Characters / Fruits Basket - The Sohma Family

Fruits Basket Main Character Index
Main Characters (Tohru Honda) | The Sohma Family (Akito Sohma) | Tohru's Friends and Family | Student Council and Other Characters | Sequel Characters

Zodiac Members

General Zodiac Tropes

The cursed members of the Sohma family.

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• Animorphism: They change into animals from the Eastern Zodiac (plus the Cat) when hugged by a person of the opposite sex who isn't cursed, or when they're very physically weak. Ayame is a special case since he also transforms when he gets too cold or too warm, due to being the Snake (since snakes are reptiles and thus cold-blooded).
• Babies Ever After: The sequel series Another shows most if not all the former members of the Zodiac have children many years after the end of the original series.
• The Beastmaster: They have the ability to attract, and to some degree control, whichever animal they're possessed by. However, Yuki is the only one who's actually shown to take advantage of this (by summoning an army of rats to help him recover Tohru's belongings from the landslide that buried her tent), and Kyo's ability to attract cats often happens without him meaning to. This ability is pretty much forgotten as the story goes on.
• Breaking the Cycle of Bad Parenting: Come Another. Most of the Zodiac members' parents treated them badly, either by being smothering and overprotective, neglectful, or outright abusive. By contrast, the former Zodiacs raise their own children with a lot of love and care in a happy, healthy environment.
• Brought Down to Normal: They are all freed from the curse by the end of the story.
• Cursed with Awesome: Subverted. At first the curse seems like more of an inconvenience than anything, since being able to turn into an animal is fun on paper and those who are cursed have a minor Beastmaster ability. However, it's eventually made clear that it really is a curse with far more cons than pros; the cursed Zodiac members can't control their transformations and have to be very careful about it, many of them deal with parents who either reject them or are overprotective of them because of the curse, and as members of the Zodiac, they're all bound to be subservient to their "God" no matter how much the "God" abuses them. All of these factors keep them from forming meaningful relationships with anyone outside of the family. As Rin puts it, the bond between the Zodiac members and their God may seem like a beautiful thing to an outsider, but to them it's really more like a chain that restricts them.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: After years of physical and emotional abuse at Akito's hands, on top of enduring the Zodiac curse, at the end of the series, the curse is broken and they're finally able to live normal lives. Come Another, nearly every single one of the Sohmas has a child that lives in a healthy, happy environment, with a school that adores their family, and many of them are close knit.
• Hereditary Curse: They are cursed to turn into animals of the Eastern Zodiac when they are hugged by someone of the opposite sex who isn't also cursed or when their bodies are very weak. This curse has been affecting the family for generations, with the Zodiac spirits regularly being reborn inside new members of the family. It's later revealed that there's another part to the curse: each cursed member finds it impossible to act in any way that isn't subservient to the family member cursed to be the reincarnation of the God of the Zodiac when in their presence.
  • Another part of the curse is that they’re compelled to look down on Kyo as the “traitorous” cat spirit and silently consent to have him locked up for his entire life. While they don’t always get along with Kyo, due to his abrasive nature, rejecting and imprisoning him are the last things they want and they hate themselves for it, but the curse forces them to agree.
• Honor Thy Abuser: At the end of the story, all the members of the Zodiac minus Rin decide to not bear grudges against Akito for all the emotional and physical abuse she inflicted on them for years. While they recognize how Akito treated them was very wrong, they also recognize that Akito was also victimized in nearly identical ways to how she victimized them, making her a bit more empathetic, and can see Akito is set on being a better person. They also wish to move on with their lives, and for many of them, letting go of their hate toward/fear of Akito is a major part of that. The 2019 makes it more ambiguous; while all of the Zodiac minus Rin still move on from thinking much about Akito, it's implied that others such as Hatsuharu and Momiji share Rin's inability to forgive her.
• Implausible Hair Color: Some of the cursed Sohmas have hair and eye colors that aren't considered normal In-Universe by Japanese standards, as a side effect of the animals they're possessed by. Some of them are even suspected to dye their hair by those outside the family, even though their hair colors are completely natural. Kisa in particular is bullied by her classmates for having golden hair and eyes.
• Involuntary Shapeshifting: They can't control the transition from animal to person and vice versa. While they can trigger it voluntarily by willingly hugging someone of the opposite sex who isn't cursed, this carries the risk of someone else seeing them transform. Most of the time their transformations can be unpredictable and they have to be very careful about keeping the curse a secret.
• Kissing Cousins: Downplayed; while they occasionally refer to each other as "cousins" or "relatives" and some of them have romantic feelings for each other, it's often implied that they're only very distantly related or not related at all. The Sohmas are in fact a clan consisting of 150 people, not simply one big family, so the current generation of cursed Sohmas aren't necessarily cousins by blood and merely refer to each other as such out of formality and kinship.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Whenever a Sohma gets inadvertently transformed into animal in front of a person, they resort to erasing the victim's memories. This is currently done by Hatori, whose family line has had this ability for generations.
• Mistaken for Dyed: Some of them have rare or unusual hair colors by Japanese standards, which are a natural side effect of the Eastern Zodiac animal spirits they're possessed by. People outside the family either assume their hair is dyed and reprimand them for it, or bully them for their unusual coloring; Kisa is bullied particularly badly for having naturally golden hair and eyes.
• My Master, Right or Wrong: All the Zodiac members feel compelled to be subservient to Akito because she's their God. Because of this, none of them ever tries to fight back her abuse nor comes to hate her no matter how much she wrongs them and other people.
• Shapeshifting Excludes Clothing: Their clothes don't change with them when they transform, so they're always naked whenever they change back, which is often played for comedy.
• Specifically Numbered Group: The cursed members of the Sohma family are always 14, due to being possessed by the animal spirits of the Zodiac, plus the spirits of the Cat and the God of the legend. However, it's noted to be rare for all 14 of them to be alive at the same time.
• Temporal Theme Naming: Their names (excluding Yuki and Kyo) are derived from archaic Japanese names for the months based off the lunisolar calendar. Each member is named for the month associated with their animal, aside from Momiji and Kureno who were named after each other's months by mistake.
  • Shigure is from the tenth month "Shigurezuki"^note autumn showers month, the month of the Dog.
  • Kagura is from the eleventh month "Kagurazuki" ^note month of Shinto song and dance, the month of the Boar.
  • Momiji was mistakenly mixed up with Kureno and named after the ninth month "Momijizuki"^note autumn leaves month, the month of the Rooster.
  • Hatori is from the fourth month "Konohatorizuki"^note month of taking leaves [to silkworms], the month of the Dragon.
  • Hatsuharu is from the first month "Hatsuharu"^note early spring, the month of the Ox.
  • Ayame is from the fifth month "Ayamezuki"^note month of irises, the month of the Snake.
  • Kisa is from the second month "Kisaragi"^note changing clothes month, the month of the Tiger.
  • Hiro is from the seventh month "Fumihirogetsuki"^note month of publication, the month of the Sheep.
  • Ritsu is from the eighth month "Odakaritsuki"^note rice harvest month, the month of the monkey.
  • Isuzu is from the sixth month "Isuzukuretsuki"^note month of the last cool spring days, the month of the Horse.
  • Kureno was mistakenly mixed up with Momiji and named after the third month "Kurenoharu"^note late spring, the month of the Rabbit.
• Zodiac Motifs: Thirteen individuals turn into the twelve animals of the Eastern Zodiac and the cat; they are then greatly associated with said animals in appearance, personality, and relationships. There is also another individual who hosts the spirit of the "God" or Jade Emperor who summoned all the animals to a banquet in the origins of the Eastern zodiac; that person serves as the head of the Sohma family.

Yuki Sohma (The Rat)

Go here to see tropes relating to him.

Kyo Sohma (The Cat)

Go here to see tropes relating to him.

Shigure Sohma (The Dog)

Go here to see tropes relating to him.

Akito Sohma (God)

Akito Sohma (God)

Voiced by: Murasaki Wakaba (adult), Yuka Imai (child) (2001 series), Junko Minagawa (The Last Story Voice Comic), Maaya Sakamoto (2019 Series) (JP), Chad Cline (adult), Aaron Dismuke (child) (2001 series), Colleen Clinkenbeard (adult), Trina Nishimura (child) (2019 series) (EN), Marisol Romero (LA)

The head of the Sohma family, representing the God who commands the Zodiac (known as the Jade Emperor in Chinese culture). Despite her frail health, Akito is short-tempered, controlling, and abusive as a result of her crippling abandonment issues, and is in some way responsible for many of the issues currently plaguing the family.

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See Akito Sohma

Kagura Sohma (The Boar)

Kagura Sohma (The Boar)

Voiced by: Yuri Shiratori (Drama CD), Kotono Mitsuishi (2001 Series), Rie Kugimiya (2019 Series) (JP), Meredith McCoy (2001 Series), Tia Ballard (2019 Series) (EN), Annie Rojas (LA)

Click ^here  to see her as the Boar

The Boar of the Zodiac. A strong-willed, impulsive young woman who has deep feelings for Kyo; despite constantly beating him up and berating him she insists they're engaged.

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• Abhorrent Admirer: Kagura wants to marry Kyo, but his gut reaction when he realizes that she's coming for a visit is to attempt to run for the hills. Although Kagura is a very cute girl, her pushy attitude, explosive temper, and extremely abusive tendencies make Kyo want to stay as far way from her as he can.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: The 2001 anime gave her gray eyes. This also goes for the dress she usually wears; in the manga and 2019 anime her dress is yellow, but in the 2001 anime it's green.
• Anger Born of Worry: In her introduction, she beats the crap out of Kyo after he went to train at the mountains for four months and didn't call her even once.
• Anguished Declaration of Love: Just after she gives up on Kyo, she cries out her love for him as tears stream down her face.
• The Atoner: Her original desire to marry Kyo was actually her way to atone for exposing his true form in public when they were children, which caused Kyo's mother to become even more overprotective and stop letting Kyo play outside.
• Betty and Veronica: For Kyo, Kagura is the hyperviolent, forceful Veronica to Tohru's sweet, gentle Betty. Kagura loses.
• Big Sister Instinct: She cares for Rin and makes sure her well-being is okay despite the latter constantly rebuffing her. When she witnesses Akito raging and hitting Yuki with a sake bottle, she protectively embraces Kisa both to comfort her and in case Akito suddenly turns her fury on any of them.
• Bitch Slap: She slaps Tohru in the face after she overhears her admitting to Rin that she's in love with Kyo, berating her for not telling her true feelings to Kyo's face. In the manga, Rin scolds Kagura for getting violent with Tohru, especially since Tohru got knocked out by Kagura's slap.
• Childhood Friend Romance: One-sided example. Kagura and Kyo have known each other since they were children. She wants to be his girlfriend, but unfortunately for her, Kyo isn't at all interested in her romantically. She finally gives up after Kyo falls in love with Tohru.
• Childhood Marriage Promise: Kagura claims Kyo promised to marry her when they were children, but it's only because she threatened him to agree to it (at knifepoint in the manga and 2019 anime, no less). She eventually stops holding him to it.
• Cleaning Up Romantic Loose Ends: Once she realizes Kyo loves Tohru, Kagura almost immediately gives up on him after spending years trying to force him to love her. The original series ends with Kagura still single, but the sequel series, Another, confirms that she eventually has a son. We don't know who the father is or if she's married, though.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: At first, she loses it when she thinks Tohru might be a love rival for Kyo's affections. She quickly mellows out around her and accepts Tohru and Kyo's relationship.
• Condescending Compassion: This is the root of her "love" for Kyo. When she was a child, Kagura had an inferiority complex for being the last of the twelve Zodiac animals. When she met Kyo and knew of his circumstances, she realized the Boar had it easy compared to the Cat since at least Kagura is accepted into the Zodiac circle and her curse doesn't make her transform into a terrifying monster. In her final confession to Kyo, Kagura admits she befriended Kyo and claimed to love him because being around a cursed kid who was way worse off than her gave her a sense of superiority and she has always looked down on Kyo even though she did come to like him on some level.
• Constantly Curious: During her first meeting with Kyo when they were kids, she asked him several questions to try and start a conversation since Kyo was quite shy back then.
• Cool Big Sis: While it's easy to forget she's actually older than the main cast, Kagura can act like a loving, if overbearing, older sister to them, especially Kyo, when she isn't in one of her rampages. She was described as one by Natsuki Takaya herself.
• Crocodile Tears: If Kyo won't do as she says and resists her violence, Kagura will start crying to make Kyo feel guilty enough to give in.
• Curtains Match the Window: Brown hair and eyes in the manga and the 2019 reboot. The Adaptation Dye-Job gives her gray eyes in the first anime.
• Cute and Psycho: She's usually a demure and sweet Shrinking Violet, but around Kyo, her cuteness abruptly switches to a crazy, destructive fury.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of violent Tsundere characters. Unlike most examples of the trope, Kagura's violent behavior towards Kyo doesn't endear him to her at all. Eventually, she finally realizes she can't help Kyo heal from his trauma because of her forceful and violent personality, leading her to give up on him. Kyo ends up with the gentle Tohru instead.
• Does Not Know Her Own Strength: Due to being possessed by the volatile Boar, Kagura easily resorts to violence and often doesn't realize how badly she's beating up poor Kyo until she sees him bruised on the floor. She also unintentionally knocks Tohru out on the floor with a single slap in the manga, and apparently destroys parts of her house in fits of anger on a regular basis (and she's damaged the sliding doors of Shigure's house more than once while visiting).
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: After being rejected by Kyo definitely, when her mom asks her what's wrong, she says she's just realized how self-centered she was and rejects her pity.
• Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: She beats the tar out of Kyo nearly every scene they're in together. This is Played for Laughs, since Kyo knows martial arts and should be tough enough to endure Kagura's violence. The only time Kagura is ever scolded for hitting someone is in the case of Tohru, another girl, who ends up knocked out on the floor after receiving a single slap from Kagura in the manga.
• The Fake Cutie: She tries to act cutesy and innocent, but fails because she can't resist beating up Kyo whenever she loses her temper around him.
• Flower Motifs: Willow in the 2019 anime's ending, which represents learning and growth, as shown how she goes through Character Development when Kyo turns her down for good.
• Full-Boar Action: Not only can she turn into a boar thanks to being the Boar of the Zodiac, but she's also highly volatile and can become very aggressive when things don't go her way.
• Genki Girl: Extremely energetic about her feelings for Kyo.
• Girly Bruiser: She's very girly for the most part, but she knows martial arts and is prone to violent outbursts. She's no slouch in the strength department either; in the manga, just one slap from her is enough to knock Tohru unconscious.
• The Glomp: Tries to do this to Kyo at one point when he opens the front door, but he immediately slams it shut.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: If Kyo does something that upsets her even just a bit, she flips out and uses him as a punching bag.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Tohru. They become good friends soon after Kagura overcomes her initial jealousy of Tohru.
• Hopeless Suitor: She aggressively pursues Kyo's affections, despite Kyo being clearly afraid of her violent tendencies. Once she finally realizes that Kyo won't love her back since he's in love with Tohru, she backs off.
• Hypocrite:
  • She shows a lot of hypocritical behavior in her first appearance, where it's played for humor and lampshaded frequently by Shigure and Yuki. She beats the tar out of Kyo in a fit of passion, snaps out of it, sees him beat up, and cries "My love! Who could have done this to you?!". She also tells Kyo she would forgive him if he cheated on her, but when she believes Tohru loves him she instantly beats the stuffing out of him for being "unfaithful."
  • In a more serious case, she gets angry at Tohru for taking her time to sort her feelings out with Rin before confessing to Kyo when she spent around half the series doing just that by herself.
• I Hate Past Me: Eventually, Kagura admits to Kyo that she hates her past self for looking down on him for being the Cat and hanging out with him to feel less pathetic when compared to him. She also felt guilty over running away in fear from Kyo after accidentally exposing his monstrous true form, thinking what she did made her "unclean". For years, Kagura tried to overcompensate for how she treated Kyo by smothering him with affections he didn't want.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: She eventually realizes that Kyo doesn't love her in the same way and openly accepts his relationship with Tohru.
• In Love with Love: She insists that she's madly in love with Kyo and constantly chases after him despite him clearly wanting to stay away from her. The truth is that Kagura wants to think that she's the only one who can love the miserable Cat and that makes her feel good about herself. She simply decided to call her feelings for him love to make her intentions look better to herself and others. In the end, however, there was some truth in her feelings for him, which she admits before giving up on him.
• It's All About Me: She took Kyo's beads against his protests when they were small children, then ran away when she saw his true form, which caused his mother to stop letting him out, till the pressure of hiding her "monstrous" son to drove her to commit suicide. Rather than acknowledge how much pain this caused Kyo, she instead focused on and tried to hide her own guilt by convincing herself that she loved him, and tried to force him to love her back. By the time we find this out, it's through a confession that reveals she's moved beyond that.
• Jerkass Realization: Kagura has an utterly horrified look on her face when Kazuma unintentionally shoves in her face just how awful the root of her "love" for Kyo actually is.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She's overly self-centered, intense, violent and hates it when things don't go her way, but her behavior is mainly caused by emotional immaturity instead of malice. She does care about Kyo, but has no patience for his stubbornness and this results in her reacting with violence whenever Kyo refuses her romantic gestures. She also becomes good friends with Tohru despite viewing her as a romantic rival at first, and willingly gives up on Kyo when it's made clear that Tohru is the one he truly loves.
• Lacerating Love Language: Kagura tends to beat Kyo half to death when trying to show him affection, and also to stop him when he tries running away from her. According to Shigure, this is how Kagura expresses her "love".
• Love Epiphany: When she finally accepts that Kyo won't ever fall in love with her because he loves Tohru, Kagura admits that deep down she knew that her "love" for him wasn't entirely sincere as she originally said she loved him due to a combination of pity and guilt over running away from his true form. Going over her memories for him, Kagura realizes her feelings for Kyo did have some truth to them and she tearfully confesses to him one last time before letting him go.
• Loving Bully: Shigure compares the way Kagura beats the living daylights out of Kyo while yelling that she loves him to a little kid teasing their crush.
• Mad Love: Kyo is very vocal about having no intention of returning Kagura's affections and he's terrified of her hyper violent temper, yet Kagura doesn't get it and continues to aggressively pursue him.
• My God, What Have I Done?: In the manga, Kagura panics when she realizes that she unintentionally knocked Tohru out cold after slapping her across the face thanks to her strength. This is because Kagura's slap was her way of motivating Tohru into confessing her feelings for Kyo straight on, but not to the point of hurting her to unconsciousness.
• No Sense of Personal Space: She is very clingy with Kyo, but she's also been shown to hug other members like Yuki. Her clinginess with Kyo is because of her belief that since they're both members of the Zodiac and thus don't transform when they hug, it means they're meant for each other.
• Oblivious to Hatred: Kyo makes it clear multiple times that he hates her, but she can't seem to take the hint.
• Older Than They Look: She's 17 at the beginning of the story and is around 19-20 years old by the end as a college student, but she both looks and acts like a high schooler.
• Prone to Tears: She very easily cries when she feels upset or worried.
• Properly Paranoid: In her first appearance, she worries about Kyo living in a house with Tohru lest he eventually fall for her. She's right.
• Rejection Affection: She keeps forcing herself on Kyo, even though he clearly doesn't like her and tries to rebuff her displays of affection every time. Only stops when Kyo falls in love with Tohru.
• Romantic Fake–Real Turn: At first, Kagura only pretended to be in love with Kyo to overcompensate for having used him to feel better about her situation as a Zodiac member and running away from his true form. Just as she's giving up on him, she realizes that making herself love him for so long caused her to really like him even though she somehow knew he won't ever feel the same way about her.
• Satellite Love Interest: Her role and Character Development mainly revolve around her intense unrequited love for Kyo. She loses a lot of plot relevance after Kyo realizes he's in love with Tohru and Kagura finally gives up on making him love her.
• Self-Proclaimed Love Interest: She claims that she and Kyo are engaged and generally treats him as though he's already her boyfriend, but it's only because she threatened him into agreeing to a Childhood Marriage Promise when they were kids. Kyo isn't interested in her romantically at all, but whenever he denies her advances, she'll respond with either tears or violence.
• Shameless Fanservice Girl: When she changes back from her boar form to her human form (which, like all the cursed Sohmas' transformations, doesn't include her clothing), she doesn't feel even a bit embarrassed about clinging to Kyo while completely naked.
• Through His Stomach: She tries to win affection points with Kyo by cooking a lot of food for him, even leaving the fridge empty. Too bad Kyo doesn't want to try her food and Kagura ends up wasting it by throwing Kyo at the table.
• A Tragedy of Impulsiveness: She thoughtlessly took Kyo's beads against his protests when they were small children, then ran away when she saw his true form, which caused his mother to stop letting him out, till the pressure of hiding her "monstrous" son drove her to commit suicide.
• Tsundere: Sweet type and a very rare case of doubling as a Yandere. Kagura is generally quite nice to other people, and she's super affectionate and very honest about her feelings for Kyo. Whenever Kyo expresses he doesn't like her back, Kagura beats the poor guy to a pulp. This is even more emphasized in the 2019 anime where she's voiced by Rie Kugimiya, who's famous for lending her voice to many tsundere characters.
• Womanchild: She's very childish for a college student and throws a fit over the smallest things.
• Woman Scorned: Despite her claims that she would forgive Kyo being "unfaithful" to her, she makes clear she will punish him first.
• Yandere: Kagura loves Kyo so much that she beats him half to death if he runs away from her or refuses to go on a date with her. She also made Kyo promise to marry her at knifepoint. Unlike Akito, though, her violence is played more for laughs and she doesn't cause any serious physical damage.

Momiji Sohma (The Rabbit)

Momiji Sohma (The Rabbit)

Voiced by: Miki Nagasawa (Drama CD), Kōki Miyata (The Last Story Voice Comic), Ayaka Saitou (2001 Series), Megumi Han (2019 Series) (JP), Kimberly Grant (2001 Series), Mikaela Krantz (2019 Series) (EN), Lupita Leal (Seasons 1 and 2), Emilio Treviño (Season 3) (LA)

Click ^here  to see him as the Rabbit

The Rabbit of the Zodiac, and the son of one of the richest members of the Sohma clan. His German mother was horrified by the Sohma curse and had all memories of him erased. Momiji is androgynous, childish, and likes dressing in feminine clothing, but possesses great empathy and intuition about others. He is very fond of Tohru.

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• Adaptational Early Appearance: He's introduced in Episode 3 of the 2019 anime, a good deal earlier than he first appeared in the manga and 2001 anime.
• Big Brother Instinct: For his little sister, Momo. Even though she doesn't know about their relation, he still looks after her. In fact, she asks him to be her "big brother", which he happily accepts.
• Boyish Shorts: Momiji is actually a first-year high school student, but he looks and mostly acts like an elementary school student. For most of the series, he prefers wearing shorts even as part of his school uniform, emphasizing his boyish looks. He starts wearing long pants after his growth spurt.
• Bunnies for Cuteness: He's the Rabbit of the Zodiac, and there's a lot of emphasis on how cute he is in both his human form and his rabbit form. He later has a growth spurt and becomes more mature, but he still likes rabbit-themed accessories even after his curse breaks.
• But Not Too Foreign: Half Japanese, half German. This detail isn't addressed at all in the 2001 anime.
• Cleaning Up Romantic Loose Ends: After Tohru gets together with Kyo, Momiji quickly gets over his unrequited love for Tohru and declares he plans to find a new love eventually. The sequel confirms Momiji got married and we see his eldest daughter, but his wife isn't shown.
• Cuddle Bug: He loves hugging people, especially towards Tohru - his excitement at meeting a woman outside of the Zodiac led him to hug Tohru in a public place even though he knew he would transform, and he continues to glomp her as a greeting.
• Dramatic Irony: His mother had her memory of him erased and only knows him as a random Sohma child, and his little sister Momo doesn't know he exists, but his mother expresses concern that "his mother" will worry, and his sister asks to act as her big brother.
• Elegant Classical Musician: He practices the violin.
• Free-Range Children: For the most part, he's left free to go wherever he wants as long as he doesn't meet with his mother and little sister.
• Flower Motifs: Red and yellow chrysanthemums in the 2019 anime's fourth ending. The yellow symbolizes optimism and joy, but also neglected love. The red represents deep feelings of love.
• Gender-Blender Name: "Momiji" is usually a girls' name.
• Gratuitous German: In the manga and 2019 anime, he'll occasionally sprinkle German words and phrases in his dialogue due to being half German. When he first meets Tohru in both versions, he speaks to her entirely in German, causing Tohru to assume he's a foreigner.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: He looks younger than he is, has bright blond hair, and is a great kid.
• He Is All Grown Up: Invoked when he first enrolled in school. Hatsuharu argued that it should be okay for Momiji to wear the girl's uniform when he starts high school, because once he grows up more, he'll look very nice in the boy's uniform. Evidently, he was correct, since later on he has a growth spurt that makes him look more handsome and mature (and he also switches to the boy's uniform).
• Hollywood Genetics: Blonde German mother plus dark-haired Japanese father equals blonde son, apparently. Same for his sister Momo. Justified because the curse causes his hair to resemble a rabbit's fur color, and Momo's hair is a little darker than his.
• Hopeless Suitor: He truly does love Tohru, but he never confesses because he knows she doesn't love him back, at least not in the relationship sense.
• Hypocritical Humor: He accuses Kyo of having inappropriate thoughts towards Tohru before attempting to get in a hot spring with her himself.
• I Got Bigger: He undergoes a growth spurt much later in the story, which makes him look more his age.
• In Touch with His Feminine Side: He likes wearing outfits with feminine patterns, frills and cute accessories, and his high school uniform is essentially the girls' uniform with shorts. This becomes downplayed after he has a growth spurt and switches to the standard boys' uniform; while he does look more mature and masculine, his love for cute things hasn't changed much.
• "It" Is Dehumanizing: His mother called him "that thing" in his flashbacks.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: He's in love with Tohru, but accepts that she loves Kyo.
• Keet: He often acts very childish and energetic. He's less of a Keet after he has a growth spurt and looks more his age, though he's still rather genki.
• Love Hurts: He goes through a painful heartbreak after he finally understands Tohru won't ever be his girlfriend.
• Minor Living Alone: He lives in a house on the Sohma estate all by himself since his dad basically kicked him out of the house after his mom decided to forget about him. Although, he does have servants and the occasional babysitting relative (like Hatori).
• Nice Guy: He's nice, affectionate, and helpful.
• Non-Uniform Uniform: When he starts going to high school, he wears the girl's uniform with shorts instead of a skirt. He later switches to the standard boy's uniform after he has a growth spurt.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Despite his cheerful, childish behavior, this is largely a facade and he's more mature than he looks. This is especially apparent when it's revealed how much emotional turmoil he has over his mother rejecting him and his father essentially abandoning him in favor of his sister.
• Older Than They Look: He looks and acts like a child, but is actually the same age as Hatsuharu and only a year younger than Tohru, Yuki and Kyo. Tohru initially assumes he's in elementary school and is absolutely shocked when she learns how old he really is. Much later, he goes through a growth spurt that makes him look more in line with his age.
• Parental Abandonment: Both of Momiji's parents decided to erase his mother's memories of him and cast him out of their house to hide his existence from her and his younger sister.
• Precocious Crush: While he's really only a year younger than Tohru, his childish appearance and behavior makes his feelings for her come off as this.
• Pretty Boy: He becomes as pretty as Yuki when he finally grows taller.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Says something like this when Akito asks him to stay and be taken care of by her once his curse lifts. Akito doesn't take this well.
• Sibling Team: If Another is anything to go by, he and Momo constantly work together, since she is his assistant.
• Sprouting Ears: He occasionally sprouts rabbit ears when he's being cute and/or energetic. In the 2019 anime's first ending, one scene has him run by with rabbit ears.
• Stepford Smiler: The Depressed type. His mother's reaction to his cursed form hurt him terribly, but he pretends it doesn't bother him.
• Strong Family Resemblance: His mother and little sister look a lot like him, especially the hair color. Said little sister quickly latches onto him as a brother figure, despite not being told that they're related, she is basing it on how strongly he looks like her and her mama.
• The Un-Favourite: His mother was so disgusted by him that she willingly asked to have him erased from her memory and his father pretty much chose his wife's mental health over his son, leaving Momiji abandoned by both parents. Momiji's parents went on to have a curse-free daughter who they dote on while Momiji is not even allowed to be part of the family and can only watch his mother and little sister from afar.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: The "crossdresser" part is downplayed; while his casual outfits tend to skew feminine (often with feminine patterns, cute accessories, and the occasional frills), he doesn't wear skirts or dresses, often preferring to wear shorts. When he enters high school he starts out wearing the girl's uniform, but with shorts instead of a skirt, and he eventually switches to the boy's uniform after he has a growth spurt. He's also very cheerful and friendly, and becomes especially fond of Tohru.
• Wild Child: Occasionally acts like this since he has no real adult supervision.
• Wise Beyond Their Years: Occasionally displays this, like when he tells the story of the foolish traveler.

Hatori Sohma (The Dragon)

Hatori Sohma (The Dragon)

Voiced by: Kazuhiko Inoue (2001 Series), Kazuyuki Okitsu (adult, 2019 Series), Ikumi Hasegawa (young, 2019 series) (JP), Kent Williams (adult, both series), Bryn Apprill (young, 2019 series) (EN), José Gilberto Vilchis (LA)

Click ^here  to see him as the "Dragon"

The Dragon of the Zodiac (despite turning into a seahorse instead of a literal dragon), and the family doctor. Serious and reserved, Hatori is responsible for Akito's health as well as erasing all memories that may interfere with the Sohma family's affairs. Hatori is almost blind in one eye as a result of an incident involving Akito in the past. He is good friends with Shigure and Ayame.

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• Affectionate Nickname: Momiji calls him "Ha'ri", while Shigure calls him "Haa-san" and Ayame calls him "Tori-san".
• The Atoner: Shigure's discussions with Hatori indicate that Hatori feels very guilty about his role in the family as the memory-wiper, especially as the one who had to erase the memories of all of Yuki's friends when they were younger. It's also implied that his closeness with Momiji is a result of his guilt from being the one to wipe his mother's memories.
• Berserk Button:
  • A more emotionally subdued version but he's very self-conscious about his zodiac form. When Shigure is about to tell Tohru what his zodiac form looks like, Hatori threatens to reveal all of Shigure's embarrassing secrets to his publishers.
  • A bit of a subtle one: compare him to Shigure at all and he may throw a bit of a fit. When Tohru notes that his hair is growing out so much that it reminds her of Shigure, his immediate reaction is to say he's gonna cut it soon. When Shigure borrows a suit from him for Tohru's parent-teacher conference and tries to return it after, Hatori's response is to tell him to burn it (and it's worth noting that it's a 300000 yen (~$2800) suit!)
• Bilingual Bonus: Hatori turns into a seahorse instead of a dragon. A Japanese word for seahorse is 竜の落し子 ("tatsu no otoshigo", which translates to "dragon's baby.")
• Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl: He had this sort of relationship with his first girlfriend Kana, who brought the spring of his life. When Akito's abuse on them caused Kana to break down, however, Hatori had to set Kana free of her suffering by erasing her memories.
• Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: Shigure mentions that Hatori is just about the only person Ayame listens to. The reason is that Aya admires the qualities in him he lacks.
• Curtains Match the Window: He has black hair and black eyes.
• Deadpan Snarker: To balance out the over-the-top Ayame and Shigure.
• Eye Scream: Akito nearly blinded him in one eye in a fit of anger after he and Kana asked for permission to marry. The manga doesn't clearly show how it happened, but in the 2001 anime Akito threw a vase at Hatori's face and in the 2019 anime Akito shoved Hatori so that he crashed into a nearby mirror.
• Fatal Flaw: According to Ayame, it's his kindness as much as it is his best virtue.
• The First Cut Is the Deepest: He's honestly glad that Kana could find happiness with another man after forgetting him, but Hatori still refuses to seek his own happiness because his curse and Akito make him afraid that he will only go through another depressing break up if he ever gets a new girlfriend.
• Flower Motifs: Wisteria in the 2019 anime's fourth ending, symbolizing love and sensitivity. The fact there are many of them represents expanding consciousness.
• Foil: To Shigure. Both have been important figures in Akito's life, but Hatori holds nothing against Akito and he still takes care of Akito into adulthood regardless of what Akito has done to him. Hatori is also genuinely upset at his inability to protect the younger characters from Akito's wrath. One conversation with Shigure also indicates that despite his disapproval at how Shigure sets things in motion with regards to Akito and the rest of the family, he thinks that what Shigure is doing is better than his neutrality that keeps him from doing anything as someone that respects Akito's position as head of the family as well as her place as God.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: Even though everyone who knows the way he is can tell he's a good person, Hatori has a low opinion of himself because of the people he hurt when going his job of memory-wiping. It's so bad that he takes his personal tragedy with his ex-girlfriend Kana as a reminder that he doesn't deserve to ever become happy.
• Hiding Behind Your Bangs: His bangs completely cover his hurt left eye and symbolize his emotionally detached behavior.
• Hospital Hottie: He's a doctor and has a reputation among the Sohma clan for being cool and very handsome, though he technically doesn't work at a hospital since he's strictly the Sohma family doctor.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: After Akito flipped out over Hatori's engagement to Kana and hurt his eye, Kana blamed herself for his injury and eventually became sick from the traumatic incident. To free Kana from her guilt and pain, Hatori erased her memories. He overhears Kana has been able to find a new love after forgetting about Hatori and he congratulates her with a smile.
• Living Emotional Crutch: For Akito to a certain extent - after her father's death, Akito frequently turned to the older zodiac members for familial comfort and as an adult, Akito turns to Hatori for support on the rare occasion when Kureno isn't around (such seems to be the case in the 2001 anime, in which Kureno isn't present at all). Unlike Shigure, Hatori doesn't abandon this duty in place of a grudge, and doesn't seem to genuinely hold a grudge for what happened to Kana or his eye.
• Love Martyr: Hatori doesn't spend as much time with Akito as Kureno does, but the situation is similar in that he doesn't seek company outside of the Sohma family because caring for Akito takes up much of his time. That, and Akito didn't take it so well the first time Hatori put another woman before Akito in his life.
• Manly Tears: He cried the first time Kana told him she loved him.
• Memory-Wiping Crew: He's the one in charge of erasing the memories of anyone who discovers the Sohma family's curse. This ability is a form of hypnosis that's been passed down through his line of the family for generations.
• Must Make Amends: Twofold, both in relation to his unique ability to wipe memories:
  • He erases Kana's memory in order to spare her from the guilt she felt regarding Hatori's eye and even stays away from her to keep her from possibly recovering those memories (and the guilt) again.
  • He feels guilty regarding using his ability in Yuki and Momiji's pasts (for Yuki, erasing the memory of the first friends he ever made as a child, and for Momiji, erasing his mother's memories of Momiji at his father's request) and feels particularly protective of Yuki because he understands the mental torment that Yuki had to endure from Akito.
• Not So Above It All: Has a few of moments of not being completely mature and poised. He tricked Yuki and Kyo into taking a photo of them seemingly smiling together only to playfully give the camera to Tohru by putting on her head. He gave Shigure more injections than necessary because the latter was being annoying. He also threatened to tell Shigure's colleagues every embarrassing story he knew about him since he was four if he told Tohru the secret of his zodiac form.
• Office Romance: With Kana. They fell in love while she was working as his assistant.
• One Head Taller:
  • He's a head taller than his ex-girlfriend Kana.
  • Averted with his Second Love Mayuko, who is almost as tall as him.
• Only Sane Man: He's the serious, levelheaded foil to his best friends Shigure and Ayame.
• Pretty Boy: Similar to the other members of the Zodiac and the Sohma in general. Kakeru asks if there's something he eats to be so good looking.
• Seahorses Are Dragons: He's the Dragon of the zodiac, but he actually transforms into a seahorse. According to Shigure, this is a sign that the curse is weakening.
• Second Love: After his first relationship failed, Shigure helps him find a second chance at love with Mayuko.
• Secret Relationship: With Kana, until he told Akito about it. Akito did not respond well.
• Smoking Is Cool: He's shown to smoke whenever he and Shigure meet up in the manga and 2001 anime, but not in the 2019 anime where none of the characters smoke.
• The Stoic: He's cool and composed at all times.
• Straight Man: He acts as the punchline deliverer whenever he's hanging out Shigure and Ayame, since he's used to their quirky personalities.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: He appears cold and collected in the surface. It only takes knowing him a bit better to realize Hatori is a very gentle man at heart.
• True Companions: The Mabudachi Trio (with Shigure and Ayame), as much as it pains him to be around them...

Hatsuharu Sohma (The Ox)

Hatsuharu Sohma (The Ox)

Voiced by: Akio Suyama (teen), Akemi Okamura (child) (2001 Series), Makoto Furukawa (teen), Mariko Higashiuchi (child) (2019 Series) (JP), Justin Cook (teen, both series), Joshua Huber (child, 2001 series), Morgan Berry (child, 2019 series) (EN), Armando Guerrero (teen), Sebastián Albavera (child) (LA)

Click ^here  to see him as the Ox

The Ox of the Zodiac, who possesses something of a Split Personality. "White Haru" is a soft-spoken, spacey young man, but "Black Haru" is perverted and short-tempered. He is protective of the younger members of the Zodiac.

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• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Why Yuki lives with Shigure in the first place; after seeing how poorly he was treated by Akito, Hatsuharu literally begged Shigure to get Yuki away from her. Shigure agreed on the grounds that Haru call him "Sensei."
• Anger Born of Worry: Downplayed when he sternly lectures Kisa for running away and not telling anyone she was being bullied, a rarity for White Haru.
• Animal Motifs: Oxen are very good at carrying burdens, whether their own or other people's. Some mistake this for stupidity or recklessness, but they usually underestimate just how strong oxen are.
• Berserk Button: He does not like being called dumb, since while growing up a lot of people joked about his being "the dumb ox" of the zodiac.
• Big Brother Instinct: To Kisa. After she ran away from home, he ventured out into the rain looking for her, not caring if he got sick in the process. He also hangs around Shigure's house (where Kisa temporarily stays), making sure that she's doing alright. He even hugs her after she speaks for the first time in a while.
• Big Brother Mentor: To Hiro. He's hilariously unaware of it.
• Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl: Gender-inverted, since Rin is the Brooding Girl to his Gentle Boy (at least when he isn't in Black mode). Haru's kindness is the one thing that can distract Rin from the traumas that have hardened her so much. As Rin puts it, the only place in which she never feels any pain is Haru's side.
• Brutal Honesty: Because of Haru's mild tone of voice, people are often surprised by his tendency to segue into controversial topics, like bisexuality or his abrupt Love Confession to Rin.
• Childhood Friend Romance: He has been attracted to Rin ever since they were little kids and seeing how cruelly she was treated by her Abusive Parents made him want to protect her and stay by her side more.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Says odd, almost random things some times, and other times says things in such a way that people don't understand him.
  "A teacher said he didn't like my hair, so now I have to get my ears pierced."
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Normally, he's a Cloudcuckoolander who spaces out and acts weird. When he becomes Black Haru, he's a force to be reckoned with.
• Duality Motif: He has hair that's white with black roots, making it look white on top and black toward the bottom. Hence, his Split Personalities are known as White Haru and Black Haru.
• Depraved Bisexual: White Haru isn't, but his Split Personality Black Haru is. In Black Haru mode, he's much more openly demeaning, lecherous, has No Sense of Personal Space to anyone he shows attraction to, particularly Tohru and Yuki.

• Establishing Character Moment: A couple of girls on the street gush about how handsome and badass he looks in all that biker leather, thinking he must be a bad boy off to a club. Just when they decide to go talk to him, he puts on his biker gloves and goggles and gets dramatically onto his bike... which turns out to be a common bicycle, complete with a dinging bell. The scene establishes how hardass he looks outside, but how young and spacey he is inside.
• First Friend: To Rin. They become friends when her parents still let her play outside and after they abandoned her, Haru was the only person she could form a real bond with because of how badly traumatized she was. Eventually, Rin can also form a friendship with Tohru.
• Flower Motifs: Pine trees in the 2019 anime's fourth ending, symbolizing a hopeful future. The rose in his hand also represents love (in his case, for Rin).
• Forceful Kiss: He once steals a kiss from Rin to prove whether she really doesn't love him anymore.
• Freakiness Shame: Haru was made fun of for several things related to being the Ox, such as his white hair. When they were kids, Rin told him she liked the color of his hair. This is implied to be one of the reasons why he fell in love with her.
• Freaky Fashion, Mild Mind: Played with. At first glance he looks like a delinquent, with his tendency to dress in a punk-inspired style along with having piercings and multi-colored hair, but his hair colors are actually natural and his default personality is rather soft-spoken and somewhat odd. However, as Black Haru he has a violent and perverted personality that's much more fitting of a delinquent.
• The Gadfly: His response to being given detention for his hair colour implies that he's deliberately acting out to get attention/cause trouble.
• Hell-Bent for Leather: A look he shares with Rin.
• Heroic BSoD: Hits one when he realized how much he contributed to Rin's pain.
• In-Series Nickname: Many of the other Sohmas shorten his name to "Haru".
• It's All My Fault: As mad as he is at Akito for hurting Rin, he also admits to himself that he's also at fault for her pain. Deep down, he knew how Akito would hurt the girls who came between her and the male Zodiac members. But he wanted Rin so badly, that he pushed away those worries and pursued her anyway.
• Karma Houdini: Downplayed. Rin never blames him for ignoring the threat Akito's jealousy posed to her and pressuring her into a dangerous position.
• Likes Older Women: He's involved with Isuzu, who is two years older than him. There's also the implication that he (or at least Black Haru) is attracted to Tohru who is a year older than him.
• Living Emotional Crutch: He was Rin's emotional support after her Abusive Parents threw her away like garbage. Rin believes that if Haru haven't been there for her, she would have fallen apart. Even now, Rin can only feel safe and happy when she's with Haru.
• Mellow Fellow: Even when White Haru is intense, he is quietly and logically so.
• Moral Luck: He forcefully kisses his ex-girlfriend, because he guesses that she still loves him. He's right, but he had little justification for that guess, which prompted some readers to see him as Unintentionally Unsympathetic. The kiss itself is portrayed as romantic and quickly becomes consensual, for whatever that's worth.
• My Greatest Failure: After he learns Akito has been torturing Rin, Haru feels guilty for failing to protect the girl he loves, especially when he should have known how Akito would react to his relationship with Rin and he still didn't consider it because he didn't want to think Rin would suffer. In the manga, he eventually admits to himself that he knew he was endangering Rin by pressuring her to go out with him, but practiced Selective Obliviousness instead.
• Non-Uniform Uniform: Much like Kyo, he doesn't wear a necktie with his uniform. He also rolls up the sleeves of his shirt during the summer.
• No Sense of Direction: When they were kids, Kyo had to hold his hand and lead him to the bathroom. At his introduction he states he was 'lost in the dark heart of the urban jungle' for three days.
• The Power of Love:
  • He can never get anywhere in time, it seems, except for when he finds a wandering and hallucinatory Rin at the end of their character arcs. Presumably this was because, for once, he was actually paying attention to the world around him.
  • Even before that, when he discovers that Akito had locked Rin up in the Cat's Room and essentially just left her to starve, he's so outraged at Akito's Jerkass God behavior that he grabs her by the collar, pins her to the wall, and nearly puts his fist through her face, all while threatening to kill her for what she did to Rin. Akito is left in complete shock, since due to the curse, Haru shouldn't even be able to stand up to her, much less physically assault her.
• Rage Breaking Point: After Rin harshly broke up with him by telling him she didn't need him, Haru suppressed his anger for a long while until he couldn't hold it back anymore and his Black personality goes on a full-on rampage in the middle of class.
• Secretly Selfish: White Haru seems like a sweet Understanding Boyfriend to the Broken Bird that is Rin, but he eventually admits to himself that he pressured Rin to get involved with him in the first place even though he knew it would only put her in danger if Akito found out, and that he suspected Rin didn't get hurt from falling down stairs, but didn't bother to confirm because he didn't want to face that she got hurt because of him.
• Selective Obliviousness: He did have a hunch that Rin didn't end up so badly injured from falling from the stairs, but he deliberately didn't try to confirm whether Akito had done something to Rin because he didn't want to feel at fault for Rin being hurt. He also knew he was endangering her by romantically pursuing her and pressuring her to return his feelings, but pushed those worries away until it was too late.
• Slasher Smile: Black Haru delivers these often, specifically when he wants to fight Kyo.
• Split Personality: Normal (White) Haru is soft-spoken and relaxed. Black Haru is lecherous, violent, and very short-tempered.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: He can give the impression of being serious and detached, but he's just spacey. Haru is a really sweet guy to those he cares about.
• Unknown Rival: Hatsuharu sees Kyo as a martial arts rival that he aims to surpass one day and is constantly out to challenge him whether Kyo likes it or not. Kyo doesn't reciprocate the gesture at all, though he does indulge Haru whenever he's up for a match.
• Unstoppable Rage:
  • Black Haru can express himself as a teasing, provocative bastard most of the time, but the first moment he genuinely snaps out of rage rather than just petty irritation makes it clear that things can become dangerous if you're in a room with him when he does. At one point, he destroys his classroom when he can't handle the frustration that Rin dumped him without explaining why (unbeknownst to him, for his own safety, since Akito found out they were dating).
  • Averted when he confronts Akito over what happened to Rin. He's pretty close to wrecking Akito until Kureno manages to tell him where Rin is, which is the moment he turns around and seeks Rin out.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Black Haru isn't just Played for Laughs. He called out Rin's parents when they put her in the hospital and abandoned her, and later calls out Akito for what she did to Rin.
• Would Hit a Girl: Played With. Yes, he furiously manhandles Akito and just barely stops himself from punching her out, but at the time, he didn't know Akito was a woman Raised as the Opposite Gender.
• Younger Than They Look: He looks like he's in college, but he's actually 15 when first introduced.

Ayame Sohma (The Snake)

Ayame Sohma (The Snake)

Voiced by: Takehito Koyasu (Drama CD), Mitsuru Miyamoto (2001 Series), Takahiro Sakurai (2019 Series), Natsumi Fujiwara (young, 2019 series) (JP), Christopher Sabat (adult, both series), Ciarán Strange (young, 2019 series) (EN), Víctor Ugarte (LA)

Click ^here  to see him as the Snake

The Snake of the Zodiac, and older brother to Yuki. Gregarious, flirtatious, flamboyant, and self-centered, Ayame runs a shop that sells custom-made costumes. He has a complicated relationship with his younger brother, and is good friends with Shigure and Hatori.

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• Accidental Pervert: He's first introduced in snake form, slithering up Tohru's dress to warm up. Yuki is so disgusted and outraged that he drags Ayame back to Shigure and demands they skin and cook him for dinner.
• Accomplice by Inaction: Ayame was possibly the only one in the family who didn't directly abuse Yuki in his childhood, but he never did anything to stop his parents and Akito from tormenting his little brother to the point of trauma and he ignored Yuki's pleas of help. Yuki still holds a grudge against Ayame for his inaction, and it's one of Ayame's greatest regrets in life.
• Affectionate Nickname: Shigure calls him "Aaya".
• Aloof Big Brother: He used to be rather aloof towards Yuki. By the time the series starts, he's gotten over it, but unfortunately his over-the-top behavior tends to annoy Yuki more than anything.
• Ambiguously Bi: He's currently dating his (female) shop assistant, Mine and the sequel series Another reveals that they got married and have two children. However, he tends to be very campy in his behavior and he and Shigure hit on each other with alarming regularity, though they treat it more as an inside joke between themselves than anything. There was also that time in high school when he said that all male students controlling their sexual urges could direct all their lust to him and even went so far as to call himself an Uke, though it was obviously Played for Laughs.
• Annoying Younger Sibling: Inverted since he's the older brother, but he fits perfectly otherwise. His loud and flamboyant behavior as well as his clumsy attempts to bond with Yuki only serve to annoy and embarrass his brother.
• The Atoner: Feels guilty for his treatment of Yuki when they were kids, and for how he treated a girl who loved him when he was in school.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Ayame is campy and always joking, and seems like he can't take anything seriously...until his and Yuki's mother is trying to intimidate him and Yuki into bending to her whims. He becomes very serious, his voice lowers, and he seems genuinely scary for a few moments.
• Big Brother Instinct: Eventually, he tries to become more protective towards Yuki in an attempt to make up for his negligence of his little brother during their younger days. The best example is when he, for the first time, stands up to their controlling mother to defend Yuki. This is enough for Yuki to acknowledge that Ayame is a dependable older brother now, unlike the past.
• Big Damn Heroes: To Yuki during a parent/teacher conference. Yuki's emotionally abusive mother overrides his wishes for his future, coldly shuts down his objections to her steamrolling him, and starts to make him feel like a helpless child at her mercy again. Then Ayame busts in with his usual pomp and regalia, carelessly overrides his mother's objections to him being there, and coolly shuts her down when she tries to exert control over Yuki again. This causes her to Rage Quit and leave in a huff. It's also the first time Yuki is genuinely happy that Ayame is in his life.
• Calling the Old Man Out: He stands up to his and Yuki's mother during a parent/teacher conference, telling her off for disregarding Yuki's wishes and being such a Control Freak until she finally Rage Quits and storms out of the room.
• Chivalrous Pervert: He always makes perverted comments towards Tohru, which always make Yuki and Kyo mad. However, he never actually acts on these comments and is in a happily committed relationship with his assistant Mine.
• Cool Uncle: Yuki's son Mutsuki calls Ayame the "most terrific of uncles". Mutsuki also puts own clothes Ayame designs for him.
• Determinator: He will mend bridges and bond with Yuki, no matter how many times the kid loses his temper with him and throws him out.
• Dude Looks Like a Lady: It's the long hair and his effeminate behavior.
• Eccentric Fashion Designer: He runs a shop that sells custom-made "romantic costumes" such as Elegant Gothic Lolita dresses and Meido outfits. According to his assistant Mine, he sews most of the costumes himself. His personality is also one of the most colorful and bombastic among the cast.
• Flower Motifs: Irises in the 2019 anime's fourth ending, which have the ability to purify evil (like in Yuki's life) and protecting oneself. It also alludes to his name, which is Japanese for "iris".
• Gender-Blender Name: "Ayame" is usually a girl's name.
• Hidden Depths: For all his Large Ham, It's All About Me tendencies, Ayame nevertheless has the wherewithal to keep his relationship with Mine a secret and to have her stay well out of Akito's way.
• Homoerotic Subtext: Played for Laughs between him and Shigure as a long-running joke between them.
• It's All About Me: Played for Laughs a lot, but it's also a genuine character flaw that has caused him to be callous to Yuki and others. When he finds out a girl he had been cluelessly cruel to in high-school is in town, he's all in a tizzy to comfort her, thinking she must have been broken and mooning over him all these years. Then he finds out she'd simply moved on and is Happily Married.
• Large Ham: It's referred to as "steamrolling people with his personality."
• Long-Haired Pretty Boy: He's as beautiful and feminine-looking as his little brother Yuki, with long white hair and fine features. His long hair once got him into trouble back in high school when a teacher ordered him to cut it, but Ayame made up an excuse for why he had to have long hair that was so ridiculous and long-winded that the teacher ended up relenting.
• Lust Object: Played for Laughs. When he was Student Council President, his proposed solution for the students controlling their sexual urges was to have them direct all their lust to him who is more than happy to satisfy the "needs" of both genders.
• Mundane Made Awesome: Ayame eats his soba, with great confidence.
• My Greatest Failure: While it took years to sink in, in the long run the day he callously brushed Yuki away when he literally reached out to him for help (while Yuki was being severely emotionally abused by Akito with their mother's consent) is not something he can forgive himself for. He also feels terrible for indifferently shrugging off the romantic confession of a girl he went to high school with.
• Mystical White Hair: As part of the curse, Ayame has white hair like the skin of his snake form.
• The Nicknamer: Gives nicknames to nearly all his friends, whether they're okay with it or not.
• No Sense of Personal Space: Justified when he's in snake form, as he's extremely susceptible to the cold and needs to rely on another person's body heat. Not that this explains him from getting into bed with Kyo (fully clothed) in the middle of the night and snuggling close.
• Official Couple: He and Mine are in a very happy relationship, even though it isn't clear whether or not Mine knows about the Zodiac curse. Another reveals that they married and now have two children, Hibika and Chizuru.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Normally he's flamboyant, loud, and merry, but he has his moments of quiet intensity. Consistently he is more sombre in scenes where he is alone with Mine.
• Shipper on Deck:
  • Seems to support Yuki/Tohru and Kyo/Kagura judging by how he wants to embroider "I live for Kagura" on Kyo's clothing and "I live for Yuki" on Tohru's clothing.
  • Later when Kakeru lets Ayame know about Yuki and Machi's growing relationship, he immediately supports them together showing that Ayame wholeheartedly hopes Yuki is with someone he loves and makes him happy.
  • He was also a strong supporter of Hatori's relationship with Kana, and is surprisingly upset that Hatori didn't at least go to her wedding.
• Shown Their Work: Reptiles like snakes are cold-blooded, and thus, get easily influenced by the temperature of their surroundings. It explains why Ayame transforms so easily during the cold weather.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: He's loud, bombastic and brimming with self-confidence while Yuki is more reserved and struggles with self-esteem issues. In Ayame's own words, they each have qualities the other lacks.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: Ayame's eyes are yellow, which is a visual indicator that he is the Snake of the Zodiac.
• Strong Family Resemblance: Ayame is basically Yuki if he had longer, lighter hair.
• True Companions: The Mabudachi Trio (with Shigure and Hatori)
• Uke: A self-proclaimed one. His effeminate appearance and flamboyant personality support this.
• The Un-Favourite: Played With. His and Yuki's mother is emotionally abusive to both of them, but she at least thinks Yuki has a future as the Rat and a leader in the Sohma clan. As for Ayame, she sees no worth in him as a human being whatsoever. Ironically, this works on Ayame's favor because he can enjoy more freedom than Yuki.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Not so much because he'll do anything to get what he wants, it's that he'll do what he wants - with all sorts of flowers, frill, and flair - that he thinks will help convey his point the best (his 'brotherly love' for Yuki being the best example).
• What the Hell, Hero?: He calls out Hatori for giving up on Kana. He's wrong in one respect (the lesson she taught him never faded), but you still can't deny he had a point.
  Ayame: I cannot accept that. Yes, I'm biased in your favor, but that doesn't change how wrong all of this is. It's not fair to you. Kana has it easy. She's forgotten everything and found her chance at happiness. And you're stuck shouldering the burden of those memories all alone. I can't help but feel that she's left you behind with nothing!
• You Are Not Alone: In a rare serious moment between the brothers, Ayame reminds Yuki that he doesn't have to deal with his problems alone — even if his parents think he's just a tool to be used, he at least has his friends to support him.

Kisa Sohma (The Tiger)

Kisa Sohma (The Tiger)

Voiced by: Kaori Nazuka (2001 Series), Reina Ueda (2019 Series) (JP), Kate Bristol (EN), Sofía Roig (LA)

Click ^Here  to see her as the Tiger

The Tiger of the Zodiac. Kisa is very shy, sensitive, and withdrawn, and suffers school bullying as a result of her curse. After Tohru helps her through it, she starts looking up to her as a big sister figure.

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• Affectionate Nickname: Shigure and Hiro's mother Satsuki both call her "Sacchan".
• Beware the Nice Ones: When she's first introduced in tiger form, she willingly bites Tohru twice and Haru once. It's not quite played for laughs, since she'd likely developed trust issues after being bullied at school.
• Big Sister Worship: She adores Tohru and refers to her as "Onee-chan" ("Sissy" in the English dub).
• Break the Cutie: Courtesy of her classmates bullying her for her unusual hair and eye colors, laughing whenever she tried to speak and then ultimately ignoring her. She was also badly beaten by Akito after Hiro confessed that he loved her.
• Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl: Gentle Girl to Hiro's Brooding Boy. He feels he can't ever help Kisa when it matters and ends up taking out his frustrations on Tohru. Kisa regulates his grumpy and bratty behavior so he doesn't mistreat others.
• Bullied into Depression: In her introduction, Kisa was so badly hurt by the bullying from her classmates that she stopped going to school, didn't want to go home with her stressed mother, and refused to speak to anyone for several days. She only recovers thanks to Tohru taking care of her and empathizing with Kisa's situation. Yuki also empathizes with her due to his own experiences with bullying, so both resolve to be better.
• Bully Magnet: Her classmates bully her for her unusual hair and eye colors, which are a side effect of being the Tiger of the Zodiac.
• Cassandra Truth: According to Haru, Kisa tried to tell her classmates that her hair and eye colors were natural, but none of them believed her and they just bullied her even more.
• Curtains Match the Window: She has golden hair and eyes. Since neither of these hair or eye colors are viewed as normal for a Japanese girl in this story, though, she ends up being bullied for it.
• Cute Kitten: Her curse has her turn into an adorable tiger cub, and she's already cute as a button as a human girl. When Tohru first meets Kisa in her tiger form, she mistakes Kisa for a cat while proclaiming how cute she is.
• Elective Mute: When she's first introduced, she refuses to speak since her classmates bullied her by laughing whenever she tried to say anything. After Tohru's kindness encourages her to come out of her shell, she starts talking more often.
• Flower Motifs: The Japanese plum blossom in the 2019 anime's fourth ending, symbolizing the end of a cold winter and the beginning of a warm spring.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: One of the most innocent characters in the series, and she has tawny gold hair. Unfortunately, her golden hair is part of what causes her to be bullied, since her classmates don't believe that it's natural.
• Hero Worship: She adores Tohru thanks to Tohru's kindness and encouragement helping her face her problems with bullying, and looks up to her as an older sister figure (even calling her "Onee-chan", or "big sister").
• Morality Chain: Hiro only starts to hold back on his bullying of Tohru because Kisa gets upset with him for treating her older sister figure like that.
• Opposites Attract: With Hiro. She's sweet and considerate, while he's grumpy and insensitive.
• Puppy Love: She and Hiro are the youngest Zodiac members and they obviously like each other as more than friends.
• The Runaway: When she's first introduced, she's run away from home due to being bullied at school and being too ashamed to tell her mother about it, with Hatsuharu having found her in her tiger form. After staying at Shigure's house for a few days, she goes back to live with her mother.
• Shrinking Violet: Played for Drama. Being a victim of bullying at school and physical abuse from Akito caused Kisa to become withdrawn and her self-esteem was seriously damaged, to the point that she's stopped speaking altogether when she's first introduced. She only opens up because of Tohru boosting her confidence.
• Skipping School: As a result of being bullied, she briefly stopped going to school. Because of Tohru's emotional support, Kisa starts attending class again.
• Sprouting Ears: Occasionally sprouts tiger ears and a tail in relation to her curse.
• Stock Shoujo Bullying Tactics: A victim of the "ignoring" one. Her classmates would eventually just laugh whenever she tried to say anything, which leads to her refusing to speak at all out of shame.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: She has golden eyes as a side effect of the Sohma family curse. Her unusual eye color (along with having naturally golden hair to match) is what leads her to be bullied by her classmates.

Hiro Sohma (The Sheep)

Hiro Sohma (The Sheep)

Voiced by: Yuriko Fuchizaki (2001 Series), Yo Taichi (2019 Series) (JP), Aaron Dismuke (2001 series), Luci Christian (2019 series) (EN), Jared Mendoza (LA)

Click ^Here  to see him as the Sheep

The Sheep of the Zodiac, and the youngest of the cursed Sohmas. Hiro was Kisa's best friend in elementary school, but he withdrew from her after Akito reacted negatively to hearing that Hiro loved her. Hiro is prickly and easily riled up, and takes a bit longer to warm up to Tohru than everyone else does.

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• Adaptational Early Appearance: Both anime adaptations move his introduction chapter a bit earlier.
• Adorably Precocious Child: He's the youngest of the cursed Sohmas and is very smart for his age. While he tries to be mature, he doesn't always succeed at it, though he's still more responsible than his scatterbrained mother Satsuki.
• Big Brother Instinct: Invoked after the birth of his younger sister, Hinata, who he adores. When his curse breaks, the first thing Hiro does is hold Hinata.
• Bratty Half-Pint: During his introduction, Hiro acts like a self-important kid who badmouths everyone around him and mistreats Tohru for petty reasons, like Tohru getting along with his crush. His behavior does improve later on.
• Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl: Brooding Boy to Kisa's Gentle Girl. Hiro is very rude to those around him, especially Tohru, because he feels guilty about Kisa getting beaten badly by Akito. The sweet Kisa reminds Hiro to be more thoughtful about people's feelings.
• Bystander Syndrome: He witnessed how Akito threw Rin off the second story of a building from a window, but he was too paralyzed by fear to do anything.
• Collateral Angst: Akito beats poor Kisa so badly that Kisa ends up in the hospital for weeks. In the aftermath, Hiro is the only one angsting about Kisa being hurt, blaming himself for not being able to protect her from Akito. Meanwhile, Kisa's feelings about being physically assaulted are never addressed and instead, she's much more depressed about being bullied at school.
• Crazy Jealous Guy: He lashes out against Tohru for her close friendship with Kisa because she comforted her when he couldn't. He realizes this was a dumb move when Kisa warns him to back off.
• Defrosting Ice King: One of the few people not immediately charmed by Tohru, he at first actively baits her. While he never truly warms up to Tohru in the same way the other cursed Sohmas do, he does eventually come to respect her.
• Family Theme Naming: His name contains the kanji for "light", while his baby sister Hinata's name means "towards the sun". This was invoked by their mother, who wanted her children to have "sunny" names.
• Flower Motifs: Bush clovers in the 2019 anime's fourth ending, symbolizing melancholy and Unrequited Love.
• Hypocrite: "I can't stand people who complain all the time." He also points out that Tohru's a mama's girl when it turns out he's just as fond of his own mom.
• I Got Bigger: He has a noticeable growth spurt towards the end of the story, going from being around the same height as Kisa to almost a head taller than her.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: He acts like he's above everyone else because he feels horrible about not being able to help Kisa and Rin when they needed help the most.
• Innocently Insensitive: While his putdowns of Tohru do make sense, his question during the beach vacation about why she always talks about her mother but never mentions her father cuts Tohru deep because Katsuya's untimely death when she was a toddler nearly drove Kyoko to suicide. Kisa and Kyo notice this when Tohru's trying to keep up the facade that it didn't hurt her as bad as it seemed, and they both tell Hiro off for it.
• It's Not You, It's My Enemies: Kisa thought that Hiro suddenly grew to hate her because he began to avoid her for no apparent reason. Turns out Hiro stopped talking to Kisa because he told Akito he has a crush on Kisa, which caused Akito to beat Kisa so badly that Kisa ended up in the hospital. Hiro fears staying close to Kisa will draw Akito's wrath to her again.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Hiro is a good boy, but also very rude and smart-mouthed. His protectiveness of Kisa is the greatest proof that his heart is in the right place.
• Jerkass Has a Point: While he can be rather rude towards Tohru, a lot of his putdowns about Tohru's weaknesses (like her being an Extreme Doormat and being too attached to her mother) do have some truth to them, especially when it's made clear that Tohru has several issues that she's hiding beneath her positive exterior.
• Jerkass to One: Hiro isn't the politest fellow to anyone who isn't Kisa, but Tohru gets by far the worst side of him since he bullies her and talks down to her out of jealousy for how close she and Kisa are.
• Keeping Secrets Sucks: He's the only one that knows the reason Rin was hospitalized is because Akito pushed Rin out of a window and is forced to keep it a secret by Akito and Rin. The reveal of this secret to Haru is played for as much drama as you can expect - the reason why he kept it a secret at all is because he knows exactly what Akito does to members of the zodiac who aren't utterly devoted to Akito, and he knows that Rin was trying to protect Haru from getting hurt as well.
• Love Confessor: Played for Drama. All his problems started when he personally went to Akito to announce that he has a crush on Kisa. Akito reacted as expected and Kisa ended up hospitalized for two weeks.
• Momma's Boy: Even if he can be exasperated with his mother's antics, he is very fond of her.
• Mouthy Kid: He's very prone to insulting people and delivering snarky remarks. However, despite how abrasive he can be, his insults do have some truth behind them.
• My Greatest Failure: He thinks he failed to protect Kisa from Akito's fury and that's why she was hurt. Tohru gives him a pep talk that motivates him to become a man who can be Kisa's prince.
• Opposites Attract: With Kisa. He's grumpy and insensitive, while she's sweet and considerate.
• Pet the Dog: His real love and concern for Kisa and Rin shows his Hidden Heart of Gold more.
• Puppy Love: Hiro has a crush on Kisa, who is the youngest Zodiac member next to him. He asked Akito permission to date Kisa, but that obviously didn't turn out well.
• The Resenter: The reason why he's so mean towards Tohru at first is because Tohru was the one who helped Kisa feel better about being bullied at her school when he was too afraid of Akito to even get close to Kisa when she needed him.
• Secret-Keeper: He knows Rin wasn't hospitalized because of an accident; Hiro saw Akito pushing Rin off an upper floor window. Akito makes him stay silent about it for most of the series and it weighs heavily on him. Eventually, he breaks down in tears when he can't hold back anymore and explains the truth to Haru.
• Straight Man: Becomes this a few times in the Beach arc after he decides to cool his hostility towards Tohru because of how spacey she can be, and often times is this to Kisa.
• Sweet Sheep: Downplayed; he's the Sheep of the Zodiac and his sheep form is pretty cute, but personality-wise he's a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, being very prickly and smart-mouthed towards most people but still showing a softer side to those he does care about.
• Too Clever by Half: Very smart for his age and knows it. This usually doesn't keep his mouth from getting him in trouble or give him the emotional maturity to handle difficult situations.
• Took a Level in Kindness: While he remains sarcastic and blunt throughout the series, he becomes noticeably nicer as time goes on and he grows up a little, especially once his little sister arrives.
• Tsundere:
  • Justified in his crush on Kisa. First, as much as he likes Kisa, Hiro is still a smart-mouthed kid and he has a hard time expressing his feelings properly. Second, Akito beat Kisa to a pulp just because Hiro admitted he has a crush on Kisa, which left Hiro hesitant of openly showing affection for Kisa out of fear of how Akito will react.
  • Eventually acts this way to a degree with Tohru as well; while Hiro is never as effusively affectionate toward Tohru as most of the other cursed Sohmas, he does show genuine concern for her and her well-being.
• Tsurime Eyes: His sharp eyes suit perfectly his arrogant Tsundere attitude.
• Wacky Parent, Serious Child: The Serious Child to his mother Satsuki's Wacky Parent. Satsuki is a dangerous mix of Cute Clumsy Girl and The Ditz, which sometimes makes him panic.

Ritsu Sohma (The Monkey)

Ritsu Sohma (The Monkey)

Voiced by: Mina Tominaga (2001 Series), Kengo Kawanishi (2019 Series) (JP), Mike McFarland (adult, both series), Sarah Hussey (child, 2001 series), Katelyn Barr (child, 2019 series)(EN), Luis Leonardo Suárez (LA)

Click ^Here  to see him as the Monkey

The Monkey of the Zodiac, a beautiful but near-hysterical young man. Ritsu prefers dressing in women's clothing.

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• Adaptation Dye-Job: His hair is a peach color in the manga illustrations, but light brown in both 2001 and 2019 anime. Also, his kimono is green in the manga and 2019 reboot, while the first anime made it violet.
• Adaptational Early Appearance: The two anime series moved his introduction to happen a bit earlier than in the manga.
• Affectionate Nickname: Most of the other Sohmas call him "Ricchan". This nickname is used for him more often than his real name, to the point that Tohru refers to him as "Ricchan-san" since that was how he was introduced to her.
• Apologises a Lot: He apologizes constantly for anything he thinks he did wrong, due to his many insecurities. Taken to an extreme in the manga and 2001 anime when he apologizes for eating breakfast, and he'll sometimes even apologize simply for being born.
• Attractive Bent-Gender: He looks way too convincing when dressed like a woman.
• Birds of a Feather: He starts dating Mitsuru, who also screams and freaks out over trivial things and lacks self-confidence because of it. They bond over their shared status as Nervous Wrecks.
• Camp Straight: He dresses and acts like a demure woman, yet he finds himself a girlfriend in Shigure's editor.
• Dude Looks Like a Lady: His long hair, crossdressing habits and feminine demeanor lead both Tohru and Mitsuru to mistake him for a woman when they first meet him.
• Early-Bird Cameo: In the manga, he didn't first show up until volume 8 which came out in January 2002, after the first anime ended. Despite this, he appears in the first anime in December 2001, a month before his manga debut.
• Effeminate Voice: He's a young man who dresses like a woman because it makes him feel less anxious. The first anime adaptation had a woman voice him in Japanese. This is downplayed in the 2019 reboot where he's voiced by a man doing a high-pitched voice, and in the dub of both series where Mike McFarland squeaks out Ritsu's hammy apologies.
• Flower Motifs: Rice in the 2019 anime's fourth ending, representing an offering in a time of celebration.
• Gender-Blender Name: Ritsu is a unisex name in Japan, which is part of why no one suspects he's a guy when he crossdresses.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: The root of his problems. It was played for laughs initially, but then he explained it to Tohru that he believed he had no redeeming qualities, because his parents kept apologizing for him...poor guy.
• Hero-Worshipper: Hopes to one day be as confident as Ayame. At least the poor sucker has a goal...
• Hysterical Woman: Rare Male Example. Ritsu goes into a major Freak Out whenever he makes a little mistake or displeases people. Just trying to hold a casual conversation makes him overly anxious and slip into apologizing over nothing.
• Important Haircut: In the final chapter of the manga and the final episode of the 2019 anime, now that the curse is broken, Ritsu has cut his hair short.
• Innocently Insensitive: He tells Yuki that he's starting to look more like his brother, but Yuki views this more as an insult than a compliment. He also wrongly assumes that Kyo is getting along better with Yuki since they started living together, and this only pisses off both Kyo and Yuki.
• Interrupted Suicide: In his introduction, he almost jumps off the roof of Shigure's house after he blames himself for Tohru hurting her hand when he transformed (in the 2019 reboot he accidentally ruins a few pages of Shigure's story draft and causes his editor Mitsuru to faint from the shock). Thankfully, Tohru manages to convince him to not jump.
• In Touch with His Feminine Side: He's very sensitive, wears female clothes, and has long brown hair.
• It Runs in the Family: His hysteria is inherited from his mother.
• Kimono Is Traditional: Ritsu is almost always seen in a kimono, which is fitting since his mother runs a traditional hot spring resort and always wears kimono herself.
• Long-Haired Pretty Boy: He's a very beautiful man with straight hair falling down his back and a face so feminine that no one would think he's a guy in girl's clothes until they're told. He later cuts his hair short by the end of the story.
• No Social Skills: Due to being a Nervous Wreck who feels the need to constantly apologize for everything he does, he's not the best at interacting with people. When he visits Shigure's house, he decides to bring books about fruit as gifts since he originally wanted to bring actual fruit but didn't know what kinds of fruit Shigure and the others liked. He tries to improve himself by complimenting Yuki and Kyo instead of apologizing to them, but he ends up accidentally insulting them instead.
• Nervous Wreck: He's constantly on the verge of having a mental breakdown. Unlike the other Sohmas, this is actually played more for laughs than anything.
• No Indoor Voice: Because he apologizes that loudly and repeatedly. The Title Card for episode 19 of the 2019 anime (entitled "I'm Sorry!", of course) has Ritsu shrieking the title at the top of his lungs.
• Out of Focus: Out of the Zodiac members, Ritsu gets by far the least character focus and development. The number of chapters in which he appears, including his introduction, can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
• Prone to Tears: Nearly anything can set off his tears and frantic apologies.
• Shrinking Violet: He's timid and plagued with countless insecurities.
• Significant Wardrobe Shift: At the end of the series, with the curse having been broken, Ritsu doesn't dress like a girl anymore and has started to wear suits.
• Unsettling Gender-Reveal: Tohru was sure Ritsu was a woman until she bumped into Ritsu, causing him to transform. It took Tohru a minute to understand what that meant.
• Vocal Dissonance: The 2019 anime got a male seiyuu for him, which sort of gives away that he's a Wholesome Crossdresser before the Gender Reveal. This was averted in the first anime where Ritsu was voiced by a woman to match his feminine appearance.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: He's worn girl's clothes ever since he was a kid because it makes him feel more at ease. This is acknowledged as a bit of a problem because he will soon have to get a job and his crossdressing hobby won't be seen as acceptable for that.

Isuzu "Rin" Sohma (The Horse)

Isuzu "Rin" Sohma (The Horse)

Voiced by: Houko Kuwashima (The Last Story Voice Comic), Aki Toyosaki (2019 Series) (JP), Brina Palencia (EN), Analiz Sánchez (LA)

Click ^Here  to see her as the Horse

The Horse of the Zodiac. Cold, stubborn, and fiercely independent, Rin is very closed-off as a result of her abusive and traumatic past. She hates how easily the rest of the Sohma family submits themselves to Akito (and has several disastrous run-ins with Akito herself), which makes her determined to find a way to break the curse.

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• Aloof Ally: She also wants to break the curse like Tohru and is trying to watch out for her and Haru so Akito doesn't hurt them. However, Rin's stubborn refusal to accept help from others to not "burden" them makes her push people away, including anyone who shares her goal.
• Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: She's tall, has hip-length black hair (at least until Akito cuts off most of her hair out of spite) and a very cold personality that resulted from severe trauma, courtesy of her Abusive Parents and Akito.
• Anger Born of Worry: Often acts irritable with Tohru because she worries about her.
• Armor-Piercing Question:
  • She unintentionally made one to her parents when she was a little girl. Since her parents seemed so perfect all the time, Rin one day asked them if they really were always happy and bad things never happened for them. This made her parents snap because they had been forcing themselves to pretend they loved Rin. From that day on, her parents took their frustration out on her until Haru and Kazuma found out they were abusing her.
  • She delivers one to Tohru after their friendship starts, asking what she cherishes most. Early in the series, Tohru would have immediately said her mother, but is now unable to give an answer.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: She hopes that Tohru will find a lover who can help her heal. Tohru does, but it prompts her to move away and see Rin less often, because she is building a household of her own.
  Rin: I think they should break up.
• Berserk Button: As a byproduct of her troubled past and Parental Abandonment, Rin hates doctors and escapes every time she goes to the hospital, on top of being increasingly frustrated when everyone she meets is more concerned with taking her to a doctor than helping her break the curse. In their first meeting, when Tohru suggested they bring Hatori to look her over, Rin's immediate response was to, while still in horse form, try to kick Tohru in the face.
• Birds of a Feather: She and Haru understand each other's volatility.
• Blemished Beauty: Rin is the most beautiful woman in the series, even though she has a large scar on her back because Akito pushed her out of a window and almost killed her.
• Boyish Short Hair: Akito gives her a Traumatic Haircut out of spite, making her hair much shorter and more uneven. Ironically, this new haircut actually suits her jaded, sardonic personality more than her Hime Cut did.
• Break His Heart to Save Him: She dumps Haru by saying that she was "tired" of him. The real reason was Akito had found out they were in a Secret Relationship and Rin didn't want Haru to suffer from Akito's wrath.
• Broken Bird: Her Abusive Parents damaged her so badly that she finds it incredibly difficult to open up and bond with people. She's easily one of, if not the most traumatized and emotionally damaged of the cursed Sohmas.
• Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl: Gender-inverted, since Rin is the Brooding Girl to Haru's Gentle Boy. Rin has a buttload of emotional baggage after being mercilessly abused by her parents and then Akito. Haru treating her so kindly is the only thing that gives her some peace of mind.
• Brutal Honesty: Zig-zagged. Rin isn't the kind of person to mince her words most of the time. However, she admits during a monologue that when she says things that are actually hurtful, she doesn't really mean it; rather, she says those things to push people away so they won't get hurt by associating with her.
• Cathartic Crying: After Akito imprisoned her in the Cat's Room for weeks, Rin can't hold back her tears in front of Haru anymore as she feels helpless for being unable to free him from the curse and Akito. Haru then takes her home with him because being with Rin is all he needs to be happy, finally freeing Rin from her self-imposed burden of breaking the curse by herself.
• Childhood Friend Romance: She and Haru played a lot in their early childhood, although they stopped seeing each other after Rin's parents started abusing her. After Rin was abandoned by her parents and taken into custody by Kagura's family, Haru was the only person she opened up to. When they entered their teenage years, they started dating. Because of Akito, Rin broke up with Haru, but they still love each other. By the end of the series, they go back together. In the sequel, they're married and have two children.
• Chronic Self-Deprecation: She believes she's useless without Haru, which is at odds with her attempts to martyr herself when he isn't around. At the end of the manga, she also feels like garbage for being the only one who hasn't moved on from resenting Akito and needs Haru to reassure her she isn't bad for it.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: She is pissed when she hears Haru calling Yuki his "first love".
• Clothing Damage: Since her animal form is the biggest out of the Zodiac, Rin's clothes get torn up when she transforms and needs Tohru to give her some of her clothes so Rin doesn't go around naked.
• Covert Pervert: Haru is usually shirtless in her inner monologue, and when they kiss, her hands go right to his chest.
• Cruel to Be Kind: Rin acts so harsh towards kindhearted people because she's afraid they'll get hurt if they get too close to her due to the curse and Akito.
• Cry into Chest: As she keeps failing to find a way to break the Zodiac curse, Rin can't hold back her tears anymore and cries her heart out while burying her face into Tohru's chest.
• Cynicism Catalyst: All her innocence and good faith were lost when her parents revealed they had pretended to love her to ignore how disgusted they were that their daughter was possessed by the Horse.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Rin's early childhood was a happy one until the day she questioned if her parents were really as angelic as they pretended to be. After that, they turned into cruel Abusive Parents who deeply scarred Rin both physically and emotionally. Her parents' abuse was eventually discovered by Haru and Kagura's family took her in, but Rin is so badly damaged that she never opens up to anyone but Haru and eventually Tohru.
• Deadpan Snarker: Because of her cynical nature and tendency towards Brutal Honesty, she'll sometimes get some very snarky lines, especially when talking to the more optimistic Tohru.
  Rin: How do you know about Haru and me?! Who was it? Who told you?
  Tohru: I-I couldn't say...[...] Um...well...it's...oh! It must be a woman's intuition!
  Rin: I doubt that's a gift you've been endowed with.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Rin is possibly the most hostile and slowest out of the Zodiac to warm up to Tohru. During their first meeting, Rin was the only Zodiac who really tried to attack and seriously hurt Tohru because the latter simply suggested calling Hatori out of concern for Rin. However, Tohru's kindness does eventually start defrosting her, and Tohru becomes the only person she's willing to open up to besides Haru.
• Delicate and Sickly: Her traumatic past causes her health problems more than once. Specifically, she has stomach ulcerae and often is bed-ridden due to them.
• Destination Defenestration: When Akito confronts her in regards to her and Haru, Rin says she's the one who started their relationship. An enraged Akito throws her out the second floor window. She survives, but is seriously injured.
• Determinator: She won't rest until the Zodiac curse is broken and Haru is finally free from Akito's clutches.
  • Upon the possibility of alerting the other Zodiac to her presence at the beach villa, Rin's so determined to continue her search that she's able to force her transformation back into her human form (despite being unwell) in order to demand Yuki and Tohru not tell anyone about her being there.
• Doctor's Orders: It is a source of immense frustration to Rin that everyone she meets cares more about getting her back into the hospital then her crusade.
• Eccentric Artist: She's a very talented artist, but her mental health isn't the best due to her PTSD episodes causing her to hallucinate and act erratically at her most unstable moments.
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: The contrast between her long jet-black hair and pure white skin befits her somber personality and taste for gothic fashion.
• Even the Girls Want Her: After Tohru sees her transform back from her horse form to her human form (which, like all the Zodiac members' transformations, doesn't include her clothing), she thinks to herself how Rin is what they call a "voluptuous beauty" while blushing.
• The Fashionista: She has the most stylish fashion sense out of any woman in the series. According to the author, fashion is one of Rin's few hobbies.
• Fatal Flaw: Her stubbornness, emotional distance, and insistence on trying to find a way to break the curse herself causes far more problems than it solves. All she succeeds in doing is getting herself manipulated by Ren and locked in the Cat's Room for weeks on end, which goes unnoticed by everyone else because of Rin's own attitude; Kureno only found out and saved her because he saw one of the maids taking food to the Cat's Room.
• Find the Cure!: Out of all the Zodiac members, Rin is the only one who actively tries to find a way to break the curse.
• Flower Motifs: Peonies in the 2019 anime's fourth ending, symbolizing great rewards by taking great risks. They are also used as tattoos to represent a devil-may-care attitude.
• Foil: To Shigure, although she never realizes it. Both of them are obsessed with breaking the curse—not for themselves, but for the ones they love—and hide that under a veneer of selfishness. They diverge in their methods for breaking the curse; Rin is desperately looking for the answer with no real leads and refuses to accept anyone's help because she doesn't want to rely on others and potentially get them hurt. Shigure, while not necessarily cooperative with regards to figuring out the curse, deliberately manipulates others in order to achieve his endgoal of wanting Akito to himself, which happens to coincide with the curse breaking at the conclusion of the manga.
• The Four Loves: She is uncomfortable with storge, because her early experiences with family kind of tainted it for her. Hence her initial anxiety around Tohru, who induces storge feelings in her and in most of the Zodiac.
• Freak Out: She's prone to panic attacks as part of her PTSD symptoms from all the damage her Abusive Parents did to her. At one point, she randomly sees Tohru as her mother, causing Rin to desperately scream and cry out in terror.
• Friendless Background: She never made many friends due to her parents' abuse, her health problems putting her in and out of the hospital, and her own distant personality. The only people she really bonds with are Hatsuharu, and later Tohru.
• Girlish Pigtails: When Rin decides to tie her hair into pigtails one day, Tohru thinks she looks quite adorable as that girly hairstyle is a big contrast to Rin's usual "aloof beauty" image.
• Godiva Hair: When she turns back to her human form in front of Tohru and Yuki, Rin's long hair conveniently covers her breasts.
• Goth: Not as blatantly as Hanajima, but Rin has notable elements of the Gloomy Goth stereotype. She's an Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette who habitually wears dark casual clothes with heavy gothic fashion influence. Her attitude is very sardonic and moody because of a terrible childhood that left her with traumas she might never fully get over.
• Goths Have It Hard: Rin usually dresses in dark gothic fashion, which is a giveaway of what a tormented character she is. Out of all the Zodiacs, Rin is possibly the one most damaged and suffers from severe PTSD because of the child abuse her Abusive Parents subjected her to in the past.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Played for laughs; she glares at Yuki while Haru is talking to him in the epilogue.
• Guilt Complex: Rin blames no one but herself for her own suffering. To this day, Rin believes her Abusive Parents wouldn't have hated and abandoned her if she wasn't "bad". She also doesn't blame Haru for initiating their relationship despite knowing what would happen when Akito found out and after being pushed out of a window by Akito, Rin thinks Akito is right about it being her fault for accepting Haru's love when she doesn't feel like she deserves it.
• Her Own Worst Enemy: Rin could have avoided a lot of pain if she stopped being so stubborn and accepted that there is no way she could break the curse by herself. Looking for all the answers alone only get her easily manipulated by Ren and almost killed by Akito a second time. Her distant and hostile personality also led to her disappearance going unnoticed by other characters as well, delaying her from getting medical attention she needed if someone noticed her disappearance sooner.
• Hime Cut: Her hairstyle denotes her status as a member of a very rich and influential clan. However, her personality doesn't fit the attributes related to the trope, as she's a melancholic and embittered Broken Bird who prefers gothic fashion instead of a graceful Yamato Nadeshiko. She later loses this hairstyle after Akito cuts most of her hair out of spite.
• Honor Before Reason: Not selling Haru out was terribly heroic of her, but he was probably more able to bear the brunt of Akito's vengeance than Rin was.
• Humanizing Tears: She acts cold and callous, but can't help to break down in tears as she keeps failing to solve her problems on her own.
• Hypocrite: She pulls a What the Hell, Hero? when Kagura slaps Tohru in the face and asks Kagura if she thinks she's so great that she can get away with hitting a defenseless girl. Let's not forget that in their first meeting, Rin tried to kick Tohru in the face while in her horse form because Tohru simply suggested bringing Hatori to check on Rin. If Yuki haven't protected Tohru, Rin would have ruined Tohru's face or even killed her. It's likely for this reason this part of the scene was removed in the anime.
• Ineffectual Loner: Instead of asking help from Haru or anyone, Rin resolved to find a way to break the Zodiac curse by herself. Her efforts only end in her being tricked by Ren into stealing a box from Akito and Akito tortures Rin when she catches her in the act. Afterwards, Haru makes Rin promise him that she won't ever try to do everything alone again.
• Insecure Love Interest: Rin and Haru love each other very much, but sadly, the trauma with her Abusive Parents left her terrified that anyone she loves will come to hate and abandon her again. She also doesn't believe someone damaged like her deserves such a kind soul like Haru to love her, even thinking her emotional dependency on him just makes her a hindrance. After Akito told her Haru doesn't need her and threatened to hurt him if they kept dating, Rin became convinced that she's nothing but a burden for Haru. Rin then broke up with Haru and decided to focus on freeing Haru from the curse, truly believing Haru can only be happy if she and the curse are gone. It's not until Haru tells her that he has never thought of her as a burden and she's needed for his happiness that Rin accepts it's fine for her to stay with Haru.
• Irony:
  • Her favorite food is gelatin, which is made by boiling animal products like horse hooves.
  • Rin spends almost the entire series obsessed with finding the way to break the Zodiac curse because she believes that's what will make Haru happy. Due to her parents' and Akito's abuse making Rin see herself as an unlovable nuisance, she doesn't understand all Haru needs to be happy is having Rin by his side and seeing her acting so cold to him without explaining herself brings lots of grief for both of them. It's not until Rin is almost starved to death by Akito that Rin and Haru have a heart-to-heart and Rin accepts it's fine for her to stay with Haru.
• It Was a Gift: The accessories she wears are handmade gifts from Haru.
• Jerkass Has a Point: At one point, she bluntly tells Kagura how pathetic it is that she forces herself on Kyo and calls it love. Kagura herself later admits that her love for Kyo is rooted in pity.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Like Kyo, Rin isn't a bad person, but her painful past causes her to come off as unpleasant and overly harsh to those around her. Deep down, she's a good-hearted person who'll go through anything for those she allows herself to care about.
• Leave Me Alone!: Whenever others of the Zodiac or Tohru try to get close to her or help her, Rin angrily tells them to leave her alone.
• Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: She's the Dark Feminine (alluring, harsh Broken Bird) to Tohru's Light Feminine (sweet, pure-hearted Ingenue).
• Loner-Turned-Friend: She starts off as the most aloof and solitary of the Zodiacs, making her one of the slowest to open up to Tohru. As expected, Tohru's endless kindness and compassion eventually win Rin over and Tohru becomes the only person Rin can call a true friend.
• Love at First Sight: A rare platonic example. When she saw Tohru doing laundry on the porch, Rin felt a "burning impulse" to hug her and cry on her shoulder, even though they had never met before. (Tohru has that effect on people.)
• Love Martyr: In her childhood, Rin endured her parents' abuse because she was convinced it was her fault they had become abusive and she still hoped they could go back to being the loving parents they pretended to be at the start.
• Love Revelation Epiphany: After her parents abandoned her, Rin's only comforting company was Haru. Over the years, she fell in love with him, but didn't fully realize her feelings until Haru asked her to be his girlfriend and she found herself unable to refuse him.
• Modesty Bedsheet: When she turns back into human, Tohru gives her a bedsheet for Rin to cover her nude body.
• Ms. Exposition: She clarifies exactly what the curse is to Tohru, because no one else is willing to talk about it.
• Ms. Fanservice: According to Natsuki Takaya, "Rin is the character in charge of sexiness." Thankfully, she has enough of a complex personality that this isn't all there is to her.
• Naked First Impression: She's the only Zodiac who is completely naked when Tohru first meets her because the exhaustion of traveling to the Sohma beachfront villa by herself caused her to transform into her horse form.
• Oblivious to Love: She didn't have a clue that Haru was in love with her until he outright asked to kiss her. Until then, she had assumed he was just kind to her like he was with everyone else.
• Odd Friendship: Eventually develops this with Tohru, since she's still aloof and stand-offish, while Tohru is... well, Tohru.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: In-series she's called more often by her nickname "Rin" than by her given name "Isuzu". Her nickname is tied to her real name in two ways; "Rin" is an alternate reading of the second kanji of "Isuzu" (鈴) and the kanji in question means "bell", while "rin" would refer to a bell's "ring".
• The Ophelia: In Rin's worst moments, she wanders around hallucinating.
• Parental Title Characterization: Played for Drama. Despite being an Aloof Dark-Haired Girl, Rin has PTSD episodes where she desperately calls out to her "papa" and "mama" as she begs them to forgive her and not get angry at her. This shows that the trauma of her parents' abuse still has a strong hold over her and a part of her mind is still a scared little girl.
• Past Experience Nightmare: She often wakes up crying because of the nightmares caused by the traumas her Abusive Parents and Akito gave her.
• The Patient Has Left the Building: Rin hates going to the hospital and escapes every time she's sent to one. This is a product of her Dark and Troubled Past; her parents abused her to the point she was hospitalized and visited her just to tell her they were kicking her out of the house and wanted nothing more to do with her.
• Picky Eater: Due to her stomach ulcer, Rin hates most food. She only really likes gelatin.
• Poor Communication Kills: She broke up with Haru after Akito found out they were dating, but she didn't tell him why she didn't want to see him anymore, causing nothing but angst for both of them. In fact, most of Rin's current issues are the result of her not wanting to talk about her problems and seek help from anyone.
• Proper Tights with a Skirt: She wears black tights with her school uniform.
• Protectorate: She's the person Haru cares about and wants to protect the most. When Haru finds out Akito threw Rin out of a window and now is torturing her by locking her up in the Cat's Room, he goes ballistic and comes very near to punching Akito. He only stopped himself when the guilt of failing to protect Rin from abusive people again starts eating him up.
• Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: Her straight, black hair and very pale skin are part of what makes her possibly the most beautiful woman in the series.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: She gives a swift but brutal one to Kagura during her Establishing Character Moment, regarding Kagura's feelings toward Kyo.
  Rin: It's sad how you force yourself on him and call it love.
  Kagura: (stunned and hurt) ... How could you say that?
  Rin: Well, it's true, isn't it?
• Rebellious Spirit: She's the only one who actively tries to resist obeying Akito because of the Zodiac curse and hates how all the other cursed Sohmas don't fight back enough until Tohru comes along.
• Rescue Romance: Her romance with Haru started when he saved her from almost dying after she collapsed on the street because of her parents' abuse.
• Scars Are Forever: She has a large scar on her back, courtesy of Akito who pushed her off a window and critically injured her.
• Screw Destiny: She actively tries to break the curse because she won't accept a fate where she and the other Zodiacs are eternally tied down by "God's shackles".
• Sex for Services: She offers herself to Shigure to get him to tell her how to break the curse. Thankfully, Shigure declines.
• Sex for Solace: Presumably the reason that Rin had sex with Haru so young, as, unfortunately, many abused children do. The flashback shows Rin crying after realizing sex didn't take her pain away nor made her as connected with Haru as she wanted to be.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: Despite all of her efforts, Rin makes no progress in breaking the curse on her own. It all climaxes when Ren gets her to break into Akito's room to steal a box under the promise of telling her how, only for Akito to catch her in the act, give her a Traumatic Haircut, and lock her in the Cat's Room for weeks on end to starve; the only reason this didn't become a case of Shoot the Shaggy Dog is because Kureno found out and saved her before it was too late. To drive the point home, it turns out Ren doesn't know how to break the curse and just claimed she did to manipulate Rin into doing her bidding.
• Shameless Fanservice Girl: She seems quite unconcerned about her nudity when she transforms back to human form in front of Tohru and Yuki since she's more upset about them finding out she traveled to the beach villa to check on Haru.
• Silent Scapegoat: When Akito revealed she had found out Rin and Haru were in a Secret Relationship, Rin took the blame so Akito would take her anger out on her and not Haru. In truth, Haru was the one who asked Rin to date him, despite her warning him Akito would get angry at them. As a result, Rin was pushed out of a window by Akito and forced to break up with Haru.
• Single-Issue Psychology: Defied. After the curse is finally broken, Rin reveals that she'd hoped all of her pain and emotional issues would go away, but they didn't. It turns out, a lifetime of horrific abuse that the curse brought her (her parents, Akito, etc) doesn't magically end with said curse.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: She fell in love with Haru because he was gentle with her, demanded her evil parents to apologize for abusing her and helped her forget about her pain and sadness.
• Sour Outside, Sad Inside: She was abused and abandoned by her parents. Akito only destroyed what little self-worth Rin had left, drilling into her head that she didn't deserve Haru's love. Her abrasiveness and hostility towards everyone around her are her way of pushing people away because she really feels it's easier to be hated and rejected from the get-go than to be at risk of being hurt and abandoned again.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: She's cold, cynical, and blunt. She does have a soft spot for those who can bring her out of her shell like Haru and Tohru.
• This Is Unforgivable!: While she's not happy about it, unlike the rest of the Zodiac, Rin refuses to forgive Akito for everything she's done despite full knowledge that she's remorseful and trying to change, and openly questions Momiji and Haru how they can. Hardly surprising, considering she got some of the worst of Akito's abuse (thrown out a window, given a Traumatic Haircut and left to starve, etc.)
• Through the Eyes of Madness: The chapters she narrates are incoherent; they provide relevant information, but they are choppy and filled with tangents, interspersed with traumatic flashbacks and philosophical meanderings.
• Trauma Button:
  • When her stomach ulcer causes her to almost vomit at Shigure's living room, Rin hallucinates Tohru is her mother yelling at her and Rin begs her in terror to not be angry.
  • After it was discovered her parents were abusing her, Rin was hospitalized because of her weak condition. Her parents visited her at the hospital once only to tell her they didn't want her anymore. Ever since, Rin hates hospitals and escapes every time she's sent to one.
• Traumatic Haircut: Courtesy of Akito, as punishment for following Akito's evil mother's orders.
• Troubled Teen: Rin is a teenage girl with a lot of baggage because of the trauma with her Abusive Parents who abandoned her, and later being forced to break up with Haru by Akito, who threatened her and pushed her out of a window.
• Trying Not to Cry: When she meets Tohru and is awed by her kindness and warmth, Isuzu hates herself for wanting to confide in her and cry on her shoulder.
• Tsundere: Harsh type. Rin hides her vulnerability behind a rude and bad-tempered demeanor. It's very obvious Rin is still hopelessly in love with Haru, but she pretends that she hates him because she doesn't want to be a burden to him or Akito hurting Haru. Despite her hostility, Rin is also fond of Tohru because of her kindness. It's justified because a past full of physical and emotional abuse made Rin reluctant to show herself as emotionally open and vulnerable.
• Tsurime Eyes: Her sharp eyes represent her emotionally distant personality. They also represent her Tsundere tendencies towards Haru and Tohru.
• Unwitting Pawn: Ren manages to turn her into one twice. After remarking on how lucky Rin was to have such a happy home, she tricked Rin into curiously asking her parents if they were truly as happy as it appeared. The next time was her taking advantage of Rin's desperation in finding a way to break the curse, saying she'd trade the answer (which she didn't know), in return for retrieving an item in Akito's room. The first time was for her own amusement because she'd always hated Rin, the second in order to obtain something of her husband's without risking herself.
• Virtue Is Weakness: She deeply respects kind people, but she also believes their compassion makes them gullible and unable to protect themselves.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Delivers a shockingly direct one to Kagura in the manga, after the latter slaps Tohru across the face and yells at her that she needs to confess her feelings properly to Kyo. Despite all of Rin's aloof behavior towards Tohru, she flips her shit, physically grabs Kagura, and screams in her face that she has no right to raise a hand to Tohru. God only knows what she might have done if Kagura hadn't been shocked into realizing she'd crossed the line and given Rin a Cooldown Hug and a sincere "I'm sorry".
• With Great Power Comes Great Perks: Horses can kick very hard and outrun most animals, both traits which Rin has found useful on occasion.

Kureno Sohma (The Rooster)

Kureno Sohma (The Rooster)

Voiced by: Susumu Chiba (The Last Story Voice Comic), Yuichiro Umehara (2019 series), Mayu Minami (young) (JP), Ian Sinclair (adult), Ryan Reynolds (young) (EN), Gerardo García (LA)

Click ^Here  to see him as the "Rooster"

The Rooster of the Zodiac (though he actually turns into a sparrow), and a polite and selfless young man whom Akito is very attached to. Since Akito rarely allows him to leave the Sohma estate, he's rather clueless about basic things most people would take for granted, but his closeness to Akito has made him privy to a few big secrets regarding the Sohma family.

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• Age-Gap Romance: With Arisa. He's 26 years old and she's in high school.
• The Atoner: He realizes that capitulating to Akito's every wish contributed to her growing up as bad as she did and, realizing that his presence would only remind Akito of her mistakes and keep her from moving forward, leaves the Sohma estate near the conclusion of the series.
• Broken Pedestal: Inverted. Kureno thought the world of Shigure according to a couple of side-drawings by Takaya, and Kureno definitely still respects Shigure; but Shigure did not appreciate that Kureno slept with Akito and Shigure explicitly tells Kureno that he hates Kureno for his role in Shigure's exile from the estate.
• Brought Down to Normal: Kureno's curse actually broke at least ten years ago, and only he, Akito and Shigure know about it. While he keeps it a secret from the rest of the cursed Sohmas, Takaya has stated that they can still subconsciously sense that he's no longer one of them. It's later revealed to be a sign that the Sohma curse is weakening, setting up how the rest of the cursed Sohmas are eventually freed from the curse as well by the end of the series.
• But Now I Must Go: Kureno leaves the Sohma family after he is discharged from the hospital, realizing that Akito needs to find her own way in the world without him to remind her of her mistakes. According to Takaya, post-series Kureno has completely cut ties with the family and has no desire to interact with any of the other Sohmas.
• Cooldown Hug: He tried hugging Akito to calm her down at the climax of the series. It didn't work.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of the Extreme Doormat and Nice Guy. His curse has been broken for over ten years and he could easily leave the Sohma estate any time he wants, but instead, he couldn't bring himself to abandon a crying, begging Akito and agreed to pretend he was still cursed out of pity. In the present day, it's heavily implied that if Kureno had broken away right then and there instead of feeding Akito's abandonment and dependency issues, it would have been better for her overall mental state; Shigure himself tells Kureno point-blank that he's done nothing but make Akito worse as a person by making her think she's entitled to be loved while giving those around her nothing but abuse and spite in return, and Kureno eventually realizes he's right after Akito locks Rin up in the Cat's Room to starve.
• Early-Bird Cameo: It's a Freeze-Frame Bonus, but he's in the car with Akito in episode 7 of the reboot.
  • The third opening and ending shows him in a bit more light, and the first episode of season 2 has a quick shot of him next to Akito in shadow.
• Endearingly Dorky: His clumsy and naive behavior at the convenience store makes Arisa immediately fall for him because his dorkiness reminds her of Tohru.
• Everyone Has Standards: He may be an Extreme Doormat who goes along with anything Akito says and wants, but Kureno still has his limits. When he discovers Akito gave Rin a Traumatic Haircut and locked her in the Cat's Room to starve to death, Kureno doesn't hesitate to release her and even calls Akito out over her actions for the first time.
• Extreme Doormat: He has let Akito dominate his life more than anyone in the Zodiac because he's way too nice to reprimand her abusive behavior or leave her alone. Special mention in that the Rooster's spirit is no longer influencing him, so unlike the other Zodiacs, Kureno should be able to fight off Akito's control if he wanted to.
• The Farmer and the Viper: He agreed to act as Akito's Living Emotional Crutch and pretend he was still part of the Zodiac out of pity, unable to bring himself to abandon the lonely kid. In the long run, all he succeeded in doing is exacerbating Akito's issues and making her mental health worse, which Shigure calls him out on. When he tries to comfort a mentally-unhinged Akito with a Cooldown Hug and a Rousing Speech, all he gets in return is a knife In the Back.
• Fatal Flaw: His kindness and Extreme Doormat nature. His curse has been broken for ten years, but he just couldn't bring himself to abandon a crying, desperate Akito and agreed to remain by her side and pretend he was still part of the Zodiac. In the long run, by feeding Akito's clinginess and dependency issues, Kureno only made her overall mental state and attitude worse, and by the time he realizes this, it's almost too late, with both he and Tohru nearly losing their lives trying to reason with her.
• Flower Motif: Cherry blossoms in the 2019 anime's fourth ending, symbolizing the fleeting nature of life.
• Foreshadowing: When Tohru suggests to Rin that they ask Kureno for help with breaking the curse, Rin is immediately dismissive, saying that he's not one of them. This is because he's actually no longer cursed, having been freed from it a long time ago. Supplemental materials state that the other Zodiac members distrust him not only because he's close to Akito, but because their spirits subconsciously detect that he's no longer one of them.
• Friendless Background: Akito has basically forbidden him from interacting on a deeper level with anyone but her. The other cursed Sohmas also tend to avoid him since they don't trust him due to his close association with Akito and because they can sense that he's no longer cursed like they are. Whenever the Zodiac have reunions, Kureno stays isolated from everyone.
• Grew a Spine: He spent ten years letting Akito dominate his life and isolate him from other people even after his curse broke and he was no longer forced to, but he put up with it because he was just too nice. He finally stands up to her when she locks Rin in the Cat Room to starve, going behind Akito's back to save Rin and realizing that by never saying no to Akito, he only contributed to how badly she turned out.
• Irony: He stays with Akito because she's desperately lonely, but staying with her leads to him being lonely in a different way since Akito doesn't allow anyone to see him. He also chooses to stay with her despite the fact that he's no longer cursed, and is thus no longer under the influence of Akito's status as the God of the Zodiac.
• Living Emotional Crutch: For Akito, starting from the moment his curse was broken. His release from the curse caused Akito to realize that the curse wasn't permanent, causing her to desperately plead with him to stay with her. He admits to Tohru that once he was freed from the curse, he no longer understood what was keeping him attached to Akito - but also knew that beyond that broken connection, he saw a crying little girl that was desperate for love. Shigure points out that Kureno fulfilling this role for Akito in her life has not helped her for the better, and tells him that he should leave for her sake.
• Love at First Sight: During his trip to the convenience store, Kureno briefly meets Arisa who works there and instantly falls in love with her when he sees her laughing, thinking how he wants to see her laugh forever.
• Love Martyr: He was one for Akito - so much so that his staying with Akito kept him from pursuing a relationship with Arisa. We later find out that his being with Akito completely wrecked his relationship with Shigure, and Kureno intends to continue staying with Akito to keep her from being lonely despite knowing full well that who Akito really wants is Shigure, not him.
• Maintain the Lie: Kureno's curse being broken is only known by him, Akito and Shigure. We only learn about this when Kureno eventually reveals his secret to Tohru. However, supplementary materials state that the other Zodiac members can still subconsciously sense that he's no longer one of them.
• Major Injury Underreaction: We don't know exactly how badly he was injured, but he doesn't initially react to Akito's literally stabbing him in the back besides calling for someone to go after Akito, and he seems to need a cane after the fact.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Has this reaction near the end of the series, when he realizes that his staying by Akito's side and constantly abiding by her wishes only made the situation worse. Kureno openly blames himself for Akito turning out the way she did, and moves out of the Sohma house at the end of the series so she can find her own way.
• Nice Guy: He's polite, gentle, and compassionate. The downside is that Kureno is so kind that he forces himself to stay with Akito because he knows she would be sad if he ever tries to leave her.
• Non-Indicative Name: His cursed animal is called the Rooster, but he turns into a sparrow. Judging from Shigure's comments about Hatori, this is likely a sign that the curse is weakening, since Kureno himself has been free of the curse for at least ten years.
• Not Quite the Right Thing: When he was much younger, he was actually freed from the zodiac curse. He agreed to pretend he was still a part of the Zodiac and stay by Akito's side at all times though, because he didn't want to abandon the poor kid. It's implied in present times that it would have been better for Akito's overall mental health if Kureno had instead broken away then and there, instead of feeding Akito's clingy dependency issues.
• Opposites Attract: With Arisa. He's reserved, passive and obedient to a fault, while she's cheerful, brash and a former delinquent who still has a rebellious streak.
• Pity Sex: He has a sexual relationship with Akito, but both know they don't love each other and are only together because Kureno doesn't want to see Akito cry if he leaves her side.
• Rousing Speech: Kureno gives Akito a very heartfelt talk about how it is better to live while moving forward instead of being fixated on the generations-old Sohma curse. It doesn't work since Akito fully breaks down and literally stabs him In the Back.
• Second-Hand Storytelling: When he tells Tohru about Akito.
• Secret-Keeper: As a child, he was one of four members of the zodiac that knew Akito's real gender. He's also proof that the curse is weakening, and has been free from the Sohma curse for at least ten years before the events of the series.
• Shading/Colour Dissonance: Kureno's auburn hair has no shading in the manga, which can lead readers to think his hair color is much lighter until they see him in color.
• Sheltered Aristocrat: Akito very rarely allows Kureno to leave the Sohma estate, leaving him with little to no experience in the outside world. When he first meets Arisa at her convenience store job, he's carrying a huge amount of groceries in his arms since he's never been to a convenience store before and didn't realize he could use a basket to carry them, resulting in him spilling his groceries all over the floor.
• Spear Counterpart: He's basically a male Tohru. This is driven home by how his first meeting with Arisa perfectly mirrors her first meeting with Tohru; they both introduce themselves to her while carrying a large amount of items, then bow to her in apology, which causes them to spill whatever they're carrying onto the floor.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: He's in love with Arisa, but is unable to be with her or see her anymore because of Akito. At the end, they're finally able to be together.
• Stepford Smiler: Arisa can quickly notice that there's always a hint of sadness behind Kureno's smile.
• Walking Spoiler: His deep involvement with Akito pretty much makes it impossible to reveal much about him without revealing major spoilers.
• When He Smiles: Arisa is dazed when Kureno shows her a true smile at the end of their second meeting.
• You Remind Me of X: Arisa says that Kureno reminds her of Tohru in that he is unfailingly kind like she was.

Other Sohmas

In General

• Abusive Parents: More often than not, parents of children with the Sohma curse will treat them very badly, with indifference at best and physical, mental, and emotional abuse at worst. Kagura, Hiro, Kisa, Haru, and Ritsu are on generally good terms with their parents, but that doesn't preclude not getting mistreated by other members of the family.
• Adults Are Useless: The absolute Sohma family hierarchy with Akito on top means that nobody prevents or intervenes in the event of physical or emotional abuse that occurs regularly within the family at Akito's hands regardless of what they think. Discussed and lampshaded from time to time by Hatori and Shigure: Hatori laments from time to time that "[the older zodiac members] really suck at [protecting the younger ones from Akito]," while Shigure prefers to allow things to play out.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: Even barring the Zodiac curse, the Sohma clan has numerous issues, most notably many instances of Domestic Abuse, some perpetrated by Akito, and some by various Abusive Parents, of which Akito herself is a victim. On top of that, family tradition states that the one cursed as 'the cat' is a pariah who exists to be shunned, scorned, and imprisoned in an isolated room for life. It's not just a product of Akito's Yandere behavior, either; as indicated by the flashback showing Ren's early days with Akira, the nasty backbiting and poisoning opinions for influence within the Sohma family has been going on for generations, long before Akito was even born. It says a lot that the post-Zodiac generation depicted in another subverts this, but the older generation are still bitter and abusive and make several attempts to drag the new generation down to their level with little to no success.
• Bystander Syndrome: The Sohma family values tradition, wealth, and status over morality and ethics and tries to keep quiet about everything. This leads to them doing nothing about the various abuses the Zodiac members suffer and letting Akito do whatever she wants because she's the head of the family.
• The Clan: Despite often being referred to as a "family", they're actually a clan consisting of 150 people. While the Sohmas will sometimes refer to each other as "cousins" or "relatives", this is mainly out of kinship and formality, since it's often implied that many of them are only very distantly related or not related at all.
• Everyone Has Standards: The maid caring for Rin while she's imprisoned in the Cat's Room was genuinely terrified and worried that Rin would starve to death, so she voluntarily asked Kureno to save her.
• Inherent in the System: A lot of the abuse, toxicity, and misery that occurs in the family is both the way the family is structured, and how the elders teach children their own awful mentalities.
• Legendary in the Sequel: Come Another, the Sohmas are a big deal again, but this time Kirisaki celebrates any and all members of the clan, and worship them just as the Prince Yuki Fan Club did years ago.
• My Master, Right or Wrong: It's not just the Zodiac members; just about everyone in the family, including the maids, goes along with anything Akito says or does and allows her to do whatever she wants because she's the head of the family and God of the Zodiac. It's to the extent that when Kureno breaks Rin out of the Cat's Room behind Akito's back after she had been locked in there to starve, the head maid lambasts him for going against Akito's wishes and "betraying" her, openly declaring he and the rest of the Zodiac exist solely to live and die for Akito's sake and without her, the cursed Sohmas are nothing.
• Social Services Does Not Exist: The Sohma kids have all been so abused/neglected that they're barely able to socialize at school. As pointed out by the head maid, they prefer to avoid conflicts and stick to themselves, hence why nobody calls the police or Social Services.

Kazuma Sohma

Kazuma Sohma

Voiced by: Norihiro Inoue (adult), Miki Machii (child) (2001 series), Toshiyuki Morikawa (adult), Ayaka Nanase (child) (2019 series) (JP), Dameon Clarke (adult, both series), Heaven Tubbs (child, 2001 series), Emily Fajardo (child, 2019 series) (EN), Arturo Mercado Jr., Casandra Acevedo (child) (LA)

Kyo's martial arts teacher and foster father. His grandfather was the previous Cat, and Kazuma regrets his cruel words towards his grandfather during the one time they met. After Kyo's mother died, he took Kyo in as a way to atone, but over time he came to love Kyo like his own son.

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• Adaptation Dye-Job: In the manga and 2019 anime he has brown hair, but the 2001 anime gives him grey hair.
• The Atoner: As a child, Kazuma treated the former Cat (his grandfather) quite badly. Upon meeting the new Cat, Kyo, he takes him in, having never been able to forgive himself for that.
• Bare-Fisted Monk: The martial arts instructor of Kyo, Yuki, Haru, and Kagura.
• Calling the Old Man Out: He really lets Kyo's biological father have it for supporting his son's confinement after high school.
• For Your Own Good: When he first appears in the manga and 2019 anime he purposefully removes Kyo's beads in front of Tohru, revealing his true form to her, because he wanted Kyo to confront the possibility that someone wouldn't reject him for it.
• Heel Realization: He realizes how badly he treated his grandfather, the previous Cat, and how wrong the Sohmas' traditions are after seeing Kyo, an innocent little boy, being treated exactly the same way. This spurred him to take Kyo in as his own and find a way to prevent him from being confined.
• I Want Grandkids: After the Zodiac curse is finally broken, Kazuma says he's ready to die happy now that Kyo is free. He changes his mind when he realizes that when Kyo and Tohru get married and have children, he'll become a grandfather.
• Important Haircut: He cuts his hair short offscreen after the true form incident.
• Lethal Chef: He can't even prepare decent tea.
• Long-Haired Pretty Boy: He's a good-looking man who ties his long hair back in a ponytail. He later cuts it, which Tohru finds to be a shame.
• Older Than They Look: He's 39 during his first appearance. At the end of the series, he should be about 41. You wouldn't guess any of this just by looking at him. Even Takaya admits she draws him very young looking.
• Only Sane Man: He's among the very few Sohmas who realizes how ridiculous their traditions involving the curse are, especially their view that the one cursed by the Cat exists solely to be shunned, persecuted, and eventually locked up in isolation for life through no fault of their own.
• Papa Wolf: He will not allow anyone to mistreat Kyo. He even calls out Kyo's biological father when the man tries to enlist Kazuma's support in locking Kyo up once he's out of school, making it clear that he will protect Kyo and prevent him from being confined in the Cat's Room even if it means defying Akito herself.
• Parental Substitute: He's Kyo's foster father, and has been seen taking care of Rin in lieu of their terrible biological parents.
• Shading/Colour Dissonance: Kazuma's hair is dark brown, but it lacks any sort of shading in the manga. As a result, the first anime adaptation gave him grey hair.
• Shipper on Deck: He actively encourages the growing romance of Kyo and Tohru from the moment he first sees them together because of how happy Kyo looks around Tohru. He even forced Kyo to reveal his monstrous cursed form to Tohru so they could become much closer by having Tohru accept all of Kyo.
• Stacy's Mom: Male example. His adopted son's classmate, Hanajima, falls for him. She's a high school student and Kazuma is over 20 years older than her at the very least. Hanajima teases Kyo about the possibility of her becoming his foster mother. However, nothing comes out of this relationship since Hanajima is stated to have married a foreigner in the sequel.

Ren Sohma

Voiced by: Ai Orikasa (JP), Katelyn Barr (EN), Kerygma Flores (LA)

Akito's mother, Akira's widow and the matriarch of the Sohma Clan. She has a highly antagonistic and dysfunctional relationship with Akito, largely due to her own unstable personality.

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• Abusive Parent: She demanded her daughter Akito to be raised as a man in orderto make her unattractive to the opposite sex. Ever since Akito can remember, Ren has constantly told her that she's worthless and no one will ever love her for her own person, so it's a matter of time before the curse breaks and she ends up all alone.
• Attention Whore: Pretty much summarizes her character. Ren is an overgrown brat who complains whenever someone else is getting even a bit of attention.
• Ax-Crazy: She's the embodiment of a mentally deranged person in a series full of people with mental issues. At one point, she tries to stab Akito just to steal a box.
• Barefoot Loon: She's almost always seen barefoot. This highlights both her mental instability and her reclusive nature, since she never leaves the Sohma estate and thus wouldn't have much reason to wear shoes.
• Batman Gambit: The entire series happens because Ren made a bet with Akito and convinced her to let Tohru stay at Shigure's house, claiming that the Zodiac members would rather bond with a Nice Girl like Tohru than an abusive Psychopathic Womanchild like Akito. Indeed, the Zodiac members gravitate towards Tohru and come to view her as family, exactly as Ren planned.
• Child Hater: She has a very dim view of children and seems to think of them as worthless, up to and including her own daughter Akito. She once said that she hated how then-tiny Ayame, Hatori, Kureno and Shigure swarmed to her and cried because they could sense that she was pregnant with Akito, the future God of the Zodiac. Akito remembers her as a cold mother and as noted by Ren herself, has always hated Rin (for no known reason); up to the point that she tricked a young Rin into questioning her parents's love, knowing what the horrible outcome would be.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: She absolutely hated the idea that Akira could love another woman more than her, even if that woman was their own daughter.
• Death Seeker: She would be happy if Akito killed her because she would go to where Akira is and finally not have to see her hated daughter anymore.
• Didn't See That Coming: Ren correctly predicted that the Zodiac members would rather gravitate towards and bond with Tohru, a kindhearted complete stranger, rather than the abusive Akito, thus proving to Akito that the curse cannot truly force them to love their God. What she didn't expect or foresee was that Tohru would also extend her healing presence and offer of friendship to Akito herself, enabling Akito to undergo a Heel–Face Turn and work on redeeming herself while Ren is left with nothing.
• Domestic Abuse: Aside from being the world's worst mother to Akito, Ren essentially bullied and emotionally blackmailed Akira into raising Akito as a boy, threatening to terminate her pregnancy if he didn't. Also, it's implied she played the part of the loving maid and took advantage of Akira's loneliness to get him to love her.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • Her destined deep connection with Akira isn't so different from the eternal bond Akito says she has with the Zodiac that Ren always ridicules. It's revealed that neither are true; the Zodiac curse is waning and Ren slept with Shigure in the past.
  • Ren unknowingly despises what Akira believed truly symbolized how special their love was together: Akito being born as God of the Zodiac. She obsesses over whatever's in a box of his as evidence of his love that she says is hers by right, that was left to Akito but, in truth, prepared by the Sohma's Head Maid in order to console her over her father's death. It did very little to once she opened it. It's empty. After what Shigure said to her beforehand, Ren's left an Empty Shell of a mess once she sees what's inside.
• Dramatically Missing the Point: She was so intent on proving how the Zodiac's bond is only an illusion and the only eternal one being between her and Akira that Ren didn't comprehend the implications sleeping with another man had. It finally hits after learning Shigure simply used her as a stand-in for Akito.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Her debut was more than 20 chapters before her proper introduction, when Tohru, who was sneaking around the Sohma compound trying to find Kureno, ended up hiding outside her room. Ren's relationship with Akito was strongly foreshadowed with Tohru accidentally mistaking her voice and the small amount of body language shown for Akito's.
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Her daughter inherited her looks, and she's very unstable.
• Entitled Bitch: She's just as bad about this as Akito, if not worse, in this regard, being nothing more than an overgrown brat who complains whenever someone else is getting even a bit of attention. Ren goes so far as to claim everyone should be revering her instead of Akito as it's been solely because of her that Akira was saved and Akito exists, despite the fact that she didn't even want to have Akito and went so far as to threaten to abort her unless she was Raised as the Opposite Gender.
• Entitled to Have You: Ren is convinced that Akira's love and all his mementos are rightfully hers. She treats her own daughter like a thief because she was also loved by Akira and obsessively tries to steal a box from Akito because she believes it contains Akira's final treasure. Eventually, Ren even tries to stab Akito with a knife just to get the box.
• Evil Counterpart: To Kyoko Honda, though the two have never met. Both women were looked down on by the families of their respective spouses for their social standing (Kyoko for being a Former Teen Rebel, Ren for being a mere maid), and both were crushed by their husbands' untimely deaths by illness. However, while Kyoko was able to move past Katsuya's death and raise Tohru with love and compassion, Ren never got over Akira's death and treated Akito with nothing but hatred and scorn. Effectively, Ren represents what Kyoko could have become if she was never able to move past her grief.
• Evil Is Petty: She more or less singlehandedly screws up the family by abusing Akito to insanity, all because she was jealous that her husband would love their child more than her, and that her daughter would receive more male attention once she grew up (being beautiful, female, and the head of the family) than she did. At one point, she tries to kill Akito over a box, which she believes holds some treasure left behind by her husband. The reveal that the box was empty just emphasized how obsessively twisted Ren was.
• Evil Matriarch: She's one the evilest parent of the series, which is saying quite a lot considering Rin's parents and Kyo's father.
• Evil Wears Black: She's often depicted wearing a black dress to represent the color of her soul.
• Excessive Mourning: The death of her husband destroyed any semblance of sanity she had. She stays locked inside an isolated room in the Sohma main house and has never even wanted to look at her daughter because she resents her for having been beside Akira in his deathbed when she couldn't.
• Female Misogynist: Taken to absurd levels. She wanted to abort Akito after knowing that she was pregnant with a girl. She only agreed to give birth after she made her husband agree that their daughter would be raised as a boy. She claims Akito had to live as a man because a female family head would be unacceptable, but that was only an excuse to prevent Akito from being more popular with men than she was.
• Florence Nightingale Effect: Back when Ren worked as a maid in the Sohma state, she was the first person who took care of the Delicate and Sickly Akira and reached out to him. As a result, Akira fell in love with her and decided to marry her against his family's wishes.
• Foil: For Kyoko Honda, in several ways:
  • Ren lived at the Sohma estate as a proper maid, while Kyoko was a part of a gang and had a rough upbringing. Kyoko was disowned by her family, while the Sohma family was unable to dismiss Ren due to her position. When their husbands made their marriage proposals, both families were shocked due to their belief that one partner unfit for the other; the Katsunuma family wondered why such a respectable person would want to marry their daughter, while Ren was apparently an unsuitable choice since she was a maid. Both were young mothers who lost their husbands when their only daughters were toddlers. However, while Kyoko was able to move on with just the memory of Katsuya and the love she shared with Tohru ultimately proved to be the redeeming factor in the entire series, Ren stayed fixated about Akira's love for her, yet needing a box of Akira's for proof of it, and was swallowed by her grief to the point that she fueled the angst of the main series.
  • Their relationship with their husbands and daughters. Ren cared for Akira who was terminally ill and reached out to him when she saw how lonely he was. Katsuya was a student teacher who worried about a troubled Kyoko and his death from pneumonia was very sudden. Ren threatened to abort Akito unless she was raised as a boy out of fear Akira could love her more. They went irreconcilable over their child until very the end. Kyoko was happy to have Katsuya’s baby but worried that their child's life would be miserable because of her, but they were still a happy family upon Katsuya's death.
  • They both left alone in the world after their husband's untimely death (due to said husband being their Living Emotional Crutch), were looked down on as by his family and estranged by their own, and they emotionally abandoned their young daughter to some extent after his death. However, Kyoko snapped out of it and learned to possitively channel her grief into making her daughter feel as happy and beloved as possible, while Ren wallowed in her misery and dedicated her life to making her daughter feel as worthless and unlovable as possible.
  • The opinions they have about children in general. Kyoko forms a few Intergenerational Friendships and was even thinking of having another baby with Katsuya. Unless she's able to use a child for her schemes, Ren believes them to be useless and refused to even hold her own child after they were born.
  • A younger Ren was remarkably similar to Tohru, both reaching out to someone (who just so happened to be the God of the Zodiac) who's incredible loneliness went unnoticed. Their connections differed in that Tohru with Akito being on a much more personal level that enabled Akito to no longer rely on an eternal bond, while Ren's warped belief on how only she and Akira existed in the other's world not only drove her husband away but caused her utter dependency on the two's relationship.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: The narrative goes out of its way to point out that being looked down on by the Sohma family for her background as a housemaid and internalizing that her only value came from her husband's love for her is no excuse whatsoever to be so vile to her daughter, or the other Sohma family members.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Ren is absolutely sick with envy over her daughter Akito a) being born head of a wealthy and respected while while Ren herself was a lowly housemaid, b) the thought of her daughter growing up with more male attention than she ever got, c) her daughter being praised and loved as "special" because she's a "God" while Ren herself isn't.
• Good Girls Avoid Abortion: To show just how much of a repugnant woman she is, Ren was all for aborting Akito if her husband didn't consent to raising their child as a boy.
• Greater-Scope Villain: She's introduced very late into the story and never directly interacts with Tohru, but she is ultimately the reason why the story happens in the first place: it was her idea to allow Tohru to live in the Sohma estate, and Akito is such a Jerkass because Ren mentally and emotionally abused her for her entire life.
• Gruesome Grandparent: On top of already being an awful excuse of a mother, the sequel reveals she eventually becomes just as abusive towards her grandson, Shiki. She even tried to stab the boy when he was a kid.
• Hate Sink: Unlike her daughter, Ren has no tragic backstory or excuses for her actions and is mainly to be blamed for how horrible Akito is now. The most that can be said is that the rest of the Sohma family treated her poorly when Akira showed interest in her and she's clearly mentally ill to some degree.
• Hated by All: While Akito does have the support of the older maids, who believe that the head of the family deserves their devotion, a few younger maids are devoted to Ren. A good portion of the Sohma family hated her when she managed to win the heart of the then-head of the family, despite being a maid. Nowadays, she's despised for being an Evil Matriarch who shaped Akito into the abusive Yandere she is today.
• Hates Their Parent: An inverted example. Ren makes no secret that she has hates her daughter Akito's guts since before she was even born. In fact, she wanted to abort Akito when she learned she was pregnant, just because Ren never wanted Akira to love another woman.
• Her Own Worst Enemy: She's pretty much the cause of her own misery. The thought that Akira didn't love only her threw Ren into such a jealous spiral that her life seems dedicated to destroying her daughter's self-esteem to the point of crippling abandonment issues. Ren missed her husband's death and would never get to hear Akira's belief their child being born as God was proof of the specialness of their bond, due to Akito's insecurity of another bond possibly existing beside the one she shares with the Zodiac.
• Hypocrite: After all her talk of how a man is destined for one woman and that Akira loved no one else but her, she brushes off any authenticity to the relationship between Shigure and Akito and easily starts one up with him herself. It's possibly due to the similarities she sees he has with Akira: belief he's suffering from the Zodiac Bond and only she can ease his pain, falling in love with him as she believes he secretly desires her. She snaps when Shigure tells her how he only slept with her as she looked like Akito if she'd been raised female, and mocks Ren over how only she would need a box to prove Akira's love for her.
• Internalized Categorism: Being a Female Misogynist and a Penny Among Diamonds, Ren seems to have internalized that a woman's only value comes from male attention she gets. Since only Akira loved her and the rest of the Sohma family looked down on her for her housemaid background, Ren seems to have internalized that her only value as a person comes from her (deceased) husband's love for her. Naturally, this makes her insanely jealous of the thought of her husband loving any other girl, and she projects this attitude onto her daughter. The thought of her daughter receiving more male attention than her makes her sick with jealousy, since she can't stand the thought of her daughter being "better" than her.
• Irrational Hatred: Her reasons for hating her own daughter are completely nonsensical and shallow. In the end, Ren is just throwing a tantrum because she wasn't the only special woman in Akira's life and Akito was practically worshipped since before she was born because of her status as the Zodiac's "God". Ren despises being around Akito so much that she missed Akira's final words to her, never hearing just how special he thought their love was because the "God" was their child.
• The Irredeemable Exception: In the end, while even Akito was redeemed after being given the chance of becoming a better person, Ren is still as evil and awful as she was in her introduction.
• "It" Is Dehumanizing: When discussing making Akito the head of the family, Ren outright refers to her as "that."
• It's All About Me: Ren doesn't care about anyone or anything but herself. Her hatred of Akito is solely because she's pissed and jealous that she's getting more attention.
• Jealous Parent: Exaggerated. Ren never once thought of Akito as her daughter, even before she was born. She only sees her as the woman who "stole" Akira's love and attention from her, even though Akira never stopped loving Ren. In fact, Ren hates the mere idea that Akito gets any sort of positive male attention to the extreme that she raised her as a boy and emotionally abused her so that no man would find Akito desirable.
• Jerkass: As a whole, Ren is all of Akito's worst traits rolled into one, only amplified tenfold and minus any Freudian Excuse or anything remotely positive or redeemable, explaining where Akito got them from in the first place.
• Jerkass Has a Point: While Ren is a completely vile women who more or less indirectly caused most of the problems for the Zodiac, she brings up several good points about the curse that Akito tries to refute:
  • Ren notes that the outside world will ultimately prove too attractive an alternative to Akito's presence for the Zodiac, which is especially true for Kyo who is destined to be locked away for his entire life. Given Akito's regular abuse of the members (caused by Ren's manipulation), she isn't too far off.
  • While Ren's claim that no one would love Akito is rather cruel, she's right in that the Zodiac Bond isn't a genuine source of love. The Zodiac only stay by Akito's side and unconditionally forgive her because the curse compels them to, so they have no other choice. No one outside the bond understands it nor sees what they have as a real, healthy dynamic, and the family only justifies it because it's been part of the Sohma family's legacy for generations. This is proven when Kureno's curse breaks, and he cannot understand why he felt the need to be close to Akito, showing that the Zodiac members' "love" for Akito is forced by the curse and not natural. It's only driven home when Momiji's own curse breaks; he himself openly questions why he ever let someone as weak and pitiful as Akito dominate his life for so long, turns a deaf ear to her pleas not to leave her, and shuts the door in her face.
  • Ren is revealed to be the one who convinced Akito to let Tohru stay at Shigure's house, as a part of a bet to show her daughter that the Zodiac would rather bond with a kind-hearted outsider than an abusive head of the family. The Zodiac come to love Tohru as family and heal through her, while straining their bond with Akito and leading the latter to have a breakdown.
• Jerkass to One: While Ren is bitchy, immature, and cruel to virtually everyone, she's even more cruel and abusive to Akito than anyone else, hating her since before birth simply out of petty jealousy that Akira could love anyone else. Largely anything bad that happens to the Sohma family, and in the series as a whole, can be traced back to Ren's Irrational Hatred of her own daughter and the lengths she's willing to go in order to make Akito's life miserable.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: Whenever Ren does something decent, it's all for her self-serving goals or as a means to screw with Akito.
  • The entire reason Tohru lives with Shigure in the first place is because Ren talked Akito into letting her stay. It may seem like kindness at first glance, since Tohru was a Starving Student living in a tent, but Ren only did so as a means to prove to Akito that the curse can't truly force the Zodiac members to love their God, correctly surmising that they would rather bond with an All-Loving Hero stranger than an abusive Psychopathic Manchild of a family head.
  • She also agrees to help Rin find a way to break the Sohma curse if she steals the box Akito keeps in her room for her; Rin's caught in the act, given a Traumatic Haircut, and locked up in the Cat's Room to starve to death. Not only did Ren know this would most likely happen, it turns out she doesn't even know how to break the curse and lied to Rin to get her to do what she wanted.
• Karma Houdini: She receives no punishment for the way she treated her daughter and indirectly driving her to make the Zodiac members miserable. In the sequel, Ren is still living in the Sohma estate and trying to inflict physical and emotional harm on the new Sohma generation, including her own grandson.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: While she receives no real punishment for her abuse of Akito and role in the suffering the Zodiac members endured at the latter's hands, Ren doesn't end up too well off either, given that Akito is able to move past her manipulations and thus can't be tormented by Ren anymore, leaving Ren just a crazy woman who is ignored and/or disliked by the Zodiac, a lot of the servants, and the family at large. Considering that a significant part of Ren's motivation is to ruin Akito and make her life a living hell, seeing Akito move on and finally have a chance at happiness while Ren herself is left alone and miserable is actually the best possible punishment she can receive.
• Love Makes You Evil: Her Face–Heel Turn came when she got pregnant and became obsessed with the idea that Akira would care more for their then-unborn child than for her... and you know what came next.
• Madden Into Misanthropy: While Akira's death proved to be the tipping point, most of the Sohma clan and attendants did their best to marginalize Ren as soon as Akira started showing interest in her. Akira's devotion solely to her was the only positive influence in her life, but when she believes she's lost that... well, see the other tropes of her.
• Manipulative Bitch: She doesn't believe in the bond, but she doesn't do anything about it except trying to use it against Akito:
  • She tricks Isuzu into stealing Akito's box by promising to tell her how to break the Zodiac Curse. The promise turned out to be a lie, as she had no clue how to break the curse, and she only said she would tell Isuzu, simply because she hated her and she wanted to get her in trouble.
  • It's implied that she manipulated Akira into falling in love with her, using his loneliness to her advantage by playing the part of the loving maid.
  • Tohru's stay at Shigure's house is entirely due to her manipulation; Ren made a bet with Akito that the Zodiac members would willingly gravitate towards a complete stranger, thus proving that the curse cannot truly force them to love their God. Indeed, that's exactly what happens; the Zodiac members are drawn to Tohru's healing compassion and choose to side with her over Akito.
• Meaningful Name: Ren's name is written with the kanji 楝, which refers to the chinaberry, a tree whose fruit looks attractive, but is notoriously poisonous to mammals, and is regarded as a pest by many people as a result. It is also a foreign plant to Japan (it originates in tropical Asia), which may symbolize her unwelcomeness in the Sohma estate.
• Meaningless Villain Victory: In the end, Ren won the bet between herself and Akito; as she predicted, the Zodiac members gravitate towards Tohru and bond with her because she treats them far more decently than Akito ever did, thus proving to her once and for all that the Zodiacs' bonds with her as their God were fake and forced on them by the curse. Ultimately, however, her victory is pointless, since Tohru also extends friendship to Akito, allowing her to move past her mother's manipulations and find a chance at happiness while Ren is left alone, miserable, and either ignored or outright despised by the Sohma family at large.
• Never Got to Say Goodbye: Her biggest chagrin at Akito is that she was at Akira's side during his deathbed and got to hear his last words while Ren didn't make it time to see her husband depart from the world.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Ren, always looking for ways to screw over her daughter, such as starting a bet with Akito regarding Tohru and the Zodiac. She believed that the Zodiac would willingly gravitate towards a stranger to prove that the curse cannot truly force them to love the "God"; if Ren was right, Akito had to leave the family for good. While Ren was proven right, she lost everything in the long run instead of Akito. Ren was so blinded by her belief that no one would love Akito that she didn't count on Tohru extending her kind hand towards the former. Tohru's healing compassion helps Akito realize her flaws and allows her to let the past go, leading to the curse breaking and freeing herself of Ren's manipulation. Between betraying her vow to Akira and going insane over an empty box, Ren loses the family's respect and winds up alone, forced to watch the daughter she tortured move on and work towards redeeming herself. None of which would have happened if Ren never proposed the bet to begin with.
• Not Afraid to Die: When her taunts drive Akito to strangle her and scream death threats, Ren dares her to kill her so she can be with Akira again.
• Penny Among Diamonds: A deconstructed example. Ren was originally a housemaid in the Sohma main household. Akira, the family head fell in love with her while she looked after him due to his poor health and they got married. No one in the family approved of their marriage because of Ren's low class position and Ren was ostracized by a majority of the Sohma household staff. After Akira died, Ren basically stays confined in the Sohma main house, surrounded by a few servants being willing to support her usurping Akito. It goes to exacerbate her already unstable mental state and extreme envy towards her daughter who is worshipped by the family as the Zodiac's "God".
• Psychological Projection: It's strongly implied that Ren has some genuine self-worth issues due to being looked down by the Sohma Clan on as a lowly housemaid who was not good enough to marry Akira, and she internalized that her only value came from her beauty and male attention (specifically, her husband's love for her). Therefore, she gets insanely jealous at the thought of her husband loving any other girl because she fears it diminishes her value as a person. Akira's death certainly left Ren abandonedly and largely ignored by the rest of the Sohma Clan. Therefore, Ren projected her insecurities onto her daughter and the Zodiac Curse by repeatedly claiming that the Zodiac Curse was the only reason they loved her, the only thing that made her special, and that without the Curse then Akito would be left all alone and hated by everyone... just as Ren was left all alone and hated after Akira died.
• Psychopathic Womanchild: Not only is her reason for abusing Akito ultimately very petty (being jealous of her just because Akira was excited to be a father, and because she couldn't stand the idea of her daughter growing up receiving more male attention than she did), she tries to outright murder Akito over an empty box that belonged to Akira, believing that all of Akira's belongings are hers by right.
• Redemption Rejection: After her Heel–Face Turn, Akito tries to reach out to Ren and make peace, but Ren refuses to talk with her or make amends. Come Another, she's still as despicable and bitchy as ever.
• The Resenter: Ever since before Akito was born, Ren felt viciously jealous of her because Akito was a "special child" who would be adored by everyone in the Sohma household, unlike her who was shunned for being a former maid even after she married the family head.
• Shadow Archetype: To Kyoko in the same way Akito is to Tohru. Like Kyoko, Ren craves attention and affection, her husband married her against the wishes of his family and then, he untimely died from illness, leaving Ren grief-stricken. What they significantly differ is that Kyoko found the will to carry on and took very good care of the daughter her husband left with her. On the other hand, Ren never gets over her husband's death and the only feelings she gave her daughter Akito were abhorrence and petty jealousy. While Kyoko lovingly raised Tohru into a gentle and selfless young girl, Ren's emotional abuse is the main reason why Akito grew up into a possessive and unstable Yandere.
• Smug Snake: She's beautiful, evil, sly, manipulative, and not just despicable, but in the end, very incompetent. She has to manipulate her desperate niece Rin to get her late husband Akira's box (Rin then fails and is horrifyingly "punished" by Akito), is humiliated by Shigure when he tells her he only had sex with her because she looks like an older Akito, and once her plans crumble she's left as an Empty Shell of her former self.
• The Sociopath: Ren possesses several traits of this. She has no empathy for anyone, not even her own daughter, who she mentally and emotionally abused into the psychotic Yandere she is today, all out of petty jealousy that her husband could love anyone more than her. She's also quite intelligent and manipulative, duping Isuzu into questioning her parents' love and later into stealing the box from Akito's room, both times knowing what the horrible outcomes would be and not caring, and possesses enough charm and charisma to sow a level of division amongst the Sohma staff, with an entire faction siding with her over Akito.
• Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: While Akito herself is an example, being a Yandere Domestic Abuser responsible for a lot of the mental and emotional issues the Zodiac members have, Ren is even worse and serves to make Akito sympathetic by comparison, considering the fact that her shitty parenting is what made Akito such an abusive Jerkass to begin with.
• Villain No Longer Idle: She spends most of the series a non-active Manipulative Bastard, finding ways to screw Akito over and dupe the Sohma family and staff into siding with her over her daughter. When her attempt to manipulate Isuzu into stealing Akito's box backfires when Akito catches her in the act and locks her up, Ren is done playing around and breaks into Akito's room with a knife to demand the box herself... only to be rendered an Empty Shell when Akito voluntarily hands it over, revealing the box is empty and was actually given to her by the head maid.
• Wanted a Son Instead: She wishes Akito was born a man. She claims it's because a female family head is unfitting, but it's actually because she was afraid that her husband could love another woman more than her (even if she's their daughter).
• Would Hurt a Child: She's emotionally and psychologically abusive towards Akito throughout her entire life, and deliberately manipulates Rin into putting herself in harm's way twice, knowing full well she would most likely get hurt. In the sequel, she's shown brandishing a knife towards her own grandson.
• Yandere: Even worse than Akito. She initially wanted to abort Akito because of her fear of losing her husband's love to their daughter. When Akira passed away, though, she turned into an Abusive Parent and got worse from there. After her Villainous Breakdown, she stumbles deliriously into Akito's room with a knife to demand the box Akira gave to Akito (that's not even his) as Ren needs his possessions to reassure herself of their love together. Especially after Ren's mortified realization that her deep connection with Akira was little more than talk on her part.

Akira Sohma

Voiced by: Akira Ishida (JP), Chad Cline (EN), Arturo Cataño (LA)

The former head of the Sohma family and Akito's father.

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• Casting Gag: Akira is voiced by Chad Cline in the English dub of the 2019 anime. Cline originally voiced Akira's child Akito in the dub of the 2001 anime, where Akito is depicted as male since this was long before the reveal about Akito's gender.
• Deceased Parents Are the Best: Akira was a loving father who Akito still adores even so long after he died, in sharp contrast to her still living mother Ren, who is outright evil.
• Delicate and Sickly: It was said that he was born with a weak body and succumbed to illness before the story started.
• Disappeared Dad: He died when Akito was a child.
• Doting Parent: He adored his child Akito, because he believed her being the God of the Zodiac proved that his love with his beloved wife Ren was special.
• Innocently Insensitive: His final words to Akito were lamentation that Ren was never happy about giving birth to her, even though the God of the Zodiac being their child was proof their love was "special". This added to Akito's many issues, since she became afraid that not even her father loved her, at least not as much as he loved Ren.
• Lonely Rich Kid: As head of the Sohma family, people could seldom approach him. Not helped by his horrible health.
• Parents as People: He truly loved his daughter and did his best to raise her right, but his inability to really protect Akito from Ren's abuse and the fact that he promised her impossible things (that she was destined for eternal love and happiness and no one would ever leave her) sets the groundwork for a lot of Akito's mental issues.
• Poor Communication Kills: If he had told Ren that the reason he adored their daughter was because he felt their child being "God" of the Zodiac was proof that their love was special, maybe she would have been... less destructively jealous and spiteful throughout the series. Then again, Ren's unreasonable attitude didn't help as flashbacks show that after Akito was born, she only spoke to Akira to complain about how Akito was "stealing" all the attention she wanted for herself and refused to hear Akira say anything positive about Akito. As he said while dying, things would remain unsettled between the two.
• Posthumous Character: He died long before the start of the series due to a terminal illness, and is only seen in flashbacks.
• Pretty Boy: He had an "unearthly beauty", according to people.
• Uptown Guy: When they first met, Akira was the leader of the Sohma household while Ren worked as a maid in the Sohma state. They fell in love and got married.
• Useless Bystander Parent: He never did much about Ren outright refusing to be a mother to Akito. The most we see him do is asking why she refuses to hold Akito and doesn't seem to react to her referring to their child simply as "that baby" and implying that everyone fusses over Akito enough that she doesn't need to bother. That's not even going into how Ren bullied Akira into agreeing to raise Akito as a boy regardless of her sex at birth, threatening to get an abortion if he refused.
• Your Days Are Numbered: He was terminally ill for a very long time, which led to his death when Akito was still very young.

Kyo's father

Voiced by: Kazuhiko Inoue (2001 series), Shinobu Matsumoto (2019 series) (JP), E. Bailey (2001 series), Aaron Roberts (2019 series) (EN), Sergio Morel (LA)

Kyo's estranged father who hasn't seen him since Kyo's mother's funeral.

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• Abusive Dad: He treats Kyo like a horrifying monster, refers to him as "it", claims his mother committed suicide from shame and disgust at having him and insists Kyo should already be locked up in the Cat's Room and be left to rot away there.
• Dirty Coward: He loves to throw his weight around, taking every opportunity to insult Kyo and treat him like garbage, and outright manhandles him on one occasion... but when Kyo pries his hands off, his immediate response is to Freak Out, screaming for help and accusing Kyo of trying to kill him.
• Domestic Abuse: Kyo's father treated his mother as badly as he treats their son, blaming her for making him fall into disgrace by giving birth to the boy cursed by the Cat, even though that was in no way her fault. It's very likely that this was what really pushed her into committing suicide.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: Given the one born with the cat spirit is by the Sohma's rules an outcast and an abomination to be shunned and scorned, he was thus by proxy just as shunned as Kyo was by the rest of the family, fundamentally becoming a pariah and losing most of his social status. That being said, it does not excuse his horrendous treatment of Kyo and his wife or diminish his Hate Sink status in the slightest, and Kazuma makes sure to let him know that.
• Gruesome Grandparent: Come Another. It's not clear whether or not they've actually had any contact, but Hajime openly admits that he hates Kyo's father and doesn't consider him family at all.
• Hate Sink: He's one of the most despicable parents in the entire series, which is saying something.
• Hates Their Parent: Inverted. He hates his own son Kyo so much that he cannot stand the idea of him having any happiness whatsoever, and loses it when he learns Kyo is moving forward with someone he loves.
• Irrational Hatred: He utterly despises Kyo, viewing him as nothing but a horrible monster and treating him like he's subhuman because he was cursed by the Cat, something that Kyo had no control of whatsoever. He went so far as to mistreat his wife just for giving birth to Kyo, to the extent she was Driven to Suicide.
• "It" Is Dehumanizing: Kyo's father refuses to accept Kyo as a fellow human being let alone his son, referring to him as "it" and "that monster".
• It's All About Me: He never shuts up about how hard his life has been ever since he became the father of the Cat and his wife committed suicide as if he was the only one with problems because of Kyo's curse.
• Jerkass: He's a spiteful and petty man who treated his wife and son like garbage for things that weren't their fault.
• Never My Fault: He insists that everything even slightly wrong with his life has to be Kyo's fault. He even refuses to acknowledge that his emotional abuse towards his wife might have been a factor in her suicide because Kyo must be the one to blame.
• Psychopathic Manchild: To put it simply, he's nothing but an annoying and whiny brat in the body of an adult man, using his own son as The Scapegoat for everything that goes wrong with his life, no matter how small. Best cemented in his and Kyo's final meeting; Kyo's father throws a temper tantrum over the fact that the son he's always hated and dehumanized is moving on with his life and has found love, and is left whining and shouting that he "won't allow it" even as Kyo turns his back on him and walks away.
• Redemption Rejection: Near the end of the series, Kyo approaches him, hoping to make peace. When his father just keeps hurling insults at him, on top of throwing things and outright trying to manhandle him, Kyo quickly realizes that he's a lost cause and leaves, cutting him out of his life. Come Another, it's clear they're still on bad terms; Hajime openly admits to Sawa that he hates Kyo's father, does not consider him family, and wants nothing to do with him.
• Shadow Archetype: He represents the worst possible version of Kyo without the positive influence and love Kyo received from Kazuma and Tohru, as well as what would happen to Kyo if he held on to his Irrational Hatred for Yuki his whole life much like how his father has refused to let go of his own Irrational Hatred for Kyo himself. It's made especially apparent in the 2019 anime, where he looks even more like an older Kyo than he does in the manga.
• That Thing Is Not My Child!: Kyo's father calls him a monster and absolutely refuses to acknowledge him not only as his son, but as a human being, only ever referring to Kyo as "it" or "that monster". He sees and treats Kyo as an abominable beast that needs to be locked up for everyone's safety.
• Unnamed Parent: He's never called by name and even the characters refer to him as "Kyo's father".

Kyo's mother

Voiced by: Miki Nagasawa (2001 series), Atsuko Yuya (2019 series) (JP), Wendy Powell (EN), Liliana Barba (LA)

Kyo's deceased mother.

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• Driven to Suicide: She committed suicide by throwing herself in front of a train. Kyo was blamed for it because everyone assumed she must have been so disgusted by giving birth to the Cat that she chose to die out of shame. However, it's implied that her suicide had more to do with her husband's emotional abuse.
• The Faceless: Her face is obscured in flashbacks. Averted in one scene during episode 24 of the 2019 reboot.
• Missing Mom: She killed herself when Kyo was a young child.
• My Beloved Smother: She tended to keep Kyo sheltered and away from other people; she claimed she did so because she loved Kyo, but it was more likely because of her paranoia about what would happen if his true form was revealed in public. This is implied later on to be his father's decree.
• Parents as People: She did try to make Kyo feel loved and supported, but she failed to do it in a healthy way. Though she often told Kyo she loved him, Kyo suspects that she was overcompensating to hide how she was deeply afraid and paranoid of his true form. He remembers how she would constantly check to make sure he was wearing his beads, and she prevented him from leaving the house by claiming he was so adorable that she needed to keep him all to herself. Eventually, the stress of raising the Cat and the emotional abuse of her husband were too much for her, resulting in her taking her own life.
• Posthumous Character: She has been dead for years by the beginning of the series and we only know about her through Kyo's memories.
• Unnamed Parent: We never get to know her actual name.

Yuki and Ayame's mother

Voiced by: Sayaka Ohara (JP), Morgan Garrett (EN), Karla Falcón (LA)

Yuki and Ayame's cold and selfish mother.

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• Abusive Mom: Like most of the Sohmas, she's emotionally abusive towards her sons. She completely dismisses anything Yuki says and acts like his feelings have no value. When Yuki was a kid, she wasn't above smacking him around a little when she was upset with him. She's no better to Ayame, who she calls useless and worthless, but Ayame has learned not to let her get to him. She outright yells that she shouldn't have given birth to Yuki and Ayame just because they aren't acting like her mindless puppets.
• Character Development: Hinted at. After being told off by Ayame for completely disregarding Yuki's own wishes during a parent/teacher conference and confronted by Yuki afterwards, while not entirely her blessings, she grudgingly advises him to put her permission on forms that required her approval to good use.
• Control Freak: She expects Yuki to follow her orders without question and has no interest in his personal desires, only caring about how she can use him to further her own social standing. During the parent/teacher conference, she reveals she's planned out Yuki's entire future without consulting him, and when Ayame intervenes and tells her off for her controlling nature, she loses her temper and snaps that she never should have given birth to either of her sons simply because they're not doing what she wants.
• The Dark Side Will Make You Forget: Discussed and implied. Ayame remarks that she has trampled on the things important to her, suggesting that she does care about her sons, but is so fixated on her social status and wealth that she's lost sight of that.
• Greed: Her defining trait; she only sees Yuki as a Trophy Child and uses his existence for self-gain and to boots her social status, since the Rat is considered special to the Zodiac and worth a lot of prestige and money.
• Hate Sink: She represents the worst traits of a neglectful and controlling mother.
• It's All About Me: In a nutshell, she doesn't give a damn about anyone who's not her, even her own sons, unless she can use them for money and social status.
• Jerkass: She's extremely callous and self-centered, openly admitting she sees Yuki as nothing but a tool for her own self-gain.
• My Beloved Smother: She tells Yuki to his face that he's nothing but her tool so he doesn't have the right to have wishes of his own. At the parent/teacher conference, she casually says she already planned out Yuki's future without consulting him while not letting Yuki even voice out his opinion about it because "she knows what's best" and Yuki "never had opinions of his own".
• Parental Favoritism: Played With. She openly favors Yuki over Ayame, but that's only because as the Rat of the Zodiac, Yuki is the closest to God and worth a lot of money and prestige whereas Ayame, the Snake, is much lower on the scale; she cares nothing for Yuki as a person and openly admits she only sees him as a Trophy Child she can use to boost her wealth and social status. A rare case where being The Unfavorite works in one's favor, since Ayame is free to live his own life.
• Parental Neglect: She's rarely at home, doesn't even like talking to her sons, and going to the parent/teacher conference to discuss Yuki's future is a "waste of time" to her. Basically, she wants nothing to do with her sons unless it benefits her and her social status.
• Psychological Projection: She says she must decide everything for Yuki because she thinks he's self-centered, selfish, and unreasonable. Considering she views Yuki as nothing but a Trophy Child she can use to get wealth and status, openly calls him a tool who doesn't get to have dreams or wishes of his own, and gets angry to the point she states outright she never should have given birth to him simply because he's not acting like her mindless puppet, those three words are a better description for her than they ever will be for Yuki.
• Unnamed Parent: Her given name is never revealed.

Momiji's father

Voiced by: Toshihiko Seki (2001 series), Junichi Yanagita (2019 series) (JP), E. Bailey (2001 series), Ben Bryant (2019 series) (EN), Esteban Desco (LA)

Momiji's father is the CEO of the company Tohru works at as a janitor.

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• Apologises a Lot: Momiji has revealed that his father frequently apologizes to him for his poor and selfish handling of their family dynamics. In fact, Momiji has noted that he is struggling to maintain the happiness he has rebuilt over the years, suggesting that his fear is driving his actions.
• Always Save the Girl: Deconstructed. Because his wife became suicidally depressed as a result of giving birth to the Rabbit and only got better after willingly forgetting about her own son, Momiji's father basically kicked Momiji out of the family and deliberately limits any contact Momiji has with his own mother and sister so his wife isn't in danger of remembering him even though Momo wants to bond with her older brother despite not knowing they're blood related. In the end, the father prioritizes his wife's sanity instead of his kids' happiness.
• The Faceless: In the manga and 2019 anime, he's always shown from the back, not allowing us to see his face. This is averted in the 2001 anime where Momiji shows a picture of his father's face.
• It's All About Me: Has shades of this. He goes out of his way to limit any contact Momiji has with his own mother and Momo because she was nearly Driven to Suicide over being mother of the Rabbit and had her memory wiped, doing everything in his power to stop them from getting closer and going so far as to force Momiji to quit violin lessons after Momo takes interest in them, all so he doesn't have to risk destroying his own happiness.
• Lack of Empathy: He forces Momiji to quit his violin lessons that he loves so much after Momo becomes interested in learning violin so she can play with Momiji. And why? Because Momiji and Momo becoming closer could destroy the happiness he created for himself by excluding Momiji from the family and letting his wife forget their cursed son. He doesn't seem to care he's denying his children happiness for the sake of not risking his own.
• Love-Obstructing Parents: A rare familial variation. The father wants to keep Momiji as far away from his wife and Momo as possible in fear that his wife might remember him. All of Momo's actions (taking violin lessons from Momiji's instructor and wanting to attend Momiji's high school) are to see her brother and get closer to him despite not knowing they're related. Every time their father takes Momiji out of the equation, he's denying Momo her greatest wish: her brother.
• Parental Favoritism: Even though he had promised to love Momiji even more to compensate for his mother forgetting him, he apparently changed his mind after Momiji's little sister Momo was born and seems to ignore Momiji in favor of his wife and daughter. Momo even got into the violin lessons she wanted at the cost of Momiji being forced to quit by their father, even though Momo wants to learn violin to play with Momiji.
• Unnamed Parent: His actual name is never given.
• Useless Bystander Parent: Despite promising to make up for his wife's rejection of her son, all he does is enable her neglect, coddling her so that she never even has to see the son she abandoned. He has his reasons (Momiji's mother was apparently fragile to the point of a nervous breakdown), but we only see Momiji's dad making the boy's life even more difficult in his quest to shield his wife, such as demanding apologies when Momiji accidentally runs into his mother and sister, and ending his beloved violin lessons so that Momo had unobstructed access to Momiji's tutor. He clearly acknowledges that what happened to Momiji was wrong, but takes his wife's side to the detriment of his son.

Momiji's mother

Voiced by: Azusa Nakao (2001 series), Takako Honda (2019 series) (JP), Elise Baughman (EN), Maggie Vera (LA)

Momiji's father met his German wife in college and she came to live in Japan after marrying him. After Momiji was born, Momiji's mother entered a serious depression because she couldn't accept that her son transformed into a rabbit when she hugged him. Ultimately, Momiji's father took the decision, with Momiji's "consent", to erase him for his mother's memories.

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• Ambiguous Situation: In Another. While Momo is now aware of her relation to Momiji and regularly works with him, it's not clear whether or not she herself knows.
• Bungled Suicide: In her madness over having given birth to the Rabbit, Momiji's mother stabbed herself with scissors. She was saved on time and Hatori erased Momiji from her memory at her own request so her emotional health could improve.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Played With. Momiji got his blond hair from his mother. While she's shown to be a gentle woman in the present, that's only because Momiji was erased from her memory. She originally was extremely depressed because of the stress that being the mother of a cursed Sohma put in her mind. She finally broke down and asked to have Momiji erased from her memory, going as far as saying that her biggest regret was giving birth to that "creature".
• Hysterical Woman: According to Momiji, his mother panicked and started screaming whenever she saw him until Hatori made her forget about her own son.
• I Have No Son!: She all but officially disowned Momiji because she didn't want to endure the complications of having a Zodiac member as her son. She went as far as to ask Hatori to make her forget Momiji because she regretted the mere fact of giving birth to such a "creature".
• Innocently Insensitive: Since she willingly forgot about Momiji being her son, she has been made believe that Momiji is the son of another Sohma family. Each time she runs into Momiji, she asks him to not make his mother worry by staying out late and tells him to have fun in family vacation. You can see how Momiji is struggling to not cry as he hears his own mother saying such things while treating him like a stranger.
• Phenotype Stereotype: She's a German woman with blonde hair and green eyes.
• Selective Obliviousness: Momiji's mother readily agreed to the memory wipe because she didn't want to remember him, and this is reflected in how she currently behaves around him. Even after forgetting Momiji is her son, she still distances herself from him; for example she never smiles when she sees him, and when her daughter points out the obvious resemblance between them she firmly denies that he looks anything like her.
• That Thing Is Not My Child!: Momiji's mother only saw him as an abomination because he's one of the Zodiac members and she couldn't even hold him without him transforming (and it's implied that postpartum depression played a role as well). She got so sick of him that she allowed Hatori to erase Momiji from her memory, saying that her greatest regret was giving birth to "that creature".
• Unnamed Parent: Her given name is never mentioned.
• When She Smiles: Near the end of the series, she finally shows Momiji a true genuine smile once his curse is broken.

Momo Sohma

Momo Sohma

Voiced by: Saya Tanaka (JP), Megan Shipman (EN)

Momiji's kid sister. She was born after Momiji's mother requested to forget all about her son. Although Momo herself is unaware that she has a brother, she is very attached to Momiji and wants to get to know him, despite her father constantly interfering with her progress.

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• Adaptation Dye-Job: She has dirty blonde hair in the 2019 anime, but the 2001 anime depicted her with a lighter blonde hair color much more similar to Momiji's.
• Alliterative Family: Both her and Momiji's names begin with "M".
• Big Brother Worship: Even though she doesn't know they are actual siblings, Momo adores Momiji and wants to make him her big brother even though her father tries to keep their interaction to the minimum.
• But Not Too Foreign: She's half Japanese and half German, like Momiji. According to Momiji, Japanese isn't her first language and she prefers to speak German, though she doesn't actually speak German in any of her appearances.
• Children Are Innocent: She's pure and sweet to the core. All she wants is becoming closer to Momiji and playing with him, but her father's selfishness causes Momo's wish to bond with her brother to drift them even more apart.
• Determinator: This girl does not stop until she gets to see Momiji; she tries to speak with him whenever she can, signs up for violin lessons to get closer, and even talks about attending his high school in the future. No amount of her father’s interference (unknown to her) deters her from her goal.
• Dramatic Irony: She wants Momiji to adopt her as his little sister, when in fact he really is her brother and her father keeps their relation a secret from her because their mother chose to forget about Momiji, and their father tries to keep Momiji away from them as much as possible.
• Family Theme Naming: Momo is the little sister of Momiji.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Just like her brother, Momo is a very sweet kid with blonde hair she got from her German mother, although she is very shy and it's hard to express it sometimes.
• Hollywood Genetics: Like Momiji, Momo has the blonde hair from their German mother despite their father being Japanese. Her hair color is at least a bit darker than Momiji's, however.
• Innocently Insensitive: Her pursuit of Momiji and aspiration to be like him leads her to following him and taking violin lessons like him, but their father removes Momiji from the activities he loves to keep Momo in the dark. While this frustrates Momiji, he doesn't once blame Momo, instead it strains his patience with his parents' actions.
• Locked Out of the Loop: She's kept in the dark about everything related to Momiji and the curse despite being a part of the "inner family", because her father doesn't want her mother to have another breakdown.
• Shrinking Violet: She's usually shy around strangers.
• Sibling Team: In Another, Momo is now aware that she and Momiji are blood siblings and are now working together; she's working as his assistant.
• Siblings Wanted: Her greatest wish is having a big brother and she has decided Momiji is perfect for it, unaware that he's her real brother.
• Stalker without a Crush: Because her parents won't let her see Momiji, Momo sneaks into his house where she secretly watches him from the garden.
• Third-Person Person: She refers to herself in third person, as it's normal for little children in Japan.
• Took a Level in Cheerfulness: As an adult, she’s grown out of her shyness and is much more outgoing and openly affectionate, especially towards her niece.

Isuzu's parents

Isuzu's father is voiced by: Masayuki Kato (JP), Robert McCollum (EN)

Isuzu's mother is voiced by: Fuyuka Ōura (JP), Kenneisha Thompson (EN)

Isuzu's parents abandoned her after they subjected her to terrible abuse. They are responsible for most of Isuzu's emotional issues.

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• Abusive Parents: One of the worst ones in the entire series. Once they got tired of pretending to love their cursed daughter, they became horribly abusive towards Isuzu, until Kagura and her parents found out and took Isuzu into their custody. The mother's last words to Isuzu were that she was an eyesore to them and could never bring themselves to love her. The aftereffects of their abuse are still strong in Isuzu to this day, which is why her adjustment to Tohru's healing presence is the most drastic, but also takes the longest to happen after they meet.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: When Isuzu was a little girl, they pretended to be ideal parents who loved Isuzu despite her cursed status, but as Isuzu puts it, they were merely like actors in a play. That was until Isuzu innocently asked them if they always were as happy as they seemed to be. With just that, her parents got sick of acting and started abusing her terribly until Haru found her collapsed on the street and Kagura's family took Isuzu in.
• By the Hair: Flashbacks show them pulling Rin's hair when they were mad at her.
• The Faceless: Their faces are never fully drawn, which only dehumanizes them further as we find out the impact their abuse has had on Isuzu.
• Happy Marriage Charade: When Isuzu was a young child, her parents acted like they were a happy family and had no problems at all even though their daughter was the Horse. The charade only lasted until Isuzu innocently made an Armor-Piercing Question by asking them if they were really happy. From then on, they became Abusive Parents and didn't think twice to abandon their daughter when they had the chance.
• Hate Sink: They're easily some of the most loathsome Abusive Parents in the story, even by the standards of the Big, Screwed-Up Family that are the Sohmas. They're the main reason why Isuzu is the most emotionally broken and traumatized out of the Zodiac members. It says something that their faces are never fully drawn as it dehumanizes them the most out of all the parents shown in the series.
• Hidden Disdain Reveal: After Rin innocently asked them if they really were as happy as they seemed to be, their facade of being Good Parents vanished, revealing that they had always resented having a cursed daughter.
• I Have No Son!: They officially disowned Rin once she was hospitalized, stating that they don't want her around and told her to never come back. This is where Rin moves in with Kagura and her parents.
• Kick the Dog: They told Isuzu to her face that they didn't want her at their house anymore because they could never love her.
• Parental Neglect: They abandoned Isuzu following Isuzu's first hospitalization as a child and it is implied they wouldn't have even minded her disappearance had Kazuma not called them to inform them Isuzu was in the hospital.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Up to a horrifying level. They only appeared in Rin's flashback, but their constant abuse left a pretty much devastating impact on her even in the present days, causing her to develop a panic attack and nightmares, which clearly affects her mental health (making this and everything that happens to her in the series even worse than Kyo). Rin would have stayed sweet and kind had they not reject and mistreat her for who she is.
• Unnamed Parent: Neither of them are named in Isuzu's flashbacks.

Kana Sohma

Voiced by: Haruhi Terada (2001 anime), Minami Tsuda (2019 anime) (JP), Libby Smith (2001 anime), Kara Edwards (2019 anime) (EN), Xóchitl Ugarte (LA)

Hatori's ex-fiancée.

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• Amnesiac Lover: Hatori erased her memories of their romance after Kana became depressed out of guilt over Akito hurting Hatori's eye. Kana goes on to marry another man, and only remembers Hatori as her never-confessed First Love.
• Best Friend: To Mayuko who she has been very close to since college.
• Break the Cutie: Kana was a very sweet and optimistic young woman who loved Hatori and wanted to live happily with him. However, Akito would never allow that and injured Hatori in one eye in her fury at hearing that Hatori wanted to marry Kana. This broke Kana badly. The poor woman was left in such a serious state of depression that Hatori erased her memories of their time as a couple so she could get better.
• Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl: As Hatori puts it, Kana was the one who melted his unending winter and let spring come to his life. Sadly, that only lasted until Akito snapped at Hatori wanting to marry Kana.
• First Love: She was the first woman Hatori ever fell in love with. Their romance ending so badly for both of them is what convinces Hatori that the cursed Sohmas aren't meant to find happiness.
• Hospital Hottie: She was Hatori's assistant.
• It's All My Fault: She blamed herself for Akito blinding Hatori in one eye. Her guilt ended up making her so depressed that Hatori made her forget about their romance so Kana could feel better.
• Locked Out of the Loop: As one of the "outer" Sohmas, she had no idea about the Zodiac curse until Hatori accidentally transformed in front of her. She also had little awareness of the influence Akito held over the family and was so devastated after Hatori was nearly blinded that she had to have her memories erased to even begin to recover from the mental trauma that the incident caused.
• Nice Girl: Gentle, sweet and cheerful.
• Office Romance: She met and fell in love with Hatori when working as his assistant.
• The One That Got Away: Kana was Hatori's girlfriend and their time together was the happiest of his life. That was until Akito half-blinded Hatori because he asked permission to marry Kana and Kana felt so guilty about it that she fell into deep depression. Not wanting to see his beloved suffer anymore, Hatori erased Kana's memories of their time as a couple and exited her life forever. Hatori will never forget Kana, but he's sure her forgetting him was the best for her.
• Satellite Love Interest: She receives little characterization beyond being a Nice Girl and her only purpose in the story is providing Hatori with a sad backstory. It's later revealed that she's also friends with Mayuko, but she still isn't fleshed out much beyond that.
• Shipper on Deck: Ironically, after Hatori erased her memories, Kana became supportive of Mayuko and Hatori becoming a couple.
• Shipping Torpedo: She didn't like it when Mayuko was kind of dating Shigure because she could tell Shigure was very cold to her friend.
• Understanding Boyfriend: Gender-Inverted example. When she first learnt about Hatori's seahorse cursed form, she immediately accepted him and told him she loved him despite of it. This made Hatori cry Tears of Joy.

Satsuki Sohma

Voiced by: Mikako Takahashi (JP), Erica Mendez (EN), Georgina Sánchez (LA)

Hiro Sohma's mother, she makes relatively few appearances later in the story. She gives birth to a non-Zodiac daughter, Hinata, making Hiro a big brother.

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• Children Raise You: Hiro acts like a concerned but exasperated parent to her most of the time. She remarks in one panel how her son always scolds her. In another panel, Satsuki responds with a "Yes, sir!" when he tells her to be more careful while she's still pregnant. (Though her lighthearted tone of voice could mean she just humors him all of the time.)
• Cute Clumsy Girl: Such a klutz that Hiro is paranoid she's bound to trip down a flight of stairs. He's especially freaked out when she's pregnant.
• Doting Parent: Aside from Kagura's mother, she's the only mother of a Zodiac child we see who neither rejected him nor became overprotective.
• Good Parents: Satsuki is one of the only parents of Zodiac members who openly loves her kid.
• Kindhearted Simpleton: She's kind of an airhead and a big klutz, but she's still a sweet person and one of the best parents in the series.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: She's a lot more aware of Hiro's emotional sore spots than he realizes.
• Open-Minded Parent: Unperturbed that her son turns into a sheep. When he transformed when she held him for the very first time, her reaction was, "I love sheep!"
• Shipper on Deck: Openly anticipates gaining Kisa as a daughter-in-law, much to Hiro's horror.
• So Proud of You: Honestly is very proud of Hiro being her child without being overprotective or ashamed of him.
• Wacky Parent, Serious Child: The Wacky Parent to Hiro's Serious Child, being very clumsy and scatterbrained in contrast to Hiro's more serious demeanor. She indulges her son Hiro's strictness often.
• Womanchild: She's very loopy and clumsy, which stresses out her son.

Okami Sohma

Voiced by: Junko Yamamoto (2001 series), Sachiko Kojima (2019 series) (JP), Julie Mayfield (EN), Gabriela Guzmán (LA)

Ritsu's mother, and the manager of a hot springs owned by the clan.

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• Apologizes a Lot: Most of her lines are apologies.
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Her long jet-black hair, pale complexion, and gloomy aura make it easy to mistake her for a Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl.
• Hysterical Woman: She panics over every problem, no matter how trivial it is.
• It Runs in the Family: Ritsu apparently got his anxiety and tendency to apologize over everything from his mother.
• Kimono Is Traditional: She wears a kimono and is the owner of a traditional hot springs inn.
• Mistaken for Undead: She has been mistaken as a Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl.
• Nervous Wreck: Her son takes after her in anxiety problems.
• No Indoor Voice: It appears she doesn't know how to apologize without yelling.
• Parents as People: For all of her faults, she adores Ritsu. That said, the bad habit of her and her husband to apologize for almost everything Ritsu did fed his anxiety and low self-esteem issues that almost drove him to kill himself at one point.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: When she's not stressing out over every minute detail, she's quite adorable. As a result, these moments don't come up much.
• Transplant: She apparently appeared in one of Natsuki Takaya's earlier stories.