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The Kudo Family

In General

Badass Family: Each of them have very useful superpowers and are more than capable in a conflict, despite Yuusaku's and Yuukiko's attempts to subvert this with Shinichi.
Big, Screwed-Up Family: Not big, unless you count in the Irregulars, but more than screwed up enough to count. Hakuba describes Yuusaku and Shinichi as "the father-son duo from Hell", and the mom's just not present.
Dysfunctional Family: The family consists of Yuusaku, an abusive father seemingly with the weight of the world on his shoulders; Yuukiko, an absent mother whose job is to be a mood-altering propaganda mouthpiece; and Shinichi, the traumatized son determined to win his agency. There's a fourth member to this mess if you count Hakuba, Yuusaku's depressingly complicit unofficial surrogate son/sidekick.
Psychic Powers: Each member of the family has one or more psychic abilities: Yuusaku can forcibly enter peoples' minds and riffle through and alter them, Yuukiko can force others to be content and happy, and Shinichi can absorb the emotions and perceptions of other people through both direct contact and the objects and locations they themselves were in contact with while experiencing them. Notably, Shinichi's power so far appears both similar to and opposite of his parents' projective abilities.

Kudo Shinichi

"This wasn’t just about saving the city, saving the public, or saving the day. This was about saving one single life."

The main protagonist of Dominoes and its main perspective character. Shinichi is quick and clever, ravenously curious, and intimidatingly intelligent—but not a detective, much to his resentment. Forbidden and resolutely blocked from his ideal career path by his parents and their allies, Shinichi has had to be secretive and resourceful to claw his way into his status as an Intrepid Reporter in spite of them and seek out the truth behind harmful secrets wherever they've been hidden. It's a pity, then, that he's drowning in so many...

Shinichi's power so far appears to be the ability to absorb the perceptions of other people through either direct contact or through interaction with the objects and locations the individuals were in contact with during the experience. He can also perceive others' emotions at a distance of up to 10 meters.

Abusive Parents: Yuusaku and his minions constantly go out of their way to Gaslight Shinichi into believing everything he tries to do without his father's express approval and support is crazy, useless, pointless, worthless, and burdensome. Yuukiko's involvement isn't really clear as of yet, but she's rarely around and, if she disagrees with Yuusaku's parenting choices, Shinichi hasn't perceived it.
Academic Athlete: Ironically, he doesn't put much effort into either aspect of the trope, but he still qualifies. He's incredibly intelligent but doesn't much care to focus on schoolwork and he only goes to soccer practice when he has nothing better to do, despite being the captain of the team. He gets away with the latter mostly because he's easily the best player the school has. Though his difficult life circumstances have caused his Teen Genius arrogance to manifest in a different and more insecure and defensive way than in canon, his lack of appreciation for the achievements and roles he has obtained that others would find incredibly impressive and important may be the most obvious place it appears early-on. Though of course, one could argue that such achievements are hard to value when they aren't goals you yourself decided on and they represent the only thing you've ever been allowed to achieve.
Amateur Photographer: Although it's not focused on as much, as Shinichi primarily considers himself an Intrepid Reporter, Shinichi almost never separates from his camera equipment and uses it for not only documentary but also expressive and sentimental purposes.
Ambiguous Situation: Though Shinichi believes himself to be far less liked than those with whom he associates, and thus assumes third parties around him will always side against him in interpersonal conflicts, it's possible this is another example of Shinichi's nature as an Unreliable Narrator. Shinichi's issues with Hattori and his distancing from Agasa demonstrate that one of the unstated but very clear scars Shinichi bears from his father's abuse is that he seems to expect everyone to view him as lesser, unworthy, and unimportant, something unfortunately repeatedly reinforced by the fact that the contesting loyalties his father set up drive the people Shinichi loves to choose between them, and they've pretty much always chose obedience to Yuusaku over Shinichi's wellbeing, with Yuusaku thereafter even inciting those close to Shinichi to spy on him. Throughout the story Shinichi seems confused by and distrustful of the idea that people would want to be around him because they actually like him, so it's unclear how accurate Shinichi's assessment of his Cool Loser status actually is. It's very possible that Shinichi's assumptions about how he's seen by others is a reflection of his own insecurities.
Beware the Mind Reader: Discussed. Shinichi "could know everything, if he wanted to"; until he found out how much everyone else was lying to him, the invasiveness of his abilities had made him very uncomfortable and he'd exercised careful restraint over the ability. It's also implied a part of this hesitation was due to an unstated fear about what he'd find out. He even directly narrates at one point that his own assumptions about Ran's motivations were probably less painful than any answers she could give him. Given that Shinichi states his discomfort in the past tense; after being taken advantage of so thoroughly, it's likely he'll be more willing to use his abilities moving forward.
Blessed with Suck: His psychometric empathy is incredibly useful while investigating but it's also implied to require a huge amount of mental and emotional fortitude to endure, because he's literally experiencing the emotions, perceptions, and thoughts of the people from whom the memories originate. Worse still, instead of being supported, this critical mental fortitude has been under near-constant seige through Gaslighting, manipulation, and even Mind Rape for most of his life. Shinichi's Calling the Old Man Out moment in chapter 9 implies that growing up while trying to learn to cope with his unusual sense alone was deeply and formatively scarring to Shinichi as a person.
Born Detective: Much to his father's and surrogate brother's unending stress. Shinichi still has his Sherlock Scan, he's still obsessed with mysteries, and he's still The Ace of the teen cast (if with a larger side of Almighty Janitor). The more we learn about his powers, the more they also seem perfectly tailored to detective work, even moreso than Yuusaku's or Hakuba's: while Kudo Yuusaku's telepathic abilities enable him to feel and read other people's minds and Hakuba's heightened senses means that he's able to perceive greater nuances in the sensory data around him, both of these abilities rely on the present state of the crime scene and who and what is still there when they go to collect information. Shinichi's Psychometry helps to mitigate this limitation, as he can absorb the perceptions of past events through exposure to not just the witnesses but also the objects and/or locations involved. While Hakuba's and Yuusaku's abilities are generally useful in a variety of circumstances, Shinichi's ability is insanely useful specifically in the context of investigation, arguably making him more of a Born Detective than either of them.
Brilliant, but Lazy: Played with and subverted. Many characters like to reprimand Shinichi using his apparently inadequate grades as evidence that he isn't focusing on what (they think) he should be, and the general wording of those who talk about Shinichi's efforts in school implies they find his effort lacking, but Shinichi actually works incredibly hard when it comes to his "scoops" and cases. Given Shinichi's intellectual ability, it's also possible that, besides simply not prioritizing them at all, Shinichi's attitude towards his unoutstanding grades may be the result of his complicated negative feelings towards those who use said grades against him, since the only time we hear of Shinichi's grades is in instances when other characters use them as a convenient excuse to chide and redirect Shinichi and putting more effort into them likely wouldn't actually change anything for Shinichi in a meaningful way.
Broken Ace: Shinichi's as talented as ever, but rather than being supported and admired for those talents, Shinichi gets quite the opposite treatment. The fact that he still is, unquestionably, the Ace of the cast is emphasized by the fact that, despite being Mind Raped, Gaslit, abused, exploited, called useless by his own father, and constantly treated like a burden, Shinichi's still the one to crack the overarching case connecting the missing children, the mysterious disasters, the Red Siamese Cats, and the Crows—no one else in the cast got anywhere close to the truth until Shinichi explained it to them.
The Cassandra: Enforced. Hakuba and the police treat Shinichi as if his information is unreliable and worthless even though they know very well that Shinichi is rarely ever wrong and have outside information confirming his claim's accuracy.
Childhood Friend Romance: With Ran, although it's been functionally non-existent for a while. He only sees her every few weeks outside of class, and at one point during Part 1 Shinichi says that they haven't kissed since midsummer—it's April in the present. He breaks it off with her in chapter 10.
The Cobbler's Children Have No Shoes: All of his friends were selected to become superhero trainees and he's the son of a lead superhero and the International Super-Hero Association's propaganda mouthpiece, but Shinichi himself has been Locked Out of the Loop of the heavily enforced variety since childhood and was left to struggle through dealing with his metahuman abilities alone without training or support.
Cornered Rattlesnake: As of chapter 10, Hakuba despairingly realizes that, rather than stoically accepting the "twisted" brand of Tough Love Hakuba and Yuusaku gave him, Shinichi has actually increasingly retreated into this position, and sees everyone around him as some level of threat to his person—even his own loved ones. Hakuba had long attempted to shield himself from seeing the toll his and Yuusaku's abuse takes on Shinichi; undeniable evidence that they've pushed Shinichi to the point where he is implicitly hostile even to Ran shakes Hakuba to his core.
Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: As seen with his introductory interview with the company president of S&L, Shinichi is perfectly willing to lead suspects on with false impressions of himself and his capabilities in order to gather evidence against them, although he dislikes the element of dishonesty inherent in the tactic.
Daddy Issues: Yuusaku is severely emotionally and psychologically abusive to his son, and has convinced most of the people around his son not only to accept this as justified, but to reinforce it as the right choice of action and thus become functional accomplices in the abuse. By his dialogue Shinichi is aware that his father continuously turns those around him into Shinichi's handlers on Yuusaku's behalf, and as much as Shinichi tries not to let it bother him (because he genuinely cares for most of them) he also feels constantly betrayed because of this. Worse still, Shinichi has become extremely paranoid of anyone who expresses interest in accompanying him and automatically suspects them of being a spy for his father, a suspicion which has unfortunately been proven right often enough that Shinichi now has trouble believing anyone actually wants to spend time with him for the simple pleasure of his company. All of this is unfortunately justified, as even Shinichi's own girlfriend only prioritizes spending time with him when Yuusaku orders her to do so, and while Yuusaku seems to have a very serious reason and Hakuba insists that Yuusaku loves his son dearly, Yuusaku also seems to have targeted anything that Shinichi cares about with disturbing precision; Shinichi has only ever won modicums of autonomy through stealth and subversion of his father's authority.
Destructive Romance: His relationship with Ran contains a whole lot of abuse flags. To emphasize this point, the first two concrete things the reader learns about their relationship is that Shinichi would rather wake up and directly escape out a window than have Ran learn he was awake or be seen by someone who would tell her this, and that he sees Nakamori Aoko's physical resemblance to Ran as a reason to avoid Aoko, though he loathes to admit it. Shinichi also directly implies that Ran's presence destroys his ability to feel proud, successful, or even generally good about himself. Largely this is because Ran has adopted Shinichi's father's abusive attempts at behavioral control over Shinichi and mostly enforces this by shaming Shinichi for his attempts at achieving a fulfilling career that his father disagrees with. Ran does this because Shinichi wants to be an Intrepid Reporter (or better yet, a detective, but Yuusaku has gone out of his way to prevent the police from cooperating with Shinichi in any way) and she considers that too dangerous a career for him, an opinion later revealed to come from her considering him "normal, delicate, weak" and she's unable to bear the thought of him in danger.
Determined Defeatist: Even in the face of being shut down and abused, with seemingly no hope for being able to help or for getting anyone to fully respect or appreciate him, and even after fully accepting that everyone around him can be and do more than he ever could, Shinichi refuses to stop doing the little he can to pursue his dream of investigation and try to expose those who would do harm towards others.
Differing Priorities Breakup: This is a major aspect of Ran's and Shinichi's breakup, although there is a lot more to it. On Ran's side, she put her dreams of being an ISHA hero far before her relationship with her boyfriend but refused to give up the latter; in the end, because she prioritized being Angel, all she could give Shinichi without compromising her devotion to her ISHA training was a relationship with zero transparency or honest communication and run entirely on her terms and priorities, which she allowed to be dictated by Shinichi's abusive father. Even once things are out in the open between them, Ran still tries to justify how she treated Shinichi through her dedication to her supposed talents at heroism. On his side, Shinichi's dream is to be a detective, and when that is blocked, to be an Intrepid Reporter, a goal that is intimately tied in his mind with the achievement of personal agency, as his abusive father has been such a roadblock to Shinichi succeeding in his personal goals. While Ran used to support Shinichi, after joining the Irregulars under Yuusaku's tutelage her priorities changed and she began conforming to the attitudes taught by her ISHA training and expressing disappointment and shame at Shinichi as his father does. Despite each sincerely caring for each other deeply, they break up soon after Shinichi discovers Ran's secret identity, largely owing to the fact that Ran's newly-revealed life choices have made it clear that their respective priorities are and have been incompatible with a healthy romantic partnership between them for quite a while now. They each genuinely seem to want the best for each other, but it's clear they have very different ideas regarding exactly what that means.
Do You Trust Me?: He's asked this a lot, mostly because everyone around him has some level of uneasy awareness that they keep giving him more and more reasons not to. He doesn't trust anyone completely, and he has unfortunately valid reasons.
The Dog Bites Back: After the False Kidnapping Incident, Hakuba describes Shinichi using the trope-naming idiom, comparing him to a dog beaten so thoroughly he turned on them.
The Empath: Part of Shinichi's power set is psychic empathy—the ability to feel others' emotions. The ability is mainly limited by physical contact with an individual, but he can also pick up emotions and memories from objects and places with which individuals were in contact.
Emotion Suppression: Shinichi seems to do this to himself in order to keep functioning in difficult situations, since he was never trained on how to handle his empathic abilities and he himself is a victim of emotional and psychological abuse. Also, this is an implied repercussion of Yuusaku's Mind Manipulation; though rarely explicitly pointed out within the text, Shinichi will sometimes react to situations in ways he doesn't understand because he doesn't remember his reasons for the emotions and desires that motivate his actions. This is ironic, considering Hakuba has a flashback about he and Yuusaku having a conversation regarding how unhealthy forcibly suppressing Shinichi's emotions using meta-abilities would be; their alternative decision to erase memories instead of emotions isn't any better and still results in a similar effect.
Energetic and Soft-Spoken Duo: Shinichi with Hattori—Hattori's a very outgoing and friendly Motor Mouth around Shinichi, and while Shinichi is very confident when he speaks, he's generally The Quiet One and measures every word for maximum effect.
Et Tu, Brute?: Of all the secrets revealed to him in part one, Ran's is the one that most expressly feels like betrayal, because of what it implies about how she sees him and how false all of his hopes had been for a long time regarding their relationship.
Face Death with Dignity: After the Nullifier appears to drop off the tower, Shinichi makes the decision to stay in the tower with Santa while Hakuba and KID seek out the Nullifier so that she won't have to be alone. KID protests that Santa will kill Shinichi, and Shinichi calmly replies that yes, he knows that, unless KID gets back in time—but he refuses to show fear to Santa, and refuses to leave her to suffer alone. Because of this, Shinichi is still in the tower when someone at ISHA launches a missile at it, and even then he appears totally calm. Fortunately/unfortunately, KID comes back and pulls Shinichi from the tower right before it explodes—but Santa is left behind to die.
Face Your Fears: Spent almost the entirety of Part 1 actively avoiding his girlfriend Ran because he dreaded the full realization of the wreck that was their relationship—to the point of contemplating escaping buildings via windows to steer clear of her. In chapter 10, he waits hours after his championship game that she missed in order to confront her about their failed relationship, culminating in him breaking up with her.
Forgotten First Meeting: If Kaito's memory is to be trusted, he and Shinichi met during the disasterous KID vs. Baron fight eight years ago. Shinichi doesn't remember because Yuusaku has edited his memory.
Freudian Excuse: Shinichi is pretty terrible at maintaining relationships with people and tends to close off emotionally at the first sign of trouble, but whether he's conscious of this or not, it's pretty obviously a conditioned defense tactic against his father's control schemes, which often involve using any and all emotional bonds Shinichi's formed with potential friends as second-hand control mechanisms as well.
Hates Being Touched: Physical contact comes with a lot of emotional baggage for Shinichi, both figuratively and literally.
Heroic Blue Screen of Death: Almost boots up into this after his father's "The Reason You Suck" Speech in chapter 9, but painfully forces himself to still try to analyze and grapple with the situation in order to turn it somehow in his favor. His emotional vacancy is evidently so horrible to witness that Aoko and Kazuha immediately agree to Empty Promises with him at the first chance with the implication that they're desperate to somehow make themselves feel better about the situation, while Hakuba, Ran, and Hattori shudder in horror at the emotional implications of Shinichi's apparent surrender.
Heroic Self-Deprecation: In the extreme, and played realistically. Shinichi is brilliant, successful, and resourceful, but has been refused any positive feedback from those around him for the achievements that mean the most to him for basically his entire life, and one of the ways the effects of his years of living under his father's abuse truly manifests is through a constant underlying insecurity that he is as useless, stupid, and worthless as his father implies and/or directly claims, especially in comparison to everyone else around him. In chapter 9, Shinichi has an internal rant of shocking self-loathing which goes to show how much Yuusaku's and his allies' abuse has truly screwed Shinichi up: Shinichi genuinely concludes, upon discovering his father's and the Irregular's secret identities, that being managed for so many years by their abusive and deceptive power plays without fully realizing the scope of the manipulation and deception means not only that everyone around him probably thinks he's stupid and dumb and lacking credibility and "the village idiot," but that he deserves to be thought of as those things, that he is those things, because despite telling himself in the face of unanimous external disparagement that he was good enough to be a detective, he didn't realized the extent to which everyone around him was deceiving him. And in Shinichi's mind, that proves every horrible thing they've ever said or implied about him was true. He then, as he always does, represses that down to keep functioning and carries on with his plan, and thereafter spends the rest of the chapter internally attempting to process what's happened and unstably balancing between the instilled belief that he's worthless and the furious instinct to resist accepting that.
His Own Worst Enemy: Mostly subverted. Despite being psychologically and emotionally damaged from the abuse he receives from his "friends" and family, Shinichi never lets it defeat him forever. It looks like it might at the end of chapter nine, when Shinichi boots up into Heroic BSoD after the confrontation with his father, but even then Shinichi throws himself a line with his "deal" with Hakuba. On the other hand, while Shinichi may be managing to hang in there for most o f Part 1, his reactions to interpersonal conflict are not those of a psychologically or emotionally healthy person.
Ignored Expert: Shinichi is an extremely gifted and talented investigative journalist. Yuusaku and Hakuba have gone out of their way to incentivize others to treat him and his information as unreliable. Predictably, this backfires.
Implicit Prison: Lives in one, to the extent that his father has gotten all of Shinichi's "friends" and "girlfriend" to enforce Yuusaku's control over Shinichi (to the point where Shinichi refers to his girlfriend's grip on his hand as a "shackle") and has the police Gaslight him so as to better control him. More tellingly, Shinichi is so used to people who try to be his friend secretly being agents of his father's attempts to control and contain him that Shinichi has emotionally withdrawn from almost everyone around him. In chapter 1, in order to pursue his investigative reporting, Shinichi actually plots his escapes from the house while treating everyone else in it as obstacles, especially his parents and girlfriend. By the blasé way he thinks this through, escapes like this appear to be routine.
In Spite of a Nail: This world is fantastically and dramatically different from Detective Conan canon, but Shinichi still ends up shrinking into Conan through what is implied to be very similar methods and circumstances, as of the second interlude.
Intrepid Reporter: His way of getting around his father barring him from detective work.
It's All Junk: After breaking up with Ran, Shinichi looks through the photos on his phone and realizes that she'd given him up, whether she'd realized it or not, the day she agreed to become Angel and first started wearing her ISHA communicator earrings—the same day she decided to quit all of her extracurricular activities sans her new training with his father, and the day that marked the beginning of her shaming him for his interests and activities rather than supporting him. At this realization, Shinichi deletes every trace of her from that day forwards off his phone. Then he deletes every picture of Hakuba, and every picture of his parents, and every communication with any of the Irregulars, erasing things faster and faster until his phone is "emptied of everything that wasn’t strictly professional," unable to really articulate why he did this other than their existence on his phone hurt and he wants it all to be gone.
Laser-Guided Amnesia: It's implied Yuusaku has used his powers to edit Shinichi's memory a lot.
Living Emotional Crutch: He and his girlfriend Ran are each other's, to an extremely toxic degree. Unlike in canon, Yuusaku's and Hakuba's choices basically forced Ran to be Shinichi's because she was his only consistent source of emotional support (until she became Angel), as they'd left him with no one else. Demonstrating exactly how damaged Shinichi actually is by this, he breaks up with Ran not because Ran's treatment towards him is wrong, but because he feels she thinks he's a burden, and to him that's the one thing he can't live with.
Love Martyr: Subverted at the last minute. Shinichi deeply loves Ran and has considered her the most important person in his life since they were small children but finding out about her secret identity finally clues him into at least some of the horribly toxic ideas and standards she's held him to, and how one-sided and condescending their relationship truly has become. He gives her one last chance to prove she (and the other Irregulars) are willing to make a relationship/friendship with him work, and they fail. He briefly internally argues with himself about how his hopes for their relationship were "childish dreams" and "fairy-tales," and how he should accept Ran's exploitation and emotional abuse because it's what's best for everyone, and who cares about his feelings? But her attempts to explain herself solidify his realization that she's stopped seeing him as an equal and partner and now sees him as a burden. He promptly breaks up with her, because whether he's willing to admit it to himself or not, being condescended to as a burden on her is more of a deal breaker than the fact that she exploited him and was complicit in his abuse, which really says all you need to know about the status of Shinichi's mental and emotional health.
MacGuffin Super-Person: As the person Hakuba believes to be "Pandora," who is sought after by various parties.
Mind Rape: The victim of this at the hands of his father. We see one explicit incident of this and one heavily implicit incident of this first-hand. By necessity Yuusaku had to have done this to his son at the very least a third time to edit out the memory of Kuroba Toichi's death. It's implied Yuusaku has actually done this many more times than we see, given the sheer impossibility of keeping every secret from Shinichi when his power is Psychometry and his house is their base of operations.
Missing Child: The connecting line throughout Part 1 is Shinichi's search for a growing list of missing homeless children. Ironically, he himself disappears mysteriously during the arc's climax and has officially been declared a missing person by the post-Part 1 Interlude.
Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: Helps KID plot against Night Baron and the Irregulars in exchange for the return of his evidence regarding the missing childrens' case, despite KID informing him of their secret identities. Hakuba compares Shinichi to a dog beaten too many times to remain loyal.
Muggle Born of Mages: What most think Shinichi is, given that Yuusaku and Yuukiko didn't register him as a metahuman when his powers first developed and, noticably to others (especially to the Irregulars), gave Shinichi absolutely zero training in anything to do with metahuman, combative, or investigative abilities. Everyone thought he was The Family Normal, and since they never shared the fact that they had metahuman abilities with him, Shinchi was left to struggle through dealing his empath powers alone.
My Greatest Failure: A younger Shinichi once ran an article on the street kids of Tokyo under the assumption "that the publicity will help the reluctant subjects" and that the positive-attention-starved Shinichi himself would be "a savior for it." Instead Shinichi's article caused the children to lose their shelter and have to flee to another. While this event is only mentioned briefly, it evidently greatly changed Shinichi as a person; he's deeply ashamed of his past actions and past self, whom he openly decries as arrogant.
No-Respect Guy: Enforced. One of the methods Yuusaku and his allies use to attempt control over Shinichi is Gaslighting him about the worth of his attempted contributions to society, repeatedly reinforcing the idea that his attempts at investigating and helping other are ultimately useless and pointless. This involves disrespecting him to his face and treating the fruits of his labor, and Shinichi himself, as worthless except for when he conforms to their desires. It's partially because of this treatment that the Irregulars and (possibly) Yuusaku are so late to learning about the experimentation conflict that arcs Part 1 and largely unprepared for the black hole crisis in its climax; Shinichi spent all of Part 1 collecting the pieces of the puzzle, but they'd brushed him aside until there was almost no time to manuver for options and the opportunities for most of the wiser solutions had already passed.
Parental Neglect: Like in canon, Shinichi's parents frequently left for months and years at a time, leaving the house to be inhabited largely by Shinichi alone. Given the nature of his family in this story, this Shinichi preferred things this way. Unfortunately, this is past tense - due to all of the chaos in Tokyo, Yuusaku has been around far more than usual, which has severely disrupted Shinichi's life.
Psychic Powers: Shinichi demonstrates psychic empathy, retrocognition, and Psychometry. It's possible all of these are mere manifestations of the same power. In one instance, Shinichi absorbs muscle memory from a door lock key pad in order to get inside a building and immediately after absorbs knowledge of a computer password from its keyboard, implying he can also absorb physical skills from people and the objects they interact with as long as his body is physically capable of reperforming them—which would further imply that he can absorb information and skills from just about anyone. It's implied by Hakuba and Yuusaku that Shinichi may unintentionally be capable of emotional manipulation or intensification at a distance as well, considering Hakuba's comment in chapter 5 about how loosing control of one's emotions when Shinichi is around is "a potentially fatal mistake." However, this implication has so far been contradicted by Shinichi explicitly describing his powers as being limited by the necessity of physical contact.
Pursue the Dream Job: Shinichi really wants to be a detective, but has buried that dream in a shallow grave owing to his father's mechanizations and has instead chosen to work around those by becoming an Intrepid Reporter. This goal is tied up heavily into how Shinichi tries to cope with a lot of his self-worth and agency issues regarding the life-long abuse he's suffered at the hands of his father and those his father can convince to assist him. Shinichi puts it best while expressing that he's given up talking to those around him about it because they seemingly don't care:
"What could he say? That this was important to him? That he wanted to help people, to feel useful? To connect with the world through the safe shield of a camera's lens? That he wanted to know the truth, about everything, and knew he couldn't, shouldn't know what he really wanted to know? That he tried to sate himself on any measly, impersonal truth the world had to offer him? That he was capable, he was skilled, and he was practical? That he could do this, if they'd all just let him?"
The Quiet One: Downplayed. We the reader are constantly provided with Shinichi's voice on matters, but we experience his internal dialogues and follow him through almost every important interaction he has over the time-span shown in Part 1. Outwardly, however, Shinichi expresses very little to other characters aside from providing or receiving strictly important, factual information; unless he's ready to pursue and advance his own cause in a conversation, he's actually quite quiet. This is demonstrated best by just how difficult it is to find a spoken line of dialogue that really expresses his character—even the character quote above comes from his internal narration.
Right for the Wrong Reasons: When Shinichi breaks up with Ran, he doesn't do it because she reinforced and willfully participated in creating an extreme culture of emotional and psychological abuse against him and still doesn't seem to fully understand what she did wrong. No, he does it because he feels he's become a burden on her, and that makes him feel even worse about himself. Yes, he does feel anger over the abuse and neglect, but he still tells himself that it's irrational anger and that what she did was probably reasonable and likely for the best in that bigger picture of the situation he hasn't been allowed to see, so he should have put up with it, who cares about how he feels in comparison? That being a burden on his emotionally neglectful and abusive girlfriend is a more valid reason to break up in his mind than the actual abuse says a lot about his mental state underneath his stoic and snarky facade.
- It's worth noting that a part of Shinichi is struggling against this deeply unhealthy "logic"—a part of him is still as offended and angered by the implied presumption that he's worthless as he is hurt by the idea it might be true. Unfortunately, the second idea pervades his inner thoughts almost constantly when conflicts like this appear, because that's the idea everyone around him goes out of their way to validate.
Repressed Memories: He has these, at the very least regarding Kuroba Toichi's death, and possibly regarding more life events. It's unclear how much is self-repression, owing to the fact that he's dealing with more memories than just his own and struggles coping with that, and how much is Yuusaku editing his mind. Chapter 9 at least implies the repression of Kuroba Toichi's death was Yuusaku's doing.
The Resenter: Towards Hakuba, and mildly towards the rest of the Irregulars, since they benefit from Shinichi's parents' favoritism towards them and were given everything Shinichi's ever wanted.
Sherlock Scan: He not only has the regular version, albeit less practiced due to others actively trying to sabotage his attempts to learn to use it, but his superpower is basically a supernatural version of this—although it relies on touch rather than eyesight. Shinichi can access others' memories and emotions through physical contact with objects, places, and people. If not impeded, Shinichi can perceive enormous amounts of personal information and secrets long after the individuals from whom the information is ultimately sourced are gone through inspecting the simple objects they left behind.
Seeker Archetype: Seeks truth, a way to help others around him, and the personal fulfillment that he attains through his efforts to seek the previous two. The strong investment in the well-being of others helps him avoid the distance and callousness that usually associated with this archetype, though he does have something of a Sugar-and-Ice Personality.
Sour Outside, Sad Inside: Shinichi is cold, snarky, sarcastic, aloof, and calculating, but beneath the mask of composure he's bitter, resentful, rebellious, almost perpetually hurt and clearly emotionally and psychologically damaged, with constant self-worth battles and scars on his personality that, even if this abusive treatment ended tomorrow, would realistically take decades to psychologically heal if they ever do. He's had to suffer under the abuse of arguably the most powerful man on earth, and not only has no one been willing to help him, but those who've noticed have turned a blind eye or even supported this treatment under the assumption that his father has good reasons for this cruelty—include Shinichi's own girlfriend. And on some level, he knows this, which means he's constantly aware that even those who claim to love him consider his emotional and psychological wellbeing trifle in comparison to his father's orders. Even worse? Shinichi's a psychic empath, making emotion regulation and mental stability even harder to maintain than normal and making him arguably much more vulnerable to that kind of emotional and psychological damage. However, Shinichi's control over his own emoting is usually so convincing that even Hakuba deluded himself into thinking they weren't doing that much damage, only realizing this was a self-delusion once he sees a rare instance of Shinichi's rigorous emotional suppression slipping.
The Stoic: Shinichi has some of the most emotionally visceral perspective sections, but represses his emotions deeply and expresses very few personal feelings to others. This is partially a professional tactic for his investigative journalism, but it's also partly a repressive coping mechanism born out of dealing with both the empathic abilities no one helped him learn to manage and his father's carefully cultivated environment of emotional and psychological abuse.
Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Most of the time, Shinichi is serious, cold, and aloof owing to his difficulties with trusting others, an issue probably exacerbated by the fact that his Abusive Dad uses any and all displays of emotion as justification for calling Shinichi irrational and ignoring him. However, Shinichi's actually very sentimental and treasures the few people close to him dearly, as shown through his more recreational use of his camera. This makes Hakuba's Interlude realization—that Shinichi had removed all images of his family and Ran from their display places around his bedroom and boxed them away a while ago—very telling about Shinichi's emotional state prior to and during the early events of the story. It also adds impact to Shinichi's It's All Junk response to said breakup.
Swapped Roles: He and Ran have swapped roles from their canon relationship, with Ran being the secretive hero stringing her love interest along with frequent unexplained absences and Shinichi being the long-suffering, long-waiting love interest kept ignorant of his significant other's circumstances. However, Adaptational Context Change alters the surrounding circumstances of each of their personal lives to highlight just how wrong this kind of dynamic can go if the two parties can't manage to communicate, reconcile, and maintain trust despite the secrecy. The result is a brutal deconstruction in which their relationship is simultaneously dependent and deeply deprivational.
That Liar Lies: Shinichi. Hates. Lies. And, due to his abilities, almost always knows when someone is lying. This trait was particularly prevalent in Shinichi's personality when he was younger, but ironically, due to his horrible family life, he's had to adapt to trickery himself in order to attain any agency as he grew older. He still hates it, but realizes it's necessary for maintaining his freedom and mental wellbeing as best he can.
Thousand-Yard Stare: Has one that can make even Hakuba flinch—and his angry one has so far been easier to withstand than his vacant one.
Transferable Memory: An aspect of his powers—along with transferring emotions and thoughts, Shinichi can also perceive others' memories through physical contact with them or something they touched.
Twice Shy: A platonic variation: Shinichi has serious issues with reaching out to others emotionally because of how terribly he's been treated by those around him when he's reached out in the past, which has inspired some pretty intense self-worth issues and the constant suspicion that those choosing to spend time with him are there because they're serving his father's agenda, not because they actually care about him. It's unfortunately justified because we see those around Shinichi continue to do exactly this throughout Part 1, including Shinichi's father, surrogate brother, and girlfriend. As such, this baggage severely damages Hattori's attempt to befriend Shinichi in Part 1, owing to Shinichi's inability to trust him.
The Unfavorite: It's implied this is how Shinichi sees himself when compared to Hakuba, who was "given everything Shinichi had ever wanted" by Shinichi's own parents while said parents excluded Shinichi. This is ultimately played with, as it's implied Yuusaku is actually more concerned with and protective over Shinichi than over his surrogate son Hakuba or the other children he mentors (despite his words), but this concern appears to be Yuusaku's motivation for being crueller to Shinichi.
Unreliable Narrator:
- Though it's unclear to what extent, it becomes increasingly obvious over the course of the story that Yuusaku has meddled with large portions of Shinichi's memory throughout the course of Shinichi's life. Further, Shinichi can perceive the memories and experiences of others, and at least one memory that he thought was his own has been confirmed to have actually been someone else's. When combined with the Gaslighting and general extreme emotional and psychological manipulation and abuse Shinichi's been subjected to for years, it becomes hard to trust some of Shinichi's older and more illogical impressions and memories owing to the fact that they may have been instilled or modified rather than genuinely experienced, something Shinichi himself becomes aware of over the events of Part 1.
- This carries over into his powers: Shinichi can absorb others' perceptions through physical contact with them, their belongings, or the location the perceived event took place. However, Word of God has clarified that he can only absorb their perceptions—what others knew and consciously perceived at the time the perceptions were made and/or imprinted onto the object or environment. He can't concretely extract the objective reality that had been around them, only what they perceived of it, and so he still has to work out the reliability of the memories and perceptions himself.
Unwitting Instigator of Doom: The second interlude confirms that Hakuba believes, and that Yuusaku has told him, that Shinichi is Pandora, the metaorganism hypothetically driving those around it to mad bursts of violence. It's unclear if this is the truth as of yet.
What You Are in the Dark: Though no one would begrudge him for taking the easier and safer route, few would ever know if he did, only KID is around to witness, and she may very well get him killed, Shinichi refuses to leave Santa to suffer alone.
White Sheep: Shinichi is the only member of the Kudo family who is not part of ISHA's incredibly dubious power structure; his parents are one of their leaders and their emotion-manipulating propaganda mouthpiece respectively. He's also the only Kudo whose powers, as of yet, have not proven to be projective or altering to others' minds/emotions. Instead, his Psychic Powers are absorptive; rather than pushing foreign presences/thoughts/emotions onto others, Shinichi can psychically perceive the current and past perceptions of others embedded in the persons, places, and things around him. It's implied that Yuusaku believes Shinichi can project some kind of influence over others' minds and he regards this as a danger, but so far that has yet to be concretely proven.
Willful Blindness:
- Zig-zagged. Shinichi deliberately seeks out harmful secrets that he feels he can do something about, but shies away from those make him feel powerless or confirm painful truths about interpersonal relationships that he didn't want to confront. A lot of this comes from Shinichi's attempt to grapple with his father's abuse, and in particular Yuusaku's abusive insistence that Shinichi can have no possible worth or contribution ability outside of what Yuusaku has designated for him—that Shinichi is a "useless" burden in all matters Shinichi actually cares about. Tellingly, Shinichi thus challenges conflicts Yuusaku tells him he has no place in while avoiding the very presence of those whose words and actions imply agreement with the idea that Shinichi is a useless burden, such as Ran and Hakuba. Shinichi sets himself very low expectations for how others see and feel about him, likely in the hopes that if he does have to confront the reality of how they actually see him, he won't be as hurt if he already expected the worst. Shinichi directly expresses in chapter 10 that his own assumptions as to why others have chosen to hurt and neglect him still probably hurt less than the reality.
- There's an element of this reflected in his powers: Shinichi, as a psychic empath, was not taught how to manage his abilities emotionally and so has resorted to blocking out his advanced awareness of others' emotions for the sake of his own ability to function day to day. As the narration of one of Shinichi's perspective sections puts it, "Shinichi spent the vast majority of his life trying to avoid unnecessary physical contact with others. Even soccer sometimes pushed the edges of his tolerance, and there had been a time when he’d only ever reach out to Ran willingly. He didn’t want the burden of other people’s shameful secrets and petty thoughts—he could barely manage his own."
Your Days Are Numbered: Though neither Yuusaku nor Hakuba ever told Shinichi, Hakuba had long accepted that Shinichi's alleged nature as "Pandora" is dangerous enough that if no other solution could be found soon, the Pandora Effect would strengthen to the point where Shinichi would have to be destroyed, essentially meaning that Shinichi's been on a secret Death Row with Yuusaku as judge, jury, and prison warden for most of his life. Hakuba's comments in the interlude imply that if Shinichi and the Pandora Effect both hadn't suddenly disappeared, the city-wide riots would have been the tipping point for the decision to execute him. As it is now, the argument over whether he's too dangerous to let live is moot because they think he's dead, although Hakuba resists accepting this.

Kudo Yuusaku/"Night Baron"

“Do you really think you’ll uncover something I can’t?”

Shinichi's father and the Irregulars' mentor. A famous detective in the public sphere, and as Night Baron considered the greatest of the Overseers, Yuusaku is quick, clever, and always seems to be hiding many things beneath his mask and mantle...

Abusive Parents: He's intensely psychologically and emotionally abusive to his son Shinichi, to the point that it drives a significant portion of the plot.
- Yuusaku goes out of his way to make sure Shinichi feels worthless, up to and including creating competing loyalties with basically all of the people in Shinichi's life so that no one will side with Shinichi over Yuusaku and having all of them try to Gaslight Shinichi into believing everything he tries to do without his father's express permission and support is crazy, morally wrong, useless, pointless, and, again, worthless.
- He's called his son's dreams and aspirations "ridiculous" since he was a child, despite supporting others with the same dreams directly to Shinichi's face, and has encouraged others to put Shinichi down for these same aspirations, including Shinichi's peer group and the police.
- Yuusaku's also not afraid to force his son to behave in the manner he desires, such as when he wipes his son's memory of the immediate present circumstances and forces him to leave KID's heist and return home like a mindless puppet, after which Shinichi comes back to himself with no memory of encountering the Night Baron but evidence on his camera that he did. It's implied Yuusaku has done this with unfortunate commonality over the years, despite acknowledging that this kind of mental coercion is known to be psychologically damaging.
- Further damaging is Yuusaku's tendency to bury, confuse, scramble, edit, and outright erase Shinichi's memories at Yuusaku's own convenience, taking Gaslighting to such extremes that Shinichi himself has become an Unreliable Narrator regarding any and all events that occurred prior to the story.
  - The most blatant demonstration of all of this behavior is from Chapter 9, in which Yuusaku goes on a cold, manipulative diatribe about how Shinichi is "useless" and has proven through his acts of rebellion against Yuusaku's abuse that he isn't worth trusting or treating with respect—to Shinichi's face. It's further implied that Yuusaku is using his Psychic Powers on Shinichi during this, as Shinichi not only thinks and behaves in ways that do not align with his normal behavior, but quietly surrenders the evidence he's spent the entire story trying to obtain without being fully conscious of doing this. It also takes Shinichi a full day to begin to shake off the compulsion to view himself as his father described. Yuusaku's interaction with Shinichi here is such a clear-cut mental assault that even the most dogmatic of the Irregulars are left in Stunned Silence, only managing to react full minutes after the incident is over.
Adaptational Jerkass: In canon Yuusaku is a laissez-faire parent with an occasional tendency to show up his son, but is generally willing to step in and support Shinichi when he needs it. He had some more problematic tendencies in the early manga, such as pretending to kidnap his own son just to "test" Shinichi's reaction, but as Characterization Marches On he's become a more involved and helpful figure in Shinichi's life. Not so in Dominoes, where Yuusaku is an abusive, child-grooming, emotionally manipulative, and Ambiguously Evil mastermind extraordinare who likes to browbeat and Mind Rape his son into submission.
Ambiguously Evil: Yuusaku is a master of mixed messages in terms of his moral alignment; though Yuusaku is nominally a leader among the world's superheroes and Hakuba insists he's doing everything For the Greater Good, Yuusaku's also so manipulative that it's hard to guess what about him is ploy and what is genuine, or if anything about him can be trusted at all. He's capable of mentally altering and controlling the people around him and he's learned lying and trickery so well he can even convince a psychic empath that the falsehoods he speaks are truths (at least for a little while). Still, though he has some supportive and constructive moments with the Irregulars, most of his actions are characterized by abusive control tactics and a startling Lack of Empathy; his words towards his son honestly wouldn't be out of place as the dialogue of a genuine supervillain.
The Antagonist: Yuusaku isn't the villain (probably), but he is the constant opposing force to Shinichi's ideals and endeavors. It appears to be Yuusaku's decisions, choices, and influence that causes the entirety of the story's second main conflict (Shinichi vs. his loved ones). Yuusaku's role as this to Shinichi is all but acknowledged directly by Hattori and Hakuba in the first Interlude, in which they openly discuss how Shinichi is so completely repudiative towards being controled and manipulated any further by Yuusaku that any association with Yuusaku dooms any genuine friendship with Shinichi.
Beware the Mind Reader: Yuusaku is perfectly willing to use and abuse the information and weaknesses he finds in others' minds—even those of the children in his care—in order to maintain control over them. Word of God describes him as "very invasive" as a person.
Bizarre Alien Psychology: Yuusaku is a human rather than a literal alien but otherwise appears to play this straight, up to and including a psychic character trying to read Yuusaku's thoughts and describing them as alien, vast, and incomprehensible.
Break Them by Talking: One of the major red flags in Yuusaku's behavior. Hakuba notes that Yuusaku has a specific voice, tone, and linguistic strategy he uses to do this specifically to minors. The most egregious example of this is Yuusaku's horrifically emotionally abusive "The Reason You Suck" Speech to his own son in chapter 9 (and the implications from that conversation of the exact depth and duration of the abuse). Hakuba also notes that Shinichi is the most common recipient of this strategy of Yuusaku's in general.
Cold Equation: Puts acquiring the Meta-Nulifier over the lives of the nine million people of Tokyo, the lives of the nine million people of Tokyo over the life of the children who have been experimented on, and his son's life over his son's psychological wellbeing.
Conflict Ball: He's basically a character version of this; there isn't a character he interacts with for whom he hasn't instigated conflict somehow on a personal level. Some of his conflict instigation definitely appears intentional, although it's unclear if all of it is.
Everyone Has Standards: As morally repugnant as Yuusaku's actions are, even he thinks the manner of Santa's death crossed a line.
Expy: His role as Night Baron bears a lot of resemblance to Batman.
Faux Affably Evil: It's unclear if he's actually a proper villain or merely Shinichi's personal antagonist, but regardless, so far in the story Yuusaku has shown readers a gentleman's facade covering an extremely manipulative and cruel underbelly, one which is seen primarily when he interacts with children.
For the Greater Good:
- Yuusaku rationalizes the decisions made at Shinichi's expense by arguing that they bring about the most overall good and, tellingly, that it won't matter because Shinichi will (hopefully) never find out anyways. Yuusaku's mention of the latter excuse immediately after insisting it's for the greater good implies that he's really telling himself that it's okay because he won't have to face a Shinichi that knows what he's done and that some part of Yuusaku's abuse rationalizations are motivated by the desire to protecting himself from the consequences of his actions. Unsurprisingly, Shinichi does find out, and Yuusaku's reaction even horrifies the Irregulars. Despite Hakuba's insistence that Yuusaku loves and has deeply sacrificed for his son's happiness and wellbeing, Yuusaku is so emotionally and psychologically abusive that, rather than bringing about good, it's almost like Yuusaku's trying to push Shinichi to a precipice.
- In chapter 11, Yuusaku pulls this again, stopping the Irregulars from destroying the Meta-Nullifiers during the black hole crisis by claiming that ISHA needs them. In doing so, Yuusaku puts possessing these nullifiers over the safety of nine million people, choosing not only to leave all of the superheroes in the city depowered during a time when as many options as possible are desperately needed, but to render any attempt to call for backup fundamentally pointless, because the backup will be made as powerless as the Irregulars as soon as they come near the city. As far as the Irregulars and Yuusaku know, this leaves four normal teenagers as Tokyo's only defense against the growing black holes that threaten to erase the city and millions of people from existence, and they have less than two hours before the entire city is gone.
Gaslighting: Yuusaku not only steals Shinichi's evidence of inconvenient events and edits and erases Shinichi's memories at his convenience, but when Shinichi calls him out on his many manipulative and controlling behaviors, Yuusaku insists that "Everything I’ve done has been for you. You just... Don't understand," which is an outright attempt to confuse, delegitimize, and dismantle Shinichi's ability to recognize harm as harm. Further, trying to convince Shinichi (and the watching Irregulars) to accept the irrational idea that Shinichi should trust that someone who repeatedly harms him and shows no remorse actually has his best interests in mind and it only looks like those who hurt Shinichi don't care because Shinichi himself just isn't capable of recognizing this care reeks of an attempt to program Shinichi and the watching Irregulars to accept the abuse as appropriate and allowable and Stockholm Syndrome as the correct response Shinichi should have to said abuse.
The Heavy: To his own son. While not a member of the story's Obviously Evil primary villains, the Crows, Yuusaku is easily the most pervasively felt antagonist in the story throughout Part 1, with almost all of the cast's conflicts deriving somehow from his conflict-instigating or conflict-perpetuating actions and decisions.
His Own Worst Enemy: Most of the conflicts in the story that are implied to challenge and stress Yuusaku appear to derive from his own choices having consequences that come back to bite him.
I Shall Taunt You: His go-to strategy for controlling others is to dig at their insecurities. Sometimes he's subtle and does this under the facade of constructive criticism or alleged concern for another's flaws, but sometimes he isn't.
Insufferable Genius: As with Hakuba, this is played with. Yuusaku is supposedly incomprehensibly smart, but when confronted with dissent or a loss of control of the situation, he tends to weaponize his own perceived intellectual superiority to shut people down with condescension aplenty. However, like Hakuba, Yuusaku doesn't actually display his intelligence while doing so, to the point where he borders on The Alleged Expert. Instead, Yuusaku, like Hakuba, usually appeals to his own greater influence and reputation of intellectual superiority specifically in order to make those disagreeing with him look and/or feel powerless and stupid by comparison in an attempt to delegitimize their position without having to challenge their actual ideas. Yuusaku's intelligence is partially an Informed Attribute because, while he displays a high level of manipulative cunning on a social level, he refuses to be honest about his actual reasons for doing anything—most of his arguments in defense of his actions are, rather than an impressive display of facts and logic, comprised instead of personal attacks and fallacies. This charade of dialogue is Lampshaded in the narrative, which specifically describes Yuusaku's language when speaking with Kaito, for example, as "delivered like a speech given by the educated to the ignorant, only bereft of fact or explanation. No one cared if the ignorant understood or not, so long as they were quiet in their incomprehension."
Irony: Despite insisting for the entirety of Part 1 that Shinichi isn't cut out for Hakuba's and Yuusaku's line of work as heroes, detectives, and leaders in crisis management, Shinichi basically ends up having to do Hakuba's and Yuusaku's jobs for them when it comes to the Missing Children's case and the subsequent Black Hole Crisis, which they appeared to be too distracted by personal drama to focus on.
Manipulative Bastard: Yuusaku sets people against each other for his own ends, managing to turn Shinichi's friends' genuine care for Shinichi into a tool to control and hurt Shinichi from a distance, seemingly careless of the fact that the fallout of such tactics would inevitably devastate the emotional climate of Shinichi's friend group, the emotional health of everyone he used, and Shinichi himself as long as Yuusaku achieved his own ends. He also deliberately goads people into anger and then uses their subsequent emotions to argue that they're too emotional, irrational, and immature for their side of the argument to be valid. He's seen doing this both in flashbacks and in the present, mostly to Shinichi, but we witness at least one instance each in which Yuusaku also does this to Hakuba, Hattori, and Kaito.
Memory-Wiping Crew: It's heavily implied he edits others' memories in accordance with his own agenda, so it's never fully clear what version of events the other characters are working with at a given moment, or how true that version is.
Mystery Writer Detective: Aside from claiming the title of World's Greatest Detective and secretly being the Night Baron, Yuusaku also maintains his DC canon career of writing mystery novels.
Psychic Powers: Yuusaku outright attacks his own son's mind when Shinichi touches him, overriding his consciousness, blocking his memories, and forcing him to go home like a puppet on a string. Later, Shinichi regains awareness inside his room, with no memory of what happened after seeing Night Baron. It's unclear if Yuusaku's demonstration of power is a different usage of the same power as Shinichi, or a different kind of mental power altogether. (If he's as sensitive to the emotions and experiences of others as Shinichi and still choses to treat those around him as he does, he's even more abusive than previously thought).
Pyrrhic Victory: Yuusaku and Hakuba desperately want the Nullifier, to the point where they were willing to gamble the survival of a city of nine million people for the chance to get it. The reason they don't? They did their best to write off every investigative effort that Shinichi made as worthless... and he's the one who was investigating the case surrounding it. If they had treated him with respect and listened to him earlier, the three of them collectively probably would have been able to realize the connections between the kidnapped children, the Red Siamese Cats, and Professor Hirota much sooner and made better plans to handle the Nullifier and the experimented children; perhaps, for example, working with Professor Hirota to acquire further production of the Nullifier in exchange for his protection and support for his research, or organizing a mission to take the Nulifier and analyze its components in the weeks before it became critically necessary to Santa's survival. Because Yuusaku and Hakuba were more focused on invalidating the credibility of everything Shinichi was trying to tell them, they missed the opportunity for the Nullifier until there was almost no time to manuver for options and the opportunities for most of the wiser solutions had already passed. Thus, instead of having time to calmly decide how to manage the situation with the Nullifier and the children who needed it, Hakuba and Yuusaku had to choose between them and brought almost every conflict in Part 1 into crossfires, during which the Nullifier was lost. As a consequence of their own poor decisions and ill-chosen priorities, the city whose survival they were willing to gamble was saved at the cost of Yuusaku and Hakuba ultimately losing almost everything they'd gambled and compromised it and their own morals for: the victim who'd unintentionally caused the black holes, the Nullifier, and, it appears, Shinichi himself. "Won the battle, lost the war" seems quite apt; it'd almost be Laser-Guided Karma if the consequences for others weren't so much greater.
Quit Your Whining: In chapter 10, even Hakuba is outraged and hurt over Yuusaku's behavior in chapter 9, and confronts Yuusaku on the obviously abusive tongue lashing he gave Shinichi in front of the entirety of the Irregulars. Yuusaku reacts with deep condescension, writing off Hakuba's outrage and hurt at the injustice as something in the line of "Shinichi's dramatics" and implying that such emotions are childish and beneath someone like Hakuba—two points which serve to underscore both how emotionally abusive Yuusaku is willing to be towards anyone in order to maintain control of them and exactly how much he looks down on his own son, considering that Hakuba claims to be Yuusaku's closest confidante and therefore supposedly no one was around to necessitate Yuusaku put on any kind of act.
Sherlock Scan: Deconstructed. Yuusaku is supposedly the world's best detective and it's implied he uses both his deductive abilities and mind reading powers to gain an incredibly invasive amount of information about those around him at just a glance. He then uses this information to his benefit, often to the point of abusing it, giving him an inordinate amount of extremely unhealthy and manipulative power over those who routinely interact with him.
Tough Love: Hakuba frames Yuusaku's abuse of Shinichi as this. It's unclear if this is an accurate assessment of Yuusaku's intentions or just what Hakuba tells himself.
The Unapologetic: So far, Yuusaku, about pretty much everything. Whenever someone calls him out on the pain he's caused others, he's at this point given nothing but self-flattering rationalizations before actually doubling down on causing that pain.
Unreliable Expositor:
- Every time Yuusaku gives a reason for his actions, they often superficially apply to the particular instance he's discussing but conflict with the bigger picture and the other things the reader knows he's said and done. Having proven himself both a masterful liar able to fool literal psychics and perfectly willing to mess with the minds and memories of those around him for the benefit of his own ends, it's impossible to know if he's ever been honest with any of the cast and, if so, with who, and about what. In chapter 11, the reader is left with an implication that may explain the rationale behind Yuusaku's and Hakuba's decision to functionally attempt to strip Shinichi of agency and imprison him in an extremely regulated pre-approved lifestyle—but with how twisted Yuusaku's other rationalizations have been, and how much of a self-centered martyr complex he has demonstrated concerning his framing of the conflict with Kaito, it's unclear whether Yuusaku's assessment of the situation, whatever that situation is, can even be trusted to be "the truth"—even if Yuusaku himself believes it.
Would Hurt a Child: His own child, as a matter of fact. Also, others' children, should the security of the city require it. He also personally runs a child soldier grooming process—and one of the ones currently under his "tutelage" has been trained as a sidekick since they were eight years old. For context, were this Real Life, Yuusaku's grooming of Hakuba as a Child Soldier alone is a human rights violation bad enough to, if it ever went to court, get Yuusaku put on several watch lists, banned from being within a certain proximity to minors, and have custody of his son taken from him, if not get Yuusaku outright jail time. If Real Life consequences were given for all of his actions towards the Irregulars, he'd likely be dragged before a High Court and possibly the Japanese Supreme Court, and if Japan turned a blind eye then the International Criminal Court would have jurisdiction to investigate Yuusaku for being in violation of the Rome Statute, which declares, among other things, that the grooming of child soldiers is a war crime.
Why Are You Not My Son?: Downplayed. He doesn't directly state this, but he does paint Shinichi quite negatively in comparison to Hakuba, especially when it's just Yuusaku and Hakuba around to hear.

Kudo Yuukiko/"Edogawa Fumiyo"

Shinichi's often-absent mother.

Abusive Parents: Her role in the Kudo family relationship disaster isn't really clear, but it can be concluded that she's likely willingly kept herself distant from Shinichi in accordance with Yuusaku's wishes, which would imply consent towards Yuusaku's treatment regarding their son if true. Her scene in the Interlude indicates that she herself views it as "running away" from the family's issues.
The Face: Of ISHA's PR department. Following the trope to a T, she has emotion manipulation abilities to encourage audiences to have the reaction ISHA wants. She's not even open about being The Face, but instead created the role of ISHA spokeswoman Edogawa Fumiyo, who is.
The Ghost: Her only impact in Part One is a brief scene in which she is revealed to be ISHA's propaganda mouthpiece under the alias of Edogawa Fumiyo. Other than that, she's only really felt through mentions by other characters. She finally appears in the Interlude.
Out of Focus: Only shows up briefly in part one, in comparison to the starring roles held by the rest of her family. She finally appears during the Interlude.
Psychic Powers: Yuukiko can influence the emotions of others around her, usually to make them more complacent and happy, which makes her ideal as ISHA's propaganda mouthpiece.
Secret Identity: Her role as The Face of ISHA's PR is done under the pseudonym Edogawa Fumiyo; the public appears unaware that she and the registered emotion-manipulating meta actress Kudo Yuukiko are one and the same.
Useless Bystander Parent: Does nothing to protect Shinichi from Yuusaku's abuse and spends most of her time abroad on work-related trips. She references this tendency in her scene in the Interlude, pointing out that she runs away from the family's problems.

ISHA Personnel

The Irregulars

A group of teenagers invited by the International Super-Hero Association to train to be future superheroes. Their mentor is Kudo Yuusaku, who strangely insists they keep his son in the dark about everything. The Irregulars have their own page, found here.

Agasa Hiroshi

The Kudo family's neighbor, an eccentric inventor and the Night Baron's and Irregulars' tech support.

Accomplice by Inaction: He really does care for Shinichi, but he also knew Yuusaku's and the Irregulars' secrets and still let the disaster that is Shinichi's personal life happen. While Agasa only has a few scenes in chapters 10 and 11, it's clear he feels guilty and regretful over how things are in Shinichi's life. Unlike the Irregulars, Agasa claims that he actually had tried to support Shinichi years ago by creating gadgets to help him in his investigations; however, Yuusaku caught him, and Shinichi concludes from the implications that Yuusaku got angry at Agasa for this. Ever since, Agasa has quietly complied with Yuusaku's policies.
Ambiguous Situation: What is his relationship with Yuusaku? In Case Closed canon they're good friends with little to no disagreements, but here it's clear there's at least some tension in their relationship from the little description Agasa provides on their conflict over supporting Shinichi. Given the amount and type of power Yuusaku has and the fact that he'd apparently gotten angry at Agasa for trying to support Shinichi's investigative efforts, after which Agasa complied with Yuusaku... are Agasa and Yuusaku still good friends, or has more uneven social dynamics (such as power, authority, or intimidation) crept into the functions of their relationship? The uneasy way Agasa describes his disagreement with Yuusaku isn't helped by the fact that Agasa ends his short summation of their conflict with the line "[Yuusaku] didn't think it was a good idea, but it takes more than that to keep a true genius down," implying a context of suppression from Yuusaku onto Agasa and a further context of rebellion onto what Agasa presents to Shinichi next—his collection of Shinichi's articles.
Bungling Inventor: Shinichi believes he is this. There is an element of truth to this, as Agasa's experiments aren't managed with the safety percausions their frequent explosions appear to warrant, but there's also an unfair skew in Shinichi's perspective because Yuusaku has limited what Shinichi's allowed to know about Agasa's work, and through this, Agasa's successful inventions.
Conflicting Loyalty: Agasa loves Shinichi like a doting family member does a favorite nephew, but Shinichi withdrew from Agasa as he grew up. In chapter 11 we see that Agasa created more espionage-oriented technology for Shinichi for years, and never disposed of his creations despite Yuusaku's repeated refusal to allow Shinichi to have them. We also see him devotedly prioritize attending Shinichi's games despite the emotional distance between them. However, despite private disagreement with them, Agasa still toed the line with Yuusaku's abusive policies up to Shinichi discovering the Irregulars' secret identities. Even then, Agasa's anxious about helping him because "your father isn't an easy man to keep secrets from."
Gadgeteer Genius: He created much of the technology the Irregulars use and created a small arsenal of gadgets for Shinichi before Yuusaku noticed and put an end to that.
Secret Identity: Though it's yet to be explicitly stated, the Irregulars credit their tech to "Professor Sun" and it's later confirmed Agasa is the one behind their tech, so it stands to reason that Agasa is Professor Sun.
So Proud of You: Keeps a computerized self-updating database of all news in the city—but ensures special attention to every article of Shinichi's investigative work, from the beginning of his career to the present. It's clear Agasa was fully intending to support Shinichi further by supplying him on the technological front before Yuusaku stepped in and barred him.
Walking Spoiler: A unique situation in which Agasa himself is not and the personal attributes of his character are easily predictable, but the timing and details of his involvement in the plot gives away that Shinichi has learned of Yuusaku's and the Irregulars' secret identities by that point in the story.

Law Enforcement

In General

Gaslighting: The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department toes Yuusaku's line and does their best to keep Shinichi out of investigations, up to and including heavily implying to Shinichi that his memory can't be trusted because he's "tired" or "stressed," lying to Shinichi about the reality of situations Shinichi himself has witnessed, and confiscating Shinichi's proof that these situations occurred.
Offscreen Karma: Because the police decided to act as if they weren't taking Shinichi's claims seriously, Shinichi felt it necessary to expose the Missing Children's Case extremely openly. He posted a video claiming that the TMPD and ISHA were engaged in a cover-up regarding the missing children and the Crows and that he would be providing proof in his next update right before going missing under suspicious circumstances. Because they provide context to the mysterious circumstances of his disappearance, Shinichi's claims end up widely reported in the news, and the lack of transparency on the police's part becomes linked in the public narrative with the Black Hole Crisis. Though we as of yet haven't seen the direct effects of this, it's almost certainly become a PR disaster for the TMPD.
Police Are Useless: Unfortunately, as they're not the ones to respond to the majority of emergencies in the plot anymore, the most they've done so far in the story is wear red shirts and gaslight witnesses on the superheroes' behalves. In Real Life, the very public disappearance of an ignored witness at the apparent hands of criminals the police are on record denying exist would be grounds for a massive and brutal internal investigation, but given their record so far...

Takagi Wataru

Bad Cop/Incompetent Cop: What he and Date actually come off as during Shinichi's interrogation, owing to Takagi's good nature but maintainance of the policy line in place regarding how to handle Shinichi. When he tries to make excuses for why they haven't given Shinichi back his stuff despite doing their best to make Shinichi doubt the seriousness of the crime he's investigating, it makes it incredibly obvious to Shinichi and the reader that there's something underhanded and secret being done with Shinichi's evidence and that they're lying through their teeth.
Good Cop/Bad Cop: He and Date try to be this with Shinichi while debriefing him on the incident in the warehouse.

Date Wataru

Bad Cop/Incompetent Cop: What he and Takagi actually come off as during Shinichi's interrogation, owing to Takagi's good nature but maintainance of the policy line in place regarding how to handle Shinichi. The two attempt to gaslight Shinichi into doubting the events he witnessed at the warehouse and his knowledge of the case, but their fumbling to answer Shinichi's questions about when he'll get his belongings back makes it incredibly obvious to Shinichi and the reader that there's something underhanded and secret being done with Shinichi's evidence and that they're lying through their teeth.
Detective Mole: He not only does ISHA's bidding when the orders come like Takagi, but he secretly reports back to the Night Baron about everything he hears. The first report we see him give is on the desperation surrounding the missing children's case, confirming to the reader that he was lying to Shinichi during their debriefing when attempting to make Shinichi doubt himself on the reality of the missing children.
Good Cop/Bad Cop: He and Takagi try to be this with Shinichi while debriefing him on the incident in the warehouse.
In Spite of a Nail: While the story starts off very differently from canon, with Date alive and still Takagi's partner, he ends up dying sometime around the end of Part 1, leaving in his wake a vacancy for Sato Miwako to take his place in Division 1.
Locked Out of the Loop: Covertly works with the Night Baron and generally follows his lead when it comes to "managing" police cases and Kudo Shinichi. However, it seems he doesn't know the Night Baron is Kudo Yuusaku, nor that Shinichi is the Night Baron's son.

Criminals

Kuroba Kaito/"Kaitou KID"

"You all think you're so much better than everybody else, don't you? Like to pretend you know what's best, that you can decide who's good and who's evil. Like to play judge, jury, and executioner just because you woke up one morning with superpowers? Like to interfere where you aren't wanted, enforce your ideals on everyone else just because they don't have the means to stand up to you? Even now, you're acting like you have some sort of moral high ground. Bullshit... You didn't join the Irregulars to save and protect. We both know you didn't want Kaitou KID behind bars for the greater good. This is all about payback because you think KID tore your family apart. But you know what...? Your amazing, heroic Overseers tore my family apart. And I won't stop until they pay."

A teen thief who has adopted his father's alterego, Kaitou KID, and functionally declared war on ISHA for covering up the circumstances of his father's death. A Technopath, though he keeps his powers strictly secret; only Shinichi has so far managed to figure this out.

Big Brother Is Watching: Kaito's status as a Technomancer means, among other things, that all cameras do his bidding. Along with all electronic security systems, high-speed transportation, most forms of distance communication, and the internet. However, this may be downplayed, as Shinichi's deduced there are limits on what Kaito can control, though we don't know what those limits are yet.
Both Sides Have a Point: In his argument with Aoko in chapter 5, both he and Aoko make genuine points about the moral failings of each other's stances on the conflict between them; unfortunately, Aoko's self-evidently a hypocrite, and Kaito proves to be one himself later in the story, so neither take each other's points on good faith and both end up getting angry and largely ignoring the accurate parts of the criticism.
Create Your Own Villain: He's the villain Yuusaku's actions created. Regardless of what actually happened during the tragedy, Yuusaku's poor handling of the aftermath of Toichi's death caused the Kuroba family to turn against him, with the second KID's mission explicitly being revenge. Throughout the story Yuusaku continues to handle this situation terribly, making threatening demands rather than giving answers or showing compassion to the son of his deceased friend, driving Kaito to further extremes against him. Yuusaku proves that he's aware of this in chapter 10, but he tries to convince the Irregulars that he's the good guy for blaming KID for the deaths of four people including Toichi's and covering up his own involvement in them. Yuusaku even has the nerve to claim he's helping Kaito by deliberately antagonizing him, because without Yuusaku Kaito would have no purpose in life.
Cynicism Catalyst: Kaito was an excited and happy child prior to the first KID's last heist eight years ago; he was even excited at the idea that his father might secretly be the Night Baron. Then he witnessed the Night Baron kill KID, and it wasn't the Night Baron who was his father.
Differing Priorities Break Up: Aoko and Kaito have a very extreme and explosive version of this which destroys both their budding romance and their friendship—on their very first date, no less. When Hakuba exposes Kaito is KID to Aoko, Aoko suggests to Kaito a way to "fix" the situation so their relationship can be salvaged; namely, Kaito turns himself in, does his penance in prison, and ceases to menace ISHA and the public any further. Kaito is so insulted by Aoko's suggestion (given that Kaito does not see ISHA as a benevolent authority and perceives them deserving of his vengence) that he verbally associates the life she wants for him with a surrender of identity and calls it "vapid." Aoko interprets this to mean that he saw their entire relationship as vapid, clings to the idea that she's trying to do the right thing, and Kaito replies with the character quote above. As much as they both did and likely still do really care each other, their currently irreconcilable difference of opinion on ISHA puts them at opposite ends of the battlefield, and given Aoko's Black-and-White Insanity and Kaito's obsession with Revenge, it'd take something pretty big for either to decide to change their minds.
Foil: His initial role in the story appears to be one to Yuusaku, especially in chapter 9. Though his methods and designated "role" is supervillainous—chaotic, destructive, and unlawful—Kaito expresses empathy and a desire for fairness. One of his reasons for drawing Shinichi into his plans against Yuusaku was because he was genuinely upset at how Shinichi was being treated by the supposed heroes, relating it to the pain Kaito felt when he found out about his family's secrets the day Toichi died. In the very next scene Yuusaku demonstrates that, despite his supposed superheroic role, his behavior is that of a Faux Affably Evil villain; beneath his surface facade of passable civility and kindness is a sociopathic level of cruelty and dismissal towards the value of those whom he can't "use"—one could easily lay Yuusaku's speech about the "uselessness" of his son over the visual images of countless Machiavellian-type Big Bads with family relations to the hero and change surprisingly little of the dialogue. It doesn't help that his own words imply that he looks down on people whose abilities he sees as unequal to his own, calling into question whether he is even morally capable of making just decisions involving the lives of millions if not billions of non-powered civilians. In short, the two are supervillain and superhero but their contrasting dialogue highlights that each expresses personality traits usually attributed to the opposite role.
- In chapter 12, they subvert this: their determination to get the nullifier and willingness to sacrifice others' lives for what they see as a more important priority actually makes them similar. Despite all of Kaito's talk about valuing justice and fairness and possessing empathy, Shinichi points out that he's used everyone around him like tools, behaviors mirroring what Yuusaku openly expresses about usefulness in chapter 9. Despite being foils in how they present and express themselves, the reality of Kaito's and Yuusaku's behavior is very similar.
Freudian Excuse: Kaito became KID to bring down the man who murdered his father and used his position of power to escape consequences and lie about it to the entire world. Subverted by Shinichi, who, despite siding with Kaito on the idea that such injustice should be resolved, has no problem criticizing Kaito on his own more ethically problematic choices. In chapter 12, Kaito ends up hypocritically doing the thing he accuses Yuusaku of and seeks revenge for—serving his own agenda at the cost of someone else's survival.
Hypocrite: In chapter 12, Kaito ends up doing the thing he accuses Yuusaku of and seeks revenge on him for—serving his own agenda at the cost of someone else's survival.
Immune to Mind Control: Like his father before him, Yuusaku is completely unable to psychically sense Kaito's mind, making Yuusaku unable to do anything to it. However, Shinichi's powers do work on him, as proven when Shinichi views Kaito's memory of Toichi's death.
Irony: Kaito is KID in revenge for Yuusaku murdering Toichi and then blaming him for the deaths involved. Because of this, much of the public think KID is a killer. But in chapter 12, in order to get tools for his revenge against Yuusaku for this frame-up and murder, Kaito steals the chemical needed to neutralize and stabilize an out-of-control metahuman child, and with no way to neutralize her, she's put down by missile strike. Arguably, in his quest for vengeance over the murder and slander, Kaito himself gave KID's reputation for callous bloodshed an underlying truth.
The Masquerade Will Kill Your Dating Life: Kaito's and Aoko's prospective first date is ruined by Hakuba giving Aoko evidence that Kaito is Kaitou KID, and her subsequent decision to confront Kaito about it. Despite Hakuba believing that Kaito was only using her, Kaito was evidently very excited to date her and deeply hurt by the destruction of their relationship.
The Scapegoat: By chapter 9 it's clear that Kaitou KID has served as this for at least two "heroes":
- Yuusaku blamed his murder of the first KID and the damage and other deaths involved on KID himself, hiding Toichi's identity and labeling him a civilian casualty of KID's deadly act.
- Aoko blames her difficult and long-standing family issues on KID because it's easier for her to do that than working through the complicated emotions she feels for her neglectful but well-meaning father, who was at a KID heist when her mother died in the hospital and continues to neglect Aoko in favor of his work catching KID.
Shame If Something Happened: Deliberately brings up the Night Baron's son in this manner during their covert late-night meeting. In a twist, Kaito's not bringing Shinichi up to use Shinichi's wellbeing as leverage; Kaito openly compliments Shinichi and calls him "ruthless" while threatening to inform Shinichi of Yuusaku's secret identity, the implication being that Shinichi himself will be enough of a threat to Yuusaku when informed.
Sour Outside, Sad Inside: As KID he still keeps up his cheerful facade, but rather than the fun-loving character from DC canon, Kaito's resentment of ISHA as a superpowered ruling elite, along with the public that uncritically adores them, has turned his civilian identity into a bitter, jaded troll that tends to upset and anger those around him rather than cause anyone fun or amusement. Of course, that hatred stems from said superpowered ruling elite apparently murdering his father, Toichi, and then framing Toichi for his own murder. To make matters worse, Kaito only found out his father was KID by witnessing KID's murder at Yuusaku's hands. This trauma and the lack of resolution or justice obviously still pains Kaito to the point where, despite being one of the cast members who exhibit the most Jerkass tendencies, he's actually the only person to express open empathy towards Shinichi specifically because he relates Shinichi's situation to his own.
Spanner in the Works: Ironically and cruelly, he becomes one to Shinichi, whom he'd previously cooperated with. Kaito steals the Meta-Nullifier that Shinichi needs to end the Black Hole Crisis without ISHA putting Santa, the child involuntarily causing it, down like a rabid dog. Because of this, ISHA orders an airstrike on Santa's and Shinichi's location; Kaito saves Shinichi at the last second, but leaves Santa to die.
Villain Has a Point:
- Despite nominally being the villain, being very destructive, manipulative, and coercive when it suits him, and speaking from a place of vengeance and spite, none of the criticisms Kaito makes about ISHA's justice system have proven inaccurate—in fact, what little we've seen so far only supports and demonstrates his points; ISHA shows itself to absolutely be the super-powered police state Kaito accuses it of being when the chips are down, and it usually just hides or uses propaganda to excuse the morally questionable part of their actions after the fact. The "heroes" have really only managed to maintain the illusion of moral highground by at least intending to limit the destructive impact on the public and by sweeping KID's points under the rug as best they can. In fact, this particular villain makes so many points that when given a choice between ceasing investigating the disappearing children (as per the Irregular's repeated command) and helping KID for the benefit of evidence on the disappearances, Shinichi sees cooperating with him as the lesser evil.
- By chapter 10 this plot point, represented in this case by Shinichi who's now openly demonstrated his willingness to ally with KID over the Irregulars if forced to choose, is one of the many things that splits the Irregulars into conflict after the horrifying end scene in chapter 9. Hattori and Ran hotly take Shinichi's side while Aoko sides against him (and KID), but even then Aoko can't really make a rational argument against the gaping moral failings pointed out by Shinichi's and KID's situation and Yuusaku's own actions right before their eyes.
What You Are in the Dark: Negative example. Kaito talks a lot about the injustice and cruelty of ISHA and expresses empathy for Shinichi's situation, but secretly actively and knowingly sabotaged Shinichi's efforts to save the life of Santa, a young and innocent girl, in order to recoup his "investment" and obtain the superior nullifier. Kaito talks a lot about justice and the lack thereof when the Night Baron ended Toichi's life, but Kaito secretly chose to sacrifice Santa's the moment her life got in the way of his revenge.
You Killed My Father: His Cynicism Catalyst and the motive for his set against ISHA: he witnessed the Night Baron kill Kaitou KID when he was nine, and ISHA covered it up.

Daichi

"I'm not doing this for you. I'm doing it for him. Sometimes it helps just to know somebody's looking for you, that someone out there cares."

A homeless teen, street fighter, and minor criminal who tries to shelter and look after younger street kids.

Baker Street Regular: Downplayed. He is one of Shinichi's street informants, but he justifiably doesn't trust Shinichi, owing to Shininchi unintentionally compromising his and his kids' safety during what Shinichi calls an "arrogant" and "shameful" part of his career in journalism. However, he proves desperate enough for a solution to the current danger that he and his kids still act as Shinichi's street informants on the missing children's case.
Homeless Hero: The only person we see consistantly looking out for the kids on the streets when they're not the subject of an investigation.
King of the Homeless: Downplayed. He's the street kids' ringleader and protector, but it's implied there are a bunch of other "communities" like his around the city, and while he poses like a powerful leader he's characterized more like a scared teen desperately putting on aires in an attempt to protect people even less capable of defending themselves.
No Name Given: He's only ever referred to as "Daichi." Possibly justified both by the unfriendly relationship between him and Shinichi and by the fact that the homeless kids as a whole rarely use their real or full names for obvious reasons.
Street Urchin: The leader and main protector of a ragtag group of homeless children. We don't see the kids directly because he bars Shinichi from direct interaction with them.

"Tequila"

A strange man Shinichi encounters while investigating an abandoned warehouse in connection with missing persons. Shinichi concludes that he's deeply involved in an organized criminal conspiracy to abduct homeless children.

Elite Mook: In comparison to the Crows' other henchmen, Tequila has a codename and superpowers.
Faceless Goons: The Crows' members wear bird masks described similar to plague masks.
Mook Lieutenant: Naturally. Unlike in canon, it is Tequila who becomes the first high-ranking member of the Crows introduced to the readers as Tequila attempts to flush out the warehouse Shinichi's investigating for any homeless children to kidnap.

Civilians

Moriguchi Satoshi

A thirteen-year-old from Osaka who vanished two months prior to the beginning of the story.

Abusive Parents: Ran away from a set of these a couple months prior to the story; they're currently being investigated by the police for the horrible living conditions discovered within their home.
Death of a Child: Shinichi eventually realizes that, due to the experiments performed upon him, Satoshi was the fireball creature that the Irregulars had destroyed in chapter 2.
Disposable Vagrant: Invoked and Subverted. It's highly probable that Satoshi and the other children were targeted by the Crows because, as street kids, it was assumed no one would miss them. Fortunately, Satoshi had at least one person with both the will to bring as much attention as possible to Satoshi's disappearance and the sheer luck that that attention reached people able and willing to do something. Asakawa Shimpei was the volunteer frisbee coach at the local youth center whose concern over Satoshi's disappearance drove him to call the police on the Moriguchi parents and seek out Detective Mouri Kogoro to find Satoshi. Through Detective Mouri word of Satoshi's disappearance reached Shinichi, triggering an investigation into the whereabouts and fate of what turned out to be many kidnapped homeless children.
Missing Child: He actually goes missing twice. He first ran away from his abusive homelife in mid-February to live on the streets of Tokyo, but then he was noted to have disappeared by his fellow street kids a week before the start of the story.
No Body Left Behind: Aoko smothered him with water. The combination of the water and his out-of-control full-body fire powers somehow destroyed whatever stability his form had so far managed to maintain, and his remains dissolve into sludge which drains into nearby bodies of water.
Playing with Fire: As we learn after the fact, Satoshi had powers apparently similar to the Human Torch. When they go out of control due to the Crows' experimentation, he becomes a giant seemingly made of fire.
Plot-Triggering Death: Shinichi investigating his disappearance is what triggers the external plot of Part 1.
Street Urchin: Satoshi was living on the streets at the time of his final disappearance.
Walking Spoiler: Considering basically everything about him is a crucial plot point that triggers Shinichi's conflict with the Crows...

Ishikawa Haruka/"Santa"

A young girl with gravity-manipulating abilities, and one of the kidnapped children Shinichi was investigating.

Afraid of Their Own Strength: Santa doesn't want to hurt anyone, but the experimentation has caused her gravity powers to go wildly out of control, and so she fled from everyone out of fear that she's a danger to them.
"Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: If Yuusaku and Hakuba had spent as much energy considering the information Shinichi kept uncovering as they did trying to control Shinichi and push him away from that information, they would have been far more aware of the players and stakes involved in Part 1's external conflict and infinitely more prepared for the situation. The main factors that contributed to the stressful rush before Santa's death—solving the case mere hours before she was about to go critical, and having only one existing sample of the superior nullifier—would have been largely negated or managed in advance had Yuusaku and Hakuba heeded Shinichi's information weeks prior. Santa's death so far as it has been presented appears to have been completely unnecessary and avoidable, if only Yuusaku and Hakuba had used their brains and done their job rather than sabotaging others' efforts to do the same.
Death of a Child: Santa is "no more than ten" at the time of her murder, according to Shinichi's estimate.
Death from Above: Santa is destroyed via a missile strike ordered by mysterious higher-ups at ISHA.
Disposable Vagrant: Invoked and Defied. It's very likely, and discussed in-story, that Santa and the other children were targeted by the Crows because, as street kids, it was assumed no one would miss them. However, once Satoshi's coach went looking for him, the other homeless kids' awareness of the danger reveals the numerous other abductions and prevents the crimes against the kids from being swept under the rug completely.
Dying Alone: Shinichi desperately attempts to subvert this and assures her that he's not leaving her and she isn't going to die. But when the missile strike is launched, Kaito pulls Shinichi from the tower at the last minute, and Santa, unfortunately, does die alone.
Missing Child: She's one of the disappeared homeless children Shinichi is attempting to locate throughout Part 1.
No Body Left Behind: She was atomized, so, like Satoshi, there ended up being nothing discernable left of her.
Stay with Me Until I Die: She wavers between this and fearing anyone being near her for fear that she'll hurt them, convinced that she's going to die and end up killing others while she's at it; Shinichi promising to stay with her despite this makes him the last person she actively sought out comfort from before she died, attempting to cling to him for comfort as he went to check the windows for whatever new emergency Ran was trying to warn him about.
Walking Spoiler: If Satoshi's existence sets up the plot with the Crows, Santa's existence is Part 1's climax. Not that it's hard to guess what happened to her, given her character tropes.
You Remind Me of X: She reminds Shinichi of Shinichi, what with her terror over her inability to control a part of herself and her feeling like no one can ever be allowed to touch her or comfort her because of that. She feels that she needs to be alone and untouchable, but she doesn't want to be.

Characters / Dominoes

The Kudo Family

ISHA Personnel

Law Enforcement

Criminals

Civilians

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Characters / Dominoes

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The Kudo Family

ISHA Personnel

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Criminals

Civilians

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