Characters / Choubu no Shinobi

Arachnid Character Index
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

Character list for Choubu no Shinobi, a spinoff to Arachnid about bug-themed ninjas in the Sengoku era.
Currently a work in progress.

---

Protagonists

Rin

A female ninja formerly from the Koga clan who's been tasked with protecting the severed head of Nobunaga from unworthy lords.

---

• Babies Ever After: After Rin and Hanza survive the story and reconcile, she says she wants to settle down and have lots of kids with him.
• Battle Strip: As part of her butterfly motif, Rin can release explosive powder upon pulling her clothes off and she does it to trick the Big Bad into blowing himself up while trying to shoot her.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: She never suffers any lasting injuries through the story.
• Clothing Combat: Her sleeves can harden into wing-like blades. Those are her main weapons for most of the story until she swaps to a katana to kill Tengyuu.
• Damsel in Distress: After Hanza betrays Rin, she's left trapped in a torture room where ant-themed psychos try to push a grate towards her until they can beat and rape her. A remorseful Hanza saves Rin in the nick of time, but then another assassin leaves her unconscious from a poisoned dart. After she wakes up, though, Rin becomes the de facto protagonist of the story while Hanza turns into a Distressed Dude in turn. She defeats all remaining major antagonists on her own from then on.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Was shunned by her father as a tiny girl for having a disability that makes her fingers extremely sensible, so she was almost glad to be sold off to the Koga clan... where the Training from Hell started with every other kid around her being executed for being unable to distinguish between gold and pyrite powder.
• Disability Superpower: Has very sensible fingers that make her unable to do hard labor but allow her to discern between different kinds of materials mixed together in gunpowder and to be so good at ear cleaning and poking pressure points that she can paralyse people.
• Intimate Healing: She snaps Hanza out of Akari's brainwashing by cleaning his ears.
• MacGuffin: She guards a basket containing the severed head of Oda Nobunaga that is coveted by both the Koga and Iga ninjas.
• Pressure Point: She can paralyse people by hitting pressure points on their ears while pretending to clean them with a cotton swab. It's also how she breaks the brainwashing on Hanza near the end.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: Rin's four years of efforts to protect her little sister go to waste in the first chapter when the girl is murdered by a ninja from her former clan.
• Vagina Dentata: Of a sort. She has a butterfly-like proboscis that can paralyze enemies and is implied to come from her genitalia, even though that appendage in either vertebrates or invertebrates is for feeding and has nothing to do with reproduction...

Hanza

A ninja from the Iga clan who gets involved with Rin while trying to lose his virginity.

---

• Brainwashed and Crazy: Akari puts Hanza under the illusion that he's looking after a violated and distraught Rin and rapes him multiple times while he's reduced to being a zombie-like slave. Rin manages to save him with erotic ear cleaning of all things.
• Distressed Dude: He is captured by Ayano's threads and later is saved by Rin, who drives him away due to his previous betrayal. Then after killing Sarasa he is turned into a mindless sex slave by Akari. Rin takes pity on Hanza and saves him again. As a result, he's left incapacitated for far longer than Rin was and only spectates the final confrontation in the story.
• False Innocence Trick: Exploits the notion that he's just some simple-minded guy to deceive Rin and let his mentor capture her.
• Flash Step: Tiger beetles are so fast that their vision can't keep up, and so Hanza can dash and slice enemies at the blink of an eye.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Hanza fools Rin and lets his comrades from the Iga Clan capture her for a reward, though he was hoping they wouldn't harm or kill her. He then becomes too worried, ends up finding Rin trapped in a torture room and saves her. She rejects him for a while after getting even and Akari preys on his regret to brainwash him.
• Quest for Sex: The story begins with Hanza dramatically entering a red-light district hoping to get laid. Between him meeting Rin and getting on her good graces, he ends up betraying her, indirectly gets one of the prettiest Koga women killed, directly kills the other one and loses his virginity to a child-like granny who rapes him several times while he's brainwashed and doesn't even know what's going on.
• Too Dumb to Live: Rin calls Hanza too pure and foolish when he risks his life "for a moment of pleasure" and lets her clean his ears a second time while telling his backstory.
• Would Hit a Girl: He knocks Rin out and lets the Iga Clan capture her under the condition that they wouldn't kill her. Then he kills Sarasa with extreme prejudice and tries to knock out Akari in a failed attempt to prevent her hypnosis from taking effect on him.

Koga Clan

Akari

• Attempted Rape: She gets the hots for Hanza after watching him kill Sarasa and turns him into a brainwashed sex slave, with leads to a rape scene quite indicative of how lax the censorship on Gangan JOKER has been since Arachnid ended.
• Expy: Her leader role, brainwashing ability and agelessness makes her a counterpart to the Organization Boss from Arachnid without looking or acting exactly like her.
• Karma Houdini: She gets away with repeatedly raping Hanza and survives the story's conflict without suffering any harm.
• Older Than She Looks: Due to the neoteny traits of female fireflies, Akari is about 100 years old but looks like a child. The epilogue says she died of old age only a few years later, so like the Organization Boss she wasn't outright immortal.

Muhou Kitagawa

• Would Hurt a Child: Seen casually executing a dozen young ninja candidates sold off to him for not having the senses to distinguish between gold and pyrite powder.

Mayubachi

• Action Bomb: Explodes himself with a bomb in his mouth when Rin has him paralysed.
• Body Horror: Has a cyborg-like skeletal appearance and gruesomely uses a tiny girl's dead body like a shell.
• Body Snatcher: He kills Rin's little sister and invades her body like a parasitoid wasp.
• Starter Villain: The first antagonist who attacks Rin and Hanza in the story. He quickly commits suicide on defeat, but his killing on Rin's sister means she cannot possibly work under the Koga clan anymore.
• Would Hurt a Child: Kills Rin's little sister in the first chapter.

Megumi

• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: In Arachnid, Megumi and Ran are pupil and master. In this story they're enemies and only interact at the very end. Blue Megumi also never interacts with either Ayano or Hiyori, the two characters who have traits of Alice Fujii — Blonde Megumi's beloved Only Friend in Arachnid.
• Antiquated Linguistics: Her codename is the obsolete "Gokikaburi" instead of "Gokiburi".
• Butt-Monkey: Megumi does kill one mook but otherwise fares as well as her counterpart from Arachnid usually does. After surviving a needle to the neck and avoiding the rest of the conflict, Megumi tries to assassinate Rin but Ran shows up and tosses her several feet away. Megumi ends up unconscious with her butt left exposed, while the narrator states she spent the rest of her life trying to kill Ran for it.
• Catchphrase: Variants of "being hated feels great", just so the reader knows she's exactly the same as the original.
• Demoted to Extra: Blonde Megumi is a major character in the overall Arachnid series, but this blue one is just a minor assassin.
• Improbable Weapon User: She wields a huge bowl that pops out of nowhere, which she either uses to hide herself or to slam and trap people.
• Not Quite Dead: She gets hit in the neck by a poisoned dart and disappears until the final chapter, where she tries to attack Rin and Hanza but gets knocked out by Ran.
• Reused Character Design: She's the same as Megumi "Gokiburi" Oki from Arachnid, but with blue hair.
• Super-Senses: Her roach-like Hair Antennae are sensitive to the flow of air and let her dodge hazards. She even avoids a spider thread trap from Ayano at one point as a bit of a Mythology Gag, despite never meeting her in person.

Iroha

• Actually a Doombot: The Iroha cut down by Rin crumbles away, but the one killed by Tanba was real and perishes for good.
• Attempted Rape: She finds Hanza had been paralyzed by Rin upon meeting him and starts molesting him while trying to interrogate him. He somehow doesn't get aroused by Iroha while his interests are set on Rin, much to her annoyance.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: She is the only deceased woman in the story who leaves behind a beautiful body without gruesome injuries, although with a look of fear on her face.
• Bring My Brown Pants: The author writes haughty girls pathetically wetting themselves in fear a little too much in his stories... In what's the humiliating case in the series, Iroha is a sultry female ninja who pretty much has urination as a weapon and ends up outright murdered like a joke with her corpse left half-naked and covered in her slime.
• Dreary Half-Lidded Eyes: Has a perpetually sleepy yet seductive look on her eyes.
• Drop Dead Gorgeous: Iroha's corpse is left sprawled on the floor with one breast exposed, ironically leaving her less naked than minutes before and framed from a not so revealing angle, while Tanba taunts Hanza about how even though she was too beautiful to kill he did it anyway.
• Enemy Mine: Hanza tries joining forces with Iroha and Megumi to get an unconscious Rin away from the Iga Clan, but Iroha is killed while trying to capture Tanba, Megumi nearly dies as well and Hanza is captured. Luckily, Rin wakes up and starts kicking ass on her own despite their failure.
• Full-Frontal Assault: Being the Honey Trap assassin she is, Iroha attacks both Hanza and Tanba while fully naked.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: Rin cuts Iroha in half, only for her to turn out to be a slime construct that breaks and melts away.
• Improbable Weapon User: She excretes large amounts of bubbly foam like spittlebugs do, which she uses to form blockades or to try to suffocate people with it.
• Killed Offscreen: She is killed offscreen by Tanba after being unable to subdue him, and then her dead body is shown from an angle that makes it impossible to determine how she was killed.
• Ms. Fanservice: The typical curvy, lascivious and outright nude villainess who's introduced early on to grab the reader's attention only to end up dying a short time later...
• Prehensile Hair: She can harden her hair strands and stab enemies with them.
• Sacrificial Lamb: Iroha is killed offscreen by Tanba, the Big Bad, after appearing since chapter 2 and trying to strike a partnership with Hanza. While this kicks off the ninja clan war for real, the protagonist only reacts in anger to Iroha's death for a whole second before she is completely forgotten.
• Tempting Fate: She knocks Tanba out and remarks he was much weaker than expected. Then he gets up and murders her offscreen, without a fight.
• Undignified Death: Her corpse is left half-naked with a horrified expression on her face, soaked in her slime both as Symbolic Blood and to look as if she had pissed herself in fear or after dying.
• The Worf Effect: Early on, Rin claims that Iroha should be skilled enough that she can swap places with foam clones anytime and wouldn't be killed so easily. She is one of two characters easily killed offscreen by the mysterious main antagonist Tanba, in her case before anything about his powerset is known.

Sarasa

• Drop Dead Gorgeous: Sarasa isn't outright stripped like other female victims in the story when she's killed, but there still is an ero-guro closeup of her corpse framing her chest with Navel-Deep Neckline and her shocked expression with her tongue rolled out.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: Hanza ruthlessly blows Sarasa into the air and slices her in half, killing her instantly.
• Ms. Fanservice: She's about as gorgeous and curvy as Iroha, but unlike the other female characters she doesn't show any nudity aside from her Navel-Deep Neckline even when she is killed.
• Oh, Crap!: She is terrified when Hanza is about to kill her, and Dies Wide Open with her tongue rolled out in shock.
• Tempting Fate: She boasts about her skills upon killing Tsubame only to be effortlessly slaughtered by Hanza a minute later.
• Weapon-Based Characterization: She wields a whip as part of her scorpion motif.
• Would Hurt a Child: Hanza takes issue with Sarasa bullying Tsubame and Ran, the kid ninja the Iga people saw fit to bring into the fight. Sarasa manages to kill Tsubame, but dies by Hanza's sword before she can set her sights on Ran too.

Tengyuu

• Made of Iron: He's so bulky that Rin hurts herself trying to slash him. She only kills him with a very precise stab.
• Prehensile Hair: He stabs Hiyori out of the air with his Hair Antennae.
• Would Hit a Girl: He challenges Hiyori while she was in the middle of mourning Ayano and gruesomely slashes her in half.
• The Worf Effect: He finishes a chain of those when he kills Hiyori without breaking a sweat. Rin actually has to put in effort and a little trick to get under Tengyuu's Dash Attack and mortally stab him, making him a tougher opponent than even the Big Bad who is later Hoist by His Own Petard in a single exchange of attacks.

Iga Clan

Tanba Momochi

• Beware the Silly Ones: When Iroha ambushes him, he pretends to be a laid-back man who dislikes conflict and ignores her but then mercilessly kills her when she tries to put him to sleep.
• Guns Are Worthless: Shows up to the final battle dual wielding firearms, in a time period where those are rare in Japan. Rin gets him to sparkle a huge explosion that kills him for good when he tries to shoot her.
• Healing Factor: He represents humble mosquitoes... including the Sleeping Chironomid, which gives him a powerful healing factor. Rin still kills him by exploding the entire room he's in.
• Split Personality: His true identity is that of a murderous Sayasu Fujibayashi who awakens whenever Tanba is rendered unconscious.
• Would Hit a Girl: Kills Iroha at a point she presented no threat to him, and gloats about it to Hanza afterwards.

Hanzo Hattori

• Passing the Torch: Entrusts the Iga clan to Shinzo before he dies.

Shinzo Hattori

• Expy: He's designed after Shinzo from Ninja Hattori, clothes and all. He's one of the younger members of his squad and has the ability to cry so loudly that his enemies become immobilized.
• In the Hood: Wears a red hood.
• Make Me Wanna Shout: He can immobilize people with screams, which in this series is analogous to bugs stridulating.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: He performs very badly against Rin when she comes to retrieve Hanza, loses his composure and blasts her with a scream before escaping.

Ran

• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: In Arachnid, Ran and Megumi are a master and pupil who cooperate while bickering with each other. In Choubu no Shinobi, Ran's only interaction with Megumi is to toss her head-first into the floor, which is said to earn her hatred for the rest of their lives.
• Cheerful Child: Even after all the carnage and losing most of her teammates, Ran ends the story still looking quite happy — unlike how Kabutomushi was traumatized by the death of a friend as seen in Caterpillar.
• Demoted to Extra: Ran Kabutomushi is a major character in the main Arachnid storyline, while Ran Scarab is only a minor assassin who shows up every now and then.
• Improbable Infant Survival: The only enemy ninja who encounters Ran and considers killing her during the story is Sarasa, and Hanza slaughters her for it. Ran survives the clan war and is said to become a master of new Iga ninjas after she grows up.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: She's a tiny girl but can lift several times her own weight on one hand.
• Reused Character Design: She's the same as the child version of Ran "Kabutomushi" Kabuto depicted in Caterpillar.
• Token Mini-Moe: The youngest member among the two ninja squads in the story.

Tsubame

• Brainwashed and Crazy: Akari brainwashes Tsubame into attacking everyone around her, but Ran tosses Tsubame into a river and she calms down.
• Boom, Headshot!: The top-left side of her head is torn off by Sarasa's whip.
• Brawn Hilda: She's a rough-looking tall and muscular woman. A bit of a Distaff Counterpart to Riokku from Arachnid.
• Pet the Dog: She's a ruthless assassin, but is friendly to her teammate Ran and tries to protect her from Sarasa.
• The Worf Effect: Tsubame easily kills an underwater assassin but is toyed with by Sarasa and gets half of her head blown up by her whip, which leads to Hanza effortlessly killing Sarasa in a quick draw match only to end up instantly hypnotized by Akari.

Ayano

• Drop Dead Gorgeous: Ayano is killed while she's naked, but falls face-down on the floor and the focus of the scene is on Hiyori reacting in horror to her death. Still, her and Hiyori getting snuffed was pretty much all the uncensored nudity that Volume 4 had for the illustrator to advertise on Twitter...
• Didn't See That Coming: Spider-themed assassins in the series like Ayano, Turis and Alice tend to be Crazy-Prepared, but Ayano is slashed from behind when the guy she just hanged turns out to have his actual face on his chest, with a fake head on top. She dies with a look of fear and confusion on her wide open eyes.
• Full-Frontal Assault: She shows up half-naked to distract and assassinate a male enemy by hanging him.
• Mythology Gag: She's called Ayano and is a spider-themed assassin. Alice's mother in Arachnid was named Ayana. The author curiously followed this by recycling Ayano's design and name into Konchuki and then pretending Ayana was still alive in Blattodea before it turned out to be a unknown relative of Alice's.
• Razor Floss: She wields spider threads to capture and hang people, but oddly there is no Kumoito weapon with her. She just seems to produce the threads from her hands.

Hiyori

• A Death in the Limelight: Ayano and Hiyori share the cover of volume 4 and the story bothers giving Hiyori a Dark and Troubled Past flashback as she tries to avenge Ayano and stay alive. Both of them combined are also rather reminiscent of Alice Fujii, the heroine from Arachnid... but it all amounts to nothing as Hiyori is horribly slain by Tengyuu right afterwards.
• Drop Dead Gorgeous: Hiyori is left topless when she's killed but the panels don't focus on her corpse so much after she falls.
• Flash Step: Her main thing is jumping in a split second and shooting at enemies from above, but Tengyuu manages to stab her out of the air with his antennae.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: Tengyuu executes an injured Hiyori by slicing her in half, with such force that she is blown apart.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Tengyuu stabs Hiyori with his Prehensile Hair on her shoulder, and when she tries to stand up, it's seen that it tore through her body as she's also bleeding from her butt.
• Say My Name: She screams for the already dead Ayano in her final moments.
• Undignified Death: The sole survivor of a family that was brutally raped and killed, Hiyori is slain in a gruesome way and her breasts are left exposed.

Kamejuro

• In the Hood: Wears a cloak that only leaves his narrow eyes exposed.
• Killed Offscreen: Worse than Iroha, as we don't even see his dead body after he clashes with Sayasu.
• The Worf Effect: Killed like nothing by the transformed Big Bad, Sayasu Fujibayashi, after uncovering his identity and powers.

Other Characters:

Oda Nobunaga

• Pet the Dog: Despite being seen by everyone as a demon, he considered Rin a fellow warrior and allowed her to keep her sister, who had been used by the Koga clan as a hostage.
• Plot-Triggering Death: The story revolves around people trying to acquire his severed head as a ticket to rule over Japan.
• Would Hit a Girl: Would've executed Rin for being an assassin under the Koga clan's orders even though she was begging for help against them, but she paralyses him in advance and earns his respect.

---