Characters / Speed Grapher

Speed Grapher's characters are described hereunder.

As usual with character pages, SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!

Protagonists

Tatsumi Saiga

Voiced by: Yuji Takada (JP), Christopher Sabat (EN), Adolfo Nittoli (Latin-American Spanish)

An Intrepid Reporter who used to be a war photographer and is renowned for the quality of his shoots. An interesting byproduct of his job is that he is sexually aroused by taking his photos. Despite being jaded and cynical, he is still passionate about his job and works for a regular magazine. It's during an infiltration mission that he sets foot in the Roppongi Club, a depraved secret society of wealthy hedonists whose primary goal is to indulge in their basest desires.

He ends up captured and is given a Spit-Trail Kiss by a hypnotized young girl named Kagura Tennozou, the club's "Goddess" whose ethereal beauty captivates him instantly. He was supposed to die, but the kiss triggered the "Euphoria Factor" in him instead. Apparently a latent gene that only people known as "Euphorics" have, this virus know grants him the power to make the targets of his photo shoots explode and makes him practically invulnerable to conventional injury. Using his newfound abilities, he escapes, taking Kagura as a hostage.

Both quickly grow close as Kagura comes to her senses. She realizes just what had been done to her and breaks down in tears, begging her abductor to take her away with him, and considering how fucked up her life has been until then, she's got all the reason in the world to wish for that. Saiga decides to free Kagura from the Roppongi club and her unkind mother's clutches.

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• Action Survivor: He was a veteran war photographer before the series and he fits the trope in both appearance and methods.
• Anti-Hero: He's a a bit of a prick, but underneath that he's a genuinely good man.
• Bad Powers, Good People: Despite being gifted with powers that make him a truly lethal assassin, he's actually one of the few good and decent people in the series.
• Badass Longcoat: Part of his standard street-striding attire.
• Blessed with Suck: His super-powers mean he can't ever take a photo without destroying whatever he's targeting. Which is particularly problematic given that's what he does for a living. Also, overusing his powers is killing his eyes and will eventually send him blind. By the series' end, his eyes have exploded.
• Celibate Hero: Well, he tries, but Ginza has other ideas. In fact, Saiga just can't seem to escape women in general.
• Deadpan Snarker: Saiga's sense of humour is very dry, to say the least.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Even though he's lost his vision, he gets to live a peaceful life and is happily reunited with Kagura.
• Empowered Badass Normal: Saiga was an accomplished war photographer and accustomed to violence before becoming a euphoric...
• Even the Guys Want Him: He's long since gained attention from Bob, and (some would argue) Joe as well.
• Intrepid Reporter: He used to be a war photographer, but since quitting that, he's engaged himself in this as a job.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: A huge heart of gold indeed. The jerk parts are relatively minor, but more prominent because he doesn't interact with many characters that aren't Kagura.
• Knight In Shining Armour: To Kagura.
• Knight in Sour Armour: Saiga knows the world is corrupt and one man can't change it all. That doesn't stop him from being a good person.
• Mind over Matter: His Euphoria is a form of this, telekinetically destroying whatever he takes photos of.
• Mr. Fanservice: During the spa segment and the church episode.
• Nigh-Invulnerability: Only decapitation can kill him, like all Euphorics.
• Nightmare Fetishist: Not even he realizes his fetish until he gets his powers. And Ginza does mention once that he needs a camera to get aroused.
• Official Couple: With Kagura at the end.
• Papa Wolf: The man will protect Kagura.
• Power Incontinence: Strangely, all other Euphorics in the series have a level of control over their powers and can avoid triggering them, they just don’t. But Saiga can never take another photo without destroying the subject.
• Red Right Hand: Subverted. His eye becomes red upon using his power but he isn't evil.
• Shirtless Scene: The guy is so damn ripped it's no wonder Ginza lusts after him.
• Tall, Dark, and Handsome: Probably the best example in the show.
• Token Heroic Orc: Most Euphorics are complete sadists who use their abilities to torture others for their own sexual gratification. Even the more sympathetic ones are still murderers. By contrast, Saiga uses his powers purely to combat evil people and protect the ones he cares about.
• Weak, but Skilled: In comparison to other Euphorics, his power is limited and in some cases not really useful, but his resourcefulness, wit and survival skill more than make up for it.
• Weapons of Their Trade: Tatsumi Saiga is a former war photographer who now worked in a gossip magazine, but always being loyal to his camera. When he got powers from the Euphoria virus, his camera now becomes his Weapon of Mass Destruction, blowing up the whole place where he shoots a picture.

Kagura Tennozu

Voiced by: Kei Shindō (JP), Monica Rial (EN), Maythe Guedes (Latin-American Spanish)

A sweet, demure and innocent young girl who lives sheltered in a high skyscraper in Tokyo. Abused and mistreated by her horrible mother, she still endures it quietly, hoping that one day her courage may pay off and that her mother might grow to genuinely love her. Besides this, she is unwittingly the object of worship of the depraved secret society of Roppongi and is known as "The Goddess".

When Saiga abducts her to save himself, she eventually realizes how she's been manipulated and used by her entourage and begs Saiga to take her away with him. Captivated by the purity of Kagura, he complies.

Kagura's growth has been artificially stunted so that she may not lose her catalytic powers that trigger the Euphoria virus in the carriers of the gene. Since she is under constant medication, she also runs a risk of dying if she doesn't go through intensive rehab due to how intoxicated her body is with the drugs she was force-fed back in the days.

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• Betty and Veronica: The Betty to Hibari's Veronica.
• Break the Cutie: Her life is an absolute trainwreck. It likely starts well before the first episode, given what that one reveals about her in the first place.
• Damsel in Distress: She can't be blamed. Being 15, when Suitengu's men capture her or Ginza recovers her, she can't fight back all that well.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: After everything the poor girl's had to endure, she's finally free from the Euphorics, the people in power who meant to use her are all dead or bankrupt and she is happily reunited with Saiga as a grown woman, her once stunted growth now fully developed.
• Gilded Cage: Her home life in the beginning, and her capture later.
• Girl in the Tower: In the later episodes, after being recovered.
• The Ingenue: Her innocence is a large factor in making her a sympathetic character. She doesn't have much beyond it, but it's a wonder she has it, given her upbringing.
• MacGuffin Super-Person: She houses the Euphoria Virus. The entire series is about rescuing her from her family.
• Magic Kiss: She can turn people's fantasies to real superpowers with her kiss.
• Magic Skirt: As much Male Gaze as the camera gives her, the Lolicon Fanservice is kept to a minimum and Panty Shots are (usually) averted.
• May–December Romance: With Saiga, who is in his late 30's and her still a teenager. Lampshaded by Bob who tells him early on that such a relationship runs a high risk of tanking when Saiga gets old for real and Kagura will still be hot enough to get courtship from men her age.
• No Periods, Period: Played with. It is mentioned that she mustn't have her period else her powers might decrease... so she gets injected with a serum that stunts her growth.
• No Social Skills: She has no idea how to interact people once she's taken out of her tiny circle of rich adults. She gets felt up on a public shuttle and thinks he was tickling her.
• Official Couple: With Saiga at the end. Boy, did they deserve it.
• Orphan's Ordeal: Dead father and mother too, late in the show.
• Precocious Crush: On Saiga. How precocious it really is isn't clear; she's well into puberty, but she's had her growth stunted and hasn't had her first period yet. Of course, no one would blame her if it wasn't.
• Prone to Tears: Not that surprising given the horrible treatment she was subjected to by her Evil Matriarch. She is understandably very sensitive when Saiga first meets her but she grows out of it during the show's finale.
• Spit-Trail Kiss: Her kiss is implied to exchange saliva with her target.
• Split Personality: As the Divine Goddess. She seems to be under some sort of hypnosis, and can't remember anything from when she's using the Goddess persona.
• Sympathy for the Devil: Despite all the abuse, violence and neglect her mother Shinzen put her through, she can't help but tearfully mourn her death as she lays dying in her arms, after Suitengu strangles her.
• Token Wholesome: Even as her Goddess persona, she appears with more decorum than the surrounding debauchery of the club. The contrast is most likely intentional.
• Troubled Fetal Position: In the Eye Catch, and every time she's confined.
• Your Days Are Numbered: Six months left to live, six months left to save her.
• Zettai Ryouiki: Her default clothes sport the trademark bare thighs.

Hibari Ginza

Voiced by: Takako Honda (JP), Clarine Harp (EN), Lilo Schmidt (Latin-American Spanish)

A very proactive, sultry and shrewd Rabid Cop, Hibari is also Saiga's Stalker with a Crush who wants to have him for herself. Dressed in a red jumpsuit to highlight her knock-out body, she uses her golden-plated guns as a weapon and is far from being a by-the-book cop.

Able to hold her own in a fight, she usually doesn't hesitate to use physical force to get the info she needs and isn't big on morality either. Seeing Kagura as a wedge between her and Saiga, she coldly gives her back to her horrible mother in exchange of having her way with an unconscious Tatsumi.

Despite her initially obstructive behaviour, she eventually becomes intrigued with the Roppongi club and eventually understands that her enemy isn't necessarily the one she believes...

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• Action Girl/Dark Action Girl: She's one of the most hostile characters in the show and pulls out guns where they really aren't necessary. She's really not a good person.
• Ambiguously Brown: She has white hair, but her skin is of a darker color than other characters in the show.
• Anti-Hero: Barely. A Nominal Hero at best.
• Betty and Veronica: The Veronica to Kagura's Betty.
• Berserker Tears: At the onset of the Final Battle between Suitengu and Saiga, she's charged with spiriting Kagura away from the scene. Since Kagura displays childish resistance, Hibari starts crying and yelling in sorrow and jealousy and tells her how much she would like to shoot her dead after Saiga openly confessed his feeling for Kagura in Hibari's presence. But she simply knocks her unconscious and gets on with her mission, crying uncontrollably.
• Badass Biker: She rarely travels unless it's on her motorbike, which serves to highlight her fierce female cop attitude.
• Bling-Bling-BANG!: Her handguns are gold-plated.
• Cool Shades: Sometimes, sometimes not. She only takes them off when she gets into a serious matter.
• Double Standard Rape: Female on Male: Saiga will never know what she did to him while he was unconscious.
• Dirty Cop/Rabid Cop: A Rare Female Example. She freely practices shooting and killing suspects in the name of "self-defense" and often takes money from drug peddlers for herself in exchange for overlooking their crimes. She only enforces what she wants and even the lightest of her sins would get a cop fired in Real Life.
• Femme Fatale: She knows she's a hot piece of ass and she always uses it to her advantage.
• Guns Akimbo: Early on and near the end of the show.
• Heel Realization: She comes to realize how sick those she helped were, but not before raping Saiga.
• I Have You Now, My Pretty: Gender Flipped. See above.
• Karma Houdini: Played with. She never shows the slightest bit of remorse for raping Saiga and all her other illegal activities, and in fact, is rewarded with a happy ending. However, soon after said rape, she repeatedly becomes a Badass in Distress at the hands of some villains.
• Ms. Fanservice: She plays it up for all it's worth, but drops it in later episodes.
• Murder the Hypotenuse: Downplayed at first when she unapologetically gives back Kagura to Shinzen, wanting Kagura out of the picture for good so she could harness Saiga for herself. Subverted later on, when she wishes to, and even threatens Kagura to do just that to her after she hears Saiga confess his feelings to Kagura, but she doesn't proceed, knowing that she would only lose even more than she already has.
• Playing with Syringes: The last we see of her, she's with Dr. Ryougoku, playfully threatening a patient with a syringe.
• Stalker with a Crush: Towards Saiga. Unlike a lot of examples, it's played exactly for what it is.
• Stalking Is Funny if It Is Female After Male: Averted. As said just before, Ginza's obsession with possessing Saiga at all costs is never Played for Laughs but presented as covetous and twisted behavior, up to the point of her outight raping him while he lays unconscious on her bed.
• Tomboy: Can pull this off along with being a Femme Fatale.
• Visual Innuendo: Some of her... weapon handling, especially in the second OP. Though this is intentionally so; it's pretty obvious that, much as Saiga has a fetish for high stakes photography, she has a fetish for guns and shooting people.

Roppongi Club Higher-Ups

Shinzen Tennozu

Voiced by: Gara Takashima (JP), Pam Dougherty (EN), Elena Díaz Roledo (Latin-American Spanish)

The ruthless, domineering and abusive mother of Kagura. A former actress who used to have some success back in her prime, she is now the head of the Tennozu Foundation, a powerful financial company that oversees the political and monetary landscape of Japan, often corrupting politicians and businessmen through the promise of indulgence in their basest desires in the Roppongi club.

She is involved with Suitengu and unapologetically indulges in her lustful desires with him. Still good-looking for a woman her age, she doesn't waver in personally corrupting those who may obstruct her schemes or who just want to protect her daughter from her.

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• Abusive Parents: Starves her daughter and slaps Kagura around whenever she acts up.
• Alas, Poor Villain: At least intended, considering Kagura's heartbreak when she's killed by Suitengu.
• Asshole Victim: It's very difficult to feel sorry for her when Suitengu kills her.
• Big Bad: As the head of the Tennouzou Foundation and the Roppongi Club, until Suitengu usurps control from her.
• Big Bad Wannabe: She sees herself as the one in charge of Suitengu, when really it's the other way around.
• Depraved Bisexual: Rare Female Example. She isn't above using sex to personally corrupt females if it may serve her goals.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: In Kagura's right after Suitengu strangles her and shoots Gotokuji in the head.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Despite being the nominal leader of the villainous faction, it is Suitengu who is really in charge, a fact he makes clear when he overthrows her.
• Dragon Lady: Acts to the trope quite well with her lustful persona and her brazen bitchiness.
• Evil Matriarch: Towards her daughter who she thoroughly despises, even more so when it is revealed that Kagura is instrumental in her power schemes.
• Faux Affably Evil: Bitchy but polite all the same, whenever Suitengu's around.
• Flower Motifs: If she cuts one, it's never a good omen.
• Kick the Dog: Her treatment of Kagura is hideous, but one scene in particular stands out. After having malnourished Kagura, one of her teachers, Ms. Wakaba, promises to talk with Shinzen over it. Kagura returns home, only to find Shinzen having sex with Ms. Wakaba, and then giving her all the money she can carry... and making her leave without her clothes. On the way out, all Ms. Wakaba says to Kagura is to demand she give her a wad of bills she'd dropped while fleeing. The message is pretty obvious from Shinzen to her daughter: "There is nobody you can count on I can't take away from you."
• Manipulative Bitch: She'll twist any sitution that doesn't revolve around her to suit her, usually at other people's expenses, mainly Kagura's and Suitengu's.
• Meal Ticket: To Suitengu, but subverted in that she knows it all too well.
• Only a Flesh Wound: Shinzen shoots Suitengu in the leg for failing her, then demands he have sex with her in the pool before he bandages it. While the audience knows he can easily heal it, Shinzen doesn't know he's a Euphoric, so she seems to just think he'll be alright as long as it's bandaged before long. It's a subtle way to show that she's not nearly as smart as she thinks she is.
• Pet the Dog: She truly cares for her mentor, Ms. Gokutouji.
• Purple Is Powerful: Mauve and deep purple are her signature colors (up to her lipstick) and she's indeed one of the most powerful people in Japan.
• Rich Bitch: She's the head of Tennozu Group, putting her at the peak of Japan, and she's an absolute bitch about it.
• Smug Snake: Emphasis on snake. She freaks out when things start to turn against her.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: She once was a quiet, shy young actress with all of her dreams broken. Now she's a huge bitch.
• White-Dwarf Starlet: She used to be a small-time but successful star, until she ran off.
• Woman Scorned: Subverted. She only deducted that it was the case but turns out her man was killed unbeknownst to her, instead of running out on her. Whichever, it was her Start of Darkness.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Shinzen knew Suitengu didn't love her and only had her as his Meal Ticket... but she didn't know what he would do about it.
  • Despite being a higher-up in the club, she had absolutely no idea what was going on in regards to her daughter and the euphorics. This means she had no idea that not only did super-powers exist but that her latest fling was super-human as well. The whole time she believed she was the one at the top of "just" a fetish club for rich and powerful assholes and that everything that was going on was just the typical legal/illegal trading of money, power, and favors. She learned the hard way what kind of story she was really in when she tries to kill Suitengu.

Chouji Suitengu

Voiced by: Toshiyuki Morikawa (JP), Chris Ayres (EN), Carmelo Fernández (Latin-American Spanish)

A mysterious and enigmatic figure, known to the public only as the right hand man of Shinzen Tennozu. To the wealthy and powerful, he has another side, that of the master of the ultra-exclusive Roppongi Club, a black club where the elite can satisfy any fetish, perversion or delight they may have, no matter how depraved or the cost in human life. A Euphoric, Suitengu's power is to manipulate his own blood.

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• A Father to His Men: His three Co-Dragons absolutely worship him. Two refuse to leave his side in the eleventh hour, even when it means their almost certain death. The third later plans to construct a skyscraper to honor them.
• Affably Evil: Suitengu is rather polite and kind to his underlings.
• Anti-Villain: Suitengu had a traumatic childhood, seeing his parents kill themselves, while his sister became a sex slave and himself a child soldier, later forced to give her a Mercy Kill. Additionally, although he's ruthless about it, Suitengu seeks to better Japan by destroying the upper class that made him suffer for so long.
• Appropriated Appellation: He got the name "Suitengu" from a name-plate tied to a sword he was wielding as one of the gangsters he saved asked for his name.
• Badass Longcoat: He wears a rather fancy number (looks fur-lined) as part of his usual outfit.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Though he dies, he pulls off his plan, wiping out the Japanese upper class in his club and triggering the collapse he wanted.
• Berserk Button: Suitengu is very calm, reserved and stoic about nearly everything. The one thing that finally makes him snap on someone is a guy trying to prostitute his five-year-old daughter to him for money, having mistaken Suitengu's Pet the Dog towards her as lust. This likely stems from the fate of his beloved sister.
• Big Bad: Sort of. He is the real leader of the Roppongi Club; he manipulates Shinzen and later usurps control from her. However, he only wants to destroy Prime Minister Kamiya and the upper class, the Greater Scope Villains, and succeeds, so he could be considered a non-evil Big Bad.
• Bloody Murder: Suitengu can use his blood to do a whole host of things, from splitting people in half to flying on creepy-looking wings.
• Break the Cutie: His backstory involves his parents hanging themselves due to debt, abandoning him and his sister to be sold as a Child Soldier and a Sex Slave respectively.
• Broken Bird: It's bad enough that his parents killed themselves right in front of him, but he then was turned into a child soldier while his sister was forced into prostitution. By the time he rediscovered her sister, she had been rendered an Empty Shell by her experiences, forcing him to Mercy Kill her. When all is said and done, he's nothing more than a hollow man whose only drive to live is to ensure that the corrupt ruling class pay for what he went through.
• The Chessmaster: He stays hot on Saiga's heels, and almost always has a plan ready for him. It comes up more in relation to Shinzen and the big powers of Japan.
• Child Soldiers: His personal history involves being sold to an unspecified army (the bad kind) and being trained to kill before he was old enough to drive.
• Death Seeker: In the end, he opts for this, wanting Kagura for a murder-suicide and seeing it as destiny.
• Dragon-in-Chief: As well as a Dragon with an Agenda, to Shinzen.
• Empowered Badass Normal Suitengu was a child soldier long before becoming the first euphoric.
• Even the Guys Want Him: Tsujido is so blatantly gay for him that it may as well be explicitly stated.
• Expy: Heavily resembles Atsunobu Hayashimizu, down to even having the same voice actors.
• The Extremist Was Right: Him ultimately invoking Taking You with Me on a whole social class was pretty Ax-Crazy. However, they were still the Greater Scope Villains behind everything wrong in this setting, and the epilogue does show everyone else's lives being much better as a result of his final actions.
• Four Eyes, Zero Soul: Soul and decent vision alike have long since left him.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Once upon a time, he was an innocent kid with no real ambitions and definitely no evil ones. Then life happened and he's become one of the most powerful and ruthless men alive.
• Game Face: He doesn't show it to anyone unless he intends to kill them.
• Good All Along: A downplayed example, in that he remains an antagonist but turns out to be a Well-Intentioned Extremist. It turns out that he is not a greedy monster like he initially seemed; all of his evil acts were done to gain the trust of the upper class, as part of his ultimate plan to ruin them and save Japan from their corruption.
• Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: Effeminately thin, long cigarettes rolled out of money.
• Hidden Agenda Villain: Shinzen and most of the other corrupt rich people he interacts with think he's in it for money and power, when in reality, he's a brutal Well-Intentioned Extremist who is plotting against them.
• I Have You Now, My Pretty: Along with And Now You Must Marry Me, during the church scenario with Kagura.
• Likes Older Women: He's Shinzen's lover, but there are other reasons to that.
• Manipulative Bastard: He manipulates every single person he meets, with the exceptions of his three underlings.
• Money to Burn: Those cigarettes? He rolls them himself. With million yen notes. He then takes this trope to its logical extreme when he bombs the Roppongi Club building, which contains all of the membership fees in cash, incinerating the money.
• Not So Stoic: He is sobbing when he is forced to Mercy Kill his beloved little sister. When he brutally beats a man to death for trying to prostitute his five year old daughter, he screams:
  "You upper-crust vermin with your bloodstained money! You did this to me! You made me into this monster!"
• Only a Flesh Wound: Shinzen shoots him in the leg for failing her, then demands he have sex with her in the pool. Justified, as he's a Euphoric with enhanced healing.
• Pet the Dog: Even while keeping Kagura confined, he shields her from her mother's abuse. When a club member is unable to pay his dues and his daughter naively tries to offer play money, Suitengu is touched and lets him off the hook. Turns out he was unwittingly reminded of his sister by that little girl.
• The Purge: His ultimate goal is to invoke a rare example where the recipients are all Asshole Victims — namely all the corrupt elite of Japan.
• Red Right Hand: His right hand bears a scar identical to the one Shinzen's sweetheart had, marking that arm as grafted onto him from that body.
• Scary Shiny Glasses: Quite often.
• Shirtless Scene: Near the end, he goes this along with One-Winged Angel.
• Tragic Villain: To put it frankly, his life sucked, and it was all the result of the corrupt economy controlled by the monstrously hedonistic upper class.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Once was a nice young boy from a more-or-less affluent family... until he and his little sister Yui were orphaned.
• Walking Spoiler: From being the real Big Bad to having completely different motives than what was assumed.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Considering everything we've been shown, his end goal of completely decimating the corrupt upper class feels completely justified. Though it did involve collapsing Japan's current economy, it's shown in the epilogue that Japan managed to build itself back up just fine.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: His ultimate goal is to die after destroying the corrupted culture of greed that Japan had become, as they forced him and his sister into a living hell.
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child: He's ruthless towards adults, but he never harms children. In fact, it's a very bad idea to try to in front of him. Just ask the asshole who tried to prostitute his five-year-old daughter to him.

Tsujido, Makabe, Niihari & Kikukawa

Tsujido voiced by: Hiro Yuki (JP), Greg Ayres (EN), Marycel González (Latin-American Spanish)

Makabe voiced by: Hisao Egawa (JP), Bob Carter (EN), Daniel Jiménez (Latin-American Spanish)

Niihari voiced by: Kenjiro Tsuda (JP), Robert McCollum (EN), Emerson Gutiérrez (Latin-American Spanish)

Kikukawa voiced by: Kaoru Fujita (JP), Brina Palencia (EN)

Tsujido, Makabe and Niihari are Suitengu's most loyal minions, a trio of gangsters he rescued from death at the hands of their superiors when he coincidentally chose to kill off those superiors so that he could take over their turf. Tsujido, noseless from the incident, is also a Euphoric; his fetish for smells has given him an incredibly sharp nose and the ability to track people by scent.

Kikukawa is Shinzen Tennozu's right-hand woman, confidently handling any tasks her mistress presents her with and content to stay in the background.After Shinzen's death and Suitengu's takeover, she transfers her loyalty to Suitengu.

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• Anti-Villain: All of them commit terrible acts, but only because they have the utmost devotion and gratefulness to Suitengu.
• Because You Were Nice to Me/I Owe You My Life: Tsujido, Makabe and Niihari feel this way to Suitengu, who rescued the three of them from horrifying fates.
• Co-Dragons: Though Tsujido, Makabe, and Niihari could all fit into different roles in a Five-Man Band, the fact that Suitengu holds them all in equal confidence, with none of them more loyal or trusted than the others, makes them closer to this. Kikukawa was also this to Shinzen and, after her death, she becomes part of Suitengu's group of henchmen.
• Creepy Crossdresser: Tsujido. The guy's basically wearing a Spy Catsuit with a frilly low neckline. Doesn't help that the outfit he wears during the Ritual of the Goddess Ceremony is a sleeveless midriff-exposing top with evening gloves and Grade B Zettai Ryouiki boots. Officially, he was meant to give off "the atmosphere of having an Ambiguous Gender".
• Due to the Dead: In the epilogue, Niihari does a surprisingly noble version of this for his dead friends: he's collecting a crapton of money so that he can build three massive buildings. Kikukawa, whom he reined in, seems to approve gladly as he tells her of his project.
  "What can I say, I'm a man with a dream. I'm gonna need me a crapload of cash so's I can build three towers downtown so damn tall they block out the sun. The tallest one, smack in the middle, I'll name 'The Suitengu Building,' and then, the ones on either side, I'm gonna call 'The Tsujido Tower' and 'The Makabe Plaza.' Now that's a dream that's fucking worth something!"
• Evil Is Hammy: Niihari, mostly, who often has No Indoor Voice.
• Facial Horror: Implied with Tsujido's permanent nosepiece. He indeed got his nose cut off, and now sports a wolf's snout instead of a human nose.
• Friendly Enemies: Played with. They are by no means friends to Saiga or Kagura but they hold no grudge against either of them. They just want to help Suitengu.
• Gayngster: Tsujido, though he's more concerned with his work.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Makabe, for Tsujido.
• Karma Houdini: Niihari and Kikukawa escape unscathed from the carnage and end up alive (and super rich) in the end.
• Kissing Discretion Shot: After Kagura is brought back to the Roppongi Club after her failed escape attempt, she's left sitting in a room, drugged into compliance. We see Kikukawa taking advantage of this to kiss Kagura on the lips but the kissing is only implied. It is left to interpretation whther or not that means she's also an Euphoric.
• Our Werewolves Are Different: Tsujido. See above.
• Punch-Clock Villain: Most of them, Kikukawa in particular, have no interest in being assholes apart from their jobs.
• Rape as Backstory: With Tsujido. When Suitengu found him, he was strung up naked, and a man was pulling up his pants.
• Satellite Character: Kikukawa, who stays mostly in the background although she shows up quite often.
• Secretary of Evil: Kikukawa was this to Shinzen and then becomes also this to Suitengu, handling most of the paperwork and ancillary tasks.
• Subordinate Excuse: They are never seen questioning their horrible actions, but justify them as Suitengu’s orders.
• Unholy Matrimony: Niihari and Kikukawa are heavily implied to end up as such in the end.
• Villainous Friendship:
  • The three Co-Dragons and Suitengu share a great big Type 1 with each other.
  • Kikukawa's quick transfer to Suitengu's side without so much as a reaction indicates a Type II-IV mixture. Sort of hard to gauge given her inconsistent screen time.
• You Are Not Alone/Stay with Me Until I Die: Invoked. Despite Ginza having knifed him in the neck, blasting him with a shotgun, and the Roppongi collapsing, Tsujido stayed behind in order to carry Suitengu to the generator so he could activate the Self-Destructive Charge.

Roppongi Club Euphorics

Euphorics in General

Every single Euphoric we see barring Saiga is a part of the Roppongi Club, and it shows. All of them go after Saiga at some point or another.

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• Cast from Hit Points/Cast from Lifespan/Power Degeneration: Overusage of Euphoric power can lead to death. Miharu and Kanda exhibit this. At least only Saiga's eyes are in danger from overuse.
• Leitmotif: Two of them: Theme of Euphorics will play whenever a new Euphoric is on the scene, and Sweet will play whenever one of them is having a monologue or a flashback. The first lays to their more sinister aspects and the second is a sensuous theme that can be quite at odds with the scene at hand, especially the dentist's. You could also count Sorrow as one for Saiga and Suitengu.
• Mad Artist: They often fancy themselves as artists and will do the most despicable things in the name of their "art".
• Monster of the Week: They show up, challenge Saiga, then die.
• More Despicable Minion: Shinzen Tennouzu and her dragon Chouji Suitengu (actually the real Big Bad) are initially built up as evil, greedy villains but are revealed to be more sympathetic than they first seem, with Suitengu in particular being a Well-Intentioned Extremist who is vindicated in the end, and most of their Roppongi club minions are either also sympathetic or generic. But three of them- Mikunozuchi, Ran Yurigaoka, and Chief Ekoda- are even worse than their bosses, being hedonistic Serial Killers who prey on innocent women to satisfy their sick lust.
• Removing the Head or Destroying the Brain: The only conventional way to kill any Euphoric.
• Sadist: They typically, and literally, get off on using their powers. Almost all of them abuse their powers and injure and/or murder innocent people in order to get off. The worst thing about it is that it isn't made clear if they were always like that, or if some sort of Roppongi conditioning turned them that way. Koganei and Miharu are two possible exceptions.
• Sex Is Evil: Their powers are just the most extreme expression of their fetishes.
• The Killer in Me: If Suitengu is to be believed, many of these people's basest desires involved bloody murder. The dentist's certainly did.
• They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: There really isn't any way to tell a normal person on the street from a Euphoric on the street.

Katsuya Shirogane

Voiced by: Takehito Koyasu (JP), J. Michael Tatum (EN), Manuel Bastos (Latin-American Spanish)

A great ballet dancer, but obsessed with flexibility (and, by extension, rubber) to the point of insanity. First seen breaking a would-be pupil's arm for not being flexible enough, he later becomes the first Euphoric to be seen in the series. His power is to become living rubber, a talent he uses to serve as an assassin for the Roppongi Club.

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• Ax-Crazy: Murderous and psychotic.
• Catchphrase: Flexible... flexible...
• Creepy Ballet: A professional ballet dancer and tutor... who also happens to be an absolute psychopath with a disturbing fetish for rubber who moonlights as an assassin, using literally fetish-fueled superpowers to kill people.
• Dance Battler: Being a professional ballet dancer, it goes without saying.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: The shard of mirror he impales Saiga with ends up used to blow his head off.
• Form-Fitting Wardrobe: When he's being asked to deal with Saiga, he dons an all-black and skintight spandex suit.
• Kick the Dog: The little girl whose arm he broke because she was too "rigid" to dance.
• Madness Mantra: He can often be heard muttering "flexible" or "rubber" in a low mumble.
• Off with His Head!: Saiga uses the mirror shard Kazuya impaled him with to blow his head off.
• Rubber Man: His power.
• Sissy Villain: He's rather campy and feminine.
• Smug Snake: Talks a big game, but gets taken out fairly easily once Saiga figures out his weaknesses.
• Starter Villain: The first Euphoric fought. It only gets creepier and more fucked up from Shirogane onward, especially for poor Saiga.

Kaoru Koganei

Voiced by: Mari Yokō (JP), Colleen Clinkenbeard (EN), Maite Bolívar (Latin-American Spanish)

The second Euphoric sent after Saiga to recapture Kagura. She is quite literally Made of Diamond, as this is her Euphoric Power: to turn her whole body into diamonds. A side effect (or cause?) of this is that she is quite addicted to diamonds, eating them by the dozen.

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• Alas, Poor Villain: She ends up begging for her life and fleeing in terror of Suitengu, but doesn't get far.
• Body to Jewel: A weaponized version. Her power is to turn her entire body into diamond, with the added bonus of getting all its properties, including diamond-hard skin, razor-sharp nails and a transparent body that refracts light.
• Femme Fatalons: She can grow them at will once she's used her power, and boy are they lethal.
• Foil: In a sense, to Kagura. Both are brunette females with almost everything in their life already paid for thanks to their loved ones. However, while Kagura's family is extremely abusive and outright seems to hate her and she would do anything to escape them, Koganei's husband loved her very much, and it seems she may have returned his affections, and forges his death into something worth continuing her current situation (read: addiction) over. These differences are gone into by Koganei herself during her episode.
• Full-Frontal Assault: She strips naked whenever she's about to start using her powers.
• Gold Digger: Played with. Kagura points out how if she loved her husband, she should have told him he meant more to her than diamonds. However, she seems to believe that men's loves are defined by how much they'll give for it, at which point it becomes less about diamonds and more about the man's suicide.
• Literally Shattered Lives: Just to make things more disturbing, the last we see of her is a part of her head with her eye tearing up.
• Nigh-Invulnerability: Not much can hurt her, given she's made of one of the single hardest substances found in nature. Saiga and Suitengu get around this, however.
• No-Sell: She's this to Saiga's camera power: his lens can't properly focus on her because she's transparent when made of diamond, causing the explosion to affect whatever's behind her instead. He wises up eventually and uses a paint can to allow his camera to focus on her.
• The Slow Walk: When she turns on the Club and goes after Saiga and Kagura herself. She's not the least bit worried about the camera pointed at her.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: By Suitengu.

Mizunokuchi

Voiced by: Shiro Gō; (JP), R Bruce Elliott (EN), Luis Miguel Pérez (Latin-American Spanish)

A monstrous dentist who enjoys seeing people he works on writhe in agony. His Euphoric Power takes the fetish he has for teeth and translates it into spider-like surgical tool tentacles from his back, and more from his jaws and tongue.

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• Animal Motifs: A spider. Victims trapped and helpless? Spidery limbs out of the back? Crawling around like one? All check. He even morphs his face into a spiderlike mandible with a drilling tongue.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: He loves this, and he doesn't care about his victims at all. When we see him work on Kagura, not only has he kept her awake for work (which involved removing a molar), he also did drilling on that molar that he admits was unnecessary, before yanking it out with pliers, with nerve lining still hanging onto the ends. And this is before he becomes a Euphoric. How this guy got a job is a mystery.
• Depraved Dentist: A very straight example of this, complete with the sadism.
• Nightmare Fetishist: Likes ripping out teeth. The tooth he extracts from Kagura, he kisses and licks—messily, and sexually. He kept that tooth and drills on it in his spare time.
• Sadist: His first scene is him over a woman strapped down, whimpering in agony while he destroys her mouth with his tendrils. Whether he was one before or after he received his power isn't made clear, but it seems so.

Ran Yurigaoka

Voiced by: Takeshi Kusao (JP), Christopher Bevins (EN), Luis Carreño (Latin-American Spanish)

An esthetician with the power to bring his tattoos into reality, and "infect" other people by transferring them into their bodies.

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• Artistic License – Physics: Blatantly. A parachute doesn't work if there's gaps in it like a fishing net.
• Boom, Headshot!: Despite being affected by one of his spiders, Ginza manages to retain enough control to shoot him in the head and allow Saiga to finish him off.
• People Puppets/Puppeteer Parasite: He can do this with his tattoos, specifically the spider ones, and uses it on Ginza to try to get her to shoot Saiga dead.
• Spiders Are Scary: He often scares people with his own spider tattoos as they also serve to channel his possession powers.
• Tattooed Crook: A variation. In Japanese culture, tattoos are a Yakuza-only thing and wearing one, especially a large one, implies that you belong somehow to a criminal organization. Yurigaoka is no Yakuza but his activities are indeed not exactly legal.
• Your Mind Makes It Real: Ignoring that all Euphorics can supposedly do this, this is his specific power, turning his body art into weapons. He even keeps a knife handy with a skull tattoo as its holster.

Father Kanda

Voiced by: Ryūzaburō Ōtomo (JP), Bill Flynn (EN), José Granadillo (Latin-American Spanish)

A corrupt Priest, who was found out to have given all of the Church's donation money to the Roppongi Club to pay his Membership dues, Father Kanda is a Euphoric who had the power to control electricity. He can also transform into wires and control thunder bolts. He believes he is a God, due to his powers.

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• A God Am I: The Roppongi Club was enough to get this man to not only turn on his faith (and empty church assets into it), but to believe he himself was God.
• Genius Bruiser: He electrocutes Saiga and Kagura, but not to kill them—to stop Saiga's cameras from working and being used against him. It doesn't work.
• Oh, Crap!: When he realizes Saiga still has a working camera.
• Psycho Electro: Absolutely insane with his power.
• Sinister Minister: The moment Kagura and Saiga flee, he's after them, with a cross on his back.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: After watching Saiga and Kagura escape, he's never heard from again. This is particularly jarring, considering his power.
  • However, based off the damage done to his body and the way his body seemed to overflow with electricity, that the damage he took made his body unable to handle its own power and he died launching one last attack.

Miharu Shirumaku

Voiced by: Maya Okamoto (JP), Laura Bailey (EN)

One of the Roppongi Club's assassins, a Euphoric with the power to manipulate water and turn herself into a mermaid-like creature.

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• Anti-Villain: She's one of the (apparently) few non-evil Euphorics.
• Freudian Excuse: Her mother intended for them to drown together in a double suicide. It's implied this happened more than once before her mother finally died.
• Making a Splash: Her power is to turn her whole body into water.
• Offing the Offspring: Her Stage Mom tried to do this, which completely broke her.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: It's noted she really wanted to please her mother.
• The Vamp: Her backstory clearly involves her sleeping with and murdering men for their money and getting away with it.

Spoiler Character

Seiji Ochiai

Voiced by: Tetsuo Kaneo (JP), Jerry Russell (EN), Rafael Monsalve (Latin-American Spanish)

A former photographer, Seiji Ochiai is now a cabinet member who leads a group called the White Eagles whose purpose was to bring down the Prime Minister and Suitengu.

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• Black Shirt: On both sides. He's this for Suitengu and pretended to be so to the White Eagles, but detests what he sees as "pseudo-XYZ" reformists.
• Les Collaborateurs: A front.
• Large Ham: He loves the sound of his own voice a little too much, especially when talking to Saiga.
• Laughing Mad: After he reveals himself as the traitor.
• Loud of War: His Euphoric power.
• Superpower Lottery: Can reduce metal pipes and concrete flooring to dust and send Saiga flying.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Gives one to Saiga while determinedly pounding his skull with sound waves.
• Walking Spoiler: He initially appears to be an ally of Saiga before being revealed as a Euphoric.

Spoiler Character

Katsuji Kamiya

Voiced by: Takehiro Koyama (JP), John Swasey (EN), Luis Pérez Pons (Latin-American Spanish)

The Prime Minister of Japan, and involved in the Roppongi Club up to his eyeballs, with plans to seize control of the club from Suitengu and place it under government control. A Euphoric, his fixation on food and eating gave him the power to mutate into a huge head-creature with acidic saliva, so he could more easily eat anything he pleased.

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• Asshole Victim: Given how despicable he is, it’s hard not to cheer when Suitengu finally exacts revenge upon him.
• Big Eater: His unique power.
• Corrupt Politician: To an absurd degree, he regularly abuses his power to screw over just about everyone.
• Evil Chancellor: As the Prime Minister of Japan.
• Fat Bastard: His Euphoric Power turns him into this.
• Game Face: "Even fatter bastard" is a crude way of putting it. In essence he becomes a giant, horrifically bloated head that drags itself around with tongue-leg appendages jutting out of its mouth.
• Greater-Scope Villain: He is the one most directly responsible for Japan’s mass corruption and Suitengu’s backstory, which led him to commit he actions he did, but he himself stays in the background for most of the series.
• Hate Sink: In contrast to Shinzen and Suitengu, who have their good qualities, he is a vile, despicable character who serves as the embodiment of greed and the system that drove them to evil in the first place, and is personally responsible for Suitengu’s Start of Darkness. He later tries to devour Kagura.
• No, Mr. Bond, I Expect You to Dine: Invites Kagura to gloat over breakfast.
• No Name Given: His first name is never mentioned in the series.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: Of all the characters, he is the one who most believes that money can get him out of any responsibility.
• The Sociopath: His disgusting, lying and scheming nature as well as his utter remorselessness for his crimes definitely paint him as this. There's also the fact that he's extremely self-centred and only interested in his own twisted pleasures, which is a defining trait of sociopathy and psychopathy.
• The Starscream: Initially under Suitengu's thumb as a member of the latter's club, he later makes a way to place the club under government ownership and plots a hostile takeover of the Tennouzu Group. Suitengu easily brushes off the takeover attempt and kills Kamiya in response.
• Villainous Glutton: To symbolize his Greed, his power involves eating things in huge amounts.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: He can turn himself into a HUGE spidery monster.

Supporting Characters

Bob

Voiced by: Kouji Ishii (JP), Antimere Robinson (EN), Héctor Indriago (Latin-American Spanish)

A flamboyantly gay American man whose passport was invalidated, trapping him in Japan, Bob runs a massage parlour out of his apartment and lives in the same building as Saiga. The two are friends, and Bob is a good person, so he regularly tries to help Saiga as he gets more caught up in the mess with Suitengu and his Roppongi Club. Bob has a sister (a transgender woman named David, who runs "Le Pub David", a cabaret staffed by trans women.

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• Camp Gay: Incredibly so.
• Hidden Depths: After Saiga and Kagura come to stay with him, he gives Saiga a meaningful talk, without even the high-pitched voice. Though his heart is in the right place, he's mistaken in thinking Saiga wants a relationship or is attracted to Kagura.
• Nice Guy: He may be camp to an irritating degree, but he's always there to lend an ear for Saiga and support him and Kagura.
• Only Sane Man: He sticks out as not having a single power nor alliance.
• Pet Homosexual: To Saiga.
• Plucky Comic Relief: Very happy and outgoing, which is saying a lot given the show's tone and it's dour characters. Played for Laughs usually, though he also has some serious scenes, too.

Genba Ryogoku

Voiced by: Rikiya Koyama (JP), Kent Williams (EN), José Manuel Vieira (Latin-American Spanish)

A doctor that was responsible for operating on and saving the life of Saiga after he was pulled from the rubble of the bioweapons lab where he unknowingly contracted the Euphoria Virus. Afterwards, he got married and settled down in a private clinic in Japan, until his wife died of cancer. After Saiga becomes a Euphoric and rescues Kagura, he comes to Genba for assistance in finding out what is wrong with the both of them.

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• Action Survivor: Like Saiga, he was on the war lines too.
• Aloof Ally: Always there to help but he would rather not involve himself more than necessary.
• Hospital Hottie: He's very Tall, Dark, and Handsome. Which might be why Ginza ends up with him in the end.
• Non-Action Guy: His area of expertise is medicine, not fighting.
• The Medic: See above.
• Nice Guy: Despite his reluctance, he's a good man and a valuable ally to Saiga and Kagura and one of the few characters in the show besides the heroes to be genuinely trustworthy.
• Pair the Spares: Ends up with Hibari in the finale.
• Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: See above. This is the kind of couple him and Ginza end up forming.
• Weak, but Skilled: He manages to take out a soldier, steal his gun, and shoot Mizunokuchi, saving Saiga from a horrific death seconds away.

Other Characters

David's Pub

David is a trans woman and Bob's sister. She runs a dance show parlor staffed with other trans women, and they support Saiga and Kagura for a short time. They also quickly stand up to the Euphoric Kagonei when she attacks.

• Badass Bystander/Heroic Bystander: Most people without their own Euphoric powers don't survive assaults by Euphorics. These girls do.
• Defiant Stone Throw: The club staff are very clearly outmatched by Kogane and know it, but that doesn't stop them from buying Saiga time by throwing bottles at her.
• Mugging the Monster: Quite literally.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Funnily enough, at least one of them assaults Kogane with a bottle, which of course breaks. It may have been this that gave Saiga the idea to take down Koganei the way he did—if she's no longer transparent, she becomes vulnerable to him.

Joe

Joe (real name Joji Kitamura)

• Cruel and Unusual Death: Ochiai kills him and most of the other people in the room with sound waves strong enough to make his skull crack and bleed. Saiga does not take kindly to this.
• Foreshadowing:
  • While he's drinking with Saiga, he expresses that if he found a way to help the hellhole Japan's become, he'd gladly give his life to do it. That's exactly what happens the next day.
  • Joe's seen in the first minute of the episode getting told off for seemingly not standing up for his girlfriend. At the end, he tries standing up for something he loves and pays for it.
• Mauve Shirt: He's actually one of the better characterized Muggles in the show. He has enough time to make Saiga smile over drinks before he dies the next day.
• Pietà Plagiarism: Joe gets this from Saiga after he's died, and from the journalist chief as well.
• Tragic Mistake: See above. Saiga tells Joe the night before that running and hiding is a smart option, but instead Joe follows the philosophy he learned from Saiga. Unfortunately, this choice leads him to confront Ochiai, directly leading to his murder.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Poor Joe gets killed off in the same episode he's introduced in.

Spoiler Character

Chief Ekoda and the Piano Teacher

Ekoda is voiced by: Naoki Makishima (JP), Mike McFarland (EN)

Though entirely unrelated, these two share some disturbing habits: severing and collecting body parts. For Kagura's Piano Teacher, it's hands, while for Ekoda, it's legs. Ekoda is not a Euphoric; whether the pianist is one is never expounded on.

• Creepy Souvenir/A Love to Dismember: The piano teacher cuts off hands and sticks them on to mannequins, and is looking for a pair to replace the rotting ones on the mannequin most important to him, which he identifies as a lover, and wants Kagura's for them. Ekoda cut off his wife's and daughter's legs and preserved them in a trophy room, and would have done the same to Ginza.
• Chainsaw Good: Ekoda uses one to do his sick collecting with.
• Karmic Death: Ekoda gets a little too close, allowing Ginza to literally break his neck with her thighs. A fitting end for him considering his thing for legs.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: Ekoda initially appears to be nothing more than a short, comic relief character amusingly henpecked by Ginza. Then he kidnaps her and tries to rip off her legs.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: We never see the piano teacher again after the lesson.

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