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Frontier School of Arts

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/frontier_2.png
A relatively new school introduced in -Re LIVE- that fosters students who specialize in showbusiness and artistic talent. Unlike most other perfomance arts schools, the academy's more liberal nature lets its students experience the theatrical arts under a culture of freedom, and its new types of classes, gym, and barbecue areas have attracted a growing number of applicants. Unfortunately, it's due to this that the school and its students are sometimes seen as crude or boorish to those with more traditional views.

With their emphasis on fun and lively performances, five of their best are out to participate in the Auditions to showcase their talents!


Stage Expression Course Students

    In General 
  • All the Other Reindeer:
    • Despite housing talented individuals within their campus, the school and its students are looked down upon by other performing arts schools with more traditional views because they are perceived as valuing style and flash over substance. This in turn leads everyone else to believe that Frontier doesn't take the performance arts seriously like the rest of the other schools do, giving the school a bad reputation as a result. Frontier being relatively new doesn't help their case one bit.
    • The 2nd year students of this group are this individually for different reasons:
      • Lalafin's preference for going all out onstage with action scenes don't mesh well with plenty of the students in Frontier who prefer to keep their plays simple and lowkey. As a result, she kept getting kicked out of nearly all the groups she was planning to enter S-Con with as a result before Aruru and Misora recruit her later on.
      • Tsukasa slacking off after her accident in the past coupled with her brushing people off gave her a bad rep among her classmates.
      • Shizuha's talents unintentionally upstaged many of her seniors in the past during her first year by sweeping off nearly all the awards in S-Con, leading to a lot of resentful students making unsavory comments about her. Combined with the other students who want her on their teams for S-Con unintentionally remarking that they want her because having her is a sure win, this resulted in Shizuha disntancing herself from others as a result.
  • Cleavage Window: Their Revue outfit has a large cut right around and above the chest area unlike the other schools.
  • Cruel to Be Kind: In Arcana Arcadia, as a result of their desire to be the "Unknown Lead" and to keep them on par with the other schools, Misora, Shizuha, Tsukasa, and Lalafin all antagonize poor Aruru and gang up on her during her Revue duel with them in an effort for her to take the competition seriously as well as help her be at her most brilliant just like what she displayed during Chapter 10 of the Main Story despite her pleas. Unfortunately, this backfires on them spectacularly in Chapter 16, as not only did they not take Aruru's feelings into consideration, their efforts in forcibly pressuring her to be at her best completely fail to take into account the exact reason why they succeeded in making such a wonderful production in Chapter 10 with Aruru's help. The only thing their efforts accomplished in the end was driving Aruru to the brink of despair to the point that she renounces the stage despite her prior love of it.
  • Feather Motif: They have a prominent wing motif going on with them and their primary symbol as a school, seen on Frontier's emblem, is that of single golden wing, representing their school's culture of freedom and how they're more open to explore new frontiers on the stage.
  • Foil: Their school is one to Rinmeikan Girls School. Whereas Rinmeikan is an age-old institution that strictly adheres to tradition and whose student population is dwindling under their Performance Department, Frontier is relatively new, freely encourages its students to be more innovative in their performances without having them stick to traditional views on the stage, and has a burgeoning number of students and applicants within its campus.
  • For Happiness: Unlike the other schools whose motivations for joining the Auditions range from desperation in saving something they cherish (stopping Rinmeikan's Performance Department from being shut down for Rinmeikan), having something they all consider precious to be at stake in the Revues (the memories of the Starlight play for Seisho), or something as grandiose and proud as proving they're the best above all (Siegfeld), the Frontier girls compete in the Auditions merely to get people to watch their "Captain Twins" play. This makes them the only school who doesn't get to risk losing anything of value in the Auditions, win or lose. This is also their general motivation in doing plays under both Aruru's leadership and their school's teachings: getting people to smile while having fun performing for them onstage.
    Aruru: Have fun with your presentation! That's Frontier's policy!
  • Pirate Girl: They all take on the roles of seafaring and adventurous pirates in "Captain Twins", their play for Frontier's annual S-Con event.
  • Talk Like a Pirate: Justified for their "Captain Twins" card variants since the characters they play there are pirates.

    Aruru Otsuki 

Aruru Otsuki

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/aruru_otsuki_revue_outfit.png
Portrayed by: Megumi Han
"Sparkling bullets, loaded onto wings
And heading into the wilderness, looking for a free stage.
The spotlight is a goldrush, and with both hands,
Grab onto that BIG DREAM!
Stage Girl — Aruru Otsuki!
Against the wind, to Frontier!"


A very cheerful and happy-go-lucky stage girl. Her naturally bright smiles and optimistic energy never fail to lift the spirits and moods of those around her. She believes herself to be very lucky, and despite her being a complete amateur in the world of the stage, her straightforwardness rapidly gets everyone around her involved in what she does.


  • All-Loving Hero: Even more so than Karen. She's very eager to be friends with the other Stage Girls from the other schools even though they should be fierce rivals with Frontier at that point in the beginning of the Main Story, genuinely befriending the icy Akira and quickly becoming buddies with the Seisho Stage Girls with little to no apprehension whatsoever. In Self-Proclaimed, Stage Girls, she's even the only one of the Stage Girls to actively reach out to Elle and successfully befriend her because she wanted to let her experience her own stage as a Stage Girl like them, whereas the rest of them were either suspicious of or neutral towards her at best, and hostile to her at worst.
  • Always Someone Better: Downplayed. Misora would often compare herself unfavorably to Aruru because of the latter's natural talent onstage, but doesn't resent her for it and instead, even admires her.
  • The Baby of the Bunch: Not overall, but among each of the schools' representatives in official artworks, she is the only first year among them while everyone else is in their second year in high school.
  • Beneath the Mask: It's revealed later on that her constantly sunny disposition is a mask she uses to hide her deep insecurities and her darker traits as a result of her parents abadoning her as a child. She acts like a happy-go-lucky girl because that's what people wanted her to be, not because she is one herself, afraid that if she lets her "true" self out in the open, her newfound family would leave her too.
  • Berserk Button: It's later revealed in Arcana Arcadiathat just uttering or even reading the word "mother" in front of Aruru causes her deeply hidden dark emotions to swell up and surface as it's a very bitter reminder of what she could never have as an abandoned orphan.
  • Beware the Nice Ones: It's extremely hard to get the chipper and friendly Aruru mad, but if you badmouth her friends in front of her, all bets are off. She actually snaps back at Andrew for doing so in Self-Proclaimed, Stage Girls, then proceeds to immediately take over a Re LIVE and renames it to just "LIVE", all in an effort to prove to Andrew that he was wrong about her friends and that they're genuine, and not "Self-proclaimed" as he claimed, Stage Girls.
  • Beyond the Impossible:
    • Aruru flat out hijacks a Re LIVE and turns it into an impromptu performance of "The Wizard of Oz". Becomes even more impressive after the "Elle Note" is revealed. Anything written in the notebook is brought to life in the world of the stage, so anyone involved ought to be acting out their part as written. Aruru being who she is, she somehow took control of the story regardless.
    • She does it again during the Procyon Revue for Starry Diamond: together with Misora, she convinces both Ichie and Mahiru to put down their weapons and just share Position Zero together without having to fight, something they all agree on (though it took them a little longer to convince Mahiru), and all participants end up winning the revue without having to put up a fight like the Frontier duo wanted, a first for the series as a whole.
  • Born Lucky: According to her. Her happy-go-lucky attitude and optimistic personality are both rooted in her personal belief that she's a very lucky girl.
  • Break the Cutie: The events of Arcana Arcadia have not been kind to the poor girl at all, which is not helped by her friends' well-intentioned but horribly misguided actions.
  • Bunny-Ears Lawyer: She might be a wacky newbie in the performing arts, but Aruru has shown time and again that she can just as easily catch up to her more experienced peers with dedicated practice. Shoujo Conte All Starlight also shows that she can go toe-to-toe with Junna when it comes to memorizing and quoting lines from famous figures. In Self-Proclaimed, Stage Girls, having already heard the explanation from the Seisho girls, she stuns Elle and Andrew when summoned for a Re LIVE by beating the latter to the punch and quoting that explanation word for word.
  • Childhood Friends: With Misora. They've been inseparable since they were kids and they're almost always seen together.
  • Cloudcuckoolander: She's so hyper and carefree that she tends to have the most outlandish of schemes almost every second. The wish she initially wanted granted if Frontier won the Audition was for Pteranodons to come back from extinction so they can watch her group's "Captain Twins" play.
  • Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of three particular character archetypes:
    • Of The Heart. She's the person who inspired and lifted her friends up and more when they hit their lowest points in both Frontier's School Story and in Self-Proclaimed, Stage Girls and is the Frontier group's emotional center. She knows exactly what to do and say to inspire her friends and it's clear that she cares for their group a big lot. But while she genuinely loves them and truly enjoys being with them enough to defy odds for their sake as she considers them as her family, she's actually just as dependent on their group as they are on her as she bases her identity of "Aruru Otsuki" around their team. Without their group and her role within their dynamic, she's essentially a "nobody". When the Pirates disband all of a sudden so they can find their own stage by themselves in an attempt to become the Unknown Lead during Arcana Arcadia, Aruru quickly deteriorates emotionally at the crisis of having her newfound family, her role, and her identity, being forcibly taken away from her and being left with nothing once more.
    • Of The Pollyanna. Aruru is perpetually cheerful, sunny, and good-natured, if a little insensitive sometimes, and it's not easy to get her down in any circumstance no matter how bad things get. She even makes it her goal to spread happiness through plays. It's actually a mask she constructed both as a means to cope with her abandonment issues and as a means to appeal to others out of a desire to feel needed. Her "real self", which she buries deep down and hates believing it to be undesirable, is an unhappy child with an unhealthy load of negative emotions stemming from her abandonment that she actively suppresses and hides from others.
    • Of the Genki Girl. She's the resident mood maker of the group, cheerful, energetic, and always so vibrant that it encourages her group to do their best so they could match the energy and enthusiasm she displays during performances. She actively plays it up because everyone loves "the bright and energetic Aruru" and this makes her feel loved and needed. She actively wishes to spread happiness by being an embodiment of cheer itself, both to give herself a sense of purpose around others and as a way to fight her own unhappiness within her as an "empty" individual. Needless to say, when her purpose was taken away from her when the Pirates suddenly disbanded, her personality takes a drastic and gradual shift throughout Arcana Arcadia until the mask completely breaks in Chapter 16 despite her fears of revealing her darker side to everyone.
  • Doorstop Baby: The Arcana Arcadia Main Story reveals that she was left at an orphanage by her birth parents.
  • Even the Loving Hero Has Hated Ones: Aruru usually sees the best in everyone and is nothing but friendly and loving to those she meets. But harbors hatred and resentment towards her unknown birth mother for abandoning her without a word, to the point where she admits that whenever she sees or hears the word "mother" in scripts for plays or elsewhere, she can't help but feel nothing but dark emotions and disdain towards the word itself.
  • Everyone Has Standards: She may be whimsical enough to go with the flow when it comes to improvising for unforeseen events, but during the BanG Dream! collaboration event, even she started panicking when Karen carelessly forgot to get music teachers to teach them how to play instruments for a special play involving characters who are in a band that she, Karen, Hikari, Tamao, and Akira are participants in.
  • Exotic Eye Designs: She has distinct star designs on both her eyes when looked upon closely, and is so far the only character to have them in the franchise.
  • First-Name Basis: She refers to everyone by their given name, regardless of her closeness to them and whether or not they're actually older than her.
  • Foil:
    • To Nana. Both of them are dual wielders with blonde hair and big hearts, and cherish their friends' happiness. Where Nana has a careful, supportive, motherly disposition, Aruru is like the eager little sister who runs ahead and pulls everyone else along behind her. And where Nana was so afraid of losing her friends' happiness that she created a time loop, preserving their brilliance at the cost of stilting their growth, Aruru helped her friends attain their brilliance by helping them press forward and blossom as true Stage Girls. Their core similarities and key differences get further highlighted during Arcana Arcadia, where it's revealed that Aruru is just as big of a Stepford Smiler as Nana is and that she also both ties her identity down to her close relationship with her friends and has a very huge attachment to them due to lacking a family of her own. Unlike Nana however, Aruru was luckier to have befriended and formed an inseparable bond with Misora early in her childhood, preventing her from experiencing the same loneliness that afflicted Nana prior to her entering Seisho in spite of Aruru's own personal issues.
    • To Misora. Aruru is impulsive and adventurous, while Misora is more cautious and level-headed. Aruru's natural talent makes Misora question her own ability and ultimately decide to see the competition Aruru provides as motivation to improve herself as a stage girl. On a sadder note, Misora's big family serves as a painful reminder to Aruru of her lack of one.
    • To Shizuha. Shizuha's experience and mind for organization help theater novice Aruru get a lot of her ideas off the ground, such as in the Frontier School Story, where Shizuha's connections with Lalafin and Tsukasa help Aruru get two of the three actors she needs for Captain Twins. Aruru's refusal to give up on Shizuha inspires Shizuha, up until that point resigned to underperforming in order to make others happy, to act to her fullest.
  • Foreshadowing: Aruru being an orphan is a surprising twist in the story that's been very subtly hinted at in the game since the beginning:
    • Frontier's core theme as a group revolves around "family". Very fitting for a girl who's always desired to have one of her own since she never had any she knew.
    • All four of her friends in Frontier have talked about their own families at least once on different occasions, whether it be in an event story, a Theater Story, in their main menu lines, or in some of their cards' Bond Stories. She hasn't.
    • One very subtle piece of foreshadowing which can be easily missed on the first watch can be found as early as the very first event in the game via Spider Witch Tsukasa's 2nd Bond Story where Tsukasa and Aruru have this seemingly innocent conversation:
      Aruru: It'd be nice to see Kaoruko-chan and Futaba-chan, but playing with the kids is what I really want! I'm an only child, so I always wanted a younger brother or sister to play with.
      Tsukasa: You were an only child, too?
      Aruru: Yep! You too, Tsukasa-chan? Yet, we're so different... How strange...
    • Aruru's sympathy towards the disheartened little girl in Santa Savior Lalafin's Bond Story and her out of character reactions to said girl's situation at two certain points foreshadow her personal issues that form the central conflict later in Arcana Arcadia.
  • The Gadfly: Shows shades of this in Self-Proclaimed, Stage Girls when she repeatedly calls Andrew 'Abominamole' while fully knowing how much he hated being called that whenever she introduces him to the rest of her friends in Frontier.
  • Genki Girl: She can give even Karen a run for her money in the energy department. Her performances onstage become livelier as a result of her energetic portrayals. It gets Played for Drama when it's revealed that she deliberately plays her cheery disposition up as a means to appeal to other people because she's very afraid of being abandoned again. Underneath the happy mask she puts up is a sad and lonely girl who feels empty due to her supposed lack of a true identity.
  • The Gunslinger: She uses twin pistols as her main weapons in the revues.
  • Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Though she has a penchant for carelessly running her mouth off every now and then, she's ultimately a friendly, fun-loving, kind girl.
  • Hates Their Parent: In a particularly sad scene, Aruru professes her hatred for her mother who abandoned her without saying anything after Misora brings the word "mother" up in what should have been a heartwarming conversation with her, revealing her deep-seated resentment towards her unknown parents for their abandonment of her.
  • The Heart:
    • She's the glue holding the Frontier group together, and fully embodies the ideals Frontier was meant to carry in the first place. She helps encourage her friends and knows exactly what to say to them to get them back on track whenever they feel down. Self-Proclaimed, Stage Girls exemplifies why she's this trope to her friends firsthand.
    • This is ultimately deconstructed during Arcana Arcadia. Aruru is a genuinely kind and brilliant Stage Girl and is the main reason her friends in Frontier got their brilliance as Stage Girls back ten-fold and they love and admire her for it. Thanks to that, they put her on a pedestal of sorts and believe that through her, they can all be at their best and can overcome any challenge with her as their center. Ultimately however, Aruru is still a human being at the end of the day, complete with her own hidden flaws and shortcomings even with her uncanny talents and unrelenting headstrong personality, and that there's only so much she can take if she's overwhelmed with too much pressure and pain foisted onto her, just like everyone else. Her friends failing to see past the strong front she puts in front of them results in them unintentionally putting her through severe emotional trauma under the misguided belief that she can overcome anything they throw at her with her usual brand of optimism onstage and come out stronger no worse for the wear. As a result, not only does their well-intentioned plan backfire on them when they inevitably made Aruru crack from all the pressure they forced her through, it also made Aruru denounce the stage before running away to get away from all of them, afraid that they'll just end up hurting her again.
  • Heroic BSoD: For most of Arcana Arcadia starting from the moment her friends all inexplicably turn against her and abandon her without her knowing exactly why. However, while obviously miserable the entire time, she doesn't fully snap until during Chapter 16 when Misora and the rest bring up a very touchy topic in front of Aruru, causing Aruru to finally let out all of her very negative emotions she's been holding back all this time. She even literally regresses into a child when it happens to show how bad her emotional state at the time is.
  • Innocently Insensitive: She has a bad tendency of accidentally insulting other people without really meaning to though it's played for laughs. At one point in the Main Story in ReLIVE, she unintentionally pisses off Futaba in their first encounter together by pressing her Berserk Button despite intending it to be a well-meaning compliment for her.
  • Lethal Chef: Her cookies are terrible, and while Misora comments that some of the desserts she makes sometimes turn out amazing, most of the time...not so much.
  • Magnetic Hero: Her charisma and go-getter attitude helped net her her new circle of friends in Frontier AND get the cast she needed for the "Captain Twins" play she wanted in just one go. It is also Aruru who draws Elle out of her shell and onto the stage as an active participant.
  • Meaningful Name: Played With. As a whole, Aruru's given name doesn't really mean anything whatsoever and even Aruru herself lampshades that it's a strange name (but she loves it anyway). However, the first two characters of her first name, 「ある」( = aru), is a verb typically used to indicate that something "exists" or "is" in Japanese. This becomes meaningful throughout Self-Proclaimed, Stage Girls, where Aruru continuously repeats her namesake while proving to Andrew that her friends are not "self-proclaimed Stage Girls" like he claimed they were.
    Misora, Lalafin, Tsukasa-chan, Shizuha-chan...They're not "nothing"! They are Stage Girls! They are! They are!
  • Mirror Character: To Karen. Both are energetic stage girls who help talk their classmates through their issues (Karen in her revues, Aruru in Self-Proclaimed Stage Girls) and jump into stages against all expectations (Karen in Episodes 1 and 12, Aruru again in Self-Proclaimed Stage Girls). In Main Story 16, Aruru even gets an "I AM REBORN" animation in the style of Karen's from the anime.
  • Oblivious to Hints: She doesn't seem to notice how much her friends dread and recoil at the mere mention of her baking anything due to the..."creativity" she involves in it.
  • O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Whenever Aruru drops her sunny smiles, expect the story to take a more dramatic shift than usual.
    • Aruru is always happy-go-lucky, and is never mean-spirited; the worst she gets is her Innocently Insensitive tendencies. So it comes as a bit of a shock when she actually shouts at Andrew for insulting her friends' skills as Stage Girls.
    • Aruru behaves rather oddly at two specific points during Santa Savior Lalafin's Bond Story. In the first instance, she angrily and uncharacteristically scolds Tsukasa for saying that there was little they can do for the disheartened little girl whose friend told her off for still believing in Santa Claus, insisting that the three of them should act as her Santa instead, which surprises both Lalafin and Tsukasa before Aruru catches herself and apologizes for her sudden outburst. The second instance happens later on, where Aruru's usual peppy smile is replaced with a somber one while remarking that "no one should be sad during Christmas" to herself, which both her friends catch on to, before she goes back to her happy energetic self again and runs off. These two instances are her briefly dropping her mask because the situation with the little girl hit a little too close to home for Aruru.
    • You know Aruru is in a terrible place emotionally when she starts becoming moodier and more ill-tempered towards others during Arcana Arcadia which is her way of lashing out over her conflict with her "family" in Frontier when Shizuha decides to disband the Pirates for reasons Aruru can't comprehend.
    • When the usually cheery Aruru starts laughing humorlessly in Chapter 16 after spending most of Arcana Arcadia in a miserable state when Misora brings up the touchy topic of her mother in front of her, that's a huge red flag that she's well and truly snapped for the first and only time in the game's story. This is further compounded when she immediately follows this up with a hateful rant against her unknown mother and angrily tells her friends to stay away from her after she denounces the stage in front of them as a result of their actions towards her.
  • Parental Abandonment: It's revealed later on that Aruru's birth parents abandoned her at an orphanage as an infant, leaving only a slip of paper with her name on it with her as they did. This contributes to a lot of Aruru's own deep-seated issues within herself and is a big reason for her attachment towards her friends at Frontier, who she sees as family in her eyes.
  • Plucky Girl: She's a free-spirited optimist who doesn't let anything get her down and is cheerfully persistent when it comes to getting whatever she wants out of something or someone. This trait of hers becomes especially important in light of Self-Proclaimed, Stage Girls.
  • Revolvers Are Just Better: Dual wields two pistols for the Revue duels.
  • Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: For a certain definition of rules, and under a questionable definition of authority. Aruru doesn't have much in the way of real power, but anything that would put limits on whatever stage she wants to create, be it rules, tradition, or a reality-warping notebook whose sole purpose is putting on the performances penned by its owner is something to be cheerfully ignored.
    • Shizuha finds that being part of the judging committee, which usually dissuades other students, is not nearly good enough an excuse to keep Aruru from seeking her involvement.
    • In Self-Proclaimed, Stage Girls, she flat out takes control of the entire Re LIVE and turns it into an impromptu Live performance of a version of "The Wizard of Oz" done by the Frontier girls, helping the others find their own brilliance in the process despite Andrew's assertion that they didn't have what it takes to be Stage Girls. Andrew even exclaims that she basically rewrote the entire definition of a Stage Girl.
    • Misora notes that this has been a part of Aruru ever since she was young. In her first performance, she derailed a production of "The Wizard of Oz" hosted by Misora's family's theater troupe because she disagreed with the ending, not wanting the story to end with finding the Emerald City and going home. When Misora protested that that's not how "The Wizard of Oz" is supposed to go, Aruru cheerfully asserted that this was their stage, and that they could decided what happened. Though the rest of the play was an ad-libbed mess, Misora fondly recalls that she had never had so much fun performing before, and that this moment completely changed the way she saw the stage.
  • Stepford Smiler: Aruru is a bundle of sunshine and optimism and is genuinely friendly and good-natured to all of her friends. However, underneath all that is a girl who has deep-seated identity issues as a result of her parents abandoning her as an infant and leaving her with nothing except a name that doesn't make sense. Thanks to this, she's very attached to her "family" in Frontier and bases her identity around them, since this was a better alternative to her than to be left with nothing about herself at all.
  • Walking Spoiler: Aruru's character, seemingly depicted as a fairly traditional Genki Girl archetype, is dramatically recontextulized by a plot revelation much later into the story. Consequently, most of her entries are whited out.
  • You Are Better Than You Think You Are: On a roll with this to her friends in Frontier in Self-Proclaimed, Stage Girls:
    • As Misora berates herself over prioritizing her energy towards her part-time jobs instead of being a Stage Girl, Aruru turns her and Andrew's arguments around and tells both of them that Misora is a true Stage Girl through her experiences working part time as they helped Misora gain the necessary knowledge for stage operations and character development. To put the cherry on top to all this, Aruru then tells Misora how grateful she is to her for teaching her about the stage and how "the stage is the future", saying that her love of discovering and experiencing new things were because of her.
    • She refutes both Andrew and Lalafin's arguments about Lalafin's hero gimmick being stale and repetitive by saying it's through said repetitions that she's further sharpening and improving her craft each day.
    • She completely breaks Tsukasa's Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond mindset by making her realize that deep down, she really wasn't satisfied with how things are and actually wants to be more than just being known as Shizuha's equal in Frontier with her desire to be in the center of the stage.
    • She forcefully has Shizuha confront the fact that she actually wants to spread her wings further than how their school wants her to, and that it's okay if Aruru and the rest of their friends end up getting hurt from their efforts in trying to catch up to her because they'll keep up somehow.

    Misora Kano 

Misora Kano

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/misora_kano_revue_outfit.png
Portrayed by: Ayana Taketatsu
"It's something that's always been with me,
So that's why I had lost track of it.
My stage —
Carry it through with love to the depths of this heart!
Fly high!
Stage Girl — Misora Kano!
Aiming for that sky, to Frontier!"


Aruru's childhood friend. Having grown up with parents who run a troupe, Misora has had a connection to the stage since her early childhood. As she's always dragged around by the reckless Aruru for most of her life, she's developed a great physique and mental fortitude which is directly accompanied by her large appetite.
  • Big Eater: She eats as much as she moves around, and since she gets dragged around by the hyperactive Aruru a lot, that's saying something.
  • Boke and Tsukkomi Routine: Admits that she has this dynamic with Aruru, with her as the tsukkomi and Aruru as the boke.
  • Childhood Friends: With Aruru. They come a long way back and have been inseparable best friends since.
  • Circus Brat: Though not exactly a circus per se, her parents run a theater troupe and this served as her introduction to the performing arts at an early age.
  • Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: As her childhood friend, she's responsible for reining in Aruru's kookier tendencies. She even serves as a translator buddy for her when others don't get her train of logic sometimes.
  • Fiery Redhead: She's passionate and energetic, and is second only to Lalafin in their group when it comes to being athletically-inclined.
  • Generation Xerox: She studied in Frontier partly because she wanted to follow in her parents' footsteps of being a performer in a theater troupe. Her parents were initially apprehensive about her career choice however, as it hadn't been the easiest life for them.
  • Heroic Self-Deprecation: Believes she is the least talented stage girl among her friends and would oftentimes have thoughts about how lackluster she is compared to everyone in their group.
  • Innocently Insensitive: She wasn't aware of how badly it would upset Aruru, but she still should've known better than to bring up the topic of possibly finding Aruru's wayward mother in front of her given how Aruru has abandonment issues as an orphan and that she may have harbored some feelings of resentment towards her birth mother for leaving her.
  • The Lancer: Shares this role with Lalafin for Aruru. Bonus points for her Revue weapon being an actual spear.
  • Massive Numbered Siblings: She's the literal middle child of five sisters.
  • Middle Child Syndrome: She's the third-born of five sisters, having two older sisters and two younger sisters in the family. She's also heavily implied to be the only one of her sisters to willingly follow a career in the performance arts by her own choice, something her parents were initially apprehensive about despite running a theater troupe themselves.
  • My God, What Have I Done?: She's frantically apologetic when she ends up unintentionally hurting Aruru by accidentally stepping on a very sensitive landmine of hers in Chapter 16: Glittering Children, especially after the latter literally regresses into a child and runs away in tears.
  • The Nose Knows: She gains a keener sense of smell after Aruru has her take up the role of Toto and uses it to track down the rest of their missing friends in Self-Proclaimed, Stage Girls.
  • Oh, Crap!: Every time Aruru tries to bake something, this is her immediate response. One memoir even shows her dreading in the background while Aruru was making her infamous cookies in the kitchen.
  • Only Sane Woman: Zigzagged. While she's quick to question Aruru's antics every now and then she goes along with them anyway once they begin and that she herself is no stranger to quirky behavior every now and then.
  • Out of Focus: The amount of event stories she's involved in when you exclude the Main Story chapters, Intermissions Stories, and Bond Stories, can be counted on one hand.
  • Workaholic: She works multiple part-time jobs alongside her duties as a student and a Stage Girl. Andrew and Misora herself view this as problematic as she seems to devote herself more to her jobs rather than exerting her energy wholeheartedly in her performances as a Stage Girl of Frontier, leading him to call her a "self-proclaimed Stage Girl".

    Lalafin Nonomiya 

Lalafin Nonomiya

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/lalafin_nonomiya_revue_outfit.png
Portrayed by: Miyu Tomita
"Chasing madly after a small admiration,
Catching the big stage with these hands!
Roar loudly, shine brightly — Behold, my hero transformation!
Stage Girl — Lalafin Nonomiya!
With love and courage, to Frontier!"


A small, animal-like stage girl. As someone who's been in the showbiz industry as an actress and model since her childhood, Lalafin entered Frontier in the hopes of broadening her horizons over arts and theater, being further captivated by the stage as a result of her stay there and is always absorbed in the lessons she learns. She's experienced in rhythmic gymnastics and is good at dynamic stunts that require great physical strength despite her small stature. She's a fan of anime, idols, tokusatsu.


  • Animal Motifs: Rabbits. She wears rabbit ear-shaped hair ties, is fleet-footed and hyperactive, and is even small to boot. She's even seen feeding and playing with them in one Memoir.
  • As Long as It Sounds Foreign: The name "Lalafin" is meant to give the impression of having two names of different ethnicities like Claudine's, but unlike Claudine, "Lalafin" isn't a real name in any language.
  • Berserk Button: Like Futaba, she has a complex over her height, so she really dislikes being reminded that she's small for her age.
  • Bunnies for Cuteness: She has an affinity for rabbits and/or bunnies. Her choice of accessories even reflects this. Small surprise that she's chosen to portray the Easter Bunny for the Easter event in the game.
  • But Not Too Foreign: She's born to a Japanese father and a German mother.
  • Cloudcuckoolander: She has a knack for being as imaginative and outlandish as Aruru is.
  • Foil: Andrew points out that Lalafin is one to Claudine. Both are former child actresses of half-European descent, but while Claudine randomly sprinkles in French in her speech, Lalafin doesn't do the same since she can't speak in German. They both have rosy memories of their childhood past, but unlike Claudine, who isn't hung up over her past glory and strives to move forward every day, Lalafin clings to her memories of playing the same hero character from her childhood and is satisfied with repeating the same performance over and over again. They also contrast each other height-wise: whereas Lalafin is one of the shortest characters in the cast, Claudine is right up there among the tallest.
  • Former Child Star: Defied. Like Claudine, she's been starring in shows and modeling for agencies since she was still a child and lacks any of the problems that childhood stardom would bring and fully enjoys her career. A Theater Story shows that she's still active in the industry as she was called in as a model for a photo session recently.
  • Genki Girl: She's always bright and cheerful.
  • Girlish Pigtails: Her hair is held together by, you guessed it, rabbit ear hair ties.
  • Girly Girl with a Tomboy Streak: She's every bit of a girly girl like everyone else is, but her main interests and hobbies (her love for Tokusatsu shows, superheroes, and sports) are mostly considered boyish. Her ideal version of Cinderella (in which Cinderella is more of an assertive main lead who doesn't need her prince) in a Frontier-centered event in ReLIVE reinforces this in spite of Lalafin genuinely loving the classic Cinderella story herself.
  • Gratuitous German: Defied. Though Lalafin is half-German, she admits that she can't speak the language itself and never peppers her speech with it, unlike Claudine and her Gratuitous French.
  • In a Single Bound: She once jumped high enough to reach a high tree branch to hide an Easter Egg in her Easter Bunny card's first Bond Story, taking Shizuha by complete surprise. Note that not only is the much taller Shizuha unable to reach that very same tree branch, Lalafin does this twice in a span of a few minutes between both jumps without looking exhausted right after.
  • Older Than They Look: Despite looking like a small child, she's actually a second year in high school and is Aruru and Misora's senior in school. Not only that, she's actually the oldest stage girl overall, being older than the next oldest, Futaba, by a few weeks. She's pretty annoyed when Misora mentions in an in-game comic panel that she reminds her of one of her younger sisters because of her appearance despite being older than her.
  • Otaku: She's a big fan of Tokusatsu shows and anime.
  • Pintsized Powerhouse: Despite her size, she's physically strong and athletic. Her weapon of choice is even a giant hammer.
  • Righteous Rabbit: Her favorite role and image that she loves to personally perform onstage is that of a masked tokusatsu-inspired bunny hero of justice named either "Rabbit Steel" or "Usafin", which is a testament for her love of the hero genre and her affinity with rabbits.
  • Trademark Favorite Food: Milk. There might be a really good reason why that is...

    Tsukasa Ebisu 

Tsukasa Ebisu

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/tsukasa_ebisu_revue_outfit.png
Portrayed by: Emiri Katou
"How do you create a play, you ask?
Let's learn it together from A, B, C!
To the CAST, the STAFF friends are FAMILY.
Let's hold hands and raise the curtains together!
Stage Girl — Tsukasa Ebisu!
Hearts aflutter, to Frontier!"


A laid-back, fashionable stage girl who cherishes her comrades more than anyone. Despite how carefree she looks, her appearance belies her natural abilities and talents onstage that are almost equal to the academy's top class. Because she was raised in a strict home environment, she lets herself loose in the dorms and allows herself to binge on junk food and fashion.
  • Big Sister Instinct: After the Siegfeld students harshly reject their invite to watch their "Captain Twins" play offscreen, she purposely left out her and her friends' names and school from their next invitation to Seisho out of fear that the Seisho girls would react the same way to protect Aruru and the others from another potential cold rejection and disappointment during the game's Main Story. Luckily for them, the Seisho girls warmly accept.
  • Bad Liar: Lalafin once commented that Tsukasa's talented at acting, but is a terrible liar in general.
  • Brilliant, but Lazy: After her accident, she started slacking off as a performer despite being rigorously strict and talented about it prior. Aruru persuading her to perform in her play under Shizuha's recommendation forces her to come back to the stage though.
  • Career-Ending Injury: Her foot got injured during a performance for a play in the past, and the trauma of the incident made her reluctant and very unmotivated to join in on other productions by the time Aruru and the others meet her despite her talents. Aruru's persistence in seeking her out for a play she wants to do makes Tsukasa relent however.
  • Cool Big Sis: Being the oldest at the time, she becomes one to the younger and shyer Rui and Shiori after the three got separated from each of their groups during the "New Year's Omikuji" event, gently encouraging the other two to break out of their shells and open up more.
  • Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Looks frivolous, but is actually one of the most talented students in Frontier and was even considered to be on par with Shizuha for a while before her accident happened.
  • Dual Wielding: Wields two axes in stage combat.
  • The Fashionista: Loves fashion and always looks trendy whenever she can.
  • Friend to All Children: She's great with kids and her very first event story has her willingly volunteer to help out her old kindergarten teacher in a special Halloween program made for kids to enjoy.
  • Gyaru Girl: She follows gyaru fashion and trends though she lacks the personality that accompanies it. She apparently only started it after she started to dorm, as a result of, and likely a rebellion against, her rigidly strict home life prior to entering Frontier.
  • Mirror Character:
    • Tsukasa and Kaoruko are both sheltered rich girls who greatly enjoy candy and have temporarily left the stage (Tsukasa in her first year, Kaoruko in Episode 6). They bond over this in "Hello to Halloween."
    • In Reika Jinguji Tamao Bond Story 1, Tsukasa and Tamao find that they both largely grew up without their parents' attention and commiserate over their shared feelings of loneliness.
  • Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: Self-Proclaimed, Stage Girls reveals that she had begun to see herself this way. Though being said to be as good as Shizuha felt great in the beginning, at some point she realized that only Frontier students really saw it that way, which causes her to question just how accurate the statement really is.
  • Only Sane Woman: A role she shares with Misora among the Frontier students.
  • Ojou: She's heavily implied to come from a wealthy household, though she refuses to elaborate on it apart from admitting that her parents were really strict on her while growing up.
  • Saving the Orphanage: In her RE Live in Self-Proclaimed Stage Girls, Tsukasa sticks up for an orphanage that's hard on money. However, like the other Self-Proclaimed Stage Girls Re Lives, it's not exactly what it seems—the orphanage is an elaborate farce orchestrated by some kind of medical institution, since the doctors there get money from the government for looking after Tsukasa.
  • Sweet Tooth: She frequents a sweets shop and hangs out there whenever she has free time.
  • Team Mom: The second, stricter mom after Shizuha to her friends in Frontier.

    Shizuha Kocho 

Shizuha Kocho

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/shizuha_kocho_revue_outfit.png
Portrayed by: Mikoi Sasaki
"Heartbroken loneliness as I fall with broken feathers.
The neon lights invite the stage of bonds.
If 'now' and 'reality' are but a night's dream,
I'll carve my flight onto the stage.
Stage Girl — Shizuha Kocho!
I spread my wings, to Frontier!"


An elegant stage girl who values health above all else. She is considered as an ideal older sister figure by her peers and is modest and considerate to a fault. She charms people onstage with her outstanding style and talent and is considered the face of Frontier's Stage Expression Course.
  • The Ace: She is the most talented student in Frontier and is the face of her school's Stage Expression Course. According to Nana, she was already renowned for her skills onstage during middle school even before she entered Frontier in high school.
  • Adaptational Personality Change: Shizuha in -Re LIVE- is normally composed and dignified, and while she's sometimes not above joining her friends in Frontier for some wild merry making, she still retains her mature, graceful composure in the way she speaks and acts. The -The LIVE Edel- Delight stageplay essentially flips her personality by making her a lot more mischievous and excitable, likely to make up for both of Aruru and Lalafin's absences in the story.
  • Adaptational Villainy: The Prince from Cinderella, whom she plays, is a vile villain in Frontier's version of the story in their play.
  • The Chessmaster: During Frontier's School Story, it's implied that she deliberately recommended both Lalafin and Tsukasa to Aruru and Misora after her encounter with them not only because their skills and personalities perfectly match the roles in Aruru's "Captain Twins" script, but to also help give them the right group to work with after being rejected by others (in Lalafin's case), and to help them get back on their feet in the acting business after being in a funk for a while (in Tsukasa's case). It works. What threw her off a curve though is Aruru inviting her to join them too.
  • Cool Big Sis: Her personality and tendency to look after her friends get her this reputation among the Frontier students. She's especially this to Aruru and Misora, her two juniors.
  • Do Well, But Not Perfect: Though she's still widely recognized as Frontier's top student who's on par with the likes of Maya, Akira, and Claudine, she keeps holding her own talents back out of a combination of fear of hurting others who are trying their best to reach her level and pressure from her school's higher ups to not completely overshadow students from more influential backgrounds.
  • Foil: Her general reluctance to overshadow other people's Brilliance with her own makes her one to Maya, her fellow top student from Seisho. Unlike Shizuha, Maya holds no compunction over defeating her classmates and taking their Brilliance in her ambition to be Top Star while Shizuha is afraid of hurting her competitors despite sharing the same dream of being Top Star herself. Whereas Maya is competitive in general, Shizuha is not and is instead motherly to nearly everyone around her. Even their reasons for being isolated in the beginning differ from one another: whereas Maya sees it as an inevitable part of being Top Star and willingly accepts it, Shizuha deliberately distances herself from others in a bid not to hurt others and herself anymore after what happened to her in her first year in Frontier.
  • Gamer Chick: Surprisingly, Shizuha is one. To the point that she would line up early in the morning to get a pre-ordered video game and build her own PC. When asked, she explains her parents cultivated a love for gaming in her and keeps contact with them via the online games they play.
  • Huge Schoolgirl: She's the tallest among the Frontier students and the second tallest stage girl in -Re LIVE-, being shorter than the tallest, Nana, by only a few inches.
  • Lethal Chef: As a health junkie, she concocts health tonics, but the flavor is nothing to be desired. She can cook excellently otherwise though.
  • Lonely at the Top: As she's Frontier's star student, numerous other students would always vouch to have her be an actress in their plays. Because of Shizuha's talents however, she would always end up overshadowing the others on stage leading other people to believe that the student plays she stars in are only good because she's in it. This leads to Shizuha distancing and openly avoiding herself from group plays and productions until she meets Aruru. This gets explored further in Self-Proclaimed, Stage Girls.
  • Mean Character, Nice Actor: The kind and motherly Shizuha is usually typecasted in villainous roles and characters to play as in most of her cards in ReLIVE, such as the Queen of Hearts, her dastardly Pirate Queen variant in "Captain Twins", and a more villainous interpretation of the Prince from Cinderella.
  • Mirror Character: Nana and Shizuha are both tall, mother-like Stage Girls who have consciously underperformed in order to maintain a status quo. However, while Nana took this on for herself, Shizuha was forced into this by her middle school teachers and Frontier's administration.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: It was mostly her idea to force Aruru to face all four of her friends in Frontier including her as a way of helping Aruru achieve a better brilliance than the one they all found in Chapter 10, unaware of the amount of misery and heartbreak she's causing poor Aruru to experience through that alone. Likewise, there's also her telling Nana about Frontier's current predicament with Aruru, as by doing so, she causes Nana to return to her old Well-Intentioned Extremist mindset from the anime, where she later declares that she will defeat everyone to protect them from their desire to be the "Unknown Lead", as Nana fully empathizes with Aruru's situation and emotional state and refuses to see everyone else end up the same way.
  • Proper Lady: Her main demeanor. She incorporates this image even on the stage, resulting in her elegant performances.
  • Sinister Scythe: Her weapon for the Auditions.
  • The Smart Guy: She's a great deal knowledgeable about literature, and among the girls of Frontier, she's always the first to discuss the history of the plays they perform.
  • Stepford Smiler: Self-Proclaimed, Stage Girls reveals that she's inwardly frustrated that her school wouldn't allow her to spread her wings further than what she's capable of despite her talents and that she's afraid of overshadowing and hurting other people if she lets her true abilities stand out too much.
  • Supreme Chef: Like Nana, as the resident "mother", she's an excellent chef, and her friends would always look forward to her cooking.
  • Tall Poppy Syndrome: Was a victim of this in her first year as a result of her winning nearly all the awards from the previous year's S-Con, earning her the ire of the graduating third years from back then.
  • Team Mom: She's doting towards others and looks out for both her classmates and underclassmen like a mother would a child.
  • Yamato Nadeshiko: Has the grace and elegant beauty of one, with her graceful performances and soft-spoken words emphasizing her demure personality.

Other Students

    SPOILER 

Elle

For her page, see Elle.


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