Characters / Higurashi: When They Cry - Protagonists

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Protagonists

General

• Earn Your Happy Ending: Being trapped in a time loop of insanity and murder for 100 years, the final arc has them being able to beat Takano, overcome fate, and gain their freedom to live the rest of their lives happily.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble:
  • Satoko: Sanguine, the most cheerful and laughable Smart Girl of the bunch, falling under the common stereotypes of over seas Genki Girl.
  • Mion: Choleric, the most easily agitated yet tomboyish one of the four and shares the role as The Leader and The Big Girl.
  • Rena: Melancholic, the least outspoken of the girls. She is shy but also sweet, but becomes Sanguine whenever she sees something kyute.
  • Rika: Phlegmatic, The Cutie of the girls. Nipah!
• In-Series Nickname: Mion and Shion (influenced by her sister) call Keiichi "Kei-chan". The twins themselves are called "Mii-chan" and "Shii-chan" by Rena, and just "Mii" and "Shii" by Rika.
• Ms. Fanservice: Just about every female character have their moment. Especially in Rei, Kira, Jan & Mei.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: There's the New Transfer Student who moved from the city because of some actions he deeply regrets, a girl weirdly obsessed with cute things (or at least things she thinks are "cute") and the local deity, the heir of the local Yakuza, a Bratty Half-Pint expert at setting up traps, and the little Miko of the local shrine who's the only one aware of everyone being killed over and over for over a hundred years.
• Sanity Slippage: Almost every single main character in Higurashi, minus Mion, Rika and Hanyuu, has an arc about their gradual descent into madness as a result of paranoia caused by the Hinamizawa Syndrome.
• They Killed Kenny Again: All of them are subjected to this but it's especially the case for Rika.
• True Companions: The club members will try to support and help each other for anything, even helping conceal a murder. Too bad that many of the arcs has one of the members go crazy and murder their friends.

Keiichi Maebara

"Magician of Words" Keiichi Maebara

Voiced by: Soichiro Hoshi (JP), Grant George (EN, Bang Zoom), Khoi Dao (EN, Funimation)

Portrayed by: Gouki Maeda (film), Yu Inaba (drama series)

The main protagonist in the "question" arcs. The son of a famous artist, his family recently moved to Hinamizawa after an unfortunate event involving him in their hometown. His charisma and remarkable talent for speechmaking allow him to easily make new friends and become popular in the village.

The first arc, Onikakushi-hen (Spirited Away by the Demon chapter), is focused on him.

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• Absurd Phobia: He once read a manga where needles were mixed into food, which makes him a bit apprehensive about accepting food from others. In the first arc, Mion gives him ohagi with tobasco sauce as a prank, but Hinamizawa Syndrome convinced him that the unpleasant taste was a needle.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: Only slightly, but probably as a result of an Adaptation Distillation, Keiichi does not antagonize Mion regarding Satoko's bad home situation in the anime adaptation of Tatarigoroshi-hen. His inner monologue about wanting to kill Takano while she drives him home is also cut from the anime adaptation of the said arc.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: Eye variation. Both the original and the MangaGamer art for the visual novel generally give him indigo eyes, though the PS3 port makes them a purplish-brownish-gray. The first anime, manga, and the Mahjong game are the only continuities in the series that display him with outright purple eyes.
• All-Loving Hero: Starting with Tsumihoroboshi-hen, Keiichi essentially become the symbol of The Power of Friendship and hope as he keeps trying to fight for an ending that doesn't end in tragedy for him and his friends.
• Amnesiac Dissonance: During the events of Onikakushi-hen, Keiichi's paranoia about the town being out to get him makes him develop the Hinamizawa Syndrome and in his hallucinations, he thinks Rena and Mion are going to kill him, driving him to kill them in what he believes to be self-defense in a fit of madness. He doesn't realize what really happened until he recovers his memories in Tsumihoroboshi-hen and he can now remember with clarity that Rena and Mion weren't trying to hurt him in that previous timeline and he had actually killed them over nothing but his own delusions when they were truly worried about him.
• The Atoner: In Tsumihoroboshi-hen ("Atonement Chapter"), Keiichi is horrified to discover that he allowed his paranoia to get the better of him and brutally beat Rena and Mion to death with a baseball bat when he was under the influence of the Hinamizawa Syndrome in Onikakushi-hen. Once he remembers what he did and figures out Rena is in the same state he was in the previous world, Keiichi sets out to snap her back to sanity and stop her from blowing up the school.
• Bad Liar: Whenever he does anything that will get him in loads of trouble, he will act very guilty and his lies are horrendous, especially in Watanagashi-hen and Tatarigoroshi-hen. However, in all other cases, he is an absolute god at getting people to believe crap that he makes up.
• Batter Up!: His go-to weapon is Satoshi's baseball bat.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Keiichi gets smacked around with this Aesop in Tatarigoroshi-hen. Create a perfect murder that can't be discovered and verified? Fine. Except it can't even be verified by you. Wish people who are making your perfect murder more difficult were dead? Fine. Insanity Ensues.
• Became Their Own Antithesis: He recognized that moving to Hinamizawa meant he could change himself, and jumped on the chance - partly because he was afraid of becoming entirely isolated from emotion again, to the extent of hurting others for fun, and partly because his 'past life' was joyless and ultimately unfulfilling. The fact that his current personality - social, warm-hearted, and The Heart - is entirely opposite to his old one is probably not a coincidence.
• Berserker Tears: He cries his heart out while killing his two best friends in what he thinks is self-defense. This is pretty much the first thing you see in the series.
• Big Brother Instinct: An incredibly dark twist on it. In Tatarigoroshi-hen, Keiichi tries to act as Satoko's older brother in place of the missing Satoshi. When Satoko's uncle returns to abuse her terribly, Keiichi ends up killing Teppei to protect Satoko. It doesn't end well for him as things take a horrific turn for him unpredictably.
• Big Fancy House: Called "the Maebara Mansion" by the villagers, though about 2/3 of it is taken up by his father's art studio.
• Big Good: In Tsumihoroboshi and Minagoroshi, Keiichi takes up the role of the main force of good who is determined to prevent the tragedies from the previous timelines repeat themselves. His efforts to inspire others to fight against the tragedy and unite his allies result in him restoring Rena's sanity when she was at L5 of the Hinamizawa Syndrome and saving Satoko from Teppei without killing him by convincing everyone in Hinamizawa to get help from child services.
• Bishie Sparkle: He's noticeably pretty and even sparkles on various occasions.
• Book Smart: Deconstructed. Back when he lived at the city, Keiichi spent all of his free time studying at Cram School. As a result, he got the highest test scores at his school and for a while, he liked being praised for it. However, that didn't last long as his parents and teachers kept placing even bigger expectations on him and other students bullied him because he had better grades than them. Keiichi couldn't handle all that academic pressure and started shooting at children with a BB gun to relieve stress. He regretted it when he hit a little girl in the eye. Now at Hinamizawa, Keiichi doesn't put much focus on his studies because he wants to have fun with his new friends. He's still of great help at helping other kids study.
• Broken Ace: In his backstory, Keiichi was the top student at his school, but he was also very lonely and didn't find any enjoyment in anything he did. Eventually, the stress and frustration over his parents and teachers demanding more of his studies and his classmates bullying him caused Keiichi to relieve himself in destructive hobbies. He bought a BB gun and started shooting at little girls as if it was a mere game. He didn't realize the risk of his actions until he shot a girl in the eye.
• Bully Magnet: In Tatarigoroshi-hen, it's revealed in a flashback that he was bullied at his previous school for being Book Smart. He even had a dead rat placed on his desk.
• But Thou Must!: In the PS2-only adaptation, Matsuri, there actually is a way for Keiichi to offer the doll to Mion before Minagoroshi-hen. She still refuses, and you can unlock Watanagashi-hen through that route as well, though instead of flaying you for not giving the doll to Mion, it instead flays you for offering it to her when there's no way she feels she can accept it without embarrassing herself. You just cannot win.
• Butt-Monkey: The other members of the club seem to take glee in pulling pranks and embarrassing him even outside their usual punishment games. Especially Satoko who spends hours designing and setting up traps just to humiliate him and Mion whose tabasco sauce/needle filled ohagi convinced him they were trying to kill him. In fairness if your friends treated you like they do and you were suffering from a disease that causes extreme paranoia, you would have probably come to the same conclusion.
  • In Kai, he is horrified when Hanyu joins the club... and everyone still decides to haze him. Apparently club ranking is not determined by how long you've been in it.
  • In Watanagashi-hen, the earlier chapters (especially at the game store) are an entire Humiliation Conga of this, mostly done by Mion. This may have been a factor in him giving the prize doll to Rena instead of her, kicking the story into high gear.
• Buxom Beauty Standard: In the VN, after criticizing Mion for skipping breakfast and praising Rena for eating hers, he encourages Rena to grow curvier, not flat like Mion. Probably a subversion of the trope, since, as Mion is visibly not flat, Keiichi is definitely teasing.
• Character Exaggeration: He's notably more Hot-Blooded and a pretty big pervert in the anime adaptation. In the original sound novels, he's more of a rather generic, but good-natured Nice Guy who only occasionally acts hot-blooded (typically only during club games) and perverted, and often even chastises some of the girls (like Mion) for acting like a pervert. He's also much less subtle and introspective in the anime, however this can easily be justified in that it's hard to get across an introspective internal monologue in an animated format, as opposed to a sound novel format.
• The Charmer: Called The Magician of Words for his supreme charisma and talent in bullshitting.
• Chick Magnet: Though it can also work against him. Shion was attracted to him in Watanagashi/Meakashi and it's one of the things that set her off since she didn't want him to replace Satoshi in her heart. Either way, he has Mion AND Rena, at the very least, as well as general popularity.
• Chivalrous Pervert: Takes pride in being a pervert, but he cares very much for his friends.
• City Mouse: A nicer example than most, but he moved to Hinamizawa from the city. He sees the village as a huge improvement over his past life there once he gets used to it.
• Conveniently Seated: He always sits in the second-to-last row, along the windows.
• Dark and Troubled Past: His family moved to a little town in the middle of nowhere for a reason. Keiichi's life at the city wasn't happy at all. He spent all his time burying himself in his studies to get praised for his good grades as he had no other special skills. However, good grades only got him adults demanding even more of him and other students bullying him. To distract himself, he bought a BB gun and started shooting at children like it was a game. He didn't realize just how dangerous this was until one of his bullets hit a girl in the eye. Keiichi immediately regretted what he did and admitted his misdeed to his parents and the police. His parents could use money so that Keiichi didn't face a major legal punishment, but they decided it was better for them to move away from the city so they could all start over at the rural town of Hinamizawa. Keiichi states that he's been happier than he has ever been since he moved to Hinamizawa because the pressure of school is gone and he has found good friends he can have fun with.
• Death by Recognition: The Bad Ending to the Eye-Opening Chapter (which actually has a lower main-cast body count than the True Ending of that arc) ends with someone approaching Keiichi at a park bench and saying hello. Keiichi exclaims, "You're-" and then the final scene shows Mion finding him dead on the park bench. Later TIPS establish that the person who killed Keiichi was Takano. The reason he exclaimed was probably because as far as he knew Takano was supposed to have died at least a month earlier.
• Decoy Protagonist: Though he remains an important character, in Kai it's revealed that the real main protagonist of the story is Rika.
• Determinator: No matter what, Keiichi does not give up.
• Did I Just Say That Out Loud?: In the sound novel, he wonders why the other club members can read his wacky thoughts like an open book when he is nervous. When the narration switches to Rena in Tsumihoroboshi, it turns out it's because he doesn't just think them.
• Dodge the Bullet: He manages to dodge Takano's bullet when the latter shoots him in Miotsukushi-hen, with a lot of help from Hanyu stopping time.
• Dragged into Drag: The girls force Keiichi to wear embarrassing female cosplay a few different times as the result of punishment games. Usually it's a Meido costume or a School Swimsuit with cat ears.
• Even the Guys Want Him: Has an entire army of loyal fanboys that call him Comrade K because he helped them embrace that All Men Are Perverts.
• Featureless Protagonist: In the first half of the sound novels, Keiichi had no character sprite or mentions of his physical appearance. This is in keeping with the typical faceless male protagonists of visual novels at the time, even though it's quickly revealed that Higurashi is not a Dating Sim or even a typical visual novel.
• Foil: In sharp contrast to Rika's fatalism, Keiichi is a Determinator who won't believe fate decides everything. Also serves as this towards Mion and Rena, being less calm than them.
• Foreshadowing: In the sound novel, Keiichi hears Hanyu's voice apologizing as soon as just after the title screen of the first chapter. Since he has been away from the village for a few days, he has already started to develop the syndrome. At that moment though, he's half-asleep and thinks it's just a girl apologizing to someone.
  • This later counts as Fridge Brilliance, too. Annoyed with the unknown girl's constant apologies, he thinks that whoever she's apologizing to should just forgive her already, as she clearly feels guilty over what she did. Higurashi is the story of how Hanyu and Rika forgive themselves for failing the "Groundhog Day" Loop so many times, and are thus able to move on to the future...at least for a little while.
• Friendless Background: Back in the city, he spent all his time studying. Keiichi never knew what it was like to have friends until he was accepted into the games club at his new school.
• Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: In Tsumihoroboshi-hen, he repeatedly tries to snap sense back into Rena after Takano's notebook makes her become delusional about the Sonozaki family being behind an alien invasion.
• Giving Someone the Pointer Finger: In the VN, Keiichi does this during the bento competition (at least in the CG), when he basically turns it into Phoenix Wright: Lunchtime Edition.
• The Heart: When he's not a Villain Protagonist, Keiichi is the emotional core of the cast that makes the characters become united. Rika and Hanyu comment in the manga that he is the 'piece' that brings change to Hinamizawa. Because Hinamizawa is a village so traditionalist and unchanging that its people have begun to stagnate, it is very important that he comes and stirs up their preconceptions - in particular, changing the ostracizing attitude that many have towards the Houjou family. In Matsuribayashi-hen Rika and Hanyu are shown to takes measures to ensure Keiichi moves to Hinamizawa, and Oryou set up estate for outsiders like him that she normally despises because she knew her village needed some "fresh air".
• Heel Realization:
  • He realized what horrible things he had been doing back in his old life when he was shooting at children with a BB gun and he treated it like a game until one of the kids got seriously hurt.
  • In Tsumihoroboshi-hen, Keiichi breaks down after he remembers Onikakushi-hen. In that timeline, he thought Mion and Rena went crazy and betrayed him by trying to kill him. When he can see it from a sane perspective, he realizes the one who went crazy, betrayed his friends, and killed the innocent Rena and Mion was him.
• He Knows Too Much: Keiichi spends most of Onikakushi-hen being harassed by Rena and Mion because Ooishi has told him all the secrets related to the mysterious deaths and disappearances that are blamed on Oyashiro-sama's curse and Keiichi suspects the entire village is trying to kill any outsider like him. Subverted as it's later revealed that Rena's and Mion's crazy behavior in that arc was all the product of Keiichi's hallucinations induced by the Hinamizawa Syndrome.
• Hope Bringer: His presence is what gives hope to Rika, since according to her he didn't move to Hinamizawa in two unseen timelines and these were "sad and doomed worlds".
• Hot-Blooded: Keiichi just about oozes passion, no matter what he's talking about. For just one example, see his speech as K.
• I Don't Want to Ruin Our Friendship:
  • In Wataganashi-hen, he doesn't give Mion the doll not really because he doesn't think of her as a girl, but because Mion is someone he likes to joke around with and he didn't want their friendship to change if he treated her as a girl.
  • In Kira, this is Keiichi's response to the romantic shenanigans going on. More justified than most examples, in that the story fully establishes that he knows how wonderful it is to have True Companions that one can trust like family, and he doesn't want to screw that up by causing jealousy between anyone.
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: In the climax of Tsumihoroboshi-hen, Keiichi stops a L5 Rena's terrorist attack at the school and challenges Rena to a one-on-one fight that concludes in his words reaching Rena, restoring her sanity.
• Image Song: "Cool ni Nare". Also has a rather humorous rap with Ooishi… at least until the end.
• Indy Ploy: Along with fast talking, this is a characteristic distinct to Keiichi, and what his club mates admire and rely on him for.
• Innocently Insensitive: Keiichi is a great friend to be around but at worse, he can be emotionally dense especially in Watanagashi and Meakashi-hen, when he wins a doll at the toy store and gives it to Rena instead of Mion because he assumes the latter seems to be masculine, he doesn't realize until Rena lectures him that Mion wanted that doll in the first place and was devastated when he doesn't give it to her. His action inadvertently cause tragic circumstances for everyone at the end as he indirectly made Shion succumb to the Hinamizawa Syndrome and cause her to commit murders without remorse. Fortunately in Minagoroshi hen; thanks to Rika's advice, he gives the doll to Mion insisting she's still a girl to him, therefore, preventing tragic events similar to them from occuring.
• Intelligence Equals Isolation: Because his classmates were jealous of his good grades, he was bullied and tended to be isolated from the class. This leads him to becoming Book Dumb after transferring schools.
• Intergenerational Friendship: In Minagoroshi-hen, with Ooishi. Doubles as a rather Odd Friendship, especially considering their cold relationship in the previous arcs. In some of the post-finale arcs, they form the "Soul Brothers" along with Irie and Tomitake.
• Interrupted Suicide: In the ending of Tatarigoroshi-hen, it's mentioned that Keiichi tried to commit suicide after surviving the Great Hinamizawa Disaster, but was stopped. He did die from a fever caused by the Hinamizawa Syndrome months later.
• It Amused Me: Once, he got bored of studying and decided to shoot down random kids with a BB gun. He stopped and turned himself in because he hit a little girl in the eye.
• I Wished You Were Dead: In Tatarigoroshi-hen, everyone he wanted dead end up in deadly accidents.
• Jack of All Stats: In Higurashi Daybreak, he's this along with Nata Rena. He has decent running speed, plausible defence, great melee range and powerful range attacks that cover quite a distance. However, all three of his weapons lean slightly towards being a ranged moevest of varying styles, with the Baseball Bat being more Boring, but Practical , the golf clubs going for more damage at expense of less control and the shovel has an emphasis on wide-spread keep-away tactics.
• Jerkass Ball: Horrifically goes through this in Onikakushi-hen under the Hinamizawa Syndrome when he learns about a murder case and Oyashiro's curse, he becomes downright paranoid and belligerent towards mostly Rena and Mion assuming they were going to kill him but in reality, they were really trying to help him but sadly his Sanity Slippage ends with him bludgeoning them to death with Satoshi's baseball bat at his house. By the time he suddenly remembers it in Tsumihoroboshi-hen, he immediately breaks down in tears remorseful about it.
• Killing in Self-Defense: Subverted in Onikakushi-hen. Keiichi thinks that Mion is going to inject him with the same drug that made Tomitake claw his own claw out. This makes him go apeshit and beat Mion and Rena to death with a baseball bat. In Tsumihoroboshi-hen, it's revealed Keiichi was only hallucinating the syringe because of the Hinamizawa Syndrome and Mion and Rena never tried to hurt him.
• Knight Templar Big Brother: In Tatarigoroshi-hen, once he sees no other way to save Satoko from her uncle's abuse, Keiichi takes extreme measures to put it to an end by killing Teppei as he thinks he must protect Satoko while her older brother Satoshi is missing.
• The Leader: Type IV - Charismatic. His charisma and force of personality are essential to bringing everyone together as a group. Rika mentions that there have been worlds where Keiichi never moved to Hinamizawa - all of them doomed to failure.
• Lethal Chef: Screwing up some basic stuff like Miso soup or rice is a thing. Almost setting fire to your house while cooking vegetables is Homer Simpson level.
• Lonely at the Top: Before moving to Hinamizawa, he was top of his class, but his high grades isolated him from his envious classmates, and praise from adults gradually faded into high expectations with little reward. He started relieving stress by scaring girls with a BB gun, but accidentally shot one in the eye.
• Love Epiphany: The first part of his narration in Onikakushi-hen is a very dark example where he muses over how he might have loved Rena, who he has just murdered in a crazed fury. It should be noted, though, that he may mean platonic love rather than romantic love. Also crosses over with Et Tu, Brute? and Was It All a Lie? because he thought Rena and Mion were the best friends he could have asked for until they tried to kill him even though the sad truth is he was only hallucinating that part and the girls were innocent.
• Mistaken for Murderer: In the ending of Tatarigoroshi-hen, Satoko sees Keiichi standing in front of Rika's mutilated corpse with a weapon in his hand. In that arc, Keiichi did murder Teppei, but Rika's murderer was Takano. Still, Satoko was unstable because of the Hinamizawa Syndrome and didn't trust the claims of innocence of a guy who admits to not trusting his own perception of reality anymore.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • In his backstory, he didn't realize what a terrible thing he was doing by shooting at kids with his BB gun until he hurt a girl in the eye and possibly blinded her.
  • In Tsumihoroboshi-hen, Keiichi is able to remember the events of Onikakushi-hen in one of the previous timelines. Keiichi breaks down in tears, horrified that he killed Rena and Mion when the Hinamizawa Syndrome made him hallucinate that they were trying to harm him when they were really worried about him as the good friends they are.
• My Greatest Failure: In his backstory, he shot a little girl in the eye when he was shooting at children with his BB gun to relieve the stress of his studies. After he and his parents moved to Hinamizawa, Keiichi just wanted to start anew and leave behind the terrible thing he did by being a better person.
• My Greatest Second Chance: In Tsumihoroboshi-hen, he recovers his memories of the Onikakushi-hen timeline and realizes his previous self killed Rena and Mion when he was driven insane by the Hinamizawa Syndrome. This motivates him to save Rena from the Hinamizawa Syndrome once he understands she's in the same crazed state he was in the previous timeline. In the climax of the arc, he does manage to talk Rena back to her senses.
• Naïve Newcomer: Onikakushi might be a Deconstruction. The fact that Keiichi knows nothing about Hinamizawa or important past events and feels like an outsider, is a major cause of his growing paranoia and suspicion toward his new friends; and serves to lure the equally clueless reader as well.
• Nervous Wreck: In the latter half of Onikakushi-hen, Keiichi, fearing that he has ended up on the wrong end of the village conspiracy and convinced that his classmates are stalking him, graudally turns into full blown paranoiac who is seeing threats everywhere and nearly constantly in fight-or-flight mode. It is an effect of the Hinamizawa Syndrome, and rather than making him a pushover, it makes him dangerous, as he chooses fight, rather than flight.
• Nice Guy: More so in the sound novels.
• Oblivious to Love: He can't seem to catch on to Mion and Rena's attraction to him.
• One Dialogue, Two Conversations: In Onikakushi, a few days after he ate the Ohagi with the "needle" (actually tabasco sauce) inside, he screams at Mion, saying that her ohagi was so good he almost died. She answers, almost crying, that it was just a little prank. It's obvious in this exchange that they are not talking about the same thing.
• The One Guy: He is the only guy in a club full of females.
• One of the Girls: His group of friends is made up entirely by girls.
• Only Sane Man: Seems so at first when he's his normal self. He was the only one to notice that the town wasn't normal.
• Psychological Horror: The horror from his arc Onikakushi-hen comes more from paranoia and fear rather than blood and gore. Especially the fact that turns out that most of the things he was so paranoid about was really all in his own head and that to anyone observing him from the outside he very much appeared like a high-strung maniac constantly jumping at shadows.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Invoked by Hanyuu, who calls him the "furious red flame" to Rena's "silent blue flame". Later plays the same role, but to Rika instead. Also has this relationship (same role, but to a lesser extent) to Mion.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: Early in Watanagashi-hen, Keiichi thinks Mion is lying about having a twin sister to act like a different person in front on him. He was wrong and right at the same time: The few times he meets "Shion" at the beginning, it's really Mion pretending to be her twin, but Keiichi doesn't know Mion has an actual twin until he meets the real Shion and Mion at the same time.
• Rousing Speech: An expert on these. Mion goes so far as to call him a master of words. Becomes a plot point in Minagoroshi-hen.
• Running Gag: In the visual novel, it's a running gag to have Keiichi imagine something really outlandish and then have everyone respond specifically to the outlandish thing he was thinking. Everyone else says that you can tell exactly what he's thinking by his face.
• Screw Destiny: Starting from Tsumihoroboshi-hen, as opposed to Rika who gave in to "fate" after watching things go to hell in the loops so many times, Keiichi resolves he's going to fight against fate and stop the tragedies from the previous timelines to repeat ever again.
• Smarter Than You Look: He's actually among the most intelligent people in the main cast. Shion in particular doesn't think much of his brains.
• Sole Survivor: In Tatarigoroshi-hen, he is the only person living in Hinamizawa who survives the Great Hinamizawa Gas Disaster because he was unconscious by the riverside during the time of the tragedy. He does die eventually, though. Just not from that.
• Stupid Sexy Friend: Often feels this way towards...well, every teenager in the club. He's not interested in dating yet, but the fact that all of them are hot chicks makes such things as swimming expeditions awkward.
• Supporting Protagonist: The story is really about Rika changing timelines with Hanyuu's power as she loses hope of finding a world where she isn't murdered. However, Keiichi is the character that inspires her to fight fate and find a happy ending the most.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Subverted. In-universe his similarities to Satoshi are often pointed out, but it turns out the only they are just the similarities others want to perceive...until the syndrome strikes, and they act Out of Character in almost identical ways.
• Sympathetic Murderer: In Tatarigoroshi-hen, he murders Satoko's uncle to free her from his abuse. Unfortunately, him admitting to doing so at a Satoko who is unstable because of the Hinamizawa Syndrome and finding Rika's mutilated corpse shortly after, ending in Keiichi being pushed off a bridge by a crazed Satoko.
• Tears of Remorse: In Tsumihoroboshi-hen, Keiichi starts crying out of guilt and horror when he remembers he killed Rena and Mion during his madness induced by the Hinamizawa Syndrome in Onikakushi-hen.
• Thinking Tic: Rena once remarked that when Keiichi is thinking deeply about something stupid, he will often bend his head backwards and start speaking his thoughts without realizing it.
• Through the Eyes of Madness: In Onikakushi-hen, Rena and Mion did hide several dark secrets from Keiichi, but the parts where the girls act insane and appear to be trying to make him "transfer schools" like Satoshi are actually Keiichi hallucinating because of the Hinamizawa Syndrome making him go insane from paranoia. The two most notable examples are when Rena and Mion make ohagi for him, Keiichi thinks he finds a needle inside the food because red liquid is coming out of his mouth, but the truth is there wasn't any needle (Mion had simply filled the ohagi with hot sauce as a prank and the needle was Keiichi's hallucination) and also the "syringe" Keiichi thought Mion was going to inject him with was really a marker as the girls just wanted to doodle on his face.
• Too Dumb to Live: So your friend has just admitted to committing multiple murders, then suddenly decides she wants to go on a walk with you alone? Sure. Then said friend asks you if you want to see her sister, whom she has kidnapped? No problem. She leads you into a Torture Cellar, admits to killing two of your closest friends, torturing her own sister, and said sister screams bloody murder at the sight of her? Everything's absolutely fine. Somehow he still manages to act surprised when he gets knocked out and wakes up strapped to one of the torture devices. Through dumb luck, he survives, and even though this friend explicitly warns him to stay away if he ever sees her again, he still trusts this friend enough to step out of his house and speak with her when she drops by in the middle of the night.
• Tragic Keepsake: In Miotsukushi-hen, Keiichi reveals to Rika that he went to visit the girl he injured when his family went back to the city for a funeral. She forgave him and gave him back the bullet that hit her eye, which Keiichi now carries with him to remember why he must not hurt anyone ever again.
• Unreliable Narrator: Almost his entire narration in later parts of Onikakushi-hen clouded by hallucinations and extreme paranoia caused by the Hinamizawa Syndrome that make him think Mion and Rena are stalking and trying to kill him. In reality, they were both very concerned and even frightened by their good friend's sudden descent into withdrawn and erratic behavior and were trying to check up on him, while the he was the actually turning crazy and murderous.
• Unscrupulous Hero: A pretty dark take on this in Tatarigoroshi-hen. Keiichi decides that if no one is going to save Satoko from Teppei the legal way, he's going to get his hands dirty and murder that scumbag of an uncle who is beating Satoko.
• Villain Protagonist: In Onikakushi, Keiichi is the POV character and he thinks that the village is trying to kill him for being an outsider, driving him to kill Mion and Rena in what he thinks is self-defense. Neither Keiichi himself, or the reader, are aware of that Keiichi was the only culprit in that arc until Tsumihoroboshi where Keiichi can remember that he was only hallucinating that Mion and Rena tried to kill him.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: He and Satoko — except in Tatarigoroshi-hen, where Keiichi tries to act more like Satoshi — constantly snipe at each other, and it's very clear that their friendship is built on this dynamic. In Onikakushi-hen, when Keiichi doesn't get mad at her and try to get revenge on her after one of her pranks, she instantly becomes very concern about his wellbeing.
• What the Hell, Hero?: When Rena finds out some things about his past, she calls him on this. Also the catalyst for the Atonement Chapter having the name it has.
• Worthy Opponent: Partly why Mion likes him so much. They're not equals in skill, but they share a competitive, easily riled spirit that no one else in the club has.
• Would Hit a Girl: If said girl set up a combo-trap for him on his first day at his new school, yes he would. Not to mention hitting a girl in the eye with a BB gun in his backstory.
• You Can Always Tell a Liar: In one scene in Taraimawashi-hen, Rena claims that when Keiichi lies, his nose twitches.

Rena Ryugu

"Cute Mode" Rena Ryugu

Voiced by: Mai Nakahara (JP), Mela Lee (EN, Bang Zoom), Emi Lo (EN, Funimation)

Portrayed by: Airi Matsuyama (film), Minami Kato (drama series)

A girl who returned from Ibaraki to Hinamizawa one year ago, and she is in the same grade level as Keiichi. She has an obsession with things she perceives as cute, whether they're actually adorable or butt-ugly. Every now and then, she goes treasure hunting in the town's trash heap, searching for "cute" things to collect, and upon finding something "cute", it's difficult to stop her from taking it home. Despite this disarming trait, Rena is shown to be amazingly observant and perceptive about the things around her. According to Mion, while Rena might seem cute herself, people should be careful not to anger her, as she becomes quite scary. She is especially sensitive about the topic of Oyashiro-sama, who she fears will curse her for leaving Hinamizawa.

The sixth arc, Tsumihoroboshi-hen (Atonement Chapter), is focused on her.

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• Action Girl: Very violent behind her usual cute self.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: Her hair can be orange or light brown depending on the medium.
• Agent Mulder: She believes whole-heartedly in Oyashiro-sama and the legends surrounding the god, especially the curse. Questioning her beliefs will make her angry and quite unstable.
• Alliterative Name: Rena Ryugu.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: As a Background Boss in the "Strolling Rika" mini-game.
• Attempted Rape: She may or may not have been on the receiving end of this, as she was affected by Hinamizawa syndrome at the time and possibly only thought this is what her male classmates were attempting to do, and she nearly kills them as a result. But because the boys refuse to talk about Rena's attack, even to the police, they really might have been trying.
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: She gets distracted easily, especially when she sees something she finds cute.
• Ax-Crazy: In the scenarios where she snaps, Rena becomes unstable, violent, and murderous.
• Badass Adorable: Don't underestimate Rena because of her size. She looks cute, but get her mad and she'll have a cleaver to grind with you. Keiichi thinks that he wouldn't be able to beat her in a fight. The climax of Tsumihoroboshi-hen shows he was right.
• Berserk Button:
  • She never takes it well when someone mocks her belief in Oyashiro-sama.
  • Lying is also one quick way to piss her off as Keiichi learns this the hard way in Onikakushi and Tsumihoroboshi hen as it turns out that her aggressive reaction isn't really a hallucination brought on by the Hinamizawa Syndrome he contracted with. This is possibly justified as it was shown in her backstory that she was lied to by her unfaithful mother who got pregnant with one of her co-worker she was having an affair with and chose to elope with him.
  • Also, being called "Reina-chan" by Rina in the same way as her hated mother. In this case though, the problem is not so much the button than the person who presses it.
  • Being reminded of her mother in any way pisses Rena off greatly, due to how Mrs. Ryugu cheated on her husband and manipulated Rena into accepting her boyfriend.
  • On a less serious note, she has little tolerance for lewdness, and has clobbered Keiichi and Mion several times for their perverted behavior.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Rena is a very friendly and sweet girl. Just don't mess with her father or lie to her. She can turn scary. In extreme cases especially in Tsumihoroboshi-hen, she won't hesitate to get her hands stained with blood literally when she kills Ritsuko and Teppei to protect her father and in Minagoroshi-hen when she kills a few Mountain dogs.
• Cathartic Crying: She spends the early part of Tsumihoroboshi suppressing her sadness and frustration as her family situation gets increasingly worse because her father is being scammed by a yakuza woman. She finally lets out the tears when she confesses to her friends that she killed Teppei and Rina to protect her father.
• Character Catchphrase:
  • "HAU~! OMOCHIKAERII!"
  • She's the most infamous source of "USO DA!"
• Children Do the Housework: She took up the household chores to take care of her depressed father ever since her mother ran off with another man.
• Cloudcuckoolander: She has a strange thought process.
• The Confidant: To Mion in Watanagashi. She also helps Keiichi realize that he hurt Mion's feelings, so it may be a indirect case of Playing Cyrano.
• Covert Pervert: She blushes when she hears Keiichi say that it's soo hot his crotch is getting sweaty to both her and Satoko in the VN.
  • Also, in Rei, she’s a little too eager to strip Keiichi of his swim trunks...
• Cry into Chest: At the end of Tsumihoroboshi-hen, Rena breaks down and sobs her heart out into Keiichi's chest after he finally manages to bring her back to her senses even though she had already reached a high level of the Hinamizawa Syndrome.
• Cry Laughing: In Tsumihoroboshi-hen, she spends a long monologue insisting that she had no other choice than killing Teppei and Rina who were swindling her father, and that telling her friends would have been useless. Then she mocks them and starts laughing out loudly before bursting into tears, as she understands fully well that this may not have been the right choice.
• The Cuckoolander Was Right: In Tsumihoroboshi, she may not be all there but there are a few things that she actually gets right. Notably the Okonogi gardeners being a fake society hiding secret agents, the fact the Hinamizawa Syndrome is being researched at the Irie Clinic, or the fact that there is some kind of relationship between said research and the mysterious deaths. Of course, she is completely off the mark about all but one of the rest, but that's still ironic.
  • Well... at least until Hou, when it's revealed that one of the mysterious viruses is the work of an alien. Une's, that is. It wasn't Hinamizawa Syndrome, but it was close.
  • Kotohogushi reveals that she was in fact correct about aliens being responsible for the parasite that causes Hinamizawa Syndrome, albeit in reality the Ryuun brought it to Earth by accident.
• Cute and Psycho: She's cute as a button. She also has a record of breaking all the windows at her previous school and physically assaulting some guys with a baseball bat. In Onikakushi-hen, Keiichi gradually becomes terrified of her as she randomly goes from her usual cute self to going livid, making scary eyes, and laughing maniacally. This bit is subverted when it's revealed Rena's psycho behavior in that arc was all Keiichi's hallucination produced by the Hinamizawa Syndrome. It's played straight in the scenarios where the Hinamizawa Syndrome makes her go insane and murderous.
• Cute Bruiser: Once she goes into "Cute Mode", she's prone to Megaton Punching anything in the nearby area, even without her famous cleaver handy. Able to snap the rope that has her tied up with ease. Can wield the axe without any difficultly also. And probably brought home the statue of Col. Sanders^note the KFC mascot that's bigger than she is without any assistance. When Hilarity Ensues she doesn't hesitate to hit her friends, and she's thrown tables a few times when things get rough. She's apparently quite strong.
• Cuteness Proximity: One of her Running Gags. However, she doesn't have quite the same idea of what's "cute" as most people do.
• Daddy's Girl: She remained very loyal to her father after her mother betrayed/cheated on him.
• Dark Action Girl: When she's under the Hinamizawa Syndrome's effects, Rena turns very ruthless and makes a formidable opponent in her fight against Keiichi even winning, although she recovers enough of her sanity as to not kill him.
• Dark and Troubled Past: She discovered that her mother cheated on her father. While her parents were finalizing their divorce, she attacked her classmates while suffering from Hinamizawa Syndrome. She then attempted suicide and was treated with medication and therapy. She and her father then moved back to Hinamizawa to start a new life.
• Defiant to the End: In Minagoroshi-hen, Rena tells Takano that she will never become Oyashiro-sama right before Takano shoots her dead.
• Do Not Call Me "Paul": Rena's birth name is Reina, but she hates being called by the name her mother gave her. She only lets her father call her that.
• Dumb Is Good: She acknowledges in her narration in Tsumihoroboshi-hen that the persona she uses when having fun with the rest of the group is "dumb," (though she herself isn't) but likes herself better when she acts that way and internally associates it with being happy.
• Elmuh Fudd Syndwome: This is how the English translation of the manga decided to translate her signature "kaaii" (A slurred way to say "kawaii," the Japanese word for "cute"). In the translation, it became "adowable", while in the sound novel translations it's rendered as "sho kyute".
• Empty Eyes: A striking example. When Rena starts losing herself to madness or talking about Oyashiro-sama, her sprites are identical, right down to her cheery smile, except her eyes lose their inner lighting, making them appear dark and empty. The effect is exceptionally disturbing, particularly with the most recently updated MangaGamer sprites.
• Evil Laugh: Gives a very nasty one in Tsukiotoshi-hen after she burnt down Satoko's house.
• Expy: According to Word of God, her name and appearance were based on Lenna from Final Fantasy V (specifically, Rena's appearance was based on Lenna's SNES sprites).
• Extremely Protective Child: As shown in Tsumihoroboshi-hen, she is willing to go to extreme lengths to protect her father from being extorted by his scammer girlfriend.
• Fiery Redhead: Her hair is a shade of orange and she's sure a very passionate person who can become fierce when provoked.
• Figure It Out Yourself: Rena asks for Keiichi to do this regarding how he hurt Mion's feelings in Watanagashi-hen.
• Fingore: Keiichi smashes Rena's fingers with a door when Rena is trying to force her way into his house.
• Foil: To Keiichi and the twins. She is calmer and quieter compared to the loud Keiichi or Mion. But when it comes to bad situations, she is the most insane and scariest. Shion is jealous that Rena is way more intimidating and perceptive than her.
• Genki Girl: She's a cheerful girl who reacts with excitement when she sees "Kyute" things and wants to take them home. This makes her major role in Tsumihoroboshi all the more tragic and also horrific.
• Girl with Psycho Weapon: She's quite famous for wielding a Japanese gardening tool called a "nata." The in-game text called it an axe on the first chapter but promotional game art showed her using the more distinctively shaped weapon, and it stuck. Eventually the in-game dialogue started referring to it by name (Rena was nicknamed "nata-onna"), and the English translation started to call it a cleaver thanks to its rough silhouette (by extension, Rena herself was nicknamed "cleaver girl"), though that it has more in common with similar gardening tools such as billhooks and machetes.
• Glurge Addict: Subverted; while she is obsessed with "cute" things, her idea of what's "cute" often isn't the same as most people's (like a statue of Colonel Sanders, for example).
• Go Mad from the Revelation: In Tsumihoroboshi-hen, being driving to murder Rina and Teppei had already made her unstable, but it was reading Takano's notebook that described her theory about the "curse of Oyashiro-sama" what drives Rena to the final stages of the Hinamizawa Syndrome and convinces her that there's an alien conspiracy with the Sonozaki family using brain parasites to control humankind.
• Hates Their Parent: Rena hates and resents her mother for abandoning her and her father to run away with another man. After she left the house, Rena destroyed all of her mother's possessions that the latter left behind. In fact, she hates her mother so much that she quit using the name Reina that her mother gave her.
• Hot-Blooded: She defiantly shows this, sometimes to the degree of Keiichi, whenever she snaps out of her calmness.
• Hyper-Awareness: Most of the time she hides it very well, but Rena has amazing observation skills that make her capable of noticing details about people and places that others would normally miss. Seen best in Watanagashi-hen where she can make her Sherlock Scan based on small things out of place in Rika and Satoko's kitchen.
• If It's You, It's Okay: Pulls that move on Keiichi during the zombie-tag game to "paralyse" him.
• Image Song: "Egao Happy Peace"
• I'm Taking Her Home with Me!: Trope Namer. Not only does she often declare that she wants to take cute things and people home with her, but she'll frequently try to physically run off with them.
• Indignant Slap: In Watanagashi-hen, Rena slaps Keiichi because he and Shion violated the ritual tool shed the night of the Festival.
• Interrupted Suicide:
  • In her backstory, Rena's depression and anger at her mother's abandonment caused her to cut her own neck. She was stopped by the nurses and doctors at the hospital giving her injections and treating her wounds. The delusions she experienced during her suicide attempt motivated her to return to Hinamizawa.
  • The end of Tsumihoroboshi-hen also counts, with Keiichi's stopping both the time bomb and her desire to claw out her throat.
• It's All My Fault: She felt at fault for her parents' divorce because if she haven't been nice to her mother's boyfriend when she met him, she thinks her mother probably wouldn't have run away with that other man.
• Kill It with Fire: In Tsumihoroboshi-hen she plans to burn down the school along with the hostages and herself should Oishi not agree to investigate the Sonozaki. She also burns down Satoko's house to kill Keichi and destroys the evidences after succumbing to the syndrome in Tsukiotoshi-hen.
• Killing in Self-Defense: Downplayed in the early part of Tsumihoroboshi-hen. Rena reveals to Rina that she knows all about who she really is and that she won't let her extort more money from her father. Rina then tries strangling Rena to death to silence her. Rena grabs an iron pipe laying in the garbage dump and beats Rina in the head and the arm with it. Rina is still alive, however, and tries begging for mercy to the girl she just tried to kill. Rena is done with Rina's shit and finishes her off by crushing her skull with the iron pipe.
• Leitmotif: "Lunch Time" (although you only hear it in the first novel).
• Lightning Bruiser: Very fast when in Cute Mode. Avoiding her punches is actually a reflex-based mini-game.
• MacGyvering: A rare non-heroic example. She makes a school-blowing bomb with a little gasoline, a cook timer and a base-ball. And it works horribly well, as Yoigoshi-hen shows us.
• Meaningful Rename: She changed her name from "Reina" to "Rena" to reinvent herself when she returned to Hinamizawa. She felt that, by removing the "i", she was removing her bad memories. She also changed the writing of the name from kanji to katakana; using katakana in a name was quite unusual at the time the story is set.
• Mighty Glacier: In Higurashi Daybreak Kai, she has a weapon called an "Iron Clad Nata". This cripples her mobility, giving her no ability to run on the ground and having a very small stamina bar, meaning she floats very slowly in the air in a very short period of time. She also barely moves when she walks, giving her the slowest walk speed in the entire game. However, all her attacks are very powerful and have enormous range.
• Mood-Swinger: It's hinted in the games that she's actually bipolar.
• Ms. Exposition: In Tsumihoroboshi-hen, as she explains Miyo's scrapbook to Keiichi.
• Murder Is the Best Solution: She seems to believe that it will prevent Hinamizawa from being destroyed. Instead, it sends her down spirals of madness.
• Nice Girl: Her usual, normal self which fits the name in general. A cheerful girl with a sweet and friendly nature who has a high sense of morality, usually trying to do the right thing.
• Nightmare Fetishist: She finds some very odd things to be "cute". One of the TIPS says that this might be a psychological reaction to prevent other people from entering and ruining her household.
• Nosebleed: Has frequent ones in the Visual Novel, triggered by the presence of cute things.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Rena is a Kawaiiko girl with a weird obsession for cute things and the town's deity, so one wouldn't expect her to be very smart. When the situation calls for it, Rena proves herself to be really observant, insightful, cunning, and deductive.
• Parents in Distress: Early in Tsumihoroboshi-hen, Rena wants to protect her father from two scam artists who want to steal one million yen from him.
• Parent with New Paramour: Rena's mother divorced her father and married another man, resulting in a permanent estrangement between them. The fact that the relationship started before the divorce certainly didn't help.
• Plucky Girl: One of her most admirable virtues is her near unbreakable spirit and will to fight on even at desperate times with all odds against her.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Invoked by Hanyuu, who calls her the "silent blue flame" to Keiichi's "furious red flame".
• Sailor Fuku: Her chosen school outfit.
• Sanity Slippage: The visual novel version of Tsumihoroboshi-hen is shown from two point of views, Keiichi's and Rena's. Rena's POV normally shows narrative texts in bright pink color, but as the story progresses, the narrative texts gradually changed color into orange and eventually blood red as Rena slowly descends into madness due to Hinamizawa Syndrome.
• Series Mascot: Rena has become the most symbolic icon of the entire Higurashi franchise. She's featured in promotional art and covers more than any other main character. Ryukishi07 comments on this in Tsumihoroboshi, believing that she best represents the story's ups and downs.
• Sherlock Scan: At the end of Watanagashi-hen, she figures out the identity of the killer (mostly) just based on a flyer and the state of Rika and Satoko's dinner.
• Showgirl Skirt: Her casual dress has the skirt split at the front, displaying her legs.
• Silk Hiding Steel: The scary yangire under her usual seemingly light and girly demeanor.
• Smarter Than You Look: She's often underestimated due to her cute mannerisms and vaguely ditzy/detached manner. However, she possesses one of the most analytical minds among the cast.
• Sole Survivor: Rena is the only person living in Hinamizawa to survive the Great Hinamizawa Gas Disaster in the anime's adaptation of Tsumihoroboshi-hen. Originally, in the visual novel, she's supposed to die with everyone else. In a more limited scope, she's also the only one of the True Companions to survive the events of Watanagashi-hen and Meakashi-hen.
• Stepford Smiler: She acts cheerful, but she has a lot of issues and insecurities and actively tries to keep them surpressed most of the time.
• Supreme Chef: A great cook, Satoko and Keiichi will fight for her side dishes.
• Survival Mantra: "Hauuu~ I'm taking her home with me!"
• Team Mom: Rena has a maternal streak that grows stronger as the series progresses. By the end of Matsuribayashi, her ending sequence explains that she acts like a mother to all the younger children in school.
• There Are No Therapists: Averted. She did see a therapist after the little... incident at her old school.
• Third-Person Person: Usually when she's joking around.
• Through His Stomach: She tries this with Keiichi in the third episode of Kira.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Girly Girl to Mion's Tomboy. Rena is much more obviously girly than the tomboyish Mion.
• Trauma Button: Hearing Rina say she wants to marry her father and lying about being pregnant causes Rena to snap because it reminds her of when her mother claimed she was leaving her father because she got pregnant from another man.
• The Un-Smile: There is her happy and cheerful "cute mode". There is also her "Oyashiro-sama mode". Her smile in this mode is described as looking "as a sharp cut from a knife".
• Unstoppable Rage: Given her surprisingly-strong attacks, including a punch that is fast enough to even take Mion by surprise, it is understandable that when Rena gets angry, you probably don't want to be within the same area code.This shows up most notably in Tsumihoroboshi, where she is able to fight off the much-larger Rina, beat her to death, and mutilate her corpse fuelled purely on rage, and later fights Keiichi to a standstill on the school roof.
• Verbal Tic:
  • She has a case of Palilalia which is the ocasional repeating the last words of her sentences, most notably "kana, kana?" ("I wonder, I wonder?"). Done to very sinister effect in Tsumihoroboshi-hen. As an added bonus, "kana" is also one of the onomatopoeias for the cry of cicadas.
  • Also "Hauuu..." when bashful, depressed, or suffering Cuteness Overload.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Tsumihoroboshi-hen. She genuinely believes that her actions in that arc are going to save Hinamizawa from the disaster. Ironically, it might actually have, at the cost of the lives of all her hostages. She also just wants the happy days in Hinamizawa to last, it's just that she thinks that Murder Is the Best Solution.
  • Although we later learned in Yoigoshi-hen that it is NOT the solution at all as Takano still has the entire town gassed anyway.
• Wise Beyond Her Years: Tsumihoroboshi clearly shows it, especially the sound novel.
• Would Hurt a Child: In Tsumihoroboshi-hen, she held her classmates hostage and threatened to bomb the elementary school with all of them inside.
• You Are Not My Father: Rena disowned her mother completely after her parents divorced, and has made it clear she wants nothing to do with her. She especially didn't care when she found out her mom was pregnant, and has never acknowledged having a sibling.

Mion Sonozaki

"Club Leader" Mion Sonozaki

Voiced by: Satsuki Yukino (JP), Megan Hollingshead (EN, Bang Zoom), Michelle Rojas (EN, Funimation)

Portrayed by: Rin Asuka (film), Rika Nakai (drama series)

The oldest classmate in Keiichi's class. Her social skills are on par with Keiichi, whom she highly respects as a friend and rival (though it is later shown that she has a crush on him). She acts boyish, but has a hidden girlish side. She is next in line to be the head of the Sonozaki household, one of the Three Families which holds tremendous influence in Hinamizawa. Her position as heir is marked by an oni tattoo on her back.

The second arc, Watanagashi-hen (Cotton-Drifting chapter), is focused on her.

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• Accomplice by Inaction: In Meakashi-hen, Shion condemns Mion nearly as much as their grandmother for the ostracization Satoshi suffered from the village because Mion never even tried to do anything with her position as the Sonozaki heir to put a stop to it. Shion also resented Mion for never standing up to the mistreatment the Sonozaki put Shion through which is especially unfair considering that Mion should have been the ostracized twin, but unintentionally stole Shion's birth name and rights when she got the oni tattoo by mistake. Even when Shion was forced to rip off her own fingernails and cried in pain, Mion only stood and watched.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: Her eyes are turquoise in the visual novels, but the anime often portrays them as green like her hair.
• Bad Liar: When Mion is impersonating her sister early in Watanagashi-hen, Keichii doesn't exactly buy it because her nervousness and blushes give away that she's lying, but he plays along anyway.
• Berserk Button: As shown in Matsuribayashi-hen, Mion won't forgive anyone who brings the resentment against the Houjous into the school.
• Beware the Nice Ones: She's normally a Genki Girl who loves playing games with her friends, but when acting as the next head of the Sonozaki family, she can construct a cold-hearted persona who can make her twin sister rip out her fingernails without showing a shred of sympathy. However, she never takes pleasure from it and also rips out her own fingernails claiming it wasn't fair for Shion to be punished like this.
• Book Dumb: She may need to ask Keiichi for help studying, but that does not mean she's stupid. In Matsuribayashi, she figures out Takano's plans based on bits and pieces Rika gave her, then outwits the Yamainu through a mix of Satoko's traps and psychological warfare.
• Break the Cutie: Meakashi-hen has her go through a hellish nightmare. She's locked in a dungeon and her sister emotionally tortures her by killing their grandmother, the town's mayor, and Satoko while Mion can only scream and futilely beg Shion to stop. She's a sobbing wreck by the time Shion finally kills her too.
• Calling the Old Man Out: She calls Oryō out over her unfair treatment of the Hojo siblings after the "distinguishment incident" offscreen (talked about in the Eye Opening chapter). The incident was the last straw as Mion was comtemplating KILLING HER in a Noble Top Enforcer style rebellion.
• Cannot Spit It Out: She never has the guts to admit to Keiichi that she has a crush on him. Even pretending to be Shion to show her feminine side to Keiichi doesn't really help.
• Cheshire Cat Grin: Often before she decides to mess with someone.
• Class Representative: As the elder, she is the class president and everyone looks up to her as the leader.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: She gets easily jealous when Shion flirts with Keiichi to get under her skin.
• Club President: She's the president of the games club formed by the main characters.
• Comatose Canary:
  • In the Playstation-only Taraimawashi-hen, Mion survives the Great Hinamizawa Disaster, but her mental trauma has reduced her to a vegetable. She recovers if presented Rena's hat, but suddenly dies before she can see Ooishi again.
  • Also in the one-shot chapter Hinageshi-hen. Mion also ends up as the only survivor of the Great Hinamizawa Disaster in that timeline. Ooishi still can't get any answers out of her about anything because the poor girl is stuck in a catatonic state where she's living in a fantasy where all her friends are still alive.
• Creepy Monotone: When acting as the next head of the family, she often uses a flat, emotionless tone with an equally stoic face. At the end of Taraimawashi-hen, her lines are delivered in a monotone that is half-creepy and half-depressing in the context of being a Comatose Canary.
• Death Seeker: Shortly after Keiichi is shot and killed by Takano in episode 13 of Higurashi Kai, it's heavily implied that her sacrifice to buy the others time to escape was her being this out of grief over Keiichi's subsequent death.
• Dual Wielding: She uses the traditional "katana and wakizashi" combination in Yoigoshi-hen.
• Empty Eyes: Less common than Rena, but occasionally Mion's eyes lose their lighting effects and take on a disturbing, empty look. Somewhat unusually, where this visual effect is usually used to show that the person with empty eyes is suffering from high-level Hinamizawa Syndrome, in Mion's case it becomes a highly reliable indicator that the narrator is suffering from it instead and is starting to hallucinate.
• Empty Shell: In the PS2 exclusive Taraimawashi-hen, Mion survives the Great Hinamizawa Disaster, but her trauma has left her in a vegetative state. She still hasn't recovered in her late twenties.
• The Gadfly: Her favorite hobby is teasing Keiichi.
• Forced into Evil: She's forced by her family to take part in many morally corrupt deeds, but she's not happy about it.
• Forced to Watch: In Meakashi-hen, Shion locks her in a cell of their family's abandoned Torture Cellar while Kimiyoshi wastes away, Shion directly tortures Satoko to death in front of her and then decides to do the same to Keiichi just so Mion can hear his screams of agony (though she ended up sparing him).
• A Friend in Need: Matsuribayashi-hen reveals that Mion formed the afterschool club to help keep Satoko and Satoshi away from their abusive aunt and uncle as long as possible as well as letting them have fun and relieve stress.
• Friend to All Children: She is a friendly and protective club leader who is well liked by all the younger classmates.
• Gaslighting: Tragic and unintentional example in Tatagoroshi-hen, where she is the accomplice to Teppei's murder trying to prevent a repeat of the events of 1982, but her attempts to help Keichii convince him that he's going insane.
• Genki Girl: When she gets way too excitable and hammy during games or punishment games.
• Girl Next Door: She's the approachable, down-to-earth, and somewhat tomboyish friend who Keiichi thinks of as One of the Boys.
• Guile Heroine: She's very cunning and sharp thanks to her family's business of organized crime. Good thing she's one of the heroes and only uses her criminal mind to help her friends.
• He Is Not My Boyfriend: The source of a hilarious misunderstanding in Miotsukushi-hen is that Mion asked Kimiyoshi for his help in making a party to celebrate Mion passing on her role as Class Representative to Keiichi, but her wording made it sound like she was getting engaged to Keiichi and they ended up inviting the entire town to the party to supposedly announce their marriage.
• Heroic Willpower: Mion is one of the few characters who can't reach high levels of the Hinamizawa Syndrome naturally because she's too mentally and emotionally strong to develop the paranoia and hallucinations.
• Image Song: "Futari no birthday" and "Ienai Kotoba".
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Mion is the only of the main characters who can't be influenced by paranoia induced by the Hinamizawa Syndrome and never attempts to murder anyone because of it.
• Innocently Insensitive: Just as Keiichi innocently hurt Mion's feelings by not giving her the doll, Mion vents out her frustrations about it to her sister Shion who isn't too pleased with hearing Mion talk about trivial problems with her crush when Mion can still see the boy she likes, unlike Shion who has to live with Satoshi being missing for a year now. This becomes one of the first triggers that lead to Shion reaching L5 of Hinamizawa Syndrome and it's why Shion claimed that her "demon" wouldn't have awakened if Keiichi had given Mion the doll as Mion wouldn't talk about her love troubles with Shion if he did.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: She had feelings for Satoshi, but sealed them for her twin's sake.
• Kicking Ass in All Her Finery: Her older self in Yoigoshi-hen wears an elegant black kimono and carries a katana with her that she later uses to cut down Yakuza.
• Lady of War: She becomes this in spades in the alteverse sequel manga, Yoigoshi-hen where her kimono-clad older self or rather Shion's older self who she's possessing cuts down Yakuza with a katana with graceful moves.
• The Lancer: Although technically the leader of the club, in terms of the plot, she takes this role with Keiichi.
• Large Ham: She can get very hammy during club games.
• The Leader: She isn't The Heroine, but she directs the groups' activities. As the oldest member, she usually coordinates the abilities of everyone to maximum and frightening effect in and out of battle. Thus showing her brilliance despite being the most laid back of the group.
• Leitmotif: "Spring Step" (shared with Shion).
• Lovable Sex Maniac: She's openly perverted, often joking about sex towards Keiichi. This is prevalent in the manga where she does such wholesome things as grope Keiichi's rear in the Cotton Drifting chapters and raunchily stares at his crotch in the Curse Killing chapter. Gets blurry since its hard to tell how much of it is her being a pervert and how much of it is it being her normal gadfly self. Note that acting perverted is one of her favorite tactics for messing with people.
  Keiichi: <internal narration> Thank goodness you were born a girl. If you were a boy, you'd probably be a perverted asshole...
• Luminescent Blush: Happens every time Keiichi says and does nice things to her. And it's adorable.
• Morality Pet: The only reason why Shion's Roaring Rampage of Revenge from Meakashi-hen didn't happen a year earlier was because Mion swore to her that she had no idea of why Satoshi went missing and ripped off her own fingernails so Shion wasn't the only one who suffered.
• Ms. Fanservice: She has the biggest bust out of the girls in the club and tends to put on sexy outfits during the punishment games.
• My Greatest Failure: The reason she refuses to talk about Satoshi is because she was unable to save him. To clarify, Satoshi specifically asked her for help dealing with his obviously abusive aunt, but Mion's grandmother ordered her not to. The only thing Mion did (could do?) was establish a 'safe zone' at their school where the Houjous were not ostracized or bullied. She blames herself for Satoshi's trauma, believing that if she had had the courage to rebel against her family, he would be alive. Which may or may not be true. It should be noted, however, that this was happening around the time when Shion tried to rebel against the Sonozakis and got three fingernails ripped out in a formalized torture ritual because of it. After Satoshi's mysterious disappearance, which she believes she could have prevented, she resolves to make sure nothing like that ever happens again. Hence, she is deeply loyal to her friends and very protective of those she loves.
• Nice Girl: Once you get past her playful competitive side, she's very friendly and one of the kindest members of the cast. And unlike Rena, who is just as nice, she technically has no dark backstory and according to Rika, she never succumbs to Hinamizawa Syndrome.
• Oblivious Mockery: In Tatarigoroshi, she eagerly and repeatedly mocks Keiichi's lunchbox, pointing out what a terrible cook he is, with Satoko nodding and snarking in agreement. Except Satoko is actually the one who made the food in said lunchbox.
• Ojou: Heir to a prestigous family, though she doesn't quite act the part, except when she is in a formal meeting or has to witness her sister's punishment.
• Only Sane Woman: She's one of the more psychologically well-adjusted characters in the cast full of Dysfunction Junction. According to Rika, she's the only member of the known group to never succumb to Hinamizawa Syndrome's paranoia.
• Parrying Bullets: In Yoigoshi-hen, she's capable of cutting bullets in midair with a katana.
• Plausible Deniability: As per her grandmother's indirect phrasing during family planning meetings. This is a clue that the Motive Rant at the end of Watanagashi-hen wasn't from her.
• Polar Opposite Twins: Mion is tomboyish and openly perverted, but secretly shy and calm when not playing games. Shion poses as a Proper Lady, but she's actually Hot-Blooded and quite unstable. It also gets downplayed in that both twins are smart and like messing with others.
• Raised by Grandparents: She's primarily raised by her grandmother Oryou because she's being groomed to succeed her as the family head and her mother was disowned for marrying a Yakuza boss against Oryou's wishes.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The hammy Genki Girl Mion is the Red Oni to the more demure Shion's Blue Oni. Mion herself states that she's the warm friendly one while Shion is cold. Although, it gets Played With; Mion turns out to be more reasonable and emotionally stable than Shion.
• Self-Harm: In the Meakashi backstory, Mion pulls off three of her own fingernails (though unlike Shion, she did so offscreen) because she considers it unfair that only Shion gets punished by the family.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Mion dresses up as Shion in front of Keiichi to show him she can be cute and girly. It works, although it's awkward for both when Keiichi finds out Shion does exist and isn't just Mion's disguise.
• Shipper on Deck: She plays this role for Keiichi and Rena during the festival in Onikakushi (especially in the sound novel). Which is quite baffling when we learn her feelings for Keiichi in the following arc.
• Shorttank: While she isn't a co-lead, Mion fits into the image of the trope, being the male protagonist's tomboyish friend who can be rough on him and wears sporty outfits. She does have her girly side, but has trouble getting Keiichi to acknowledge her actual gender.
• Signature Laugh: An awesome one can be heard a few times in the anime, notably at the end of the Zombie Tag. GAHAHAHAHA!
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: Keiichi being a Nice Guy is the reason why she likes him so much.
• Sole Survivor: She is the only survivor of Hinamizawa in Taraimawarashi-hen as she was imprisoned by Shion in the torture chamber which allowed her to evade being killed by Yamainu. This, however, she's left in a minimally conscious state for the rest of her life.
• The Strategist: "If she had joined Napoleon, Siberia would be French territory by now. If she had joined Hitler, the Third Reich would be all over Europe."
• Suspiciously Specific Denial. In the scenario where Keiichi does give her the doll she wanted, Mion embarrassingly accepts it while claiming she's only doing it because Keiichi insisted, so he better not get the wrong idea that she likes the doll.
• Team Dad: A rare female example. While Rena typically pulls Team Mom duties, with her kinder, more nurturing side, Mion is the tomboy leader who keeps everyone else in line.
• Theme Twin Naming: The "on" in Mion and Shion is the same kanji, 音 (meaning "sound").
• Third-Person Person: Sort of. She uses ojisan ("old man") as a first-person pronoun. She does use watashi sometimes though.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Mion is energetic in a tomboyish way and wears pants, while her twin sister Shion is more overtly feminine and wears skirts. That said, it's Played With; Mion turns out to be a Tomboy with a Girly Streak and Shion isn't really the demure and passive lady she appears to be.
• Tomboy Angst: A mild example. Mion is mostly comfortable with her tomboyish ways, but she feels sad about Keiichi not acknowledging her girly side. In Watanagashi-hen, Keiichi gives a cute doll to Rena instead of Mion, saying such a girly thing "doesn't suit" a mannish girl like Mion. Unbeknownst to him, this deeply hurt Mion.
• Tomboyish Ponytail: Mion wears her long hair in a ponytail to fit her sporty and unladylike personality. This is also one of the traits that set her apart from her girlier twin sister who lets her hair down.
• Tomboy with a Girly Streak: She's a very boisterous Genki Girl who seems like a tomboy. Later, we learn that Mion is actually really girly. If one looks closely, her desires are feminine (she wants to spend time with her friends, she's attracted to Keiichi, etc.) but her methods are very masculine. (She takes a leadership role among her friends, often deciding when and why they meet; she gropes Keiichi, jokes about wanting to have sex with him - you get the idea.)
• Tomboyish Voice: She speaks with a raspy voice compared to her twin sister whose voice sounds more gentle and ladylike. Both sisters can change the tone of their voices when they switch places, though.
• Tranquil Fury: Unlike everyone else when they're under the effects of the Hinamizawa Syndrome, the Sotsu anime depicts Mion as calmer, more cold-blooded, and much more controlled if still murderous which is a big contrast to how the syndrome manifests in her sister, Shion, who is more explosively rage-filled when affected.
• Tsundere: A unique Sweet (Dere) type. She neither acts terribly tsun nor dere, but has the classic signs of denying her attraction or her desire for things, including her crush on Keiichi. Her tsun side shows up when she starts acting cold in her tone.
• Unreliable Expositor: The Sonozaki family is often implicated in the goings on in the village, meaning that of all the cast she has some of the best reasons to lie. Subverted. More than just about anyone else, you can trust what Mion has to say. However, tricks can be played on the reader such as 'Mion' confessing to all the murderers and talking about the history of the village and really playing up the angst. However, not only is this not Mion, Shion was actually bullshitting throughout the entire thing, meaning that at least half of what she said was a lie.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: No one ever comments on the gun she carries around. It's an airsoft gun, but you'd still think it would draw some attention...
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: She stands up to some thugs who were about to beat up Keiichi.
• Waif-Fu: Matsuribayashi reveals that she's excellent in hand to hand combat, particularly aikido. She manages to beat Okonogi, a combat specialist with professional military training.
• Yakuza Princess: She's the heiress to the Sonozaki family are portrayed as a dangerous group that work like Yakuza, and are actually tied to the Yakuza by virtue of Akane's husband.
• Younger Than They Look: Mion, while not as mature looking as Shion, seems to appear to be the oldest in the club physically, as well as noticibly taller than them sans Keiichi. In most media, it may surprise that she was depicted as 14. The re-releases on the PS2 and the live action adaptations rectify this somewhat by making her and Shion 17.

Satoko Houjou

"Trapmaster" Satoko Houjou

Voiced by: Mika Kanai (JP), Jennie Kwan ^note  credited as Minx Lee (EN, Bang Zoom), Brittany Lauda (EN, Funimation)

Portrayed by: Erena Ono (film), Reina Seiji (drama series)

A younger classmate in Keiichi's school. In spite of her young age, she seems to have an impressive arm strength and is quite clever in setting up traps, which she likes to practice on Keiichi.

Although her personality is quite energetic and mischievous during the events of the games, Satoko's past was full of trauma; her family were outcasts for supporting the dam project that would have destroyed the village, her parents died in an accident, she was abused by her foster parents (her aunt and uncle), and her beloved brother Satoshi disappeared. She greatly misses Satoshi, and feels that by being strong, he will return. She cannot tell the difference between cauliflower and broccoli because she is color blind.

The third arc, Tatarigoroshi-hen (Curse-killing chapter), is focused on her.

---

• Accidental Murder: Miotsukushi-hen depicts this as being the case with the death of Satoko's parents. Satoko tells Rika that she didn't intend to push her parents off the cliff, but was trying to jump and hug them because she understood they truly loved her. Satoko herself thought maybe she wanted to kill them, but she remembered her parents' expressions of relief as they pushed her to safety so she wouldn't fall with them and this makes her sure she never wished for their deaths.
• Adaptational Modesty: The original sound novel displayed her sprite completely naked at the bridge scene at the end of Tatarigoroshi-hen. The visual novels give her a Modesty Towel and in the anime, she's fully dressed during the scene.
• All of the Other Reindeer: Because her parents supported the dam construction, Satoko and the rest of her family are seen as outcasts by the village's adults (though she's treated normally by other children).
• Annoying Younger Sibling:
  • She's a surrogate example to Keiichi. With the way they act, anyone would think Satoko is his bratty little sister who he finds very annoying yet he still cares for her.
  • In a more dramatic sense, Satoko's constant whining and overdependence on her older brother's protection added to Satoshi's stress and he eventually reached a point where he was just tired of looking after Satoko. This was one of the factors that made the guy break down resulting in the Hinamizawa Syndrome making him go insane.
• The Baby of the Bunch: She's one of the two youngest members of the club and unlike Rika, Satoko's mental age matches her physical age. The older members of the main cast, particularly Keiichi and later Shion, treat Satoko as a little sister who they must protect.
• Best Friend: While Rika cares about all her friends in the games club, Satoko is her closest and most cherished friend.
• Big Brother Worship: She adores her Nii-nii more than anyone. His disappearance really crushed her to a degree that you only begin to see in Tatarigoroshi-hen.
• Bratty Half-Pint: She's a very loud and arrogant child who loves making a fool of Keiichi by having him fall into her traps or just annoying him in general.
• Break the Cutie: Tatarigoroshi-hen is about the bubbly little prankster Satoko turning into a extremely depressed shell of herself because of her uncle returning to abuse her.
• Butt-Monkey: Besides her tragic past, it seems that, no matter who dies over the course of the series, one thing that's almost guaranteed is that Satoko's going to get beaten up at some point (most likely with a chair).
• Cheerful Child: Usually, she's a very lively little girl who almost always smiling and laughing. In the arcs where her uncle returns to abuse her again, Satoko loses all her cheerfulness as she falls into serious depression.
• Color Blind Confusion: Both her and her brother are colorblind, which means they can't tell broccoli and cauliflower apart.
• Comatose Canary: In the anime-only arc Yakusamashi-hen, Satoko manages to escape from the Yamainu and survives the Great Hinamizawa Disaster. Ooishi tries to get her to tell him what happened in the village, but the trauma of seeing Rika's corpse has left Satoko in a catatonic state, unlikely to recover any time soon. She does recover, but unfortunately, the nurse is on the Yamainu’s payroll, and by the time Ooishi figures out what she knows and returns to the hospital, she’s already dead.
• Covert Pervert: Her little smile after seeing Keiichi's "fur seal" in Rei speaks volumes.
• Crazy-Prepared: Sometimes you wonder how and when she sets up some of the traps that she does and how she times them so well.
• Cute Little Fangs: Every so often during club activities, she shows these to show her mischievous personality. In the 2020 anime, she has a little fang sticking out as part of her default expression.
• Deceased Parents Are the Best: A revolving door of replacement daddies was hard enough to adjust to before she was left in custody of her aunt and then uncle. Confirmed in both Saikoroshi-hen and Miotsukushi-hen that Mr. Houjou isn't a bad stepfather and if they're still alive she would have accepted him.
• Defiant to the End: In Meakashi-hen, Shion tortures Satoko as revenge for making Satoshi protect her all the time. However, Satoko refuses to cry out despite Shion stabbing her arms and slowly bleeding to death because she swore she would endure any pain for Satoshi's sake until he returned. Seeing Satoko withstand the pain of her torture to the last minute makes Shion realize that Satoko did have faith in Satoshi's return while she never did and dirtied her hands with blood in her despair.
• Does Not Like Spam: She hates kabocha squash and complains about it very noisily whenever Shion makes her eat it.
• Drop the Washtub: A preferred prank. She can summon them anywhere.
• Dull Eyes of Unhappiness: Her eyes are sometimes portrayed as dull and lifeless. In their case, it's usually reason to be afraid for the narrator's safety; in Satoko's case, it's reason to be afraid for her safety, as it typically shows up when she is suffering traumatic abuse at the hands of her uncle.
• Entendre Failure: Presumably because she's one of the Token Mini Moes, she is particularly prone to this. The one to lampshade this is usually Rika, the other one. Notably, she always gets it. Occasionally, it seems like she chooses not to understand the entendre. Makes sense as Rika is a 100+ year old being pretending to be a child.
• Fan Disservice: Her appearing fully naked (and not in Barbie Doll Anatomy) in the bridge scene of the Tatarigoroshi sound novel only makes it more disturbing. Notably, all releases after the original give her a Modesty Towel to help address this.
• Fatal Flaw: Before her brother Satoshi went missing, Satoko used to depend on him for everything and did nothing but cry as their aunt abused them. Due to believing her dependent behavior was what drove Satoshi to a corner and he abandoned because he was sick of protecting someone weak like her, Satoko has an erroneous mindset that she must not let anyone help her with her problems and she must endure it on her own while bottling up everything to prove to Satoshi that she's now "strong" when he comes back. This is why she refuses to admit Teppei is abusing her to the child services in Tatarigoroshi-hen, which leads to Keiichi taking desperate measures by killing Teppei and this only makes Satoko try to kill him out of paranoia as Satoko is already at L5 of her Hinamizawa Syndrome due to the abuse.
• Formal Characters Use Keigo: She speaks in an extremely formal way, using the first-person pronoun "watakushi", forms like "de gozaimasu" and the honorific -san with even her close friends, as well as the request formula "-kudasaimase". According to Rika, Satoko does this because she forced herself to be hyper-polite so as not to be a target of gossip when the Hōjō were ostracized, but it didn't really help.
• Freak Out: She's prone to random panic attacks with lots of crying and screaming in the scenarios where her uncle comes back to abuse her. This is also one of the effects of having an advanced case of Hinamizawa Syndrome.
• Friendly Shopkeeper: In the Higurashi Rei mangas, an older Satoko runs a souvenir shop. Her daughter Sakiko helps her out as a fellow poster girl.
• Genki Girl: She's a very energetic little girl, until she breaks.
• Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: In Miotsukushi-hen, Rika panics after she hears Takano is going to gas the entire village with an evolved version of H173 and already thinks this world is doomed. Satoko literally smacks Rika back to her senses and tells her the best friend who encouraged her to fight off Teppei wouldn't give up so easily without seeing the current fight to the end.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: She's an energetic and playful little girl with blonde hair.
• Heroic BSoD: After suffering her uncle's abuse in Tatarigoroshi-hen, she acts borderline catatonic, barely responding to her friends entreaties.
• Image Song: "Sukisuki Nii Nii".
• Insistent Terminology: They are not "pranks", they are "traps"!
• It's All My Fault: Satoko feels at fault for her brother Satoshi being pushed over his limits and apparently running away because her constantly crying and clinging to him only made him shoulder more burdens on top of the town making them outcasts and their uncle and aunt abusing them.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She may always be an arrogant brat who comes up with traps to prank everyone including her friends, but she does really care about them; in this case apparently in Tatarigoroshi-hen when she feels concerned for Keiichi when he nearly sets his house on fire as he learns to start cooking.
• Leitmotif: "Small Town".
• Living Emotional Crutch: We can assume that if not for her, Rika would have given up long ago.
• Minor Living Alone: Satoko and Rika are grade-schoolers who live on their own because both lost their parents a while ago. Satoko is happier with this as her other option would be moving in with her abusive uncle.
• Misery Builds Character: Part of the reason she won't seek out help whenever Teppei comes back and starts abusing her is because she believes that enduring it will make her stronger when Satoshi comes back. In Minagoroshi-hen, Rika points out that she's really just waiting to hide behind him again, and true strength would be taking a stand against it like he did. This finally convinces her to accept help from child services.
• Mood-Swinger: In Tatarigoroshi-hen, the effects of enduring her uncle's abuse causes her to apparently act normal at school to abruptly have a panic attack and then just as abruptly go back to pretend she's okay when the teacher arrives.
• Morality Chain: She becomes this to Shion in arcs after Meakashi-hen. Remembering her promise to take care of Satoko becomes the reason why Shion doesn't go on a killing spree ever again. She only turns murderous if Satoko's life and safety are endangered. This is best shown in Miotsukushi-hen where Shion tries to kill Irie because he has been using the Houjou siblings as test subjects and is paranoid about him hurting them. The club intervenes and Satoko is the only one who can talk Shion back to her senses by telling her she's alright with being a test subject because Irie doesn't treat her badly. She also begs Shion to stop because she doesn't want to see her Nee-Nee shooting someone, causing Shion to break down in tears as she and Satoko hug.
• Morality Pet: To multiple characters in different arcs.
  • Irie is quite suspicious for most of the series, but his genuine fondness and concern for Satoko are proof that he isn't a bad person. It's later revealed that Irie participated in some morally questionable experiments for the research of the Hinamizawa Syndrome, but he started working on a cure to save Satoko's life, since Takano was going to kill her once she had reached Level 5.
  • Satoko also turns out to be this to Rika once we learn more of the latter's true self. After dying and seeing her friends kill each other countless times, Rika has developed a major case of Lack of Empathy, but Satoko's suffering is the only one she can never stand to see. In Minagoroshi-hen, Rika is finally convinced by Keiichi to fight fate in order to save Satoko from Teppei.
  • To Shion in the arcs that come after Meakashi-hen. Due to remembering her promise to Satoshi, Shion no longer goes insane out of revenge for Satoshi's disappearance and now prioritizes looking after Satoko until Satoshi comes back.
• My God, What Have I Done?: You might miss it and you won't understand it at the time, but it happens at the end of Minagoroshi chapter when she realizes that her parents weren't trying to kill her and she didn't need to push them off the cliff.
• Naked Nutter: At the end of Tatarigoroshi, she winds up facing off against Keiichi on a bridge, now paranoid and hallucinating thanks to Hinamizawa syndrome. In the original sound novel she is completely nude for this scene, while in every subsequent release she is given a Modesty Towel, but her lack of proper clothes in either case serves to accentuate both her vulnerability and her insanity.
• Noblewoman's Laugh: "Oh ho ho ho!" Often while bragging about the setup or success of her traps.
• Not Afraid of You Anymore: After Rika finally convinces her to accept help from child services in Minagoroshi, she tells Teppei that she hates his guts and wants him out of her house, putting up as much of a fight as she can before the police Ooishi wisely set up in advance come to her aid. She's also spurred by Rika and Keiichi to fight back in Miotsukushi, even mocking him when he can't keep up with her, but Teppei takes the wind out of her sails by revealing that she's a Self-Made Orphan.
• Parental Abandonment: Boy, does poor Satoko get it bad. Her mother, father, aunt, and brother all died or disappeared, and her uncle skipped town. Although that last one really isn't a bad thing because her uncle is an abusive asshole and in the arcs he comes back, Satoko soon breaks.
• Parent with New Paramour: Satoko suffered from this in her backstory. Her mother and father divorced when she was young, and Satoko's mother remarried multiple times. She suffered abuse from some of them, but got along so poorly with the last one that she called the child abuse hotline falsely. Ultimately, she deluded herself into believing her new stepfather and her mother were trying to kill her and shoved them off a cliff herself. The false call to the child welfare office unfortunately leads them to delay acting on reported abuse when Teppei returns in Tatarigoroshi-hen.
• The Prankster: She's the master of pulling pranks on her friends, especially Keiichi. Although, she says her pranks are traps.
• Prone to Tears: She easily starts crying, especially when she and Keiichi bicker. It was way worse when she still lived with her abusive uncle and aunt as Satoko spent all her time crying loudly and calling for her brother to help her. Shion hates Satoko for being such a crybaby and burdening Satoshi with her whining.
• Proper Tights with a Skirt: She wears black tights with the small dress she wears as her school uniform. Given her incrediby sophisticated speech, she's probably trying to create an elegant image.
• Protectorate: Satoshi ran himself ragged trying to protect her (and deep down was getting tired of it), particularly from their abusive aunt who he eventually ends up killing. One of his last conversations with Shion before disappearing was asking her to take care of her, which she becomes especially dedicated to doing after remembering her mistakes from Meakashi. Two arcs focus on the Club (particularly Keiichi) saving from her Evil Uncle, the second much more successful than the first.
• Repressed Memories: She doesn't remember that she was the one who pushed her parents from the cliff when she was under the effects of the Hinamizawa Syndrome, though she starts to remember after Rika's Exposition Dump about Hinamizawa Syndrome late in Minagoroshi, and is directly told by Teppei in Miotsukushi.
• Self-Made Orphan: An accidental, tragic example; her Hinamizawa Syndrome made her delude herself into thinking that her mother and stepfather were trying to kill her, and she shoved them both off a cliff in what she thought was self-defense.
• Shameless Self-Promoter: In the sequel manga Higurashi Rei, in order to promote her souvenir shop, Satoko is willing to put on a Cat Girl cosplay. She also has her daughter Sakiko and Mion's daughter Tamaki put on cosplays too to post their pictures for online advertising.
• The Smart Girl: The "Trap Master" of the group. She can make weapons and traps out of anything. Her expertise even allows her to understand and figure out the things others make, such as quickly concluding that the bomb Rena created was hidden in the rain gutter on the roof.
• Stress Vomit: In Tatarigoroshi-hen, the stress of trying to act like everything is alright when her uncle is abusing her at home makes her vomit during lunch break.
• Super-Strong Child: She's strong enough to shove Keiichi across the room or off a bridge, and she also shoved her mother and stepfather off a cliff. Considering that on all of these occasions she was crazed due to the effects of Hinamizawa syndrome, it isn't all that surprising.
• Technicolor Eyes: Pink and in some versions, Red.
• Together in Death: In the visual novel of Meakashi-hen, after Shion tortures Satoko to death, she has a bit of a fantasy sequence in which she imagines Satoko and Satoshi together, Satoshi reassures her that it's OK to cry now, and Shion is left behind in Hinamizawa, absolutely soaked in Satoko's blood. Most of this got cut in the anime in favor of a very short scene where Shion realizes what she's done and that she has irrevocably refused Satoshi's final request to her.
• Token Mini-Moe: Along with Rika, she certainly seems to be younger than the other cast members.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: The Tomboy to Rika's Girly Girl. Satoko is more mischievous and energetic than the cutesy Rika although that part of Rika's personality is faked; Rika's true self is more of a jaded woman. Satoko also likes wearing shorts in her casual clothes while Rika always wears skirts.
• Trap Master: It's her club title. She can make traps that can catch trained soldiers off guard!
• Trauma Button: During Tatarigoroshi-hen, Satoko returns to school seemingly back to normal despite Teppei's abuse. However, the moment Keiichi gives her an Affectionate Gesture to the Head, she suddenly shoves his hand away and starts freaking out. Further attempts at physical contact lead to him getting shoved hard, followed by Stress Vomit and incoherently begging for forgiveness. It's likely that Keiichi just touching her at all made her think of Teppei getting rough with her.
• Trauma Conga Line: More than anyone else, Satoko's history has been a list of things going wrong in her life. First, her parents die due to a tragic accident. Then, she and her brother are forced to move in with her abusive aunt and uncle. Then, her aunt is killed by her brother, her brother disappears a few days later, and her uncle abandons her (although this last one was actually a good thing for Satoko).
• Trying Not to Cry: Because she was always crying for Satoshi to protect her in the past, Satoko does her best to hold back her tears when she's in pain and agony as she wants to prove she isn't a weak crybaby anymore.
• Unreliable Expositor: In Tatarigoroshi-hen, Keiichi kills Teppei, but Satoko swears that her uncle was at her house the night Keiichi killed him and is still abusing her. She almost dies from staying at the hot bathtub all night, claiming her uncle forced her to do it. This, along all of their friends claiming Keiichi was with them at the festival the night of the murder, makes Keiichi think he's going insane. The truth is Satoko was the crazy one because being abused by Teppei sent her back to L5 Hinamizawa Syndrome and she was just hallucinating that her uncle was abusing her even after Keiichi killed him. As for the rest of his friends, they were knowingly creating an alibi for him to cover up his crime.
• Unwitting Test Subject: Satoko thinks she has to go to the Irie Clinic frequently to get shots and treatment for a nutrients research project. The truth is that she's a test subject for the Hinamizawa Syndrome treatment Dr. Irie is researching in hopes of fully curing Satoko one day. Without the injections, Satoko would go back to Level Five in a short period of time, but she doesn't know any of this.
• Vague Age: Like Rika, she's somewhere from 9-13, but specifics are never given.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: She and Keiichi - except in Tatarigoroshi-hen, where Keiichi tries to act more like Satoshi - constantly snipe at each other, and it's very clear that their friendship is built on this dynamic.
• Yaoi Fangirl: She seems a little bit TOO happy at the sight of her brother about to feed Keichii will a spoon held in his mouth in the first episode of Kira.
  • Then again, Keiichi was dreaming that entire sequence so it might not be true.
  • The visual novel version of this scene states that Satoko was disgusted after seeing her brother perform such a punishment game, and even begs him not to get caught in one anymore. Rika knocks her out with chloroform afterwards, claiming that she was 'too loud'.

Rika Furude

"Tanuki" Rika Furude

Voiced by: Yukari Tamura (JP), Rebecca Forstadt (EN, Bang Zoom), Apphia Yu (EN, Funimation)

Portrayed by: Aika (film), Hinata Homma (drama series)

A younger classmate in Keiichi's school, who is in the same grade level as Satoko. Naturally, she is great friends with her, as they live together in the same house. She is the Miko of the Shrine of Oyashiro-sama, and some of the villagers revere her as a prophet. She has been the head of the Furude family since her parents died, but rarely attends town meetings due to her young age.

She is the only one who can see Hanyu, whom everyone else thinks is an Imaginary Friend.

The seventh arc, Minagoroshi-hen (Massacre chapter), is focused on her.

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• A-Cup Angst: Rika at one point laments her small breast size (due to not being done with puberty yet), and a DVD extra has her do a Skinship Grope of Mion. There is also a manga omake where she is jealous of Hanyu's breasts (Hanyu is adult when in her ghost form in the manga). The reason she's so hung up about this is because she can never physically grow older until the "Groundhog Day" Loop is finally broken.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: Rika's hair is blue in the original sound novels, but the anime gives it a more purple tint.
• Affectionate Gesture to the Head: Often does this to people. While most assume that it's her way of comforting them, she's actually mocking them.
• Animal Motifs: Between her punishments (often involving having to wear cat ears), her Verbal Tic ("Mii~", which is meant to be a kitten's mewing), and her general behaviour, characters in the sound novel often compare her to a kitten. And there is a mini-game where she's dressed as a Cat Girl. The theme is perpetuated by her other self Bernkastel in Umineko: When They Cry, who has a cat's tail and can turn into a cat. Oddly enough, her club title compares her to a Tanuki instead.
• Badass Adorable: Near the end of arc 6: Fighting against a psychotic girl who is 4-5 years older than you physically, is stronger than you, and is wielding a hatchet, with a mop, and surviving to tell the story. That's no easy feat. And who could forget the line "I'll play with you. Come on, hatchet girl!"... *Nipaa~*
• Badass Bookworm: She's very intelligent and precise when fighting.
• Barrier Maiden: Takano's theory about the Hinamizawa Syndrome says Rika is the Infection Queen whose existence keeps the disease dormant. If Rika dies, everyone in Hinamizawa would start to go insane and homicidal within a few days. The Mountain Dogs and other members of the Irie Institute are assigned to keep a close eye on her to make sure no harm comes to her, while Emergency Manual 34 contains a contingency plan to slaughter everyone in the village with poisonous gas should she ever die unexpectedly. Takano is the one planning Rika's murder to prove the Hinamizawa Syndrome is real and have the village wiped out. However, this is subverted as there's no outbreak of the syndrome in the arcs where Rika is killed or commits suicide because of Shion instead.
• Beneath the Mask: Despite being over a century old, Rika is forced to keep up the act of being an innocent, prepubescent girl. Sometimes she either tires of the act and gives up on it, or lets it slip when she thinks no one is paying attention. This actually winds up creating some strife with her mother, who is one of the only people to notice that every once in a while her daughter doesn't act like a "normal" child her age.
• Berserk Button: Teasing her about her crush on Akasaka is a surefire way to draw her ire.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: In Meakashi-hen, Rika stabs herself in the throat when she's at mercy of Shion, as she knew the fate that awaited her in that world was brutal torture and death at hands of Shion so she chose to give herself a quicker and less painful death.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: The seemingly sweet-natured Rika is eventually revealed to be bitter, world-weary, and decidedly harsher and snarkier than her Deliberately Cute Child act would suggest. When her true personality comes out during her scenes in private with Hanyuu, Rika is often teasing her, being mean to her, and threatening to consume spicy food when she gets too whiny.
• Blush Sticker: Cute blush marks are part of her anime design as a little child in Himatsubushi-hen.
• Broken Bird: Underneath her cheerful and innocent exterior, Rika is actually a cynical and desperate girl who has almost entirely given up on her future after being repeatedly killed in gruesome ways.
• The Cassandra: She has tried to give warnings about future incidents to adults in the past, but they either ignored her or were too freaked out by her abrupt change of personality to listen to what she said. Rika has long since given up trying to convince people that she knows the future.
• Cheerful Child: This little girl is a bright ray of sunshine. Or so it seems.
• Chekhov's Gunman: During the first half of the story, she gets the least amount of focus out of all the Games Club members, but she still drops several hints that she knows more than she lets on. In Kai we learn a great deal more about her relevance to the plot, and she essentially replaces Keiichi as the main protagonist.
• Creepy Child: She occasionally acts in a knowing, creepy manner completely unfitting her age. There's a reason for this.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: She is a frequent victim of this, usually involving disembowelment. In one arc, she inflicts this on herself by bludgeoning her brains out with a kitchen knife.
• Curtains Match the Window: Only in the anime and then in the VN's Steam release, both of which give her purplish-blue hair and eyes. In all other media, her hair is blue and her eyes are purple.
• Death of Personality: She sometimes doesn't consider herself "Rika Furude" because her Mental Time Travel to each new timeline overrides whatever carefree little girl existed beforehand. In Saikoroshi-hen, she finds herself in a completely different Hinamizawa where nobody had any Dark and Troubled Past. The Rika of this world isn't an orphan nor linked to Hanyuu (her mother is instead the eighth first-born daughter), and was said to be quite spoiled. Rika muses that the Rika who existed before her Mental Time Travel into this alternate world is probably no more.
• Deliberately Cute Child: Even before the reveal that she's mentally much older than she acts, you still get the sense that some of her cutesy behaviour is deliberate. However, it's later made clear that her cutesy act is less about manipulating people and more about not wanting to alarm them with how much she really knows.
• Determined Defeatist: Even when things start going to hell, Rika doesn't want to abandon the loop because she wants to be with her friends and help them a little before she dies again. This is why she tries to bring the injection for Shion and Rena when they're at L5 even though she knows they're going to resist and refuse it. In Minagoroshi, she isn't convinced that they can get child services to save Satoko from Teppei, but follows along because she cares for Satoko. Thankfully, Keiichi and her friends allow her to gain hope by breaking from their tragic fate with their effort and determination.
• Deuteragonist: Keiichi is the protagonist and POV character for the first three arcs. His actions are also very important in beating obstacles in later arcs like stopping a L5 Rena and saving Satoko from Teppei with child services' help. However, Rika is way more important and central to the overall plot than Keiichi or anyone in their group. Basically, Rika's death at hands of Takano is what's creating the loop because Hanyu transfers Rika's soul to a new fragment every time she dies. The latter half of the story is frequently from Rika's perspective, but despite this, it is mostly Keiichi and the rest who act to save Rika from fate.
• Dodge the Bullet: In Miotsukushi-hen, Rika can dodge all the bullets Takano fires at her, with help from Hanyu's time powers.
• Driven to Suicide: She is captured and tortured to death by Shion in Watanagashi. In Meakashi, when she ends up in the same situation again, she prefers to skip the torture part and kills herself with a kitchen knife.
• Drowning My Sorrows: She drinks wine when she's depressed, despite being underage. She notes that it's quite easy to get drunk with her small frame. She knows she's fated to die anyway, so what harm could it do?
• Emotionless Girl: She is not, but is afraid of becoming one because of the repetition of an increasingly short period of her life. This is elaborated more in the Minagoroshi sound novel.
• The Fake Cutie: Acts like a cute Cheerful Child in public, but when alone with Hanyu or with her own thoughts she's very cynical.
• Fatal Flaw: Rika's biggest flaw is her extremely passive nature and lack of action. After 100 years of being stuck at a loop that always ends in her gruesome death, Rika believes even trying to save herself and her friends isn't worth anything so she has become sort of a bystander who tries enjoying some fun times with her friends before everything goes to hell again. The few actions she takes are vague warnings that only cause confusion and trying to inject Shion or Rena to cure their Hinamizawa Syndrome when they're already L5 murderers. The tragedies of loops only end thanks to the actions of more proactive characters like Keiichi who refused to give up like Rika did.
• The Fatalist: Years of being stuck in a gruesome "Groundhog Day" Loop has led Rika to believe You Can't Fight Fate and there's nothing she or anyone else can do about events that have already "been set in stone". Inspired by Keiichi, she keeps trying, though, and eventually gets it right.
• Formal Characters Use Keigo: Similar to Satoko, Rika uses very formal speech patterns for someone of her young age, since she's the daughter of one of the three high-ranking families in Hinamizawa. She speaks more casually when she speaks alone with Hanyu, who taught her to speak like that in the first place.
• Friendship Favoritism: Downplayed in a realistic fashion; Rika cares about all of her friends, but she has a closer bond to Satoko compared to the rest. The rest of the cast is aware of both the favoritism and its innocent nature but are not really bothered by it.
• Groundhog Peggy Sue: Rika has been stuck in a "Groundhog Day" Loop for at least a century where she relives the last month of her life continuously. She is unable to break the loop until the end of the series.
• Guile Heroine: Rika is by far the most manipulative of the main group, and tends to use her cuteness and innocent nature to distract people or lure them into a false sense of security.
• Gutted Like a Fish: In Tatarigoroshi-hen, Keiichi and Satoko find Rika's mutilated corpse with her guts spilled all over. Minagoroshi-hen reveals Takano is the murderer. Takano's plan requires Rika's death, and she chooses to honor the original Wataganashi (Instestine Drifting). Rika is usually knocked out by chloroform, so she's spared the pain but never learns who's killing her until Minagoroshi-hen.
• Hime Cut: She has straight full bangs, bra strap-length sidelocks, and waist-length straight hair, fitting her position as the Miko of her town's shrine.
• Hive Queen: It's noted that the older residents in the city are all incredibly fond of her. This is due to a pheremone signal she releases for her "subjects". Though this is the extent of her power; she theorizes that the effect could have played the trope more straight in the past.
• Hoist by Her Own Petard: She attempts to inject Shion with Hinamizawa Syndrome medication in Meakashi, but Shion ends up overpowering her and injecting it into Rika herself, which leaves her too ill to do anything but kill herself to avoid a more drawn out death from Shion's torture. When she approaches Rena in Tsumihoroboshi with the same needle, she decides that she's not even going to try forcing it into her if she won't accept it.
• How Dare You Die on Me!: She desperately cries and begs Hanyuu to not die after Hanyuu gets shot in Miotsukushi-hen.
• Identical Granddaughter: She looks a hell of a lot like her ancestor Ouka. Except for Ouka's hair being a slightly lighter shade of purple, she and Rika look the same. Ouka is voiced by Rika's seiyuu as well.
• Image Song: "Mugen Kairou", and "S A G A Rinne no Hate ni".
• Immortal Immaturity: While she says she's mentally over a hundred years old, it becomes clear that it's not true. Instead, she's actually grown desperate rather than truly growing old. This can also be explained by the fact that her body has not yet reached puberty, so her brain is not fully developed, and thus she simply cannot be completely adult in mind since she is not physically capable of it. While she does not act her apparent age (somewhere around nine to eleven) it's clear that she's really still pretty childish. Considering how she's spent hundreds of years hanging out with kids and teenagers and acting like a kid to fit it, it's also likely that she doesn't know how to act like an adult.
• Lack of Empathy: Some of her monologues in Minagoroshi make her appear not only cynical but also disturbingly selfish, only worrying about people's safety if that can allow her to survive (physically or mentally). The worst in all that? She perfectly knows that the Mountain Hounds killed her parents and she doesn't even care, since she considers it's her mother's fault for opposing the experiments in the first place. No longer the case after the Dice Killing Chapter when her darkness is purged from her consciousness. In Umineko: When They Cry, this darkness manifests itself as Bernkastel.
• Lady Drunk: A bit of a disturbing example. Really 700 Years Old or not, she is physically a prepubescent girl. In large part it's a way for her to pick on Hanyu.
• Leitmotif: Baby's Walk; also used in some situations where a character ridicules himself without getting what's going on.
• Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: During their private interactions, Rika is the Dark Feminine to Hanyuu's light. Rika can be her true pessimistic and sardonic self when alone with Hanyuu who is more comedic and childish despite being a ghost.
• Little Miss Badass: Miotsukushi-hen includes scenes of Rika pulling really awesome stands against adults much stronger than her. She can get back at Teppei for abusing Satoko a bit by spraying him with pepper spray in the eyes and kicks him in the face before getting back up from Keiichi. Later at the final confrontation with Takano, Rika manages to face Takano on her own and dodges all her bullets with some help from Hanyu's time control powers.
• Little Miss Snarker: A majority of her dialogue consists of snarky remarks when she isn't being innocent or serious. At first you may think her patting the head of people is to comfort them; you quickly realize it's her way of mocking them.
  Satoko: Mion must have caught a cold, she looks a bit feverish. Hey, Rika, why are you patting my head?!
  Rika: Satoko, you too will catch a cold someday.
• Loved by All: In sharp contrast to the discrimination her friend Satoko suffers, all the native Hinamizawans fawn over her and address her with the honorific "-chama" ("chan"+"sama"). She's seen as the head of the Furude family now that her parents are dead, the reincarnation of Oyashiro-sama, and supposedly carrying the Queen pathogen that keeps Hinamizawa Syndrome in check and instinctively promotes reverence toward her.
• The Many Deaths of You: Most of the time she is disemboweled following the "gut drifting" ritual. But there are also worlds where she is tortured to death by Shion, stabs herself not to be tortured to death by Shion, burns when Rena blows up the school, or is killed by Teppei when trying to save Satoko. And probably others in the early worlds when she actually tried to do something.
• Mark of the Supernatural: She's the only member of the club with purple eyes and she's also the only one who fully remembers previous timelines due to her direct connection to a godlike being.
• Meaningful Name: Rika means Pear Blossom whose meanings are "lasting friendship and hope". This also created some sad meaning with the sequel’s Bernkastel as Rika removes herself (Frederica) from "Frederica Bernkastel" which means that Bernkastel has lost all hope.
• Mental Time Travel: By unusual means (using Alternate Universes rather than actual Time Travel), but ultimately to the same effect.
• Mid-Suicide Regret: She almost kills herself in Minagoroshi-hen when she finds out that Satoko's uncle has returned and neither Takano or Tomitake can help her. She stops once she realizes that by doing this she would just leave this world's Satoko alone.
• Miko: She serves as one at Oyashiro-sama's shrine, and she also performs rituals at the Cotton-Drifting Festival.
• The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: Due to still being physically a preteen, she cannot achieve complete mental maturity despite being mentally over a hundred years old, simply because certain changes in the brain that occur during puberty haven't occured for her yet. A line in the visual novel suggests she hasn't even gotten her first period yet.
• Minor Living Alone: Rika lives together with Satoko at their own house even though both are kids of elementary school age. Their parents died a few years ago, leaving the two with no adults to look after them. Despite that, they're quite happy and don't have much trouble looking after themselves. It's mentioned in Tatarigoroshi that Kimiyoshi is her official guardian.
• My God, What Have I Done?: In Saikoroshi-hen, she finds herself in an alternate Hinamizawa where everyone's better off, with Rika herself not being an orphan, but the only way to return to the Hinamizawa that she fought for is to kill her mother, who holds a fragment preventing Hanyuu from entering that world. After seemingly just accepting her new life, she wakes up back in her original world and breaks down crying over the realisation of what she must have done, even though Hanyuu tries convincing her that it was All Just a Dream.
• Not Growing Up Sucks: One of her dismays with being trapped in a "Groundhog Day" Loop is the fact that she hasn't aged past ten for hundreds of years now. In Matsuribayashi-hen, as part of her Survival Mantra, she boasts that once the loop ends among most things, she's gonna grow taller and develop breasts.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: As part of her Deliberately Cute Child routine, she passes herself off as a clueless kid, but she knows a lot more of what is going on than any of her friends. This turns out to run even deeper than it first appears, as Rika has actually existed for over 100 years stuck in a "Groundhog Day" Loop, meaning every bit of her cutesy, innocent persona is a carefully cultivated act.
• Older Than She Looks: While Rika is physically a child, she has been stuck in a time loop for over a hundred years and she's the only one who keeps her memories consciously. In the Oniokoshi-hen manga that takes place in 2019, Rika looks in her mid-twenties at the oldest, but she's in her forties.
• Oracular Urchin: Rika often gives creepily ominous advices and warnings to the other characters about bad things that are coming because she already lived through those bad things in previous timelines.
• Out of Continues: Unlike other examples of "Groundhog Day" Loop, the period of time she and Hanyu can rewind becomes progressively shorter, meaning that her attempt in Matsuribayashi was probably her last chance.
• Out of Time, Out of Mind: Averted, though she puts on an act so as not to freak people out.
• Precocious Crush: It's strongly implied that Rika has a crush on Akasaka who is an adult married man and she met him when she was even younger than now. Akasaka is very fond of Rika, thinking he would like to have a daughter as cute as her.
• Reincarnation: She's thought to be the reincarnation of Oyashiro-sama. This is later revealed to be wrong; Oyashiro-sama didn't reincarnate into Rika, but she looks after her as some sort of spirit guardian.
• Resurrection/Death Loop: Each time she dies, Hanyu transfers Rika's consciousness to another fragment. However, no matter how many times Hanyu does this, Rika always ends up being killed again one way or another. This has been going on for possibly over a hundred years. The period of time Hanyu can rewind becomes progressively shorter; the first times, Hanyu could send Rika back a few years, but in the latest loops, Rika ends up reliving the same nightmarish June 1983 where she and her friends always die because of Takano's ploy.
• Retroactive Precognition: She already knows every crucial event that will happen in each scenario, but she isn't really predicting the future; she "remembers" it because she's the only one who retains memories from the previous timelines.
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Along with Hanyu (who's the one responsible for the loop in the first place), she's the only person who knows that there's a "Groundhog Day" Loop going on, and she remembers all the previous universes.
• Saying Sound Effects Out Loud: She has a habit of doing this, such as saying "pachi pachi" ("clap clap") while clapping. Her "nipa~" Verbal Tic is essentially this as well, since "nipa" is a Japanese Unsound Effect for smiling.
• Seen It All: She has seen her friends go crazy and become murderers so many times that all she wonders when she restarts a loop is which bloody scenario she'll be forced to relive.
  • Notably averted in the Dice-Killing Arc: After over a century of reliving the same events in 1983 and thinking she'd seen pretty much every possible permutation of events, she is dumped into a totally alien and unfamiliar Hinamizawa. In this world, seemingly all of the grisly events that led to the Higurashi series didn't happen. For the first time in any of Rika's cycles, the Hinamizawa Dam Conflict was resolved peacefully and with the villagers agreeing to relocate, while Hifumi Takano was able to find a sponsor for his research. As a result of that, Miyo Takano and Tokyo never took an interest in Hinamizawa and Irie was never sent there to open a clinic; Rika's parents were never killed by Tokyo; the Houjous were never ostracized and Satoko was able to bond with her stepfather, meaning she never killed her parents and Satoshi never fell victim to Hinamizawa Syndrome as a result; because of the planned flooding of the village, half of Hinamizawa has already moved away and the Maebara family, Keiichi included, never moves to the village; Rena's mother stayed in Hinamizawa and never abandoned her or her father, meaning she also never was afflicted with Hinamizawa syndrome nor did she ever change her birthname of 'Reina'. Most notably, Rika loses her connection to Hanyuu and is unable to communicate with her as normal. These events are so far beyond the norms of what Rika is used to, she loses her characteristic composure and completely freaks out when she realizes how different the world is.
• Shameful Strip: In the arcs where Takano kills her in the Watanagashi ritual, she has the Mountain Dogs strip Rika of her clothes beforehand. Rika comments that she's bothered more by Takano's perverse pleasure at the ritual than she is about being seen nude.
• Stepford Smiler: In a cast full of them, she's probably got it the worst; she acts like a cute Cheerful Child, but in reality she's suppressing how she's witnessed and experienced hundreds of years' worth of murder and torture.
• The Stoic: Whenever she drops the Deliberately Cute Child act, her personality becomes cold and emotionally detached.
• Straw Nihilist: Her real personality is extremely cynical and bored about everything. In the first half of Minagoroshi, she keeps making monologues about how meaningless and pointless is to even try hoping for anything and all she can do is wait for everything to go to hell. You can't really blame her when she has been stuck in a loop for 100 years and events always spiraled down into tragedy and death for her and her friends. She grows out of it because of Keiichi showing her fate can be beaten through hope and effort.
• Tareme Eyes: When in her "cute" facade, her eyes are big and round to make her look innocent and adorable. When she drops the act and acts like her real cynical self, they change to Tsurime Eyes.
• Technicolor Eyes: Rika's eyes are purple, just like Hanyuu's. Given that Hanyuu is her ancestor and was a demon, the eye color is NOT cosmetic.
• Time Loop Fatigue: She has been stuck in a "Groundhog Day" Loop for somewhere between a century and a millennium. In most iterations, one of her friends will go insane and kill a bunch of people. In every iteration, she is murdered, usually disemboweled while she's still alive, and most or all of her friends die within a few days. Then she's resurrected in the past, and goes through it all over again, and she's the only one who remembers what's happening, but enough important details keep changing that she can't manage to stop it.
• Token Mini-Moe: She shares this role with Satoko as the other club member of elementary school age.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Girly Girl to Satoko's Tomboy. She's a lot more cutesy and polite than her trapmaster best friend, although Rika's true personality makes this dynamic more of a front.
• Too Dumb to Live: Saikoroshi-hen kicks off with a bike race where Rika gleefully ignores Hanyuu's safety warning and then Satoko's direct warning that a truck is coming her way, assuming that the latter is just trying to slow her down. Rika ends up in a parallel world after getting run over, and learning what happened to her from Hanyuu reduces her to Cry Laughing when she realizes that she devastated her friends and basically threw away her hard-fought victory from the "Groundhog Day" Loop by ignoring common sense about playing on the road.
• Took a Level in Idealism: After having pretty much given up on fighting fate and resigning to keep dying continuously, Rika is inspired by Keiichi to believe not all hope is lost and they can beat their tragic fate if she and her friends try hard enough. It all pays off and they get their happy ending.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Bernkastel Wine.
• Tragic Time Traveler: It's eventually revealed that she has been stuck in a time loop for decades, if not centuries, with it constantly ending with the people around her dying. It hasn't done much good to her mental health, though she eventually manages to escape with help from her friends.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: She drinks wine to drown her sorrows and she's not any older than twelve (at least, not physically). She does this behind everyone else's backs, though.
• Tsundere: Harsh type toward Hanyuu. She's very snarky toward her and often consumes spicy food and wine just to make her suffer through their shared senses, but she learned more from her than her actual mother, feels distressed when she's not around, and is devastated when she gets fatally shot in Miotsukushi-hen.
• Verbal Tic: She has several:
  • She sometimes starts her sentences with "Mii", which is meant to imitate a kitten's mewing.
  • She says "Nipa~" whenever she smiles, as it's a Japanese Unsound Effect for smiling. This could actually be foreshadowing of some sort. Turns out, "nipa~", as well as being the Japanese onomatopoeia for "smiling", is also the name of a virus that causes neurological failure and death in humans.
  • Like Hanyu, she ends all her sentences with "desu" or "nano desu", even when it makes no grammatical sense. In the English translation of the manga, she instead ends her sentences often with "sir".
• Vocal Dissonance: Her "real" voice, when she's not Obfuscating Stupidity, sounds deeper than a little girl should sound.
• Walking Spoiler: Her close ties to fellow Walking Spoiler Hanyuu qualify her as this, namely that she's the only one of the main characters who really knows what's going on due to being aware of the "Groundhog Day" Loop Hanyuu created. The fact that she's not the Cheerful Child she seems to be on the surface also ties into it.
• Walking the Earth: In the Oniokoshi-hen sequel manga, Rika is enjoying her adulthood by traveling all around the world, although she still returns to Hinamizawa for the Watanagashi festival every year.
• With Friends Like These...: She and Hanyu are close friends, no doubt about it; that doesn't prevent her from regularly punishing Hanyu with wine and spicy food or outright shutting her up when she finds her annoying.
• Yaoi Fangirl: In the preview at the end of Kai episode 7 she claimed that she ships Keiichi/Ooishi.

Shion Sonozaki

Shion Sonozaki

Voiced by: Satsuki Yukino (JP), Megan Hollingshead (EN, Bang Zoom), Michelle Rojas (EN, Funimation)

Portrayed by: Rika Nakai (drama series)

Mion's identical twin sister, who currently resides in Okinomiya. Unlike her twin, she is girly and somewhat cold. In spite of their different personalities, she and Mion often switch places, and it can be difficult to distinguish between them. She was sent by the Sonozaki family to a private boarding school, but escaped and returned to live near her hometown, where she lives with Kasai. She was in love with Satoshi, and blames the Three Families of Hinamizawa for his disappearance. She works as a waitress at the Angel Mort restaurant and is the manager's assistant for the Hinamizawa Fighters little league team.

The fifth arc, Meakashi-hen (Eye Opening chapter), is focused on her. Infamous for its content. You Have Been Warned.

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• Absentee Club Member: Shion is ostensibly the Cute Sports Club Manager for the Hinamizawa Fighters, except she rarely attends games anymore. She doesn't attend them because her main reason for attending them before her crush, Satoshi, stopped attending due to having disappeared one year ago. However, when she does attend after Keiichi joins the team, she hops right back into her old role and there is no questioning it from anyone.
• Absurd Phobia: Shion has an irrational fear of canned foods because Kasai used to tell her stories about these containing human meat.
• Adapted Out: She's the only member of the party who doesn't appear in the live-action movies. Granted, she doesn't appear Onikakushi and only has a minor role in Tsumihoroboshi (the two arcs the movies adapt).
• All for Nothing: She spends most of Meakashi-hen (and by extension, Watanagashi-hen) seeking revenge on the Three Families for murdering Satoshi. It would be bad enough if they were merely innocent of his death, but it's worse than that- he's not even dead!
• Alliterative Name: Shion Sonozaki.
• Annoying Younger Sibling: She likes doing stuff to mess with her twin sister. The main reason why she flirts with Keiichi is to see Mion go nuts because she knows Mion has a crush on Keiichi.
• Arc Villain: She's the culprit of the Watanagashi-hen and its answer arc Meakashi-hen, although the Big Bad of the series overall is someone else.
• The Atoner: In the Eye Opening Arc, she realizes too late that she broke her promise to Satoshi of protecting Satoko in his place after she has already killed Satoko. She becomes especially aggressive in protecting Satoko in later arcs.
• Ax-Crazy: Shion is one of the most dangerously psychotic and violently unstable characters in the whole series. She viciously tortures and murders several innocent people in the course of just a few days in her character-focused arc.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Though she ends up regretting her actions, she still succeeded in taking revenge on all of her intended targets, and she dies without having to face any justice.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: She falls head-over-heels for Satoshi after he merely pats her head.
• Being Tortured Makes You Evil: Her grandmother forced her to rip off three of her own fingernails as punishment for returning to Hinamizawa and falling in love with a Houjou. In the scenarios where she snaps, Shion puts her victims through a torture several times worse than the one she experienced.
• Bring My Brown Pants: In the anime, she wets herself after killing Satoko and suddenly remembering Satoshi's last wish. Some fans have theorized that what comes out between her legs is not urine. Not that she cares anymore at that point.
• Bubbly Waitress: When she's serving as a waitress at Angel Mort, Shion is bubbly, cheerful and outgoing.
• Cain and Abel: In the arcs where Shion snaps, her twin sister Mion ends up among her many victims. Shion also torments Mion by forcing her to watch as she tortures and kills her friends.
• The Cameo: She appears in a short-story of Umineko, "Cornelia the New Priest" which doesn't make sense as that story clearly takes place in a Western town (or a different world?), but it's probably more of a joke anyway.
• Captured on Purpose: In Miotsukushi-hen, the club puts up an act to make the police and Takano think Shion kidnapped Rika so the police arrest Shion and try to interrogate her while Rika is hiding at the Irie Clinic.
• The Charmer: When Shion wants to be, she is very charismatic. This is especially clear in the Watanagashi chapter, where newcomer Keiichi has none of the locals' fear of her family, and she basically waltzes in and starts fucking with him.
• Cheshire Cat Grin: Much like her sister, she smiles mischievously when teasing Keiichi and Mion. She takes upon a different smile when she turns into a Troll.
• Consummate Liar: In Meakashi-hen, Shion shows she's an amazing liar as she can sound incredibly convincing when deceiving Keiichi.
• Cool Big Sis: In the worlds where she remembers the promise she made to Satoshi of looking after Satoko, Shion acts as a loving older sister figure to Satoko. She's sometimes called "Nee-nee" similar to how Satoshi was called "Nii-nii".
• Covert Pervert:
  • A subtle example. The ending to Matsuribayashi notes that she has been seen cheerfully buying up men's clothes and taking them to the Irie Clinic, where a comatose Satoshi is being held. Then it mentions that she very excitedly bought a maid outfit that didn't fit her and brought it during her next trip to the clinic...
  • In Hajisarashi-hen, Irie uses a collection of pictures with Satoshi in various states of undress to tempt her out of further interference with Keiichi.
• Crocodile Tears: She can summon tears at will to play at being a Damsel in Distress.
• Cute Sports Club Manager: She became co-manager of the Hinamizawa Fighters baseball team to get closer to Satoshi. After Satoshi went missing, Shion became a "phantom manager" due to loss of interest in the job.
• Dating What Daddy Hates: Her family is not happy about her being in love with Satoshi. Subverted: Her grandmother long stopped detesting the Houjou family but has to keep up appearances. It also turns out that the main reason the Sonozaki family was against the relationship was that Satoshi is a murderer, not that he is a Houjou.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Shion's personal character arc in Meakashi-hen serves as a deconstruction of the Yandere stereotype. Shion grew up shunned by her family, leading her to get overly attached to Satoshi for his kindness. After she grows paranoid she'll be made disappear like Satoshi, Shion starts murdering people. While she's angry about what happened to Satoshi, her motives for murder are mainly focused on trying to kill the leaders of the Three Great Families before they kill her as well as lashing out at the extremely unfair treatment her family gave her. Also, her murderous behavior was majorly a result of the Hinamizawa Syndrome, something that affects nearly all the main characters and turns them into murderers in one arc. Shion's love for Satoshi is far from the only reason why she reached L5. At the end of the arc, she realizes all the people she killed were innocent for Satoshi's disappearance and she broke her promise to look after Satoko. Being left with nothing, she kills herself as she deeply regrets her crimes.
• Desecrating the Dead: In Meakashi-hen, after she figures out that Oryou is dead, frustrated that she didn't get to interrogate and (perhaps) torture her first, she lashes out at Oryou's corpse with a barbed whip over and over again.
• Desperately Craves Affection: A lot of Shion's actions and emotional responses make more sense when you remember how lonely she must feel. She's been estranged from her family for years at a time (and they were abusive to begin with), separated from her sister, and the closest thing she has to a guardian is a bodyguard who admits he would side with Shion's family over her. Fortunately, this gets better once she joins the main characters and has actual friends to support her.
• Disney Villain Death: In the Cotton Drifting and Eye Opening chapters, she dies by throwing herself off her apartment building. The manga does give a very graphic illustration of her corpse after she hits the concrete.
• Do Not Go Gentle: While Keiichi not giving Mion the doll is considered the trigger for her inner demon reawakening in Meakashi, what truly sent her over the edge was the deaths of Takano and Tomitake, which were supposedly punishment for entering the ritual storehouse. Having also entered the storehouse with Keiichi, and experiencing several grave reactions to trespassing (even from Kasai, who'd generally been on her side), she's convinced that she's next, and that whoever's responsible also erased Satoshi the previous year. This is when she actually starts capturing and torturing people, determined to get answers and fight back as much as possible before her apparent incoming demise.
• Does Not Like Spam: She hates canned foods because Kasai traumatized her into thinking that human meat gets packed inside.
• Driven by Envy: She holds buried resentment toward her family for being The Un-Favourite, and ostracizing and possibly doing away with Satoshi. In Meakashi-hen when Mion cries to her about Keiichi not viewing her as girly enough to give her a doll he won, the "demon" in her reawakened out of frustration that only Mion gets to interact with the guy she likes, while her crush Satoshi is nowhere to be found. After torturing to death several people who she believes made Satoshi suffer, she gleefully tells a devastated Mion that she's going to capture and torture Keiichi, not because he'd wronged Satoshi (he'd never even met the guy), but just to subject Mion to the agonized screams of the guy she likes before killing her too.
• Driven to Suicide:
  • In Watanagashi-hen and Meakashi-hen, after she fails to get inside her apartment room, Shion is overcome with regret over how she murdered almost everyone she knew in a misguided revenge and throws herself off the building, falling to her death as she apologizes to all the innocent people she killed.
  • Although the circumstances are much more ambiguous, the ending scroll of some arcs inform that Shion committed suicide the day after the Great Hinamizawa Gas Disaster.
• Easily Forgiven: While still believing her to be Mion, Keichi and Rena listen to Shion admit that she murdered Rika and Satoko. They literally forgive her immediately for this and still consider her to be their beloved friend. She's actually appalled at how readily they accept their friend "Mion" being a murderous psycho, but seeing her overtly sadistic behavior toward the captive Mion (she claimed her previous behavior was just part of her duties) later convinces Keiichi that she must be under Demonic Posession, which Shion herself believes is motivating her behavior.
• Fanservice with a Smile: Her waitress job at Angel Mort requires her to wear a uniform that reveals her cleavage, shoulders and thighs.
• Fingore: In the Meakashi-hen backstory, Shion's grandmother forces her to pull out three fingernails in order to protect people she had endangered by returning to Hinamizawa and falling in love with a Houjou.
• Formal Characters Use Keigo: Shion has more polite speech patterns than her sister Mion, who kinda talks like a boy, emphasizing the fact that she's the more feminine and ladylike twin. Ironically, Mion is the heiress to their rich family while Shion has no rights to the inheritance because she's the younger twin even though she is the older one. Also, Shion is actually far more likely to go Ax-Crazy than Mion.
• Fragile Speedster: In Higurashi Daybreak, she has a lot of mobility options and great damage in the melee department. She also has the fastest walk and run speed and second best air dash speed, behind non-scythe Rika. She also travels quite the distance when attacking someone with a regular attack, dashing forward a few feet forward before actually attacking them, depending on the distance, giving her deceptively good range in melee. However, she is almost the first to be knocked out in a game, has less than an average health and has one of the lowest defenses in the game, along with Rika.
• Girly Girl with a Tomboy Streak: She's very girly, but is just as spunky and is as much of The Tease as her twin. She has some Hot-Blooded traits as well, and has frequently displayed far less control over her emotions because she hasn't needed to temper herself like Mion as the next family head.
• Go Out with a Smile: Despite the shame and remorse she feels in her final moments in Meakashi-hen, she dies pretty happy. The visual novel and manga versions suggests she finds her own Heaven after coming to terms with herself.
• Good Girl Gone Bad: She was a simple girl ostracized by her family just for being born second when she's actually born first who had a crush on a boy for being nice to her. Then her family forced her to rip off three of her fingernails and her crush went missing with the main suspects being her own family. In Meakashi-hen, we see the consequences of all the physical and emotional pain she was put through when she goes on a killing spree as she decides to take revenge for the apparent death of the boy she liked.
• Green-Eyed Monster:
  • In Watanagashi-hen and Meakashi-hen, what starts her fall into madness is hearing about her twin sister's romantic woes as she's madly jealous that her sister's crush is around while her Satoshi is missing. At the end of both arcs, she stabs Keiichi because she couldn't stand leaving Mion's crush alive.
  • In the visual novel version of Meakashi-hen, Shion also feels wary, and sometimes even jealous of Rena, she believes that both of them are secretly Ax-Crazy, but Rena is better than her at hiding her violent tendencies.
• Hammerspace: Appears to be where she kept her taser as none of her outfits at time seem to feature any pocket.
• Heel Realization: At the end of Meakashi-hen, Shion realizes too late that she tortured and murdered several innocent people and committed the ultimate betrayal to Satoshi by killing his beloved sister. As she lets herself fall to her death from her apartment building, Shion apologizes for her crimes and thinks how everything would have been better if she had never been born.
• Honorary True Companion: She's considered part of the main cast's team, but she isn't a club member nor even lives at Hinamizawa because of her complicated family circumstances so her presence in the story is much more sporadic than the main group.
• Identical Twin ID Tag: Shion wears her hair down and dresses in skirts, in contrast to Mion who has a Tomboyish Ponytail and wears pants. This makes people think it's easy to tell the twins apart, but Shion can fool everyone by stealing Mion's hairstyle and clothes. The only definite physical difference between them is that Shion doesn't have an oni tattoo on her back.
• Image Song: "Futari no Birthday" and "Ienai Kotoba", along with Mion.
• It Amused Me: The main reason for her love of screwing with people; she's been stuck out in Okinomiya with no-one to talk to and nothing fun to do. By the time of her introduction, she's bored as hell.
• I've Come Too Far: In Meakashi-hen. After she kills Satoko, she realizes that she forgot her promise to Satoshi to protect his little sister, but she felt it was already too late to atone and she had no choice but to continue her murderous rampage. Later, as she's about to kill Mion, her sister desperately tries to convince her that the Sonozakis have nothing to do with the annual curses. Shion briefly considers that she may have just killed a lot of innocent people for no reason... then just laughs it off as Mion trying to ruin her Roaring Rampage of Revenge, feeling that she has to complete her vengeance after pushing herself past any sort of redemption and that she's become too much of a demon to be swayed by Mion's tears anymore, and makes her fall to her death.
• I Will Wait for You: Ever since Satoshi disappeared, Shion has been clinging to the hope that he will return someday and she will be waiting for him until then. Although two arcs involve what happens if she gets tired of waiting and decides to seek revenge instead. It's not pretty.
• Kick the Morality Pet: Double Subverted with Keiichi in the arcs where she goes crazy. Part of her wants to kill him just to make Mion suffer. Part of her also understands just why Mion fell for him as he continues to call her (believing she's Mion) his best friend even after she admits to murder, even jumping to the conclusion that her sadistic behavior must be caused by Demonic Posession because he simply refused to believe that she could naturally be so malicious. She ends up sparing him and apologizing for defiling his image of "Mion", but later Sanity Slippage leads to her stabbing him anyway.
• Knight Templar Big Sister: For Satoko after the Meakashi arc concludes and she remembers in future arcs that she was asked by Satoshi to protect her. She would have killed Satoko's uncle to free her if Keiichi haven't stopped her.
• Laughing Mad: In Meakashi-hen, she has a lot of insane laughter moments as she goes on a murder spree.
• Love Confessor: She openly admitted in front of her family that she's in love with Satoshi, one of the Houjou they hate so much. This only got her grandmother even angrier at her.
• Love Informant: Played for Laughs in Matsuribayashi-hen. When she and Kasai are about to make what everyone thinks will be a Heroic Sacrifice, Shion essentially says to Keiichi the following: "Tell Mion I love her and I hope we're twins in the next life... Also, you know my sister wants to bang you, right?"
• Love Makes You Crazy: What kicks off the start of her Sanity Slippage is being reminded of how much she misses Satoshi and coming to believe she really might never see him again because he was killed by her family is a big factor in sending her into a murderous rampage.
• Love Makes You Evil: Being convinced that the Sonozaki family is behind the disappearance of her beloved Satoshi, Shion murders everyone in the family and those who she, in her insanity, blames for any trouble Satoshi went through.
• Loving a Shadow: Her attraction to Keiichi mostly comes from how he reminds her of Satoshi.
• Manipulative Bitch: In Meakashi, she proves herself at being a master at deceiving and playing people like puppets, especially Keiichi who is the main victim of her lies.
• Master Actress: She has frighteningly good acting skills.
• Matchmaker Crush: Has some feelings for Keiichi, but represses them to get her twin with Keiichi. Also, in Watanagashi, even if she takes a rather unsympathetic delight at making Mion jealous, she does make Keiichi realize that Mion loves him. Then things go downhill from there. In Kira Episode 3, she poses as Mion to push their relationship forward, but finds herself falling for Keiichi after he defends her from thugs they way Satoshi did when she first met him, and Kasai suggests that Keiichi might make her happier than waiting for Satoshi's recovery which may never happen.
• Mature Younger Sibling: Seeing how she plays Mion like a harp and acts somehow superior to her, you really wouldn't think she's the younger twin. And that's because she is the older one.
• Misplaced Retribution: She goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against the Three Great Families in Watanagashi and Meakashi-hen because she's sure they are responsible for Satoshi's disappearance. Turns out they really had nothing to do with it.
• Ms. Fanservice: She has one of the biggest busts out of the cast, only on par with her sister, and has to wear a revealing outfit when working at Angel Mort.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • She's disgusted with herself when her assault on Satoko for being a burden to Satoshi results in that same boy attacking her while ranting about how badly everyone treats them, though she's not truly remorseful to Satoko.
  • After torturing Satoko to death she remembers that Satoshi asked her to take care of his little sister and that while she gave up on Satoshi coming back and went for revenge, Satoko never lost faith.
  • At the end of Meakashi-hen, Shion discovers the Three Great Families had nothing to do with the strange murder and disappearances in the Cotton-Drifting Festival, meaning she brutally killed innocent people. She still tries to escape from the law, but in the end she can't handle the guilt over her crimes and kills herself.
• My Greatest Failure: One of the main motivations for her murder rampage in Meakashi-hen is that she's convinced she would have been able to save Satoshi if she had been Mion instead of Shion as she was supposed to be before her sister got the oni tattoo.
• My Sibling Will Live Through Me: In Yoigoshi-hen, after Mion's death at the school's explosion, Shion took on her twin sister's name since she became the Sonozaki heiress.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: When she was a child, she felt bad for her twin sister being mistreated and changed places with her from time to time so her sister could enjoy some of the privileges of being "Mion". Because of this, the wrong twin was branded as the next family head, Shion lost all her birth rights as the firstborn child and has lived her life shunned by her family.
• Nothing Nice About Sugar and Spice: Despite her girly and flirty persona, she is a badass tease like her sister.
• Off to Boarding School: Her family sent her to one that she managed to escape from before the beginning of the plot.
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: She's technically co-manager of the Hinamizawa Fighters, but lost interest in the team after Satoshi quit, and considers herself a "phantom manager".
• Polar Opposite Twins: Downplayed with her and Mion. At first glance, they look like opposites with their Tomboy and Girly Girl front, but they have more in common than what it's apparent. They're both The Gadfly, cheerful, socially intelligent, adept at manipulating people, and have weak spots the size of Mount Fuji when it comes to romance. The main difference is how they approach these similarities; in the latter example, Shion likes to manipulate on a personal level, swaying individual perceptions; Mion likes to manipulate groups, with speeches and military tactics and ginormous guns.
• Proper Lady: As opposed to Mion, Shion acts like a sophisticated and graceful lady. Although, that turns out to be a mask for her many issues.
• Psycho Electro: Kasai gave her a stun gun for self-defense, though she gets far more aggressive with it during her Roaring Rampage of Revenge in Meakashi-hen.
• Psychotic Smirk: When she's a Troll instead of her usual self.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Played With. Mion pretends to be the dominant Red Oni and Shion the passive Blue Oni. In reality, Shion is way more of a Red Oni than Mion could ever be.
• The Resenter: Normally suppressed, but she has some resentment for Mion because she can still see the boy she likes.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: In Watanagashi-hen and Meakashi-hen, Shion kidnaps, tortures, and murders the representatives of the Three Great Families to avenge Satoshi's apparent death. Then she finds out her suspicions were mistaken.
• Sadist: During Watanagashi and Meakashi, for which she is the protagonist of, she acquires a certain fondness for breaking people and causing severe pain, both physical and emotional.
• She Who Fights Monsters: In Watanagashi and Meakashi-hen, Shion becomes a monster way worse than her family in order to avenge Satoshi as she's convinced the Sonozakis are behind the mysterious murders linked to the Cotton Drifting Festival (which turns out to be wrong).
• Shipper on Deck: She likes to tease Mion about her crush on Keiichi. She feels a bit attracted to Keiichi because he reminds her of Satoshi somewhat, but she doesn't let that stop her from wanting to support her sister's love life, at least when she isn't insane.
• Sibling Murder: In Wataganashi-hen and Meakashi-hen, she kills her twin sister by throwing her into a pit to have the police think Mion is dead while she can get away by reassuming the Shion identity.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: She fell so hard for Satoshi because he was the first boy of her age who showed her even a bit of kindness after she was starved of affection by her family. She even catches feelings for Keiichi for similar reasons, in spite of how much his personality differs from Satoshi.
• Sixth Ranger: She shows up for the first time in Watanagashi, an arc later than the rest of the team, and she isn't treated as a true member of the team until the next-to-last arc since she was the villain of two arcs before that.
• Spanner in the Works: Her actions in Watanagashi and Meakashi are what saves the village in those two arcs. More than two days pass between Rika's death and the finding of her body, but no villager has gone insane, destroying the basis of the Emergency Manual 34, and thus preventing the Hinamizawa disaster. Too bad Shion tortured and killed half of the main cast in the process.
• Spree Killer: Her murders in Watanagashi and Meakashi drag on longer than most of the other characters' in the arcs that focus on them, but there isn't enough of a cool-off period for her to be considered a Serial Killer.
• Start of Darkness: Subverted with the "distinguishment scene". It is so in arcs where she snaps but not in arcs where she doesn't.
• Static Stun Gun: She carries a taser with her for self-defense.
• Stepford Smiler: Unstable type. Behind that polite and sweet smile, there's a mentally unstable girl who goes on a murder spree when triggered.
• Survivor Guilt: In the world of Yoigoshi-hen, even twenty years after the Great Hinamizawa Disaster, Shion wonders if she maybe should have died with her sister and the rest of the club. Otobe uses Mion's words to encourage Shion to live to the fullest in the world where only she survived.
• Talking to Themself: Near the end of Watanagashi-hen and Meakashi-hen, she has become so deranged that she has conversations with herself while pretending to have arguments with her dead twin sister.
• The Tease: She acts flirtatious around Keiichi just to screw with him and Mion.
• Theme Twin Naming: The "on" in Mion and Shion is the same kanji, 音 (meaning "sound").
• Token Evil Teammate: She's more mentally unstable than outright evil, but still counts. In the arcs where she's the club's ally, Shion still believes Murder Is the Best Solution when Satoko might be in danger and hurts Keiichi when he refuses to let her get blood in her hands. Thankfully, Keiichi can talk her back to her senses.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Unlike the brash and pants-wearing Mion, Shion is very girly and wears skirts. As noted under Red Oni, Blue Oni, it's Played With as this is mainly a front. Mion is actually quite girly, while Shion is, well, murderous.
• Torture Technician: Meakashi-hen is infamous for the scenes in which Shion horrifically tortures her victims.
• Tragic Villain: During Meakashi-hen when she's a Villain Protagonist, the greatest tragedy of all is that she spends the entire story trying to unravel Hinamizawa's "curse system" in her mission to avenge Satoshi... but literally every single conclusion she draws is wrong. Perhaps worst of all, despite all the atrocities she commits in the name of her vengeance, Satoshi isn't even dead!
• Trickster Twins: Since they were children, Shion and Mion have occasionally switched places just to screw with people.
• Troll: In the Played for Laughs vein, she basically steers Keiichi over to the toy shop where Mion works in order to get him to buy the doll that he failed to give to Mion (an unintended insult that she had told Shion about and was still smarting over) for her. She does similar activities as The Tease a few different times, mostly when Mion's around.
• Two Siblings In One: Yoigoshi-hen features a world where the dead Mion's spirit possesses Shion's body in order to avenge the death of their mother.
• The Un-Favourite: As the younger twin, she is denied any family privilege. Especially painful because she is really the older twin, and thus should be the Sonozaki heir. However, it seems that for the most part she doesn't entirely mind because it's not very fun having the responsibilities of the Sonozaki heir.
• The Unfettered: She's all for manipulating and killing people who she thinks have wronged the Houjou siblings.
• Unreliable Expositor: Like a lot of the cast are at varying points. However, this is specifically referring to almost the entirety of what she says at the end of Watanagashi being bullshit.
• Uptown Girl: Played With. Shion's family is one of the Three Great Families in Hinamizawa, but she doesn't enjoy any prestige from it because the family shuns younger twins. She fell madly in love with Satoshi, a boy from a low-class family that was hated by the villagers because the parents supportedd the dam project that would have destroyed the village.
• Villain Has a Point: She slowly becomes a vengeful, sadistic murderer in Meakashi over Satoshi's mistreatment and supposed death. While the latter didn't actually happen, the Sonozakis still unreasonably made him and his sister pariahs for the actions of his already dead parents, Mion and Rika simply showed them pity at school without really using their positions to put a stop to the ostracization, and the aforementioned sister was constantly crying for his help without ever thinking about the burden he was suffering. When Rena brings up the same points in the next arc while explaining why she didn't expect any help from her friends, they can't really argue with her.
• Villain Protagonist: In Meakashi-hen, she takes center stage by going absolutely insane in the pursuit of revenge.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: Even looking at Satoshi in a way she doesn't like is a good way to set her off. Special mention to Miotsukushi-hen, where she overhears Rika and Irie talking about Satoshi being in the clinic the whole time. She forces Irie at gunpoint to guide her to Satoshi's room, and becomes furious that he left her and Satoko in the dark for so long and has been performing tests on Satoshi. The rest of the club tries to stop her, but only Satoko, who accepted the info much more readily, is finally able to talk her down.
• Voice Changeling: She can perfectly imitate Mion's voice.
• Walking Spoiler: It's difficult to talk about Shion without spoilers for Watanagashi and Meakashi-hen.
• Would Hurt a Child: She physically assaulted Satoko for being such a big crybaby and burdening her already stressed out older brother. In Watanagashi-hen and Meakashi-hen, she tortures and kills Satoko out of spite. She did the same to Rika in the former, but she killed herself to avoid the same fate in the latter.
• Yandere: Not normally, but she tends to fall into this in routes where she ends up snapping after her Hinamizawa Syndrome level rises, leading to a Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
• Younger than She Looks: Maybe it's her civil outfit, her behaviour and personality or her long hair, but for some reason she looks older than Mion (she is, but it's not that big a difference as they're still twins). Add to that her apparent military training and experience with guns, and it's really easy to forget that she is depicted as 14 in most media. The live action adaptations and the re-release age her and Mion up to 17, which isn't nearly a big of a pill to swallow.
• Yubitsume: She had to rip off three of her fingernails to gain forgiveness from her grandmother for running away from her boarding school.

Hanyu (UNMARKED SPOILERS)

Hanyu

Voiced by: Yui Horie (JP), Xanthe Huynh (English)

Portrayed by: Moeka Takakura (drama series)

The mysterious "transfer student" in Matsuribayashi-hen. She has appeared to Rika all her life, but only in Matsuribayashi-hen does she choose to interact with others. She is very meek and often makes the noise "Au au au" when she is nervous or uncomfortable.

The eighth arc, Matsuribayashi-hen (Festival Music chapter), is focused on her.

---

• 11th-Hour Ranger: She doesn't join the team until the final arc where they all work together to stop Takano's plan. She technically was with the main cast since the first arc, but no one but Rika could see her so Hanyu couldn't participate in the plot until the very end.
• Adaptational Curves: Her ghost form has a more adult appearance in the manga, making her considerably more busty.
• All-Loving Heroine: She is all about love and forgiveness. She is not happy with Hinamizawa's bloody history of torture and death in her name. Even people she professes to hate, like Takano, she is willing to forgive and even sacrifice her life for when it comes down to it.
• Ambiguously Related: She bears some passing similarities to Featherine, a witch from Umineko: When They Cry, but their connection isn't as clear as the one between Rika and Bernkastel. Featherine's TIPs imply Hanyu might be "another form" of Featherine that she changed into after her horn device got damaged (Hanyu's broken horn being a clue to this), but it's never made explicit. It's notable that the Umineko manga features Hanyu as the Game Master that trapped Bernkastel in a Logic Error and it's revealed Bernkastel is Featherine's miko in the same episode.
• Amnesiac God: She forgets who she really is when she possesses Rika's body in later versions of Miotsukushi-hen.
• Antiquated Linguistics: In the few situations where she acts like a proper god, like her conversation with Takano at the end of Matsuribayashi, where she addresses her as "child of man" and calls her gun "iron fire". This was how she initially spoke in the past, but her husband taught her polite speech patterns to make her sound more feminine.
• Apologises a Lot: "I'm sorry" is sort of her Character Catchphrase.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: She was originally a demon in human form who ascended to godhood by dying for the sins of others.
• Berserk Button: She can't stand being called a monster for her horns.
• Big Good: She develops into this role in Matsuribayashi-hen and Miotsukushi-hen. After being inspired by the club's efforts to fight fate, Hanyu takes an active role in opposing Takano and her godlike powers play a big role in helping the club defeat her.
• Break the Cutie: Quite a lot, though often missed in the anime adaptation or replaced with a more cute reaction.
• But I Can't Be Pregnant!: When she discovered she was pregnant with Riku's child, Hanyu had a hard time believing it because her race had very low birth rates and she thought it would be even less possible for her to conceive with a human.
• Can't Hold Her Liquor: She gets knocked out from a glass of wine. A fact that Rika likes to take advantage of.
• Child of Two Worlds: According to Kotohogushi-hen, Hanyu was the only one of her pureblooded demon race who was born and raised in the human world. She cared about protecting humans from "half-blood" demons more than any pureblood, but humans tended to fear her because of her horns. Hanyu felt like she didn't belong with either the pureblooded demons nor humans; Riku and Shino were the only humans who fully accepted her.
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe: The reason why her powers are failing lately is tht she doesn't have as many worshippers as in the past.
• Continuity Cameo: She appears in a single panel in the manga version of Episode 6 of Umineko: When They Cry as the Game Master who trapped Bernkastel/Rika in a hellish Unwinnable game. This further hints at her connection to Featherine who is Bernkastel's original master.
• Continuity Snarl: At the end of Matsuribayashi-hen (the conclusion of the main storyline) and in the later Yumeutsushi-hen, Hanyu stays as a physical being... but in the in-between chapter Saikoroshi-hen, she's suddenly a spirit again. This is never explained, though the visual novels have implications that she can willingly transition between being physical and being incorporeal.
• Cowardly Lion: She's really fearful and insecure, but lays the smackdown when it comes to people she cares about, as shown at the end of Kai. This isn't always a good thing, though.
• Curtains Match the Window: Purple hair and eyes.
• Cute Ghost Girl: Before Matsuribayashi, Hanyuu can only manifest as a ghost that looks like a cute girl in Miko garments.
• Cute Monster Girl: While she's described as a demon of some sort, she shows herself as a cute young girl with horns on her head.
• Dark and Troubled Past: She was forced to kill her husband who was "possessed" by a pure-blood demon to save him. She also had her daughter kill her to prevent her from turning "evil" again.
• Death by Adaptation: She lives and stays with Rika in the ending of Matsuribayashi-hen. In Miotsukushi-hen, the new ending for the PS2 port, Hanyu dies protecting Takano and disappears in front of Rika and Keiichi. Although, Hanyu does say she won't really die because she's still Hinamizawa's guardian deity and indeed, Rika hears Hanyu's voice reassuring her in the epilogue.
• Deity of Human Origin: She was originally a demon who took human form and was sacrificed as a scapegoat in order to "atone" for the village's sins. After dying, she ascended to godhood.
• Determined Defeatist: In a slightly different manner from Rika. While Rika has a tiny sliver of hope that the perfect circumstances may line up, Hanyu is only doing it because she wants to spend more time with Rika. She changes her attitude at the end of Minagoroshi, when the Club encounter her in the afterlife and chastise her for shedding tears over their failure that she never once had any faith in overcoming.
• Disappears into Light: In the ending of Miotsukushi-hen, Hanyuu's form vanishes after she takes bullets for Takano and turns into light as Rika and Keiichi watch on.
• Does Not Like Spam: She dislikes alcohol and spicy foods like kimchi, which Rika uses in large amounts when Hanyu is being particularly annoying (Hanyu's and Rika's senses are linked together).
• Dying as Yourself: According to Kotohogushi-hen, Hanyu went on a rampage after the villagers turned against her daughter Ouka for her medicine and attacked Ouka's husband and daughter. Hanyu started to turn into a mindless demon and Ouka stabbed her with her sword to protect the villagers. After being stabbed, Hanyu recovered her senses and asked Ouka to kill her so she wouldn't lose her mind and try to kill her daughter again.
• Family Eye Resemblance: Her daughter Ouka and descendant Rika don't resemble her too closely except for the purple eyes they get from Hanyu.
• The Fatalist: While she's outwardly less cynical than Rika, she's really only perpetuating the "Groundhog Day" Loop to spend more time together, as nobody else will be able to talk to her if Rika stays dead. She spends much of Minagoroshi-hen warning Rika not to get her hopes up even after several unforeseen miracles, fearing that Rika will become an Empty Shell if her hopes keep getting shattered. While the arc does end in failure (it's called the Massacre chapter for a reason), Hanyuu actually sheds tears over the Club's failure to overcome the recently exposed Big Bad Takano, and the other members in the afterlife call her out for getting upset over an outcome that she never once believed that they could overcome, leading to her direct involvement in the following Matsuribayashi-hen.
• A Form You Are Comfortable With: Her race took on human forms to associate with the residents of Hinamizawa, but they couldn't hide their horns.
• Formal Characters Use Keigo: Her husband taught her to speak politely to make her sound more feminine. Later on, Rika ended up picking up the formal linguistics from Hanyu.
• Freakiness Shame: She has something of a complex about her horns. Rena thinks they're cute (but then again, Rena thinks a lot of things are cute). The only one to react negatively is Takano, and even she probably didn't really care. It's implied that her complex comes not from her current-day friends' reactions (or lack thereof) but rather the fact that when she took on human form to mediate between demons and humans, she could not hide her horns. They are a large part of the reason why she was chosen as a sacrifice.
• Friendly Ghost: While she's a ghost for most of the story, Hanyu is very peaceful and comical, with her only purpose being to keep Rika alive via a "Groundhog Day" Loop.
• Full-Frontal Assault: In Kotohogushi-hen, Hanyu fights and kills a bear while completely naked.
• God Is Good: Hanyu is the real identity of Oyashiro-sama, but she's nothing like the scary legends describe the malevolent god who curses people. If anything, she hates her legend developed into that and all she wants is for her descendant Rika to live out a happy life with her friends.
• God's Hands Are Tied: Although she's technically a goddess, the only thing she ever does to "help" Rika's situation is moving her soul to a new fragment every time Rika is killed instead, you know, at least telling Rika who keeps killing her. On top of that, her powers have reached their limit after 100 years of fragment jumping with Rika. In fact, Hanyu even goes so far as to describe herself as "a powerless god".
• God Was My Copilot: She's Oyashiro, and, in spite of her In-Universe Historical Villain Upgrade, is the reason Rika can utilize Mental Time Travel.
• Going Commando: She doesn't have underwear in her Miko outfit. Ironic given that her adult form's garb is much more conservative.
• Good Girls Avoid Abortion: When she found out that she was pregnant with Riku's child, Hanyu became scared that her child would be born with horns and thought about killing her unborn baby to "spare" her child from suffering the harsh treatment from humans that she got. She went to the Onigafuchi Swamp and asked the Ryun-Oku to get rid of her unborn baby, but the Ryun-Oku refused because Hanyu was trying to kill her child over a mere possibility. Then, Riku found her and convinced her to give birth to their child. Thankfully, Hanyu was relieved that her daughter was born without horns.
• Hide Your Otherness: In Kotohogushi-hen, Hanyu wears a cloth over her head to hide her horns while she's still living with Riku at the Furude Shrine.
• Hime Cut: She has full bangs, cheek-length sidelocks, and waist-length straight hair. This is to go with her spirit form dressing like a Miko.
• His Quirk Lives On: She always speaks in formal Japanese because her husband spoke like that.
• Historical Villain Upgrade: In-Universe; She's Oyashiro, who's known as a god of torture and bloodshed. The truth is that she never ordered human sacrifices nor cannibalism as the legend says. Instead, the real source of the Watanagashi ritual was Hanyu being sacrificed by her daughter to stop a berserk Hanyu from killing the villages and perform a ritual to purify the villagers' sins. She's horrified by all the torture and killing done in her name, and hates Takano for glorifying her malicious portrayal.
• Hoist by Her Own Petard: Her own daughter Ouka used Hanyu's demon-slaying sword to kill her as normal swords wouldn't be able to kill Hanyu.
• Horned Humanoid: She has a pair of dark-colored horns on her head, one which is chipped slightly. It turns out that she used to be a demon whose horns remained when she took human form. Her horns were largely the reason why she was sacrificed, since many people feared and distrusted her because of them.
• Hunter Of Her Own Kind: According to her past shown in Kotohogushi-hen, Hanyu hunted and killed "half-blood" demons of her race who possessed humans due to losing their physical bodies and caused them to turn into monsters.
• Image Song: "Nano Desu".
• Immortal Immaturity: Generally, she can act and sound like a thousand-year old goddess when she is serious, even calling Takano "child of man" at the end of the last arc. She actually seems to have the same kind of dual personality as Rika. The same voice actress voices her "child" and "adult" voices. In addition, she demonstrates some stunning immaturity by refusing to so much as apologize for stealing Tamura's offering, even though that minor transgression is what motivated Tamura to let Une's threat spread to a global scale. Disproportionate Retribution or not, what Hanyū did in that moment was wrong and yet she still can't bring herself to even say sorry to someone who put the whole world in danger.
• Intangibility: Her ghost form is intangible, so she can't be touched and can phase through objects.
• Interspecies Romance: In life, Hanyu was a demon who took human form. She married a human man and they had a daughter together.
• Invisible to Normals: Until Matsuribayashi-hen, she is a spirit who can only be seen and heard by Rika and, to a lesser extent, by those in the final stages of Hinamizawa Syndrome.
• Kill the Ones You Love: She was forced to kill her beloved husband Riku after he was possessed by a demon and became a half-blood.
• Leitmotif: "Over the sky" represents the "Goddess" part of her character. Really makes you feel like you are hovering above the clouds. The human part is represented by "Air Pizz".
• Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: Light to Rika's Dark. She has a more lighthearted and softer personality than Rika when the latter stops acting cute and reveals her true cynical self.
• Little Miss Almighty: She's the true form of Oyashiro-sama, the patron deity of Hinamizawa. What no one but Rika knows is that the goddess of the town looks like a young girl with cute horns.
• Mark of the Supernatural: She's a supernatural godlike being with purple eyes and lavender hair.
• Master Swordswoman: Her more mature past self in Kotohogushi-hen was a skilled swordswoman who taught her daughter Ouka how to strike an enemy's weak points.
• Mayfly–December Romance: According to Kotohogushi-hen, Hanyu is part of a long-lived demon race. She first met her husband when he was just a baby and married him after she met him again when he was already an adult.
• Messianic Archetype: Subverted. Hanyu was one in the past, allowing herself to be killed by her own daughter, initiating the first Watanagashi Festival, to atone for the sins of the inhabitants of Hinamizawa, but now disagrees with the idea of people sacrificing others in the name of purifying their own sins.
• Miko: She wears a miko outfit in her spirit form. Kotohogushi-hen explains why she dresses like that; her husband Riku was a priest and had a huge shrine maiden fetish, making Hanyu wear those clothes for his own pleasure.
• Misapplied Phlebotinum: For every arc until the last she is undetectable to anyone that is not named Rika or in the later stages of Hinamizawa syndrome. It apparently never occurred to Rika to utilize her invisible ghost spy to do anything like figure out who killed Tomitake. Then again, Rika is still quite the child, even though it sometimes seems otherwise. And quite pessimistic at that, with the whole "what's the point" attitude since she can never seem to alter some events.
• Mysterious Protector: She plays this role in Miotsukushi-hen. Unlike Matsuribayashi-hen, Hanyu doesn't take physical form and disappears from Rika's side, only appearing in the form of a voice that guides the characters in times of trouble or using her powers to save Tomitake from the Yamainu. She appears to Rika close before the end and explains she took this approach to help the club win without letting Rika rely too much on her.
• Naked First Impression: She first met her husband Riku in Kotohogushi-hen when she was taking a bath at a waterfall and needed to rescue him from a bear, totally forgetting she was naked until she saw him getting all flustered.
• Nervous Tics: She tends to say "Au au auu~" whenever she's nervous or upset.
• Never My Fault: Downplayed in Higurashi Hou; while the situation with Une and Tamura is clearly more their fault than her own, Hanyū stubbornly refuses to take any sort of responsibility for her role in Tamura's backstory. While it's true that Tamura's actions are major Disproportionate Retribution of the highest degree and petty in their intent, Hanyū always tries to shift all of the blame on her when the more mature thing to do would probably be to apologize for her own (admittedly minor) wrongdoing against Tamura.
• New Meat: After she joins the club, Mion calls her the "newbie".
• New Transfer Student: Apparently to the other classmates who don't know her true identity.
• Nice Girl: Contrary to how others perceived Oyashiro, Hanyuu is a sweet and selfless girl.
• Not-So-Imaginary Friend: She has appeared to Rika all her life and Rika thought she was just her Imaginary Friend. When she was growing up, Rika's mother was bothered by her "imaginary friend" Hanyu. Not helped by the fact that Hanyu taught her to cook and do laundry.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Most people call her Oyashiro-sama, people who know her call her Hanyu, but her real name is Hainiryūn Ieasomūru Jieda. She got the nickname of Hanyu because her husband could not memorize her full name.
• Our Demons Are Different: Before she became a god, she was a demon who took on human form but couldn't hide her horns. What a "demon" actually is is left vague. In Matsuribayashi-hen, Rika confesses to her that no matter how many times Hanyu has explained who she is and where she came from, she can never understand it. Also worth noting that she hates being called a monster. Kotohogushi-hen offers an explanation to her race's origins; a race of demon-like beings called the Ryun escaped from their original destroyed world by crossing dimensions, but many lost their physical bodies and possessed humans, creating the "half-bloods". Hanyu was born from one of the "pureblooded" demons who kept their physical bodies when arriving to the human world. It's said her race is long-lived and can dematerialize their bodies at will.
• Our Gods Are Different: She was a demon in human form who was sacrificed and ascended to godhood after dying. She's currently worshipped in a similar manner to most Shinto gods in real life, though her reputation has been distorted over the centuries so that now everyone sees her as a malevolent force who will curse anyone who displeases her. She isn't too happy about that.
• Overly Long Name: Her real full name is Hai-Ryun Ieasomuru Jeda. It's pretty long and difficult to remember, so she kept the nickname her husband gave her.
• Parental Substitute: A weird example. She replaced Rika's mother in teaching her cooking, sewing and so on, while the latter was alive and living with her. Naturally, her real mother was pretty freaked out and upset to see her daughter talk with a Not-So-Imaginary Friend and do things she never taught her. Probably not made better by the fact that as soon as Rika was born the villagers started adoring her instead of her mother.
• Physical God: She's a godlike entity who spends most of the story as a spirit who can only be seen by Rika, but takes a physical form in Matsuribayashi-hen in order to help the club stop Takano.
• Really 700 Years Old: As the origin of the Oyashiro-sama legend she's around a thousand years old. Even older when you factor in the Groundhog Day Loops. Not to mention her not even being in her true form either.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: The few times she is seen legitimately angry, her pupils glow red.
• Save the Villain: In Miotsukushi-hen, she saves Takano, the one responsible for Rika's murder and the genocide of Hinamizawa in countless timelines, at the cost of her own life.
• Shipper on Deck: She teases Rika quite a bit when Akasaka comes to her home to occupy the house while she and Satoko are hiding at Mion's place. As a response, Rika eats dinner with Akasaka; a super-spicy dinner.
• Shrinking Violet: She's incredibly shy around other people at first, but she gradually opens up.
• Silent Scapegoat: As part of the deal to allow her people to live in Hinamizawa, Hanyu allowed herself to be set up as a scapegoat and killed by Ōka via ritual butchering. As her daughter was also the daughter of one of the village priests, this brought unity to the two factions.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: She fell in love and married Riku because he was the first human who was always nice and caring with her. He even called her horns cute.
• Some Call Me "Tim": Her real name is so long that her husband had trouble remembering it and shortened it to her current name, Hanyu.
• Spirit Advisor: Though when it comes down to it she's not a very good one, since the only "advice" she gives Rika is to not let her hopes up to avoid disappointment. This only served to make Rika more cynical.
• Supernaturally Young Parent: In life, she had a husband and a daughter. However, she was already an adult when she died, and only appears as a young girl in the present as a way to get Rika to relate to her.
• Sweet Tooth: She loves sweets, especially cream puffs.
• Synchronization: Her senses are connected to Rika's. Though it's Played for Laughs rather than drama, with Rika threatening to eat spicy food and drink alcohol whenever Hanyu annoys her.
• Take Care of the Kids: In Miotsukushi-hen, as she's about to disappear, Hanyu asks Keiichi that he and his friends look after Rika who she calls her beloved child.
• Taking the Bullet: In Miotsukushi-hen, Hanyu is shot by the Banken in order to save Takano.
• Temporal Mutability: Hanyuu doesn't actually turn back time, but travels to a new timeline and transfers the dead Rikas' memories into an alternate Rika while the previous worlds continue with Rika dead. However, Rika keeps getting killed due to enough factors in the new timelines remaining unchanged for the outcome to be the same. It's until the end of the series that Rika is able to live on in the last timeline where she and her friends find a way to stop Takano from murdering Rika.
• Time Master: She can stop time primarily in the manga version, though it is only really good for speaking because when she stops time not only do bullets stop moving, but so do people. She's also the one responsible for Rika's Mental Time Travel to parallel worlds whenever she dies.
• Token Mini-Moe: She looks around Rika's and Satoko's age, making her the third "child" member of the club even though she's way older than Rika who is mentally over 100 years old.
• Tomato in the Mirror: In later versions of Miotsukushi-hen, Hanyu never disappeared but she was controlling Rika's body the entire arc while the real Rika's soul was inside a jewel. Since Hanyu spent 100 years by Rika's side sharing her experiences and senses, she really believed she was Rika until she reunites with the real Rika.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Her favorite snack is cream puffs.
• Tsundere: Kotohogushi-hen shows she was somewhat of a Tsun type towards her husband Riku. She easily got annoyed at him for his Miko fetish and constant attempts to get her to wear his modified cosplays for him, but she did love him a lot.
• Uncertain Doom: At the end of Miotsukushi-hen, Hanyu acts as a human shield to protect Takano from being shot and her physical form vanishes in front of Keiichi and Rika. It's left up to interpretation if Hanyu really died or she simply lost her ability to manifest in front of Rika as Rika does hear Hanyu's voice comforting her in the epilogue.
• Unmoving Plaid: Her skirt in the MangaGamer visual novels. It's very subtle, based on the way the pleats in her skirt fold, but the plaid pattern doesn't quite distort around the folds the way it should.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Subverted. The games reveal that everyone did notice her horns but avoided mentioning them because they either were too polite, they liked them or they thought they were some kind of accessory. Takano is the only person who reacts as negatively as she feared.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Anyone besides Rika who can hear her is already around L4, so her disembodied voice and footsteps are only going to worsen their Sanity Slippage. Following Keiichi around after he murdered Mion and Rena pushes his paranoia to a throat-clawing end, and Shion twisting her into Satoshi's specter helped reignite her resentment toward her family for supposedly erasing him.
• Verbal Tic: She frequently ends her sentences with "nano desu", even when it makes no grammatical sense. It's even the name of her Image Song. Rika does this as well, having picked up the habit from her.
• The Voice: Until Minagoroshi-hen, she only appears in the form of a mysterious voice. In Onikakushi, in at least the sound novel remakes, you can hear her in the scene where Keiichi looks out his window at Rena. It's scary.
• Walking Spoiler: It's really difficult to say anything about Hanyu without spoiling some very big revelations such as her being the one creating the loop to prolong Rika's life and that Hanyu is the source of the Oyashiro-sama legend even though she's nothing like the evil deity described in the myth.
• Wolverine Claws: Her race could enter a state with heightened offensive power and incredibly sharp claws, but staying in it for too long would erode their sanity.