty much a failure despite the ship being successfully nuked. By Blattodea, Yoriko is dead while Serena confortably hangs out around the Organization's HQ, scheming to make a plaything
- The Arachnid Hunt had two goals:
- Population control. The zombified students are expected to cut Japan's population by half while giving a reason for the goverment to accept the Organization's help in eradicating them. However, most of the country and possibly the rest of the world is ruined in a larger scale than expected.
- Get Alice to grow into the ultimate assassin who'd become devoted to Yoriko and replace Suzumebachi by making her life hell and then gloating about it to her face. All this does is make Alice reject Yoriko in disgust, leading to the parasite-girl being killed by Kabutomushi while attempting to dispose of Alice.
- The Arachnid Hunt had two goals:
- Expy: If Alice is based on Turis from Jackals, then Yoriko would be a match for her manipulative mistress Lee Meilang... if she hadn't stepped so much on Alice's toes. Once everything is revealed, there's just no way Alice could pledge her loyalty to Yoriko.
- The Faceless: Until the eventual reveal that it was Yoriko all along.
- Faux Affably Evil: Since Alice has nowhere else to go, Yoriko thinks its fine to admit being the one responsible for the ruin of her family and demand Alice to be her right-hand woman at gunpoint. It's no wonder that once Alice gets over the shock of how ridiculous this situation is, she pretty much tells Yoriko to buzz the hell off.
- Foreshadowing:
- That the boss is hiding at Shouran High was kind of a big deal, so it couldn't be a case of a Stranger Behind the Mask. And isn't Yoriko a little too convenient?
- Yoriko wasn't affected by the nerve gas Jigabachi and Anabachi set upon her and Kabutomushi.
- There were multiple scenes of Kabutomushi causing Yoriko to fall on her back, even from the beginning when Goki holds Yoriko and jumps off a staircase to avoid Kabuto. The last time, Kabuto denies Yoriko can die from just a 3 meters long fall.
- Graceful Loser: Takes her own imminent death well as she bids farewell to Alice, leaving her exponentially heartbroken.
- Hellish Pupils: The flashbacks about the faceless boss have the recurring pupil effect on her eyes for creepiness.
- Join or Die:
- If Jin refused to become Suzumebachi, both him and his family would have been killed on the spot.
- Then she orders Alice to replace Suzumebachi as her main henchwoman, under the threat of Ginyanma aiming at Alice from afar. This is after Alice's father is killed and Yoriko admits being responsible For It All. Alice gets furious and refuses, so Yoriko tries to have her killed.
- Kick the Dog:
- Frustrated over her abilities failing her, Yoriko forced Suzumebachi to kill his own wife and started bullying Alice out of spite sometime after.
- To make it possible for Alice to become Suzumebachi, Yoriko nonchalantly orders her father's brains to be blown out by sniper fire. Then she brags about how easy it was to act friendly and become like family to Alice thanks to her mind-reading power.
- And then, of course, she tosses a completely helpless Alice off the building when she refuses to become the final Suzumebachi. What did she even have to gain from that?
- Manipulative Bitch: Forcing Alice to "shoplift, become an underage prostitute and beat her ex-boyfriend to death" weren't the only things Yoriko had in mind when she let Alice live with her. With her mind-reading, Yoriko pretended to be such a good friend that the lonely Alice went from hating her to considering her family in less than a month.
- Meaningful Name: Is it any coincidence that a girl with the word "yori" (より), for "turn" or "twist", on her name turns out to be a major plot twist themed after bugs known as twisted-wing parasites?
- Never Grew Up: Yoriko stopped aging at 6 years old and stayed like that for decades, but after her son's death she suddenly aged about 10 years at once.
- No Name Given: Yoriko named herself after her adopted son's original mother. Her real name isn't ever revealed.
- Non-Action Big Bad: Ironically, although Yoriko doesn't fight at all she gets closer to killing Alice than anyone else. Yoriko probably does have some sort of assassination skill, but being a child with parasiting bug powers, she's been relying on others to work for her and protect her.
- Older Than She Looks: Female strepsiptera remain larviform when they mature, which means Yoriko ages really slowly. This effect also depends on her relationship with Suzumebachi, given her bug is a parasite.
- Orcus on His Throne: Averted. Yoriko spent the entire series building a relationship with Alice while turning her into the ultimate assassin.
- Outliving One's Offspring: Her adopted son Masashi, who she took in at around the end of World War II, killed himself out of his own accord in order to be replaced by Alice's father. It was the only time Yoriko ever felt bad about swapping out a Suzumebachi.
- Post-Final Boss: After defeating both Suzumebachi and Ginyanma, Alice finally collapses under the damage from all the battles. Thankfully her good friend Yoriko is still here to... throw her off the rooftop. Kabutomushi then comes and blows Yoriko away to her death while Oki rescues Alice.
- Posthumous Character: Blattodea develops Yoriko's character after she's killed by Kabutomushi, by showing what she had in store for Alice, had she accepted to be her right-hand woman, and by showing Yoriko might have been in the grasp of the American Shadow Dictator Serena the whole time.
- Psychic Powers: Telepathy. Yoriko can read the minds of those who are close to her and even permanently control the actions of a single person until their death if they permit it.
- The Reveal: Oh look, Yoriko somehow survived Sasori's murder attempt after all and is the freaking boss of the Organization. Guess that explains how she's a rich lone girl.
- Self-Made Orphan: Yoriko's mother realized how unnaturally subservient her husband was acting to their daughter and attempted to kill her. Yoriko wasn't surprised and made her father kill her mother and hang himself.
- Shadow Dictator: Yoriko controls all of Japan from the shadows with only her hornet enforcers knowing her identity. Most people wouldn't accept a little girl as their boss, after all.
- Slouch of Villainy: Is shown giving orders from a fancy armchair. That she had the body of a little kid back then makes this rather amusing.
- Social Darwinist: This trope is essentially her and the Organization's M.O. — seeking out weak people to kill and steal from, setting up death games between their own staff and going to the extreme of wiping out entire chunks of Japan's population so that only the strong survive.
- Supernaturally Young Parent: The old man we saw talking to Yoriko in a flashback from chapter 22 was actually her adopted son.
- Villainous Crush: She calls Alice beautiful and says she intended to spend the rest of her life with her.
- Walking Spoiler: Discussing her spells out that the Boss is not Sara. On top of that, it's Yoriko of all people. Bizarrely enough, not only is her identity spoiled midway through Caterpillar (at a time it is a prequel) but it is also mentioned in the ending of Choubu no Shinobi by its narrator despite it being set centuries earlier and having no direct connections to Arachnid.
- We Can Rule Together: Yoriko does intend to treat Alice well for real after making her the last Suzumebachi, but Alice is both pissed off at Yoriko's true nature as one of her mother's killers and very unwilling to have her mind read and half-controlled.
- Woman Behind the Woman: As the hidden Boss of the Organization, she was at the end of a chain of secret and traitorous antagonists out to get Alice. Caterpillar and Blattodea then reveal it doesn't stop at her, as she worked in opposition to an infiltrator, Serena Cervantes, the whole time.
- Young and in Charge: As already mentioned, the reason this 15 years-old girl is the leader of an international crime syndicate is because she's actually 100 years-old. She has been leading the Organization as a little girl for decades before her body began to grow again some time prior to the beginning of the series.
