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In General
Tanpopo is a mysterious crime syndicate with members all around the world. Their motives are shrouded in secrecy, but their military might rivals any nation's and they've crossed swords with the Yozakuras on several occasions.
- Exotic Eye Designs: Their agents tend to have a strange, flower-like eye design. This is because of their use of the Hazakura drug, a performance enhancer synthesized from the blood of the Yozakura heads that grants them the power of all of the Yozakuras to a limited extent.
- Evil Knockoff: The Hazakura drug, synthesized with the blood of the previous Yozakura head, turns anyone doped with it into a knockoff of the Yozakuras, granting them watered down versions of all of the Yozakuras' abilities, such as Nanao's strength and regeneration. An Elite Mook army of them manages to pressure the Yozakuras, but they're still ultimately outmatched for the most part. As if to drive this home even further, "Hazakura" refers to fallen cherry blossoms in a mockery of the Yozakura name.
- Family Extermination: Tanpopo operatives were responsible for killing both the previous head of the Yozakuras as well as Taiyo's family.
- Knight of Cerebus: While the Yozakuras have fought all kinds of crooks, none of them are too much for them to handle. Tanpopo's arrival represents the first real threat to their lives.
- Nebulous Evil Organization: Their soldiers, technology, and resources can rival entire countries and it's clear they're up to no good. But no explanation is given as to why Tanpopo is the way it is. According to Kawashita, Tanpopo is working to answer people's will to live, including "saving" the terminally ill like Shirai. It's later revealed that he's been trying to fufill the wishes of the Yozakura founder, who wanted to eliminate the relevance of the Yozakuras by spreading the power of her blood across the globe. It is revealed that this was engineered by Asa, whose final goal is to harvest the Yozakura family for medicines.
- Tattooed Crook: All of their members have the same dandelion-fluff shaped tattoo somewhere on their bodies.
- Theme Naming: The members of Nijibana, Tanpopo's top field agents, all have codenames related to a color, as the group's name refers to rainbow flowers.
Makoto Kawashita
Makoto Kawashita
The head of a medical clinic and the leader of Tanpopo. He has vast connections within the medical industry and is connected to one of Tanpopo's most important projects, making him a key figure in the Yozakuras' investigation.
- All Your Powers Combined: He's able to use the respective techniques of the Nijibana Flowers through the same principle as his Mook Maker ability below.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Even the Properly Paranoid Taiyo is initially fooled by Makoto's outwardly warm personality. But once Taiyo confronts him behind the scenes, it's clear that Makoto is anything but.
- Blatant Lies: In a flashback, he tells Shirai that Tanpopo isn't an organization conducting shady experiments while standing in front of dozens, if not hundreds of bodies that break apart like dry twigs with slight pressure.
- Body Horror: The full extent of his Blooming, Regeneration, makes Nanao's Adaptation look positively cuddly. Rather than simply regrowing severed limbs or even his own head, black tendrils extend from the separated parts and reach out to the main body before sowing itself back together. He can also sever parts of his body willingly to give birth to monstrous clones of those whose DNA he's taken into himself. He then hooks himself up to the crystallized someinine of Shizuku Yozakura, mutating into an enormous tree-like creature set to detonate and start his Seed-Sowing Project.
- Dissonant Serenity: Years ago, he cheerfully greeted Shirai while standing amidst the dying, desiccated bodies of dozens or hundreds of people he's experimenting on. He then talks about how he ordered the deaths of Taiyo's family as though it were a completely heartfelt moment.
- Eyes Always Shut: He keeps his eyes closed while acting as the kindly doctor. But he opens them once his Mad Scientist side comes out.
- Good Thing You Can Heal: His Healing Factor is first demonstrated by him casually reattaching his head after Kyoichiro cuts it off.
- Healing Factor: A basic application of his Blooming, Regeneration. He demonstrates by casually reattaching his decapitated head.
- Hidden in Plain Sight: While dining aboard a train, he fills the cabin with a specially made odorless and colorless hallucinogenic gas called the "Fog of Disguise", a mix of hallucinogenic drugs and deadly toxins that make it impossible to recognize someone's face. Taiyo is able to walk right past him without noticing him until he realizes that the gas is leaving soot everywhere and messing up everyone's sense of smell.
- Ironic Name: Makoto means "sincerity" or "truth" depending on how its written, yet he is a duplicitous Bitch in Sheep's Clothing who thinks nothing of killing people and takes sadistic pleasure in his activities.
- Mad Scientist: He's the head of the Somei Yoshino project, which aims to kidnap Mutsumi and turn her into an endless fountain of the Hazakura doping drug.
- Mook Maker: As a result of injecting himself with DNA from the Nijibana Flowers, he's able to create duplicates of them through his Regeneration Blooming.
- Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: He's a legitimate doctor who sees and treats patients, but also a Mad Scientist behind the scenes and a member of a global crime syndicate.
- Muscles Are Meaningless: He's rather tall and slim, but he easily wrestles Taiyo to the ground and would have killed him if not for the metal plate Kyoichiro had given him. This makes complete sense when you learn that he too has gotten the power of the Yozakuras and a real Blooming.
- Older Than They Look: He's been alive for over a century, having been sustained by his Regeneration ability and the Yozakura blood that created it. He's been performing his research since World War II and was close friends with his test subject, Tsubomi Yozakura.
- Personality Powers: All of the members of the Nijibana Flowers are themed after a color and the greatest source of their trauma in the past.
- Power Dyes Your Hair: His hair was originally black, but it became white after Tsubomi Yozakura gave him her blood.
Nohmen
Nohmen
The owner of the Dandy Lion hotel where Kawashita hides away at.- Affably Evil: Although a member of Tanpopo who holds an entire hotel hostage via bombs, he's honestly pretty polite to Taiyo during their fight and takes his loss against Shinzo with dignity.
- Graceful Loser: When he's defeated by Shinzo, he compliments him out of respect for outwitting him.
- Straight Gay: He's casually implied to be into men.
- Wake-Up Call Boss: He's the first user of Cherry Blossom Leaf Hazakura.
Yuki Shirai
Yuki Shirai
An agent of Tanpopo who Taiyo meets on a train. Shirai has the abiltiy to control her hair and use it as a weapon. She seems to know an awful lot about Taiyo for some reason.
- Animal Motif: Snakes. Her hair moves like snakes, she names her attacks after them, and her callsign is "White Snake". Yet, she subverts the connotations of the trope by being genuinely kind and remorseful for her actions while working for Tanpopo and wants to help Taiyo take revenge for his parents' deaths.
- Code Name: Her flowing white hair gave her the callsign "White Snake".
- Incurable Cough of Death: The treatment used to save Shirai's life only extended it by ten years, and she's coughing up blood by the time she comes to blows with Taiyo.
- It's All My Fault: She blames herself for the death of Taiyo's family, as they were murdered to cover up Tanpopo's experimentation with Hazakura on ill patients.
- Like a Son to Me: Inverted. Without any family, she comes to consider Taiyo's parents her family as they worked hard to treat her.
- Living on Borrowed Time: A 100% concentrated dose of Hazakura can only extend one's life for up to ten years before the body horribly breaks down.
- Kicking Ass in All Her Finery: She wears a luxurious black dress on the day she meets Taiyo.
- One Degree of Separation: Shirai knows all about Taiyo for some reason even though he's never met her. This is because Taiyo's parents had worked tirelessly to treat her while she was bedridden, keeping her spirits up with their kindness and administering Hazakura to save her life.
- Power Makes Your Hair Grow: Her hair regrows no matter how many times it's cut, making impossible to simply disarm her by cutting it off.
- Prehensile Hair: She's able to perfectly manipulate her hair as though it were just another limb of hers, allowing her to use it to fight as thought they're Combat Tentacles, shield herself from even electric shocks, and grapple others with them.
- Suicide by Cop: This is her implicit goal when she confronts Taiyo on the train. Knowing that she doesn't have long to live, Shirai encodes a message with her hair to reveal her connection to Taiyo's parents and why Tanpopo had them killed. She then hopes for Taiyo to strike her down to defeat Tanpopo when her Survivor Guilt prevented her from doing so. This is also why she retrieves Yae for Taiyo after it fell from his grasp just minutes before their fight.
- Super-Soldier: Out of ten thousand trials, Shirai was the only patient with perfect compatibility with Cherry Blossom Hazakura, extending her lifespan ten years and giving her the ability to walk again. It also gives her physical prowess on par with the Yozakuras and allows her manipulate her hair. These traits and her Survivor Guilt were used to make her a Tanpopo agent.
- Survivor Guilt: Ten years ago, she was sickly and bedridden until Taiyo's parents learned about a new drug and brought on Kawashita to treat her with it. That drug, Cherry Blossom Hazakura, saved Shirai's life. But when she returned to the hospital several years later, she's horrified to discover that it has become a brutal testing ground for the drug, while Kawashita ordered for the deaths of Taiyo's family to cover up any trace of Hazakura's existence. But because she needs Hazakura to extend her life, she's unable to bring herself to fight against Tanpopo. However, she never forgot Taiyo's parents either and reveals the GPS tracker Tanpopo planted in her earrings to him in hopes that he'd be able to stop them once and for all.
- Tragic Keepsake: Shirai's sun-shaped earrings were given to her by Taiyo's mother to cheer her up prior to trying a new drug. They serve as a memento of Shirai's appreciation for what the Asano's did for her, and she reveals the GPS tracker Tanpopo planted in them so Taiyo would be able to locate Tanpopo's hideout.
- Unwitting Test Subject: As far as Shirai knew, she was simply undergoing a clinical trial to save her life. Little did she know that she would be turned into a Super-Soldier for Tanpopo.
- You Fight Like a Cow: She consistently trash talks Taiyo throughout their fight, asking if he's okay with being torn apart and insisting that he's no match for her. Shirai then presses Taiyo's Berserk Button by threatening his wife. Her hidden message to Taiyo implies that this is a front she's putting on to keep Kawashita fooled, and she doesn't want to hurt Taiyo at all.
- You Remind Me of X: She says that Taiyo's unruly hair and kind eyes is "just like them", to his confusion. The "them" refers to his parents, who did everything in their power to treat Shirai when she was terminally ill.
Akai
Akai
First Among the Nijibana Flowers
Originally a teenaged girl name Miki Akasaka, Akai lost her entire family to a hedonistic arsonist. Kawashtia saved her life by grafting on the body parts of her younger siblings, recruiting her into Tanpopo in exchange for giving her the revenge she wanted.
- Asskicking Leads to Leadership: She's the first among the Nijibana Flowers and the member who has the highest compatibility with Cherry Blossom Hazakura, operating at more than 500% efficiency. However, she's also the first to get taken out thanks to Futaba.
- Attack! Attack! Attack!: She has no real strategy to speak of in combat, merely trying to burn anything that pissed her off to ashes with constant, furious fire attacks, reflecting how she buries her grief with murderous rage.
- Convection, Schmonvection: Subverted and discussed. When pitted against Futaba, she points out that even if Futaba deflects the fire, the radiant heat will eventually cook her alive if Akai just keeps attacking.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Akai was once an Ordinary High-School Student until an arsonist killed her entire family in a house fire. Because of this, she's constantly burning with the desire to use her abilities to burn away anything that annoys her so that she'll never be hurt again.
- Death Seeker: Having lost everything and everyone who matters to her, Akai doesn't care if she dies, willingly going past her body's ability to withstand her own fire and heat in an attempt to kill Futaba.
- Interrupted Suicide: Futaba uses her own Blooming to cancel Akai's own powers, saving Akai from her own attempt at Taking You with Me.
- Playing with Fire: Her body is able to emit a gas that she can ignite at will to set anything on fire.
- Super-Soldier: Like Shirai, Akai has 100% compatibility with Cherry Blossom Hazakura, letting her take on even the Yozakura siblings. In addition to this, she also has her own version of Blooming, which enhances her already deadly fire powers by allowing her to emit rays of pure heat that she can manipulate to turn her enemies to ash.
- Taking You with Me: She attempts this against Futaba, creating a fire plume as tall as the volcano they're fighting in to burn them both to ashes. Luckily for the both of them, Futaba completely nullifies it with her martial arts
Aonuma
Aonuma
Orignally Ryo Aoyanagi, who was once homeless until Kawashita took him in. He became one of the leaders of Tanpopo and a member of the Nijibana Rainbow Flowers.- An Ice Person: His body releases gas that can freeze objects and create ice structures.
- Dark and Troubled Past: When he was young and homeless, he competed for warmth and clothes with older woman named Hako, whom he had looked upon as an honorary Grandmother. One night when she was away, his small body began to be overcome by the cold and nearly died. When he woke up, he found that Hako had gave him her coat and she passed away from losing heat. This event shook him, and cause him untold guilt and believe him to be unworthy of kindess.
- Weaksauce Weakness: His strength of his ice powers are tied to how control of his emotions he is. When Kengo compromises his emotional state by bringing up Hako and his Dark and Troubled Past above, the lethality of his powers went way down, essentially leaving him at Kengo's mercy.
Kurosawa
Kurozawa
Originally Kuroda Yoshimasa, a former condemned criminal who lacks a fear of death. Kawashita obtained custody of him while he was awaiting death row for several murders, and forced him through horrific experiments to completely convert his body into Kokuinseki, an military-grade organic alloy that changes shape when exposed to electric shocks from the surrounding muscles.
- Ax-Crazy: It's clear from Kurosawa's backstory that it didn't take much for him to kill people, with his first confirmed kill being at 15, when he beat his friend to death over losing a game they were playing. As a result of his lack of fear of death, he can kill people like a person would swat flies thought a second thought.
- Healing Factor: The Kokuinseki he's composed of allows him to regenerate his body no matter how many times Shinzo destroys his attacks and wrecks his body. It requires Shinzo to destroy the metal at the cellular level to prevent him from regenerating.
- Living Weapon: As a result of his entire body being made out of a shape-changing alloy, he can create multiple weapons from his body through his Blooming, like blades, spikes, and in one instance, a drill.
- Literally Shattered Lives: His body is completely obliterated by the end of his fight with Shinzo. Notably, he's still alive, smiling with his eyes after Shinzo thanks him for bringing back in control by unintentionally blood-letting his body.
- Mortality Phobia: Inverted. The judges at his trial note that not only he's not scared of death, his own or anyone elses, but he shows clear disinterest in it. He only begins to fear his own demise once Shinzo is through with him.
- Oh, Crap!: He has this expression when he finds that his attempt to assimilate his broken pieces of his body fails, and then has a worse one seconds after Shinzo immediately overwhelms him with constant attacks to his body.
- The Speechless: Throughout his appearances, he doesn't utter a single word, leaving his body and his facial expressions to do all the talking for him. It's unknown if he can't talk or he just chooses not to, as we don't see him say anything during his backstory.
Cha Cha
Cha Cha
Fourth Among the Nijibana Flowers
Fourth among the Nijibana Flowers, a boy whose vast intellect is trapped inside his immobile body. He was found by Kawashita, who turned Cha Cha into a cyborg and recruits him into the Nijibana Flowers as the group's hacking and electronic warfare specialist.
- Genius Cripple: Despite being completely immobile and lacking a formal education, Cha Cha is remarkably well-spoken and a match for Shion in wits and hacking ability.
- Insufferable Genius: Cha Cha is proud of his intellect and prattles on and on about how Shion's specs are no match for his. He even looks down on the other members of the Nijibana Flowers despite being ranked fourth among them, calling their abilities "crude power" instead of "pure talent".
Mizuki
Mizuki
Third among the Nijibana Flowers, a mysterious older man with a propensity for poison. He's most frequently partnered up with Ai, a girl under his care.
- Heroic Sacrifice: He decides to pump all his parasomeinine in his body to save Ai, at the cost of killing himself in the process.
- Parental Substitute: For Ai as the only person he truly cares about. While he can be strict and terrifying, he's willing to lay his life down for her, pumping all of the parasomeinine in his body into her to save her life even as Nanao warns him of what would happen.
- Poisonous Person: He's able to emit noxious poison that can even harm Nanao as well as belch out a huge cloud of it to cut off people's escape. His strongest poisons are so virulent that people's bodies will melt after being exposed to it.
Ai
Ai
A small girl under the care of Mizuki, one of the Nijibana Flowers. She possesses oddly familiar ears and size-shifting abilities.
Following the events of the Tampopo raid, Ai is put into the care of the Yozakura family.
For more information, see the Yozakura Family character page.
- Abusive Parents: Her biological mother constantly beat her up until she was finally murdered by Mizuki to retrieve Ai for Tampopo.
- Little Bit Beastly: She has furry paws and dog ears due to having her DNA mixed with an Okami dog's and she's shown to be able to shift between forms at will.
- Muscles Are Meaningless: Due to being spliced with the DNA of an Okami dog, Ai possesses disproportionate strength for her size, able to bat Taiyo down the length of a train car with ease and damage Nanao.
Mysterious Agent (Unmarked Spoilers)
Momo Yozakura
A mysterious man in a longcoat working for Tanpopo. He turns out to be the Yozakura's supposedly dead father.
- Abusive Parents: As his children continue to oppose his agenda, he sinks to a new low by brainwashing them into following him with mind-controlling parasites. Futaba and Shinzo fall victim to this in chapter 141. Subverted when this his abusive behaviour is revealed to be an act to escape Asa and prepare his children to eventually defeat their evil ancestor.
- Affably Evil: When he finally stops for conversation, he turns out to be surprisingly genial and friendly. He compliments Kyoichiro and the rest of his children and orchestrated Taiyo's near-death experience and the raid of the mansion to force Mutsumi to give Taiyo her blood to make him stronger. With this in mind, it's easy to forget that he's a dangerous assassin working for a shady paramilitary organization.
- Badass Longcoat: He's always wearing a long duster coat.
- Batman Gambit: He convinced Tanpopo to attack the mansion to create a situation where Mutsumi would be forced to give her blood to Taiyo. He even shot Taiyo with full knowledge that even with Shinzo's and Nanao's immediate treatment, Taiyo would teeter on the edge between life and death, the optimal time to inject Mutsumi's blood while limiting potential side effects.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: He marches to the beat of his own drum, doing as he pleases regardless of whatever anyone else thinks. Kawashita's complaints about Momo's pungent shumai go unaswered to the point of comedy, but as a Yozakura he's one of the most dangerous spies in the world.
- Cool Teacher: He prepares several DV Ds, one for each of his children as well as Taiyo. Each DVD contains a set of Momo's personal instructions and 5-year training plans to help his children overcome their weaknesses and defeat Asa for good.
- Dissonant Serenity: He cheerfully remarks about how much his children have grown while beating them within an inch of their lives.
- I Need You Stronger: He shoots Taiyo and orchestrates the assault on the Yozakura estate to create a situation where Mutsumi would be forced to give Taiyo some of her blood, ensuring that he would either die or become a stronger husband for her.
- Knight of Cerebus: The biggest in the series. Momo's sheer, utter insanity, combined with his disturbingly friendly demeanour and immense power makes every encounter with him deadly serious.
- Lotus-Eater Machine: His Blooming, "Dream" allows him to draw people into a dream world, enabling Momo to manipulate their memories and perceptions to control them.
- Mask of Sanity: Momo's genial personality hides that he is utterly insane. This is subverted when it's revealed that his insane, evil personality is an intentional mask to hide his true self as the kindly father his children remembered him as. He purposefully underwent Obfuscating Insanity with his own Blooming to fool Asa.
- No-Sell:
- After Kyoichiro uses an attack that gouges the landscape, Momo completely nullifies it, telling Kyoichiro that as the one who taught Kyoichiro his moves, Steel Spider can't touch him.
- He later takes a Blooming-enhanced attack from Ban powerful enough to leave a bus-sized hole in a fortress wall with an open palm, only getting a small scrape that quickly heals itself.
- Obfuscating Insanity: He used his Blooming on himself to create a mask of insanity in which he'd commit his most deranged and heinous actions at his wife's request in order to unite his children and fool Asa.
- Opposite-Sex Clone: Kawashita was shocked to discover that Momo's genetics are practically identical to Tsubomi Yozakura's even though he looks nothing like her and is male. It cannot even be explained by parentage since Momo is not Tsubomi's son. Even Kawashita has no idea how this is possible.
- Shadow Archetype: Momo how he portrays himself as is essentially what both Taiyo and Kyoichiro at the beginning of the series could have become.
- Like Taiyo, Momo experienced loss in his family (in his case, Rei). But while Taiyo is ultimately is able to move past his loss by becoming part of the Yozakura family, Momo chooses to obsess over the past and bringing Rei back to life, at the expense of everyone else, including his own children.
- Like Kyoichiro, Momo became obsessed with Rei and becoming a complete family again after the incident, his twisted devotion to this dream mirroring Kyoichiro's own in the first chapter with Mutsumi's safety. Unlike Kyoichiro, who does get better in this regard thanks to Taiyo's influence, Momo does not.
- Shipper on Deck: Momo supports Taiyo's relationship with Mutsumi and has since they first met as young children. He believed that an ordinary person like Taiyo would be the unpredictable factor needed to change the Yozakura family's fate.
- Stealth Expert: He's so stealthy that even Sui and Shinzo aren't able to detect his presence.
- The Tape Knew You Would Say That: Momo can accurately predict the responses of his children with such uncanny skill that his recorded message to his children is akin to a conversation.
- Subverted slightly with his personal tape to Taiyo. Since he knows him the least, especially compared to how much he knows his children, he's visibly struggling to come up with anything to say. All he really manages to predict is how soon Taiyo would watch the video, and how important the content on that video would be to him. Namely, a video of his parents before he was born.
- Trademark Favorite Food: His second on-screen appearance in the story has him open a box of extremely pungent shumai and eat it regardless of Kawashita's complaints. When Kawashita tries to ask him to stop, Momo says he'll simply do as he pleases.
- Walking Spoiler: His very existence is one, as up to the reveal he was thought to be dead. And even more so when the real root of his actions are revealed.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: He shoots Taiyo and leaves him almost dead as part of his Batman Gambit to make Taiyo a stronger husband for Mutsumi, knowing full well that the experience would have killed Taiyo had his body rejected Mutsumi's blood. Kyoichiro lampshades this, calling him arrogant and self-righteous.
- His questionable behaviour is revealed to be an act to fool Asa. Rei discovered Asa's existence. Momo, who had a change of heart, chose to side with Rei in an attempt to rebel against Asa. When that failed, Momo heeded Rei's final instructions and put on an act to evade Asa while preparing plans for making his children stronger to defeat the evil ancestor of the Yozakura family.
- Wild Card: His reasons for supporting Tanpopo, which organized the assassination of his wife and the theft of her body, are unknown. He doesn't seem to particularly care about helping Kawashita either, not bothering to warn him of the incoming Yozakura attack despite knowing about it advance nor does he help to stop it. He also takes Rei Yozakura's heart with him and refuses to speak to Ban before vanishing.
- World's Best Warrior: He's dangerous even by the standards of the Yozakura family. When his children all face him together in chapter 101, even Kyoichiro admits he thinks they can hold him off for about five minutes at most. Indeed, by the end of the chapter Momo has already defeated all of them while he isn't even scratched.
- You Are Already Dead: He can shoot someone so quickly and precisely that they don't start bleeding or feel any pain into several seconds later, by that time he is already out of sight. Taiyo experiences this firsthand, taking a dozen bullets and only realizing it when Shinzo sees that he's bleeding.
- You Never Asked: He notices the encrypted message Shirai left for Taiyo in her hair, but neglects to tell Kawashita any of this simply because he never asked.
