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Mahito
Mahito Maki
Voiced by: Soma Santoki (JP), Luca Padovan (EN)
A young boy from World War II-era Japan. He is grieving the death of his mother and resents that his father has moved on to a woman named Natsuko. But after Natsuko disappears into the mysterious tower on her estate, Mahito is drawn into an otherworldly adventure to rescue her.
- Driven to Suicide: A possible interpretation of his stunt with the rock. Suicide is a common occurrence in Japan's youth culture for one reason after another, especially since he received a cold reception from his classmates who were probably jealous and he either wanted to die because of their bullying or willingly wanted to be with his mother again out of desperation. Since Mahito survives however, it becomes a Bungled Suicide.
- Homing Projectile: Mahito's homemade arrow is fletched with one of the Heron's feathers, and always flies towards him no matter how the bird seeks to evade it.
- Improvised Weapon: After the Heron breaks his bokken, Mahito uses a piece of bamboo, nail, and leftover rice to craft a bow and arrow. The result is realistically flimsy with the arrow in particular flexing far too much to fly straight, only proving dangerous after using the Heron's feather as fletching.
- Insistent Terminology: Mahito insists on referring to Natsuko either by name or as 'the woman his father fell in love with' and pointedly avoids referring to her as his aunt or his step-mother whenever one of the tower's denizens ask about her. He begins calling her 'mother' during the film's climax.
- New Kid Stigma: Mahito is met with hostility by the students at his new school, which escalates to a fistfight while he's walking home.
- Pretty Boy: The maids gush about his delicate good looks and how he is the spitting image of his mother.
- Self-Harm: Mahito intentionally scars himself by bashing his head with a rock, in order to get an excuse for skipping school (and possibly as revenge on his bullies). He later reveals to the Master that he's ashamed of it, and states that the scar he got is proof of the evils in his own heart. In the dub, Mahito says that he scarred himself so that he would never forget his own capacity for malice. Apparently he felt that he overreacted to his bullies and so he decided to punish himself.
- Strong Family Resemblance: He is said to look a lot like his mother, and aunt Natsuko by extension.
- Survivor's Guilt: Mahito has frequent and invasive dreams about his mother's death and is depressed over her death. The Heron starts out by stating there is a way to bring her back.
- Sympathy for the Devil: The pelicans are initially presented as violent and dangerous, trying to eat Mahito and later gorging on the defenseless Warawara. Mahito fully believes they deserved being set ablaze by Himi until the Noble Pelican explains his race is trapped on the island and were forced to subsist on Warawara or starve. After the Noble Pelican dies, Mahito and the Heron give it a burial.
The Grey Heron
The Grey Heron
Voiced by: Masaki Suda (JP), Robert Pattinson (EN)
Click here to see him later in the film
An enigmatic heron residing on the estate grounds. He beckons Mahito into the mysterious other world and is later tasked with guiding the boy through it.
- Bait-and-Switch Character Intro: The Heron is presented throughout the first act as a menacing, mysterious figure dripping with malevolence. Once Mahito injures and captures him, the Heron quickly reveals himself to be a rather bumbling and comical figure nowhere near as evil or powerful as he claims to be.
- Boisterous Weakling: Implied. The Heron boasts about his power numerous times, but he never demonstrates any signs of being anywhere near as powerful a sorcerer as he claims.
- Cheshire Cat Grin: His toothy grins evoke the classic image of mischief and deceit.
- The Drag-Along: In the second half of the film, he would rather leave but for various reasons ends up getting dragged along, becoming Mahito's friend along the way.
- Effeminate Voice: In the English dub, the Heron's voice briefly turns very flamboyant when he's showing his avian body off after Mahito fixes the hole in his nose. When he prepares to abandon Mahito his voice turns back into the raspy one we're otherwise used to.
- Enigmatic Minion: He seems to be antagonistic towards Mahito for some reason, but still helps him in the end and becomes friendly, however he clearly tells him "we're not friends or allies". He could seem an ally of the tower's master at first, but he's not affiliated with him, either. In the end he's a trickster who only sides with himself.
- Expy: To the Mockingbird in The King and the Mockingbird.
- Fire-Forged Friends: He and Mahito spend most of the film at odds with one another, and the Heron doesn't hide the fact that he would fly off on the first chance if he could. However, they do become friends after experiencing many trials and tribulations together.
- Gonk: His human form has a receding hairline, bulging eyes, detailed drawn teeth, and a large Gag Nose.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: The Heron attempts to abandon Mahito after getting his beak fixed, pointing out that he was only helping because he had no choice. Amusingly subverted when the Heron gets so distracted by the cork in his beak that he ends up sticking around and becomes Mahito's friend.
- Shapeshifter Mode Lock: After Mahito pierces its beak with an arrow, the Heron is unable to assume its full avian form until Mahito mends it.
- Suddenly Speaking: The first sign that the story is taking a magical turn is when the Heron lands in Mahito's window and begins speaking.
- Tengu: He evokes the imagery of a Tengu after Mahidol punctures its beak, looking more and more like a human man with a gigantic nose wearing a Heron suit than an actual bird.
- Toothy Bird: The heron has a set of human-like teeth and gums in its beak.
Shoichi
Shoichi Maki
Voiced by: Takuya Kimura (JP), Christian Bale (EN)
Mahito's father, who owns a profitable factory.
- Conspicuous Consumption: Shoichi has a habit of showing off his wealth, sometimes in ways that wouldn’t be a big deal in Japan today but were impressive luxuries during the scarcity of World War Two. He arranges a car to tour his factory, gifts the groundskeepers with rare canned goods, and makes a point of driving Mahito to school in a car on his first day.
- Mundane Luxury: Shoichi's wealth and position allow him to acquire many goods which have become hard to find several years into World War II. He makes a good first impression with the housekeepers by gifting them canned goods like corned beef, and he's also one of the few people still able to acquire actual tobacco rather than relying on inferior substitutes.
- Papa Wolf: Shoichi demands to know who injured Mahito so he can give whoever's responsible what for. When Mahito and Natsuko disappear, Shoichi grabs a sword and marches to the tower to investigate personally.
- Parent with New Paramour: He marries Natsuko after Mahito's mother Hisako dies, which initially causes some one-sided conflict between Mahito and his new stepmother.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: Shoichi bribes the school officials to let Mahito stop attending school, bragging about how it only took three hundred yen.
Natsuko
Natsuko
Voiced by: Yoshino Kimura (JP), Gemma Chan (EN)
Shoichi's second wife. Her attempts to reach out to her new stepson are initially unsuccessful, but her disappearance into the tower prompts Mahito's search for her.
- Doppelgänger Replacement Love Interest: Mahito's new stepmother Natsuko looks a lot like Mahito and his dead mother Hisako. This serves as a source of tension for Mahito's relationship with her. It is only revealed halfway through the film that she is Hisako's younger sister and therefore Mahito's maternal aunt, which probably made things even more awkward for him.
- Good Stepmother: Natsuko is shown from her first appearance to want to be this to Mahito, and repeatedly attempts to reach out to him. Given that he is also her nephew, she met him (once) even before she married his father. Mahito, on his end, does not reciprocate and treats her with calm politeness until she is taken into the tower.
- Hand on Womb: Shortly after Mahito and Natsuko start the trip to her estate, she takes his hand and puts it on her belly, asking if he can feel the baby moving. This serves as an abrupt indicator to both Mahito and the audience of how much Mahito's father has moved on from the loss of his wife, and while Natsuko likely means for it to be a bonding moment between her and Mahito, he seems to be put off by it.
- Hidden Disdain Reveal: More sympathetic than most examples, but when Mahito first attempts to rescue Natsuko, she turns him away and says she hates him so he will leave her alone, letting her deliver her baby in peace. However, Natsuko had been attempting many times to connect to Mahito throughout the first act, and his apathy toward her efforts along with her own grief over her sister's death made her seek the world Granduncle had created as a means of escape. Mahito recognizes where he went wrong with his "malice" and accepts her as his new mother, which eventually leads to him rescuing her anyway and the two reconciling, even if Natsuko forgets what happened.
- Parents in Distress: Step-Parent/Aunt to be technical, but Natsuko is taken to the tower and Mahito ventures through said tower to find and bring her home.
- Yamato Nadeshiko: She is a lovely, dutiful, proper, and affluent lady from 1940s Japan. She is also skilled with the bow, firing a warning arrow to scare the heron and frogs away from Mahito.
Kiriko
Kiriko
Voiced by: Ko Shibasaki (JP), Florence Pugh (EN)
- The Drag-Along: Kiriko ends up getting dragged into the temple, and consequently the other world, by Mahito while trying to convince him to turn back. She then spends the rest of the movie as a protective talisman given to him by her younger self.
- Elemental Weapon: She wields a flaming whip, using it to chase away the pelikans before they can hurt Mahito.
- I Was Quite a Looker: Her present self is a short wrinkly grandmother; her past self, meanwhile, is a tall, attractive, and tough woman.
- The Lad-ette: The fisherwoman Mahito meets halfway through the film looks and acts very androgynous and uses "ore" (a pronoun commonly used by men) to refer to herself.
- Limited Wardrobe: Downplayed. Old and Young Kiriko wears the same patern, but her older self wears a long yukata while her younger self wears a shirt.
- Mysterious Past: Kiriko's history and how she wound up in the other world are never detailed.
- Objectshifting: It's revealed at the end that the present-day Kiriko was turned into the small doll that her younger self gave Mahito.
- Parental Substitute: Protects and helps Mahito around after he finds himself alone in the Other World.
- Statuesque Stunner: She towers over the much shorter Mahito, Himi, and the Heron. Granted, the former two are preteens, and the Heron is a Tengu with a bird form, but the comparison makes her height stand out significantly.
Himi
Lady Himi
Voiced by: Aimyon (JP), Karen Fukuhara (EN)
A young girl with fire powers residing in the other world. She agrees to guide Mahito through the tower.
- Big Damn Heroes: Mahito is about to become parakeet food when he enters the blacksmith's house which is overrun by them. But before they could chop him up, Himi comes in and attacks the parakeets with her flames.
- Face Death with Dignity: When she and Mahito return to their respective times, he warns her of her impending fate of dying in a hospital fire. But Himi was okay with it, knowing she'll be happy to have known Mahito until the end.
- Kid from the Future: Himi, the Fire Witch, is the inversion of the trope, being the childhood version of Mahito's mother Hisako from when she entered the tower during her youth. Near the end, having come to understand that Mahito is her future son, she intends to return to her own time in order to become his mother, even though Mahito tells her that means she will die.
- Luke, I Am Your Father: She's Mahito's mother in a much younger form.
- Playing with Fire: She has control over fire and uses it to protect the warawara and Mahito.
Granduncle
Granduncle
Voiced by: Shohei Hino (JP), Mark Hamill (EN)
- Anti-Villain: He's the closest thing the film has to a Big Bad, as he is the master of seemingly hostile world who has seemingly kidnapped Natsuko. However, all he seeks is an heir to continue to maintain the world he's created after he passes on, and he even wants said heir to be a morally just person free of malice.
- Secret Test of Character: After revealing to Mahito how he is building, maintaining and re-building a tower of differently shaped blocks in order to maintain the world, the master offers for Mahito to take his place and to add a new block (out of a selection of three different ones) to the tower's repertoire. Mahito rejects all three blocks by pointing out they're made of stone, not wood, and would introduce pain and evil to the tower. The master immediately approves, and the next time they meet the stone blocks are nowhere to be seen.
The Noble Pelican
The Noble Pelican
Voiced by: Kaoru Kobayashi (JP), Willem Dafoe (EN)
- Advertised Extra: The Noble Pelican, only has one scene with about five minutes of screentime. Regardless, his actor is still credited alongside the rest of the main cast.
- Alas, Poor Villain: The Noble Pelican devoured countless warawara before being mortally wounded by Lady Himi, but he explains to Mahito he and his people are simply starving and desperate, and that even the warawara barely sustain them. He begs Mahito to put him out of his misery before passing away from his wounds. The Heron and Mahito mourn his passing, and Mahito gives him a proper burial.Heron: He truly was a noble bird.
The Parakeet King
The Parakeet King
Voiced by: Jun Kunimura (JP), Dave Bautista (EN)
- Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: He ends up solving the moral conundrum facing Mahito at the end when he seizes the blocks and attempts to stack them himself. This causes the world to start unraveling, leaving Mahito no choice but to leave it and return to the real world without any guilt of abandoning it to its doom.
- Large and in Charge: The biggest and bulkiest of the seen parakeets, befitting his status as their leader.
- Putting on the Reich: The Parakeet King is first seen as head of a massive military parade, the flag symbols invoke Nazi eagles, and several of his followers hold posters declaring him 'the duch'.
- Requisite Royal Regalia: To denote his royal status, the Parakeet King has a golden crown and collar, as well as a noble sword.
- Rule of Symbolism: Given that the Parakeet King's main goal is to preserve the world and not accept change, it's probably no coincidence that he's visually based on a Fascist dictator, with Fascism being an ideology that often popularizes itself by appealing to an imagined glorious past and refusing societal change.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: He's the ruler of a savage kingdom of gluttonous birds that repeatedly serve as antagonists to the heroes. However he does care about his people, and wants to maintain the dying world so that they can continue to live.
