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Meimi Haneoka (Saint Tail)

Meimi Haneoka (Phantom Thief Saint Tail)

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Meimi Haneoka
^{Click to see Saint Tail (anime)}
^{Click to see Meimi (manga)}
^{Click to see Saint Tail (manga)}

Voiced by: Tomo Sakurai (JP), Mela Lee (EN)

The series' protagonist. The daughter of a Stage Magician and a former Phantom Thief, she combines both skills for her secret work as Saint Tail, a phantom thief who uses tips from Seira's confessionals to help people in need.

Act of True Love: Meimi's obsession with maintaining the image of Saint Tail for Asuka Jr. comes from the fact that she thinks it's the only way she can give him anything to be passionate about, and she's willing to do things like make The Promise with him just so she can keep doing that. She's still upset about the fact she seemingly can't have his affection and will only ever be treated like an annoying girl in his class (as Meimi) or a prized object (Saint Tail), but his happiness always comes first in the end. In the finale, she puts everything on the line for him despite believing it'll permanently ruin their relationship, but does so because it's the only thing she can do for him anymore.
Adaptational Angst Downgrade: Meimi in the anime is a little more confident and outgoing than the manga version, who wasn't a Shrinking Violet by any means but was Prone to Tears, had a tendency to bottle up her feelings or put up with things she hated, and generally didn't have it in her to tease or sass people (especially Asuka Jr.) the way she does in the anime. Even during scenes with the same dialogue lines, the anime usually has Meimi keep more of her composure in her body language and facial expressions than her manga counterpart, especially in the final arc where the manga version had involved her approaching a mental breakdown.
Adaptational Jerkass: "Jerkass" would be a strong way to put it, but Meimi's All-Loving Hero and occasional Extreme Doormat nature is a little more pronounced in the manga than it is in the anime; she never rubs in Asuka Jr.'s failures even jokingly, and her first proper meeting with Takamiya in chapter 6 has her still trying to make friends with her despite everything she'd just seen her do. In comparison, the anime version is a little more prone to teasing and making fun of Asuka Jr. (albeit mainly because he doesn't take it as hard as his manga counterpart would), and she's more obvious about her jealousy when other girls like Sayaka and Takamiya approach him, even getting snippy at him for large portions of the day while he genuinely has no clue what he did wrong.
Adaptation Dye-Job: Her Saint Tail outfit is primarily pure black in colored manga illustrations, but the anime design gives it a clearer tone of red and adds a brooch on her bow. Meimi's hair is also made straighter and neater than it was in the manga, where it had a slight curl to it (and noticeably bunched around the area where she tied it as Saint Tail).
Advance Notice Crime: She sends out Calling Card warnings to Asuka Jr. detailing exactly when she’s going to strike next and what she’ll be trying to steal. Being a stage magician as well, she proceeds to make each one increasingly unique, such as via an arcade machine’s game over screen or on the side of a blimp.
Agent Mulder: She's not as extreme as most cases of the trope, but her background as a Stage Magician means she likes encouraging the idea of entertaining hypotheticals and believing in other "mysterious things" in the world, serving as a contrast to Asuka Jr. being an Agent Scully who dislikes the idea of believing in anything "unscientific". The anime elaborates that she doesn't necessarily blindly believe in every fantastical story she hears, but simply believes that science hasn't explained everything yet and that things like UFO sightings are at least worth looking into.
All-Loving Hero: Meimi's ultimately working as Saint Tail because she cares about the people she's helping, often being extra determined to take on a job as Saint Tail simply because she's really offended on behalf of the victim. That being said, this factor is also a big part of why being Saint Tail ends up being so dangerous for her, because she's a little too all-loving out of the fact she can't see herself as having any worth.
Behavioral Conditioning: At the beginning of the series, Saint Tail's personality is basically just "Meimi but more playful" to the point she sometimes accidentally says things that are on her mind as Meimi, and she initially identifies herself so closely with Saint Tail that she falls in love with Asuka Jr. by projecting his passion in chasing Saint Tail onto herself, but the metaphor of the dolphin caper (chapter 20/episode 39) suggests that repeated exposure to being treated like an abstract concept had started making her act like an inhuman and detached entity to the point she'd become unrecognizable. The problem is that internally speaking, she is still Meimi, but being unable to express herself means she's trapped in her own head and can't interact with others as Meimi, unnerving Asuka Jr. because he consciously knows it's likely that Meimi is under there Beneath the Mask yet still has to treat her like a near-complete stranger until he can get proper confirmation.
Balloonacy: Her signature tactic for getting around, to the point she can actually send out clusters of balloons as decoys to trick people into thinking she's elsewhere.
Beneath the Mask: One of Asuka Jr.'s goals with Saint Tail was always to figure out more about how the human behind her worked, but once he suspects that Saint Tail might actually be Meimi, he realizes that he doesn't know much about Meimi at school either because of how secretive she is, which only intensifies his desire to figure out what's going on. It's only at the end of the series when he finally gets to see what's under both personas.
Book Dumb: She struggles with her studies (especially math), and some plot points involve her needing help from Asuka Jr.; their first "date" came from her agreeing to take him to a baseball game he'd wanted to go to in exchange for his help.
By the Power of Grayskull!: She uses the phrase "Oh Lord, forgive me, for I use no gimmick or trick" before changing into Saint Tail, as well as "May the blessings of God be with us" with Seira before she sets off on a caper. Neither are actually necessary for her to change into Saint Tail and use her abilities, and it's mostly just a formality for her and Seira considering it to be a Mission from God.
Cannot Spit It Out: Even after she comes to terms with the realization, she can never bring herself to tell Asuka Jr. that she likes him; most of it is because it's tied to the issue of her identity, which she's equally as unable to be honest about because she's worried he'll start hating her if she does. As she says herself, "it's not that I'm trying to deceive him, I just can't bring myself to say it." Even after they start dating, she's still so full of guilt and shame that vaguely clinging to his sleeve is the most she's able to express her feelings, and it takes Rosemary and Maju's intervention to finally get across the full truth.
Catchphrase: She pulls off her magic tricks with a "One, two... three!" She also likes to sometimes use "it's showtime!" when doing something particularly dramatic.
Child Prodigy: In magic, to the point where she can match and even surpass her professional magician father in pretty much every trick he performs... and she can do it having only witnessed a part of the trick beforehand, without ever being told how it was done.
Clark Kenting: Averted: while the only physical difference between Meimi and Saint Tail is that the latter wears her hair in a ponytail, Saint Tail takes extreme care into not showing her face, and she eventually starts acting different to Plausible Deniability levels the more she ends up being consumed by her Secret-Identity Identity problem. In fact, the final arc involves Asuka Jr. feeling tormented because despite all of the signs of Meimi and Saint Tail having the same physical body, he can't fully register them as the same person without confirmation because of how detached and unrecognizable Saint Tail acts.
Dark Secret: Being Saint Tail becomes more and more of this for her as the series goes on, since the consequences would involve revealing Meimi as the criminal Sawatari loves slandering and Takamiya has no qualms about punishing, let alone the thief Asuka Jr. is assigned to arrest. Of course, Meimi's biggest concern is simply that she'll lose Asuka Jr. for good. By the time of the epilogue, she still has to keep this from everyone around her, but she at least has Seira and Asuka there to help protect her secret and well-being.
Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: The prequel manga chapter reveals that her initial motive for becoming Saint Tail was that she felt unfulfilled from having to keep her stage magic abilities a secret, so she'd Jumped at the Call hoping that she could show them off and put them to use. Unfortunately, while it seems to have worked initially, her eventual Secret-Identity Identity crisis ends up actually making it worse; the reason she gets so attached to the idea of Asuka Jr. chasing her is that it makes her feel wanted, and she ends up unable to bring herself to quit being Saint Tail despite it slowly destroying her because she feels like she has to do something to help others.
Didn't Think This Through: While she's good at being spontaneous, she also has a bit of an impulse problem, and the fact she tends to act on assumptions without actually thinking through how likely those assumptions are results in her increasing detachment from reality during the second half.
The Dreaded: In episode 24 of the anime, the criminals-of-the-week panic when they hear that Saint Tail's target is in a mansion they'd swindled, reasoning that her capers had gotten other criminals arrested and that she's probably conspiring to dig up some dirt on their fraud scheme. In actuality, Saint Tail had been going to retrieve a jewelry box and wasn't particularly intending to uncover their plot at all, and Detective Asuka turns out to have already been chasing them anyway, driving home the point that most people besides Asuka Jr. don't actually understand how Saint Tail works. During the final arc, Maju uses hypnosis to convince the entire town that Saint Tail has suddenly gone rogue and started terrorizing the town, leading to her name becoming a symbol of fear and leaving Asuka Jr. as the only one left who has any faith in her at all.
Early Installment Character-Design Difference: Meimi occasionally wears round glasses in the first few manga chapters (farsighted ones to use for class), but she's never seen with them again afterwards. The anime doesn't even bother with them.
Extreme Doormat: While she's assertive enough to call Asuka Jr. out for his behavior, she struggles when it comes to defending herself from boys like Sawatari invading her boundaries, and her habit of putting up with things she hates is a major reason Asuka Jr. assumes she must be putting up with him.
Famed In-Story: Saint Tail becomes a local legend in time to the point a perfumer stages a fake advertising campaign based on his product being "good enough to be stolen by Saint Tail", and incidents like these are how Asuka Jr. eventually comes to realize that "Saint Tail" is more of a concept and name than it is an actual person: she's well-known among the people in the sense that they'll switch from exploiting her name value to worshipping her like a deity at the drop of a hat, but very few people understand her actual motives for stealing, and nobody knows or cares about what she's like as a human being.
Fille Fatale: Downplayed: she's only interested in Asuka Jr., but she's not above buttering up Sawatari to get something she needs for a case, and, in an episode of the anime, she makes use of a rich man having fallen in Love at First Sight with her to get herself in position for a heist. That this tends to get Asuka Jr. on edge goes over her head.
Flower Motifs: In the manga, the reveal of the snowdrop Creation Myth results in the Saint Tail persona being associated with the snowdrop flower that helped the "snow" (Asuka Jr.) in the story, while Saint Tail/Meimi's actual feelings are represented by Princess Rosa's flowers, symbolizing her complicated feelings over her "true self" and her Secret-Identity Identity crisis.
Following in Relative's Footsteps: Her parents don't realize that she's doing it, but her work as Saint Tail is her way of trying to apply her father's magic specialty to her mother's former Phantom Thief career. It eventually becomes a problem when it turns out that Eimi didn't want her to become a full-on phantom thief and had only been hoping she would take after the physical agility that came with it. Meimi's obsession with taking on her mother's burdens and carrying on her legacy ends up accidentally re-aggravating Lucifer's rivalry with Rosemary, who likewise treats Meimi as no more than an extension of her mother through whom she can get Revenge by Proxy.
Free-Range Children: Her parents catch on early that she's sneaking out at night, but Eimi is thrilled at the idea of her following in her footsteps, and they ultimately don't see a reason to do anything about it. Later, when Meimi brings Ruby home, they're so free-spirited that they don't see a problem with her suddenly taking in a hedgehog at all.
Friend to All Children: She has a particular soft spot for requests for help that come from young children. While her capers are usually reserved for rectifying serious ethical wrongs, she's willing to go as far as scaring an observatory's staff into evacuating to avoid a fake Comet of Doom just because they were cold to some kids who wanted to use it to see a comet.
Guile Hero: Her intelligence isn't focused on, but she's incredibly perceptive and intelligent and frequently pits her unwitting adversaries against each other as Saint Tail (to ensure the police catch the given caper's actual bad guy or to cover up her identity).
Green-Eyed Epiphany: She starts off denying she has any interest in Asuka Jr. besides as Saint Tail's Worthy Opponent, but Sayaka (one of the victims she helps) and Takamiya entering the picture as love rivals starts getting her to act out, and eventually Takamiya getting dangerously close to stealing her baseball game "date" away from her tips Meimi over the edge in admitting that she really does like him.
Heroic Fatigue: By the time the end of the series rolls around, Meimi's managing to keep up with her work as Saint Tail purely from the feeling of obligation to help others, but she's otherwise emotionally worn down from the stress of everything she's hiding and its resulting nasty aftereffects: other than Seira, she can't open up to anyone about what's going on, she's convinced her alter ego doesn't count as her anymore, the people she helps don't even appreciate her as a human, and she's especially crumbling from the guilt of everything she's hiding from Asuka Jr. and the fear of what'll happen her identity is revealed. Despite the fact her assumptions about him are actually completely wrong, she can't confirm it because she's so drenched in guilt and secrecy that she can't open up to him. Eventually, things get to the point where she witnesses him getting targeted as a way of hurting her, and by that point her self-worth is so low that she goes into her final caper expecting to lose everything she has; she's only able to get closure when Asuka Jr. openly accepts her for everything and gets her to retire.
Hero with Bad Publicity: While the police are aware she's doing her work for altruistic reasons, they also take the stance that she should still be considered a criminal and thief regardless of how good her motives are. A number of townspeople, including some of Meimi's classmates, consider her to be a local hero, but not all of them understand her Just Like Robin Hood nature, so some will speculate about which expensive thing she'll target next or buy into newspaper articles accusing her of thefts that weren't actually her doing. Near the end of the story, Maju and Rosemary hypnotize their victims into believing Saint Tail stole from them, making her into the entire town's scapegoat and nearly completely demoralizing Meimi.
His Own Worst Enemy: Ultimately, the reason Asuka Jr. has to actually "catch" her in the end is that Meimi will not stop sending herself down a path to self-destruction "until her heart breaks" unless he steps in and tells her to stop.
Hot Blooded Sideburns: According to Tachikawa, they're not actually sideburns, but they achieve the same effect, especially when she's the more vivacious Saint Tail.
Important Haircut: The epilogue shows that, eight years after finally being "caught" by Asuka Jr., Meimi has cut her hair short, since she's moved on from being Saint Tail.
Insecure Love Interest: She's so utterly incapable of processing the idea that Asuka Jr. has always been in love with her that her thought process starts going out of its way to interpret his words and actions in ways that suggest otherwise. The most extreme example is when he tells Saint Tail something that comes off to her as "you resemble a girl I like"; even putting aside the fact that this in itself is a misinterpretation (he'd actually meant that their similarities are so uncanny that it's suspicious), you would think the first obvious candidate for "a girl Saint Tail resembles" would be Meimi herself, but Meimi somehow completely bypasses this and concludes that he must like some other girl who presumably happens to coincidentally resemble Saint Tail. And no, even the Love Confession doesn't sufficiently do it by itself; the only thing that actually works is him making a public spectacle to an extent even she can't argue with.
I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: She may get sulky about it, but Meimi never expects Asuka Jr. to ever actually like her back and never goes beyond quietly pining about it or sulking about his insensitivity; she's more upset about him treating Sayaka badly than she is about herself, and the reason she resents Takamiya's behavior so much isn't out of being a Clingy Jealous Girl but because Takamiya treats him like she's laying claim to personal property. Even then, in the anime, she passes up on an opportunity to ask him out to a concert because Takamiya had asked him out with better tickets. During the finale, Meimi goes into her final caper knowing that rescuing Asuka Jr. is basically the same as revealing her identity to him, believing that it's likely he'll hate her for having deceived her this entire time; she still considers him important enough that she's determined to take him back anyway.
Just a Kid: At the beginning of the story, most people had been convinced that Saint Tail was an adult woman, so Asuka Jr. realizing via a brief moment of physical contact that she's actually a young girl around his age is a huge factor in his initial interest in her. Takamiya also notices that she's a young girl during their first encounter, making her more confident in her ability to catch her but also causing her to see Saint Tail as a love rival for Asuka Jr.'s affections, resulting in her having to distract her by convincing her that she's an adult man Disguised in Drag.
Just Like Robin Hood: While she's a Phantom Thief, all of her capers are strictly done as a means of rectifying ethical wrongs and getting illegitimately obtained things back to their original owners, and she doesn't take things for personal gain. Even when she takes Ruby, it's specifically because her owner had gotten arrested and she was worried about who'd take her in (she'd been planning on buying her normally from the pet shop beforehand). Unfortunately, the under-the-table forcible nature of the job ends up having its own limitations as well: she can't actually meaningfully connect with the people she helps, she can only do the bare minimum to forcibly fix the immediate problem before leaving, and she can't do anything about potential side effects that impact people surrounding the case.
Karmic Jackpot: As far as she knew at the time, Saint Tail's choice to make The Promise with Asuka Jr. would only endanger herself further by increasing the chances of him catching her, but her decision to do so ends up having payoffs when he starts doing a better job at protecting her than catching her, and her allowing someone to come see her on every caper creates a Character Witness who ends up being the only one standing up for her when everything goes to hell in the final arc. It also creates a hard record of exactly how long Meimi had loved him, thus communicating her feelings when she'd failed to do so the entire series. The flower-and-snow Creation Myth alludes to this by describing it as the snow protecting the flower in exchange for it offering its color.
Keeping Secrets Sucks: This ends up becoming the part of maintaining the Saint Tail persona that does the most damage to her emotional health: she ends up increasingly having to suppress her actual feelings and refuse to open up, to the point she sends herself down a rabbit hole of assumptions about how Asuka Jr. would never approve of her that don't actually match up with reality because she's just circulating them in her head. On top of that, she's completely unable to defend herself against people like Sawatari slandering Saint Tail to her face. It's also what makes the Secret-Identity Identity problem so poisonous: anyone who doesn't know what's Beneath the Mask will only ever perceive Saint Tail as a concept rather than an actual person, so Meimi can't associate any of it with herself as long as nobody is there to acknowledge her as a human for it.
Like Parent, Like Spouse: Subverted: her ideal type is "someone like her father" (according to both her and official notes from Tachikawa), but keeping in line with the series themes of loving someone even when they're not perfect, Asuka Jr.'s temperament is very different from that of Genichiro's, leading to Asuka Jr. very awkwardly trying to appeal to Meimi by claiming "if I were your father..." at one point. In actuality, his blunt pragmatism arguably makes him closer to her mother Eimi. He does, however, end up getting Meimi to retire from being a Phantom Thief by showing her unconditional love, just like Genichiro did for Eimi.
Love Confession: "If I do end up being caught, I want to be caught by you" wasn't intended as this when she'd first said it in chapter/episode 10, and Asuka Jr. had been too thick-headed as usual to understand it at the time, but when Maju accidentally gets him to realize the actual meaning of her calling cards, he remembers the statement and immediately goes out to "catch" her like she'd wanted.
Love Letter Lunacy: Her calling cards were originally just sent as a challenge, but after seeing a completely miserable Asuka Jr. effectively begging her to keep sending them so he can always have a chance at catching her, she makes a promise to always send him one no matter what. Being a Stage Magician, she uses increasingly dramatic and over-the-top ways to deliver them. Eventually, the calling cards end up being the one thing she never gives up on even when she starts becoming increasingly terrified of him, and an Insult Backfire from Maju mocking one as a "love letter" in the finale gets Asuka Jr. to realize that they'd all effectively been that the entire time.
Loves My Alter Ego: Due to her own insecurity and some Tsundere mishaps from Asuka Jr., she's convinced that he's only interested in her as "Saint Tail" and would never feel the same way about her as Meimi. In actuality, he's only ever been seriously in love with Meimi with Saint Tail as a proxy, but all of the signs of this are going completely over her head.
Master of Illusion: She can use her magic to create illusions, including making flowers appear to be snow or convincing a dolphin in captivity that it's in the sea. Asuka Jr. is perceptive enough to tell when she's using one of these (even if he can't necessarily see through it), but most people are fooled.
Master of the Mixed Message: Part of the reason Asuka Jr. can't figure her out is because of how confusing her behavior is, since half the time she acts like she hates him while being genuinely kind to him during the other half. Added to the fact that she has a tendency to put up with things she hates while still occasionally being willing to call him out, it results in him concluding that he has absolutely no idea what their relationship is by the beginning of the second half.
Master of Unlocking: Another of her magic skills, which allows her to instantly unlock anything ranging from padlocks to windows.
Masquerade: Other than moonlighting as a phantom thief, the fact she can do magic tricks in itself is supposed to be a secret, since Genichiro had instructed her not to show anyone any tricks until she became a full-fledged magician. Her restlessness about this is why she'd agreed to become Saint Tail, because she can't actually show off her tricks to anyone as Meimi.
Meaningful Name: Her name "Meimi" contains the kanji for "sprout" (芽), referring to her role as the "flower" in the flower-and-snow Creation Myth.
Mission from God: She does capers in response to people who pray at the confessionals, prays to God herself before starting her capers, and tells criminals that she's inflicting "punishment from God" on them. Asuka Jr. initially dismisses her as blasphemous, but he starts to seriously reconsider the more he sees Saint Tail helping others and realizes that even if she's not actually sent by God, everyone will see her that way anyway. As a result, the first thing he does when he "catches" her in the end is remind her that the actual one is watching, so she can't pretend that this didn't happen.
Morality Pet: Meimi noticing Asuka Jr.'s Hidden Heart of Gold and encouraging him (both at school and as Saint Tail) ends up significantly changing him for the better, allowing him to get a much-needed humility check and demonstrate all of his good traits that had been buried under his inferiority complex. The irony is that she has absolutely no idea about this at all; she's so insecure and lacking in self-worth that not only is she still convinced that he only cares about Saint Tail as his Worthy Opponent long after this has stopped being the case, she even believes that deceiving him with her identity makes her a worse person than him and expects him to despise her on the spot once he finds out.
Nice Girl: Even back when she disliked Asuka Jr., she always treated him with more respect than her classmates and gave him a chance to do better, which is how he ended up falling in love with her. On the other hand, this is also why he assumes that she hates him until late in the series, because he considers her to be such a nice girl that she'd put up with him and show him kindness even despite that.
Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Her early Tsundere behavior ends up causing Asuka Jr. to assume that she really does hate him and that he needs to catch Saint Tail to impress her, resulting in him keeping his distance from her, pouring himself even more into the Saint Tail chase, and inadvertently convincing her that he only ever cares about Saint Tail and not her.
Playing Hard to Get: A rather unusual variant. She doesn't have a lot of self-worth and wants to feel wanted, so she'd fallen for Asuka Jr. because of his passion in pursuing Saint Tail, despite the fact that he was originally doing it to satisfy his pride and have her be arrested as a criminal. The irony is that she's so fixated on this that she misses the signs of him actually being much more meaningfully in love with her as Meimi for unrelated reasons and convinces herself that because Saint Tail is the one he's physically running after, Saint Tail is the only one he cares about. She's still so convinced of this by the time of the Christmas bonus chapter that she deliberately gets herself lost in a crowd to see if he'd come for her; this time, he figures out what she's pulling immediately, and while the results go a little differently than expected, Meimi calls it quits because she's too in love witih him.
Power Copying: Some anime episodes will have her come home, see Genichiro demonstrate a trick, and decide to make use of it in her next caper. She can easily copy her father's tricks even after seeing them only once, or even only part of them.
Prone to Tears: Mainly in the manga, where she's so emotionally sensitive and prone to crying easily that she cries even at the sheer sentimentality of a young girl coming to pray for her grandfather. One of the reasons Asuka Jr. has to be careful with her is that while he doesn't want to coddle her, it doesn't take a lot to get her to start crying, and he really does not like seeing her sad (although he does figure out how to properly scold her after they start dating).
Pull a Rabbit out of My Hat: Her silk hat is the source of most of the things she can make appear out of nowhere, complete with things that definitely should not be able to fit in there. She's so dependent on it that dropping it in midair leaves her completely helpless and in freefall, and she likely would have died or at least been severely injured had Asuka Jr. not caught her.
Refuge in Audacity: This is how she gets away with so many things: her tricks are so over-the-top that most people are reduced to stunned stupor until someone shouts to try and arrest her. Part of the reason Asuka Jr. is able to get ahead of others when it comes to catching her is that he's so terribly pragmatic that he can recover from it quickly (and even then, he's not completely immune to being thrown off at first).
Required Secondary Powers: Being a Phantom Thief who can do Roof Hopping and successfully run away from adults on her trail requires having borderline superhuman physical abilities, which Meimi inherited from her mother. Notably, she doesn't actually do much to hide it at school, leading to more than one student (accidentally or otherwise) correlating her with Saint Tail. It eventually turns out that this was what Eimi wanted her daughter to "follow in her footsteps" with, rather than her literally being a Phantom Thief.
Right for the Wrong Reasons: She initially becomes drawn to Asuka Jr. by projecting his passion in chasing Saint Tail onto herself, but she eventually ends up succumbing to insecurity about the idea that he only cares about Saint Tail and not her "true self", which she identifies as her civilian self and not Saint Tail. In fact, Asuka Jr. has always been "pursuing" Meimi, just in a more metaphorical manner: one of his early motives for catching Saint Tail was to impress Meimi, and once he starts suspecting them to be the same person, he becomes even more obsessed with catching Saint Tail to figure out if she's Meimi Beneath the Mask. Later, he starts dating Meimi in the hopes of "finding" Saint Tail by getting her to open up about it, thus making both outlets into a "pursuit" of Meimi's actual "true self" since he knows he can't truly understand her until he has both sides of the picture.
Roof Hopping: If she's not using her balloons, she usually does this to get around, and Takamiya catches onto her identity when she notices that Meimi has the necessary athletic ability to pull such a thing off.
Samaritan Syndrome: Late in the series, Seira (who was the one who got her to Saint Tail to begin with) advises Meimi that it might be a good time for her to quit being a phantom thief: she'd already done a lot up until that point, she's in a relationship with Asuka Jr. and thus doesn't need to rely on being Saint Tail for the Foe Romance Subtext, and continuing is likely to hurt her personal life even more. Meimi refuses to stop despite being emotionally distraught because she can't stand the idea of abandoning someone in trouble. She only stops when Asuka Jr. stages an intervention, but he eventually becomes a Private Detective so her desire to protect the city won't be in vain.
Secret-Identity Identity: Saint Tail was intended as an outlet for her to have her magic be appreciated by the public, but what actually happened was that she ended up dumping everything into the "Saint Tail" persona, resulting in her self-worth as "Meimi Haneoka" becoming virtually nonexistent. This results in her convincing herself that Asuka Jr. would never care about her as much as he does Saint Tail, when in actuality it's the opposite: part of the reason Asuka Jr. is concerned about her being Saint Tail is that the public keeps treating her like an abstract concept, meaning she can't associate anything Saint Tail does with herself as a human being and is pressured into acting like an inhuman entity, disturbing Asuka Jr. because it's effectively like watching her go through a slow, public-facing Death of Personality.
Single Woman Seeks Good Man: She respects her father deeply and wants to marry a Nice Guy like him, and the first manga chapter has her insulting Asuka Jr. by lamenting about wanting to find a "wonderful man" instead. Ironically, she does actually end up falling in love with Asuka Jr. anyway, specifically because she realizes early on that there's more good in him than it seems at first.
Sparing Them the Dirty Work: Non-lethal example. Episodes 31 and 37 of the anime involve Saint Tail stealing to prevent someone else from stealing, even if also for noble reasons, because she doesn't want them to dirty their hands with stealing like she does.
Stage Magician: She may seem like a truly magical Magical Girl, but this is what she really is when she comes down to it. Saint Tail's outfit started out as Meimi's dream stage outfit, and her reason for becoming a phantom thief in the first place was that she wanted an outlet to prove the worth of her stage magic.
She Cleans Up Nicely: The first clear depiction of Asuka Jr.'s romantic interest in Meimi is when he sees her modeling for a wedding dress and gets completely lovestruck (despite his attempts to deflect it). A later comment from him suggests it may have actually been an instance of When She Smiles.
Stepford Smiler: While she doesn't pretend to be cheerful all the time, she's not very open or straightforward about her actual feelings and will often try to come off as doing better than she actually is, which means that as the pressure of all of her secret-keeping intensifies over the course of the series, she has to suppress more and more of her actual feelings while at school and as Saint Tail. Part of Asuka Jr.'s concern over her comes from suspicion that something like this is the case, and by the time the series reaches its final arc, she can't even properly hide her misery anymore. Once he "catches" her at the end, with everything having been fully revealed, she's finally able to fully open up to him while crying in his arms.
Surpassed the Teacher: Her father had taught her stage magic when she was young, but not only is he unaware that she'd been practicing and mastering it over the years, she's even already able to devise her own techniques and perfect them for use in her phantom thief capers (in comparison, when Genichiro first met Eimi as an adult, he was only able to do one trick at the time).
Terror Hero: She sometimes tries to mess with her targets by pranking them in order to teach them a lesson. She doesn't mean badly beyond a slap on the wrist so that they won't do it again, but it makes her come off as The Dreaded in her claims of inflicting divine retribution.
Tomboyish Ponytail: This is where the "Tail" part of Saint Tail's name comes from, and it's the one thing the public consistently knows about her. It also serves as the main thing that defines the difference between Meimi and Saint Tail, and the ponytail being taken down with a clear view of her face is how Asuka Jr. identifies her as Meimi when he sees her reflection in Princess Rosa's mirror. Rosemary and Maju do it again to confirm her identity to him, and once things are settled, he mentally defines Saint Tail as just "Meimi with a ponytail" because of how little of a distinction he draws between the two; Meimi coming to terms with leaving the Saint Tail persona behind involves her starting to wear the ponytail even at school before eventually getting an Important Haircut by the time of the epilogue.
Unwanted Harem: Besides Asuka Jr., there's Sawatari and (possibly) a boy who asks her out to dance, while the anime adds a student who becomes briefly enamored with Saint Tail after she's Mistaken for Flirting with him, and a rich young man who tries to claim Meimi as his wife (and then switches to Saint Tail by the end of the episode). Meimi only has eyes for Asuka Jr., and finds the others to be an annoyance.
Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: When she finds out the target of one of her capers is a very large lizard, she's terrified, and the anime has this overwhelm her so much that she actually has to take a breather before trying again. In the anime, she has a fear of lizards in general to the point Asuka Jr. teases her over it.
Worshipped for Great Deeds: This is what Asuka Jr. means when he refers to Saint Tail as an "ideal": she herself claims to be inflicting "divine retribution" on criminals while anyone she helps sees her as "God answering their prayers", so regardless of whether she's on a real Mission from God or not, people certainly see her as part of the will of God and treat her more like an abstract concept than they consider her to be a human being. It's also shallow enough that Maju merely planting the suggestion in people's heads that Saint Tail is stealing their stuff gets the entire town to believe she must have suddenly snapped and gone rogue.

Daiki Asuka (Asuka Jr.)

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/asuka_daiki_4.jpg

^{Click to see manga art}

Voiced by: Kousuke Okano (JP), Joshua Seth (EN)

One of Meimi's classmates, with whom she has a formidable love-hate relationship. He intends to succeed his father as a detective and is recruited by the police as a specialist in pursuing Saint Tail, whom he considers to be his Worthy Opponent.

Adaptational Angst Downgrade: He's still socially awkward and Innocently Insensitive, and he's still bad with criticism, but his Hair-Trigger Temper is heavily downplayed, his Inferiority Superiority Complex is made into more of a Know-Nothing Know-It-All problem, and he's overall far more open and friendly than his manga counterpart was. Him being an Insecure Love Interest is also portrayed more as simple uncertainty rather than him being convinced that Meimi has the right to hate him.
Adaptational Badass: The anime amps up his Awesomeness by Analysis skills and gives him opportunities to deduce Saint Tail's patterns, make complicated counter-plans, and even trap her, allowing him to get much closer to catching her than he'd usually get in the manga (where he got trapped in the security system in the first chapter and was almost always unilaterally defeated afterwards).
Adaptational Dumbass: A rather strange example caused not by his character inherently being more of an idiot than he was in the manga, but by a lack of consistent context making his Hidden Depths more unclear. In particular, Filler episodes portray him as significantly less perceptive of the idea that Saint Tail might be Meimi, although his Green-Eyed Epiphany in episode 40 still indicates that the mirror incident had the same effect on him as it did in the manga. Meanwhile, since Meimi is much worse at hiding her feelings in the anime than in the manga, him not picking up on them makes him come off as significantly more Oblivious to Love.
Adaptational Jerkass:
- Zigzagged. In the anime, he starts off cockier and more of a Know-Nothing Know-It-All, he's more willing to tease or provoke Meimi, added Filler episodes in the early stages of the anime portray him as taking longer to develop the level of concern over Meimi he does in the manga, and later episodes have him putting on a front of continuing to be cocky about the Friendly Rivalry when he's actually secretly trying to protect her. On the flip side, he's also more open about his respect for Saint Tail from the get-go, and he's portrayed as more openly friendly and sociable in general; in particular, his Hair-Trigger Temper is downplayed to the point he's able to have far more casual interactions with others than he would have been capable of in the manga (in fact, he's able to tease Meimi more specifically because she doesn't take it as hard).
- Played straight when it comes to the way he treats Takamiya; in the manga, her being a Hate Sink who did nothing but threaten Asuka Jr. into doing what she wanted made it very understandable why he would treat her coldly and try to keep her away from him, but in the anime, she actually does things to show him support, only for him to continue ignoring her and treating her rudely.
Agent Scully: He dislikes anything without "scientific proof", doesn't believe in ghosts, and considers things like magic tricks and fortune-telling to be the same as deceiving people, which was the reason he and Meimi instantly started off on the wrong foot when they first met (Meimi saw it as an insult to her father). The events of the series get him to loosen up on it a little, but the fact he's more grounded in reality ends up becoming very helpful when Meimi starts losing her grip on it.
All of the Other Reindeer: His classmates love mocking him, and while Yasuhiro and Chiba do seem to care about him, they also only ever praise him when something he does gets in the newspaper. It's portrayed less as the kids around him being overtly malicious as much as it's a bad chemical reaction of his penchant for taking everything personally with his Hair-Trigger Temper making him easy to tease, resulting in Meimi and Seira functionally being the only ones in class who have any respect for him.
Amateur Sleuth: He would like to believe he's this, but people in-universe and out love to jab at him for being a "wannabe" detective, and the anime especially makes it a point that he's only allowed to work on the Saint Tail cases because it's a small fry case compared to others. He doesn't even get paid for it. At one point, Takamiya gets close to getting him removed on the grounds that he's not motivated enough.
Ambiguous Syntax: His difficulty in expressing himself makes him the undisputed master of this, resulting in anything that comes close to expressing his feelings for Meimi getting clouded by bad wording or Anger Born of Worry (even after he manages to get his Hair-Trigger Temper under control). As a result, Meimi completely fails to pick up the hints that he's actually doing his best to look out for her.
Armor-Piercing Question: Part of the reason he starts becoming so obsessed with "making everything clear" by catching Saint Tail is that during one of his Belligerent Sexual Tension arguments with Meimi, Takamiya had snarked at them by asking them for a clear answer as to whether they actually get along or not. Asuka Jr. realizes he can't answer this question clearly because he doesn't actually know much about Meimi at all, and especially now that he knows there's a possibility she's actually Saint Tail and has been keeping this a secret from everyone the whole time.
Awesomeness by Analysis: Parodied in the first chapter of the manga, where he tries to show off his analysis skills by describing their English teacher getting in a motorcycle accident, meaning... that they'll have a pop quiz because he's in a bad mood. He does manage to use his deductive skills to put together a plan that almost completely traps Saint Tail in chapter 17/episode 27, and the anime gives him multiple opportunities to show this off more effectively.
Bad Liar: He'll do it to protect Meimi, but his guilty conscience is strong enough that he gets jumpy about it, and he has a very hard time dodging questions about why Saint Tail suddenly disappeared out of nowhere and why he'd lost interest in the case for no good reason.
Because You Were Nice to Me: The implicit reason he fell for Meimi and ended up so devoted to her well-being is that, outside of their Belligerent Sexual Tension arguments, she actually treats him with respect instead of joining the rest of the class in making a mockery out of him, and whenever they're not fighting, she's capable of making him feel comfortable instead of setting off his Hair-Trigger Temper. Notably, he seems to see her this way despite also believing that she hates him, mainly because he considers their past fighting to be his fault and sees her as a Nice Girl who'd still put up with him or show him kindness despite that.
Book Smart: Detective skills aside, he's academically talented enough to be one of the top in the class, and some plot points involve him needing to help Meimi with her schoolwork. The perfume caper also has Meimi go up to him to get information about flowers that she needs for the case, simply because she figures he's knowledgeable about all sorts of things and would be likely to know something about it.
Break the Haughty: He starts off cocky and confident that he'll catch Saint Tail just to satisfy his own pride, but he ends up confronted with the possibility that she might actually be the girl he's falling in love with, and he starts questioning what he's doing when he realizes he's dealing with an actual human being who's working to help people in need and is paying the price of never being able to show her real self to anyone. By the time the end of the series rolls around, he's clinging onto the idea of catching her just out of sheer desperation from wanting to make sense out of all of this, legality or pride be damned.
Bunny-Ears Lawyer: He's able to get close to catching Saint Tail because he's just as unconventional as she is and can recover quickly from her over-the-top acts, or at least get through things with sheer gusto.
Can't Take Criticism: When it's not Anger Born of Worry, his Hair-Trigger Temper comes from being overly defensive whenever he feels like he's being put on the spot. Over the course of the second half, while he still struggles with losing his composure, he manages to improve at getting it under control.
Character Witness: While Asuka Jr. had gotten Saint Tail to make The Promise for him mainly for his own personal gain, him being invited to every single caper allows him to figure out via repeated exposure how Saint Tail works and what her motives are, resulting in him eventually becoming the only person who can reliably vouch for her while everyone else believes whatever they want. This includes the final arc and the epilogue, in which he's near-singlehandedly the one responsible for saving Saint Tail's reputation.
Clear Their Name: His initial refusal to believe that Meimi is Saint Tail and subsequent attempts to confirm the latter's identity come out of wanting to prove that Meimi's not a criminal; Worthy Opponent or not, he'd fully believed that Saint Tail deserved to be arrested at the time.
Crappy Holidays: Once he and Meimi start dating, one of the first things he does is blurt out that he's not fond of going all-out for holiday events. It leads to a little bit of drama during the second bonus chapter when he declines the idea of going on a Christmas date with Meimi, to her disappointment (although it's implied it was more him legitimately having no idea what she would have preferred).
Crazy Jealous Guy: Defied. Part of his inability to admit that he's getting jealous over Meimi is that he doesn't want to be this, since he has no problem stepping in when she's uncomfortable but isn't sure what to do when her own feelings on the issue are more unclear. He's only able to accept it when he realizes that the feeling comes from not trusting anyone else with her.
Declaration of Protection: The part about "not letting Saint Tail get caught by anyone else before he catches her" was originally intended as The Only One Allowed to Defeat You, but once the possibility of her being Meimi comes up, he immediately becomes insistent that nobody is allowed to get near Saint Tail/Meimi because he's afraid someone else will hurt her before he can get to her, effectively redefining it as another form of this.
Defective Detective: His lack of social skills and Hair-Trigger Temper fit him into the archetype, although his emotional issues are more from an implied harsh childhood than anything to do with his profession, and even a small amount of proper emotional support gets him to be much more well-rounded.
Desperately Craves Affection: Ultimately, his Inferiority Superiority Complex comes from needing someone like Meimi to give him proper support instead of considering him a failure, and it's implied that the problem originates from a less-than-ideal upbringing of constantly having high expectations forced on him.
Devoted to You: Played with. He's a self-reliant person and also wants Meimi to be independent, so he takes care not to invade her boundaries or allow her to become overly dependent on him. It's just that this doesn't stop his concern over Meimi's welfare from unconsciously devouring his brain space and completely rewriting his motives for catching Saint Tail.
Deuteragonist: He's functionally the main character of the second half of the manga (chapters 13-24), corresponding to the "snow protecting the flower" part of the Creation Myth mentioned in chapter 15. Prior to then, he'd been portrayed as a Worthy Opponent Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist who happened to be Meimi's Love Interest, but the mirror incident creates a drastic shift that reveals that even if he wasn't originally on Saint Tail's side, he is absolutely devoted to Meimi's well-being, and the rest of the story becomes about him figuring out the truth behind what's going on with her before she heads for some extremely dangerous emotional places.
Determinator: When he says he's going to catch Saint Tail this time, he really means it. The reason he wants Saint Tail to send her calling cards is that it's the only way to guarantee he has a chance to catch her at all; otherwise, no matter how many times he fails or how much the cards are stacked up against him, he's absolutely determined to do it eventually. This ends up having an emotional parallel when he ends up becoming equally as determined to overcome his own insensitivity and denseness problems in order to make Meimi happy, culminating in him finally achieving his goal of "catching" her literally and metaphorically.
Establishing Character Moment: Meimi first takes an interest in him when she sees him defend Saint Tail's honor and acknowledge her good motives, even despite the fact he disapproves of her methods. In the end, it's exactly this kind of respect that gets him to eventually start agreeing with her.
Everyone Has Standards: Part of the reason Meimi fell for him is that even back when he believed Saint Tail should be arrested, he would step in to protect her from harm he considered to be too inhumane. It eventually becomes a full-blown Declaration of Protection once he starts associating her with Meimi.
Faith in the Foe: Even from the beginning, he took Saint Tail's Just Like Robin Hood nature seriously and thus spends every caper observing her closely to confirm that it's true. In the anime, he eventually starts harboring suspicions about the people Saint Tail targets before he's even figured out the full situation. This ultimately ends up becoming Sympathy for the Hero once he realizes what he's actually dealing with.
Geek Physiques: He's not very good in athletics and can't run very fast. Meimi even manages to identify him from within an Embarrassing Animal Suit just from his "century-making" clumsiness when falling over.
Genre Blind: His ability to analyze people's behavior isn't actually that bad, all things considered; the only reason he severely underestimated Meimi's feelings for him and assumed she genuinely disliked him was that he didn't realize that Tsundere is a concept that exists.
Grew a Spine: When he first meets Takamiya, she drags him around and even threatens him with violence, flaring up his Hair-Trigger Temper every time she antagonizes him, but once Meimi becomes a significant enough priority in his life, he eventually manages to assert himself instead of letting Takamiya continue to step all over him.
Hair-Trigger Temper: He starts off this way, easily getting worked up and upset over even the smallest things (although that includes other emotions as well, including crying dramatically). His temper mellows out significantly as he gets over his inferiority complex, with his main remaining Berserk Button being out of fear of losing Meimi.
Hates Being Touched: He hates it when Sayaka and Takamiya smother him, albeit more because they're doing it invasively without his permission (in contrast, Meimi doesn't usually go farther than clinging to his clothing).
Heel Realization: Seeing Saint Tail help people enough times gets him to realize that he's been protecting the wrong people and doesn't want to arrest Saint Tail anymore, and while he has to continue putting up an act so that he won't be taken off the chase, he starts using his position to prevent the police from touching her.
Hero Stole My Bike: In the anime, his preferred way of chasing Saint Tail over long distances is via bicycle (being a 14-year-old, he can't drive). While he does have his own bike, episode 14 has him doing a Flashed-Badge Hijack for one, and episode 21 implies he'll take one off the side of the road if he has to (ironic considering he's using it to chase a thief).
Hidden Depths: He initially seems like a Hot-Blooded, abrasive idiot who's Oblivious to Love and is obsessed with Saint Tail to Inspector Javert levels, but he's actually holding in self-consciousness about his insensitivity issues and whether he has the right to act on his feelings for Meimi. He's also so much of a Pragmatic Hero that, contrary to Meimi's concerns, he completely bypasses the Secret-Identity Identity problem; he's the only one who bothers to care about Saint Tail as a human, and he ends up figuring out what's going on with her by sheer observation.
Hidden Heart of Gold: Meimi's interest in him comes from the fact he really is a good person at heart, it's just buried under his complex of constantly being judged and mocked all of the time and some implied questionable upbringing. Thanks to Meimi and Saint Tail's influence, he ends up growing into a more legitimate Nice Guy with only some social awkwardness at worst; in fact, he turns out to be more kind and forgiving than even Meimi expected.
Hot-Blooded: He's officially described as the type whose body starts moving before his brain, and while he calms down a little in the second half once his Hair-Trigger Temper fades out, he still prefers to act on instinct rather than sitting around thinking.
Hyper-Awareness: The main reason he can get by as a detective despite running off instinct and Selective Obliviousness is that he's really good at internalizing details, including memorizing a license plate number from a car that's speeding away from him. In fact, it seems to be downright impossible for him to forget things even if he wants to, which is why he starts to mentally equate Saint Tail with Meimi even when he's consciously trying to not think about it.
I Can't Believe a Guy Like You Would Notice Me: Aside from him being a little dense and Meimi being very confusing to read, the main reason he can't catch onto Meimi's feelings for him is that he assumes by default that she dislikes him (which, to his credit, she did prior to the events of the series), and it takes 12 chapters for him to even consider the idea that she doesn't hate him. Even after they start dating, he still can't read exactly what she thinks of him, and his first reaction to learning she was actively hiding her identity from him is wondering if she might have been secretly enjoying messing around with him; learning that she'd been legitimately in love with him the entire time is such a shock to him that he's "so happy he might die".
Inferiority Superiority Complex: His initial motivation for catching Saint Tail himself stems from wanting to be praised by his classmates instead of being mocked for his failures, and it's implied that his complex over his poor physical abilities may also be a factor. It starts fading out after Meimi starts treating him more nicely, and she eventually becomes so important to him that he stops caring as much about what his classmates think.
Innocently Insensitive: It's effectively his Fatal Flaw, with the word "insensitive" (donkan) being so associated with him that even the manga captions call him out for it, and it especially applies to his difficulty with girls or romance. His problem with it is so bad that it initially seems that he's legitimately inconsiderate, but it turns out that he's actually quite conscious of his surroundings and is simply having difficulty expressing that through his many emotional issues and disastrous handling of nuance. Meimi's influence gets him to improve over the course of the series.
Insecure Love Interest: The reason he's not more proactive in pursuing his feelings for Meimi is that he's self-conscious about his insensitivity and Hair-Trigger Temper always messing things up, and the fact he's perfectly willing to do things to help her but is in denial about wanting her to himself implies that he doesn't think he has the right to feel that way about her. In the manga, it's to the point he's concerned that she secretly dislikes him, and in the anime, one slip-up gets him to be angry at himself for the rest of the night.
In-Series Nickname: He's known to the neighborhood as "Asuka Jr."^note to the point even newspaper articles call him that. Some people, such as Takamiya, will just call him "Asuka", and he's addressed with normal formalities by a few others, but most of the people in town use the nickname in lieu of any honorifics. By the time of the Distant Finale eight years later, Seira still calls him that despite admitting it's a bit weird to do so when he's an adult Private Detective now.
Internal Reformist: Episodes 33-36 of the anime imply that by this point, he's already aware that he's probably on the side of the wrong people but is limited in how much he can investigate compared to his need to focus on keeping Saint Tail safe. Meanwhile, by putting up an act and maintaining his position, not only can he prevent others from catching her in his place, he can also let Saint Tail take care of the actual problem while he has the police follow up in apprehending any criminals she exposes.
Ironic Name: His name "Daiki" (大貴) was deliberately chosen for it containing the kanji for "big", in contrast to him being very short (at least until he starts hitting his growth spurt).
Know-Nothing Know-It-All: His initial characterization in the anime, where he starts off bragging about how much he knows about Saint Tail despite having met her only very few times. It eventually becomes ironic when he really does end up becoming the one who knows her best... and can't trust others with her safety anymore because of it.
Let Off by the Detective: On top of having secret conversations with Saint Tail, he finds himself starting to agree with her work to the point he hesitates and passes up one of his closest chances to catch her, outright forms an Enemy Mine with her at one point, and eventually keeps her secret when she vanishes from the public eye (let alone the fact he ends up marrying her).
Longing Look: Meimi likes meeting him as Saint Tail because she believes that's the only time she'll get to see him with "those eyes that look only at her". It starts off just being from sheer Hot-Blooded passion, but it really does become "wondering if he's looking at Meimi and pining for her" after chapter 13.
Missing Mom: What happened to his mother is unknown (not even if she's still alive), only that she's not around. According to commentary from Tachikawa, she was involved in police work and raised a young Asuka Jr. by treating him like an adult, leading to his intelligence and independence, but something to do with her apparently made Asuka Jr. look so "pitiful" that Tachikawa didn't want to depict it. It's presumably a major reason why he has such a difficult time socializing or understanding girls, and an anime episode has his father comment that their family has "trouble with women", adding more fuel for speculation.
Modern Major General: He's actually very competent for an Amateur Sleuth; it's just that making a Phantom Thief into his rival probably wasn't the best idea when he can't run to save his life and his tactical strategies can only do so much against a reality-defying Stage Magician. He's trying to be a detective who fiercely chases his target down a la Javert or Zenigata, but he's ultimately what amounts to a fourteen-year-old armchair detective trying to navigate a Chase-Scene Obstacle Course.
My God, What Have I Done?: In the manga, it's implied that a major reason he believes Meimi has the right to hate him is from his regrets over having snapped at her and hurt her in chapter 4 prior to him making his promise with Saint Tail, which adds more reason for him to be shocked when he eventually learns that she'd reached out to him as Saint Tail despite that because she was in love with him.
The Napoleon: He starts off short (159 cm, only barely taller than Meimi) and very angry, with Huge Schoolgirl Takamiya teasing him for coming off as a child, but he hits a growth spurt in line with his Character Development to the point he outgrows even Takamiya. By the time of the final chapter, he's considerably taller than Meimi.
No Social Skills: This is the real reason he's so infamously dense and Innocently Insensitive: he's socially awkward and doesn't care for things he sees as meaningless platitudes, he reacts to things he doesn't care about by rudely ignoring them, and things go over his head because he takes them at too much face value. Much of his character arc involves figuring out how to express his deeper feelings instead of falling back into his old Hair-Trigger Temper habits.
"Not So Different" Remark: It's implied that his initial interest in Saint Tail is heavily shaped by the fact she's actually a girl around his age, making her a peer who would actually take him seriously as a rival.
Obfuscating Stupidity: Downplayed: he doesn't pretend to be an idiot, but he often keeps quiet about suspicious details he notices and simply pretends that he hasn't noticed. Even when he ostensibly accepts Plausible Deniability explanations, he never really dismisses them, at best deciding to put it aside for the time being until it becomes relevant later.
Oblivious to Love: He's at least capable of telling that Takamiya is trying to force him to become her boyfriend (and really would rather not), but he's dense to things like Sayaka blatantly having feelings for him or the exact nature of Takamiya's schemes. It does seem that at least part of it is because he only has eyes for Meimi, who is terribly difficult to read and is actively trying to cover up her own feelings. Ultimately, it's subverted; it takes a ridiculously long time and some prompting from Maju, but he does actually figure it out before Meimi is ever able to tell him and even apologizes to her about it.
Old Shame: A manga bonus chapter has him and Meimi go to see a heavily romantic movie that invokes I Will Find You as a trope, which reminds both him and Meimi of his actions saying something similar when hunting Saint Tail down. Meimi thinks of it as a sign of how passionate he used to be about finding Saint Tail, but he finds his past arrogance to be so cringeworthy that he pretends to sleep through the movie.
The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: He tells Saint Tail early on that he doesn't like the idea of anyone else catching her, and at the time it's just out of his fear of ending up with another failure on his record. Once he starts catching onto the idea Saint Tail might actually be Meimi, it becomes less this and more a fixation with making sure nobody does anything to hurt her before he can at least figure out what's going on.
Paralysis by Analysis: He can still do short-term Awesomeness by Analysis for his detective work, but he otherwise dislikes the idea of thinking too hard about things and prefers to act purely on instinct, reasoning that overthinking things would mess up his thinking process compared to just focusing on the main goal at hand. This is the main reason he approaches the issue of Meimi being Saint Tail with Selective Obliviousness and stakes everything on catching her, since that's at least a guaranteed way to get an answer. Sawatari is displeased to find out that Asuka Jr. won't even take questions like "how to make a girl happy" consciously into account because he's so dependent on his instinct.
Plausible Deniability: Meimi has a bandage right where Saint Tail got a small wound on her face? Probably a coincidence. A mirror shows Meimi in Saint Tail's reflection? Well, that's pretty unscientific, he was probably seeing things. Saint Tail brings out the exact same flowers Meimi asked him about earlier? Could be another coincidence. Meimi has a hedgehog that looks suspiciously like the one Saint Tail rescued? She says it's a stuffed animal that just happens to look like her. The part where he hits an Oh, Crap! is when he starts sensing that she even gives off a similar aura when he's in her presence.
Pragmatic Hero: His bluntness comes from the fact he doesn't care for anything he perceives as platitudes or too symbolic, ranging from holidays to conspicuous romantic gestures to magic tricks or fortune-telling. While this makes him a bit of a killjoy, it also makes him very good at seeing through Saint Tail's illusions, and the fact he doesn't get distracted by arbitrary psychological factors is how he manages to completely bypass the Secret-Identity Identity problem.
Pretty Boy: As Meimi starts finding him to be more attractive (and once Art Evolution sets in), the manga will occasionally drop its pseudo-Super-Deformed style to reveal he's actually quite the pretty boy◊.
Private Detective: His eventual career in the epilogue, taking up the job of helping the town that Saint Tail had once done, but without the secrecy or isolation.
Real Men Cook: It's apparently his hobby, and it's implied he does the household cooking due to having a Missing Mom; one of Saint Tail's calling cards shows up in an egg when he's cooking breakfast for his father in the morning, and the anime has one show up on a package of his favorite hanpen while he's out shopping for oden ingredients.
Say My Name: Lets out a dramatic "HANEOKAAAAAAAA!!" at the end of the series when she's revealed as Saint Tail's true identity, and twice during a manga bonus chapter when he's yelling at her in a crowd, all of which are rendered in gigantic letters within their respective manga panels.
Secret Chaser: Once he starts suspecting that Saint Tail is actually Meimi, he becomes determined to figure out whether this is the case out of concern for her, but because he's unsure about what she thinks of him, he's unable to ask about it directly, and his attempts to use indirect methods only end up making it worse. Eventually, it takes the Arc Villain's forcible intervention to work things out.
Secret Identity Apathy: Downplayed; he's still very interested in Saint Tail's identity, but it's more in an intellectual curiosity sense, because (as he tells Takamiya) her identity won't change the fact that he wants to catch her. This still holds even after he starts suspecting her to be Meimi, albeit because "identity" and "catch" end up taking very different meanings.
Selective Obliviousness: His "relying on instinct" policy means he puts anything that would be uncomfortable or confusing to think about in the back of his head and focuses on the immediate task at hand, and he really doesn't want to think about Meimi potentially being Saint Tail because of the uncomfortable questions it would bring up, so his way of coping with it is by falling back on any excuse to not believe it for as long as he can. It doesn't stop the question from influencing his behavior anyway, but it at least allows him to stall until he gets the answer on his own terms. The main reason he's so upset at Rosemary revealing Saint Tail's identity to him isn't because of her identity in itself, but that she'd forced it in his face at a time he wasn't emotionally prepared to deal with it.
Single-Target Sexuality: Meimi legitimately seems to be the only girl he's ever been interested in, and part of the reason he's so dismissive in regards to romantic matters is that he just isn't interested unless it involves Meimi. Part of Asuka Jr.'s Green-Eyed Epiphany is the realization that his possessiveness regarding the Saint Tail chase had escalated into a completely different direction the moment he'd started seeing her as Meimi.
Snow Means Love: He's represented by the "snow" in the flower-and-snow Creation Myth, with "a single white flower offering the snow its color when every other flower rejected it for being too cold" referring to Meimi/Saint Tail reaching out to him when everyone else treated him like a social outcast. On top of their promise in chapter 4 taking place on a snowy night, certain panels in the manga's second half related to his feelings for Meimi have snow in the background to drive the point in further.
Sour Outside, Sad Inside: He's fully aware of his Hair-Trigger Temper problem, but he wants to be a Nice Guy and is secretly distressed about his bad relationship with Meimi. Saint Tail recognizing his Hidden Heart of Gold and agreeing to always send him calling cards gets to be more comfortable about the idea that things might improve, and his temper issues significantly mellow out once he's actually able to dedicate his energy to helping Meimi instead of lashing out at her.
Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist: As far as the first half of the manga and approximately the first 16 episodes of the anime are concerned, he's only the antagonist on a technicality because him "catching" Saint Tail would mean getting her arrested; in practice, the various individual villains of each case are Saint Tail's real enemies, with Asuka Jr. closer to being The Rival. He loses the "antagonist" status and becomes the Deuteragonist after that, since it turns out that he's in favor of Meimi's well-being while being Saint Tail starts ruining her mental health; once Meimi "running away" from him is redefined as "emotionally blocking him out", the idea of "the detective catching the thief" becomes a very good thing.
Take Up My Sword: In exchange for Meimi retiring from being Saint Tail at the end of the series, he becomes a Private Detective specifically so her efforts to protect the city won't be in vain.
To Be Lawful or Good: He starts off firmly on the Lawful side at the beginning of the series, respecting Saint Tail's altruistic motives but condemning her as a thief. Over time, he realizes that she's actually helping genuinely desperate people who may not have gotten that help otherwise, resulting in him becoming more hesitant about whether what she's doing is all that wrong. Eventually, he becomes a Private Detective who's implied to use Seira's tips as leads to work alongside but separately from the police, and he fully acknowledges Saint Tail as someone who worked to protect the city.
Tsundere: Played with. He acts like he's not interested in Meimi, but it's only because he's convinced she dislikes him and is afraid of getting a hostile response if he's too open about it; in actuality, he does want her to know that he's worried about her, and he gets better at figuring out how to convey this through his social awkwardness as the series goes on.
Unwanted Assistance: Beyond the fact he doesn't want anyone else to be the one to catch Saint Tail, he also finds Takamiya's presence on investigations and extreme methods to be intrusive and Sawatari to be annoying, so he's willing to withhold information or even lie to keep them out of the way.
Unwanted Harem: Besides Meimi, he's got Sayaka (a girl Saint Tail helps in an early chapter/episode) and Takamiya, but he finds both of them to be annoying, and Meimi's the only one he has eyes for.
Unknowingly in Love: Since he has difficulty understanding romance and usually acts on instinct instead of consciously considering his own feelings, he has difficulty realizing that his growing investment in Meimi's welfare and happiness is love; for all he understands, he just cares about her as a decent human being should, and it doesn't help that it really is rather ambiguous as to when exactly the turning point was (he clearly had some interest in her approval from the start, but it's not until chapter/episode 9 when he first starts thinking about protecting her from harm and chapter/episode 13 when he starts consciously thinking about their relationship). What gets him to distinguish "caring about her" and "being in love with her" is the Green-Eyed Epiphany aspect of not wanting anyone to take her away from him; once he does figure it out, he doesn't even waste time in properly giving her a Love Confession.
What You Are in the Dark: He believes Meimi dislikes him or is at least putting up with him, and he's worried that she might reject his help if she finds out that he's going out of his way for her, so he doesn't tell her about everything he does for her sake. This ends up being a problem because Meimi does have feelings for him, but his lack of clarity about his intentions means that she ends up misinterpreting or failing to notice the signs that he actually likes her back, and by the time he is clear, Meimi is too far detached from reality to parse it properly.
Worthy Opponent: He was willing to defend Saint Tail's honor and good motives even from the get-go, even while believing that she needs to be arrested. Once he realizes that Saint Tail might actually be Meimi, the actual reason becomes a matter of figuring out what's going on while preventing others from potentially hurting her, but Meimi continues to assume that he sees her as some kind of rival until the end.

Seira Mimori

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/mimori_seira_habit.png

^{Click to see her without her habit (anime)}
^{Click to see manga art (with habit)}
^{Click to see manga art (without habit)}

Voiced by: Kikuko Inoue (JP), Anjuli Cain (EN)

Meimi's best friend and accomplice (or perhaps more accurately mastermind) in the whole Saint Tail thing. A nun-in-training, she uses her position to learn about people's troubles during confessionals and pass the information onto Meimi, who then finds a way to help them as Saint Tail.

Adaptation Dye-Job: Colored manga illustrations depict her with purple hair and blue eyes, but the anime gives her brown hair and purple eyes.
A Day in the Limelight: The manga bonus chapter with her and Sawatari serves as this for her, going into her restricted life as a nun-in-training, her own feelings about romance, and ultimately the reveal that her Manipulative Bastard behavior comes from her being terrified of making big upheavals to her own life more than her job as a nun.
Armor-Piercing Question: She's very good at well-timed remarks that cut right to the chase and call Meimi out regarding anything she's not quite ready to admit at the moment.
Meimi: If they're making a bet like that, I sure don't feel like getting caught now!
Seira: Oh, so you were interested in being caught before then?
Cassandra Truth: When Meimi and Asuka Jr. make a deal that he'll help her study for an exam if she treats him to a baseball game, Seira points out that he'd technically asked her out on a date, but Meimi is too Tsundere to acknowledge that she's seeing it that way and tries to claim that he's blackmailing her. In actuality, Seira is more on the mark than even Meimi thinks, because Asuka Jr. also happens to be suspiciously excited about hanging out with her to a degree that doesn't look like it's just from her paying for it...
Celibate Hero: Since she's a nun-in-training, she can't get in any relationships, referred to by fellow students as "having given up her youth to God". She even cracks a joke about it when she temporarily puts on a wedding dress as part of disguising herself as Meimi. Sawatari eventually realizes the hard way that there's probably nothing he can do about her celibacy, but he decides to at least take her out on a date and give her the opportunity to do things she couldn't before, and she's happy that he's willing to go out of his way for her in a way he wouldn't for other girls.
Christmas Every Day: An unusual abstract variant that frames the concept in a positive light. In their manga bonus chapter, Sawatari takes Seira to a planetarium show that points out that if you took the Bible's description of the Star of Bethlehem at face value, Christmas wouldn't even be in December anyway. Sawatari takes this to mean that any day when one thinks of God could easily be Christmas, and thus that for Seira, Christmas might as well be every day. His intent in doing this is not to dilute Christmas for her, but to get her to understand that she can approach her life more flexibly and enjoyably without necessarily breaking her faith.
The Confidant: Due to Meimi's position as Saint Tail requiring her to keep secrets she can't tell her classmates and family, Seira is often the only one she can discuss things with whenever it comes to her work as Saint Tail and Asuka Jr.'s role in the situation. At times, Seira herself has to be the one to call Meimi out when she's not being honest about her feelings.
Creature of Habit: The bonus chapter focusing on her reveals that this is the main reason she has a much more restricted life than she's actually expected to have; having lived her entire life in the same exact way, she'd convinced herself that if it had worked for her up until then, she should keep doing it. Sawatari gets her to consider being more flexible and taking more risks instead of avoiding anything that intimidates her.
Good Shepherd: Subverted: she's a nun-in-training who does her best to help others, console them that The Lord will help and guide them, encourage them when they need a confidence-boost... and then violate the confessional secret to let have Saint Tail do something about it. She even refers to the people they help as "lost lambs".
Inconvenient Attraction: It's subtly implied her apparent Oblivious to Love nature regarding Sawatari is actually Selective Obliviousness and that she's trying to keep a lid on any potential feelings she might have for him in return, because she knows her celibacy means it's never going to work out. She does realize she would like it to at least be a Pseudo-Romantic Friendship, and ultimately her relationship with him ends on that note.
Instant Sedation: She can prepare "perfumes" with this effect that prove useful during Saint Tail's capers, and based on Meimi's comment about it, she seems to have a hobby of making "shady perfumes" like this. In the manga, it was the first thing Saint Tail used to prevent Asuka Jr. from learning her identity, and its effect is short enough for him to get back up quickly (but long enough for her to escape).
Manipulative Bastard: She can be uncannily manipulative into getting what she wants, since she's used to keeping up appearances as a nun and thus has a tendency to rope others into doing her dirty work. She got Meimi to become Saint Tail by exploiting her weakness of wanting to show people her magic, she often manages to induce Meimi to do things against her initial protests via Reverse Psychology, and she can get other people to do things for her by saying the right things, all with a smile on her face and brushing it off by saying it's "all according to God's will".
Meaningful Name: Her name "Seira" (聖良) is written with the kanji for "holy" and "goodness".
Mission Control: She provides this role for Meimi, giving her details on the next victim they need to help and occasionally providing advice or even direct assistance. She's also uncannily good at getting information besides just the confessional tips, researching information whenever Meimi needs it or picking up on gossip around town, and she can even obtain leaked info about the police's plans to stop Saint Tail so that she can avoid their traps.
Mission from God: This is her rationale for having Meimi become Saint Tail. She does seem to genuinely believe it and prays for Saint Tail's safety during every caper, although the fact she manipulated Meimi into it to begin with brings this into question. The events of the manga bonus chapter surrounding her and Sawatari get her to finally internalize the fact that God never asked her to do any of this, and that she can work past her self-imposed restrictions without having to forsake her religious devotion.
Naughty Nuns: Defied: no matter what, she can't get into any relationships even if she wants to, but Sawatari decides he can at least give her the kind of good experience a boyfriend would even if they can't be in a relationship. The end of the final bonus chapter in the manga also implies that his own Immoral Journalist tendencies are still a huge factor in dissuading her from entertaining him too much.
Nice Girl: She really is kind and compassionate, and the whole Saint Tail thing started because she genuinely did want to help the "lost lambs", even if her methods are less than savory. Also, despite the fact she'd manipulated Meimi into becoming Saint Tail, she does take responsibility, plans to share any punishment Meimi has to take if she gets caught, is fine with enabling her relationship with someone charged with arresting her despite this, and starts advising her to consider quitting when it starts taking a severe toll on her personal life. She's also the only named character who genuinely likes Sawatari and sees him as a Nice Guy, even when others warn her that he might be exploiting her for an article.
Not So Above It All: She's usually graceful and polite, but she's still capable of being playful when helping Saint Tail on her capers and even entertains the idea of being "Saint Seira" at one point. The anime also has a moment with her that makes even Takamiya come off as an Only Sane Woman.
Nuns Are Mikos: Tachikawa learned very early into producing the manga that nuns aren't actually supposed to wear the veils when they're still in training, but by that point the only thing she could do was just ask the audience to roll with it.
Nun Too Holy: For starters, Saint Tail was her idea, which came out of her functionally exploiting Meimi's weaknesses regarding wanting to show people her magic. Then there's her doing things like knowingly aiding and abetting a thief, violating confessional secrets, or mooching off Meimi for food because a nun on duty can't buy snacks but having a friend sharing with her is okay. A manga bonus chapter reveals that this behavior is actually because she's too devout; more specifically, she'd convinced herself that her Mission from God forbade her from doing certain things, meaning her more morally questionable actions come from her trying to work around those restrictions instead of being more reasonable about how she approached her devotion.
Oblivious to Love: She's technically more receptive to Sawatari than Meimi is, but whether she's actually oblivious to his feelings or whether she's just mentally blocking it out due to her mandated celibacy is left ambiguous; at the very least, she certainly acts the part of having it go over her head. Once he takes her out on a date, she does start wanting to believe that he actually did it for her specifically and not just out of being a Nice Guy, but her doubts make her momentarily consider if him saying he has "a girl he likes" actually refers to someone else.
Only Sane Woman: Compared to Meimi, she's much more level-headed, and part of her job as Mission Control for Saint Tail is berating her when she's doing something out of hand. She's also capable of actually catching all of the signs of Asuka Jr. and Meimi falling for each other that both of them completely miss.
Pseudo-Romantic Friendship: She tries to ignore the idea of being in a romantic relationship herself, but she does start feeling a little sad when she thinks Sawatari might not have really thought of her as anything special when he'd approached her, and is happy to form a good relationship with him that stops just short of being a full-on romantic one.
Rightly Self-Righteous: She arbitrarily decides things for herself and passes it off as "the will of the Lord", but they're regarding things like "stopping fights in the classroom", and while she's the one who got Meimi to become Saint Tail instead of it actually being a real Mission from God, she genuinely believes that they're doing God's work even if they were never asked to do it. Unfortunately, while she's well-intentioned, her actions do often make things worse as much as they make things better, because as soon as the situation gets inconvenient for her, she'll suddenly stay out of it and let the problem escalate in the background. The events of her manga bonus chapter with Sawatari get her to reconsider doing this kind of thing just because she'd convinced herself this was the only way to do it.
Secret-Keeper: She's the one who witnessed Meimi doing stage magic even before she became Saint Tail, and she also is this for Meimi being Saint Tail by virtue of being her Mission Control. One of the reasons Meimi has to be careful about not getting caught by the police is that if she gets caught, Seira will be implicated as well.
Selective Obliviousness: She takes Sawatari's flirting in stride, but on top of her not actually taking it seriously because he knows he'll easily do it with other girls too, it's implied that it's at least partially out of her blocking any idea of a romantic relationship out of her head and not allowing her mind to go there.
Shipper on Deck: She catches onto something going on between Meimi and Asuka Jr. before either of them are willing to admit it, even to the point of noticing everything that's going over both of their heads, and (short of actually telling them about it) she does whatever she can to enable the relationship. Once they finally get together, despite being the one who strong-armed Meimi into the phantom thief thing to begin with, she's quick to suggest that Meimi retire so that it won't damage their relationship too much; even when Meimi does come around to what'll be her potential One Last Job, Seira is more concerned about what it'll do to Meimi and Asuka Jr.'s relationship than any of the other potential consequences.
Unwitting Instigator of Doom: By the end of the series, once Seira suggests that Meimi stop working as Saint Tail, it's implied that she'd realized she'd enabled Meimi's self-destructive tendencies until it was too late and offers to take her place as "Saint Seira" as a result.
Was It All a Lie?: After Sawatari takes her out on a date and treats her with tons of nice things she'd never gotten to have due to her restricted life as a nun-in-training, the other girls warn her that he may have been just exploiting her for a news article, and once he ends up ditching school the following day, they speculate that he'd immediately gone off with another girl. Seira tries to suppress her disappointment at the idea that he'd only been so kind to her out of being a Nice Guy in general and nothing more, but it turns out that he'd been ditching school because he was going out of his way to get a necklace she'd wanted.

Rina Takamiya

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/takamiya_rina.png

^{Click to see manga art}

Voiced by: Yuko Nagashima (JP), Brianne Siddall (EN)

A New Transfer Student who immediately decides to make Asuka Jr. her boyfriend and starts interfering in his attempts to catch Saint Tail, partially out of a sense of justice in wanting to catch her herself, but mostly because she hates the fact it takes Asuka Jr.'s attention from her.

Abhorrent Admirer: Especially so in the manga, where she constantly antagonizes Asuka Jr. so much that he usually wants to be as far away from her as possible. On top of that, the more she interferes with his goal of catching Saint Tail, the more he finds her to be a nuisance, and he's outright ecstatic when she drops out of the cases for a while. The fact she'd harassed Meimi doesn't help either, since he'd always been protective of her even before his feelings for her had started really escalating, and the only time he ever puts up with Takamiya for an extended period of time is specifically for Meimi's sake.
Adaptational Angst Upgrade: The anime version portraying her as having genuine feelings for Asuka Jr. means that her character arc has more shades of Love Hurts as it becomes increasingly obvious that he actually sees her as an Abhorrent Admirer.
Adaptational Nice Guy: In the original manga, she was an outright Hate Sink who treated Asuka Jr. like property she was entitled to and constantly threatened him with violence, and she wasn't shown to have any remorse at all over doing things like relishing in tormenting Saint Tail or stalking Meimi (to the point she would even giggle about it). The anime version portrays her as closer to a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, since she develops a genuine attraction to Asuka Jr. during her debut episode, genuinely seems to care for him, and shows signs of remorse or self-consciousness about her worse actions. Her trying to get Asuka Jr. off the case is portrayed as her being genuinely upset at how rudely he treats her despite that instead of simply her being possessive and controlling, and not only does she visibly have guilt over the whole thing, she also eventually admits that she knew her plan wasn't going to work.
Arc Villain: She serves as this for the first half of the manga, since her attempts to get in between Meimi/Saint Tail and Asuka Jr. cause problems for both of them, and she's effectively everything Asuka Jr. is most afraid of in terms of being out to humiliate him and threaten everything he cares about. She also returns to cause some brief trouble in the second half by trying to get Asuka Jr. removed off the case during the Swan caper (chapters 18-19/episodes 28-29), although she doesn't have much influence on its events and is eventually forced to Know When to Fold 'Em.
The Artifact: Some of her traits are obvious holdovers from when she was originally planned to be half-Japanese, such as the blonde hair, the above-average height, and the fact she has an Odd Name Out (she's the only character to have a given name in katakana instead of kanji, and the name "Rina" is one that could feasibly be non-Japanese). According to Tachikawa, even after that part of her background was scrapped, she was still too attached to the part about her being taller than Asuka Jr. and refused to change it.
Break the Haughty: Twice. First, she hits a Heroic BSoD when Saint Tail makes her believe she's actually a man Disguised in Drag, and later, her attempt at yanking Asuka Jr. off the Saint Tail cases ends so disastrously that she's finally convinced to let the whole thing go. Notably, the latter case gets her to become much less selfish and overbearing overall, with her channeling most of her prior aggressiveness into hounding Sawatari for somewhat more legitimate reasons.
Cassandra Truth: She's absolutely correct about Meimi being Saint Tail, but Asuka Jr. is so certain she must be wrong (or perhaps trying to convince himself she is) that he even accepts her wager about it, ironically in the hopes of protecting Meimi from her. She's also not wrong about Asuka Jr. starting to have doubts about arresting Saint Tail, because he'd started to realize that he doesn't entirely disagree with what she's doing anymore and also has to worry about her potentially being Meimi on top of that. He still intends on catching her himself, but by this point it's more for personal reasons than it is upholding the law, and the "test" that was supposed to prove his intent to catch her had actually involved him secretly letting her go as part of an Enemy Mine agreement.
Cherry Blossom Girl: An ironic variant: her introductory chapter/episode involves a painting with a cherry blossom theme, and her later scheme involves a sculpture that comes from the town of Sakuraoka. While Seira warns of her appearance being a bad omen, her attempts at getting between Meimi and Asuka Jr. end up enabling their relationship even further.
Clingy Jealous Girl: Literally so; on top of being possessive, she likes to assert dominance by physically clinging to and smothering Asuka Jr. to the point that it ends up being Meimi's main complaint about her. Her aggressiveness in pursuing him escalates sharply once she starts seeing Saint Tail as a rival for his affections, and it only escalates further when she sees him being mesmerized by Meimi in a wedding dress. Saint Tail tricking her into believing she's actually an adult man Disguised in Drag gets her to lay off the Saint Tail chase and Meimi for a bit, but she eventually decides to try again when he hits his growth spurt, feeling that she's going to have more competition soon and believing the Saint Tail chase to be too much of a "distraction" for him to pay attention to her. In the end, she only ends up conceding because Asuka Jr. formally dating Meimi means that Takamiya legitimately has no other choice.
Disc-One Final Boss: In the manga, she serves as the main Arc Villain who induces the first major step in Asuka Jr.'s Character Development prior to the story switching over to his side in the second half. She serves less of an overall role in his character story in the anime due to the addition of Filler relegating it to less than the first third of the series, but she still serves as one of the only true wide-spanning antagonists in the narrative.
Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: Averted when it comes to Asuka Jr., especially in the manga: he's rightfully terrified of her penchant for violence, and him escaping the consequences of his bet with her is just as much preventing him from having to become her romantic slave as it is keeping Saint Tail's identity a secret. (She herself seems to buy into the double standard in-universe, since both the manga and the anime involve her making a joke about Asuka Jr.'s masculinity at some point.) It's arguable that it may be played straight when it comes to making Sawatari into her punching bag, but that's less about her being a girl and more about him being a Karmic Butt-Monkey in general, since it's at worst Disproportionate Retribution for him being on legitimately bad behavior again.
Entitled to Have You: Her attitude towards getting Asuka Jr.'s affections is that he should automatically date her if she just puts herself into the right position for it and removes all potential distractions, and not once does she consider the fact that he finds her off-putting and would be very unlikely to return her feelings even if Saint Tail or Meimi weren't involved; in her mind, all she has to do is force him to date her.
Fair Cop: She becomes one in the epilogue eight years later. She's apparently working alongside Asuka in order to help him with his cases as a Private Detective, although she complains about him getting the credit for it.
Foil: She serves as one to Meimi in terms of being a rival for Asuka Jr.'s affections, being upfront and assertive about trying to get his attention but treating him like property, while Meimi is reserved and uses roundabout ways to communicate with him but actually values him as a person. They're also direct opposites in their stances on To Be Lawful or Good, with Takamiya believing that the ends justify the means in upholding the law to an extent that even Asuka Jr. finds to be extreme, while Meimi is a vigilante hero who repeatedly runs afoul of the law to help people in need.
Graceful Loser: She takes the realization very hard, but once it becomes clear enough that Asuka Jr. is far too devoted to the Saint Tail chase to ever be dissuaded, she eventually comes around and accepts it. She's obviously upset when he ends up dating Meimi and still has to punch Sawatari as catharsis, but she decides to maintain her pride about it and doesn't begrudge Meimi, even taking a somewhat encouraging stance with her.
Hate Sink: Tachikawa had been expecting her to take this role when she first appeared, but even she was surprised at how well it worked to the point of receiving tons of fan mail expressing dislike for her. Perhaps in an attempt to soften this, later chapters and the anime have scenes that show her in a somewhat more sympathetic or endearing light.
Hoist by His Own Petard: Despite her attempts at keeping Asuka Jr. away from Meimi/Saint Tail, her schemes end up helping them realize their feelings for each other in the long run, to the point she even gets repeated cherry blossom associations just to drive in the irony further:
- Her use of tear gas on Saint Tail results in Meimi becoming even more aware of Asuka Jr.'s Hidden Heart of Gold when he steps in to protect her, and also serves as a backdrop for why "catching her before anyone else does" eventually gets converted into a Declaration of Protection for him (because it gets him to realize that anyone else could easily do something more inhumane to Saint Tail than he would).
- Her attempt to hijack the baseball game "date" Asuka Jr. had set up with Meimi results in Meimi finally getting pushed over the edge into a Green-Eyed Epiphany.
- Her threatening Meimi and forcing Asuka Jr. into a "bet" over it gets him to realize that he cares more about protecting Meimi than he does about the Saint Tail chase or his Inferiority Superiority Complex, then later results in the meeting between him and Saint Tail that gets the latter to make her "I want to be caught by you" statement that becomes important to conveying her feelings in the finale.
- Her attempt at getting Asuka Jr. permanently taken off the Saint Tail chase ends up being the key factor in him finally accepting his Green-Eyed Epiphany; prior to then, he'd been in Suspiciously Specific Denial about being jealous or possessive over Meimi (implied to be out of self-consciousness from not wanting to be a Crazy Jealous Guy over someone he believed had the right to hate him), but the threat of "someone who's not him" getting to catch Saint Tail is so distasteful to him that it gets him to realize that wanting Meimi for himself comes from the same feeling of not trusting anyone else with her.
Hopeless Suitor: Even putting aside the fact he already found her to be overbearing from the day they met, Asuka Jr. is just too obviously in favor of Meimi and too deeply hooked into the Saint Tail chase for Takamiya to ever have a chance at his heart.
Huge Schoolgirl: She has the height, with Sawatari being the only one in the class to be taller than her when she first enrolls, and enough self-esteem to advertise her height as a charm point. When she first meets Asuka Jr., she enjoys teasing him about him being short and has a bit of a shock when he hits his growth spurt and actually becomes taller than her.
Hypocritical Humor: When two cops try to seize her as a potential suspect, she punches them out and accuses them of being perverts, yet she shamelessly smothers Asuka Jr. in suffocating hugs and completely ignores his protests of being uncomfortable.
I Gave My Word: After she (supposedly) loses her bet with Asuka Jr., she does actually keep her promise to leave Meimi alone and stops directly harassing her, choosing more roundabout ways to try and distract his attention from chasing Saint Tail instead.
It's All About Me: She has enough confidence to submit herself to the same idol recruitment campaign Sawatari had submitted Meimi's photos to, and she's outright offended when Asuka Jr. isn't interested in attending her idol audition just because she believes he should care about a "potential idol" being in front of him instead of the Saint Tail chase (when in fact Asuka Jr. does not want to see the girl he likes becoming an idol, because it'd mean she'd leave him behind for a much harder life).
I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: In the anime version of the Swan caper, she's obviously conflicted about trying to forcibly take Asuka Jr. away from something he cares about. She eventually admits that she knew all too well that this wasn't going to work out, and while she still doesn't completely give up on him after that, she cuts out the Entitled to Have You behavior and eventually accepts her position as a Graceful Loser once he starts dating Meimi.
Jerkass Has a Point: She uses Sawatari as a punching bag, especially to vent her frustration with Asuka Jr. picking Meimi over her, but part of it is because he really does do things that warrant it.
Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She's this in the anime due to her being portrayed as genuinely respectful of Asuka Jr. and self-conscious about her worse actions, and episode 25 even has her care about helping Asuka Jr. to the point she even advocates on his behalf to get him back on the Saint Tail case when a "super detective" tries to replace him (albeit at a time when she also wasn't worrying about Saint Tail being "competition"). It's also implied that her aggressiveness towards him comes from her resentment over him picking some very insensitive ways to ignore her.
Know When to Fold 'Em: Morinaka advises her that Asuka Jr.'s dedication to the Saint Tail chase is so strong that there's just no point in trying to get him off it, and while she does need to have a hard cry over it, she takes his advice and never presses the issue again.
Love Interest vs. Lust Interest: In the manga, Takamiya decides she's going to "flirt" with him the moment she lays eyes on him and tries to claim him by forcing herself into all of his affairs and bossing him around, with the implication being that she "likes" him in the sense of toying around with him due to his lack of a spine. Naturally, Meimi, who's constantly trying to accommodate Asuka Jr.'s happiness behind the scenes, quietly resents Takamiya's behavior but can't bring herself to do much about it besides try not to fall behind. As the series goes on, Takamiya does show signs of legitimately developing feelings for him, but she still continues trying to pursue her affections by force and ultimately has to Know When to Fold 'Em when it turns out he'd Grew a Spine to the point she can't do anything to him anymore.
Meaningful Name: "Takamiya" isn't a particularly uncommon name, but the fact it has the kanji for "tall" (高) in it certainly goes along well with her biggest pride point.
Megaton Punch: Are you in her way? Are you Sawatari doing something that irks her sense of justice? She'll send you flying, no matter who you are. In fact, her first victims were two cops.
Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: It's her Armor-Piercing Question about wanting Asuka Jr. to be clearer about what his current relationship with Meimi is that ends up making him so conscious about how little he knows about her, which ends up being a key factor in him becoming more aware of his feelings for her and immediately becoming obsessed with catching Saint Tail to "clear up" her identity.
Nothing Personal: Her hostility towards Meimi is strictly to do with Meimi's position as a rival for Asuka Jr.'s affections and a plausible candidate for Saint Tail's true identity, but once the identity part is (seemingly) disproven and Meimi and Asuka Jr. get together, thus leaving Takamiya no choice but to accept the loss for good, Takamiya is quite civil and even supportive towards her.
Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: She believes that the ends justify the means in order to enact justice, meaning she's willing to do things like whip out tear gas in a room she knows Asuka Jr. is also in to get what she needs done, and the fact she's willing to do something like this is what converts "catching Saint Tail before anyone else does" into a Declaration of Protection for him. She does genuinely believe she's doing the right thing, but what keeps her from being an actual Well-Intentioned Extremist is that she'll still prioritize her own self-centered goals if need be.
Overshadowed by Awesome: Despite being a middle school student, she's already more competent than most cops, and the anime even has her fight a "super detective" on equal terms. It's just that Saint Tail is too clever for her, and Asuka Jr. is too determined to have this to himself to let her get a word in.
Property of Love: Mainly in the manga, where she decides that she wants to flirt with Asuka Jr. the moment she meets him while constantly making fun of him for his height and treating him like a child or a pet. The fact she feels automatically entitled to his affections despite him indicating multiple times that he finds her to be overbearing and annoying implies that she doesn't actually have much regard for him as a person to begin with, and that she doesn't really like him as much as she likes having someone she can control and force to do her bidding.
The Rival: She immediately establishes herself as a rival for Asuka Jr.'s affections, both against Meimi (whom she identifies as Saint Tail early) and Saint Tail (whom she considers to be a distracion for Asuka Jr.'s attention). Aside from the love rivalry, both Asuka Jr. and Meimi are concerned about the possibility of Takamiya catching and exposing Saint Tail, because only Asuka Jr. gets to do that.
Romantic False Lead: She doesn't quite make it to the trope because Asuka Jr. is unlikely to return her feelings no matter what she does, and the manga makes it especially clear that he's annoyed and turned off by her advances whenever he does recognize one of her attempts, but her scheming to get in between him and Saint Tail proves to be a legitimate threat to their ability to use their meetings for their Foe Romance Subtext.
Satellite Character: She's mostly this in the manga, with nearly every single one of her appearances tying into her being a Clingy Jealous Girl over Asuka Jr. and plotting to get him to date her again. The anime softens this by giving her more scenes that aren't exclusively tied to him, and also doesn't portray her as instantly clamoring for his affections off the bat like she was in the manga (where she'd claimed that the only reason she didn't flirt with him on the spot was that she'd mistaken him for a younger kid).
Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: As the niece of the mayor, Takamiya has permission to intrude in the Saint Tail investigation despite not having any other police connections. She also uses her influence on her uncle to almost get Asuka Jr. off the case, and at one point in the anime tries to get him back on the case.
Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: She has a tendency to punch her way into any situation where there's a crime, and she does legitimately believe that Saint Tail is a thief who needs to be arrested (although the manga makes it apparent that her own selfish intentions still take obvious priority). In the anime, where she becomes more genuinely attracted to Asuka Jr. over time instead of instantly claiming him on the spot, her initial motive in chasing Saint Tail was that she was upset that the police couldn't catch her and wanted to take matters into her own hands.
Shipper on Deck: Not that she wants to ship them, but her behavior subtly suggests she knows deep down that Meimi is the one Asuka Jr. actually favors most and is annoyed at them being so ambiguous about it. When they do actually hook up, while she's still obviously trying to suppress her frustration over it, she comments that it took them long enough to get around to it anyway, and in a manga bonus chapter, she's a little exasperated when they get into a bit of a fight over the holiday.
Took a Level in Kindness: In the manga, after the events of the Swan caper, while she doesn't immediately stop being clingy with Asuka Jr., she noticeably tones it down and stops being so controlling with him. It's presumable her having to Know When to Fold 'Em got her to have a bit of a Heel Realization, since while she's still overly rough with Sawatari, she does start doing it out of a genuine interest in getting him to stop with his Immoral Journalist antics.
Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: In the anime, she's terrified of bagworms. Kyoko is surprised to see that she actually has something she's afraid of.

Manato Sawatari

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/sawatari_manato.png

^{Click to see manga art}

Voiced by: Toshiyuki Morikawa (JP), Jason Spisak (EN)

A classmate of Meimi and Asuka Jr., and a member of the school's journalism club. An infamous gossip and flirt, he's up-to-date on the latest trends, and falls in love with Meimi when she butters him up during planning for one of her capers.

A Day in the Limelight: One of the bonus chapters of the manga focuses on him and Seira, revealing that despite his penchant for sensationalism, he really is a selfless Nice Guy at heart when it comes down to it.
Attention Whore: Part of the reason he dislikes Asuka Jr. is that he "stands out" in the class more than him. Much of his Large Ham behavior comes from him trying to be a showoff.
Because You Were Nice to Me: He's interested in Meimi because she (seemingly) showed interest in his photography skills when most other girls are usually only into his appearance. He later takes an interest in Seira because she finds him to be an amusing person.
Casanova Wannabe: He's good at using romantic pick-up lines and showing off his looks, but his original love interest, Meimi, just isn't interested in him, and his attempts at flirting with her are uncomfortable for everyone in the vicinity to watch. While Seira is later more genuinely charmed by his flirting, the fact she's a nun makes a relationship impossible regardless.
The Charmer: He is actually more serious about Meimi and Seira than he is with most, but his previous reputation for acting this way plus the fact he fell for two girls at around the same time leaves both of them unable to take any of his advances seriously.
Crying Wolf: His Immoral Journalist nature ends up causing him a brief bit of trouble after he takes Seira out on a Christmas date and a few girls warn her that he might be exploiting her to make an article. In fact, he'd acted entirely with genuine intentions for her sake despite knowing he wasn't likely to get anything out of it.
Dogged Nice Guy: He genuinely admires Meimi, and he channels his adoration into taking photos that capture her beauty well so others can appreciate it too; the only problem is that he does it without really taking into account whether Meimi would want that. Later, he decides to act in Seira's genuine best interest even despite the fact he knows well it won't do much about his chances with her being legitimately impossible.
Foil: He's this to Asuka Jr. in that he's a social butterfly, falls in love easily, is a huge romanticist, and is open about his interest in Meimi but still does things to stroke his own ego more than he does anything for her, while Asuka Jr. is socially awkward, bad at understanding his own feelings, dislikes things he sees as symbolic platitudes, and is in serious denial that he's romantically in love with Meimi but is nevertheless utterly devoted to her well-being under the table. Meanwhile, Sawatari's sociality is offset by him being constantly eyed with suspicion by those around him due to his wishy-washyness and penchant for being an Immoral Journalist, whereas Asuka Jr.'s social awkwardness doesn't stop his peers from acknowledging his integrity (at least, when they're not making fun of him for his recent failures).
The Friend Nobody Likes: Downplayed; he does manage to get quite a few girls interested in his looks, and he's enough of a Nice Guy that people aren't always outright turned off by him, but his lack of integrity is well-known among the class, and his constant flirting with Meimi earns him the exasperation of surrounding students. Of the named cast, Seira seems to be the only one who actually genuinely likes him instead of just putting up with him.
Hopeless Suitor: He's not subtle about his affection for Meimi, and she's well aware that he's flirting with her, but by the time he'd started approaching her, she'd already devoted herself to Asuka Jr. (let alone the fact Sawatari was unlikely to be her type anyway). His later love interest Seira also unfortunately happens to be a nun who has to stay celibate, so a relationship is impossible no matter how much they like each other.
Ho Yay: In-universe: in a manga bonus chapter, he publishes a sensationalist article accusing the soccer team members of secretly being gay because they were hugging each other after a game, getting the rest of the student body (including Asuka Jr., who's currently already well into a relationship with Meimi) on edge about whether he's going to make similarly gossipy articles about them. Seira calls him out by pointing out that, by his logic, wrestlers would all be in romantic relationships too.
Hypocritical Humor: When Asuka Jr. catches onto the similarity between Meimi's "hedgehog plush" and Saint Tail's hedgehog, Sawatari tries to hold him back from pursuing the issue too aggressively by warning him "if you're too pushy with her, she'll start hating you." Asuka Jr., who had been spending the entire series agonizing over whether Meimi hates him or not, is not amused at hearing this from the person who'd been aggressively flirting in Meimi's face and making her uncomfortable over the last few chapters.
Immoral Journalist: He genuinely believes that sensationalism is a fundamental part of press, and he sees no problem with getting dangerously close to making things up wholesale or ruining others' reputations. His first appearance involves him being Saint Tail's target because he'd been willing to publish a photo against the subject's protests, and he takes out his grudge against Saint Tail by slandering her in his articles and accusing her of stealing things just because they're expensive-looking.
Intrepid Reporter: Attempts to be this, but his penchant for fabrication and willingness to just make things up wholesale makes him only mildly this at best. The Distant Finale implies that he's at least started using Asuka and Takamiya as direct sources of information.
Ironic Name: His name contains the kanji for "truth" (真), when his attitude towards press is anything but.
I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Once Meimi starts dating Asuka Jr., he's heartbroken but accepts it, and he later approaches Asuka Jr. for relationship advice in the hopes of learning what he does to make Meimi happy so he can do the same for Seira (whom he also has no chance at a relationship with, but still wants to do something nice for).
Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He's an Immoral Journalist when it comes to his newspaper work, and he's a little prideful about his photography skills, but he's otherwise just an overly enthusiastic and misguided Dogged Nice Guy at worst; with the girls he likes, he ultimately prioritizes their success over his actual chances of getting them to date him (although he certainly is disappointed if it doesn't work out). Asuka Jr. is actually pettier about him being a rival for Meimi's affections than the reverse.
Ladykiller in Love: He's had success getting girls interested in his looks, but he's not interested in anyone who only appreciates him for that, and he ends up in love with Meimi (and later Seira).
Likes Clark Kent, Hates Superman: He dislikes Saint Tail for having "humiliated" him and enjoys making articles that scapegoat her for things she didn't do or speculating about what she'll steal next, all while remaining blissfully unaware that Saint Tail is actually Meimi, the girl he's in love with.
Karmic Butt-Monkey: Whenever he starts rambling about something, people leave mid-speech as soon as he tells them what they need. Takamiya ends up getting in the habit of using him as a punching bag to vent her frustration after a certain point (and even a whole eight years later). Every time Meimi seems to show interest in him, she's actually stringing him along because she wants something out of him. Asuka Jr. even calls him a monkey whenever he annoys him, which is pretty much most of the time. Nevertheless, considering he's an Attention Whore Immoral Journalist, it's not like he doesn't do things that merit this kind of treatment, and Takamiya does eventually start reserving her punches specifically for when he's been on bad behavior again; even Seira, the one who treats him the most kindly and sees him as a Nice Guy, would really like it if he came around and repented for his more questionable actions, and she's not entirely above leaving him to his fate when he deserves it.
Takamiya: Huh. Somehow, punching this guy always makes me feel better.
Malicious Misnaming: Asuka Jr., who dislikes him for being an Attention Whore Immoral Journalist and a rival for Meimi's affections, likes to maliciously call him "Saruwatari" ("saru" meaning "monkey"). Takamiya later picks up on it as well.
Nice Guy: He's a shameless flirt, but he's specifically only interested in girls who can actually appreciate him as a person instead of his looks, and he genuinely admires the girls he likes and wants to show off how great they are. In fact, he actually does take the lesson about putting proper consideration into his Love Interest's feelings into account once Meimi ditches him for Asuka Jr.: he realizes very quickly that he has no chance with Seira because "the nice guy born on Christmas" is too much of a "rival" for him to even remotely have a chance at competing against, but once he learns that "devoting her youth to God" means she can't take part in fun activities with fellow students or even get Christmas presents, he's so genuinely distressed by this that he decides to take her out on a date so she can have fun and give her presents to make up for all the years she never got any. He even ends up skipping school to go out of his way and get a necklace she'd wanted, all just because he wanted to make her happy.
Paparazzi: He has a tendency to "embellish" his stories, and he's constantly on the hunt for anything he can make into a sensational article. It usually earns him quite a bit of irritation from Asuka Jr. and a Megaton Punch from Takamiya.
Pair the Spares: Played with: him slowly starting to take more of an interest in Seira right around the time Meimi and Asuka Jr.'s relationship starts really escalating has shades of this, but Seira being celibate means that it's doomed as a romantic relationship from the start. Nevertheless, he does actually have better luck in getting Seira's interest and having his feelings returned to some degree even if it ends up having to be a Pseudo-Romantic Friendship.
Romantic False Lead: He's not this from the audience's perspective since Meimi is clear about not being interested, but he starts becoming this from Asuka Jr.'s perspective when Meimi is seemingly receptive to his flirting and requests for dates. In actuality, Meimi only does this when she's trying to get something out of him, and has only been interested in Asuka Jr. from the start.
Serial Romeo: Downplayed: it's pointed out that he seems to treat Meimi in ways he'd never treated any other girl before, but it takes him very little to fall equally in love with Seira to the point he "can't choose" between them. He does still have enough attachment to Meimi that he's heartbroken when she starts dating Asuka Jr. instead, but he uses the opportunity to focus entirely on Seira despite knowing he can't be in a full relationship with her no matter what; his reputation for easily messing around with girls comes back to bite him when the other girls around Seira suspect that he'd dropped her for another girl shortly after their date, and Seira even believes it for a moment.
School Newspaper News Hound: He works for the journalism club, and while not much is known about whether it has the absurd production values usually associated with the trope, his obsession with getting a "scoop" means he's thoroughly well-researched in everything around Seika, and everyone at school is concerned about whether they'll be his next target for one of his sensationalist pieces.
Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: He and Asuka Jr. dislike each other, with Sawatari disliking Asuka Jr. for "standing out" more than him in class, while Asuka Jr. dislikes him for being an obnoxious Immoral Journalist who slanders others (especially his Worthy Opponent Saint Tail) and constantly flirts with Meimi. In fact, Asuka Jr. has a tendency to get unusually petty whenever it comes to Sawatari. Nevertheless, they're forced to put up with each other because Sawatari wants to make use of Asuka Jr.'s connections to the Saint Tail cases in order to get material for his articles, while Asuka Jr. wants to keep an eye on him because he's concerned about his articles or whether he'll succeed at taking Meimi away from him.
Unknown Rival: Asuka Jr. only barely registers as a potential romantic rival on Sawatari's radar, so he completely fails to realize that Meimi is just entertaining him when it's convenient for her. Once they actually become a couple, he's shocked because he really hadn't seen that one coming.
What Does She See in Him?: Prior to the school festival, he tries to hide his film in Asuka Jr.'s locker, figuring that someone like him would never have any girls who would be interested enough in him to want to remove the lock (based on a school ritual involving boys giving their locks to the girls they want to dance with). He's immediately confronted by one such girl (Takamiya), and the lock is eventually removed by another (Meimi as Saint Tail, who ends up pulling off the rest of the ritual).

Friends and family

Ruby

^{Click to see manga art}

Voiced by: Satomi Koorogi (JP), Brianne Siddall (EN)

Meimi's pet hedgehog, whose previous owner was arrested for stealing a diamond and making Ruby eat it.

Adaptation Dye-Job: Colored manga art depicts her as somewhat of a bright yellow color, but it's made into a darker brown used in the anime. Like Saint Tail's outfit, her ribbon also goes from pure black to red.
Adaptational Early Appearance: She originally didn't appear until a little under halfway into the manga's run, but the anime introduces her as early as episode 3 for the sake of having a marketable mascot a little earlier.
A Day in the Limelight: Her debut chapter/episode is naturally focused on her, such as bonding with Meimi and being the hiding place for a jewel.
Animal Metaphor: While Ruby already roughly corresponded to representing the bond between Meimi and Asuka Jr. due to the circumstances of their meeting (Meimi had gone to see her every day, resulting in Ruby trusting her enough to let Meimi touch her), the anime takes it to another level by adding a subplot about Meimi being the only one to recognize Ruby's loneliness when nobody else would, meaning that her feelings towards Meimi serve as a good rough approximation of how Asuka Jr. feels about her at the moment. As an example, episode 25, the first episode where Asuka Jr. has to seriously confront the idea of someone taking the Saint Tail case away from him, is also the episode where Ruby gets so worried about Meimi going off on her caper that she follows her all the way there, and both of them end up saving Saint Tail just by managing to be able to interfere at all.
Ascended Extra: Even after her introduction in the manga, she wasn't able to participate in most of Meimi's capers and mostly appeared just for background flavor whenever Meimi changed into Saint Tail, but the anime introduces her earlier and consistently has her appear in many a Funny Background Event or during her home life scenes.
Because You Were Nice to Me: Since Meimi had gone to visit her in the pet shop every day, she's comfortable enough around Meimi to let down her spines and let Meimi cuddle her, which proves helpful in her debut caper when Saint Tail is able to carry her around long enough to sneeze out the jewel that she needed (with the situation being implied to be an allegory for Meimi and Asuka Jr.'s relationship of trust built from similar circumstances). The anime has her bond with Meimi when she's still in the pet shop to the point the shop owner says that Meimi is the only one she's ever warmed up to.
Toy Disguise: When Sawatari catches a photo of Meimi playing with Ruby, Asuka Jr. recognizes it as the hedgehog Saint Tail had rescued earlier, requiring Seira to make a quick cover-up by claiming that she's actually a plush. Coincidentally, a nearby store happens to be selling plushes that look exactly like Ruby... except they're sold out, so Meimi has to get Ruby to pose as a plush and claim that she bought one beforehand. Ruby is well-behaved enough to pull it off, and since the plushes have music boxes in their stuffing, Meimi tops off the act by using the music box she'd just stolen as Saint Tail and hidden in her bag; Asuka Jr. isn't entirely convinced, but it's enough Plausible Deniability for him to not have to think about it for a little longer.
Early Installment Character-Design Difference: Her first appearance in the manga depicts her as looking close to a real hedgehog, but by the following chapter, her appearance is closer to the cartoonish one used for the rest of the series.
Meaningful Name: The name "Ruby" comes from the fact the gemstone in the engagement ring Genichiro gave Eimi was a ruby, which, other than its symbolic meaning to Meimi, assists greatly in triggering her parents' Sickeningly Sweethearts behavior to the point they cave easily to letting Meimi keep her without resistance. Eventually, something similar happens with Meimi and Asuka Jr. when Ruby herself is instrumental in bridging the gap between them and helping them reunite.
Nearly Normal Animal: Of the Largely Normal Animal variety: for all intents and purposes, she seems to be a completely normal hedgehog, but she's smart enough to follow what's going around her and directly assist Saint Tail in her capers. When Meimi needs her to act like a plush toy, she behaves perfectly well other than falling victim to a short sneezing fit, and she even helps deliver a Calling Card for her at one point.
Non-Human Sidekick: Meimi had already been considering having her help out in her magic tricks back when she was planning on getting her from the pet shop, and she quickly becomes a useful helper during Saint Tail's heists once she joins her.
Ridiculously Cute Critter: She's a cuddly hedgehog who likes kissing Meimi's nose, and it apparently doesn't even hurt when Meimi cuddles her (according to Tachikawa, she's a species of hedgehog that doesn't hurt to cuddle, or at least she hopes the audience can see it this way).
Shipper on Deck: The occasional Funny Background Event makes it apparent she's a full-on Meimi/Asuka shipper, and the finale has her dutifully carry Saint Tail's last "love letter", assist Asuka Jr. in escaping, and get flustered at their reunion.
Shoo Out the Clowns: The anime usually has at least one scene per episode with Ruby playing at home or doing something funny with Meimi, but while most of its manga-adapted episodes also add extra scenes with her to facilitate this, she doesn't feature in any of the episodes in the final arc until the final episode when she delivers Saint Tail's last Calling Card.
Undying Loyalty: She seems to be perfectly on board with Saint Tail involving her in Phantom Thief capers and asking her to do some potentially dangerous things in the process. The anime also has her spend almost every episode sad about the fact that she can't accompany Saint Tail on her capers, and episode 25 has her escaping the house and going out to follow Saint Tail because she's worried about her.

Eimi Haneoka (Lucifer)

Eimi Haneoka (Phantom Thief Lucifer)

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/haneoka_eimi.png

^{Click to see manga art}

Voiced by: Chieko Enomoto (JP), Melora Harte (EN)

Meimi's mother, a retired phantom thief who was once known as "Lucifer".

Action Girl: Even after having retired from being a thief, she's proud enough of her physical abilities that she wants Meimi to take after her in this respect.
And Then What?: Even when Genichiro when he didn't have much money and "producing flowers" was the only magic trick he could do, he'd make sure she had tons of flowers in both hands every time they met, and was altogether tolerant of her selfish and ill-tempered behavior. Eimi decided that everything she'd done as a thief felt hollow in comparison and quit being a thief.
Ascended Extra: Her backstory being revealed gave her a little more focus than Genichiro in the original manga, but she otherwise only had very few appearances, whereas the anime has her appear regularly with Genichiro during home life scenes.
Berserk Button: The anime has her get very upset at Genichiro using hypnosis on her at one point, moreso than with Genichiro's usual, and given later events it may be from being reminded of her rival Rosemary.
Cerebus Retcon: Eimi wanting Meimi to "follow in her footsteps" to the point she and Genichiro are even proud of her sneaking out at night initially suggests that they see absolutely nothing wrong with the idea of Meimi being a career Phantom Thief like her mother was, moral questionability be damned. Eventually, chapter 21/episode 40 reveals that she actually considered her life back then to be miserable and unfulfilling compared to living a happier life with Genichiro, and that her regret of not being able to return the Star Ruby is still eating at her; she and Genichiro had merely been avoiding talking about all of the negative aspects, and her interest in Meimi "following in her footsteps" had only been in terms of the Required Secondary Powers like stealth and athletic skills. As a result, what had seemingly been excessive open-mindedness on her and Genichiro's part had actually been an accidental case of ...And That Would Be Wrong.
Challenge Seeker: Her original motive for stealing was that she wanted to test her own abilities, and Rosemary made her only want to one-up her even harder. She only stopped after meeting Genichiro and finding that she enjoyed her life with him more.
Classy Cat-Burglar: Since she was a more traditional Phantom Thief back during her days as Lucifer, she even had the full catsuit.
Dark and Troubled Past: While she's chipper about her past as a Phantom Thief, the actual details about it turn out to be this for her, and being reminded of it ends up sending her into a glum mood to the point Genichiro starts worrying about how to cheer her up since he's afraid of bringing it up.
Evil Is Hammy: By her own admission, she was extremely showy and dramatic as Phantom Thief Lucifer, but unlike Genichiro or Meimi, she wasn't a Stage Magician and was stealing for personal gain.
Follow in My Footsteps: In an early chapter/episode, she discovers that her daughter is sneaking out at night and is very pleased that Meimi is taking after her as a phantom thief. It later turns out that, jokes aside, she's not necessarily interested in Meimi succeeding her as a phantom thief per se, but she wants Meimi to take after her in terms of the Required Secondary Powers, because she herself has turned over a new leaf and knows Meimi wouldn't do anything bad.
Generation Xerox: Detective Asuka was on her tail the way Asuka Jr. is on Saint Tail's now, although with a less personal connection and more hostility. On the other hand, her relationship with Genichiro has parallels to Meimi and Asuka Jr.'s, except with the genders reversed: like Asuka Jr., Eimi is more down-to-earth and pragmatic, and she also happens to be shouldering a painful background that someone open-minded like Genichiro had to pull her out of.
Happily Married: She's currently very happy with her idyllic life with her husband and daughter, and has effectively moved on completely from her past as a thief.
Large Ham: In her Lucifer days, she was so hammy that she used a blimp as her calling card. Even Meimi, quite the Large Ham herself, is surprised (before going ahead and imitating her anyway).
Love Redeems: After meeting Genichiro, his unconditional love and kindness made her feel that all of her previous thefts were meaningless in comparison, so she decided to retire as a thief and turned over a new leaf to the point she even tried to give back everything she'd stolen.
Secret Secret-Keeper: An anime-original scene has Eimi covering for Meimi when she sneaks out and express pride over her following her in her footsteps.
Shipper on Deck: By the time of the manga's bonus Christmas chapter, she's figured out that Meimi has a boyfriend just by watching her closely enough, so she gives her two tickets to go see a romantic movie with him.
Sickeningly Sweethearts: She often gets affectionate or lovingly teasing with Genichiro, who's just as much in love with her.
Strong Family Resemblance: She looks almost exactly like an older version of her daughter, except with curlier hair (the anime also gives her green eyes, with Meimi's blue eyes presumably coming from Genichiro instead). According to Rosemary, Eimi basically looked exactly like Meimi when she was around her age.
Women Are Wiser: She's generally more grounded than her husband, although that's not hard when he's a Cloudcuckoolander extraordinaire.
You Are What You Hate: Rosemary was her rival whom she despised to death, but they were basically identical in personality until Eimi met Genichiro. Rosemary even later acknowledges that she might have taken a different path like Eimi if she'd met someone like him.

Genichiro Haneoka

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/haneoka_genichiro.png

^{Click to see manga art}

Voiced by: Kazuhiko Inoue (JP), Steve Blum (EN)

Meimi's father and teacher in the ways of stage magic.

Ascended Extra: He gets somewhat more screentime in the anime when Meimi comes home and learns more magic tricks from him, and his Cloudcuckoolander personality is largely from the anime as well.
Boyfriend-Blocking Dad: The anime version of the locket caper (episode 27) has him panicking at the idea of Meimi having a boyfriend (or girlfriend), resulting in Eimi having to calm him down. In a manga bonus chapter taking place after the main series, while Eimi has managed to figure out that Meimi has a boyfriend, she can tell Genichiro hasn't because if he had, he'd be yelling and demanding to know who it is.
Cloudcuckoolander: In the anime, he can get so lost in his magic trick research and testing that he becomes oblivious to all else, and some of his tricks are very strange.
Follow in My Footsteps: He's open about wanting Meimi to become a magician like himself, although he's not particularly forceful about it and simply just hopes that she'll want to do it on her own. It's subverted when it's eventually revealed via the prequel bonus chapter that although he'd taught her the basics in magic, he'd actually expected that she'd be too inexperienced to do it properly and forbade her from doing magic in public, completely unaware that she'd end up secretly becoming even better than he is.
Generation Xerox: Meimi wants to invoke this by marrying "someone like her father", but things seemingly don't quite pan out when she falls for Asuka Jr., who really isn't much like him at all (if anything, Meimi is more like her father in temperament while Asuka Jr. is closer in temperament to Eimi). It then becomes played with when Asuka Jr. starts resembling Genichiro in ways that actually matter, right down to getting Meimi to quit being a thief just by showing her actual love.
Hidden Depths: According to Eimi, he actually knows far more than he's letting on; he's just keeping quiet about sensitive topics out of courtesy (to the point that he didn't even give full details about Eimi's depression over the Star Ruby to Seira despite being at a confessional).
Impossibly Awesome Magic Trick: He's the one who set Meimi up with these, after all. Because his techniques are tightly under lock and key, Meimi wasn't allowed to show them to anyone as long as she was still in training due to the risk of her accidentally exposing the mechanisms behind them.
Locked Out of the Loop: According to Meimi, he has no idea how much she'd been practicing and mastering the magic he'd taught her when she was little, and he also doesn't seem to be aware that Meimi's Surpassed the Teacher and is using her abilities as Saint Tail.
Love at First Sight: In the words of his wife, "you took one look at me and fell in love." That the woman who'd fallen on his porch was a thief on the run from the police who had nothing to offer him besides yelling at him and potentially getting him in trouble apparently wasn't an issue to him at all.
Masquerade: According to the manga prequel chapter, when Meimi was young, he'd made her promise not to show anyone her magic tricks or tell anyone she could perform them until she became a full-fledged magician because if anyone found out how they worked, it'd functionally be the death of a career for a Stage Magician. Seira got Meimi to become Saint Tail by suggesting it as an outlet for her magic use, leading to Meimi basically blowing that promise to bits during her capers, although one could argue she's more than enough of a full-fledged magician by that point.
Permissive Parents: Apparently, the only objection he would have to Meimi becoming a Phantom Thief like her mother is that... it might influence her love life. Other than that, he's incredibly on-board with her doing things like sneaking out at night because it makes him proud that she's taken after Eimi. It's later subverted when it turns out that he knows full well that Eimi's life as a Phantom Thief was miserable, and simply isn't bringing it up for her sake.
Sickeningly Sweethearts: He was a doting lover to Eimi from the moment he first met her, and he still is now. He's usually the one who gets himself and Eimi into moments of getting ridiculously lovey-dovey with each other, to Meimi's embarrassment.
Something about a Rose: Conjuring roses was the first trick he learned as a magician, and it proved quite effective in charming his future wife when he made them appear in front of her to hide her from the police. At the time, it was the only one he knew.
Stage Magician: His job is entertaining with stage magic, and Meimi learned the basics from him until she Surpassed the Teacher.
Understanding Boyfriend: He didn't mind the fact that the woman he'd met was a Phantom Thief who was on the run from the police; he immediately went ahead and hid her in his apartment, and he managed to captivate her so much that she decided to turn over a new leaf.
Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Him telling Meimi not to show her magic tricks to anyone ends up becoming the root cause of Meimi's lack of fulfillment and mental collapse, because he did so instructing her to keep it a secret until she became a "full-fledged magician" but believed she wouldn't actually pull it off and thus never noticed her practicing her magic in secret until she became even better than him. As a result, Meimi still thought she had to keep it a secret and turned to becoming a Phantom Thief in order to have an outlet, resulting in her Secret-Identity Identity problem becoming worse and worse until Asuka Jr. finally figures out the root cause of the problem and acknowledges her properly.

Detective Tomoki Asuka

Tomoki Asuka

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/asuka_tomoki.png

^{Click to see manga art}

Voiced by: Akio Ōtsuka (JP), Richard Cansino (EN)

Asuka Jr.'s father, a police detective who once pursued Meimi's mother during her past as Lucifer. Originally The Ghost in the manga, the anime makes him a major recurring character as a detective who was initially assigned to the Saint Tail cases but usually works on bigger operations while his son handles her in his place (although it doesn't stop him from often running into them anyway).

Adaptational Badass: In the manga, all we heard about him was via hearsay from Asuka Jr., who dismissed him as incompetent; Tachikawa's notes imply that that this isn't actually an inaccurate description, but his appearances in the anime portray him as perfectly capable and even a Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass, just Overshadowed by Awesome at worst.
Adaptational Nice Guy: The few things we hear about him in the manga imply that he has a rather cold relationship with his son (with his sole appearance involving threatening to disown him if he tries to raise a kangaroo), but his anime appearances portray him as a reasonably good father, if a little strict. The fact the anime also has him show up in scenes where he was The Ghost in the manga implies that he's overall more present in his son's life than his manga counterpart is.
All There in the Manual: His given name (Tomoki) and his past chasing Lucifer aren't mentioned in either the manga or the anime, and said facts are only known from extra material and commentary from Tachikawa.
Ambiguous Situation: Tachikawa infamously used wording describing Detective Asuka's pursuit of Lucifer as if it might have had some kind of romantic investment akin to the Ship Tease between Asuka Jr. and Saint Tail, which would normally be passable as a mere tongue-in-cheek joke if it weren't for the fact that he also allegedly met Asuka Jr.'s mother right after things "fell through" with Lucifer.
Ascended Extra: He'd started off only being mentioned in passing, but he becomes an actual recurring named character in the anime and shows up for some heists, with added episodes going into his relationship with his son and his work on larger secret missions.
Canon Immigrant: His design was originally developed by Tachikawa for anime usage purposes, then reverse-imported into the manga for a bonus chapter.
Colliding Criminal Conspiracies: Saint Tail and Asuka Jr. will often be taking care of a comparatively minor caper, only to run into him investigating a larger background case that ends up tying into it.
Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: The anime makes him come off this way, since he acts wishy-washy and lackadaisical most of the time but can be quite competent when he actually needs to do an arrest. Episode 18 suggests that at least part of this is Obfuscating Stupidity, but it's also implied that his focus is mainly reserved for when things actually get serious.
Generation Xerox: He also pursued a phantom thief in his youth, and said phantom thief just so happened to be Meimi's mother. Unlike Meimi, Eimi doesn't seem to have thought much of her pursuer, with her own nature as a Challenge Seeker and her rival Rosemary being more significant issues to her.
The Ghost: Despite being a character mentioned here and there and Asuka Jr. being nicknamed that in respect to him, he doesn't show up in person in the manga until the prequel chapter published after the anime's airing. Even then, half his face is covered.
Hero of Another Story: Saint Tail's job is more about helping victims than stopping crime, so if there happens to be some kind of larger crime going on behind one of her capers, he's usually the one who happens to have been investigating the conspiracy and has already gotten together information on it in advance. During the final chapter/episode, he's also unable to rescue his son from being kidnapped because he's busy on a secret mission and can't be contacted.
Obfuscating Stupidity: He generally pretends to be more easygoing than he actually is, and episode 18 especially involves him playing dumb to cover up his deeper suspicions.
Overshadowed by Awesome: In the anime, he's a very capable cop; it's just that Saint Tail is too good for him, and his own son is fixated on specifically her to Crippling Overspecialization levels.
Parental Neglect: The manga notes refer to him as neglecting his own son due to his Workaholic tendencies and his son being more responsible than him. He seems to be much more present in the anime in comparison.
Shoo Out the Clowns: The anime making him a major recurring character makes his absence in the final arc come off this way (in actuality, it's because he was The Ghost in the manga, which the final arc is adapted closely to).
Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist: He's in the same boat as Asuka Jr., and he's also the one who takes care of arresting all of the criminals Saint Tail exposes. However, unlike his son, he doesn't hold a Worthy Opponent stance towards Saint Tail, dismissing her easily as a thief. He also was the one to pursue Lucifer in the past, but in that case she was an actual thief stealing for personal gain with no altruistic motives whatsoever.
Wacky Parent, Serious Child: In the manga, he's said to be incompetent at his job and irresponsible compared to Asuka Jr., and Asuka Jr. has to take care of all of the household chores because he's picking up the slack for his father. While the anime makes him Detective Asuka of a Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass, he still acts wishy-washy and flaky in ways that annoy his son, and episode 37 especially has Asuka Jr. frustrated at his antics in flirting with Tomoko.
Workaholic: The main reason he doesn't have a very close relationship with his son in the manga. Even in the anime, he's often seen going off to work and leaving Asuka Jr. in charge of the house.

Mayor Hideo Morinaka

Hideo Morinaka

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/morinaka_hideo.png

^{Click to see manga art}

Voiced by: Hidetoshi Nakamura (JP), Mike Reynolds (EN)

The mayor of Seika, and the one who appointed Asuka Jr. to the Saint Tail cases.

Ascended Extra: His existence was mentioned as early as the first chapter/episode, but the anime's additional episodes have him appear before he actually showed up in person in the manga's run (both in real life and in story timeline). By the time he shows up in the manga, it's with the design already used in the anime, making it a potential Canon Immigrant case similar to Detective Asuka.
Nepotism: It's why he assigns Takamiya to help Asuka Jr.: she had asked him, and he just can't say no to her. In the anime, it's implied that the "super detective" who'd tried to replace Asuka Jr. on the Saint Tail cases ended up removed because she'd mistaken Takamiya for Saint Tail and attacked her.
Reasonable Authority Figure: Nepotism aside, he's a fair-minded mayor; he hears Takamiya out when she tells him that Asuka Jr. is letting Saint Tail escape and isn't sufficiently committed to the job (which, Clingy Jealous Girl motive aside, isn't entirely wrong), but gives Asuka Jr. one last chance to prove himself. Once he does, Morinaka lets him stay on the case and convinces Takamiya to Know When to Fold 'Em in regards to attempting to dissuade him when he's that dedicated.

Ryoko and Kyoko

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/saint_tail_ryoko_kyoko.png

Ryoko (left) and Kyoko (right)
^{Click to see manga art}

Ryoko voiced by: Satomi Koorogi (JP), Mona Marshall (EN)

Kyoko voiced by: Junko Iwao (JP), Michelle Ruff (EN)

Meimi and Seira's friends from class.

A Day in the Limelight: Anime episode 38, in which their criticism prompts Asuka Jr. to dare them to catch Saint Tail... and they accept.
Ascended Extra: The anime gives them a larger role and an episode dedicated to them, and even reassigns them some lines that were originally given to random unnamed characters so they can have a more consistent presence in the classroom. In the manga, they were basically Those Two Guys who chipped in conversations in school, and would likely be indistinguishable from other unnamed students if not for the fact they have consistent character designs and names.
Characterization Marches On: The anime starts off treating them as just as much as The Dividual as they were in the manga, and it takes until around episode 5 for Ryoko's Hot-Blooded personality to surface.
The Dividual: In the manga, the only thing that really distinguishes them is their character designs and names (and a bonus chapter revealing that Ryoko's family runs a landscaping shop). The anime makes use of the addition of voice acting delivery and added Filler episodes to distinguish them a little more, with Ryoko being more openly Hot-Blooded and fond of using kogal slang while Kyoko is superficially more calm and gentle but enjoys gossip.
If Only You Knew: When she and Ryoko try to hatch a plot to catch Saint Tail, Kyoko asks for Meimi's opinion on what Saint Tail might do, reasoning that since Meimi is the daughter of a Stage Magician, she might understand Saint Tail's thought process. Meimi is naturally at a loss for words.
Shipper on Deck: While they're exasperated at Sawatari's antics (presumably because they can tell Meimi herself isn't all that interested), they get invested in the idea of Meimi and Asuka Jr. going out on a "date". In the anime, they're full-on Meimi/Asuka shippers, although they also find it enviable when a rich man takes an interest in her. Once Meimi actually starts dating Asuka Jr., they go all-out in speculating what they'll do next as a couple and encouraging them to do romantic things together.
Those Two Guys: They serve to fill in conversations on the girls' side at school, particularly with Meimi and Seira, and update them on social happenings (Seira being a nun-in-training and Takamiya being on bad terms with Meimi means they can't talk to her about these kinds of things normally).
Welcome to My World: Episode 38 of the anime has them mock Asuka Jr. for his failures in catching Saint Tail and try to one-up him themselves, only for them to turn out to be even worse at it to the point Asuka Jr. (who's at worst competent but Overshadowed by Awesome) comes off as an Only Sane Man. Even Seira is less worried about them actually catching Saint Tail than she is about how unpredictable they are, given that they accuse the nearest suspicious-looking person of being Saint Tail and show up to the caper tossing eggs at all of her decoys despite Asuka Jr.'s warnings. Ultimately, Asuka Jr. ends up having to worry about their safety more than he has to worry about Saint Tail's, and once they lament Saint Tail getting away, Asuka Jr. points out that this is how he always feels every time, resulting in them making up (although Ryoko still tries to insist that they would have caught her if it weren't for him).

Yasuhiro and Chiba

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/yasuhiro_chiba.png

Yasuhiro (left) and Chiba (right)
^{Click to see manga art}

Yasuhiro voiced by: Yasuhiro Takato (JP)

Chiba voiced by: Isshin Chiba (JP)

Asuka Jr.'s friends from class.

Adaptational Nice Guy: In the manga, their interactions with Asuka Jr. effectively amounted to accompanying him in social contexts, being passive-aggressive or exasperated about his Hair-Trigger Temper, and sometimes outright mocking him, but the anime adds a number of scenes where they interact with him in a more friendly and casual manner. As a result, Asuka Jr. seems to have a much better relationship with them and even takes their occasional teasing much better than his manga counterpart would.
Ascended Extra: While not to the same extent as Ryoko and Kyoko, they do get enough added screentime in the anime to be recognizable, recurring characters in the classroom, and Filler episodes often have scenes that draw a contrast between them fantasizing over girls while Asuka Jr. is comparatively uninterested.
The Dividual: They're pretty much always seen together; unlike with Ryoko and Kyoko, the anime doesn't even differentiate them much further than the manga did other than hair color, and it takes a while for them to even have consistent designs and voice actors. In fact, they could probably be easily mistaken for other unnamed students from class if not for the fact that they're the only two to be consistently seen accompanying Asuka Jr. and portrayed as more familiar with him than most.
Named by the Adaptation: The names Yasuhiro and Chiba come from episode 39 of the anime, with their names coming from their voice actors (and even then, the anime credits still only ever list them as "Male Student" or "Boy".
Only Sane Man: Considering that they're usually seen in the vicinity of Asuka Jr. and Sawatari, they sometimes come off as the only people who can make levelheaded comments when it comes to the boys' side, although sometimes Asuka Jr. will play the Only Sane Man to them in turn.
Shipper on Deck: They comment on Sawatari's unusual interest in Meimi in such a way that suggests they're expecting and amused at Asuka Jr.'s very irritated reaction, implying that Asuka Jr.'s pining for Meimi is actually fairly obvious to anyone around him, and Meimi herself was the only one who never noticed. Naturally, they, Ryoko, and Kyoko are fully on the Meimi/Asuka gushing train once the two of them actually get together for real.
Social Circle Filler: In the manga, while they hang out with Asuka Jr. and seem to know him well enough that he can't be said to entirely have a Friendless Background, their relationship with him is superficial; they'll gladly join the rest of the class in mocking him, and they only say good things about him when he does something successful enough to get in the newspaper. It's because of this that Meimi's opinion eventually ends up being the only one that actually means anything to him.
Those Two Guys: They only exist to allow Asuka Jr. to have some interactions with friends outside the main cast and generally be voices of reason on the boys' side, and the manga doesn't even give them names.

Notable antagonists

Maju Sendo (unmarked spoilers)

Maju Sendo

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/sendo_maju_3.jpg

^{Click to see manga art}

Voiced by: Mika Kanai (JP)

Rosemary's adopted daughter and accomplice who runs the fortune-telling house "Pandora" in town, which is actually a front to rob people of their goods. She uses her position in town and hypnosis skills to identify Meimi through her Secret Identity, and later Asuka Jr. as Saint Tail's Achilles' Heel.

Arc Villain: She shares this role with Rosemary, reinforcing all of Meimi's insecurities and guilt about "deceiving" Asuka Jr. and getting her to isolate herself even further from him.
Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: When working as a fortune-teller, she acts friendly and polite while hypnotizing her clients into handing over their goods (or feeding Meimi her worst insecurities).
The Dragon: She's the point-person for Rosemary's capers, promoting their cons and hypnotizing people. She's also the one to confront Saint Tail while her mother schemes.
Enfant Terrible: By far the youngest major character in the cast (11 years old). She's much more immature than her mother and basically goes along with what she tells her to do without question. She's also far more openly sadistic than Rosemary, who did enjoy petty revenge but had more shades of being a Noble Demon; while Rosemary had limited her battle with Saint Tail to hypnosis-assisted psychological warfare, was impressed enough with Saint Tail to try recruiting her, and even respected her and Asuka Jr.'s relationship enough to bow out, Maju attempts to kill (or at least severely injure) Saint Tail via freefall and can't understand what Rosemary's talking about when she comments on Meimi and Asuka Jr.'s relationship.
Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: She tries to use the information about Asuka Jr. from Meimi's insecurities to ruin their relationship, but it completely backfires when it turns out that he's far more devoted to Meimi than anyone expected:
- When Meimi and Asuka Jr. first visit Maju in Pandora, she judges Asuka Jr.'s honest personality to be an "unremovable ring" and claims that he would never forgive her if he discovered her secret, taking Meimi's horrified reaction as proof that she'd hit it exactly on the mark. In fact, not only had he covered for Meimi multiple times before, he'd also been willing to momentarily put aside his usual dislike of fortune-telling because he was hoping it could get Meimi to open up about her identity; it was specifically the insinuation that the relationship would fail that slammed down his Berserk Button hard enough for him to drag Meimi out and start trash-talking it. Presumably, the fact she'd effectively been accusing him of being the kind of person who'd hate Meimi that easily didn't help.
- Her mocking Saint Tail's calling card as a "love letter" would have probably worked better if it hadn't involved someone for whom the idea of Meimi reciprocating his feelings was exactly what he needed to hear.
- The fact she's so confused when Rosemary wistfully comments on the idea of having someone who can provide unconditional love implies that the idea of anyone loving someone enough to put aside their usual standards for them really does go over Maju's head that much.
Evil Counterpart: She's devoted to doing everything her mother wants without any real will for herself, serving as a a distorted and sadistic parallel to Meimi's fixation with emulating her parents and inheriting their burdens instead of moving on with her own life.
Happily Adopted: Given how easily Maju addresses Rosemary as "Mom", takes after her as a Phantom Thief, and is so comfortable and familiar around her, if Rosemary hadn't said that Maju wasn't her biological daughter, no one would ever know. It's also unclear whether Maju was originally an orphan, or whether she ditched her family and joined Rosemary because she liked the idea of being her accomplice that much.
Insult Backfire: When Asuka Jr. gets a calling card from Saint Tail while locked up in Rosemary and Maju's monestary, Maju, who only knows that Meimi and Asuka Jr. were dating and that Meimi was hiding her identity from him, mocks the calling card as a "love letter", presumably meant as a throwaway insult to mock Meimi's feelings and make her come off as manipulative... but because the calling cards actually had a whole history behind them dating back to when Asuka Jr. was still lashing out at everyone and getting everyone to write him off as a lost cause, Maju had just accidentally let Asuka Jr. in on the fact that Meimi had loved him even back when he was convinced she had every right to hate him.
Jerkass Has a Point: When Asuka and Meimi visit her future reading stand, Maju flat-out tells them their relationship is doomed because Meimi is hiding a secret from Asuka. She's entirely correct, and the only reason it doesn't happen is that Maju herself accidentally bridges their communication gap.
Karma Houdini: After personally torturing Meimi with her hypnosis, keeping Asuka Jr. locked up, and almost murdering Saint Tail, she ends up getting to leave town with her mother, no worse for wear.
Meaningful Name:
- Her name is written with the word for "pearl" (真珠), but instead of its usual reading "shinju", it's read as "Maju", making it a Punny Name that plays on the word "majutsu" (black magic). In addition, it contains the kanji for "truth" (真) in it, which makes it both an Ironic Name (in that she actually swindles people out of their goods) and a straightforward Meaningful Name (in that she's instrumental in finally clarifying the truth behind Saint Tail that Asuka Jr. wanted).
- The name of her shop "Pandora" can refer to bringing unhappiness (her thefts and her potential damage to Meimi and Asuka Jr.'s relationship) and "evils" (Asuka Jr. having been an arrogant jerk to Meimi in the past, Meimi hiding her identity from him the entire time) with some hope (breaking through the severe communication gap both of them had been dealing with and inadvertently helping them finally reach an understanding).
Mind Control: Of the hypnotic brand, capable of briefly controlling an unaware victim or causing hallucinations with the help of some lavender scent. She's not as good as Rosemary, but she's still in training.
Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Even prior to her "love letter" Insult Backfire, her attempt at getting the entire town to scapegoat Saint Tail results in Asuka Jr. bringing up his promise with her, definitively confirming to Meimi how important it was to him and getting her to send him the final calling card in the monastery (despite it not making any practical sense whatsoever), thus finally alerting him to what she'd been doing for him this entire time.
Phantom Thief: Of the same type as Rosemary, as a mysterious phony psychic and hypnotist, although she doesn't break into people's places directly nor does she use the Calling Card.
Phony Psychic: She poses as a fortune-teller to commit her capers, supporting her normal tricks with hypnosis and getting people to hand over their stuff.
Pragmatic Villainy: Despite having all of Meimi's personal information, she doesn't use it to out her identity to the world because Pandora is equally at risk of having its "business activities" hindered if Maju is similarly exposed, so she effectively forces Meimi into an implicit blackmail agreement to keep quiet about each other and uses more roundabout methods to get her "revenge".
Psychological Torment Zone: She subjects Saint Tail to hypnosis that causes her to think she's facing Asuka Jr. accusing her about her identity, resulting in Meimi having a mental breakdown and confessing all of her guilt and fear. Maju had only been expecting to get information about her identity, but is pleased that Saint Tail had so easily revealed her worst Achilles' Heel and has Rosemary target him shortly after.
Right for the Wrong Reasons: Her "prophecy" made to demoralize Meimi isn't entirely wrong; it's true that her relationship with Asuka Jr. is unlikely to go well if she keeps hiding such a huge secret from him. What's not true is the assumption that his honesty and her secret make them so fundamentally incompatible that they're inevitably doomed; in actuality, he wants to understand Meimi better and is willing to go out of his way to do so, so the reason she shouldn't be keeping secrets from him is simply that he can't do anything to help her if she won't open up to him.

Rosemary (unmarked spoilers)

Rosemary (Kabako Sendo)

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/saint_tail_rosemary.png

^{Click to see manga art}

Voiced by: Naoko Kouda (JP)

Eimi's rival from back when she was Phantom Thief Lucifer, as well as Maju's adoptive mother and mentor. She shows up in Seika hoping to get revenge on Lucifer, but once she learns that she's retired and her daughter is working as a phantom thief instead, she decides taking it out on the daughter will be good enough.

Amazingly Embarrassing Parent: Adopted parent, but her reaction to cute people embarrasses Maju anyway.
Arc Villain: She's the final boss of the second half of the series with Maju as The Dragon, and the Psychological Torment Zone hallucinations she subjects Meimi to serve as an allegory for her mental loop of insecurity effectively trapping her in a false version of "reality".
Berserk Button: Tell her Embarrassing First Name in front of her, and she'll shout at you. Make it public, and she'll make you suffer.
Cuteness Proximity: Whenever she sees someone cute, she hugs them and gushes about how adorable they are. She does it with both Meimi and Asuka Jr. before abruptly switching to antagonizing them.
Disproportionate Retribution: Using her Embarrassing First Name in public is hardly grounds for trying to ruin the speaker's life (or at least most important relationship), but she's convinced that she's just giving her an equivalent disgrace.
Embarrassing First Name: The name "Kabako" (椛子) looks normal at first glance when written, but its reading is homophonous with "baby hippopotamus", so Rosemary considers its use to be a Berserk Button to the point she hates the idea of anyone saying it out loud and holds a grudge against Lucifer for broadcasting it to the world on a blimp. Meimi points out that the name is so uncommon that most people probably wouldn't be able to read it on the first try, but she then puts up another blimp (and, in the manga, with the reading on it this time).
Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: She's genuinely puzzled at Meimi preferring Asuka Jr. to the chance of getting rich, although after seeing how dedicated he is to her, she admits she might have turned out differently if she had someone like that in her life.
Evil Counterpart: Rosemary's lack of purpose in life besides "getting rich" and complex over her supposedly Embarrassing First Name parallel Meimi's lack of purpose in life besides "being useful to others" and complex over Asuka Jr. supposedly not caring about her.
Evil Is Petty: She and Maju have no plans for anything besides stealing, hoarding riches, and taking out petty revenge, and her comment about lacking anyone to love her the way Meimi does implies that it's out of a lack of fulfillment on her part as well.
Evil Plan: Her plan is to take revenge on her old rival by making said rival suffer, although once she sees that Eimi has retired and is living a normal life now, she decides to take it out on her daughter instead. It originally doesn't go beyond just stealing from the people of Seika and scapegoating Saint Tail for it, but then Meimi semi-inadvertently pushes her Berserk Button.
The Fagin: She took in Maju because she had terrific talent at stealing, and she does seem to genuinely love her as a daughter. She also tries to recruit Saint Tail, but she's not even remotely interested.
Femme Fatalons: Her long and sharp nails are focused on when she does devious things.
Good Parents: Maju appears perfectly happy and (mostly) well-adjusted, implying this trope is the case, although one could argue that the fact she doesn't seem to scold Maju at all implies that things might be going in the other direction. Given that she eventually admits that she might have also wanted the kind of love Genichiro and Asuka Jr. offered, it's possible that raising Maju is her genuine attempt to fill the void.
Karma Houdini: Despite all of the thefts she and Maju had committed and the torture they'd inflicted on Meimi and Asuka Jr., they move on to the next town without issue, making them the only villains in the series to escape arrest. Depending on how you interpret it, her and Maju being the main reason Meimi quits being a phantom thief could even be a case of The Bad Guy Wins, although Rosemary herself doesn't get any enjoyment out of tormenting someone who's retired, and the point of breaking Meimi out of her mental collapse is getting her to realize that she shouldn't feel obligated to solve everyone's problems.
Know When to Fold 'Em: Her main way of trying to torment Saint Tail is by trying to ruin her relationship with Asuka Jr., but once it's clear that he loves her back unconditionally even after knowing her identity, Rosemary figures that it's pointless trying to push it further, even musing thatthings might have been different if she'd had someone like that earlier in her life.
Meaningful Name: Rosemary is a common herb used in weddings and means "everlasting love" and "remembrance" in flower language, making it an Ironic Name when it comes to herself but very meaningful in light of the role she (inadvertently) plays in Meimi and Asuka Jr.'s relationship.
Mind Control: She's an extremely powerful hypnotist: by showing people her jade powder, she can briefly take control of the mind of an unaware victim, knock people out until she decides to awaken them, or trap them in hallucinations even more powerful than Maju's.
Mirror Character: Her personality is apparently identical to what Eimi's used to be, and the only real difference is that Eimi met Genichiro. Rosemary admits that she might have turned out similarly if she'd met someone like him, and Eimi would probably have been like Rosemary if she hadn't.
Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Like Maju, her mistake was basing her idea of Asuka Jr. entirely on Meimi's insecurities, and her attempt at recreating Meimi's worst fears by exposing her secret probably did far more to fix their relationship in the long run; Asuka Jr. had already been catching onto her identity and was unlikely to hate her for it, so all Rosemary had done was stall their reconciliation for a little longer. Meanwhile, had she not forced out Meimi's secret and put them in a situation where they could safely settle things away from the eyes of the police, Meimi would have probably continued to quietly crumble under the guilt of hiding her identity from her own boyfriend, while Asuka Jr. could have potentially ended up having to "catch" her under much worse circumstances.
Noble Demon: Her main goal is simply for her and Maju to live comfortably with the riches they'd stolen, and her hostility towards Lucifer and Saint Tail is more of a a petty rivalry than anything, so she doesn't actually go out of her way to ruin their lives despite the fact she's perfectly capable of doing much worse:
- Maju had extracted all of the Haneoka family's personal information and could expose them to the world if she wanted, but not only would it risk bringing too much trouble on Pandora too, Rosemary even decides to leave Eimi alone and let her continue living a normal life. She claims that it "wouldn't be fun", but she later seems to have enough respect for Asuka Jr.'s impact on Meimi to decide to not interfere in their relationship, and it's possible she might have felt similarly about Eimi and Genichiro.
- When Meimi drops by Pandora to investigate her and Maju, all they do is tease her and let her go.
- Her "revenge" on Saint Tail wasn't originally supposed to go beyond just ruining her reputation, and she only brings Asuka Jr. into it to get back at Meimi for revealing her own secret; even then, she keeps him safely in her lair and has him properly fed without subjecting him to Mind Control or anything of the sort.
- She's willing to look past her grudges against Meimi and have Saint Tail join her and Maju because she genuinely believes her talents are wasted in such a small town and that she'd be happier traveling the world and living in luxury.
- Unlike Maju, she doesn't try to inflict lasting bodily harm on Saint Tail; all of her attacks are purely psychological.
- When she decides to leave Meimi and Asuka Jr. alone, she actually departs from Seika entirely instead of trying to rob its inhabitants further.
Noblewoman's Laugh: She raises her hand to her mouth in the classic manner when laughing and gloating. She certainly dresses the part of a noblewoman, at least.
Pet the Dog: Her adoration for Maju does seem to be genuine, and she's willing to offer Saint Tail a chance to join her in spite of her having pressed her Berserk Button.
Phantom Thief: She used to be an active one like Lucifer, but she currently operates indirectly via Maju using Pandora as a front to carry out their thefts, possibly because Lucifer had outed her identity in the past, or because she wants to let Maju get some training in.
Phony Psychic: She's the one who taught Maju to hypnotize their victims, although Maju's the one who carries it out as a business.
Psychological Torment Zone: She can inflict even more powerful hallucinations than Maju can, and her battle with Saint Tail involves her being subjected to ghostly paintings that actually feel like they're strangling her, an Endless Corridor, and an illusion of drowning.
Revenge by Proxy: Her reason for going after Meimi is, in her words, "the daughter's pain is the mother's pain" (that, and going after a retired thief wasn't as fun). Prior to Meimi hitting her Berserk Button, Rosemary actually outright says she has Nothing Personal against Meimi, it's just that she needs to take something out on Lucifer.
Targeted to Hurt the Hero: Her reasoning for using Asuka Jr. to get revenge against Meimi is that Meimi had exposed her real name via Calling Card, so she's just doing the same to her by revealing one of her secrets to someone she didn't want knowing about it. She doesn't directly hurt Asuka Jr. and even feeds him while kidnapped; her goal is simply to make Meimi suffer by ruining their relationship in the exact way she'd feared.
The Rival: She competed with Eimi when Eimi was a thief, and they'd steal things the other was targeting just for the sake of the rivalry.
Vengeance Denied: Because she didn't get to find any meaning in her life the way Eimi did, she's itching to get her revenge by having someone suffer, so the idea of taking revenge out on Eimi when she's living a happy life doesn't sit well with her because she won't get the "fun" she wants out of it. She tries to take out Revenge by Proxy on Meimi under the belief that Meimi's suffering is a close enough substitute for her mother's, but when Meimi also turns out to have someone who actually cares about her enough to offset anything she does to her, she has no choice but to give up because there's just no point anymore.
Villains Out Shopping: She doesn't have any grand motives for any of her thefts except "live comfortably", so she's seen in a Chinese restaurant casually enjoying a meal when she sees Meimi's blimp calling card.
We Can Rule Together: Midway through her confrontation with Saint Tail, she acknowledges her talent as a phantom thief and offers to have her join them in robbing towns and collecting riches. Meimi wastes no time in rejecting the offer; not only would her own morals never allow it, she also sees no value in anything without Asuka Jr.

Characters / Kaitou Saint Tail

Main characters

Meimi Haneoka (Phantom Thief Saint Tail)

Daiki Asuka (Asuka Jr.)

Seira Mimori

Rina Takamiya

Manato Sawatari

Friends and family

Ruby

Eimi Haneoka (Phantom Thief Lucifer)

Genichiro Haneoka

Tomoki Asuka

Hideo Morinaka

Ryoko and Kyoko

Yasuhiro and Chiba

Notable antagonists

Maju Sendo

Rosemary (Kabako Sendo)

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Characters / Kaitou Saint Tail

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Main characters

Meimi Haneoka (Phantom Thief Saint Tail)

Daiki Asuka (Asuka Jr.)

Seira Mimori

Rina Takamiya

Manato Sawatari

Friends and family

Ruby

Eimi Haneoka (Phantom Thief Lucifer)

Genichiro Haneoka

Tomoki Asuka

Hideo Morinaka

Ryoko and Kyoko

Yasuhiro and Chiba

Notable antagonists

Maju Sendo

Rosemary (Kabako Sendo)

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