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Back-Alley Market
Gouhin
Voiced by: Akio Ōtsuka (Japanese), Keith Silverstein (English) Foreign VAs
Gouhin is a psychologist operating out of the back alley market. He attempts to rehabilitate carnivores who have gotten addicted to eating other animals. Gouhin abducts Legoshi, thinking he, too, is craving live meat. Legoshi's genuine desire to get along with Haru endears himself to Gouhin who takes the wolf under his wing.
- Anti-Hero: Once he feels his patients have recovered from their meat addiction, he lets them go with no strings attached, even if he discovers and begins treating them after they killed someone. Legoshi is shocked that the latter kind is never turned over to the authorities, but Gouhin claims that being part of the Backalley Market society, it's not his place to judge or punish animals he comes across.
- Badass Bandolier: Wears one during his first appearances, which in the manga only is revealed to go with a machine gun.
- Combat Medic: He describes himself as the head doctor of the Backalley Market, but his main purpose is to rehabilitate carnivores craving for meat, and most of his patients were brought to his clinic by force and a few almost killed him in the process. He also has a rather hands-on (well, fists-on) approach to his more aggressive wards and is competent enough to fight regular gangsters head-on if they threaten his work or friends.
- Cool Old Guy: An older panda who's a strong, physically imposing Combat Medic who wields a crossbow made of bamboo.
- Daddy Had a Good Reason for Abandoning You: At one point, he reveals that he had a wife and a small son, but abandoned them because he felt his job of rehabilitating meat-craving carnivores was far too important and morally complicated to involve them. He's also adamant he has never looked back ever since.
- Dark and Troubled Past: His life as a back-alley doctor has been one with him being nearly killed and not saving every patient in his care. He also left behind his wife and son because of how morally complicated his job would be.
- Disappeared Dad: He has a son he abandoned because of how dangerous his job is.
- Eyes Always Shut: Played with thanks to his species. It is impossible to tell when Gouhin opens or closes his eyes, adding to his rugged and powerful appearance.
- Face of a Thug: Gouhin usually wears a scowl on his face and has a intimidating presence. And while he isn't nice, he proves to be a dedicated doctor.
- Fighting Panda: Unlike the carnivorous Legoshi, who fights based on his wolf instincts, the herbivorous Gouhin is legitimately a good physical fighter, being able to take out imposing lions with ease.
- Good Is Not Nice: Gouhin is a dedicated doctor but he's not a Nice Guy about it.
- Good Is Not Soft: His whole approach to helping his patients is the "carrot and stick" method.
- Good Scars, Evil Scars: Has one across his right eye and another under his left. It makes him look even more tough and badass.
- Hammerspace: He once pulled a fully assembled machine gun out of his trousers when fighting a larger party of adversaries.
- Jerkass Has a Point: He rarely words his opinions politely, but Legoshi always takes note of what he says and takes time to talk the given matter over with him.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: For all his gruffness, Gouhin proves to be a brave doctor genuinely trying to help his patients.
- The Mentor: Gouhin teaches Legoshi about the dark places carnivores can go when they get a taste of flesh and looks out for him thereafter.
- Out of Focus: Following the Murder Incident Solution Arc, Gouhin has rarely appeared in the story afterward, and even then, his appearances are usually pretty brief. This is particularly curious given the following major arc is all about civil unrest happening in the Back Alley Market where he lives.
- Parental Substitute: Gouhin is this for Legoshi, who often asks him for advice and treats him as his confidante. The poor panda takes turns in being entertained by and annoyed at listening to the young wolf's social and romantic struggles.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: So far he's using by far the crudest language of all the cast members.
- Smoking Is Cool: He almost always has a cigarette in his mouth.
- Stern Teacher: He's a strict and often downright abusive mentor to Legoshi who often uses a sink-or-swim approach.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Gouhin eats and drinks anything bamboo-related and even made a crossbow out of one.
Cosmo
Voiced by: Yuki Hara (Japanese), Anne Yatco (English) Foreign VAs
An Okapi stripper who Louis saves from being eaten by a client.
- Small Role, Big Impact: She only makes two appearances, but Cosmo does end up helping Louis think more about his self-imposed fate of staying in the Black Market Alley.
Shishigumi
General
A criminal group of (formerly) 35+ male lions operating out of the Back-Alley Market.
- Cats Hate Water: Hence their preferred style of execution is via Cement Shoes.
- Downer Ending: They allow themselves to be arrested by the police to provide a distraction to help Louis aid Leogsi, and despite the efforts of Louis and their own attempt at good behavior, their prison sentences only end up being increased.
- The Dreaded: When they kidnap Haru, not only are the authorities more eager to cover up the crime than do anything about it but also everyone is too scared to say anything about them when Legoshi tries to find where they are.
- Dwindling Party: Between Legoshi and Gouhin killing off a bunch of them and Melon indiscriminately killing any of them that rub him the wrong way, the gang of 30+ Lions quickly gets cut down to only about 8.
- Enemy Mine: They end up allied with Legoshi in their covert efforts to try and get rid of their own leader behind their back.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Their name literally just means "Lion Gang".
- Fisher King: Their leader's influence is felt so much that it actually changes the atmosphere of the Back-Alley Market. Under Louis it becomes the kind of place you could drop a coin and a random passerby's first response would be to pick it up and give it back to you. Under Melon it becomes more chaotic than it ever was before.
- Heel–Face Turn: A change in leadership takes them from one of the most dreaded gangs in the Back-Alley Market to one of the most prominent supporters of carnivore-herbivore harmony. Even when Melon's leadership threatens to turn them back to the way they were before, they resist and secretly try to find a way to get rid of him.
- Heroic Sacrifice: With the exception of Free, all remaining members of the gang are willing to use themselves as bait and get arrested so Louis can get to Legoshi's fight with Melon. Free even states that he intends to go back and do the same so he can be with his brother in arms since he couldn't before because he was driving the car.
- High on Catnip: They're all silver vine addicts (an Asian herb very similar to catnip)
- Klingon Promotion: Although they don't usually function this way, their resentment of their former leader and recognizing his killer as someone important in society leads them to try letting Louis lead them as a bold move to try and regain some notoriety in the Back-Alley gang society.
- Minor Major Character: While eight main named members (who refer to themselves as the elites) continue to appear all the way to the end of the series, only a small handful of them ever have more than a few lines.
- Resignations Not Accepted: This is supposed to be how they operate, but their respect for Louis is so great they let him retire with a warning that they'll kill him if they see him again. And even then they're unable to go through with that threat.
- True Companions: Although they were divided on the idea at first, they come to love and respect Louis so much as a leader that not only do they fail to follow on their Resignations Not Accepted policy when he leaves, but when they see him again they beg him to come back.
Chief Lion
The former leader of the Shishigumi.
- 0% Approval Rating: While his subordinates were loyal to him, the truth is they all secretly despised him for giving the Shishigumi its bad reputation of being a ruthless gang.
- Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Right after Louis puts his gun on the boss's mouth, he orders the latter to beg for mercy, which he was about to do. Then Louis pulls the trigger.
- Boom, Headshot!: Dies to a combination of this and a Pseudo-Ate His Gun as Louis jammed a handgun into his mouth and pulled the trigger.
- Dirty Coward: He's not above shooting people who spared him when their backs are turned or pitifully begging for his life when faced with imminent death.
- Dirty Old Man: Zig-zagged. He forces Haru to strip naked and deliberately puts her in embarrassing positions afterward. However, this isn't done for any sexual reasons, but to make her meat softer and easier to eat through her distress and shame.
- Disc-One Final Boss: He's the main villain of the Shishigumi Arc, being behind Haru's kidnapping.
- Faux Affably Evil: He is nothing but polite to Haru, asking her whether she's enjoying school and assuring her that he doesn't mean to humiliate her and only asked her to strip for professional reasons. However, the second Haru shows some resistance by kicking his cane away and laughing in his face, he drops all pretenses and prepares to rip her to pieces then and there. He also tries to shoot Legoshi after the latter spared him, showing that beneath his civil facade he is nothing but a greedy, violent thug.
- Four Eyes, Zero Soul: He wears glasses and has consumed several herbivores in the past. He would have done the same to Haru, had Legoshi not interfered.
- No Name Given: The other Shishigumi only address him as "boss", which probably isn't his name. He never introduces himself either.
- Pet the Dog: His first appearance has him scolding the other lions for bullying Haru and then gently help Haru up and ask if she's alright.
- Sore Loser: Even after Legoshi spares him, he still tries to kill the young wolf while he walks away. Luckily, he's stopped by Louis (and his gun).
- Villains Want Mercy: His final words are futilely begging Louis for his life. He doesn't get it as Louis blows his brains out before he can stammer anything out past "please".
Ibuki
Voiced by: Taiten Kusunoki (Japanese), Daman Mills (Season 1), James Mathis III (Season 2) (English) Foreign VAs
A maasai lion from the Shishigumi, a criminal group of lions based in the Back-Alley Market. He later becomes the new Shishigumi leader's trusted second-in-command.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Came from a poor family who, when he was 12, sold him to have his body cut up and sold as Hyperdrugs before escaping and living the rest of his life as a runaway.
- Parental Substitute: Much to his new boss's surprise, Ibuki turns out to be a very considerate caretaker to Louis, recognizing that eating meat, smoking, and drinking were hurting him, shielding his eyes so that he won't have to witness a brutal castration during a business exchange, and even taking precautions for one of his brothers to shoot him should he give in to his urges and eat Louis.
- Tattooed Crook: As a sign of his Dark and Troubled Past, his body still bears tattoos dividing up and labeling what parts of his body can be made into what kinds of Hyperdrugs.
- Thanatos Gambit: According to the rules of the Shishigumi, there are none who leave the group alive. So when Louis tells Ibuki he wants to leave, he gives an ultimatum: kill him before he tears their throat out so they can walk away. Louis, albeit unwillingly, wins.
Free
An Indian Lion in the Shishigumi.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Free is at first reluctant to accept Louis as his new boss, andis just eager to eat him. However, Free comes to respect Louis.
Agata
A dark-furred Congo Lion and the youngest of the Shishigumi Lions.
- Adaptation Dye-Job: While his fur is consistently shaded in darker than the rest of the group in the manga, in the anime his fur is a uniform golden yellow matching everyone else.
- The Baby of the Bunch: Very much the youngest member of the Shishigumi, which is evident even by his appearance and bigger eyes. Though they still treat him as an equal, Dolph has some parental instincts towards him.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: The later part of the story plays up his status as The Baby of the Bunch by giving him a bit of innocence to him. This conflicts with some of his earlier appearances showing him to be just as cruel as anyone else. Notably, the anime adaptation alters these scenes to replace him with other members.
- Youthful Freckles: As a congo lion, he has clear spots on his face, which seem like freckles, and furthers his role as the team's youngest member.
Dolph
A 33-year-old member of the Shishigumi lions.
- Adaptation Dye-Job: His mane is consistently shaded in a way that implies he has light highlights running through it in the manga, but in the anime its a uniform brown matching everyone else.
- Big Brother Instinct: He takes Agata under his wing pretty quick when he joined the group. Agata still sees him as an older-brother like figure. His supposed death is what leads Agata to volunteer to assassinate Melon.
- Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: He turns out to not have been killed by Melon, with his mane actually stopping Melon's blade from getting too far into his throat. Everyone, even his supposed killer, is surprised when he returns as if nothing happened, calling his recovery a two-week vacation time.
- Slashed Throat: In a display of strength, Melon slashes his throat in front of all other mobs of the market and lets his blood spill to spread the scent of lions through the market.
Melon (SPOILERS!)
"It's strange, isn't it? Carnivores and herbivores should get along, yet their children are treated like freaks."
The head of an illegal ivory and tusk trade. He is a leopard-gazelle hybrid and the main antagonist after the Cherryton Highschool murders. Legoshi is recruited by Yafya to arrest him in return for removing his predation offense from public record.
- Arc Villain: The central villain of the "Revenge of the Love Failure" Arc.
- Bad Boss: During one of the Turf Wars, he slashed Dolph's throat in a showcase of power to spread the lion scent everywhere. He genuinely thought he killed his underling and is surprised when he turns out to be alive.
- Blessed with Suck: Being a leopard-gazelle hybrid may seem cool on paper, and it does give him the advantage of having Super-Senses, but the instincts and characteristics he inherited are so contradictory that they make his everyday life a living hell. These include a complete loss of taste, an inability to digest meat, shunning away from large predator-species by default, and the involuntarily desire to utterly slaughter any herbivore he lays his eyes upon.
- Body Horror: In-Universe, as from Melon's perspective having his leopard heritage start manifesting itself physically at an alarmingly rapid pace, consuming more and more of his gazelle heritage as it does, is nothing short of a complete nightmare. This is mostly because leopard traits are his Trauma Button due to his mother, who was both very clearly interested in eating him and was sexually abusive.
- Bullying a Dragon: In his youth, he was tormented viciously for being a hybrid, which eventually broke him, with his tormentors being some of his first victims.
- Did Not See That Coming: Despite how clever he is and the degree of psychology he has read up on in regards to predicting the actions of others based on the internal psychological profiles he makes of them, some things still can catch him off-guard, such as Legoshi's unpredictable actions born from the latter's No Social Skills, something which both stuns and bemuses Melon to no end as he savors the surprise in stride.
- Disappeared Dad: Melon never once have met his father in his life and has zero recollection of him, beyond his mother claiming that his gazelle side is the "spitting image" of him. This leads him to assume his mother ate him before Melon could get any concrete memory of the man in his childhood, however, the truth is that he simply ran away fearing that very situation could occur.
- The Dog Bites Back: Killing your own mother would normally be something indefensible... but considering his mother sexually abused him as a child, her death was more than earned.
- Early-Bird Cameo: Makes a cameo appearance at the end of season 2 of the anime (the end of the Murder Incident Solution Arc) where he can be seen from behind as a passenger on a train Legoshi is riding.
- Edible Theme Naming: Given a very horrifying justification. His mother named him Melon because melons were neither fruit nor vegetable but quite delicious, alluding to her desire to eat him.
- Enfant Terrible: After being tormented by his classmates, he reached a breaking point after they teased him for attempting to commit suicide by falling. In retaliation, he threw them off the building. At what was implied to be an even earlier point in his life, he killed his mother after thinking that she had eaten his father and calmly lied to the authorities that she was killed in a break-in.
- Evil Counterpart:
- He is this to Legoshi. Both are hybrids, but unlike Legoshi, who is a normal wolf with a few Komodo characteristics, Melon is a horrific amalgamation of two animals. While Legoshi seeks to avoid meat and align himself along the lines of an herbivore, Melon embraces his carnivore side. While Legoshi is gentle and caring, Melon is murderous and manipulative. Oh, and both are interested in Haru in some way. Not only that, they weren't raised by their biological fathers.
- He later becomes one to Louis during his time as the leader of the Shishigumi. While Louis led them and commanded their respect, Melon leads them through fear and is not above threatening or torturing his gang to get them to fall in line. In fact, the Shishigumi are still more loyal to Louis than they are to Melon to the point where one willingly puts down his own pride to keep Melon from discovering Louis hiding nearby.
- He also turns out to be one for Leano. While he takes his condition in stride, he does make efforts to pass himself off as a pure gazelle much like she tries to pass for a pure wolf. And while Melon seems to do this simply for convenience's sake, not unlike Leano, he becomes unstable once his hybridization starts accelerating past his ability to hide it.
- Freudian Excuse: Being a far more unstable hybrid than Legoshi has all but ruined every facet of Melon's growing up and still affects him in negative ways to this day, he was damn near Driven to Suicide by his classmates over this very problem, and his mother both sexually abusing him and admitting to having eaten his father while seemingly only barely suppressing her carnivore instincts compelling her to eat him too broke him. To make it even worse following The Reveal, his father was actually alive and was cowardly enough to leave him to his mother out of fear of social rejection which Melon already faced. He's still a merciless criminal with absolutely no regret for he's done, however, so perhaps Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse.
- Half-Breed Angst: Melon faced a lot of discrimination for being a child of a Leopard and a Gazelle, leading to him being bullied at school. On top of that, his mixed heritage leaves him unable to react to strong sensations, particularly taste, since his carnivorous and herbivorous palates conflict with one another. The realization that he feels like he's broken as an animal, in addition to learning that his mother didn't see him as either predator or prey but refused to openly acknowledge it, made him snap and become the monster he is at present.
- Half-Breed Discrimination: Melon faced a lot of discrimination for being a child of a leopard and a gazelle, leading to him being bullied at school.
- Hide Your Otherness: He resents his leopard features as they remind him of his mother and does his best to conceal them, covering up his leopard spots with tattoos and wearing a medical mask in public to hide his leopard mouth and pass for a normal gazelle. When his leopard features start developing faster than his ability to convincingly hide them, it is an extremely distressing situation for him.
- Interplay of Sex and Violence: When he is shown getting a tattoo in his inner thigh very violently, with blood splashing all around, he looks almost aroused by it, with his tongue out and face flushed. It doesn't help that, due to the location of the tattoo, he's laying down with his legs open while the tattoo artist is in between his legs messing around near his crotch.
- In the Blood: He believes his unstable nature comes from his mother. He's probably right, too. However, his lack of empathy might have been inherited from his own father.
- The Leader: Becomes the new leader of the Shishigumi. It's clear they hate it and follow him out of fear.
- Manipulative Bastard:
- He manipulates Legoshi's feelings about his hybrid status (and indirectly his guilt over his mother's suicide due to it) and his future with Haru to escape arrest. He pays Legoshi with a bullet through the chest.
- It's later shown that his criminal career has relied upon toying with public perceptions of herbivores, allowing him to saunter away from his murders simply because no one suspects a gazelle could eat somebody. He takes full advantage of this during his second clash with Legoshi, where he baits the wolf into a crowded, upscale neighborhood where everyone will think that he's attacking a defenseless herbivore, forcing him to become a fugitive from the law.
- Mask of Sanity: In his everyday life, Melon passes as a gazelle by keeping his eyes constantly shut and wearing a surgical mask, hiding his leopard traits. He works in respectable jobs with a good educational background, like as a therapist and as a college professor. He generally looks amiable and approachable and is even looked up to by others, but it takes only a little for that to crack and show off that he's a psychopathic, bloodthirsty serial killer.
- Meaningful Name: His name being "Melon" refers to the fact that he's a hybrid between a carnivore and an herbivore species, in the same way, that melons have traits of both fruits and vegetables despite largely being considered as fruit. His mother gave him the name because he was "neither fruit nor vegetable", and since it's a food-based name it was also a sign of her repressed desire to eat him.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: He's the result of an Interspecies Romance between a leopard and a gazelle, giving him the body and horns of a gazelle with the face, tail and spots of a leopard. It's also deconstructed, as having the characteristics and instincts of such drastically different animals has made his life extremely difficult.
- Oh, Crap!: Nothing seems to shake Melon much - except Legoshi's stubborn determination to try to talk with him, and their continued accidental meetings, which actually do catch Melon off-guard.
- Parental Incest: As chapter 181 reveals, his mother also sexually abused him by trying to coerce him into taking baths with her, inappropriately touching his horns and demanding that he undo her bra.
- Sanity Slippage: Not that he wasn't a total psychopath before, but upon discovering that he's becoming more leopard-like in appearance, and therefore more like his mother, he panics and becomes obsessed with gouging the spots out of his fur, going so far as to shoot off the hand of a rival gang leader on a whim to use as a tool to do so.
- Self-Disposing Villain: When Melon realizes that he has lost in his battle with Legoshi, he pulls out a gun and shoot himself to end his own life, however, he ends up surviving the two shots just barely and is carried by Yahya to the hospital, granted, he's Defiant to the End and attacks Yahya, possibly with the intention of not letting anyone help him and die.
- Self-Made Orphan: In his youth, he murdered his own mother after she told him why he's named Melon, and that she ate his father. As it turns out, his father was alive the whole time and he simply abandoned him.
- Sense Freak: Due to his lack of a sex drive or sense of taste, he resorts to sadomasochism instead as a way to feel something. Deshico the civet theorizes that many hybrids wind up the same way.
- Sense Loss Sadness: Due to being born from a union of an herbivore and carnivore, his taste buds ended up genetically messed up as a result, leaving him incapable of tasting anything from either diet of the spectrum. It brings him grief to no end.
- Slow Transformation: Every so often he develops new leopard spots in his fur, which he then promptly gets tattooed over. The morning of his final confrontation with Legoshi, he awakens to find his body more muscular, with sharper claws and leopard spots covering half of his body. He reacts to the realization that he's still changing physiologically as a hybrid... poorly.
- Start of Darkness: Killing his mother upon finding out that she had eaten his father was the point where he started his downward spiral. To make it worse, it turns out that his father didn't actually get eaten, but rather abandoned him when he was still a baby, leaving him to assume the worst.
- Super-Senses: He has better senses than any other animal, and uses them to keep control over the Shishigumi. If he smells meat on them, he kills them without remorse.
- Tattooed Crook: His body is covered in tattoos of melon leaves. It's revealed he gets these to hide any leopard spots he develops in his fur.
- Tom the Dark Lord: Melon isn't exactly the name that comes to mind when one thinks of a deranged and feared crime lord. As it turns out, his mom named him that because he was "neither fruit nor vegetable", indicating his status as a hybrid. It was also an indication of her suppressed desire to eat him. Finding out the origin of his name as well as that that his mother ate his father drove him to kill her... Or so he thought.
- Trauma Button: The scent of adult women tends to make him pause and scornfully recollect his thoughts, mostly due to it reminding him of his late mentally-ill mother.
- Two-Faced: Not in the traditional scarring fashion, but starting with Chapter 174, his spots begin spreading much more rapidly, particularly over half of his face, giving him a look to this effect.
- Villainous Rescue: At one point, out of sheer curiosity, he saves Legoshi from certain death, claiming that he alone wants to be the cause for Legoshi's death.
- Villain with Good Publicity: After finally getting captured and locked up following his Black Market showdown with Legoshi, Melon is seen in his jail cell with a really huge pile of fan mail.
- Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Literally played as he, while being pursued by Legoshi, takes full advantage of his gazelle heritage and lets the wolf catch him in a wide-open public spot with security cameras available and lets the wolf flee from the police while he himself walks away free for the moment.
Dokugumi
General
One of the four major criminal groups of the Back Alley Market, consisting of komodo dragons.
- Meaningful Name: Their name means "Poison gang"
- Willfully Weak: Their dress code consists of face masks, to hinder their ability to use their poison and to emphasize that they have great physical strength and don't need to rely on their powerful poison.
Savon
The komodo dragon leader of the Dokugumi.
- Connected All Along: Chapter 192 shows that he knows, and likely holds respect for, Gosha.
- Ironic Name: His name is french for soap. He explains his mother gave him a clean name in hopes that it would help ward off the misfortune associated with being a poisonous species.
Inarigumi
General
One of the four major criminal groups of the Back Alley Market, consisting of female foxes.
- Amazon Brigade: There only females in the whole group who kick so much ass!
- Kicking Ass in All Her Finery: Their dress code consists of elegant dresses and high heels. They appear to take a great amount of pride in their ability to fight like that.
Ten
"I'm 33 and in my prime!"
The fox leader of the Inarigumi.- Does Not Like Men: Ten loathes most males for how they react to her beauty. She tells Legosi this when she has her legs wrapped around his head and his muzzle trapped in her crotch.
- Foxy Vixen: Like the rest of her gang, Ten is quite a lovely lady.
- Kick Chick: Her preferred method of fighting. But with legs like hers, no wonder.
- Lady of War: She uses martial arts and fights in high heels and a very stylish dress. When Legoshi asks why she fights in such odd outfits, her only answer is that it makes them look good.
Madaragumi
General
One of the four major criminal groups of the Back Alley Market, consisting of leopards.
- Continuity Snarl: They are described as a gang of jaguars in chapter 66, but once they are properly introduced they're said to consist of leopards.
- Meaningful Name: Their name means "Spotted Gang".
- Willfully Weak: Their dress code consists of kimonos to show the pride they take in their spots, even though showing off more of their spots makes it easier for adept foes to observe how the movement of their spots telegraphs the movements of their bodies.
Livestock
San and Kyuu (SPOILERS!)
Louis's old cellmates back when he was livestock. They call themselves "San" and "Kyuu," the Japanese words for "Three" and "Nine" respectively because those are the numbers tattooed on the soles of their feet. Following the closure of the ring that sold live meat, they now make their living fighting in underground matches throughout the Black Market.
Tropes that apply to both of them
- Attack Its Weak Point: Their go-to strategy in a fight. San uses his Sherlock Scan to instantly pick out an enemy's weak points and direct Kyuu to where she can do the most damage.
- Crash-Into Hello: A variation. Legoshi and Louis visit the building where Louis was kept when he was livestock. The floor gives out beneath Louis and Legoshi, sending them tumbling into the basement where San and Kyuu live.
- Punny Name: Taken together, their names "San" and "Kyuu" make "Sankyuu," the Japanese pronunciation of "thank you."
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Neither of them is seen or mentioned in the epilogue chapters.
- You Are Number 6: Their names are simply the Japanese words for "Three" and "Nine", which were the numbers tattooed on the soles of their feet back when they were imprisoned to be livestock.
Tropes that apply to San
- Nice Guy: He seems much more personable and polite than Kyuu.
- Out of Focus: Does not get nearly as much development as Kyuu.
- Sherlock Scan: He's able to tell an opponent's weak points at a glance, and uses this information to direct Kyu to where she can do the most damage.
- Strong Girl, Smart Guy: The smart guy to Kyuu's strong girl.
Tropes that apply to Kyuu
- Badass Adorable: She's a bunny and is capable of going toe-to-toe with Legoshi.
- Berserk Button:
- Like Haru, she can't stand being treated like a timid, defenseless creature. For Kyuu, this manifests in the underground fights. Her carnivore opponents fail to take her seriously and attack with their claws, instead of their more deadly fangs.
- Talking about romance tends to set her off, especially mentioning her crush on Gouhin.
- Chaste Hero: She takes this to an extreme, as she isn't just disinterested in romance and her own sexuality - she is completely disinterested in the very fact she is a woman, and treats her female aspects as things that are simply there and pays no attention to them beyond practical effects on her fighter career. As a result, while she is aware of how her body affects the behavior of others around her, her ideas of helping them overcome those feelings are so detached they seem disturbing at best. However, some of her internal reactions to Legoshi's presence (when she's not complaining about how weak and easy to kill he is) hint that she might be capable of jump-starting her romantic drive in the future if she meets the right person. Or if Legoshi sticks around long enough. This is elaborated in chapter 169: Kyuu believes love is something completely inaccessible for her due to her poverty and low social standing.
- Commonality Connection: She resolves to help Legoshi take down Melon when she learns that Gouhin trained him, too.
- Defeat by Modesty: Subverted. When Legoshi ends up pulling down her pants in the middle of their fight, she asks him if he really thought that would work on her just because she's female.
- Hidden Buxom: She's first introduced wearing a baggy jacket that hides her figure, but the next chapter has her remove it, revealing that she's extremely well-endowed in the chest area.
- Hidden Weapons: her main weapons are a pair of knives that she conceals in her ears.
- Instant Knots: In addition to her knives, she also wields a rope that she can use to instantly bind enemies, leaving them extremely vulnerable to her attacks.
- Ms. Fanservice: After her initial debut, where she was wearing a baggy sweatshirt and sweatpants, the next chapter's cover page shows her in a pair of denim short shorts, a belly-baring long-sleeve shirt, and a choker with a heart-shaped clasp.
- My God, What Have I Done?: She soon regrets selling out information about Legoshi to Melon, which gets even worse when Legoshi asks her to give him the "stay" command, showing how much he trusts her.
- Parental Abandonment: Chapter 171 reveals that Kyuu was sold into the livestock trade by her financially-desperate parents when she was an infant.
- Shameless Fanservice Girl: Despite her stoic personality, Kyuu is genuinely unashamed of her body as she didn’t mind that Legoshi accidentally pulled her pants down in front of her childhood friends. She later figures out that Legoshi can’t bring himself to hit her due to being inexperienced with women, so she doesn’t hesitate to go to his room, strip, and offer herself to him.
- Smoking Is Cool: She is shown smoking on several occasions. Legoshi notes she smokes the same brand as Gouhin, and this is how they discover they both trained under the same man.
- The Stoic: She's very quiet and reserved.
- Not So Stoic: Legoshi's attitude makes her stoic facade begin to crack in chapter 161, and shatters spectacularly when she discovers they both trained under Gouhin.
- Strong Girl, Smart Guy: The strong girl to San's smart guy.
- When She Smiles: The smile she gives Legoshi at the end of chapter 170 is adorable.
