Characters of the anime series Karas.
Karas
Yousuke Otoha
The recently-appointed Karas of Shinjuku, tasked with preserving the balance between the worlds of humanity and the youkai by the Will Of The City... and also with taking down his renegade predecessor, Eko. A quiet, kindly young man who has acquired the nickname of 'Doctor Karas' due to the medical help and counselling he offers to sick youkai when he's off-duty.
- Animal-Themed Superbeing: Karas for Crows. He releases black feathers in some attacks as well.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Otoha is a calm and passive man, but he knows when he needs to be serious at times.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Has darkness-themed powers, and even wears a lot of black when he's off duty. Still unambiguously heroic.
- The Determinator: He won't even let getting Impaled with Extreme Prejudice, losing an arm, and getting bits of his own sword lodged in his eyes slow him down. Somewhat justified - see Disability Superpower below.
- Disability Superpower: He has CIP; Congenital Insensitivity to Pain. This explains his Determinator status as he literally can't feel any of the pain that would normally leave a human screaming and writhing on the ground
- Feel No Pain: As a result of his Disability Superpower.
- Good Thing You Can Heal: It's lucky that Karas are naturally tough and fast-healing, because Otoha is downright awful at taking care of his body. After he gets Brought Down to Normal, this habit gets him into some pretty serious trouble.
- Heroic RRoD: CIP can only take you so far - eventually, it's possible to take so much damage that your body just stops working. In Otoha's case, this required him to be shot repeatedly, impaled through the gut, partially roasted, an arm blown off,and blinded with pieces of his own sword. Even that, however, wasn't enough to keep him down permanently.
- Katanas Are Just Better: Even before he received the mighty Absurdly Sharp Blade that is the badge of the Shinjuku Karas, Otoha was quite capable of slicing his way through through entire gangs of gun-toting yakuza with a regular katana.
- Ninja: Most Karas have some elements of this, but Otoha takes it all the way.
- Parental Incest: His father is also his brother. It's implied that this is the reason for the whole CIP business.
Eko Hoshunin
The series's main villain, the original Karas of Shinjuku. Grew disillusioned with the city's human population over the centuries, thanks to their perceived corruption and abandonment of the old ways at the expense of the youkai. Eventually decided to go completely rogue, imprisoning his Yurine and launching an assault on the city with his hand-picked band of mechanical monstrosities to reclaim it in the name of the youkai, even if he had to enslave every human in Shinjuku to do it.
- Artificial Limbs: His left leg.
- Beware the Superman: He is a Karas who uses his powers for evil. For intents and purposes, his power means that the only thing that can stop is another Karas. Everything else, human and youkai alike can at best hope to prove a minor nuisance to him.
- Big Bad: The main villain who seeks a return to the old ways, and is responsible for the creation of the Mikura.
- Child Supplants Parent: Sees the Yurine as his mother and the Will Of The City as his father, and seeks to supplant the latter. Do the maths.
- Hero's Evil Predecessor: To Otoha.
- Light Is Not Good: He's a thoroughly nasty piece of work, and in contrast to the dark, sombre Otoha, he's almost always suffused in light and bright colours.
- Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Seeks to preserve the youkai by any means necessary, up to and including forcing them all to become vampiric cyborg abominations and turning the humans into little more than living larders for them. Doesn't see the slightest problem in this.
- Really 700 Years Old: He's been around for centuries.
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: It was the hundreds of years of watching the world he was assigned to protect slowly decay that sent him over the edge, and he firmly believes that the same will happen to Otoha in time.
Homura
A Karas from another town who popped over to see what was going on in Shinjuku. Prohibited from interfering with another city's business, but eventually cajoles her Yurine into letting her help Otoha out.
- Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: A mild, gender-flipped example. Mostly wants to intervene in Shinjuku in order to show off her superior abilities, but doesn't cause too much friction since by that point, Otoha needs all the help he can get.
- Big Damn Heroes: Pretty much every time she's authorised to go Karas, she ends up saving Otoha's hide. Eventually, he returns the favour.
- The Worf Effect: Set up as a more capable, experienced Karas than Otoha, but ends up getting ignominiously defeated and incapacitated by Eko in order to demonstrate his unstoppability. To be perfectly fair, though, our hero wasn't doing much better until she stepped in, and she bought enough time for him to come up with a Plan B.
Mikura
Nue
A renegade Mikura who fled Shinjuku some time ago, Nue
has returned to the city to settle old scores. Masquerading as a laid-back, homeless drifter who lives on the Shinjuku public transport system, he hunts down his former comrades whilst struggling against the bloodlust that threatens to consume him.
- Badass Normal: Despite being a Mikura, he starts off this way as he refused to use his Mikura form.
- Bling-Bling-BANG!: His collection of gold-plated firearms, including pistols, submachineguns, and a sniper rifle.
- Bottomless Magazines: Frequently averted, much to his annoyance. Played straight with his Mikura form's pair of Arm Cannons.
- Friendly Neighbourhood Vampire: Of a sort. He's not a vampire but he is still a creature that has to feed on human blood to survive.
- Ineffectual Loner: Not entirely by choice. There are few allies a rogue Mikura can reliably turn to.
- Senseless Violins: He carries his firearm collection around in what appears to be a cello case.
- Token Heroic Orc: The only Mikura who opposes Eko's plans.
- Unwitting Pawn: To Eko. Nue opposing his plans is just walking into his trap where Eko aims to use him and his brother as a power source.
- Vegetarian Vampire: With the help of Amefurikozo, attempts to feed by stealing from hospital blood banks. It doesn't help, and Otoha has to bail him out by contributing some living blood.
Suiko
A powerful suiko enlisted and upgraded by Eko to help him take over Shinjuku. Now masquerades as a professional wrestler, and feeds by snatching victims from public bathrooms.
- Making a Splash: Nearly all of his powers revolve around water-manipulation.
- Masked Luchador: His human guise.
- Monster Misogyny: Fine with eating just about anyone, but most of his victims seem to be women.
- Necromancer: Capable of summoning the spirits of his victims to aid him in battle.
Wanyudou
Eko's personal servant, Wanyudou is a calm, dapper gentleman in his human form, and a gigantic, wheeled abomination in his Mikura form. He feeds from motorists in Shinjuku's road tunnels, distracting them with his alternate form of a phantasmic red car before ambushing them from behind.
- Cool Bike: His Mikura form can become one of these.
- Deadly Disc: He can use his wheels as these, with a small side-order of Chainsaw Good.
- Facepalm of Doom: His other feeding method, when he's not feeling flashy.
- Taking You with Me: Attempts this on Otoha after his defeat, but is stopped by Nue.
- Transforming Mecha: Unique in that his Mikura form has a vehicle mode - two, if one counts the phantom car he uses as bait.
Tsuchigumo
The sole female Mikura, Tsuchigumo is a quiet, beautiful woman half the time, and a giant, loathsome mechanical spider for the other half. She is loyal, efficient, and frequently assigned by Eko to the missions he deems most crucial to his cause.
- Ms. Fanservice: Her human form is very nearly the sole provider of fanservice in the entire show. Rapidly becomes Fan Disservice once she starts using her abilities, though.
- Multi-Armed and Dangerous: In her Mikura form.
- Seductive Spider: The human-spider hybrid demon happens to be the only demon to be portrayed as sexy.
- Subordinate Excuse: Implied to harbour feelings towards her master, Eko. They aren't reciprocated.
- Unlimited Wardrobe: Goes through an astonishing number of outfits during the course of the show, especially when one considers her relatively limited screentime.
- The Worm That Walks: Her body is comprised of lots and lots of little spiders, which she can send out to do unutterably horrible things to her victims.
Kamaitachi
Perhaps the strangest of the Mikura, Kamaitachi is a whirling, bladed berserker with a grating, mechanical voice and no apparent human form. Given his high visibility, he rarely ventures outside Eko's headquarters except on the few occasions when the centuries-old Karas doesn't care about being subtle and just wants something dead quickly.
- Wicked Weasel: His original form, mythologically-speaking, was a trio of wind-riding, flesh-slicing weasels. He inherited the M.O., if not the appearance.
- Helicopter Blender: Uses his many spinning blades both for flight and as weapons.
- Monster Clown: He strongly resembles one in appearance, at least.
- Razor Wind: Given who he was pre-Mikurafication, it should come as no surprise that he's capable of doing this.
- Spectacular Spinning: For him, anyway. For his enemies... not so much.
- The Unintelligible: His speech is so heavily filtered and modulated that he very nearly becomes this. Dub watchers have it even worse, since he's still subtitled in Japanese.
Ushi-Oni
One of the most brutal and sadistic Mikura, Ushi-Oni takes the form of a hulking, gear-toothed bull/spider hybrid. His human form is decidedly more notable, though.
- Chekhov's Gun: In his human form he wears a ring like the other Mikura and it is clearly shown in the first episode.
- Extra Eyes: Befitting his arachnid appearance.
- Eye Scream: Tends to be prone to these, perhaps because he has spares. Narumi's one may have been the cause of his eventual demise.
- I'm a Humanitarian: All Mikura feed on human blood to survive, yes, but Ushi-Oni is particularly notable for simply crunching his victims up and swallowing them rather than using some more exotic method to drain them.
- Half the Man He Used to Be: His fate.
- Rasputinian Death: First Otoha gives him the regular Karas workout, then Narumi empties the entire cylinder of his Hand Cannon into his face.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: What he masqueraded as during his time as a human.
- This Is a Drill: Has them on the ends of his limbs.
