Characters appearing in Tamamo-chan’s a Fox!.
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Fushimi Inari Shrine
General
- Asian Fox Spirit: They're all foxes who are divine messengers of the Fushimi Inari Shrine in Tokyo.
- Family Theme Naming: For Tamamo and her sisters, it's Religious and Mythological Theme Naming, with all of them having names relating to fox spirits from Japanese folklore.
- Tamamo is all but outright said to be named for Tamamo-no-Mae, Miura suggests she's Tamamo-no-Mae's daughter.
- Tenko is a tenko, here a virtuous nine-tailed fox that's lived for over a thousand years and has slowly lost their tails until only four are left, who possesses strong divine powers and has achieved deification.
- Osaki is named for osaki
, a smaller variety of kitsune employed as servants by sorcerers and said to be born from shards of the killing stone.
- Fox Folk: The fox spirits' humanoid forms resemble humanoid foxes to those who can see past the illusion.
- The Ghost: The fourth sister, Ochiyo, only appears in statue form, and is only seen moving on one page where Tamamo thanks her for subbing for her at the shrine.
- Invisible to Adults: The glamours disguising them as human only work on adults, in terms of mental maturity as the childish Reiko-sensei can see through them while the Public Morals Girl is fooled.
- Living Statue: Tamamo and her sisters are the fox statues outside Inari's shrine in Kyoto, they occasionally revert to statue form in class, and can talk to other statues.
- Mystical White Hair: They all have white hair in both human and fox forms, which highlights their divine status.
- Really 700 Years Old: Tamamo and her sisters are somewhere in the range of centuries old, with a footnote in chapter 22 commenting Tenko has two thousand years of firsthand experience to impart, and Nakki in chapter 60 and a footnote in chapter 62 saying Tamamo's over a thousand years old. The revelation in the final volume that Tamamo is Tamamo-no-Mae's daughter makes her just short of 900, while Osaki being a shard of the Sesshōseki means she'd be around 350 years old.
- Shapeshifting Excludes Clothing: Tamamo and Osaki can't change their clothes as part of their disguise (aside from their underwear), but Tenko can.
- Shared Family Quirks: Tamamo, Tenko and Osaki are all completely clueless about their human disguises not being perfect.
Fushimi Tamamo
The main character. Claims to be an ordinary high school girl transferring from Kyoto, but most of her peers can see she's a fox.
- All-Loving Heroine: Wants to befriend everyone, even her "rivals".
- Book Dumb: Plenty of "red marks" in her academic record.
- Class Representative: Wins the popular vote, but can't take office due to her poor grades.
- Fish out of Temporal Water: Tamamo finds all sorts of modern day objects, from trains and bicycles to Tokyo Tower, to be utterly amazing and worth pointing out.
- Talking in Your Sleep: Tamamo falls asleep in her first period class on her first day of school. During this time she talks in her sleep about how she was granted permission to pose as human and go to school by Inari Okami, but that she would be punished if her true nature became widely known. Her classmates, upon hearing this, all decide they can't let her know she isn't fooling them.
- Winds of Destiny, Change!: Tamamo is prone to causing good fortune around her, particularly if someone prays or makes offerings to her. If someone gets her mad, however, they find themselves afflicted with misfortune.
Fushimi Tenko
Tamamo's older sister.
- The Alcoholic: Drinks a lot, and counts Shuten-dōji (the demon of Mount Ōe) as a drinking buddy.
- Been There, Shaped History: All of the Fushimi sisters are prone to mentioning historical and mythological events as if they were there, but Tenko is the worst by far. Even suggesting that she was Minamoto Yoshitsune's "tengu" mentor.
- Embarrassing Relative Teacher: Tenko gets a job as a teacher in volume 2, and almost immediately starts singling out her little sister for the hard questions.
- Foxy Vixen: All three of the sisters are pretty, but Tenko is downright gorgeous. She knows it, too, and likes to gently flirt and tease.
Fushimi Osaki
Tamamo's younger sister.
- Can't Hold His Liquor: Osaki; according to Tamamo, just the smell of liquor gets her drunk.
- Clingy Jealous Girl: Osaki, which is surprising given her Shrinking Violet nature. She gets flustered/angry when other girls flirt with Motoki, one the few boy students that are aware of Osaki and her two sisters' true forms. Sadly, Motoki is unaware of this crush.
- Cute Clumsy Girl: Most of the time.
- Drunken Master: Becomes much more coordinated breathing in the alcohol fumes at the café.
- Shrinking Violet: Initially very shy. But when she gets to know someone she gets more comfortable around them.
Inari Okami
The goddess of Fushimi Inari Shrine.
- Domain Holder: Due to her power her shrine is considerably Bigger on the Inside than it should be, and she can clear out crowds (to give her "daughter's" classmates a private tour for instance) whenever she wants to.
- Genius Loci: Normally can't leave her shrine, and the mountain it's built on is said to be her body.
- Willing Channeler: She possesses Nakki in order to attend parent-teacher conferences.
High School Students
General
- Covert Pervert: The Public Morals Committee girl is a wee bit too excited about giving Kagachi tights and admiring her legs in the process.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The Public Morals Committee girl, whose actual name Tateyama Mikari isn't given until the last volume.
Nakki
Tamamo's best friend at school, secretly charged with looking out for her by Inari.
- A-Cup Angst: Nakki's a bit touchy about being flat-chested.
- Academic Athlete: Nakki is the best between herself, Tamamo, and Mikki at academics. She's also a naturally gifted athlete, as she's shown outperforming Tamamo at multiple sports with minimal effort. She declines to join any athletic clubs, however, because, gifted though she is, she can never remember the actual rules of any sport.
- Little Bit Beastly: In one chapter she spontaneously grows fox ears, it turns out to be caused by a stray bit of Tamamo's fur. After the timeskip her hair has grown a pair of ear-shaped cowlicks that refuse to be cut, thanks to possession by Inari.
Kagachi and Mitarai
A ferret (not weasel) and a racoon (not Tanuki) who don't appreciate Tamamo's intrusion on their "territory" at the school.
- Big Guy, Little Guy: The rather tall Kagachi is the "big guy" to her "boss" Mitarai.
- Boisterous Weakling: At one point, Mitarai talks a big game about how she'll take on Tenko, then quickly excuses herself. A footnote for the page notes that while she puts up a bold front, she's actually a bit of a wuss.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Kagachi was a pet ferret who got left behind when her owners moved house, and was found by Mitarai, who took her in as her underling.
- Face of a Thug: With her dark skeleton-themed hoodie, tall lanky build, ever present borderline Slasher Smile, shifty eyes constantly shadowed by said hoodie and bangs, and her constant chuckling to herself, Kagachi's probably the most physically intimidating girl in school. She even manages to get the strict Public Morals Committee girl to back off by simply staring at her and laughing quietly. While early on, it's implied that she's not as averse to making new friends as Mitarai, later chapters establish her as rather kind-hearted, friendly, and eager to make new friends. Her growing friendship with Tamamo and Osaki have her open up more to the rest of the school, though she clearly still considers Mitarai her Best Friend.
- The Hyena: Kagachi is often chuckling to herself when she doesn't have anything to say. May overlap with Mirthless Laughter at times since she even does it when she's clearly embarrassed.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Both Mitarai and Kagachi become more and more of this as time goes on and they make more friends. Indeed, in the last chapter set ten years after high school ended they are seen working with foster children.
- My Instincts Are Showing: Mitarai:
- While foxes, ferrets and raccoons all stick to their territories, among the shifters only Mitarai is particularly invested in her turf.
- Mitarai always washes her food, which has the expected results when she washes cotton candy.
- Raccoons are known to take in orphans and raise them alongside their own young, reflected in Mitarai's propensity to consider taking in lost or orphaned animals and children.
- Tanuki: Mitarai is actually a North American raccoon, not a Japanese raccoon dog, but she has some of the same abilities such as shapeshifting and making leaves look like valuable objects. It turns out she learned from a real tanuki.
Anpu
A new foreign exchange student from Egypt, secretly an ancient goddess trying to recruit Tamamo into her pantheon.
- Deity Identity Confusion: Anpu is the original Egyptian name of Anubis (the Greek transliteration), though this version is female.
- Foreign Exchange Student: Her cover story, though she decides to stay longer after her original term is up.
- King of Games: She's quite obsessed with board games, creating new ones that make Settlers of Catan look like Candyland and then challenging Tamamo to them for high stakes.
- Shout-Out: She's from Ancient Egypt and has a love for traditional games, which brings to mind the original installment of the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime & manga, specifically the era before it became exclusively about the eponymous card game.
- Time Abyss: Inscriptions of Anpu go back to Egypt's First Dynasty, which means she could be over 5,000 years old.
High School Teachers
General
Miura-sensei
Tamamo and friends' original homeroom teacher, a bald and overweight pervert, and secretly a kitsune-slaying tanuki.
- The Alcoholic: Regularly seen with a beer in hand, and a horse racing ticket is identified as his because it reeks of booze. On one occasion, a crowd of old ladies scold him for public drunkenness while climbing Mt. Takao.
- Composite Character: He was both Dan Saburo-Danuki, a tanuki who drove the foxes off of the island of Sado; and Miuranosuke Yoshiaki, one of the hunters who killed Tamamo-no-Mae. His current alias of Miura Saburou is a compound of the two names.
- Dirty Old Man: Miura-sensei is prone to hitting on attractive women, including Tenko, only to get aggressively rebuffed every time.
- Filching Food for Fun: Miura-sensei has a habit of stealing Tamamo's lunches, and getting cursed with stomachaches as a result.
- The Man Behind the Man: Miura turns out to be behind Kagachi and Mitarai.
- Sins of Our Fathers: He slew the original Tamamo-no-Mae and keeps watch on her daughter and shard when they're at high school to make sure they don't take up her evil ways.
- Walking Spoiler: His true nature is only revealed a few chapters before the end.
Reiko-sensei
The only human teacher who can see through Tamamo's glamour, befriends her and her classmates.
- One of the Kids: Believed to be how she can see Tamamo as a fox.
- Sensei-chan: Reiko-sensei is the only teacher who can see Tamamo as a fox. Nakki suspects it's because she's childish at heart. Indeed, Reiko would love nothing more than to snuggle up with Tamamo's fluffy tail.
