Characters / Nightshade (2016)

Heroine

Enju Ueno

Daughter of Kōga's leader, Kandō Ueno, and Iga's former leader Tanba Momochi's younger sister Kagari. A symbol of peace between the two factions, she has been brought up carefully and has lived a sheltered life. Because of that, she is an innocent, unfamiliar with the ways of the world. She aspires to contribute to her clan and her people, training diligently.

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• Abusive Parents: Kando does nothing but put Enju down, ignore her or use her for the entirety of the game. No matter the route, he coldly cuts Enju off from the rest of the clan after her arrest and sometimes sends her friends to murder her–-despite there being an entire village of other shinobi just as able to do the job. Worst of all, he's doing so either as part of a sick game to choose Hidyori's guardian, or while knowing she's been framed for the murder he ordered.
• All-Loving Hero: Enju shows empathy for just about everyone, including people that are trying to kill her. She tends to Mokichi's wounds in Goemon's route and Kyara's in Gekkamaru's route after they attack her.
• Apologizes a Lot: She has a tendency to do this, likely because of her abusive father. It's most notable in Hanzō's route; at the start, she can't stop apologizing for every little thing she thinks she's done wrong, and at the end, she's grown out of this trait entirely.
• Back-to-Back Badasses: On Hanzō's route, she develops her fighting skills and learns how to read his movements, eventually leading to this. Several times, at that.
• Battle Couple: She fights alongside her love interests in all routes. This is more prominent in Hanzō's route, where her competence as a ninja flourishes more thoroughly, though the "couple" part only comes after they retire from shinobi life.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Wishes to go on her first mission so that she can be useful to her village and clan, the Koga. Unfortunately, the only "use" her father had for her was letting her be hunted down to rake in gold and destabilize the country for future profit.
• Break the Cutie: It starts with her Abusive Dad and Missing Mom and ends with her being framed for murder, being forced to go on the run, and possibly seeing her friends die. And then there's the bad endings.
• Calling the Old Man Out: She can get the opportunity to call out her father for his BS in all routes except Goemon's since it's the only route she doesn't get to confront him in.
• Character Development: Gets a lot in Hanzō's route, which is also the only route where she fully develops her shinobi skills. After realizing just how sheltered she's been all her life, she resolves to grow strong enough to protect herself, and actively spends time training and getting advice from Hanzō. Because of this, she gains confidence in herself, enough to stand up against her abusive father, and becomes less naive about the world. She also wrestles with the necessity of killing and her own conflicting feelings towards her mother.
• Childhood Friends: With Gekkamaru, Kuroyuki, Chōjirō , Kyara and Ennosuke.
• Childhood Friend Romance: In Gekkamuru, Kuroyuki, and Chōjirō's routes.
• Combat Medic: All shinobi are trained in medicine as well as fighting, but Enju spent even more time working with the herbalist than most. Hanzō's route reveals this is because her father told her she'd be worthless as a shinobi and delayed her training by several years.
• Commonality Connection: With Hanzō through her mother.
• Death Seeker: A variation in Goemon's bad ending. Yodo attacks Enju and kills her; Enju admits that she could have dodged it if she had tried, but didn't because she had already accepted that she was going to die either way. Tragically, in this ending she never learns that Goemon had a plan that would have gotten her out alive.
• Destructive Romance: With Kuroyuki. Weeks of travelling alone and being gaslit turns Enju into a Fragile Flower and exacerbates his Yandere tendencies. While he gets better about his possessiveness, at the end the two are (and acknowledge they're) in an unhealthily co-dependent relationship.
• Dying Dream: In Kuroyuki's bad ending, Enju is murdered by her father. As she bleeds out, Kuroyuki makes her see an illusion that they're back with all their friends in Koga and everything is safe, ensuring that she dies at peace.
• Dual Wielding: She wields two slender daggers.
• Fighting Your Friend: She's forced to come to blows with her friends while she's on the run after she's framed for Hideyoshi's murder, as they're all under orders to kill her depending on the route, much to her dismay. Though to be fair to them, they're not happy about it either.
• Fragile Flower: Kuroyuki's route brings out the worst of her dependency and lack of self-confidence, ultimately turning her into this.
• Fragile Speedster: The databooks mention that Enju's specialty as a ninja is her agility. In-story, she mostly relies on her speed and uses it to her advantage to get the upper hand in fights as she's not as durable as some of her more seasoned comrades are.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: You can rename her, but her default name is Enju.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: She is rather hard on herself, particularly when it comes to her skills as a shinobi.
• Interrupted Suicide:
  • Upon learning that Kōga will be destroyed if her head isn't taken to Fushimi Castle in Chōjirō's route, Enju rushes to Gekkamaru, Ennosuke, and Kyara's shared grave and attempts suicide. Chōjirō stops her.
  • She also attempts this in Gekkamaru's route after Ennosuke's death. Fortunately, Hanzo stops her just in time and talks her out of it.
• Killing in Self-Defense: In Hanzō's route, Enju is forced to kill one of the Nokizaru shinobi attacking her and Hanzo. Later in the same route, she kills her father in self-defense.
• Missing Mom: She committed suicide when Enju was small, which left the poor girl feeling like her mother didn't want her. Or so it seems—Hanzō's route reveals Kando actually murdered Kagari and arranged it to look like suicide.
• Morality Chain: For Kuroyuki in his route.
• Naïve Newcomer: Having been sheltered in Koga all her life, she's unfamiliar with a lot of the outside world. She also hasn't been on a mission as a shinobi before, and so has somewhat rose-tinted glasses. Needless to say, reality hits her hard.
• Protectorate:
  • Enju is this for Gekkamaru, and effectively for all of Koga as well, since she's basically seen as their princess.
  • It's deconstructed in Hanzō's route when Enju realizes that she's completely unprepared for the real life-or-death situation she's now in because she's spent her whole life being protected by others, and resolves to become strong enough to keep herself alive.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Learning that her friends all died for nothing in their pursuit of her because of Hideyoshi and Kando's schemes in addition to Hideyoshi desecrating their graves in Gekkamaru's route, the normally gentle and softspoken Enju drops all pretenses of her previous pacifism in favor of actually attempting to murder Hideyoshi and her father out of anger for what they've done.
• Self-Made Orphan: In Hanzō's route, Enju kills her father in self-defense. She also kills him in Gekkamaru's route, but unlike in Hanzō's route where she did it out of self-defense, she kills him in revenge for her friends' meaningless deaths.
• Sheltered Aristocrat: Enju is basically considered the village's princess and thus has never been allowed to go on a mission before; as a result, she is a bit naive about the ways of the world, though it doesn't generally hinder her too much.
• Shy Blue-Haired Girl: She's generally sweet and somewhat shy, with blue-tinged hair.
• Signature Move: Hyakka Shofuren. She whips up a whirlwind of cherry blossoms around her to hide her from view. She uses it to defeat Goemon in every route, and it becomes prominent in some other routes, particularly Chojiro's, since he's the one who taught it to her.
• These Hands Have Killed: In Hanzō's route, Enju kills one of the Nokizaru shinobi in self-defense and feels extreme guilt over it; she even feels bad about all the ninja that Hanzō has killed defending her, because they were after her in the first place. By the time she takes her father's life at the end of the route, she has come to terms with it, but notably, the good ending concludes with her and Hanzō both giving up the path of the shinobi.
• Took a Level in Badass: Big time on Hanzō's route.
• True Blue Femininity: Both her casual kimono and her shinobi gear are blue.
• "Well Done, Daughter!" Gal: Part of the reason she's so eager to go on a mission is to impress her father, with whom her relationship with is so distant it's practically non-existent.

Love Interests

Gekkamaru

Voiced by: Wataru Hatano

After losing his family, Gekkamaru was adopted by the protagonist's family along with his younger brother when he was three. Assigned to be the Enju's bodyguard, Gekkamaru has proven time and again to be loyal and steadfast. He is known to be one of the most skilled and reliable ninja Kōga has. Gekkamaru is completely devoted to his master and can sometimes be overprotective.

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• Big Brother Instinct: He often takes it upon himself to reel in Kuroyuki's antics.
• Bodyguard Crush: To Enju. He's been protecting her ever since she was little and he's grown overprotective to the point that everyone can see it. It may be because of the jutsu Kagari placed upon him when he was small that he's so obsessed with protecting her. That said, his feelings for her are the genuine article despite this.
• Break His Heart to Save Him: One of the options to break Kagari's jutsu to have Gekkamaru stop protecting Enju is to show him that she's in love with someone else. Given this, it's probable that the jutsu is broken in the other routes where she falls in love with someone else.
• Devoted to You: His loyalty and devotion is fully dedicated to Enju.
• Dogged Nice Guy: In all routes except his own, of the Low-Key Yearning variety. He is so devoted to Enju that he would think nothing of abandoning his village, or his own life, to keep her safe. In every single route, he abandons Koga without hesitation in order to break Enju out of prison, although someone may beat him to it depending on the route. In Chojiro's route, he even dies to protect her. It's justified, as he is working under the spell Enju's mother had cast on him as a child to protect Enju at all cost.
• Everyone Can See It: Gekkamaru's devotion to protecting Enju runs deep, but Enju remains oblivious to why he's so protective of her besides the fact that "it's his duty."
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: Whenever Gekkamaru's eyes glow, it means Kagari's protection spell is influencing him and anyone posing a threat to Enju better run.
• "I Know You Are in There Somewhere" Fight: After Enju breaks Kagari's protection spell and reactivates his mother's spell that causes him to attack her, she tries to appeal to him in this way.
• Mutual Kill: With Ennosuke on Chojiro's route.
• Not Blood Siblings: Gekkamaru was adopted into the Koga family and was raised with Enju as an older brother and bodyguard.
• Only Mostly Dead: The end of his route. He stabs himself in an effort to stop his body from fulfilling his mother's spell, and Enju is left thinking he was dead for a while. He shows up again for the finale, supposedly having been saved by the Tokugowa shinobi.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Contrary to their color-schemes, Gekkamaru is the calmer and more practical blue oni, where Kuroyuki is the cheerful, happy-go-lucky red oni.
• Supreme Chef: He's one of the few shinobi with quite exceptional cooking skills.
• Undying Loyalty: To Enju. Kagari's spell might have something to do with it, but he remains loyal to her even once it's broken.

Kuroyuki

Voiced by: Hiro Shimono

Gekkamaru's younger brother and Enju's foster brother. Right after he was born, he and Gekkamaru were taken in by her family. Cheerful, carefree and clever, Kuroyuki can also be quite cunning. He was sent away on an extended mission when he was eight, and after 8 years, has finally returned.

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• Acquired Poison Immunity: In his route, he casually mentions that he's been trained to take poison.
• Always Second Best: In Hanzo's route, he says he feels this way when it comes to Enju's affections; first to Gekkamaru, later to Hanzo.
• Amnesiac Hero: Kuroyuki's ninjutsu feeds off of memories. By the time of the events of the game, his feelings for Enju and his resentment toward Gekkamaru are all he remembers from his childhood.
• Dogged Nice Guy: In Chojiro and Gekkamaru's routes. Played with in Goemon and Hanzo's. He usually shows up to side with Enju even when he's not being romanced; however, it's implied that he's the actual killer of Hideyoshi in Goemen and Hanzo's routes, making his decision to side with her there perhaps somewhat motivated by guilt.
• Destructive Romance: One that's not entirely his fault, due to how mentally broken he is. Since his feelings for Enju are all he can remember, he's fixated on her so much that he states he doesn't know how to live without her. If she returns his feelings (that is, goes on his route), they both end up utterly, unhealthily co-dependent.
• Gaslighting: On his route, he explicitly injures himself and lies to Enju about her friends attacking him, to make her think he's the only one on her side.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: One of Kuroyuki's eyes glows red whenever he uses his shadow techniques.
• Hidden Depths: Kuroyuki's bright disposition is an act he puts on in an effort to recapture his identity that he lost along with his memories.
• If I Can't Have You……: Kuroyuki mentions that he wanted to make a world where only they could live in, even if it means making Enju hate him. Eventually subverted, as he realizes he was wrong to try to keep Enju to himself.
• In Love with Love: Since training for Kagehami (Shadow Eater) required him to stay in the dark for 8 years and have it eat away at his memories and soul, the only way he was able to cope was to summon an illusion of Enju. After they confess, Enju says that maybe he's not really in love with her, but the memory of her.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: After realizing it was wrong and selfish of him to manipulate Enju, he decides instead to try to create a world where she can be happy without him by killing anything that could harm her.
• Loss of Identity: His childhood training destroyed all of his memories.
• Love Confession: To Enju. He tells her so much that she thinks he's joking.
• Love Makes You Crazy: After Hideyoshi's murder, he breaks Enju out of jail, tells her no one is on her side except him, her friends are headed to kill her, and the only way to survive is for them to be together forever. He also ties their wrists together after she finds out that he's been lying.
• Loving a Shadow: No pun intended... Deconstructed on his route. Kuroyuki fixates on Enju because his feelings for her are one of the only things he can remember after his near-complete loss of memory. As such, he's terrified to lose her, going as far as to try and gaslight her into believing that he's the only one she can trust, and the two of them end up becoming concerningly codependent on each other. Enju even lampshades it during their Love Confession, explicitly wondering if Kuroyuki is only in love with the memory of her.
• Morality Chain: Enju becomes this to him, as she's the only memory of his childhood he has left, and one of the few things tethering him to his humanity.
• Never Found the Body: A subversion occurs in Chojiro's route. Kuroyuki's body presumably gets washed away in a river during a fight, and Chojiro and Enju presume that he is dead. In the bad ending, he's never seen again, but in the good ending, he resurfaces to assist in their escape.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: On some routes (definitely on his own but also implied on Goemon's and Hanzo's), he is the one who murders Hideyoshi, on orders from Kando Ueno. Apparently he didn't realize that Enju was in the next room, and she ends up getting framed for the crime.
• Not Blood Siblings: Kuroyuki was adopted into the Koga family and was raised alongside Enju until he was 8.
• The One That Got Away: With Enju. Regrets being sent away for 8 years and being apart from her, so he wants to make as many memories with her as possible.
• Please, Don't Leave Me: Says this repeatedly as he's sucking the poison out of Enju.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Contrary to their color-schemes, Gekkamaru is the calmer and more practical blue oni, where Kuroyuki is the cheerful, happy-go-lucky red oni. At least, on the surface he is.
• Shadow Pin: One of his techniques.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: He was subjected to years of mental torture during his training, and the jutsu he learned there specifically feeds on memories and souls, rendering him a shell of his former self. Part of the reason he fixates on Enju is because she is the only person he remembered after forgetting the rest of his childhood, and the only person who has kept him from losing his mind already.
• Sibling Rivalry: Mostly one-sided from him to Gekkamaru, as he somewhat resents Gekkamaru for being chosen as Enju's protector over himself.
• Sinister Scythe: He uses two kusarigama.
• Stepford Smiler: Kuroyuki puts on a cheerful front, but his route reveals that he is nowhere near as composed as he seems. Years of torture and learning techniques that feed on your soul will do that.
• Training from Hell: Deconstructed hard. As a child, Kuroyuki was subjected to a training method that was literal torture and also gradually ate his memories and soul. As a result, he is very mentally fragile and obsessed with Enju, because she's the only person he can remember.
• Yandere: Somewhat justified and downplayed, given his backstory. His route reveals that he'd been tortured for the 8 years he was away from Koga and that his memories of his childhood are all but gone aside from Enju. He becomes obsessed with her because he views her as his only connection to humanity and the only thing keeping him from being a complete "monster". When he realizes she'd been blamed for Hideyoshi's murder, he hatches a plan to rescue her alone and convinces her not to trust anyone but him. He mercilessly kills almost all the shinobi that come for Enju, though he doesn't do anything worse than beating up her friends (and Goemon) when they come. After his deception is revealed to Enju, he decides instead that he wants to create a happy world for her, and puts all his energy into removing all threats to her life.
• You Are Worth Hell: After Enju is claimed to be Hideyoshi's murderer, Kuroyuki doesn't care if he has to kill to stay with her.

Chōjirō Momochi

Voiced by: Kosuke Toriumi

The son of the late leader of Iga, Tanba Momochi, Enju's cousin. After losing his family and clan in the Tenshou Iga War at the age of five, he joined Kōga with his surviving people. Since he is the son of the Head Shinobi of the fallen Iga, he's naturally observant and calm. His skills as a shinobi are eminent in Kōga, as he's also a teacher for Enju and the others.

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• Aloof Big Brother: He's the strong, stoic, older brother figure to Enju and her friends in Koga.
• Big Brother Mentor: He taught the other younger shinobi how to fight.
• Conflicting Loyalty: In his route, Chōjirō hesitates to side with Enju due to the fact that Kōga will be destroyed if they do not kill her, and for Chōjirō, who has already lost his home once before, the thought of losing his home again frightens him.
• Character Tics: He clenches his fists when he's emotionally distressed.
• Dandere: He's generally quiet and emotionless, but opens up to Enju by the end of his route.
• Intimate Healing: In his route, he is poisoned by the Nokizaru shinobi and loses consciousness, forcing Enju to give him the antidote mouth-to-mouth. He teases her about this later after Hanzo points it out to him.
• Kissing Cousins: Enju's mother was the younger sister of Chōjirō's father, making Enju and Chōjirō cousins.
• Lethal Chef: His culinary skills are non-existent, with him burning every meal he and Enju eat on his route.
• Long-Haired Pretty Boy: He has long hair and is quite handsome.
• Mutual Kill: In his bad ending, he and Enju decide to kill each other rather than truly fight to the death for Hideyoshi's amusement.
• The Quiet One: He doesn't speak much and is largely introspective.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: With Enju, on his route. He's one of the shinobi ordered to hunt her down, and it takes a good bit of time for him to decide not to, despite his feelings for her.

Hanzō Hattori

Voiced by: Kenjiro Tsuda

Known as the right-hand-man to Ieyasu Tokugawa and the leader of the Tokugawa shinobi, Hanzō is one of the few surviving members of the now-destroyed Iga clan. Calm, blunt and efficient, he has made a name for himself as the greatest shinobi in Japan and is looked at with great admiration by Enju and her peers.

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• Back-to-Back Badasses: He helps Enju train on his route, and she's eventually able to fight back-to-back with him whenever they encounter enemy shinobi.
• Battle Couple: With Enju on his route, though the "couple" part only comes after they retire from shinobi life.
• Brutal Honesty: He does not hold any punches when pointing out one's flaws as a shinobi, but also doesn't pass any judgement about said flaws.
• Career-Ending Injury: At the end of his route, he takes a side wound from Chojirō, then reopens it fighting his traitorous second-in-command. As a result it doesn't heal properly, forcing him to retire from the life of a shinobi.
• Catchphrase: "That's the spirit" on his route, whenever he recognizes Enju's determination to improve.
• The Champion: To Ieyasu. He's Ieyasu's right-hand-man and most trusted accomplice, more than willing to put his life on the line to protect him.
• Character Development: Starts his route as a practical yet merciless shinobi who puts the mission above all else and says shinobi don't need trust. Effectively, a living weapon. At the end of his route, he openly says he trusts Enju, holds back from killing her friends for her sake, and abandons his mission in order to protect her, ultimately regaining his humanity.
• Childhood Friends: He was friends with Enju's mother Kagari since they came from the same village and were close in age.
• Commonality Connection: With Enju through her mother.
• Conflicting Loyalty: At the end of his route, Ieyasu orders him to kill Enju to secure him the position of Hideyori's guardian. Having fallen in love with Enju at that point, Hanzō feels extremely conflicted about fulfilling his mission and ultimately chooses to protect her from the rest of his clan. Fortunately, Ieyasu lets him off the hook by only ordering proof of Enju's death (in the form of her bloody sash) instead of her body, allowing her to live on in secret and sparing Hanzō from defying his orders.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Hanzo is considered World's Best Warrior in-universe and he lives up to the title. Any enemy he goes up against tends to fall pretty quickly, and he only really has trouble in the latter chapters of his route because he's fighting Enju's friends and wants avoid killing them for her sake. The only real exception to this is Goemon, who seemed to be able to stand against him better than most the one time they fought in earnest.
• Death Glare: Has an unfortunate habit of looking very serious and sharp when he doesn't necessarily mean to be, and this combined with his stoicism means that he comes off as very intimidating to younger shinobi like Enju and her friends. Even the normally unruffled Kuroyuki is nervous in his presence.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: He's aloof and cold, but not mean—he's just so mission-oriented, it's hard to get to know him. On his route, he warms up to Enju over the course of several months.
• Dual Wielding: He wields two large daggers.
• Hidden Depths: He has calligraphy-level handwriting and knows a lot about tea ceremonies, quite contrary to his reputation as a terrifyingly skilled shinobi.
• Historical Domain Character: Hanzō Hattori was a real historical figure who was loyal to Ieyasu Tokugawa; however he was a warrior rather than a shinobi, and probably less of a Hunk than his Romance Game counterpart.
• My Greatest Failure: Enju's mother, Kagari, spoke to him while she was pregnant and asked him to run away with her; he wasn't able to, and she ended up committing suicide (actually being murdered by Kando). Hanzo is deeply remorseful, feeling that she and Enju would have lived much happier lives if he'd done as she asked.
• Stern Teacher: He becomes an unofficial mentor of sorts to Enju on his route, helping her train and advising her about the shinobi way. While he's strict, he's also fair, never insulting her and giving compliments when due.
• The Stoic: He's generally quiet and keeps his emotions to himself.
• Undying Loyalty: When he fails his mission because he'd fallen in love with Enju and thus refused to kill her once Ieyasu ordered him to, he wants to commit suicide rather than live as a nukenin.
• What Is This Feeling?: Downplayed in his route. Hanzo is bewildered by his feelings for Enju at first because he's never loved anyone romantically before, but he figures it out pretty quickly and isn't shy about expressing it afterwards.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: If he genuinely thinks someone has made a mistake, that's one thing. However, if someone (like Enju) is engaging in Self-Deprecation, expect Hanzo to refute that, and maybe offer some constructive criticism while he's at it.

Goemon Ishikawa

Voiced by: Hikaru Midorikawa

An elusive and infamous thief with the peculiar habit of leaving a warning note in the homes he will rob, listing the exact item he intends to steal. Though charming and laid-back, Goemon is considered highly dangerous by the state for his incredible skill and anonymity. A team of Kōga shinobi, consisting of Enju and her friends, is hired to sleuth out information aiding in his capture.

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• Acquired Poison Immunity: Mentions in his route that he's immune to the poisons created by Fuma, from his training there.
• Break His Heart to Save Him: He pretends to betray Enju near the end of his route in order to trick the Fuma Clan into helping him stage her Fake Death in front of the elders so they will stop hunting her. He later apologizes to her for it, saying he'd wanted to let her in on his plan, but couldn't due to the Fuma watching him so closely.
• The Charmer: He's very slick and charming, openly flirting with Enju even minutes after meeting her.
• Chivalrous Pervert: He's generally polite and kind, but openly admits to "having fun" with women. However, he only has sexual relationships with those who know what they're getting into, which is why he doesn't do more than flirt than Enju—he can tell she's inexperienced in the romance department.
• Despair Event Horizon: Crosses it in his bad ending. Enju's death causes him to snap and break his Thou Shall Not Kill policy. The ending CGI shows him cradling her body, crying, and smiling brokenly as he walks away from the bloody scene.
• Friend to All Children: His route reveals that he is actually quite good with children.
• Gentleman Thief: Goemon is a thief who only steals from the corrupt and rich who is quite liked by the commoners of Kyo. He also always leaves a calling card before and after committing a crime. Not only this but he has a code against killing.
• Handsome Lech: Good-looking and quick to rattle off compliments to any lady who will hear them.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: Goemon attempts this while the Kyo shinobi are hunting him, standing around unobtrusively and smoking a pipe to cover up the lingering smell of smoke bombs. Unfortunately for him, Enju can differentiate between the two smells and can also smell the blood on him.
• Historical Domain Character: Goemon Ishikawa was a real historical figure and thief who targeted the wealthy during the reign of Hideyoshi Toyotomi, however he was not a shinobi and probably not a Bishōnen.
• Internal Reveal: The fact that he and the strange man named "Goro" Enju meets are one in the same is treated as a plot twist, but one look at the game's relationship menu will spoil it long before its acknowledged in the plot.
• Just Like Robin Hood: Except he is based on a real person.
• Loveable Rogue: He's a thief, but he exclusively targets the rich and is actually quite popular among the common folk for it.
• Nice Guy: He doesn't have any particular reason to protect Enju, he simply decides to because he likes her and does so even in some of the routes where he's not being romanced.
• Thou Shall Not Kill: He has a strict personal rule against killing, and will avoid doing so whenever possible. This is only subverted in his bad ending, in which he snaps after witnessing Enju's death and uses a ninjutsu to make the elders murder each other.
• Tranquil Fury: His bad ending. After Enju dies, he very calmly announces to the room that they're all going to die for what they've done to Enju. Hanzo is quick enough to grab Ieyasu and escape, but no one else is that lucky.
• Yandere: His bad ending dips its toes into this. After Enju is killed by Yodo, he uses a powerful ninjustsu to create illusions that cause the Elders (aside from Ieyasu, who Hanzo manages to get out of the room just in time) to start murdering each other. The CG plays heavily on Yandere imagery as he stares straight ahead with blank, teary eyes, cradling Enju's body as the carnage rages on around them.

Side Characters

Koga Shinobi

Kandou Ueno

Voiced by: Jirou Saitou

Enju's father and leader of the Koga clan.

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• Abusive Parent: He's emotionally distant and neglectful to Enju even early in the game, but becomes outright malicious to her later when he allows her to be used as a scapegoat for the murder ordered, or the trophy for Hideoyoshi's game to choose his son's guardian. In more than one route, he raises a weapon against his own daughter, and in Kuroyuki's bad ending he actually kills her.
• Archnemesis Dad: Eventually becomes this to Enju in routes where he's a direct antagonist.
• Asshole Victim: In the routes where he dies, you will probably have a hard time managing to feel any sympathy for him, especially since you've probably just learned about something horrible he did.
• Devil in Plain Sight: Given his Villainous Fashion Sense and the perpetual evil grimace his sprite wears, it comes as no surprise that Enju's father is evil.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: Has a large prominent scar across his left eye, making him look sinister like he actually is from the get-go.
• I Have No Daughter!: Immediately disowns Enju when she's been framed for Hideyoshi Toyotomi's murder in all routes.
• Jerkass: A real piece of work, this guy is.
• Kick the Dog: He does a lot of this to Enju, but one of his more despicable acts is sending Enju's own closest friends to go after her and kill her when she's been accused of murdering Toyotomi when he has the option of choosing other Koga ninja for the job.
• Offing the Offspring: He successfully kills Enju in Kuroyuki's Bad Ending. Hanzō's route further reveals that he even threatened to murder Enju as an infant to force her mother to make him the Jashingan, a potion used by the Iga that turns those who consume it into violent but loyal pawns.

Ennosuke Yamakura

Voiced by: Ryou Ooshima

One of Enju's childhood friends who is a ninja of Koga.

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• Belligerent Sexual Tension: With Kyara. They constantly bicker, and though it's never outright confirmed, one of the common route bonus scenarios as well as main-game subtext suggests they have more than platonic feelings for each other.
• Self-Duplication: His main ninjutsu is the ability to make illusionary copies of himself.
• Super-Speed: He is one of the fastest Koga shinobi and he uses speed to his advantage in battle.
• Wolverine Claws: He uses tekagi-shuko (hand claws).

Kyara Mikumo

Voiced by: Saori Hayami

Another one of Enju's friends, also a ninja of Koga.

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• Belligerent Sexual Tension: With Ennosuke. They constantly bicker, and though it's never outright confirmed, one of the common route bonus scenarios as well as main-game subtext suggests they have more than platonic feelings for each other.
• Dead All Along: In Gekkamaru's route. After she works with Enju to stop some of the shinobi who had been controlling her body via ninjutsu, its revealed she'd been dead all along and that the ninjutsu was the only thing keeping her alive.
• Epic Flail: She uses a chigiriki, a Japanese flail weapon.
• Fiery Redhead: Kyara is as fiery as her red hair suggests.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: With Enju. Kyara is the more fiery red oni to Enju's shy and sweet blue oni. Their colour schemes even line up perfectly.
• Tomboyish Ponytail
• Tomboy with a Girly Streak: She wears pants in her civilian outfit and shinobi gear and both have elements of flowers and fuchsia.
• Tsundere: Mostly with Ennosuke, whom she snipes with at every opportunity. However, she and him are heavily implied to have feelings for each other, and Enju notes that they know one another so well that they fight seamlessly as a team. She is devastated by his death in Chojiro's route, though it's not too long afterward that she also dies.

Kasumi

Voiced by: Megumi Han

Another one of Enju's friends and the youngest of them.

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• Apologetic Attacker: She's forced to attempt to assassinate Enju in Gekkamaru's route because her family is being held hostage unless she does the deed. She clearly hates having to kill her beloved elder sister, but feels she has no choice in the matter whatsoever. As she dies, she even apologizes for both having raised her blades against Enju, and for cruelly taunting her during their fight while Kasumi was under the influence of the drug that forces her to fight Enju.
• The Baby of the Bunch: She is the youngest of the friend group.
• Big Sister Worship: She adores both Enju and Kyara and looks up to both of them.
• Break the Cutie: Poor young Kasumi gets put through the worst of ordeals out of all her friends next to Enju depending on the routes after Enju is accused of murdering Hideyoshi and is on the run from the law after she breaks out of jail. Not only is she forced to hunt down and kill her beloved elder sister under the orders of their village head, she experiences losing all her friends one by one during the chase in Chojiro and Gekkamaru's routes. In both routes, she also ends up getting killed by the end of them.
• Deadly Disc: She uses two chakram as a weapon.
• Not Herself: The normally kindhearted and soft Kasumi becomes more vicious and cruel when she drinks the Jashingan drug Kando gives her that presumably gives her a boost in her physical abilities at the cost of her sanity.
• Older Than They Look: Despite her appearance and childlike mannerisms, Kasumi is actually 15, making her only a year younger than the 16 year old Enju.
• Only One Name: Like Gekkamaru and Kuroyuki, Kasumi's family name is never revealed despite mentioning that they exist.
• Supreme Chef: While her shinobi skills aren't great, she is good at cooking and sewing.
• Third-Person Person: It's not translated in the English written dialogue, but listening closely to Kasumi's recorded dialogue reveals her to be one of these.

5 Elders

Ieyasu Tokugawa

Voiced by: Kōki Miyata

An Influential Daimyo who rules the Kanto Region and one of the Five Elders. He owns his own shinobi clan which is currently lead by Hanzō Hattori.

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• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Is openly eccentric compared to the other Elders, but is also the most powerful and extremely intelligent.
• The Gadfly: According to Hanzo, Ieyasu enjoys teasing him for the sake of his own amusement.
• Guile Hero:
  • Straddles the line between this and Magnificent Bastard in most routes, as he's more an Anti-Hero and often takes a True Neutral position, in contrast to the full antagonism of the other Elders. He tends to be somewhat conniving and is planning to take over the country soon after the events of the game, according to Hanzo (and actual Japanese history). That said, he doesn't particularly want Enju to die and even sends Hanzo to protect her in most routes despite him being the World's Best Warrior who could probably kill her easily.
  • He is this more straight-forwardly in Hanzo's route. He agrees to simply use proof of Enju's death (in the form of her bloody sash) to ensure he becomes Hideyori's guardian instead of insisting on her body, allowing Enju to live on in secret and sparing Hanzo from having to either kill her or defy his orders.
• Historical Domain Character: Ieyasu Tokugawa was a real historical figure who did actually take over Japan after Hideyoshi's death, being the forefather of the Tokugawa Shogunate which lead Japan for over 250 years between the 17th and 19th centuries. He was quite a bit more ruthless than his in-game counterpart though, and probably wasn't a ridiculously pretty Bishōnen.
• Long-Haired Pretty Boy: He has long hair and is very good-looking.