A reference sheet for notable characters in the manga/anime series Shadow Star. Expect SPOILERS for the whole thing. Also be warned that this sheet is written with the assumption that readers have at least a small amount of familiarity with the series, meaning that some early and/or minor spoilers may be unmarked.
open/close all folders
Dragon Bearers
Shiina Tamai
Shiina Tamai
Voiced by: Asami Sanada (JP), Kelly Ray (EN)
- Shadow Dragon: Hoshimaru/Sheol (shared with Mamiko)
- Abusive Parents: Her mother treats her very coldly, tending to chastise her for her poor grades. She also apparently tried to strangle her to death in the past, blaming her for the death of Shiina's older sister Mishou. Yeah, Shiina has mommy issues.
- Action Girl: She's a brave and tough, albeit reckless, young girl who isn't afraid of fighting Shadow Dragons head-on, even if she can't mentally link with Hoshimaru, and despite the fact that she's clearly physically outmatched by the nearly unkillable Shadow Dragons. She even Lampshades her own recklessness, but accepts it as just the way she is.
- Book Dumb: She's way more interested in sports and cooking than studying, and it shows. Subverted, though, when she manages to get a scholarship for the incredibly exclusive Banda Academy.
- Break the Cutie: Goes through this throughout the whole series, culminating in her crossing the Despair Event Horizon and bringing about The End of the World as We Know It alongside Mamiko.
- Celibate Heroine: Despite her young age, she's already adamant that she'll never get married or have kids. Eventually subverted in the manga; she gradually develops feelings for Takeo and even has sex with him near the end, with their daughter going on to be the new Eve of the "cleansed" Earth.
- Decoy Protagonist: Seemingly played straight with her death in the manga but she gets better so this is subverted.
- Despair Event Horizon: By the final chapters, her father's dead, her mother gets shot to death right in front of her, her best friend falls out of a window in what's either a murder or suicide, her boyfriend (and father of her unborn daughter) is dead and has failed to become a Virgin Prince, and people want her dead. Is it any wonder that she wipes out the human race after that?
- Embarrassing First Name: She makes a point of writing her first name in katakana because she hates the kanji character used for it, which means "empty husk" or "seed that shall never sprout". It was given to her by her mother, which doesn't exactly help with her mommy issues. It becomes a critical plot point near the end of the manga, where it turns out that the name has a positive meaning after all; Misono simply didn't want Shiina to "leave" her like Mishou did. Once Shiina comes to accept her name, she's finally able to link with her real Shadow Dragon Sheol... the Earth itself.
- Expy: Effectively a genderflipped Shinji Ikari.
- Generation Xerox: In addition to having a Strong Family Resemblance to her father, the final few pages lampshade how similar the twos' lives turn out by the fact that she's started smoking.
- Genki Girl: At the start of the series, she's very cheerful.
- I Just Want to Be Special: Even though she's unable to "link" with Hoshimaru, she desperately wants to be able to control him in the same way as the other bearers. Then it turns out he isn't even hers, and she doesn't respond well. Then it turns out she's special in an entirely different way...
- Idiot Hair: Gains one of these after her Important Haircut - ironically, after she's stopped being Book Dumb!
- Important Haircut: After wearing her hair in distinctive Girlish Pigtails for half the manga (most of the anime), she gets it cut to bob length when she enters middle school.
- At the end of the manga, as the pregnant Shiina and Mamiko are the sole survivors of humanity, Shiina has let her hair grow to her shoulders.
- Leeroy Jenkins: Borders on this at times.
- Messianic Archetype: Is introduced as an emotionally strong, kind, and courageous young woman, though she truly comes into this trope by volume 7 where she sustains injury in order to protect Hiro's would-be victims and later by creating the new world.
- Misanthrope Supreme: Losing her parents, her friends, and her lover – most of whom are killed by a mob that plans to gun for her next – brings Shiina to Shinji levels of despair and causes her to annihilate humanity.
- Naïve Everygirl: She starts as one of these. Needless to say, she doesn't stay that way...
- No Periods, Period: Averted, she gets her first period right after being brought back to life.
- Scars Are Forever: After getting stabbed through her left hand during the whole mess with Oni, she has a fairly conspicuous little scar there for the rest of the manga. Even when she dies and comes back to life, it's still there.
- Scholarship Student: In the second half of the manga. Other characters comment that she's the first girl in over fourteen years to get a scholarship into Banda.
- Tomboy and Girly Girl: The tomboy to Akira and Hiroko's girly-girls.
Akira Sakura
Akira Sakura
Voiced by: Mamiko Noto (JP) Renee Gloger (EN)
- Shadow Dragon: Ain-Soph
- Abusive Parents: Her father, who is implied to have molested her in the past. Dialogue from the first volume also suggests he may have physically abused her as well.
- Beware the Nice Ones: While she's usually characterized as hating the idea of hurting others, her manner of Calling the Old Man Out makes her qualify. Also, early on, there's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it implication that she might have tried to kill Ain-Soph before; note how she already knows that Shiina won't be able to do much of anything to Push Dagger.
- Break the Cutie: She was broken before we even meet her in-series, and she breaks further as the story progresses.
- Calling the Old Man Out: By stabbing him to death.
- Cute Clumsy Girl: Akira is shown to be on the clumsy side when she's helping out at her parents' restaurant. It isn't played for laughs.
- Driven to Suicide: She makes at least two attempts on her own life in the series, but either can't bring herself to go through with it or is stopped by other characters. Whether or not her death in the final chapter is a suicide is up for debate, as it's left ambiguous as to whether she threw herself out or was pushed out by an unknown assailant.
- Dude Magnet: She seems to catch the attention of multiple boys throughout the series, whether it be due to them finding her attractive (Tomonori, Takeo), having a crush on her (Ishida), or wanting her to be a part of their plan (Tomonori again, Sudo).
- Expository Hairstyle Change: Her hair slowly grows back out in later manga volumes.
- Foreshadowing: She has dreams about falling out of the sky. In the final chapter, she's forcibly taken out of her hospital bed and thrown off the roof to her death.
- Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: Lt. Watanabe, a minor character and soldier of the Japanese Special Defence Force, pulls this on her when she grabs his gun and tries to kill herself with it. In the final volume, Akira herself pulls it on a BSOD-ing Shiina, reminding her that she still has family and urging her to patch things up with her mother.
- Hates Being Touched: By her father, specifically. When he puts a hand on her shoulder after the East Fuji incident, she shrieks and swats it away. Who can blame her?
- I Just Want to Be Normal: In direct contrast with Shiina. Akira hates her connection with Ain-Soph because it's given her recurring nightmares in which she's falling - plus when she first "linked" with it, the feeling of flying caused her to throw-up and collapse in class.
- Important Haircut: Akira chops off her own hair soon after Tomonori tells her it's beautiful (while creeping her out in general), which makes this case almost border on Traumatic Haircut.
- Nervous Wreck: Her general disposition. She's even anxious around her friends.
- Nice Girl: Polite and of a gentle nature, in a sharp, sharp contrast to just about everyone else.
- Parental Incest: Strongly implied to have been a victim of this. And her dad wonders why she isn't the cheerful girl she used to be as a child.
- Rei Ayanami Expy: Not as much as Mamiko, but with her blue hair, social isolation and repeated suicide attempts, she's not too dissimilar from Rei.
- Self-Made Orphan: She kills her physically and sexually abusive father, resulting in her incarceration in a juvenile detention center.
- Scars Are Forever: Akira has scars on her left wrist from past suicide attempts, which are seen several times in the manga. In the anime, the scars are never shown on-screen, but they're implied to be there.
- Shrinking Violet: An extremely tragic example, if not one of the most tragic examples in all of fiction. Extremely clumsy, withdrawn, and terrified of showing her feelings to others, and in absolutely no way is it played for humor or for moe points.
- The Stoic: Being a Nervous Wreck aside, she keeps her feelings to herself.
- 1000 Origami Cranes: She shuts herself in her room to make these following the East Fuji incident, where she witnessed the deaths of hundreds of soldiers.
- Trauma Conga Line: Things were already very poor for Akira by the time the story had started; she was not attending school regularly, had no friends, and is highly implied to self harm. The story being the story it is, things get worse for everyone, especially her.
Tomonori Komori
Tomonori Komori
Voiced by: Akira Ishida (JP)
"Cut yourself to fit the world? Or cut the world to fit you?"
Shadow Dragon: Push Dagger
- Adaptation Name Change: In the Central Park Media English dub, his name is Akinori Komori.
- Abhorrent Admirer: To Akira. Him stroking her hair creeps her out enough that she cuts it to chin-length after their encounter.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Apparently, he was known to his neighbourhood and school as a friendly and polite (albeit sickly) boy who was popular with girls and wanted to become a doctor. None of them knew of his true intentions, of course.
- Blood from the Mouth: Coughs up a lot of blood after being impaled by Hoshimaru.
- Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Subverted. Not too long after his death, it's revealed that he had an invalid mother he was taking care of; however, the reader already knows by then that the weak and sickly were among the sorts of people he wanted to kill off.
- Fate Worse than Death: In the manga. It's eventually revealed that after he died, he was found by government agents just when Push Dagger was beginning to absorb his body in order to transform him into an Otohime. When Sudo takes Akira to see what's become of him, Tomonori's half-transformed body is hooked up to machines that slow down the process of becoming an Otohime, effectively keeping him from either fully dying or being reborn. It ain't pretty.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: In the anime, as a result of a few things being switched around. Rather than being run through with a broken plane strut, Hoshimaru replicates Tomonori's own Push Dagger and spears him with it.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Is stabbed all the way through by Hoshimaru with a replicated broken plane strut (a replicated Push Dagger in the anime).
- Irony: His goal is to create a society where only the strong remain, but he chose Akira, arguably the mentally weakest character to be his queen.
- Social Darwinist: Not content with wanting to kill off five billion people, the next part of his plan for the world involves testing what's left of the human population for "physical endurance".
- Starter Villain: He and his Shadow Dragon Push Dagger are the first threats that Shiina faces in the series, as well as being the one that solidifies the series' dark tone.
- Utopia Justifies the Means: It says a lot that his idea of "utopia" involves turning society back to the Stone Age...
- Villainous Crush: He thinks Akira is cute when she's scared, and finds her hair to be beautiful. He finds her attractive enough to even want to make her his queen in his ideal world.
- We Can Rule Together: Tomonori tries this on Akira, saying that he'll be the king and she'll be the queen of his ideal world; it doesn't actually work, but it does leave a very strong impression on her that influences some of her later actions, like when Akira murders her father using his dagger that he gave her.
Hiroko "Hiro-chan" Kaizuka
Hiroko Kaizuka (a.k.a. "Hiro-chan")
Voiced by: Sakura Nogawa (JP), Flora Stanberg (EN)
"You can't save everybody with kindness."
Shadow Dragon: Oni
- Abusive Parents: Her father berates her for getting anything less than 100% on tests and disapproves of her friendship with Shiina, saying that the other girl is a "bad influence" on her. While her mother isn't shown abusing her in the same way, she doesn't seem to be very supportive of her either.
- All of the Other Reindeer: She's relentlessly bullied solely because of her grades and being a model student in general.
- Beware the Nice Ones: She's the nicest character, but also has the second highest observed body count.
- Despair Event Horizon: As if being raped by Aki Honda and the other bullies didn't break her enough, she goes irreversably over the edge when her father tries to cut off all ties between her and Shiina. Naturally, he ends up being her first kill.
- Dull Eyes of Unhappiness: In the anime, after Hoshimaru kills her.
- Girlish Pigtails: Her braids.
- Intelligence Equals Isolation: She flat-out admits that Shiina is her only real friend...
- Lonely Rich Kid: And her parents don't even want her being friends with Shiina.
- Nice Girl: She is one of the nicer characters in the cast, if not the most.
- The Ojou: A young, light-haired example, complete with Big Fancy House.
- Rape as Drama: She's sodomized with a test tube, no less!
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Played with. Her use of Oni is unmistakably violent and angry, yet when Shiina confronts her in person, she's eerily calm even while she's having Oni torture Shiina's dad.
- Self-Made Orphan: When she goes mad and begins to use Oni, her parents are the very first people she kills. When Shiina arrives to her home, she finds Hiro-chan hugging her father's lifeless body which sits on his favorite couch.
- Shrinking Violet: More of a passive, modest example than the actively self-isolating and wary Akira, but she's quite lonely and thinks poorly of herself.
- We Can Rule Together: Sort-of tries this on Shiina when confronted by her. It doesn't go well.
- With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Inverted; it's her descent into madness that "activates" Oni.
- Yandere: As a side effect of Break the Cutie. Besides killing everyone who ever abused her, Hiro-chan also tries to eliminate anything and anyone she believes to be an obstacle to her and Shiina's friendship... even if that means trying to kill Shiina's father.
Satomi Ozawa
Satomi Ozawa
Voiced by: Kaori Tanaka (JP), Renee Goldstein (EN)
Shadow Dragon: Amapola
- Adaptation Dye-Job: She's got green hair in the anime, as opposed to the black hair she has in the manga.
- Berserk Button: She won't stand to have her pride bruised. Dare to insinuate that she's weak, and she will try to prove otherwise; sadly for her, she won't necessarily succeed...
- Making fun of the school that she worked so hard to get into is also another quick way to get on her bad side.
- Break the Haughty: Eventually, in the manga, after one too many failures. Her defeat at the hands of the Virgin Princess (Mishou) leaves her so shattered that she pretty much gives up on fighting, instead choosing to stay by Bungo's side. If the manga had a bigger fandom, she'd probably be accused of Chickification... even though her inability to be as strong as she'd like is one of the biggest themes surrounding her character.
- Bring My Brown Pants: Wets herself when Amapola is cut by a Helicopter Blender.
- Can't Catch Up: This is basically the core of her issues.
- Co-Dragons: Together with Bungo, they serve as Sudo's underlings and the predominant villains.
- Disproportionate Retribution: The murderous grudge she has against Shiina started just because the kid made fun of the name of her school. It's only intensifies after Shiina punches her in the face when she realizes that it was her that killed all those soldiers at East Fuji via Amapola's toxic spores.
- He Is Not My Boyfriend: She often denies that she has any feelings for Bungo anymore. Even thirteen-year-olds aren't convinced by that.
- Rich Bitch: She certainly has the attitude of one of these. Subverted, as she's not actually rich at all.
- Well, Excuse Me, Princess!: Tends to sum up her relationship with Bungo for most of the series...
Bungo Takano
Bungo Takano
Voiced by: Hisayoshi Suganuma (JP), Frankie Rome (EN)
Shadow Dragon: Hainuwele
- Beware the Nice Ones: One moment, he's good-naturedly offering Shiina a tissue for her bloody nose and apologising for Satomi's behaviour; next, his Mon is blowing up planes like it's a game.
- Co-Dragons: Together with Satomi, they serve as Sudo's underlings and the predominant villains.
- Dub Name Change: The Dark Horse release of the manga calls him Kazuyuki, due to "Bungo" sounding rather strange to foreign ears.
- Expository Hairstyle Change: He bleaches his hair fairly early on, and starts slicking it back after the manga's halfway point.
- Gatling Good: He likes to have Hainuwele equip high-power vulcans, perfect for shooting down fighter jets and attack choppers.
- Macross Missile Massacre: His second favorite attack is to use rocket nests.
- Otaku: He's a military nut, and fairly knowledgable about different kinds of guns.
Naozumi Sudo
Naozumi Sudo
Voiced by: Hideki Tasaka (JP)
"Divide a single slice of bread equally between ten people and ten people starve."
Shadow Dragon: Trickster
- Beware the Nice Ones: He might seem pleasant enough to people meeting him for the first time, and he's known to his school as a particularly bright student, but aside from that, he's creepy.
- Big Bad: While he serves as the upmost antagonistic force throughout the series, it's usually Satomi and Bungo doing his dirty work for him that causes shit to hit the fan.
- Creepy Monotone: In the anime.
- Disproportionate Retribution: In the manga, he shoots two delinquents to death just for throwing a bag of trash into a river.
- Misanthrope Supreme: In order to build his ideal world, he commandeers a missile silo and launches nukes at the world's major cities and volcanoes, intending to wipe out humanity with a nuclear winter.
- Parental Abandonment: His parents and older brother are "missing", though it's never really explained what happened to them.
- Self-Made Orphan: It's suggested at one point that Sudo himself may have been responsible for his family's "disappearance".
- We Can Rule Together: Rather fond of siccing this on Akira.
Takeo Tsurumaru
Takeo Tsurumaru
Voiced by: Eiji Miyashita (JP)
Shadow Dragon: Hoshimaru
- All Girls Want Bad Boys: Very popular with the ladies, despite his attitude and how poorly he treats them (aside from Shiina and Akira). Then there's the fact that Shiina eventually falls for him...
- Anti-Hero: He's basically on Shiina's side, but his jerkishness (and the series' Black-and-Gray Morality) makes it difficult to really class him as a hero.
- Badass Normal: Even without a Shadow Dragon, he's not afraid of heading onto the field in dangerous situations. Subverted when it's revealed he's been in control of a dragon - namely, Hoshimaru - since at least the start of the manga.
- The Casanova: A somewhat twisted case in that to him, it's all about reproduction; as a result of that, he's gotten more than a few girls pregnant and already has about five kids. It takes a loooong time for him to learn that there's a difference between love and procreation.
- Dropped a Bridge on Him: Shiina finds him dead in his hideout in the final chapter; how he died is never shown, though it's made obvious that he was killed by the same angry mob that's after Shiina.
- Even the Guys Want Him: Norio's secretly in love with him, too.
- Jerkass: He can be quite a douchebag, especially towards his "girlfriends" and one girl (Kaori) he rescues as part of a job. He eventually gets better in the manga, though only after losing both the people he cared most about, and being caught in a nuclear explosion and suffering the effects of radiation poisioning.
- Made of Iron: In the manga, he can apparently take a point-blank shotgun wound to the chest and barely even flinch.
- Manipulative Bastard: He has a tendency to withhold important information from Shiina, which usually forces her to find it out the hard way. He also chooses the worst possible time to reveal to her that Hoshimaru is actually his Shadow Dragon. She doesn't take it well at all.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: With Norio.
Norio Koga
Norio Koga
Voiced by: Kouki Akaishi (JP), Jamie McGonnigal (EN)
Shadow Dragon: Vagina Dentata
- Cruel and Unusual Death: He gets one of the nastiest deaths in the whole manga. To elaborate, he gets crippled by having a tendon sliced in his leg, raped, eviscerated, possibly castrated as well... and when he's about to die from all that, he's drugged up and effectively brought back to "life" for a few more painful moments. All of this is done by a gang of monstrous city thugs who had no reason other than the fact that Norio was there and Takeo wasn't.
- Creepy Doll: Norio's hobby is creating dolls and puppets based on Shadow Dragons. Needless to say they're all kind of creepy.
- Dead Guy on Display: After poor Norio succumbs to the aforementioned Cruel and Unusual Death, his head is cut off and mounted on one of the creepy dolls, then hung on the wall of Takeo's house. Understandably, when he and Shiina's parents step in and see this, neither takes it well.
- Deadpan Snarker: While rude and flippant, he's a more agreeable example.
- Determinator: He'll go to any length to protect Takeo, no matter what the cost.
- Dude Looks Like a Lady: Nearly every character who interacts with him in the manga mistakes him for a girl at first.
- Dying Moment of Awesome:
- Though not necessarily for Norio, Vagina Dentata's last act is to 'transform' into a winged variant of itself and sprouting a human fetus and wings... which also destroys the final bomber attacking Tarrasque.
- Though he qualifies here as well because he manages to stay mostly calm when being given a Cruel and Unusual Death.
- Effeminate Misogynistic Guy: He doesn't really seem to like women all that much. See his Shadow Dragon? The one with a toothy vagina for a head? He calls it Vagina Dentata, as if to say "This is what I think of you." Further, while he's rather fruity, when he has to disguise himself as a girl, he's pissed.
- Heroic Sacrifice: He dies a very gruesome death in aiding Tsurumaru, Shiina and Jane Franklin, managing to disable all of the bombers that are targeting Tarrasque... but subverted when Robert Franklin ends up dying anyway and Shiina gets offed only a few strips later.
- Hope Spot: Now, if Norio can just deal with the bombers quickly and send Vagina Dentata back to deal with these thugs, he can make it.
- In-Series Nickname: He's called "Nori-rin" by one of Takeo's ex-girlfriends. (Fun fact: One of Kitoh's manga is called Noririn. It's a cycling manga that takes its title from its own two protagonists, so the name is probably a coincidence.)
- Incompatible Orientation: It sure sucks to be in love with a straight guy who isn't interested in anything he can't make babies with.
- Mister Seahorse: No, no, he doesn't actually get pregnant! It's just that his deepest, most secret wish is to bear Takeo's child. When he's about to die, his wish is symbolized by Vagina Dentata "evolving" into a form that resembles a winged, toothy womb with a human foetus inside.
- Off with His Head!: As if his actual murder wasn't horrible enough already, his killers cut his head off his corpse and mount it onto one of his own dolls for Takeo to come home to.
- The Runaway: It's hinted that he had issues with his family that led to him running away from home, but nothing is explained in detail.
- Static Stun Gun: Norio, disguised as a Banda student ends up taser-ing Satomi when Vagina Dentata fails to subdue Amapola.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: With Takeo, as already mentioned.
- Wholesome Crossdresser: His taste in clothes tends to be rather feminine. Funnily enough, when he has to actually disguise himself as a girl for a mission, he complains like hell.
Mamiko Kuri
Mamiko Kuri
Voiced by: Satsuki Yukino (JP)
Shadow Dragon: Sheol (shared with Shiina)
- Ambiguously Human: Is highly implied to have been created by the Earth itself to guide Shiina into awakening to her dragon.
- Creepy Child: In a series full of kooky kids, her otherworldly stoicism stands out. She's also weirdly knowledgable about other people, which creeps Bungo out.
- Defrosting Ice Queen / Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Over time she becomes quite close to Shiina. The two even go for a bike ride and have lunch together late in the story.
- Demoted to Extra: Barely appears in the anime and doesn't even get to be in the ED animation, despite being critically important in the manga.
- Emotionless Girl: Apathy and cynicism are about the extent of her emotional range.
- Fan Disservice: At first appears to be the sole purpose of her character. She doesn't evolve far from it.
- Flat Character: Zigzagged. She's this for about 9 volumes, only ever appearing to creep her allies and enemies alike out and confuse people by waxing philosophical. She's arguably the most important character in the final 3 volumes, however.
- Full-Frontal Assault: When she finally gains control of her Shadow Dragon Sheol, she goes on her first killing spree while half-naked. Her targets in this case? The thugs who'd just raped her.
- Going Commando: Mamiko never wears panties, and has no qualms about proving this fact to Bungo when he first sees her wearing clothes at all.
- Heel–Face Turn: Is at first Sudo's Token Evil Teammate who is only part of their scheme for her own amusement, as opposed to attempting to improve the world, though she eventually finds herself Intrigued by Humanity and convinces Shiina to give the world another chance after she destroys it.
- Innocent Fanservice Girl: Though "innocent" and "fanservice" aren't really the right words to use for her. In any case, she prefers to go around naked if she can, and even when she does wear clothing, it's usually just a flimsy dress.
- Little Miss Badass: It's best to not mess with her, otherwise she will take care of you calmly and efficiently - and turn you into a gory mess while she's at it.
- Naked on Arrival: Much to the shock of Bungo and Satomi (to say nothing of unsuspecting readers).
- Physical God: Becomes this after awakening to Sheol. It's even implied that she resurrected Shiina after she was fatally struck by a missile by simply creating her another body and washing it up on a shore by her grandparents' home.
- Please Put Some Clothes On: How people tend to react to her.
- Rei Ayanami Expy: Downplayed somewhat, but she fits a few of the criteria. Arguably played straight with the revelation that she and Shiina are destined to recreate the world.
Shadow Dragons
Hoshimaru
Hoshimaru
Voiced by: Satsuki Yukino
Shiina's Shadow Dragon. Later on, it's revealed to actually be Takeo's Shadow Dragon.
- Adorable Abomination: Hoshimaru is by far one of the least eldritch Shadow Dragons in the series (with Broomstick and Ain-Soph coming in close) and wouldn't look out of place in most mons series.
- Bond Creatures: Most dragon wielders are able to control their Shadow Dragons from the moment they meet - with the side effect of brutal pain synchonisation, but Shiina struggles to willingly perform telepathic activity with Hoshimaru. He often needs to be given vocal commands and is prone to seemingly acting on his own volition in response to Shiina's unconscious desires. This is because he was Takeo's dragon the entire time.
- Clark Kenting: Shiina's initial method of keeping him incognito is to get him to spout some straps so he looks like a cute backpack.
- Riddle for the Ages: Why exactly he couldn't turn Takeo inro a Virgin Princess is never explained.
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: He is an adorable star-shaped creature with big, round eyes. Everything else in the manga he's in is
not adorable, which ironically makes the fact he's such an adorable creature in a manga so dark very uncanny. - The Stoic: Hoshimaru's all but blank-faced throughout the series up until his last breath. This comes off as very jarring because he emotes quite a lot in the anime's (infamously-misleading) intro, and even more so at the end when he writhes on the floor and his mouth grows wide.
Ain Soph
Ain Soph
Akira's Shadow Dragon.
- Fish Eyes: Ain Soph's eyes are always looking upwards and away from each other.
- Palette Swap: Visually, it looks almost exactly the same as Hoshimaru, with the only difference being the eyes, the shape of its face, different facial markings, and a different color palette, that being a light gray body with a red face and green facial markings, unlike Hoshimaru's yellow body, orange face and red facial markings.
Push Dagger
Push Dagger
Tomonori's Shadow Dragon.
Oni
Oni
Hiroko's Shadow Dragon.
Amapola
Amapola
Satomi's Shadow Dragon.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Delivers one to Shiina in its humanoid form, breaking her arm and beating her into hospitalization. Is on the receiving end of one where it gets One-Hit KO'ed by the Virgin Princess.
- Implacable Man: After transforming into a more humanoid form, there's practically nothing that Shiina or Takeo can do to stop it. It takes an intervention from the Virgin Princess to defeat it and save Shiina's life.
- Shaped Like Itself: It's a flower-shaped dragon whose name is the Spanish word for poppy.
Hainuwele
Hainuwele
Bungo's Shadow Dragon.
Trickster
Trickster
Naozumi's Shadow Dragon.
Vagina Dentata
Vagina Dentata
Norio's Shadow Dragon.
Sheol - SPOILERS FOR THE ENDING
Sheol/The Earth
Shiina's true Shadow Dragon, who she shares with Mamiko. Sheol is the Earth itself.
- Apocalypse How: Sheol kills all of humanity except for Shiina and Mamiko on Mamiko's orders.
- Big Damn Heroes: Mamiko uses Sheol to protect Shiina from gunfire by an angry mob in the final chapter... before wiping out humanity.
- Genius Loci: Albeit as a puppet for Mamiko and Shiina, Sheol is the planet Earth itself.
- Giant Hands of Doom: Sheol eradicates humanity by having giant white hands sprout out from the ground and literally wipe out humanity.
- Meaningful Name: In the Hebrew Bible, She'ol is the afterlife in which all life, no matter how righteous or unrighteous they were in the living world, goes after they die. It is a dark and still place where the inhabitants have no identity of their own.
- Olympus Mons: The most powerful Shadow Dragon in the series hands-down, even without the need to become a Virgin Princess, and the only one known to be synched to more than one person. When their other master Shiina is slain late into the manga, Sheol resurrects her on Mamiko's command.
Others
Aki Honda
Aki Honda
Voiced by: Kahoru Sasajima (JP)
- Alpha Bitch: She dominates four other girls (in the case of one, through fear) and leads them as they bully Hiroko to horrifying levels.
- Asshole Victim: She suffers a horrible death, but she was a rapist and a horrible bully.
- Blatant Lies: While talking with her older brother Yasuhito after raping Hiroko, Yasuhito tells her to promise to not actually kick her in the stomach after shoving the test tube up her vagina and that it was just a bluff. Aki assures him that she won't, but he senses that she's lying.
- Break the Haughty: At the hands of the very cutie she broke, at that.
- Brother–Sister Incest: Implied to have this sort of relationship with her older brother Yasuhito. She is seen laying in bed naked with Yasu while he's shirtless and she edges closer to him while they look at each other with vaguely flirtatious eyes.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: She is held and pinned to the wall by Oni (controlled by Hiroko), and she repeats the same crimes Aki herself had forced Hiroko to suffer and endure, such as forcing her to eat worms, and finally, she gets raped by Oni's claw until she is sliced open and cut in half horizontally at the abdomen. When her body is found, her arms have also been skinned and the bones connecting her body and legs can be seen as if her legs are literally only dangling to her hips now.
- Depraved Bisexual: She's in a sexual relationship with her brother and she sexually assaults Hiroko with a test tube. Though, like with a lot of rape cases, It's possible that Aki isn't sexually attracted to Hiroko and only did so to humiliate her.
- Dirty Coward: When she's attacked by Oni, whom she realizes is Hiroko in control, she pathetically tries to apologize in a poor attempt to save her own life. After all she did to Hiroko, it's no wonder she didn't spare her.
- Driven by Envy: The other reason? She's envious of Hiroko's brilliant grades.
- For the Evulz: Why does she treat Hiroko so horribly? Because she can, pretty much.
- Girl Posse: Consisting of Mihaya Ozaki, Hiroka Takamura, and Miyoko Shitou. Out of all of them, Miyoko is the only one who ever shows reluctance and remorse for their actions against Hiroko. She's also the only one who doesn't get killed by Hiroko's Mon, albeit only thanks to Shiina's intervention.
- Groin Attack: Oni repeatedly shoves its claw up her vagina to point that the bones in her legs and hips are left dangling from each other like they're about to fall apart at any moment.
- Half the Man He Used to Be: Her final fate in the manga. The page showing this, which includes some downright disturbing Fan Disservice, was completely cut out of Dark Horse's release of the English translation.
- Meaningful Name: "Aki" sounds similar to the Japanese word aku, which means "evil". How accurate.
- The Bully: One of the more evil examples of a kid character being this trope. He bullied Hiroko every day because the girl received high grades. Poor Hiroko had to swallow a glass of bleach and worms besides from getting beat up by Aki's posse. What truly makes her a vile character is the fact she rapes Hiroko with a test tube, all while laughing and considers breaking the tube inside her.
Aki's posse
Aki's posse (Mihaya Ohzaki, Hiroka Takamura, Miyoko Shitou)
- Anti-Villain: Miyoko is the only one of these girls who shows anything similar to human decency.
- Beta Bitch: Mihaya seems to be second in command.
- Big "NO!": In the anime, Hiroka lets several of these before she's thrown out of a window to her death by Oni.
- Cassandra Truth: Miyoko is the first one to realize that Hiroko was somehow behind the deaths of Mihaya and Aki, but when she tries to imply it during her "public confession", no one believes her... until Oni shows up.
- Dirty Coward: The minute Oni comes to their class in search for Hiroka and Miyoko, Hiroka is the first to run out the door (without considering that her other classmates could be in danger), and pathetically pleads for her life before being dropped out the window.
- Fat Bastard: Hiroka was noticeably chubbier than the other girls. Considering this is a Mohiro Kitoh manga, that puts her up to only slightly underweight by most peoples standards.
- Even Evil Has Standards: All three of them are horrified when Aki explains what she plans to do to Hiroko.
- Girl Posse: A group of bullies under Aki.
- Guilt-Ridden Accomplice: Miyoko's the one who always shows guilt and remorse for being involved with Aki's gang in bullying Hiroko, and eventually does tell her class about how they bullied her, but it ends up being too late when Hiroko finally sends Oni to kill her and Hiroka.
- Heel–Face Door-Slam: Mihaya shows signs of remorse for her involvement in the test tube incident seconds before getting splattered by Oni.
- Jerkass: Mihaya and Hiroka, who simply can't rival Aki's over-the-top cruelty.
- Karmic Death: Dealt to them by Oni. Mihaya is almost as bad as Aki? She gets splattered in a dark alley, her remains almost unrecognizable. Hiroka is a mere thug? Oni throws her out of the window in front of the whole class. Miyoko is the only one who repents? Shiina manages to save her life, but Oni still breaks her arm and rips off one of her legs.
- Nervous Wreck: Miyoko, specially right before she almost dies at Oni's hands.
- Peer Pressure Makes You Evil: They mainly go along with Aki's cruelty out of fear. Special mention goes to Miyoko, who gets beaten up when she's late for the test tube incident.
- Satellite Character: Their motivations are all centered on Aki's actions.
- Sole Survivor: Miyoko is the only one to not be killed by Oni, but only because of Shiina's intervention. Even then, she's not completely unscathed, having her arm broken and one of her legs ripped off.
- Tears of Fear: Miyoko, when she explains to the whole class what happened with Hiroko.
- We Used to Be Friends: Maybe. As seen in the manga, where after Hiroko kills Mihaya, the police reveal her file that has a photo of a younger Mihaya and Hiroko smiling together, a stark contrast to the present where the former was part of Aki Honda's gang that constantly terrorizes the poor girl, with Mihaya being the second in command behind Aki.
Yasuhito Honda
Yasuhito Honda
- Brother–Sister Incest: He’s romantically/sexually involved with his younger sister, Aki.
- Four Eyes, Zero Soul: He wears glasses and he's the one who gave advice to Aki on how horrifically torment Hiroko.
- Teens Are Monsters: He was the one who gave Aki the idea to bully Hiroko by forcing her to eat worms, rape her with a test tube, and threaten to kick her in the stomach while the test tube is still inside her. Although he tells Aki to not actually kick her, it's just as likely as Even Evil Has Standards that he was just being pragmatic.
- Your Head Asplode: Oni suddenly punches his head right before he and Aki have sex, causing his head to explode.
Mishou Tamai
Mishou Tamai
Shiina's long-deceased older sister, who died in mysterious circumstances days after her birth.
- Big Sister Instinct: As a Virgin Princess, she pulls more than one Big Damn Heroes to protect her little sister.
- Came Back Strong: The Virgin Princess that's been acting like a guardian angel for Shiina is eventually revealed to be Mishou herself.
- Driven to Suicide: Subverted. While she is found alone and in a pool of her own blood, the injuries she has were apparently done after she was dead.
- Emotionless Girl: Later, as the Virgin Princess.
- Facial Markings: As with all Virgin Princesses, merging with her dragon post-mortem caused these to develop across her body.
- Genki Girl: At first. By the time Shiina is born, however, she's fallen into depression.
- Sailor Fuku: Is seen wearing one.
- Walking Spoiler: It's hard to talk about her without also bringing up that she's the Virgin Princess based in Japan.
Mr. and Mrs. Tamai
Shiina's parents (Shunji and Misono Tamai)
Voiced by: Nobuo Tobita and Chizuru Fuyuki (JP), Josh Mosby and Erica Schroeder (EN)
- Abusive Parents: Shunji is a good guy, but Misono is very cold and strict to Shiina.
- Despair Event Horizon: What made Misono so abusive to Shiina was how her birth and Mishou's death basically overlapped together. Since Misono went off the deep end when Mishou died, guess what happened.
- Heel–Face Door-Slam: Right after Misono and Shiina rekindle their bond, Misono is killed by a mob.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Shunji uses his plane to kill off Bungo's Shadow Dragon.
- Kick the Dog: Misono trying to strangle the infant Shiina while despairing for Mishou's loss.
- Parents as People: Shunji is a good guy, but he can barely stay by Shiina when she needs it; nevertheless, he still tries to do what he can for her.
Takaya Mizushima
Takaya Mizushima
Voiced by: Hikaru Tokita (JP), Stephanie Boyle (EN)
- Action Survivor: Graduates to this when he tries to help Shiina as Oni first kills Hiroka and then attacks, mutilates and almost kills Miyoko
- Demoted to Extra: In the anime, he shows up out of the blue to help Hiroko after the test tube incident, without any explanation of why he knew to be there, or even who he is. In the manga, however, he was Shiina's Childhood Friend and showed up once in a while weven after the Time Skip.
Ishida
Ishida
Voiced by: Yuuki Tai (JP), David Moo (EN)
- Childhood Friends: Seems to be this with Akira.
- Dogged Nice Guy: He also has a crush on her, seemingly for quite a while.
- Sex as a Rite-of-Passage: Averted. Akira asked Ishida to have sex with her, but he panicked and ran away. He later berated himself for not taking up her offer, while she masturbates loudly.
