These are the characters from Squid Girl and tropes that are associated with them.
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Aizawa Family
Squid Girl
Ika Musume/Squid Girl
Voiced by: Hisako Kanemoto (Japanese), Christine Marie Cabanos (Media Blasters and Sentai Filmworks dubs), Alice Beaver (Animax dub) (English), Yanitzé Ramírez (Latin American Spanish)
The "protagonist" of the series, an anthropomorphic squid-girl who comes ashore to invade the surface world in retaliation for constant human pollution of the seas, only to end up being forced to work as a waitress at the Lemon Beach House restaurant in order to pay for a damaged wall of the restaurant.
- Alien Hair: Has Tentacle Hair that she can control.
- Anti-Villain: Technically a Well-Intentioned Extremist (Type III), but her traits are more akin to a Villain In Name Only (Type IV).
- Applied Phlebotinum: In Season 2 episode 2.3 it turns out that Ika Musume can pick up heavy weights with her tentacles because she can manipulate her weight using her bracelets.
- Badass Adorable: Her silly antics make it hard to forget but those tentacles are capable of busting holes in walls... which is actually the reason she works at the Lemon Beach House in the first place.
- Between My Legs: The shot used when she's introduced. The same introduction shot is used in the first and last episodes of both seasons. She also gets this shot in episodes 3 and 7.
- Bizarre Alien Biology: While she may not be an alien, she does have weird things about her, even excluding the tentacles and clothing:
- Her mere presence, for some reason, is enough to mess with a compass, as it keeps pointing to her.
- She claims that if she hiccups thirty times in a row, her tentacles will turn into grotesque shapes (Censored by Pixellation, even), and start attacking people indiscriminately.
- She can flap the fins on her head to help her swim. On land, they're instead useful for batting Sanae away when she gets too close.
- And of course, she spits out squid ink. Whether directly, "vomited" out, or sneezed out. It's surprisingly delicious when used in meals, and it makes watermelons grow super fast (Though their insides were completely black).
- Brilliant, but Lazy: She's shown to be extremely good at math, has mastered several skills that have nothing to do with world domination, and of course there's her extremely powerful tentacles. She could at least be a serious threat, if she wasn't so lazy and easily distracted (and of course, if it weren't for Chizuru.)
- Cold Turkeys Are Everywhere: After she swears off shrimp. They pop up everywhere.
- Combat Tentacles: They are absurdly strong, faster than sound, can reach ludicrous lengths but are also precise to put a string into a needle. And they can regenerate just as fast.
- Comically Missing the Point: Due to being a literal Fish out of Water, she barely knows anything about the surface, and tends to misinterpret a lot of things.
- Cordon Bleugh Chef: She's not a chef herself, but her squid ink qualifies nonetheless. You'd be forgiven for thinking that black liquid being vomited from a girl would taste as gross as it looked, but it's actually delicious.
- Curtains Match the Window: And the tentacles.
- Cute Clumsy Girl: Without the use of her tentacles she can barely kick a soccer ball.
- Cute Monster Girl: A cute squid girl.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Occassionally hinted at. It seems life in the ocean wasn't all that great for her. When Eiko mentions how Ika isn't picky at eating, she responds by saying in the ocean you can't afford to be picky, just being able to eat at all is reason to be happy. She later tells Takeru she had never had the opportunity to play with others until she came to the surface. She seems oddly depressed when these subjects are brought up.
- Dub Name Change:
- Sort of in the Latin American Spanish dub: She is named as "Chica Calamar", which is her Japanese name translated to Spanish, through her name is also shortened to "Calamarcita" (lit. "Little Squid Girl").
- On the other hand, in the Brazilian Portuguese dub, she is named by her original Japanese name, "Ika Musume" or just "Ika" without honorifics, since the word for squid in Portuguese, "lula", is also a proper name there, as well as being the surname of the current president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
- A Dog Named "Dog": She's an anthropomorphic young female squid, in other words a "squid girl", whose name is... Squid Girl.
- Early Installment Character-Design Difference: Originally, her hat stood straight up like a mitre. It took a few chapters before it changed to the now-familiar knit cap design.
- Even the Girls Want Her:
- Ika is, in an appropriate and friendly way, friends with many kids of either gender, specifically Takeru and Kiyomi's respective groups of friends. Sanae and Cindy, on the other hand...
- In season 2 episode 9.1, Ika is asked by a little girl named Risa to join her play as her husband. Minutes later, Eiko, Sanae, and Kiyomi all join in. They have different roles but they share one similar thing: they LOVE Ika Musume. They even take their roles seriously and act as though they are genuinely in love with her.
- Face Your Fears: In Season 2, Episode 11.3, she overcomes her fear of Chizuru, accidentally ticks her off again, and gets dragged by her to a room while showing NO signs of fear.
- Ika: Oh? About what? (while being dragged by Chizuru to a room)
- Fish out of Water: It's what the show's about!
- Friendless Background: By her own admission, she was pretty lonely when she lived in the sea. Now, she's happy to have made some friends in the surface, especially Kiyomi and the others.
- Genius Ditz/Small Name, Big Ego: At her best, she is the former. At her worst, she is the latter.
- Genki Girl: Extremely excitable.
- Godiva Hair: Ika has this when she's in the bath.
- Gratuitous English: She learns to speak English in one episode. Despite claiming it's easier to speak than Japanese, her English comes out as very broken.
- Green Thumb: Her squid ink is so good for making plants grow that when she tried planting watermelon seeds, they started growing the next day; by a week, the Aizawa household was covered in watermelons. Only problem, the watermelons' insides were jet black due to the ink, though Sanae claims they tasted good nonetheless and took them all.
- Heel–Face Turn: Not completely so, but it does happen as the series progresses.
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: Her reason for invading the surface world. Her subsequent experiences, however, apparently start to impress to her that the situation is more like "Humans Are Flawed".
- Hurricane of Puns: The dub version makes many puns related to undersea creatures. This is to match the original Japanese version's way of matching punnery in which she would emphasize the ika ("squid") in any phrase containing it (for instance, with -ja nai ka ["isn't it ____?"], with emphasis normally on the nai, would be pronounced -jana-ika).
- I Call It "Vera": Her umbrella.
- In a similar vein, Black Tiger, Black Tiger GT and Black Tiger Ticonderoga, for her bamboo boat.
- Iconic Outfit: Her cute white tunic with blue bracelets and matching shoes. So much so, that they have the ability to repair itself.
- Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: Ika Musume has Combat Tentacles and a strong desire to conquer the human race. She has a bit of trouble getting to the conquering part however.
- Instant Expert: She's able to speak fluent English after a short lesson from Cindy.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Underneath all of her rudeness she really is a good person.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: In Season 2, Episode 7.2.
- Light 'em Up: Like certain types of squid, she can emit light from her body.
- Light Is Not Good: And there is the fact of Ika being a Villain Protagonist, to help cleaning the sea.
- Modern Major General:Ika: "Why am I good at everything but invading?"
- Multi-Armed Multitasking: Her tentacle-hair.
- Mundane Object Amazement: Given her little knowledge of the human world, this naturally comes in.
- Mundane Utility: Her Prehensile Hair is frequently used like an extra set of hands for carrying food.
- In fact, this is why she's given the job at the restaurant. Her delicious ink also helps.
- Mysterious Past: Her backstory prior to working at the lemon house is completely unknown.
- Never Bareheaded: And for a very good reason: it's mentioned that her "hat" is actually her life source. If it's removed, she dies. Luckily, removing it is pretty hard since it's fused to her scalp. Since she's a squid, it may actually be her scalp (it certainly looks like the top of a squid's head).
- No Social Skills: Due to having lived in the sea before going up to the surface, this is a given.Ika: "What's a military?"
- Not Now, Kiddo: How most characters dismiss her proclaimations for invading humanity.
- Offhand Backhand: To Sanae, every time she tries to glomp her.
- Parasol of Pain: In her imagination at least.
- Prehensile Hair: While not actually hair, Ika Musume has highly prehensile tentacles growing out of her head, which look quite a bit like hair.
- Pungeon Master: In the dub, where she gets kraken with a bunch of fish puns instead of her verbal tic.
- Purely Aesthetic Glasses: Briefly went under the impression that Smart People Wear Glasses, so she wore a pair of glasses to become smarter. It doesn't work that way, but it did make her even cuter than usual. And naturally, when she tried Kiyomi's real glasses for a moment, it made her dizzy.
- Required Secondary Powers: It's eventually explained that the whole reason Squid Girl can pick up people and other heavy objects with her tentacles without losing her balance is that she can alter her weight with her bracelets, becoming heavy enough to anchor herself.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: She does this in the anime when she gets angry and unleashes her full power. Watch a brief example here
. - Sick Episode:
- Ika falls ill to a Squid Girl disease. Symptoms include nausea, headaches, flushes in the face, fever, delirium, and death...ly cravings for shrimp.
- Again in Season 2 episode 8.3. Unlike in the first season, she appears to have a normal fever which she gets from Kiyomi.
- Take Over the World: Her ultimate goal. Too bad she has no idea as to the strength of all the world's military forces.
- Tentacle Hair: She has squid arms and tentacles for hair (though lacking the suckers), which are noted for speed, strength, and accuracy.
- Tentacle Rope: In one instance, Ika does this to Eiko when she wanders into Eiko's room and falls asleep there... Rather, her tentacles did this all on their own. Ika herself was already long asleep.
- Ika also does this as a self defense mechanism against Sanae and Cindy.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Shrimp. She has a separate stomach for it.
- Tsundere: A type A.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Aside from Nagisa, nobody is ever taken aback by her strange appearance and Prehensile Hair.
- Unwanted Harem: Eiko and Isozaki come to realize this. Maybe not a true harem, but definitely unwanted.
- Vague Age: While she's definitely young, her actual age is unknown. Not even she knows her own age, as sea-dwellers don't count birthdays, and she didn't even know how long a human year was until she came to the surface. This gets lampshaded a few times, like when Eiko wondered what school Ika would go to; she acts like a grade schooler, looks like a middle schooler, and her skills in maths go even beyond high school level.
- Verbal Tic: -de geso~. The English version of the anime translates this into frequent ocean life puns, apparently as an Ascended Meme from the fansubs.
- Villain Protagonist: Ika wants to take over the world because humans have been polluting the seas.
- Vitriolic Best Friends: With Eiko. They bicker a lot, but sure do spend a lot of time together as well, and Ika plays Eiko's video games a lot as well.
- Wants to Be Hated: A variation. Since Nagisa is the only one who thinks Squid Girl might be a threat, Squid Girl is overjoyed that someone's finally taking her seriously. As such, she wants to mess with Nagisa as much as possible so that the latter will fear her.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Afraid of Chizuru's eyes, orcas and sharks. Those last two are Truth in Television, as orcas and sharks eat squids.
- After the end of Season 2, Episode 11.3, it looks like Ika is not afraid of Chizuru anymore, even if she accidentally ticks her off again and gets dragged by her to a room.
- Work Off the Debt: Her "Punishment" for blasting a hole in the Lemon Beach House's wall.
Eiko Aizawa
Eiko Aizawa
Voiced by: Ayumi Fujimura (Japanese), Heath Pennington (season 1), Kira Vincent-Davis (season 2), Jessica de Borja (Animax) (English), Araceli Romero (Latin American Spanish)
Middle of the Aizawa siblings and manager of the Lemon Beach House, as well as Ika Musume's principal "handler".
- Bodyguard Babes: She's like this towards Ayumi when she sees some Casanova Wannabes try to flirt with her. She almost breaks one of those guys' arms off. Here's a quote from the same guy:"Pain in the ass bodyguard!"
- Book Dumb: Studying isn't her forte, but she's also too proud to ask Ika for help.
- Cool Big Sis: For Takeru, obviously, but also for Ika, some of the time.
- Companion Cube: She refers to her Famicom as her buddy since elementary school. When it broke, she was so saddened she buried it in the garden.
- Deadpan Snarker: To Ika. The latter's lack of knowledge of the surface world and almost never acting like an invader gives Eiko plenty of material to work with.
- Fiery Redhead: Quite short-tempered, particularly to Ika.
- Gamer Chick: Keeps a Famicom lookalike inside her room (in the anime it's a Mega Drive lookalike). Oftentimes Ika is her playmate. She even says that gaming is her life!
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She's not a jerk per se, but given Ika's behavior, can we really blame her for sometimes being abrasive towards her?
- Only Sane Man: Narrative-wise. She's also the person Ika interacts with the most.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Red to Chizuru's blue.
- Sailor Fuku: Her high-school uniform.
- Seen It All: Is unimpressed by Ika's grandstanding (until Ika proves she's really a squid) because she's met a lot of similarly rambunctious children during her job.
- Tsundere: She is a type A Towards squid girl.
- Vitriolic Best Friends: With Ika/Squid Girl. Despite the arguments they get in, they spend a lot of time together. Chizuru once lampshaded it, saying Ika and Eiko fight so often that one could say they're very close.
Chizuru Aizawa
Chizuru Aizawa
Voiced by: Rie Tanaka (Japanese), Shelby Lindley (season 1), Luci Christian (season 2), Sarah Hauser (Animax) (English), Wendy Malvarez (Latin American Spanish)
Eldest of the Aizawa siblings, and the cook for the Lemon Beach House. She's a cute, kind and reliable girl, but you do not want to make her angry.
- A Day in the Limelight: Season 2, Episode 11.3 focuses on her and her quality time with Ika.
- This is the first and only episode that is focused on her for this season.
- Badass Adorable: She's moe when not Staring Down Cthulhu.
- Berserk Button: Her store and her siblings.
- She has another one, as revealed in Season 2, Episode 11.3: Do not ever imply that she is inhuman. At best you'll simply make her sad, and at worst you'll make her very, very angry.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Even Eiko is wary whenever she exudes an intimidating aura.
- Big Brother Instinct:
- Do not threaten her siblings. Ika discovered this the hard way, and earned an everlasting fear of her ever since.
- Also Played for Laughs a few other times; the Aizawa siblings care a lot about each other, but this sometimes causes her and Eiko to get a little too worried about their little brother.
- Big Eater: The main source behind her Weight Woe is her tendency to eat a lot more than usual. Though she's still careful not to eat too much, and makes up for it by lots of exercising.
- Cool Big Sis: To both Eiko and Takeru.
- Creepy Blue Eyes/Icy Blue Eyes: Has blue eyes, which Ika fears, and for a good reason.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: And she's always on the winning side.
- The Dreaded: To Ika, who is deathly scared of her anger and eyes.
- Eyes Always Shut: Well, not completely shut, but she still squints them enough (to make up for her poor eyesight) for the trope to count. And when she opens them, expect a person or two cowering in fear. Though she actually looks pretty good when she opens them without malicious intent.◊
- Face of a Thug: In a way, and towards Ika only. Ika is so scared of her that she can misinterpret Chizuru's genuinely kind smiles and actions for glares and incoming torture. For example, when Chizuru easily allowed Ika to sleep on her Lap Pillow, she was being genuinely nice; Ika simply got too scared when Chizuru attempted to clean Ika's ear.
- The Gadfly: Sometimes she does things because it might be fun.
- Graceful Loser: In arcade games, she somehow combines this with Sore Loser. When Ika schooled her in a few games, Chizuru outwardly took her defeats pretty well and didn't get angry at Ika. On the other hand, she trained so hard on her own she became a living legend in that arcade center, so as to not lose again.
- Hidden Depths: She apparently really likes soldiers, and has a full outfit to boot.
- I Just Want to Be Normal: Her abilities are blatantly superhuman and she hates it. In the OVA she wishes for nothing more than to be accepted as a normal girl. Then Sanae comes along with a new camera leading Ika to attack with her tentacles, but Sanae moves so fast she dodges all of them. Chizuru remarks ages actually pretty normal compared to Sanae and she had nothing to worry about.
- Mentor Archetype: Teaches Ayumi the art of self-defense while having Goro as her punching bag.
- Meta Girl: Quite possibly, being the only character of the series to acknowledge the three-hundredth chapter of the manga.
- Ms. Fanservice: While wearing a one piece swimsuit, even, much to the delight of Goro.
- Muscles Are Meaningless: Chizuru, despite her Weight Woe, isn't even Hollywood Pudgy, and has the trim physique of a reasonably athletic young woman. She can also sever Squiddy's tentacles barehanded, punch holes in walls, and lift heavy weights as though they were light as air.
- Mysterious Past: According to her own admission in one of the extra mini-chapters, her past isn't suitable to be discussed in a shonen manga.
- Neat Freak: Played with. She isn't obssessed with cleanliness per se, but she does feel restless and uneasy if she doesn't clean around the house; even going as far az her gaining an intense, menacing aura if she goes long enough without cleaning.
- Nice Girl: Her default state. Annoy her and she'll make you regret it for the rest of your life.
- Nigh-Invulnerability: Chizuru, in an effort to convince the others that she was perfectly human, allowed herself to slip on a banana peel. But she had no idea how a normal person would fall, and ended up smacking into a support beam at the beach house, and then going through the wall. Eiko pointed out that would have killed a normal person. Chizuru wasn't even scratched, just covered in plaster and dirt.
- Nightmare Face: Almost every time her eyes are open.
- Oblivious to Love: For Goro. Though she may be aware of what he feels for her and uses it to her advantage.
- Oh, Crap!: The reaction she elicits from anyone who chances upon her scarier side.
- The first time Ika Musume sees Chizuru's scarier side, you can hear some sort of liquid trickling in the background...
- Physical God: She's human all right, but some of the stuff she does really makes you wonder:
- Ika-chan's tentacles are supersonic and can punch through foot-thick concrete; Chizuru can chop said tentacles in mid-flight with her bare hands.
- In chapter 366, the Three Stooges made a ray gun that causes everyone hit by it to carelessly drop things they're normally careful about. When Ika was affected, she dropped the dishes that she was cautious with. Chizuru holds herself from dropping lightning whenever Ika breaks dishes, so when Chizuru got affected, lightning did come crashing down, to her sister and Ika's shock. She uses the pencil one last time to fry the Stooges with another lightning bolt before handing it back to them, and they lampshade it all as the chapter ends:
Clark: My ray gun shouldn't have the ability to change the wheather though...''
Harris: Chizuru Aizawa is unscientific.- In chapter 153, she sometimes leaves huge and perfectly round holes in the kitchen's wall without realizing it. Eiko and Ika teamed up with the Three Stooges to find out how: when a mosquito lands on the wall, Chizuru punches it to oblivion so fast, it couldn't be picked up by a camera that slowed the action down to a millionth of a second. As for why the resulting holes are so perfectly round, they never found out.
- In another chapter, a concrete tetrapod (the kind used for anti-erosion protection on shorelines, ubiquitous in Japan and which usually weigh around a ton) that Ika somehow brought to the Lemon overnight is accidentally enlarged by the Three Stooges, who were trying to get rid of it. Chizuru is the one who ends up removing it, by smashing it to pieces with her bare hands,in a fear-induced adrenaline rush caused by an enlarged bug. Granted, her knuckles were slightly bruised afterwards, but that's still nuts.
- In chapter 401, when the Aizawa siblings and Ika got stranded, they encountered a bear in the middle of the night. When Eiko and Ika woke up, they noticed Chizuru cooking some meat, even though they had none before, and the bear was nowhere in sight...
- In the OVA she feels like an outcast at everyone treating her like a monster and just wants to be accepted as normal, so she makes a conscious effort to tone down her superhuman feats, taking care to cook slower than usual (even timing Ika to see what constitutes as normal). Then when there's a banana peel on the ground, she thinks at ultra fast speeds at what a normal person would do in the situation, reasoning that a normal person wouldn't be able to prevent their foot from stepping on the skin, that a normal person wouldn't be able to recover from the fall, but at the same time she doesn't wish to fall on the ground and hurt herself so she proceeds to slip and launch into the wall. A very large hole results and she's completely unharmed, leading all her efforts to seem normal to be rendered moot when everyone remarks that a normal person would have died from a crash landing like that.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Blue to Eiko's red.
- Sore Loser: Somehow combines this with Graceful Loser as far as arcade games go. When Ika schooled her in a few games, Chizuru outwardly took her defeats pretty well and didn't get angry at Ika, but she trained so hard on her own she became a living legend in that arcade center, so as to not lose again.
- Super-Reflexes: She is rather agile, and effortlessly dodges Ika's tentacle attacks.
- Tranquil Fury: She never raises her voice when she's pissed: all she has to do is open her eyes and everyone around her starts groveling.
- Weight Woe: Her only weakness. Ika may have a chance of actually beating her using only this weakness, if she's smart enough to notice it.
- She is also concerned with her muscles, as Eiko exploits it in an attempt to eat more meat.
Takeru Aizawa
Takeru Aizawa
Voiced by: Miki Ootani (Japanese), Amanda Céline Miller (season 1), Greg Ayres (season 2), Jessica de Borja (Animax) (English), Sebastian Alvabera (Latin American Spanish)
Youngest of the Aizawa siblings.
- Anime Hair: Has unrealistically spiky hair.
- Crossdressing Voice: With the exception of his English voice actor for season 2.
- Forgettable Character:
- In Season 2 Episode 10.1, Ika, Eiko, and Chizuru all forget about him while they try to eat as many cuts of meat as they can. Luckily, Chizuru has reserved some cuts (which she initially intended to eat herself) for him.
- Uses it to his advantage in chapter 376, during the water fight competition. While everybody else is shooting each other with water guns, he sneaks around and plants water balloons all over the battlefield like mines. They don't notice him at all until he's trumped them.
- The Generic Guy: Lampshaded when Squid Girl tries to draw the Aizawas using her tentacles (which she explains goes by her mental images of them.) Chizuru gets drawn as an oni, Eiko as a killer robot, and Takeru...is a more photorealistic version of himself.
- Made of Iron: His very first appearance has him getting thrown around and slammed into the ground by Squid Girl's tentacles, only to get right back up and proclaim "That was so cool!"
- Not So Above It All: Despite treating Ika like a playmate most of the time, Eiko notices that he's slowly learning to subconsciously control Ika — which is easy enough, given her immense gullibility.
Friends & Part-Timers
Sanae Nagatsuki
Sanae Nagatsuki
Voiced by: Kanae Itō (Japanese), Xanthe Huynh (season 1), Emily Neves (season 2) (English), Lilian Vela (Latin American Spanish)
Eiko's neighborhood friend who has taken an obsessive liking to Ika.
- Abhorrent Admirer: Well, she's actually cute, but this is how Ika sees her.
- Badass Adorable: Downplayed, since she doesn't know the first thing about fighting. Her Super-Reflexes, however, are much better than any teenage girl's should be, and she's very cute.
- Badass Normal: Mild example, as she has no combat abilities, but she has such insane Super-Reflexes that she can dodge Ika's tentacles (When she feels like it); this causes Ayumi to see Sanae as a "monster" and feel at ease around her.
- Berserk Button: She is not an alien. Do not forget that.
- Camera Fiend: She takes a lot of pictures with them. She especially likes taking pics of Ika.
- Clingy Jealous Girl: The mere sight of Ika having a friendly chitchat with Kiyomi and her friends made her exude a dark aura that made a chill run down Eiko's spine.
- Cosplay Otaku Girl: She likes cosplaying herself, but she especially loves having Ika cosplay in other outfits.
- The Ditz: She's no moron, but she's not so bright either. You can blame that on her obsessive liking to Ika, which tends to overwrite a lot of what she thinks about.
- Everyone Has Standards: Despite Ika Musume's fears and Sanae's overly obsession, there are a few times where she doesn't cross the tentacle line:
- Sanae backed off when Ika Musume's tentacles weren't moving.
- Despite stalking the Aizawa's house with security cameras, Sanae did call the police to capture the burglar that Ika thought was Chizuru's dad.
- When both girls had a heatstroke, Sanae did not take advantage of an ill Ika Musume. She even stated that it would be unfair for her to take advantage of Ika at such state. Instead, she help nursed her.
- Friend to Bugs: In a manga bonus chapter, Eiko explains that before Sanae met Squid Girl, she mostly gushed over how cute caterpillars and spiders are.
- Genki Girl: Almost even more so than Ika.
- The Glomp: Subverted; she tries, only to get back-tentacled by Ika.
- Hopeless Suitor: To Ika.
- I'm Taking Her Home with Me!: Tries to do it to Ika every now and then, because she's so cute. When Ika once tried to hide from Sanae in a bag, Sanae just took the bag with Ika in it, since she became easier to carry. It gets to the point that when Eiko warned Ika that whistling at night causes robbers, snakes, demons and kidnappers to come, Ika pictured the kidnappers as Sanae.
- Lethal Chef: Bless her heart, she genuinely tries to make good food to win Ika's heart, but she's terrible at cooking. Her attempts at it all ended in smashing failure, some of which are the subject of a few chapters:
- When she tried to concoct a new menu for the Lemon Beach House as part of Chizuru's contest, she ended up making a giant shrimp-shaped dish: it turned out extremely spicy since she used nothing but peppers to make it.
- In chapter 285, she tries to make a tray of homemade cookies to get closer to Ika. Long story short, they ended up looking, smelling and tasting so awful that they exuded a menacing aura. When Kiyomi tastes one, she claims they're nice so as to protect Sanae's feelings, but her facial expression betrays the truth. Then Ika tries to taste one too, causing Kiyomi to grab the entire bag and eat it in one fell swoop to protect Sanae's feelings further; the taste causes Kiyomi's glasses to shatter and the poor girl to faint.
- In chapter 383 Sanae asks Chizuru for training to make her cooking better. It still comes out tasting bad, so Chizuru decides what she needs is discipline, putting her through Training from Hell. At the end of it, she's able to break fifteen tiles with a punch (wondering what on earth this has to do with cooking), and tries cooking again. Unfortunately, we don't get to find out if she improved, because she reflexively breaks the table with a punch.
- Lipstick Lesbian: Is highly gay for Ika, and not afraid to show it.
- Love Makes You Crazy: In Season 1, Episode 10 part 2, she tries to abstain from contact with Ika Musume. She begins to hallucinate Ika Musume is everywhere and everything; a little girl, a set of trash bags, even as the heads of lanterns.
- No Sense of Personal Space: The main reason why Ika dislikes her.
- Single-Target Sexuality: She's Camp Ikasexual.
- Stalking is Love: To Ika.
- Super-Reflexes: Shows this in OVA 1.2, when she rushes to the Lemon shop to take pictures of Ika, while also simultaneously dodging all of the latter's tentacle attacks.
- Too Kinky to Torture: Or at least willing to get beaten up by Ika.
- Tranquil Fury: Mild example, but she didn't take Cindy's affirmation that she's an alien well at all.
- Yandere: She looks like this whenever she sees Ika chatting with another girl.
Nagisa Saito
Nagisa Saito
Voiced by: Azusa Enoki (Japanese), Cristina Valenzuela (season 1), Stephanie Wittels (season 2) Jessica de Borja (Animax) (English), Verania Ortiz (Latin American Spanish)
A surfer and part-time worker for Lemon Beach House, and perhaps the only person who sees Ika as a genuine threat to humanity.
- Berserk Button: Don't take surfing lightly. Even if you're Ika Musume.
- Bifauxnen: Just sweeping her hair back is enough to make her look like a Bishounen.
- Character Check: Deep into the manga's run, Anbe will remember she's a surfer and have her take up her old pasttime briefly, before reverting to a paranoid nutcase waitress. Chapter 321 involves her attempting to surf while pointedly trying (and failing) to ignore whatever Squid Girl is doing.
- Crazy-Prepared: She has a stack of notebooks detailing how to counter any invasion plans Ika comes up with. This includes tips for beating her at Othello. Really good ones.
- The Chessmaster: Comes up with crazy gambits to try and expose Squid Girl as a threat, but they inevitably backfire because Squid Girl is too incompetent and everybody else sees right through her or can handle her with ease.
- Demoted to Extra: While she remained a regular in the manga, the anime wasn't so kind to her, as she became a background character from Season 2 Episode 2 through to Episode 11, to the point of not appearing in a few episodes. Poor girl.
- Even the Girls Want Her: Enough to make most, if not all, of the girls squee for her in Season 2, Episode 2.2.
- He Who Fights Monsters: As the manga grows into the triple digits, her obsession with Squid Girl gets so out-of-hand she becomes a paranoid wreck who more often than not teams up with Squid Girl to preserve their tenuous status quo.
- In chapter 288, she offers to produce Squid Girl as an invader just to get people to take her seriously.
- In chapter 377, she offers to pretend that Squid Girl subjugated her just so she can demonstrate to the others what it would be like if Squid Girl becomes a ruler.
- Meaningful Name: Her name means "beach", which is pretty apt for a committed surfer.
- Only Sane Man: Usually.
- Opponent Instruction:
- After she stopped taking Squid Girl seriously as an invader, she spitballed the idea of Squid Girl getting everybody in the world to love her, then betraying them. It failed so badly she took Squid Girl even less seriously.
- Made literal in chapter 354, where Squid Girl dubs her the Invasion Club's advisor on the basis that she's always giving out great tips on how to be a better invader.
- Rescue Romance: After Goro saved her life, she came up with a scheme to hook him up with Chizuru, but she fumbled it so bad people assumed she had a crush on him instead.
- Surfer Dude: And she takes it seriously.
- Taking the Bullet: She realizes she cares more about Ika than she thought when she finds herself standing between her and Keiko's gun, taking a hit for her. Although she's OK since the gun in question was a water gun, and Ika and Keiko were just having a water fight with a few kids.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: The only one who does believe Ika might take over the world.
Ayumi Tokita
Ayumi Tokita
Voiced by: Ayako Kawasumi (Japanese), Sarah Anne Williams (season 1), Allison Sumrall (season 2) (English), Azucena Miranda (Latin American Spanish)
Daughter of the manager of Southern Winds, Lemon Beach House's rival restaurant from a neighboring town. She sometimes works part-time at the Lemon Beach House.
- Beautiful All Along: Without those creepy "Fake Ika Musume" kigurumi masks her father has her wear.
- Beware the Nice Ones:
- After episode 10.2, you better show some manners while talking to her, as her father finds out after she throws him down. Though that one is an accident. She 1earns self-defense from Chizuru. Yes, that CHIZURU!
- In chapter 224, she looks surprisingly intimidating when translating Alex's barks into human dialogue. This shocked Ika, Eiko and Sanae for a second, until Ayumi went right back to her normal sweet self.
- Bodyguard Crush: While very subtle, it's implied that she may be this for Eiko as she tends to be very shy and bashful towards her.
- Buxom Beauty Standard: She's a Dude Magnet in great part due to her well-endowed figure. Several male customers refer to her assets as her having "romance".
- Defrosting Ice Queen: Her father tells Eiko, Chizuru, and Ika that ever since she started working with them, her sociability has been improved. She's still afraid of men though.
- Demoted to Extra: While her father and his fake Ika robot continue to be semi-recurring characters, Ayumi pretty much disappears for the last hundred chapters. Aside from the big ensemble shot in the final chapter, her sole appearance is a one-page scene where Isozaki does not try to hit on her.
- Dude Magnet: A lot of men love her.
- The Faceless: Not exactly with her appearance (she's even actually quite the looker), but she's this personality-wise; as her father told Eiko, she cannot actively interact with people outside her masks.
- Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter: Her dad is a bit of a Mad Scientist, but Ayumi herself is very cute and beautiful.
- Meido: In Chapter 162 (Season 2, Episode 2.2 in the anime), she is this while working at the store and while wearing bladed brass knuckles! Needless to say, male customers are petrified at the unusual sight.
- Out of Focus: In the mid-to-late 300s, she barely shows up. Her father and the fake Ika have more page time than she does.
- The Quiet One: Doesn't talk to other human beings without a mask on. But when it comes to non-human beings, she's more than capable of chatting up a storm.
- Shrinking Violet: Too afraid to talk to other people when she isn't wearing a mask. She's slowly but surely coming out of her shell thanks to Ika and the others.
- Speaks Fluent Animal: Can understand animals like Alex, or at least claims she can. The others hope it's true.
Kiyomi Sakura
Kiyomi Sakura
Voiced by: Kokoro Kikuchi (Japanese), Carrie Savage (season 1), Brittney Karbowski (season 2), Jessica de Borja (Animax) (English), Desirée González (Latin American Spanish)
A middle-school student who Ika befriends after a prank gone wrong.
- A-Cup Angst: Kinda odd for a sweet girl such as herself, but she's not very happy about her lack of a chest for now; though she does acknowledge that she's just starting to grow up. She is so angsty about it that her original wish for Tanabata is to have a bigger bust.
- Bespectacled Cutie: Kiyomi Sakura, who also fits the trope's other traits, in that she's very kind, cute and sweet. According to one of the author notes, this was enforced as the author realized there were no glasses-wearing characters before her.
- The Cutie: So much; she's very cute, kind and sweet, and the rest of the cast likes her a lot for it.
- The Heart: Chapter 387 shows she's the one who holds the Invasion Club together; without her, they descend into acrimony.
- Nice Girl: She's an absolute sweetheart. Clearly seen in Chapter 185 of the manga, for example.
- The Rival: Sanae sees her as this. Of course, this has something to do with Ika. Although Sanae does want to become friends with her anyway, even if only as a means to get closer to Ika. Then genuinely when Kiyomi accidentally finds out about Sanae's secret.
- Sailor Fuku: Only when at school, of course. She tends to wear a simpler dress and sandals when going casual.
- Serious Business: Downplayed, as she remains sweet and kind about it, but she is very passionate about badminton.
- Sick Episode: At the end of Season 2 episode 7.3.
- Taking the Bullet: In chapter 285, she eats the entire bag of Sanae's awful-tasting cookies, to prevent Ika from stating the truth and hurting Sanae's feelings. The poor girl ends up fainting for her trouble.
- You Are Better Than You Think You Are: With her being the "you" in question: she has nothing but praise for other people, but her own confidence is low, so Ika and most of the gang decide to improve it by cheering her on. Although it didn't work; while she's great at giving compliments, she's bad at taking them and ended up feeling embarassed.
Customers & Beach Denizens
Goro Arashiyama
Goro Arashiyama
Voiced by: Yūichi Nakamura (Japanese), Jason Wishnov (season 1), Blake Shepard (season 2), Dave Bridges (Animax) (English), Carlos Domínguez (Latin American Spanish)
A lifeguard and Eiko's childhood friend, who has feelings for Chizuru.
- Ambiguously Brown: His tan is justifiable with his career.
- Childhood Friends: With Eiko. It is also through this friendship that he met and fell in love with Chizuru.
- Dogged Nice Guy: That includes getting his butt kicked by Chizuru.
- Sitcom Archnemesis: Is sometimes seen as this by Ika.
- Stalker with a Crush: Not exactly a stalker, but he keeps lots of pictures of Chizuru.
- Walking Shirtless Scene: Given his job, this is to be expected.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Fears ghosts.
Tatsuo Isozaki
Tatsuo Isozaki
Voiced by: Shinzou Miyasaka (Japanese), Philip Hays (English), José Luis Molina (Latin American Spanish)
Goro's friend and fellow lifeguard who tries to flirt with Ayumi.
- Ambiguously Brown: Like Goro, his tan is justifiable with his career.
- Casanova Wannabe: Tries to flirt with Ayumi, much to the annoyance of Eiko.
- Didn't Think This Through: He's spent so much time getting shot down that when Cindy actually agrees to go out with him, he stammers uselessly until he bails.
- Mr. Fanservice: For the same reason as Goro.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: He once remade himself as a "herbivore man" who renounces chasing after women. Eiko and Ika are immediately suspicous and start tailing him. Sure enough, they discover it's a ploy to make himself more attractive to women.
- Perverse Sexual Lust: He's absolutely obsessed with Misaki-chan, a female fighting game character. He uses her victory pose to soothe his "broken soul" after striking out with real girls. Although he refuses to buy otaku merch so he can try and keep his dignity, through a convoluted series of events he ends up with multiple Misaki figures, including a life-sized one.
- Walking Shirtless Scene: Almost always seen without a shirt.
Mr. Tokita
Mr. Tokita
Voiced by: Rikiya Koyama (Japanese), Tony Oliver (season 1), Victor Lee (Animax) (English), Gerardo Vásquez (Latin American Spanish)
Ayumi's father, first name unknown. He owns the Southern Wind beach house and is fond of making creepy kigurumi based on Ika.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He's one helluva grumpy old man, but he means well and he's generous. For one example, when his daughter brought home a stray puppy, he didn't think for a second about kicking it out despite his fear; he instead allowed her to keep it and kicked himself out. Eiko and Ika lampshade how he's a surprisingly nice guy.
- Mad Scientist: His Ika kigurumi are both cute and creepy, but creepy most of the time. He even has built a toilet room out of them.
- Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant
- No Name Given: His first name is never revealed.
- No Social Skills: His only method of communication is to bark out orders at people in an unpleasant manner.
- Villain Team-Up: With Harris, Clark, and Martin. All of them are not really villainous; only to Ika (and even then, not all the time).
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: He's deathly afraid of dogs. When his daughter brought home an adorable stray puppy, he couldn't even stay in his own house until Eiko encouraged him to try and get over it.
Ruka Shirosugi
Ruka Shirosugi
A nurse working at the beach's first-aid station, and high school acquaintance of Keiko's. She's notable for being pretty scary when visited one too many times as a patient.
- Cruel to Be Kind: Part of the reason behind her scary behavior is to get people to be more careful at the beach, even if only to avoid her wrath.
- Dr. Jerk: There's a pattern to her: the first time you visit her as a patient, she's kind and reassuring. The second time, she gets mad and scary. The third time, you leave with more injuries than you came in with.
- Former Teen Rebel: She was a notable deliquent in her high school days, but calmed down as she grew up. She notices the irony in her current job being the exact opposite of what she used to be. Though she does keep the scary attitude of a deliquent.
- Irony: A Former Teen Rebel is now a nurse who tends to injured people. She lampshades the irony of the situation.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She's pretty scary, but she is a nurse who helps the beach stay safer, and is a good person deep down.
- Retcon: Anbe pulled an "She's only nice the first time" rule out of thin air in her second appearance to justify changing the sweet, polite nurse into a delinquent thug.
- Terrible Artist: Her drawings come out as cutesy, Super-Deformed versions of whatever she was trying to draw. She's quite embarassed by it, and wants to improve.
Aiko Saito
Aiko Saito
Voiced by: Hiroko Ushida (Japanese), Estrella Melgarejo (Latin American Spanish)
An elementary school teacher, and Nagisa's older sister. She's very kind towards her students, but is extremely jealous of Ika, who stole her popularity with the kids.
- Can't Hold Her Liquor: Downplayed: she can drink a fair amount more than usual for the trope, but her sister still notes she doesn't need a lot of alcohol to get smashed.
- Friend to All Children: Parodied. She loves teaching children, and the children love her back, but they tend to like Ika more, which causes Aiko no shortage of jealousy and dismay.
- The Rival: Sees Ika as this, for having "stolen" her popularity with the kids.
- Sensei-chan: Young, beautiful, and at times surprisingly immature for a teacher. In chapter 374, Nagisa tells her the reason she's not popular with her students is because she looks down on childish pastimes. Her solution is to put on a sundress and a big hair bow, find the neighborhood children, and ask them to call her Aiko-chan while she plays with them.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Being a teacher, she's knowledgeable about bugs, but she's still terrified of them.
Keiko Furukawa
Keiko Furukawa
- Voiced by: Misato Fukuen (Japanese)
A policewoman who, despite what her job entails, is kinda incompetent.
- Cute Clumsy Girl: So clumsy despite being a cop. She once tried to handcuff a purse-snatcher; she ended up cuffing his arm to her own.
- Fair Cop: She's a really cute young woman alright. When she attempted to stand out less by changing from her police uniform into a bikini, it made her stand out even more.
- Nice Girl: Clumsy and somewhat incompetent though she may be, she's really kind and eager to help and protect whoever she can.
- No Sense of Direction: The focus of chapter 379 is her poor sense of direction, to her dismay. When she kept repeating a map's directions in her head to lead Ika where she needed to go, she was distracted by two kids reciting the Konami Code and ended up even more confused.
- One of the Kids: Is not ashamed to join a water gun fight with Squid Girl and the other kids.
- Police Are Useless: She was once held hostage when she accidentally cuffed herself detaining a criminal, and Squid Girl has saved her on more than one occasion.
- Walking Swimsuit Scene: In one chapter, she changes from her police uniform into a bikini to stand out less. Unfortunately, that just makes her stand out even more.
American Research Team
Cindy Campbell
Cindy Campbell
Voiced by: Hitomi Nabatame (Japanese), Laura Post (season 1), Shelley Calene-Black (English), Alicia Barragan (Latin American Spanish)
An American alien researcher who comes to Japan to investigate Ika.
- Alliterative Name: Cindy Campbell.
- Anime Accent Absence: In her introduction Eiko tried to speak in English with her (she tried and failed epically) until she revealed she could speak fluent Japanese.
- She was so fluent in Japanese she eventually discovered, much to her horror, that she speaks English with a Japanese accent.
- The accent is gone as of Season 2's 4.1, where she spends the whole segment speaking fluent English.
- Celebrity Resemblance: In chapter 245, she's mistaken for the world-famous charismatic singer Jennifer, much to her chagrin.
- Eagleland
- Everyone Has Standards: When invited to the Aizawa residence to teach Takeru English, not only did she wear regular clothes compared to her usual bikini, but she did not have obsession with Ika Musume as an alien.
- Gorgeous Gaijin: A sexy blonde American woman with a pony-tail, wearing a parka over a two-piece bikini or a tube-top and short shorts? Yes, please.
- Mad Scientist: Less so than the Three Stooges, but still.
- Phenotype Stereotype: Blond and well-endowed.
- Single-Target Sexuality: Her obsession with Ika sometimes goes beyond finding her "alien heritage" and she's heading right in Sanae's direction.
- Too Kinky to Torture: Much like Sanae, she doesn't mind being on the blunt end of Ika's tentacles.
- Walking Swimsuit Scene: Is almost always seen in her swimsuit.
Harris, Clark and Martin
Harris, Clark and Martin
Voiced by: Seiji Sasaki, Anri Katsu, and Tetsuo Goto (Japanese); "Phineas", Tony Oliver, and Jonathan Meza (season 1), Andrew Love, Jay Hickman, and Mark X. Laskowski (season 2) (English); Carlos Segundo, Mario Castañeda and Gerardo Reyero (Latin American Spanish)
A trio of American Mad Scientists and MIT graduates who, together with Cindy, investigate Ika.
- Beware the Silly Ones: For as silly and bumbling as they are, they can be surprisingly competent when they put their minds to it.
- Eagleland
- Geek Physiques: Harris is a little skinny, Clark is very skinny, and Martin is fat.
- When Ika is gone in episode 12.1, they become depressed — Harris and Clark gain a ton of weight, while Martin loses quite a bit.
- Gratuitous English: Humorously, a few of their Gratuitous English lines go unaltered in the English dub. "You're a god, man! We are god men!"
- Mad Scientist: A trio of 'em. Their inventions are usually annoying at best, creepy at worst, but rarely helpful.
- Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: Especially in chapter 113.
- Reed Richards Is Useless: In their zeal to discover Ika's "alien" heritage, they conveniently overlook their other, far more important discoveries: a universal language translator and a cure for cancer. Being that we actually learn this from them, they appear to have some faint awareness of the fact that they're squandering their talents and discoveries
- Probably they finance their wild-alien chase with the patent-money they get from these inventions?
- Three Stooges Shout-Out: Their In-Series Nickname
- Villain Team-Up: While they are not really villainous, the trio and Ayumi's father join forces in Season 2, Episode 11.2 to build a Mecha-Ika Musume. This Mecha-Ika has almost all of the original's powers as well as the ability to speak.
Other
Kozue Tanabe
Kozue Tanabe
Voiced by: Akemi Kanda (Japanese), Erika Harlacher (season 1) (English), Annie Rojas (Latin American Spanish)
A gentle girl that Squid Girl meets one day on the beach. Implied to be an anthropomorphic "tako musume" (octopus girl).
- Ambiguously Human: Her hat is commented to be as odd looking as whatever Ika has on her head...
- Humans Are Flawed: Her basic philosophy, which she sometimes shares with Ika.
- Last Episode, New Character: More like the Last Episode Octo-Girl of the show. She has only appeared in the last episodes of Season 1 and 2.
- Meaningful Name: Tanabe Kozue. "Tako" is Japanese for octopus.
- Mysterious Stranger
- Nice Girl: Usually nice and sweet to others.
- The Bus Came Back: After being absent for hundreds of chapters, she reappears in the last volume's omake for a quick gag about octopus cannibalism.
- There Is Another: Is hinted to be an octopus girl.
