Due to the nature of the series being full of conspiracies, misdirection, and secrets, beware of Unmarked Spoilers for almost all of the cast.
This is a listing of characters who appear in the anime and manga series Talentless Nana.
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Main Characters
Nana Hiiragi
Voiced by: Rumi Ōkubo (Japanese), Michelle Marie (English)
All this is a front, as she's actually a Talentless assassin sent to kill each of the Talented students on the island.
- The Atoner: She is fully aware of her crimes, especially after The Reveal by Tsuruoka. Once done, she decides that while she'll accept responsibility and the anger of her classmates when she tells them the truth. First she will do what she can to help them and later find Nanao as the first person to apologize to, no matter his response.
- Affectionate Nickname: "Nana-shan", a mispronunciation of "Nana-san" which in Japanese is the polite way to refer to her as an equal or a stranger. It's used exclusively by Michiru.
- Anger Born of Worry: After she finds Michiru collapsed in the shower and severely dehydrated after overusing her powers, Nana goes to great lengths to treat her in the middle of the night. After Michiru regains consciousness and she habitually tries to lick a wound on Nana's finger, she lashes out at her and tells her not to use up any more of her lifespan on such a minor injury when Michiru almost died.
- Awesomeness by Analysis: Nana is skilled at observing others in detail, allowing her to fake being a telepath.
- Badass Normal: The only normal, Talentless student on an island full of Talented people, and she's determined to kill them all—and succeeds. While she can't go toe-to-toe against them in combat, she gets tired and seriously injured, and sometimes forgets important details, her skills of manipulation, planning, and observation win out more often than not.
- Batman Gambit: Most of her plans succeed because she already expected how her target behaves. A little bit of manipulation is all that she needed.
- Yohei doesn't want to give up in investigating Nanao's disappearance? Convince him to go to the cliff where the latter died and travel back in time, not knowing that she set up an elaborate trap using the now-frozen lake, causing him to drown in the past due to fatigue.
- Mentioning cats in front of Kyouya reminds him of his usual routine of feeding his cat with milk. While she does succeed in luring him to his shack and be engulfed in the explosion, he didn't actually die because he's immortal.
- Tsunekichi blackmails you with photographs in order to coerce you to be his girlfriend? Nana plays along, and creates a fake photograph that would make him believe to have gained the upper hand on raping her, not knowing that Nana has a poisoned needle prepared.
- Berserk Button: Mention her parents or talk about how wonderful yours are and you'll see her calm, friendly, and sociable façade break instantly, as Michiru finds out the hard way.
- Following The Reveal of who actually killed her parents, seeing any Talented being mistreated/endangered/killed and Tsuroaka's very existence in general has since become a huge one for her, the latter responsible for gaslighting her into killing innocent Talented (with some exceptions) and unknowingly kickstarting Nanao's Start of Darkness.
- Big Bad Friend: The new girl who everyone loves... is actually a cold-hearted assassin who is tasked to kill the Talented ones.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: She acts like a kind, sweet girl, but she's anything but.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: During the Time Skip, the government tries to pull it on her after arresting her. It doesn't work, but she is forced to keep the front up, as her punishment is to either be sent back to solitary, or be disposed of entirely depending on who finds out first.
- Child Soldier: She was raised from around 5-6 years old to be a cold, calculating, and sociopathic murderer, a living weapon against the Talented.
- Cruel to Be Kind: She insults Michiru and shouts at her how she was never her real friend in attempt for her to run away to safety. This doesn't work.
- Crying Wolf: If one of her victims committed crimes of their own, Nana lies that they were being possessed or manipulated by an enemy of humanity. Nanao uses his biomanipulation to brainwash Shimizu into killing Daichi. While Nana is correct for once in claiming Shimizu was being controlled, Daisuke Soma isn't willing to believe it because of how overused that excuse is.
- Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of the Villain Protagonist and the Hitman with a Heart. On one hand, she does play these relatively straight, and Nana has to live with that especially after her Heel–Face Turn still has no small amount of resentment angled towards her. On the other hand, not only does she go up against a number of genuinely messed up Talented that deserve their fates, but it's eventually revealed that everything Nana ever knew and believed in was a carefully-facilitated lie, with her life ruined solely to make her into a Child Soldier.. so that she could be sent to go die anyway out of spite towards her rebellious parents. Even once she hits her Character Development in full, optimism alone does not save lives, and it takes still falling into some of her old habits and being able to be ready to fight to kill to be able to counter people that would kill her in a literal heartbeat, and even her attempts to be a Technical Pacifist and attempt to redeem Nanao gets slapped with the harsh reality that she's likely not going to be able to save or spare everyone given the true nature of Talented.
- Determinator: Nana's unfailing drive to accomplish her goals in the face of mortal danger, everyone she knows turning on her, and seemingly impossible-to-beat odds against her superpowered opponents could almost be considered a Talent on its own.
- Despair Event Horizon: Not one, but two because this is that kind of universe.
- The first is Michiru's death which shakes her to her core and causes her to start questioning the nature of her mission.
- The second is when Tsuruoka confesses to being involved in the conspiracy to murder Nana's parents for their trying to shield the Talented and his manipulating and turning Nana into a Child Soldier to murder them. She almost ends up committing suicide.
- Dramatic Irony: To say the Organization is not completely honest with Nana is an understatement.
- The number of estimated deaths that each Talented individual will cause are a fabrication to motivate and guilt-trip her to continue her murders.
- Her parents were killed by the Organization she's working for. They framed the Talented to weaponize her.
- After Michiru's Sacrificial Revival Spell, Tsuroaka claims that there's a chance that she might still be revived and that Nana must continue doing the Organization's bidding in exchange for them looking after her body until their eventual return. Then once he has the body out of Nana's sight, Tsuroaka proceeds to shoot two bullets into Michiru in her body bag and reveals he had no intention of ever following through.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Was utterly disgusted with Yuuka upon piecing together that she was ultimately an obsessed stalker who caused Shinji's death in order to resurrect him as her "boyfriend". She also makes prayers and a peace for the Talented she kills that she felt didn't deserve the fate compared to being unrepentant about the death of an Asshole Victim. Once she makes her Heel–Face Turn, it swiftly becomes Everyone Has Standards.
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: She is genuinely surprised that Michiru tries to save one of the two girls who treated her badly.
- Evil Genius: Beneath her ditzy girl façade, Nana is a very intelligent girl who is a nigh-expert on observing her targets and then meticulously planning out their deaths and always thinks on her feet especially when facing off against more formidable opponents.
- Evil Sounds Deep: Whenever her true personality is revealed, she drops her falsetto into lower registers.
- Fake Wizardry: Despite having no superpowers of her own, she successfully infiltrates the school for superpowered teenagers by claiming to be a mind-reader—something that can be faked easily. In reality, she's using her high intelligence to accurately guess what other people are thinking.
- Fantastic Racism: She has nothing but disdain for the Talented and sees them as the enemies of humanity. She eventually sheds her prejudice once the truth of her mission is revealed.
- Faux Affably Evil: While she makes herself seem like a charming Nice Girl, this is merely a façade to masquerade her true self which is a cold, nigh-emotionless assassin.
- Freudian Excuse: A good deal of her desire to see the extinction of all "Enemies of Humanity" is because her parents were killed by them when she was a little girl. Or so she's led to believe.
- Friendless Background: As a young girl, she was so obsessed and crazily good at board games that anyone she played with was driven away by how thoroughly she destroyed them. She didn't particularly mind and just looked forward to the next strategy game to master or even invented her own. After her parents were murdered and Tsuruoka took her in for his Child Soldier program, he made sure she didn't form any unnecessary sentimental attachments to others.
- Gambit Roulette: Some of her plans rely on luck, such as when she hopes her past self can spot Yōhei to force him back to the present or when she uses a decomposing corpse to press a phone screen at the right time to give herself an alibi.
- Girlish Pigtails: She wears her hair like this. It's just part of her cover.
- Guile Hero: To be able to assassinate the Talented, she essentially has to win their trust with words alone until she can discover and exploit the drawbacks tied to their powers.
- Harmful to Minors: Her parents were murdered when she was a young child. Terrified, crying, and holding her father's severed head, she rushed into a government office and began the path to who she is today.
- Heel–Face Turn: Nana eventually accepts that she's been manipulated and brainwashed by the government to be their Child Soldier and has been killing innocent Talented students this whole time (although many of them were Asshole Victims). She does not take this revelation well, but it leads her to decide to protect the remaining Talented from the Organization.
- Hypocrite:
- Despite using the belief that all talented people are bad as a way to justify her murders, after killing Sasaki, she admits that she would have killed her anyway even if had been innocent. Even before that, she killed Nanao and Yōhei despite how they wanted to use their powers for good.
- She believes Yōhei will eventually commit evil in the name of misguided justice. This is despite her own rationalization of her murders as being for the greater good of the Talentless.
- She states that unlike Yuuka Sasaki, she lets the dead rest in peace. However, she's still willing to use her victims' deaths to gain sympathy for herself and fakes being able to talk to the dead, which means she is still dishonoring the dead, but without necromancy.
- Identical Stranger: While hiding in an abandoned shack, she finds a corpse that looks a lot like her, minus the white tips at the end of her hair. She uses this to her advantage by disguising the corpse as herself, causing Sasaki to waste time confirming the corpse isn't her.
- Ignored Epiphany: She interrogates Sasaki about whether or not she killed Shinji, making it the first time she's interested in confirming her target's morality before killing them. Despite confirming that Sasaki is rotten, Nana admits that she would have killed Sasaki either way.
- It Amused Me: The reason why she of all people is sent to kill the Talented? Her higher ups thought it would be a cruel sense of irony to take the weak and normal daughter of the rebels trying to fight their government and force her to do their bidding. The Council members also took bets on how long she would survive and how many Talented kids she could kill before meeting her demise, showing that they gave her a suicide mission.
- Jerkass Realization: Nana has one of these when she sees her initial manipulation and betrayal of Nanao mirrored through Moe revealing herself to her assassination target Moguo. Moe's reveal to him is structured the exact same way Nana's was to Nanao, only this time involved asphyxiation rather than an "accident" as the method of murder.
- Knight Templar: Thanks to the government's indoctrination, Nana believes that the Talented are Always Chaotic Evil and that she's saving billions of lives by assassinating them. She believes even nice Talented like Nanao and Michiru will eventually misuse their powers and kill the Talentless.
- Laser-Guided Karma: When she nearly dies by the 'Stabber', she believes this was her fate as she recalls all the people she's killed. Implying a Death Seeker in her personality as she didn't wish to live especially when Michiru tries to do so, believing she isn't worthy of such a gift.
- Manipulative Bitch: Is a master of manipulation and deceit.
- Moral Sociopathy: Subverted. The Council intended for her to become an example of this trope by teaching her to remorselessly kill the Talented while having her believe that doing so will protect the Talentless. However, she does have redeeming qualities even before her Heel Realization. She intended for her salary to fund a scholarship for orphans and she has a Guilt Complex over unwittingly leaving her parents vulnerable to a Talented murderer, or so she's led to believe. As she spends more time with Michiru, she starts to doubt the righteousness of her mission and becomes genuinely kinder to the latter as a result.
- Morality Pet: Michiru. Initially, Nana treats her with the same contempt as all the others, further cementing Nana's status as a seemingly callous and unsympathetic murderer; however, through the course of the first arc, an increasing number of signals are given that Nana has developed feelings of affection despite herself. Later, displays of concern for Michiru in spite of Nana's mission become more and more frequent, culminating in Nana desperately hugging the corpse of the healer who had sacrificed herself against Nana's will. After this event, Nana's confidence in her convictions quickly starts to deteriorate, and she finds she can no longer bring herself to continue her mission.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: She puts on a front as a ditzy, cheerful girl whose powers of telepathy and its supposed drawbacks are convenient enough for her to be first on the scene for suspicious disappearances and attacks by the "enemies of humanity" but not strong nor refined enough to save the victims. Post-Time Skip, she also acts this way towards the government by pretending to be Brainwashed and Crazy against the Talented, while secretly coming up with plans to help free them.
- Oh, Crap!: Often when a new wrinkle in her assassination attempts shows up that completely catches her off-guard, though it's usually internalized unless it's that bad a screw up. One early case is when Kyouya manages to come out of his apartment being blown up in one piece; not only did she effectively show her hand as a killer to him to commit the act, but he's determined as hell to figure out how to bring her crimes to light as a result. And all because she had no way to figure out prior that his talent is Immortality.
- Pet the Dog:
- When she attempts to blow up Kyouya, she makes sure to evacuate the cat he was taking care of.
- She also gets an increasing number of these with Michiru as she comes to genuinely care about her.
- Phony Psychic: She can convincingly fake mind-reading powers by being really good at reading people. And if she ever has trouble reading someone, she can claim that her powers just aren't working properly right now.
- Red Herring: She uses this trope a lot to her advantage, creating false evidences and testimonies to throw her target off guard.
- With regards to her role, the first chapters/episode presents her like a bubbly side character while Nanao serves as the protagonist. It's the other way around, Nana is the real protagonist, and Nanao is just a Decoy Protagonist. The cute ditzy, girly persona? It's also just an act.
- She can't actually read minds, she's just good at observing others. A lot of the Talented fall for the "telepathy" shtick though.
- Once Kyouya starts tailing her, Nana proceeds to stab her own back in order to create an alibi that there are monsters lurking in the place, thus painting herself as a victim.
- Rose-Haired Sweetie: Subverted. She has pink hair and acts like a sweet, kind, Nice Girl, but she's actually a cold, vengeful, murderous psychopath. She slowly becomes a genuine example as the series goes on and she realizes that her mission is a farce, leading her regret her previous actions and seek to protect the remaining classmates that she originally planned to kill.
- Serial Killer: Was assigned with eradicating the Talented on the government's orders and meticulously orchestrates each murder she commits.
- Sherlock Scan: She's so good at observing people and the environment, that any minor clues can be used to her advantage. Her brief conversation with Seiya also suggests that she knows enough psychology to discern when a person is lying.
- Snowball Lie: She has to constantly make up weaknesses for her false telepathy to explain why she didn't use her Talent to easily solve mysteries. Some students either catch on that she's lying about her talent or decide that her Talent isn't reliable.
- Spared, but Not Forgiven: After she confesses her crimes to her classmates, they're all understandably unforgiving of her. However, Kyouya wants to spare her because she's valuable source of information against the government. Subverted when Nana escapes to her other classmates, only for Nanao to release their mental restraints, causing them to beat her up and leave her to be captured by soldiers.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
- Nana is an ordinary human being against superhumans. She gets wounded, exhausted, and once, almost dies from mortal injuries in her battles against them if things don't go entirely her way. Most of her victories are only through a mix of manipulation, luck, and her penchant for meticulous plans and contingencies.
- She tries to play the role of leader, thinking it will make her mission easier. However, the numerous deaths on her watch end up making people lose trust in her. This is the reason Ryuuji and Fuuko didn't work directly with her to expose Rentaro and instead chose Kyouya. This also allows Daisuke to take her place as leader.
- Telepathy: She claims her Talent is to read minds. In truth, she has no Talents, she's just extremely observant and can use Sherlock Scan skills to reliably deduce what people are thinking.
- Tragic Keepsake: The pillow Michiru gave her becomes this after her death.
- Trash of the Titans: Before her parents' murders, she was an incredibly messy child whose room was always strewn about with game boards and the pieces.
- Troubled, but Cute: A girl who commits a lot of murders throught the story, yet Nana's really a sweet girl deep inside, even without her facade.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: With so much irony had Nana not pushed Nanao off a cliff and called him an enemy to humanity, Nanao would have remained a Nice Guy and not pulled a Face–Heel Turn by becoming that very enemy.
- Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Aside from her incredible skill in playing or even creating her own board games, Nana was just a normal, sweet girl. Then her parents are mysteriously murdered and she stumbles on their decapitated heads.
- Villain Protagonist: She's an assassin tasked with killing all the Talented. Despite thinking that she's in the right, she's still a remorseless Serial Killer who will kill her targets even before they actually turn evil, though some of her victims are truly wicked, she eventually loses the villain part after a Heel Realization and a My God, What Have I Done? moment after realizing that her parents were trying to save the Talented and Tsuruoka's role in their deaths.
- Weak, but Skilled: No matter how much training she has, she can't beat most Talented in a straight fight. She has to rely on deception, strategy, and the element of surprise to come out on top.
- What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: A platonic example. Nana has spent most of her life being raised as a Talented-hating Child Soldier in addition to never having made a genuine friend in her life. So when Michiru falls into a coma from overusing her Talent, Nana doesn't understand why she's so concerned over her nor why she's nursing her back to health even though it'd be more convenient to simply let Michiru die.
- Wounded Gazelle Gambit: She stabs herself with an awl in order to make it look like she protected Michiru from an Enemy of Humanity. This convinces the rest of the class to appoint her as leader.
- Xanatos Speed Chess: She is astoundingly quick on the draw, able to concoct and modify existing plans provided she has enough prior information and planning. As soon as she knows the rules and the limitations her opponents play by, the fight is good as won for her.
Kyouya Onodera
Voiced by: Yuichi Nakamura (Japanese), Stephen Fu (English)
- Amateur Sleuth: He came to the island determined to uncover its secrets because his little sister mysteriously disappeared there. As his classmates start to get picked off one-by-one he uses his Sherlock Scan skills to try to determine exactly what is going on and be a persistent thorn in Nana's side.
- Arch-Enemy: He becomes this for Nana, with her unable to kill him and his Sherlock Scan rivaling her own.
- Awesomeness by Analysis: He catches on to a few stray details surrounding Nanao's disappearance to start suspecting Nana. He also further builds his suspicion of Nana based on her responses to him surviving a gas explosion despite her supposed ability to read minds.
- Death Glare: He is very good at dealing these out. Fittingly enough, he's immortal.
- Enemy Mine: He describes it in all-but-name when Nana proposes working together to uncover the government's genocidal conspiracy against the Talented. He's not happy about it but he knows he's better off with her help than without it.
- Friendless Background: Until he befriends Fuuko.
- Good Cannot Comprehend Evil: In his considerations that Nana is nothing more than some monstrous Serial Killer, he has a crucial lack of information as to her true motivations and no readily-available way of finding them out thanks to her training and even Nana herself being somewhat Locked Out of the Loop. As a result, while he can find clues and piece together elements of how or why she committed certain actions, he simply cannot get into her actual head about what she's thinking amidst a non-stop cavalcade of Motive Misidentification.
- Hero Antagonist: He's presented as an antagonist to Nana because he correctly suspects her of being a killer.
- Immortality: His Talent which allows him to take damage that would usually kill someone and regenerate. Due to his paranoia, he wisely keeps the exact specifics of his Talent unclear, and whilst he claims he's immortal it's not yet clear if it's Complete Immortality, Resurrective Immortality, or just a very powerful Healing Factor.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He can be rather blunt and doesn't have the best grasp of social skills, but he's concerned about his disappearing classmates and takes care of a cat in his spare time. If Nana didn't try to blow him up and incur his suspicion, he would have accepted her as a friend.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: The price of his immortality Talent is that he can only retain memories of the past two years. Unfortunately, this makes it easy for the government to manipulate him into becoming a Watchman to help them oppress the Talented, since he doesn't remember his time in school.
- Law of Conservation of Detail: His ability is unidentified, leaving Nana clueless on how to deal with him as she relies on the data stored on her phone. Since she doesn't have any hints, Nana's plan on blowing him up failed because he's actually an immortal.
- Motive Misidentification: His greatest struggle in trying to expose Nana is that he has no idea what her motive is and treats her as a generic serial killer, and therefore can't make sense of her actions. He doesn't realize that she's a government assassin who has been indoctrinated into thinking the Talented are Always Chaotic Evil.
- New Transfer Student: Much like Nana, he is a recently arrived student.
- Nigh-Invulnerability: Kyouya being practically immortal makes him an effective countermeasure for an assassin like Nana.
- No Sense of Personal Space: His first major questioning of Nana has him randomly play with one of her pigtails for a good part of it until she finally asks him what he's doing. While he answers truthfully that it reminds him of his little sister's identical hairstyle and that he has an attraction to "grabbing tail-shaped things", he doesn't stop doing it until the conversation continues enough for her to forcibly get weary of his questions more than the pigtail fondling.
- No Social Skills: He genuinely wants to be friends with the other students but struggles to get people to believe him due to his personality.
- Odd Friendship: After helping Fuuko Sorano, the two become friends of sorts, with Kyouya even revealing the price he pays for his immortality. He gets along quite well with her and enlists her help more readily than Nana's.
- Red Herring:
- When Nana is interrogating Yohei, Kyouya suddenly appears and asks about Nanao's disappearance, surprising Nana. He also does all the questioning while stroking her hair. Because of this weird act, Nana suspects that his ability involves some sort of probing. His real ability has nothing to do with it at all.
- Since Nana's phone doesn't have any data on his abilities, the only clue that she has involves Kyouya retrieving Nanao's expensive wristwatch. This makes her assume that Kyouya's ability makes him physically strong, given that he survives jumping off a high cliff. Unfortunately for her, Kyouya is an immortal, which makes him survive her trap.
- Shameless Fanservice Boy: He voluntarily removes his shirt so that he can feel the effects of Fuuko's talent without ruining his clothes.
- Sherlock Scan: Kyouya is also very observant just like Nana. But while he is correctly suspicious of Nana being involved in the mysterious disappearances, he still gets outsmarted by her in some instances.
- Socially Awkward Hero: He exudes an aura of unapproachability which does nothing to help his desire to make friends.
- Spotting the Thread:
- He becomes more suspicious of Nana once he realizes that the killings seemingly revolve around her, or specifically, the victims are the ones she interacted with.
- Kyouya can also deduce some flaws in Nana's cover-ups, such as the fake photograph hinting that Nana doesn't actually die at that time since the rope on her neck was loose.
- Stalker without a Crush: He begins closely following and observing Nana's every move after she tries to kill him with a gas explosion, being convinced she's killing the students but is unable to prove it.
- Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist: He is hunting a deluded Serial Killer who is hidden amongst his classmates and slowly picking them off one-by-one. He is also trying to figure out the truth behind the Island and the supposed "training" Talented after his sister disappeared in a previous class.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: With the likes of Nana, seeing as he correctly suspects her to be a murderer but he also knows that she can be just as useful for solving the other murders and mysteries that occur on the island.
- Trash of the Titans: His own room is very cluttered, in contrast to his bathroom which is kept spick-and-span. Nana uses this information to deduce his lack of sense of smell.
- We Need to Get Proof: Kyoya actually becomes suspicious of Nana very early on, before the other students even realize that their classmates are being murdered, and only grows more certain she is behind the killings over time. His only problem is that he never has enough proof beyond circumstantial evidence to come forward and convince the others of Nana's guilt. When Daisuke Soma insists on executing Nana after framing her for murdering Takeo, Kyoya refuses on the grounds that they don't have sufficient proof.
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: Exploited. During his father's funeral despite not shedding a tear, unlike his younger sister, Kyoya asks her to not pass away. This is when Rin realized that he will never die, with this being a start for her to make questionable decision.
Nanao Nakajima (MAJOR SPOILERS)
Voiced by: Hiro Shimono (Japanese), Caleb Yen (English)
- Abusive Parents: Zigzagged. While Nanao's father was considerably a jerk to him at home, and seemingly being cruel to him when meeting him after his fall from the cliff, all of that was Anger Born of Worry. Ultimately, despite his harsh tone and demeanor, Nanao's father did love him. Using all his resources to find his son. Tragically, Nanao kills him which is one of the things that lead to his Start of Darkness.
- Arc Villain: He's a huge threat in 2nd half of the story.
- Barbarian Longhair: After his return, his hair is longer and messier, reflecting his now unhinged nature.
- Biomanipulation: The exact mechanics of his powers are eventually explained as his being able to stop the biological functions of humans and Talented individuals both, causing their powers to malfunction. Later, he learns to stop hearts and cause organ failure or remove the brain's inhibitors to cause an effect similar to a Hate Plague.
- Body Horror: In Chapter 92, just when it looks like he might make peace with Nana, half of his face mutates.
- Cowardly Lion: He's initially too afraid to stand up for himself or even use his Talent to defend himself. When the other students are in danger, he steps up and uses his Talent to protect them from a stray fireball, showing that he has leadership material deep down. Unfortunately, this makes Nana want to kill him even more, since he might lead the Talented against the Talentless in the future.
- Create Your Own Villain: In no small part thanks to Nana betraying him, the once harmless and kindly Nanao becomes the exact kind of villain she originally set out to terminate. Ironically, at this point she doesn't want to kill anyone anymore.
- Death Seeker: In chapter 91, it's revealed he's become so tired of everything that he doesn't care if Nana kills him.
- Decoy Protagonist: He's presented as the main character for the first chapter/episode, as the series title perfectly describes his lack of power among his classmates. He's even Conveniently Seated at the rear window position to look like a protagonist. Then he gets pushed off a cliff by the other Nana in the cast, who's the real Talentless individual on the island.
- The Dragon: To Tsuruoka after being manipulated to the latter side.
- Dragon with an Agenda: Zigzagged. While truly believing in Tsuruoka's cause to prevent the Talented from mutating into monsters, Nanao isn't loyal to anyone and often does things for personal reasons even if it irrelevant to their mutual goal and sometimes even goes against Tsuruoka's orders. His will to live was lost over time and only prioritize resolving any personal conflicts he has with Nana by getting revenge on her then commit suicide to donate his own body to Tsuruoka in his common goal with Tsuruoka to find a cure.
- Drama-Preserving Handicap: It appears after his talent evolves that while he can negate basically any biological or human process, he can't interfere with non-biological objects.
- Face–Heel Turn: After surviving the fall and killing his abusive father, Nanao sides with Tsuruoka.
- Heel–Face Turn: Kind of. After an intense battle against Nana and her allies and her refusal to kill him, he managed to iron-out his animosity towards her and they reconciled. Even then, he still saw how far apart they had become after all these years and how they no longer had anything to do with each other after the conflict ended. Too bad just when he decided to leave Nana and her allies, half of his face mutated into a monstrosity. Luckily Sachiko arrives just in time to rescue the group from the camp, including him, but what he will become at this point, only time will tell...
- Faux Affably Evil: When he wants to manipulate someone, he's capable of sounding just like his old kind-hearted self, but with more confidence. However, it's clear that he wants to create discord among his former classmates and that he has nothing but contempt for them.
- Foil:
- To Nana. Nanao used to be a lonely but kind-hearted kid while Nana is charismatic but is actually a cold-blooded murderer. She eventually redeems herself at the same time Nanao descends into villainy.
- Nanao's alliance with Tsuruoka also contrasts with Nana and Tsuruoka's alliance. With the latter two, it was very clearly one-sided, Tsuruoka would give the orders and Nana, being manipulated by her own personal trauma would naively follow through with little questioning or hesitation. Nanao, on the other hand is more willing to give his own opinion and even disobey direct orders and threaten Tsuruoka, with the partnership being merely built on common goals than anything.
- Hate Plague: He eventually learns to harness his nullification power to remove a person's inhibitions, turning them into violent, murderous, hateful individuals, and eventually begins to harness it to the point where it can affect non-Talented like Nana and Tsuruoka from far distances.
- Ironic Echo: "For humanity's sake... please die." These were the final words that Nana spoke to Nanao before he was sent plummeting to his presumed death at the end of chapter 1. In chapter 89, he returns these words to Nana, replicating the way he was shoved to his death.
- Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: After the Time Skip, he's essentially become Tsuruoka's personal attack dog, gleefully helping to arrange the deaths of "dissidents" against the government purely because he finds watching them die to be funny. By the time he encounters Nana, he admits that he could do the same to everyone on the planet, Talented and Non-Talented alike, if he wanted to.
- Knight Templar: Chapter 85 reveals that Tsuruoka showed Nanao a mutant creature that is supposedly the result of a Talented maturing to adulthood. Now he believes working with Tsuruoka and helping with the latter's experiments is the only way to prevent the Talented from mutating into monsters.
- Madness Makeover: After his brainwashing, he grew his hair below his shoulders, and gained Dull Eyes of Unhappiness, both as a sign of his now twisted and ruthless nature. It doubles as Evil Makeover.
- More than Mind Control:
- With his biomanipulation, he can remove people's inhibitions and manipulate them into acting on their worst impulses. These include not only moral inhibitions, but any sense of self-preservation too, as shown when Nanao makes Daisuke act on his desire to use his Talent, despite the latter knowing that doing so is suicide.
- Also looks to be the case with his decision to stay under Tsuruoka. At first it appears that Tsuruoka spent hours breaking Nanao's spirit and making him hate the Talented, and he even admits that he has "annoying medical exams" at Tsuruoka's behest that imply brainwashing, but he does eventually come to believe that the Talented (including himself) really do need to be eradicated for the good of humanity. His attempt to try and kill Nana when he realizes she's leading the revolt against the Government is just as much driven by revenge as is it a means to finally put an end to her usefulness for Tsuruoka and the powers that be. Even Tsuruoka gets a bit unnerved by this sudden change.
- Murder-Suicide: As Shizuka saw after her first attempt to save Nana failed; this was Nanao's plan the whole time upon killing Nana. It's nullified when she makes it back and the present timeline unfolds.
- Nice Guy: He has his own issues with his family and is secretive about his powers, but he's generally a polite person. When a student accidentally launches a huge fireball at his classmates, Nanao is willing to reveal his Talent to protect them and thanks Nana for inspiring him to be more confident. He is no longer that way after being brainwashed.
- Not Quite Dead: He manages to survive the cliff and is rescued by Tsuruoka... too bad it leads to him becoming a villain.
- Only I Can Kill Him: When targeting Nana for her collusion with the Talented to take down the Government, he admits to her that he would rather finish her off himself than seeing another soldier, let alone someone like Tsuruoka, shoot her dead.
- Power Nullifier: His Talent is to negate other people's Talents. It became a lot deadlier, after his fall from the cliff to the point where he could, in his own worlds, make it affect the entire world, including the non-talented.
- Psychic-Assisted Suicide: He uses his biomanipulation to force Daisuke to activate his electric Talent, blowing up all the water-filled tires in the warehouse and causing a massive explosion. This is both to get rid of a pawn who outlived his usefulness and to frame Nana for terrorism.
- Red Herring:
- The first chapters/episode drops fake hints that he's the "Talentless Nana" to whom the series is referring and that the story would revolve around him. He's actually a Decoy Protagonist.
- He's presented as the "talentless" odd-one-out who seemingly doesn't have any superpowers, unlike his classmates. Blocking Moguo's fireball then shows that Nanao does have Talent, the ability to negate other people's Talents This eventually matures to not only also affect non-talented like Nana herself, but be able to affect anyone anywhere without the need for eye contact, something that Tsuruoka is unintentinally made aware of.
- Reluctant Psycho: In Chapter 85, it's revealed that he's struggling with the fear that once he becomes an adult Talented, he'll mutate into a monster with no morality, and therefore won't be able to feel any guilt over killing his father. He uses this as a means to justify killing Nana, so that way Tsuruoka can use him for experimentation shortly after.
- Start of Darkness: Before his start of darkness, he was a shy and kind-hearted kid who don't have it easy in life, until Nana attempts to kill him with adds to it her words that people like him have always been the enemies of humanity that set off a series of disasters, ending up with him being brainwashed into villainy by Tsuruoka.
- The Starscream: Albeit not by choice, as he reveals that after killing Nana and the Talented helping her, he plans to have himself killed for the sake of Tsuruoka's experiments. Unfortunately for him, his power has progressed to the point that it can damage people's minds at longer distance, and that includes the prison complex Tsuruoka's in...
- Story-Breaker Power: At first, his Talent seems to be the negation of other Talents, meaning he isn't much of a threat offensively. The evolved form of his Talent allows him to instantly kill people by manipulating their body processes or driving them insane by manipulating their brains. His biomanipulation also includes the ability to affect people's senses, allowing him to sneak up on a trained assassin like Nana. It later becomes long-range, and he plans to use this to kill all Talented, and turn the non-talented weaker and equally subversive. It is the drug created from Nanao's cells that can subdue even "Jin Tachibana"/Rin Onodera, one of the strongest Talent users in the entire series.
- Then Let Me Be Evil: Nana's words to him when pushing him to fall off the cliff have him embrace the enemy of humanity mindset.
- Too Powerful to Live: How Tsuruoka starts perceving Nanao and his Talent after a while, not helped by Nanao's own thoughts about how he wants to deal with Nana in the most brutal way possible. It's this reasoning that he tries to use in his effort to try and kill Nanao after his latest outburts begin directly imparing his mind.
- Trauma Conga Line: First he felt inferior in front of his father and others. Then he made a friend in Nana... only to be pushed off a cliff. He wakes up, confused and scared, then his doctor dies and soon his father comes and seemingly acts abusive then he kills him. Even worse, he finds out moments later his father was actually a good parent and then even hears Tsuruoka talking to Nana, the girl who nearly killed him and who acts cheerful about a job well done. No wonder he became so screwed up.
- Traumatic Superpower Awakening: The trauma of Nana's murder attempt awakened his true abilities, upgrading him from simple superpower nullification to actual biomanipulation.
- Tragic Villain: After the event of his fall, killed his supposedly abusive father, and being manipulated by Tsuruoka, you can't help but feel sorry for him.
- Walking Spoiler: Basically everything relating to him after chapter 1 is a spoiler.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness:
- In Chapter 86, Tsuruoka wants to dissect Nanao's brain to find a way to permanently nullify a subject's Talent, but this operation would kill the latter, making him hesitant to do so right away. He also feels this way towards Nana when he realizes what she's trying to do to stop the government's plans, and goes out to kill her despite Tsuruoka's concerns and orders.
- It starts to go the other way for him a few chapters later when, after feeling the effects of Nanao's fully-realized Talent once it evolves to affect greater distances, Tsuruoka decides to go and deal with him personally with a "Shoot to kill" order.
Nana's Inner Circle
Characters who are close friends or companions of Nana. Michiru Inukai
Voiced by: Mai Nakahara (Japanese), Emi Lo (English)
- Animal Motifs: Dogs. Part of the kanji of her last name can be read as "Dog". There is also her ability is to lick wounds closed and she is incredibly loyal to people who show her kindness.
- Because You Were Nice to Me: Her Undying Loyalty and unfailing kindness to Nana is because she was the first person to have ever saved her from bullying and was continuously generous and compassionate to her since. She has no idea it's an act—or later, was an act.
- Cast From Life Span: Her Talent gradually shortens her lifespan to heal wounds, both minor and life-threatening. Mortal injuries have her trading her life for another.
- Chronic Hero Syndrome: She doesn't hesitate to use her power to heal others even though it shortens her own lifespan. She's also constantly defending Nana despite the increasingly disturbing and overwhelming evidence of her nature as a serial killer.
- Extreme Doormat: She's incredibly submissive and prone to obliging and kowtowing to others to please them.
- First Friend: She serves as this for Nana.
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: She's got fluffy, soft, pale blonde hair and is the nicest character in the cast.
- Healing Hands: Her "Resurrection" takes the form of her pressing her hands to her target, upon which her hands glow and her life force is transferred to them. This ends up killing her.
- In-Universe Nickname: "Nana's (Pet) Dog" due to the kanji of her name reading "dog" and "raising a pet" when separated and her Undying Loyalty to Nana.
- Irony: Michiru was able to recognize the inconsistencies in the official story that Nana was told about her parent's murder, which Nana herself didn't even realize until she pointed it out, after only hearing the story once. If Michiru was clever and observant enough to piece together that much, it's clear that she genuinely could've been as big of an obstacle as Nana feared if not for her naïveté and unwavering faith in Nana.
- Kill the Cutie: In such a dark, grim series as this, she ends up dying to save Nana's life and put her on the path to redemption.
- Killed Off for Real: Tsuruoka discusses the mysterious, unknown nature of her healing and revival powers and that though her heart has stopped, her constant body temperature means she might still be revived herself. He shoots her twice with a pistol to ensure that doesn't happen.
- Meaningful Name: Michiru Inukai ("Dog"). For someone who is basically a human puppy, it's astonishingly appropriate.
- Morality Pet: For Nana. She's the first of the Talentless to unfailingly be nice, compassionate, and kind to her and it has Nana questioning her morals and the true nature of her mission. Her sacrificing herself to save Nana is what has her doing a full-blown Heel–Face Turn. Even after her death, she still serves this role, since Nana thinks about her very often.
- My Greatest Failure: Her Chronic Hero Syndrome was a result of failing to save her friend, Hitomi, from a terminal case of cancer.
- Only Friend: To Nana. It's implied by how heavily she's bullied that she feels Nana is this to her in turn. To be fair to her, it eventually becomes true.
- Only Mostly Dead: After her apparent death in Chapter 28, Tsuroaka claims that her heart has stopped but her body temperature remains constant and there may be a chance to revive her. Then he shoots her twice in her body bag which gets her Killed Off for Real with Nana none the wiser.
- Sacrificial Revival Spell: Using her powers to cure mortal injuries results in this, as Nana finds out the hard way and is subsequently haunted by for the rest of the series.
- Sheep in Sheep's Clothing: At first, Nana is convinced that Michiru's niceness is just a facade, and that she must be hiding some dark, twisted side of herself from the world, constantly checking Michiru's estimated kill count to stop herself from lowering her guard. At every single turn, though, Michiru proves herself to be every bit as kind as she appears.
- Smarter Than You Look: Despite being overly trusting of Nana, she has her moments of insight, such as when she points out that Nana's bedroom floor was clean at the time of her parents' murder, which means her parents most likely closed Nana's window before the incident occurred and therefore the culprit didn't enter from there.
- Too Good for This Sinful Earth: In a world rife with corruption and paranoia, she's such a pure and kindhearted soul that she successfully breaks through Nana's hardened and ruthless persona. As such, her death shakes the entire school to the core, and sets Nana on her path to realizing that the Talented are not the inherent monsters she's been led to believe.
- Undying Loyalty: To Nana. She's always on her side and will find any last flimsy reason to come to her defense and dismiss the ever-growing body of evidence around Nana's murders. Even after Nana calls her a bitch and angerly shouts at her to run away, she returns to heal her.
- Wound Licking: Michiru Inukai has Healing Hands, but only when she uses her tongue and for external injuries; it's useless for illness or internal wounds. Doing so shortens her lifespan considerably.
Moe Makabe
- Badass Normal: Though not to the level of Nana herself, she's capable of keeping up with the Talented and the numerous dangers that come their way.
- Break the Comedian: The resident comic relief freaks out when she finds her grandmother in a near dead state by the time she visits her. She is broken even further when she died for good and as a result she has become delusional
- Child Soldier: She's been manipulated from a young age to be a killer like Nana. She's much less effective and efficient, however, being far too enthusiastic and eager to move in for the kill without planning for every last contingency like Nana does.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Possibly the biggest one in the series
- Dramatic Irony: She is the only one aware of Michiru being killed off for real by Tsuruoka and him using the prospect of reviving her as blackmail to keep Nana in line. Several times she's shown wondering if she should confess it and face the consequences.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: As much as she's even more gung-ho than Nana about murdering the Talented, she's doing it primarily because the Organization is effectively holding her beloved grandmother hostage.
- Foil: To Nana. Despite the two of them being Child Soldiers from the government, Moe's cheerfulness and enthusiasm is less a calculated facade and more her real personality, and she's much more careless, overeager, and naive than Nana. She's also visibly much younger than the rest of the cast.
- Freudian Excuse: She was abused by her parents, which made her develop a mental disorder of being extremely obedient and being never happy. It's not until her adoptive Grandma she changes her behavior into more cheerful.
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Subverted then eventually played straight after her Heel–Face Turn. She's got blonde hair and appears to be sweet and friendly like Nana but is all too eager to murder for the organization. Then, she joins forces with her and Kyouya to protect the Talented and to uncover the deeper conspiracy underneath it all.
- Heel–Face Revolving Door: Tsuruoka uses her grandmother's death to convince her to abandon Nana. Later, Daisuke Soma forces her to lure and capture Nana, but when Nana forgives her, Moe defies Daisuke and tells the whole class that he killed Takeo Saijou.
- Meaningful Name: "Moe" in japanese means "feelings of strong affection", which has Nana towards her and vice versa. She's definitely huggable and cute too.
- Morality Pet: Another one to Nana.
- Rubber Man: Her talent is supposed to be this, though in reality, she's just that exercised.
- Too Dumb to Live: While she isn't an idiot and is just as good at fighting Talents like Nana, her eagerness and lack of planning like Nana nearly gets killed by Hikaru Daichi. Were it not for Nana saving her at the last moment, she'd be dead.
- Troubled, but Cute: She's a really sweet person... that is fine with killing others for her own goals. Though she never did any, and Nana stopped her from doing that several times.
- Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Much like Nana, she's disturbingly eager to study and figure out ways to murder Talented individuals though she's far less skilled at it than her.
- Undying Loyality: Naturally, she would do anything for Nana.
The Talented Students
In General
- Asshole Victim: Played With, some of them are decidedly awful people who don't garner much sympathy when they bite the bucket. But Nana openly admits that she would kill them anyway, even if they weren't assholes. In Kirara and Kaori's cases, she normally considers them low-priority targets despite their bullying of Michiru, but kills them because she needs someone to die in a way that gives her an alibi.
- The Bully
- Moguo loves tormenting Nanao and leads a trio of fellow delinquents.
- Kirara and Kaori love bullying Michiru.
- Daisuke is however by far the biggest one and unlike the others he doesn't have any redeeming qualities.
- Childhood Friend Romance: Two couples: Fuuko and Ryuuji, and Yuuka and Shinji. The former quickly goes away and the latter turns out to be a lie.
- Friendless Background: Most of them actually don't have much friends or have only one or so, even before going to the school on island, though they get along pretty well, especially thanks to Nana's leadership.
- Personality Powers:
- Moguo can produce flames and is very short-tempered, loud, and violent. One could call him a "hot-head".
- Seiya is very flamboyant, detached, and controlled. One might call him a "cool" guy.
- I Am Not Left-Handed: The smarter ones hide or downplay their Talents so that potential enemies won't be able to exploit their weaknesses as easily. This puts Nana in several tough spots when she doesn't fully understand how their Talents work.
- Remember the New Guy?: Most of them get introduced at later point of the story and treated like they were always in the class. Gets lampshaded a few times by Nana, that she wasn't aware of their presence. Possibly justified, since there are many students on the island and the narrative isn't focused at them. Also averted in anime adaptation, when all of students appear for a short time even in the background in first episodes.
- Walking Spoiler: Several of these characters are difficult to discuss the tropes of without revealing their true nature, such as Yuuka Sasaki and Shinji Kazama.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: Many of them are unceremoniously killed before we see whatever dimensions to their personalities they had aside from their surface-level, oftentimes stereotypical behaviors.
Male Students
Hikaru Daichi
- Accident, Not Murder: The little girl in his backstory died trying to climb a tree and falling to her death. Hikaru thought he would be blamed for it considering his gravity powers and his known habit of levitating her for fun, so he disposed of the body and learned of his rather macabre fascination with turning people into "stars".
- Arc Villain: Of a "Gravity Control" arc.
- Bald of Evil: While his shaved head might initially bring to mind a peaceful monk living a secluded, minimalist existence, he's actually much more twisted and cruel than he lets on.
- Deadly Euphemism: When he discovered the corpse of a girl he used to play with, he realized he might be blamed for her accidental death and disposed of her body by making it float into the atmosphere. He was so fascinated by how she looked in the moonlight that he discovered a love of "turning people into stars".
- Drama-Preserving Handicap: He can only use his power while the moon is up.
- Gravity Master: He has control over gravity, able to lift objects and even people. Unfortunately, it relies on the moon so it's weaker to outright useless at certain times of the day and the night.
- Heel–Face Turn: After Nana spares his life on the condition that he never gets in her way ever again, it looks like he's changed for the better after the class returns to the mainland. Then Subverted we see that he's just as twisted as ever and almost murders a helpless little girl if it weren't for Nanao's return. And even then, he still gets killed by Kiyomi, albeit after being manipulated by Nanao.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: One near-death experience at the hands of a conniving and experienced Serial Killer like Nana does not erase the twisted and horrifying impulses that make him so dangerous and cruel. He was given a second chance at life but without any additional follow up he wastes it soon after.
Tsunekichi Hatadaira
Voiced by: Atsushi Tamaru (Japanese), Billy Kametz (English)
- Arc Villain: Of a "Prophetic Dreams" arc.
- Asshole Victim: Comes with being a sleazy creep who blackmailed Nana into being his girlfriend and then trying to rape her.
- Attempted Rape: Believing that the photograph of Nana being bound on the floor is guaranteed to happen, he proceeds to tackle her on the ground and have her for himself... It's attempted however, since Nana immediately stuck him with a poisoned needle at his vulnerable moment.
- Despair Event Horizon: He used to be motivated to study and work hard until his ill-fated prophecy of him flunking his high school entrance exam. Now, he's just a lazy slacker content to let things play out.
- Delinquent Hair: He has massive, spiky blonde hair that was dyed and styled this way to emphasize how little he cares about academics or a "good future". He already knows how it's going to play out so he's not going to try.
- Establishing Character Moment: When Nana has been appointed as the leader of the class, Tsunekichi is shown with a sleazy grin from a distance. This foreshadows how he wants to have Nana for himself, which is compounded later on when he blackmails her into becoming his girlfriend.
- Faux Affably Evil: His attempts at acting charming do nothing to hide his repulsive nature.
- The Fatalist: As someone whose visions into the future are never wrong, he's become quite passive and unmotivated knowing that whatever it is he tries to do, events will always come to pass one way or the other.
- Hate Sink: The smug look on his punch-able face pictured above should tell you everything about what a slimy scumbag he is.
- Hoist by Their Own Petard: He relies on his powers to see the future, which involves photos. He didn't expect that Nana would plant a fake photograph to make him believe in a false future where he wins.
- It's All About Me: Rather than try to discreetly twist his predicted death in a way that can warn the other students, he instead wants to blackmail Nana and force her to tend to his hedonistic whims before she kills him. It's clear he doesn't care that she'll likely kill additional students after he's dead.
- Obviously Evil: It really doesn't take a genius to see how amoral and disgusting he is.
- Prophecies Are Always Right: One way or the other, the visions that come to him in his dreams will play out exactly as depicted.
- Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: As soon as it becomes clear that Nana really is trying to kill him, he tries to rape her, happily saying that he's glad he can do it without feeling bad.
- Red Herring: Nana swaps out a fake photograph that would make him assume getting the upper hand in attempting to rape her. This causes Tsunekichi to tackle Nana on the floor, not knowing that it would also drop his guard, and allowing Nana to stab him with a poisoned needle.
- Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: He once saw a picture of him completely bombing his high school entrance exam and effectively ruining his chances of a decent civilian life. In an attempt to say "Screw Destiny!", he crammed the entire night before—and ended up getting bedridden with fever from over-exhaustion then flunking said exam.
- Shoot the Messenger: This is the reason why he doesn't like to tell others about his predictions. Just as no doctor wants to be the one to break the news of a terminal, incurable illness to their patient he doesn't want to be blamed for ruining someone's day by telling them of their impending tragedy—especially because he knows their attempts to avoid it will just cause it. However, it's not an actual reason of why he doesn't use his talent for good, but an excuse so he can be careless.
- Slime Ball: He's a sleazy creep who is untrustworthy in just about every way and has zero morals worth mentioning.
- Smug Snake: He likes to think of himself as a competent manipulator. Unfortunately, his arrogance ends up being his own undoing.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Nana points out his Talent could help prevent disasters and deaths. He points out that no one wants to be told they're about to die (possibly horribly and violently) and that he knows too well that any attempts to prevent the future will just cause them to play out, one way or the other.
- The Sociopath: A low-functioning example who sees himself as a high-functioning one. He has no morals and he is completely self-serving, as typical with a sociopath. However, he is also overconfident and nowhere near as smart as he likes to think he is, which ends up biting him in the ass.
- Too Powerful to Live: Much like Shibusawa's ability to travel to the past, Tsunekichi's ability to see the future proves to be a major threat against Nana's plans, since he has photographic evidence of her killing Nanao. This convinces Nana to take him out as soon as possible.
- Too Dumb to Live: The photos of his prophecies are always true. Everyone likely knows this. He has proof that Nana will try to kill him. Does he show off that picture to the others so Nana will finally be found out? Nope, he uses it as blackmail to make Nana his girlfriend, giving her plenty of time to engineer his demise.
- You Can't Fight Fate: His MO in life. It's why he never bothers to do much of anything, knowing it will all be for naught in the end.
Moguo Ijima
Voiced by: Takuya Nakashima (Japanese), Jordan Dash Cruz (English)
- The Bully: Though he's not the only one in the class, he's particularly notable for leading a gang and Nanao being his favorite target.
- Defeat Means Respect: He's slightly more respectful of Nanao after the latter negates his fireball.
- Delinquent: He's brash, rude, and was part of a gang of them before coming to the island. Even now, he considers himself the wise and honorable "banchou" leader of a new group, going so far as to give them 5-hour long lectures while refusing to let them get up from sitting on the backs of their knees.
- Easily Forgiven: Despite nearly roasting several of his classmates in a blind rage after being defeated by Seiya, no one holds it against him.
- Expy: Of Katsuki Bakugo with his fire-related Talent, being a bully to the Un-Sorcerer, and having Hot-Blooded personality. Unlike Bakugo however, he gets better much earlier.
- Fat Bastard: At first he's a very rude and menacing at first, though he Took a Level in Kindness later. Completely averted after Time Skip, where due to very strict law in the camp, he lost some weight.
- Grey-and-Black Morality: Moguo is not a nicest individual, but unlike other classmates with their crimes, he really comes across as a saint. There's a good reason why he has followers and why Nana doesn't plan to kill him first.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He's quite aggressive and rude, but he does have a few Pet the Dog moments and he does care for his fellow classmates.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
- Similar to Seiya, Nana tricks him into helping her cover up her latest murder by cremating the various bodies of the previous batches of students, preventing any of them, including the murder victim, from being identified.
- His absurdly long, 5-hour lectures to his subordinates gives Rentarou an almost air-tight alibi to commit a murder, if it weren't for Nana and Kyouya's combined analytical skills and drive.
- Playing with Fire: He has fire powers.
- Taking the Heat: The reason Moguo is on the island is that he took the blame for a deadly fire caused by his old gang subordinate.
- Took a Level in Kindness: He's a bit less rude as the series goes on, starting with being more respectful for M.I.A. Nanao.
Moguo's Henchmen
Voiced by: Yūki Inoue (Kosakai Shoichi), Takeo Ōtsuka (Saito Sota), and Yoshitaka Yamaya (Tsurumigawa Rentaro) (Japanese), Phillip Reich (Kosakai Shoichi), Lucien Dodge (Tsurumigawa Rentaro) (English)
Kosakai Shoichi AKA Henchman A
Saito Sota AKA Henchman B
A trio of male students who follow Moguo as their leader, though their loyalty and views on him aren't as honorable and positive as Moguo likes to think.
- Those Two Guys: Two guys that are loyal to Moguo and look up to him to the point where they were willing to listen to him lecture them for 5 hours straight. What makes this notable is that they have distinct appearances, separate voice actors, and personalities from what we see of them.
Rentarou Tsurumigawa AKA "Henchman C"
AKA Henchman C
A shy and easily manipulated flunky of Moguo—or at least, so he likes to be seen to hide his true, twisted nature.- Arc Villain: Of the "Invincible Blade" arc.
- Asshole Victim: After Jin kills him, nobody seems to mourn him, except the rest of Moguo's gang who think he was controlled by enemy of humanity.
- Astral Projection: His Talent is being able to leave his physical body and effectively become a poltergeist, able to manipulate objects such as bathroom faucets, windows, and knives for when he commits his animal and eventually, human mutiliation.
- Drama-Preserving Handicap: His physical form is still vulnerable during his astral projection. Kyouya chokes his physical body to stop his attack, after discovering him hiding in an unused bathroom.
- He Knows Too Much: He pulls this on Ryuuji after he stumbles on him murdering animals for fun. Ryuuji ends up using his death for the others to eventually discover his crimes, though not in the way he expected.
- Hero Killer: He fatally wounds Nana, leading to Michiru sacrificing herself to save Nana.
- Mad Artist: He claims his slitting animals throats and leaving them to choke to death or bleed out is his form of "self-expression". He later moves onto killing people who are considered "pure," like Ryuuji and Michiru.
- Psycho Knife Nut: A serrated survival knife is his favorite "tool" for his "self-expression": mutilating animals.
Ryuuji Ishii
Voiced by: Tomohiro Ono (Japanese), Gary Littman (English)
- Big Fun: He's very large, round, and well-known as a comedian and all-around nice guy to be around.
- Died in Your Arms Tonight: As he's dying from a stab wound, he begs his girlfriend, Fuuko, to slit his throat and engineer a crime scene so the others can find the real killer.
- Face Death with Dignity: As he dies he doesn't cry, weep, or beg. Instead, he calmly faces his death while telling his girlfriend Fuuko to place his body in a way to get the students attention and find and stop the real murderer.
- Irony: His Talent is being able to shrink to the size of an average school uniform pocket yet he struggles to lose weight.
- Spotting the Thread: While he wasn't suspicious of Nana, he's one of the few who questioned her telepathy and its reliability, getting Fuuko to get help from someone else.
Shinji Kazama
Voiced by: Aiko Ninomiya (Japanese), Kai Jordan (English)
- Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance: He's a necromancer that looks like a corpse—then we find out he is an animated body, controlled by Yuuka.
- The B Grade: According to Yuuka, he was a perfectionist who couldn't stand getting 98 on a test.
- Creepy Shadowed Undereyes: He has perpetual dark circles under his eyes, making them look sunken in. This is because he's long dead and his body is being very desperately kept from decomposing any further.
- Dead All Along: It turns out he actually died in a fire long before the series began and is currently just a reanimated corpse being puppeted around by Yuuka to behave both as her ideal version of him and as a convenient scapegoat to hide her true Talent.
- Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: He's got dark, black hair and unnaturally pale skin which makes him look like the corpses he animates with his Necromancy Talent. As it turns out, he is the zombie and Yuuka is the necromancer.
- Necromancer: His alleged Talent until it's ultimately revealed he's the animated corpse.
- Super-Strength: His true Talent when he was alive.
Seiya Kori
Voiced by: Hiromichi Tezuka (Japanese), Phillip Reich (English)
- The Casanova: He's frequently seen flirting with his fangirls despite already having a girlfriend, though it doesn't seem to go further than mere flirting.
- Curtains Match the Window: His eyes and hair are the same shade of light, icy blue.
- Death by Origin Story: He was recruited to the island after he failed to save his little sister from burning to death in a crashed car.
- Elemental Eye Colors: His hair and eyes are the same ice blue as his powers.
- Expy: Of Shoto Todoroki with his talent and Yuga Aoyama with his personality, both originating from My Hero Academia.
- An Ice Person: He has the ability to freeze objects, but cannot freeze people.
- Icy Blue Eyes: To emphasize his Talent.
- Long-Haired Pretty Boy: He is the only student with long hair and he is very pretty.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: He thoroughly freezes a lake to show off his talents, but this also allows Nana to devise a trap to kill Yōhei.
- Starving Artist: After the Time Skip, he's become a gloomy sculptor, losing his Bishie Sparkles to depression, withered by the meagre rations the camp provides, and obsessing over his ex-girlfriend.
- Stepford Smiler: He's always seen smiling.
- Took a Level in Kindness: Seiya's ego tooks a dive later through the story.
Takeo Saijou
The previous leader of the class before Nana, also labeled as "the second prince of the class."
- Foil: To Seiya. Both are labeled as the princes of their class, but are polar opposites. While Seiya is flamboyant and narcissistic, Takeo is calm and rational.
- Horrible Judge of Character: Daisuke Soma reveals that Takeo befriended him while they were both on a sports team. However, Takeo didn't realize that Daisuke is a selfish bastard who only wants to exploit his kindness.
- Hunk: He is handsome-looking and is a well built athlete. Unfortunately, Daisuke takes advantage of the fact that they have similar builds to trick Sachiko into killing Takeo.
- Nice Guy: In opposition to Daisuke, he defends Nana and seems to be a pleasant person.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: The most we learn about him is that he respected Nana very much and it was implied he had some feelings for her, which are mostly revealed after his death.
Yōhei Shibusawa
Voiced by: Toshiki Masuda (Japanese), Alan Lee (English)
- Chronic Hero Syndrome: After Nana tells him about Nanao's disappearance, he takes it upon himself to repeatedly use his time travel Talent to investigate, despite the stamina his Talent consumes. Though in his defense, he can only go back 24 hours, which means he doesn't have a lot of time to discover the truth.
- Didn't Think This Through: His Chronic Hero Syndrome of trying to solve Nanao's disappearance has him outright describe the truth of his ability to Nana with very little prodding, and his Smug Super nature about the capabilities of his power make him incredibly confident that he is the most dangerous Talented in the class, enough to get even Moguo and Seiya to admit he intimidates them — even as he uses his Story-Breaker Power liberally to prevent simple bullying antics or being splashed with water, and visibly becoming tired for it. This virtually gives Nana the info she needs on a silver platter to take him down, though admittedly at this point he had no reason to even suspect Nana was aiming to kill him.
- Drama-Preserving Handicap:
- Using his power leaves him severely exhausted, making him vulnerable after each use. Naturally, he uses it repeatedly back-to-back and then gets called to use it one last time before he can even get a full night's rest.
- He can also change the future, but if someone notices him in the past, he effectively gets shoved right back to the present, which is the only reason he can't interfere whatsoever with Nanao's cliff "accident"; Nana's assassin training helps her realize he's there, preventing him from getting close enough to see the full event.
- Expy: Both his looks and obsession with justice make him a blatant expy of Ryuichi Naruhodo a.k.a. Phoenix Wright.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: His powers and their limitations become his very undoing — he's goaded by Nana to travel into the previous day while unknowingly standing over a frozen lake. The lake was not frozen the day before, and traveling this far back greatly exhausts him, so he drowns as he's too tired to swim to safety. The lake being thoroughly frozen means that it will take a long time before his body would be found.
- Hypocrite: He despises people who are noisy while eating but as shown in the anime, he's not the most controlled and elegant diner either.
- Obsessively Organized: He's easily bothered by disorderly conduct, such as leaving behind grains of rice in a bowl.
- Red Herring: It was initially thought that his ability involves stopping time. This is debunked in the diner when he reveals that he's time-traveling to the past in order to change what would happen soon.
- Story-Breaker Power: He has potentially the most overpowered Talent ever, which is why Nana targets him very early.
- Time Master: He has the ability to travel up to 24 hours into the past, allowing him to rewrite immediate events. However, if he's spotted by anyone he is forced back to the present, and the act of time travel can be very exhausting if he travels far enough.
- Too Powerful to Live: His Talent is a major Story-Breaker Power, which is a big reason Nana makes sure to take him out early on.
Daisuke Soma
- Arc Villain: Of a "Moe" arc.
- Asshole Victim: Nanao disposes him in an explosion and nobody miss him, and is quickly forgotten.
- Evil Counterpart: To Moguo. Both are delinquents, but Moguo at least shows care for his subordinates and classmates while Daisuke manipulates his classmates for his own gain and sees them as monkeys.
- Fights Like a Normal: Despite his desire to cut loose with his powers and dominate the Talentless, he spends the majority of his appearances never using his electric powers because of his poor control over them. Any attempt to use them would either draw too much attention from the authorities or cause him to receive damage too. As such, he mainly relies on brute strength or manipulation.
- Hate Sink: He is an unrepentant and manipulative bully who lacks any of Moguo's good qualities and is willing to sell out his fellow students to the Big Bad.
- Jerkass Has a Point: He's a violent asshole who is willing to execute his own classmates, but he has a point that Nana's platitudes and claims of an "enemy of humanity" manipulating students is really a way for her to sweep the string of murders under the rug.
- Manipulative Bastard: Despite looking like Dumb Muscle, he's very skilled at manipulating people. He threatens Sachiko Maezono in order to goad her into trying to kill him, all so he can trick her into killing Takeo instead. He then blackmails her into framing Nana.
- Shock and Awe: He has the power to control electricity but supposedly doesn't have good control over it.
- Small Role, Big Impact: He's one of the many Arc Villain out there, though his demise by Nanao is what finally sets Tsuoraka's plan to take over the government and take Nana and others to prison camp.
- Smarter Than They Look: Despite looking like a brutish delinquent, Nana notes that he knows how to manipulate people and exploit their weaknesses. He's also aware of how his electric powers can backfire against him, as shown when he explains the science behind phreatic explosions.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: This is the reason he sides with Tsuruoka. He knows that as much as he would like to flaunt his power and get away with crimes, the Talentless still have the numbers and resources to bring him to justice. He believes that if he has the military cover up his misdeeds, he'd be able to get away with anything.
- Turncoat: Nanao convinces him to side with the conspiracy for his own benefit. Notably, Nanao didn't have to brainwash him at all, since Daisuke was already a self-serving prick to begin with.
- Unskilled, but Strong: He claims that he doesn't have good control over his electric powers and that if he tried to attack Kyouya with it, he would risk frying electronics within a few kilometers and kill nearby people.
- Villains Want Mercy: He begs Nanao not to force him to kill himself with his own electric powers, which falls on deaf ears.
Female Students
Kirara Habu
Voiced by: Yukina Tsutsumi (Japanese), Courtney Lin (English)
- Asshole Victim: Due to bullying Michiru, her death is met with little sorrow.
- Death by Irony: Her Talent is secreting poison. She powers this by consuming toxins from animals. She is ultimately murdered by a plant-based poison.
- Drama-Preserving Handicap: She either cannot produce her poison on her own or she absorbs the toxins from animals by eating them. This gives Nana an excellent opportunity to catch her isolated and alone deep in the forest surrounding the island.
- False Friend: She and Kaori are considered "friends" of Michiru by Michiru herself, but they only hang out with her due to how fun they find cruelly and relentlessly picking on her to be.
- Gyaru Girl: A textbook example. She has tanned brown skin, dirty blonde hair that was likely dyed that way, an interest in fashion and boys, and is obsessed with her phone.
- Poisonous Person: Her talent is secreting lethal poison from her body. She needs to occasionally consume toxic animals like snakes and frogs, either for her body to metabolize it or to store that poison.
Mishima Koharu
- Anti-Hero: Unlike Kyouya, she'd rather kill Nana to stop her murders rather than go through the trouble of gathering evidence, proving Nana's guilt, and convincing the rest of the class.
- Arc Villain: Of a "Twin Trick" arc, though she serves more as Hero Antagonist than the others.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Like Nana, she likes to project a sweet, innocent, and kind exterior to hide her cunning, manipulative, and sadistic side.
- Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: During her battle with Nana, she begins to suspect Nana is actually a Talentless, and then realizes this means the school knows about her lack of Talent, yet enrolled her anyways and are likely complicit. She's horrified at the idea that the military and the government seek the genocide of the Talented, but then decides that conclusion is too far-fetched.
- Foil: To Yuuka Sasaki. Both possess far different Talents than they claim to have, with Yuuka being a Necromancer pretending to have Super-Strength while Mishima is a Master of Illusion who acts as though she shares a telepathic link with her imaginary twin sister. The key difference is that Yuuka intentionally deceived everyone about her power while Mishima genuinely misunderstood her own abilities. Yuuka's "boyfriend", Jin, is the corpse of a boy she stalked and killed before controlling with her powers, meanwhile Mishima's "sister", Hiyori, was subconsciously created by Mishima as a result of her crippling loneliness. Neither are anywhere near as sweet as they act nor is either of them mentally well, but Yuuka is a violent psycho at her core, while Mishima is ultimately just a broken and lonely young girl.
- Harmful to Minors: Her parents were murdered as part of a government conspiracy and cover-up. Her relatives treated her coldly and left her isolated, likely due to the manipulation of the government. She was so traumatized and lonely that she ended up creating Hiyori, her "twin" sister.
- Heel–Face Door-Slam: She almost turns to Nana and Kyouya's side against the Organization, but Moe's leaking the location of their leaking to Tsuruoka leads to Mishima getting brutally gunned down. It's especially painful as Mishima and Nana were considering becoming friends after all, and Nana is forced to deliver the final shot.
- Hero Antagonist: Not to the same degree as Kyouya due to her twisted personality, but she only tries to kill Nana because she knows Nana is a danger to her and their classmates and she never antagonizes her other classmates, despite looking down on them for getting smug with their talents. When she realizes Nana softened up, she was willing to form a truce, but Tsuruoka forces Nana to kill her.
- Irony: Her father and Nana's father were allies in trying to expose the government conspiracy, yet Mishima and Nana ended up as enemies. It becomes even sadder when the moment she and Nana start to become friends as well, she is fatally gunned down.
- Let Them Die Happy: Nana makes a point of making it look like Mishima's "twin sister" Hiyori was real after all before finishing Mishima off, letting the poor girl die with a relieved and happy smile on her face.
- Master of Illusion: She's fond of using her secret twin sister to make it seem like she's much faster, well-prepared, and all-knowing than she is, arriving at places well before her target, forging rock-solid alibis, and letting one twin rest while the other does the work. It ultimately turns out there is no Hiyori, she was just a hallucination by her Talent so powerful she fooled even herself.
- Power Misidentification: She believes that her Talent is simply having a telepathic link with her twin sister. In actuality, her real Talent is to create realistic illusions—her "twin sister" being one of them, which Mishima herself believes to be real.
- Twincest: With her twin sister, Hiyori. Ultimately turns out to be Selfcest as Hiyori is a trauma-induced hallucination amplified by her Talent.
- Twin Switch: They pretend there's only one of them so the other can have an alibi while the other does their dirty business or they work in tandem to screw with their enemies. Subverted when it turns out there's only one of them, Hiyori is just a trauma-induced hallucination created from Mishima's Talent.
- Your Mind Makes It Real: Her Talent is so powerful she makes Nana believe that her room's been ransacked and she's been stabbed in the side of the chest for hours, so much it even causes her to pass out from the "blood loss".
Sachiko Maezono
- Blackmail: She killed Takeo Saijou due to Daisuke Soma's manipulation. Daisuke uses this fact to force her to frame Nana for Takeo's murder.
- Best Friend: To Kiyomi Shimizu.
- Logical Weakness: She has to touch something in order to teleport it. This puts her at a disadvantage against Talented with powerful close-range abilities like Daisuke. Which is why she wanted to kill him by running him over with a car.
- Murder by Mistake: She intended to kill Daisuke, who threatened her into being the subject of a porn video. He has Takeo Saijou show up at the meeting spot instead in anticipation of her attack, resulting in Takeo getting killed instead.
- Nice Girl: A very sweet a friendly person.
- Weaponized Teleportation: She can teleport anything she touches to any location. Kyouya admits that her ability would be able to subdue him easily if she transports him to somewhere like Antarctica.
- What You Are in the Dark: Nana sets up a pair of glow-in-the-dark shoes in the unlit warehouse, making it look like Sachiko can easily discern her location and teleport her elsewhere without her classmates knowing. Despite believing she has an advantage over Nana, Sachiko begs for forgiveness and surrenders, since she doesn't want to betray Nana again.
Yuuka Sasaki
Voiced by: Miyu Tomita (Japanese), Rachelle Heger (English)
- Abhorrent Admirer: Shinji actually hated her and rejected her advances.
- Arc Villain: Of a "Necromancer" arc.
- Asshole Victim: When it is shown that she was the one that caused Shinji's death, there is very little sympathy thrown her way when Nana kills her. Played with, Nana admits that she would had killed her anyway, even if she was innocent.
- Bad Powers, Bad People: She's a psychotic Yandere on top of being a necromantic necrophile.
- Bait the Dog: Yuuka is introduced as a funny, outgoing and charming girl to the point where even Nana finds it hard to not be somewhat drawn to her friendly and loving personality. A personality that is revealed to be largely a facade for a deranged and unpleasant Necromancer.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: At first, she appears to be a kind young woman with clear feelings for her Childhood Friend Shinji. Even with it's revealed that Shinji was Dead All Along and that she's the true Necromancer, she still just comes across as a sad, crazy girl desperate to be with her love by any means necessary. However, once Nana deduces that Yuuka in reality was just a stalker who had intentionally gotten Shinji killed, it becomes clear that she has virtually zero redeeming qualities whatsoever.
- Curtains Match the Window: Her hair and eyes are both golden.
- Drama-Preserving Handicap: Light dampens her powers, making her ineffective during the daytime.
- Explaining Your Power to the Enemy: While chasing Nana through the forest, Yuuka casually reveals a key limitation of her power: to animate a person's corpse, she needs an item belonging to them. For example, she needs the necklace she's wearing to keep her zombie bodyguard active. Partially subverted, though, as Yuuka is lying: even though the limitation is real, the necklace is not the item in question. She's just trying to trick Nana into getting close to her.
- Foreshadowing: Early on, Shinji states that Yuuka only wishes that they were dating, which makes him come across as a Tsundere since he says that while they were in middle of what could be assumed as a romantic date. The Reveal that Yuuka caused his death and had been puppeteering his corpse the entire time makes it clear that this was actually a Freudian Slip on her part.
- Flunky Boss: Thanks to the islands sheer number of corpses and their sentimental items not being completely destroyed and disposed of, Sasaki goes after Nana with an army of reanimated zombies than her alleged super-strength. While it's effective for wearing Nana down and taking advantage of her limited stamina, speed, and strength, it's also a weakness as she's constantly focusing to reanimate Shinji and keep him from decaying and guarding the sentimental item that allows control of him.
- I Just Want to Be Loved: Yuuka had an obsessive crush on Shinji Kazama because she was needy and wanting to be happy with someone she could call her lover, but not only did he not return her feelings and was going out with another girl, but he grew to despise her due to her Stalker with a Crush Yandere nature.
- I Love the Dead: She is a hopeless romantic who killed Shinji with the fire she caused at the movie theater and reanimated him to be in a relationship with her.
- It's All About Me: She shows herself to be very self-absorbed, with even "Shinji" being seen by her as an extension of her own happiness and power.
- Let Them Die Happy: Or rather "Let Them Die While Ranting With A Slasher Smile On Their Face." Subverted in that Nana's intention isn't to be merciful when she stabs her with a posion needle from behind, but rather she is so disturbed and disgusted by Yuuka that she wants to finish her off as quick as possible and be done with it.
- Murder the Hypotenuse: She started the fire in the theatre that Shinji and his date were at in order to kill her, resurrect Shinji, and make him her "boyfriend" for all time.
- Necromancer: Her true Talent. It allows her to animate them, keep the corpses from decaying with enough focus, and also access their memories. Her weaknesses are her need for a beloved item of the deceased (as in voodoo) and her control weakens in bright areas and the daytime.
- Necromantic: She murdered and reanimated Shinji Kazama in order to keep being his girlfriend forever.
- Noodle Incident: Apparently, something terrible happened between her and Shinji in the past that caused Shinji to hate her and not letting her get close to him, which was the reason she could not confess her feeling properly and resorted to stalking and stealing Shinji's leftover paper test as a memento. Nana, having enough of Yuuka's nonsense, finishes her off before she elaborates further about this said incident.
- The Sociopath: She started a fire to kill Shinji and his date so she could bring him back and make him her boyfriend.
- Super-Strength: What she alleges is her Talent. It actually belongs to Shinji.
- Troubled, but Cute: She turns out to be one of the more evil and deeply disturbed among Nana's classmates, but she's also very attractive.
- Yandere: While her relationship with Shinji initially seems like the classic "childhood friends" story, Nana points out the inconsistencies in the "date" that ended up killing Shinji and realizing that Sasaki is the real necromancer.
Fuuko Sorano
Voiced by: Yuuna Kamakura
- Blow You Away: Her Talent is manipulating the atmosphere around her, being able to powerful jets of air that can cut through flesh and materials with ease, carry people or objects around, or create a miniature tornado. Her weakness is that she needs to be outdoors or in a well-ventilated room to have enough of it to use and she risks serious collateral damage to allies in enclosed spaces.
- Drama-Preserving Handicap: She needs open windows, outdoor spaces, or good ventilation to both make use of her power and have enough space to prevent unfortunate collateral damage to her allies and the spaces around her.
- Eyes Always Shut: Her eyes are almost never seen open. They are light grey in color.
- Her Heart Will Go On: While she was very pained and heartbroken by Ryuuji's death, she moves on to find his killer to both avenge him and continue living her life, as it is what he would have wanted.
- Interrupted Suicide: The final page of Chapter 71 shows that she would have hung herself if Nana didn't offer to team up with her and give her hope in overthrowing the anti-Talented regime.
- It's All My Fault: She felt it was her fault when her boyfriend dies, as she had him come to the island with her.
- Meaningful Name: The first Kanji of her family name is "Sora", meaning "air" or "sky". Her talent is largely wind-based in its application.
- Mercy Kill: She ends up performing it on Ryuuji by his request after he is fatally stabbed and wishes to use his death for the others to find the real killer.
- Odd Friendship: After Kyouya helps her, she starts becoming friends of sorts with him, frequently assisting him and hanging out with him.
- Razor Wind: One of the applications for her Talent.
- Secret-Keeper: She's the only one Kyouya told about the price of his Talent.
Kaori Takanashi
Voiced by: Yurie Kozakai (Japanese), Heather Gonzalez (English)
- Asshole Victim: While her death is horrific, she was nevertheless a gross bully to Michiru and uncaring about others in her class besides herself and Kirara.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: She dies after Nana poisons her color contacts and she unknowingly puts it on. Aside from dying with her eyes wide open in shock and horror, Kyouya notes that the scratches on her face imply that she was trying to claw her eyes out.
- Dies Wide Open: Her corpse dies with her eyes wide open in horror. Safe to say it was not a painless, swift death.
- Eye Scream: She dies by a poisoned color contact.
- False Friend: She and Kirara are considered "friends" of Michiru by Michiru herself, but they only hang out with her due to how fun they find cruelly and relentlessly picking on her to be.
- Gyaru Girl: Not nearly as immediately obvious as Kirara, but she's just as obsessed with fashion, her phone, and imitating foreign fashions and appearances through her blue color contacts.
- Icy Blue Eyes: They're color contacts but she's a cold bitch all the same.
- Killed Offscreen: We only see the gruesome aftermath of her murder. Considering the methodology, it's probably for the better.
- Mundane Utility: She is able to teleport long distances in barely any time at all. She uses this to get to class without having to spend too much planning and time beforehand.
- Teleportation: Her Talent. She is able to leap from one end of the island to the other, not that she ever uses it for anything more than getting to school on time without much effort.
The Government
Tsuruoka
- Arch-Enemy: He is Nana's true nemesis after he reveals the truth behind the death of her parents.
- Awesomeness by Analysis: When he first appears, he's able to tell that a butterfly is actually Jin in disguise based on its abnormal behavior. He also quickly identifies the conditions for Jin to transform. He easily defeats Jin in chapter 68 by reading the latter's muscle movements and facial expression.
- Bait the Dog: Two examples:
- After Michiru's death, he tells Nana that there is a chance she might be revived so long as Nana continues to be loyal to the organization. We watch him shooting Michiru twice in her body bag, destroying any chances of that while Nana continues her mission, oblivious.
- He claims he's helping to keep Moe's grandmother safe but it's heavily implied said grandmother is being held hostage and only manages to speak to Nana by chance. Even when he has a seemingly heartfelt talk with Moe's grandmother on her deathbed about how she wants Moe to have a normal life, he uses these words in a way that is convenient to his agenda by trying to guilt Moe into abandoning Nana.
- Beneath the Mask: He acts like an unflappable military man even when dealing with powerful Talented, but Nanao believes that deep down, Tsuruoka is actually terrified of them. A fact eventually confirmed when he decides to go and kill Nanao himself after one outburst too many.
- Big Bad: Is the one behind Nana becoming the way she is and later, Moe. We learn he started an entire project of anti-Talented Child Soldiers, seemingly out of a whim.
- Dare to Be Badass: When the students demand answers for the government's lack of response to the serial murders on the island, Tsuruoka exploits this trope by criticizing the students for cowering in the face of danger and claiming they they can defeat the enemies of humanity by being braver. This is all to change the subject and keep them from further questioning the government's actions. Unfortunately, most of the students eat it up and only Kyouya realizes that Tsuruoka is bamboozling them.
- The Dragon: He serves a Corrupt Politician, Kario. He is trying to help him become a prime minister even if it meant staging attacks between the Talented and the civilians of the mainland. He eventually succeeds in accomplishing this thanks to Nana's actions unwittingly giving him the ammo he and Kario needs.
- Even Evil Has Standards: He does not take it too kindly when Nanao decides to go after Nana in his own way and tries talking him out of committing the deed to no avail. Once Nanao's Talent gets so powerful that its reach even affects the prison complex he's in, Tsuruoka decides to deal with Nanao himself with intent to kill him as soon as possible.
- Faux Affably Evil: He can put on the facade of a strict, but encouraging military man who wants the Talented to do their best, but he secretly organizes their extermination. He also acts fatherly towards Nana, but manipulated her into becoming a Child Soldier for his own ends, and tries to shoot her dead when she's charged with terrorism.
- Hate Sink: He is a heartless and manipulative bastard, who does not care for the lives of others.
- Hypocrite: Tells Nana all Talented are dangerous and should be killed, yet when he sees a good Talented he asks them to join, like Jin and Nanao to use them. Nana is shocked when she learns this.
- Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: He lacks a genuine heart of gold and will always Bait the Dog.
- A Lighter Shade of Black: Make no doubts about it, Tsuruoka is a completely amoral bastard who is the Big Bad for a reason. But at least he has logical motives for trying to either cure the Talented from becoming nigh unstoppable monsters or killing them before they ever hit that state, even if he's a completely unsympathetic bastard about it. The Council and the larger span of the Japanese government he works for are A Nazi by Any Other Name, committing terrorist acts against their own people to try to justify their extension of power, and having had Nana kill Talented after her parents tried to rebel against them to protect the Talented as a cruel sense of irony and for kicks of an intentional Suicide Mission. For as much of a bastard as he can be, Tsuruoka makes use of his pawns in his plans and actually has justifiable goals instead of strictly being for his own ends.
- Manipulative Bastard: He is responsible for turning Nana into the mass-murdering Knight Templar she is by guilt-tripping her and instilling an intense hatred for the Talented. After Michiru dies, he lies about his organization keeping her alive to keep Nana obedient; unbeknownst to her, he already shot Michiru to death in her body bag.
- Morality Pet: Moe's grandmother is one of the few people he treats with genuine respect. Unfortunately, he only wants her respect, and is willing to throw her granddaughter under the bus behind her back.
- Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: He claims that killing the Talented is necessary to protect the Talentless, but he's also willing to scheme with corrupt politicians to move the class closer to the city, all so he can get them to kill civilians and use that as a pretext for the government openly persecuting the Talented, as well as to overthrow the dominant political party. He's also willing to recruit Talented who he sees as strong, implying that his real goal is power rather than humanity's safety. In Chapter 85, he tells Nanao that his real goal is to find a way to prevent the Talented from transforming into monsters, but it has yet to be seen how sincere he is, as he follows it up by telling Nanao that it requires his DNA to accomplish this, and is even willing to take out Nanao himself when the latter disobeys orders.
- The Sociopath: Is a highly self-serving manipulator with superficial charm who is absolutely remorseless to all the crimes he commits or carries out. Despite this, even Nanao's behavior and actions concern him and his plans, and eventually decides to kill Nanao before things go from bad to worse.
- Villain Has a Point:
- He tells Nana that if she defects from the government organization, that means the responsibility of killing the Talented will lie with her rather than the people she takes orders from and that she has no future due to the blood on her hands.
- While there are some more good-hearted or noble Talented out there, his doctrine for causing so many of their deaths at the hands of Child Soldiers like Nana is routinely given ground when we see just how many of the Talented are absolute bastards, a couple of them even going above and beyond any sense of selfishness and cruelty to be nothing more than an absolute Asshole Victim when they do get taken down. The problem is that Tsuruoka doesn't really discriminate, seeking the deaths of even the well-meaning ones, and, well, see below.
- He's an outright fascistic racist towards the Talented and manipulates their containment and murders, and any he cooperates with are nothing more than pawns on a chess board with their inevitable deaths at the end of the line. Then the Awful Truth is revealed after the Time Skip: Talented that evolve too far while suffering a mental breakdown can become an Eldritch Abomination capable of destroying civilization, and this has already happened to society before. For as much as a horrific monster as Tsuruoka is, his extreme methods are partly justified in preventing the end of the world entirely, but what makes him an irredeemable monster is the absolute cruelty he inflicts upon those like Nana to enact this.
- Villains Never Lie: Oh, he will at first to put up appearances. But Nana upholds her end of the deal by killing Mishima Koharu in exchange for getting truthful information from him, so he gives the brutal honest truth, admitting all the crimes he's done to Nana and Nanao and how much he toyed with them.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: When his plan to create psychologically-manipulated Child Soldiers is showing cracks and weaknesses, he has no qualms about bringing Nana to a Despair Event Horizon which almost leads to her killing herself out of guilt. He doesn't mind as it works out better for him. Before the Time Skip he keeps this going by using the terrorism charges pressed against Nana to finally try and kill her; only to be stopped by Jin telling Nana to flee in the nick of time. Later, once a revenge-filled Nanao's powers get to the point where it starts affecting him personally; he decides to deal with Nanao himself, with intent to kill him to prevent anymore incidents from occuring.
Managed Camp
Itakura Akira
- Cannot Keep a Secret: He's self-destructively honest and terrible about hiding his true feelings.
- Good All Along: He's initially portrayed as a threat to the heroes, though it's quickly revealed he has no bad intentions and instead asks for help.
- Locked Out of the Loop: Despite being on the same side, Nana and her allies end up fooling him into believing false information because they are rightfully concerned that if allowed to believe the truth he'd give the game away.
- In another sense, Itakura is a relatively late addition to Nana's group of allies and lacks any of the context to understand a lot of what is going on, such as having no real grasp on Nana's past with Nakajima.
- Shadow Walker: Hiding among shadows is how he learns the secrets of his targets.
- Stupid Good: Discussed. Although they're on the same side, Nana herself admits Itakura's penchant for being honest even when it's detrimental to self preservation is such an alien way of thinking to her, and so different from how everyone else she's ever gone up against behaves, that she has difficulty predicting how he'll react in certain situations. Downplayed somewhat in that Itakura is at least conscious of this flaw and aware it'll likely get him killed, which is why he narrowly avoids being Too Dumb to Live and seeks out help from Nana and her allies in the first place.
- Will Not Tell a Lie: Introduces himself to Nana's group by admitting to being witness to a fellow watchman's death, he also quickly confesses to having a motive, wanting the man dead, and how he could've easily used his powers to kill the man, all the while insisting he didn't do it. Kyouya confirms that if Itakura had reported the death he'd be incapable of not making himself look unintentionally suspicious and be executed for it.
Shizuka Saeki
- Dark and Troubled Past: Kario's policies caused her father to lose his job, leading to her parents committing suicide. She discovered her time-rewinding abilities, but wasn't able to save her family.
- Defeat Means Friendship: When Nana figures out her Talent's activation condition and stops it, proving how easily she could have killed her but didn't, Saeki agrees to team up with Nana to oppose Kario's regime. She proves to be a Graceful Loser by immediately beginning to refer to Nana as "Sis" and declares herself her minion to others.
- Die or Fly: Discovered her time-rewinding ability when she slit her wrist to join her dead parents in the afterlife.
- Defrosting the Ice Queen: Throught her arc, she mellows out to Nana, with this relationship serving as a Foil to the one with Michiru.
- Drama-Preserving Handicap: Among other restrictions she has yet to reveal, she can only travel back five times per person, which she unfortunately had to learn the hard way.
- Everyone Has Standards: Despite wanting to stay in the government's good graces at the expense of the other Talented, she's upset when her rewind leads to Nana failing to prevent Sorano's suicide.
- Foil: To Yohei Shibusawa. Both have the ability to go back in time and are the first Talented after Nanao to end up confronting Nana in their respective areas. Though while Yohei wants to become leader and uses his powers to fight injustice, Shizuka likely only became a watchman for the few benefits it gives in the camp. Nana also ends up befriending Shizuka unlike Yohei, whom she killed.
- Physical Scars, Psychological Scars: Usually hidden under her sleeve, she has six scars on her left wrist from when she tried to commit suicide and discovered her abilities, as well as the failed attempts to create a future in which her parents survive.
- Time Master: Can jump back in time to the previous morning and even take another person with her if she draws a mark on their wrist. However, this can only be done five times in succession.
Other Characters
Jin Tachibana/Rin Onodera
Voiced by: Koji Yusa (Japanese), Jonah Scott (English)
Click to see true form.
A former survivor of the island and a powerful Talented. He watches Nana for her motives, while also keeping an eye out to figure out the conspiracy going on with the government and the death of Talented. His true form is actually Rin Onodera, Kyouya's little sister; the real Jin Tachibana is alive but on life support.
- Ambiguous Gender: "Jin" is just one of the many forms they take. Their true form, identity, and gender are a mystery. Chapter 94 finally reveals that they are Rin Onodera.
- Animal Lover: He's seen taking care of various animals, and doesn't take kindly to anyone who commits animal cruelty. This is how he gets acquianted with Rin, and the animals taking a liking to her lets him decide to help nurse an ill Rin back to health amidst a mounting civil war.
- Arc Villain: Of a "Survival of the Fittest" arc.
- Chekhov's Gunman: He was the cat that Kyouya was feeding in the shed and uses various animal forms to spy on Nana and the others.
- Cynicism Catalyst: Becoming the sole survivor of an engineered civil war between him and his classmates led to his one-man crusade against the genocidal government.
- Drama-Preserving Handicap: Jin is unable to transform while in sight of others, and has to find or create blind spots if the form he's currently in jeapordizes him. He can also only turn into people who are still alive, meaning a number of abilities from deceased characters that he could have made good use of are out of reach.
- Everyone Has Standards: While he killed many people to survive, he shows disgust at Sasaki Yuka for digging up their graves and turning them to zombies. He even admits that some Talented do deserve to die. The real Jin held this belief five years prior as well, protecting Rin from being murdered by a Yandere and going out of his way to kill the genuinely irredeemable Talented that just wanted to enforce their power and might upon others. This caused Rin to end up following on Jin's own sense of standards as a result, and after whatever landed him on life support, she effectively became Jin to keep it up.
- How Do I Shot Web?: While he can wield the powers of those he mimics, he doesn't have the same amount of control as the original person does.
- Littlest Cancer Patient: She was born with a congenital heart defect. After their parents died, Kyouya worked extremely hard, exploiting his immortality to try to support his little sister himself.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Rin, back when she was just first meeting Jin for the first time, had befriended some of the local animals on the island only to find herself in the middle of the civil war of the Talented students looking for excuses to kill each other. When two of them are about to murder a puppy that grew fond of her, Rin snapped, transforming off-screen and killing the two effortlessly — only to meet a Despair Event Horizon at what she just did. Jin comforted her with the fact that she did it to protect the puppy, rather than with maliceful intent, setting Rin on her path to follow in Jin's steps.
- My Greatest Failure: While he did what he had to to survive on the island five years ago, Jin does show signs of regret for viewing his old classmates and friends as 'objects' in order to kill them. He tells Nana not to make the same mistakes as him, or he'll kill her.
- Shadow Archetype: Rin and Nana pass the baton on this one. Not only are they visually similar when they were around the same age, including natural white hair and Girlish Pigtails which Kyouya himself points out the similarity for the latter, but both are cynical and broken individuals who did what they thought was right for protecting the world while suffering a Dark and Troubled Past. Ironically, Nana is the twisted shadow of Rin, having been groomed by Tsuruoka and the Japanese Government to be a Talented murderer, whereas Rin stumbled into meeting Jin and ultimately took the Unscrupulous Hero approach to trying to counter the Government and save Talented from themselves. It takes Nana undergoing her Character Development to unwittingly become the more heroic-intentioned of the two, where Rin then takes the shadow by considering herself nothing more than a stand-in for Jin's will versus Nana's pacifistic goals.
- Shapeshifter Default Form: She mainly takes the form of the telekinetic Talented, Jin Tachibana, instead of her true form, since returning to her true form leaves her defenseless if she cannot find an opportunity to transform.
- Sole Survivor: He is the only survivor of the last class's civil war that happened on the island five years ago.
- Spotting the Thread: When he impersonates Michiru and tries to use Nana's trust of her to out her lack of a Telepathic Talent, Nana immediately knows it's him because he calls her "Nana-san" rather than Michiru's misprounounced "Nana-shan".
- Story-Breaker Power: He wields the talents of countless, with Nana herself admitting he's the most powerful "monster" she's ever met. Even Nana's boss, Tsuruoka, admits he's a cut above the rest of the Talented. His only drawbacks are that a.) he can't transform in anyone's line of sight, and b.) the people he impersonates must be alive. At first, he couldn't transform into Nanao because of the latter's Power Nullification, but by the time of Chapter 47, he states that his Talent progressed enough to successfully transform into the latter, which means he has access to biomanipulation too.
- Super Power Lottery: Many powers are incredible, with some being extraordinary. His are off the charts. While not invincible, Jin can wield the power of dozens, potentially hundreds. He can shapeshift, use fire, telekinesis, freeze things, and so on. Of course there are limitations to his unique abilities, but overall he is indeed the most powerful character in the story.
- Swiss-Army Hero: He is able to transform into any other Talented individual and gain their powers, voices, and physical appearance results. The crux of this is that he inherits their weaknesses as well and that he oftentimes does not have the years of instinctive training and control they have, which leads to him almost killing Nana with Moguo's fire powers after his fireballs were far too powerful.
- Technical Pacifist: He tries not to kill anyone these days but he is not above intentionally maiming them.
- Thou Shall Not Kill: After doing what he did to survive, only realizing after it was part of the government's plan, he swore to do his best not to kill. Though even he decides to go back to his old ways, but only for those he considers true scum.
- Un-person: After realizing the limitations of Kyouya's memories, she began editing out details of herself from his diary so that she can disappear from his life and he can live easier. This doesn't work due to a tic of his that helps him maintain his vague memory of her.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: Aside from various animals, his Talent allows him to become other Talented individuals and use their powers.
- We Can Rule Together: When Nana's boss comes, he asks Jin to work for him. The guy who remorselessly kills people like him. He refuses and warns Nana of him.
Sachiyo Makabe
An adoptive grandmother of Moe.
