The Voynich Hotel attracts all sorts of interesting characters. The locals are no less interesting.
Unmarked spoilers ahead.
open/close all folders
Staff
Helena
Click to see her as Lachrymarum
Helena, AKA Lachrymarum, the Mother of Tears, is one of the two maids. She's very cheerful and upbeat, and together with Berna, she keeps the Voynich spotless and still has plenty of energy left over for her own pursuits.
- Action Girl: Despite her short stature, Helena is quite active.
- The Beastmaster: Taizou, while high on Mercero, found her petting and talking to one of the local tigers, who are known to be man-eaters.
- Beware the Nice Ones: She keeps this aspect of herself well hidden, but like the other Mothers, she's got no compunctions about killing. The blood of who knows how many Spanish soldiers is on her hands, she's implied to have had a hand in disposing of several troublemakers, and harming or threatening anyone she cares about is a quick route to a thorough ass-kicking or worse.[to Mamiya, before killing her] But today, something incredibly wonderful happened. I'm really happy right now. And that means... I've earned myself a treat!
- Eye Scream: She lost one of her eyes to an arrow fired by Spanish soldiers. In modern times she has a glass eye in its place, swapping it out for an eyepatch after it was accidentally broken.
- Eyepatch of Power: She had an eyepatch for a time, when her Glass Eye was accidentally destroyed. Taizou liked the look. At the end of the story, she's apparently chosen to stay with an eyepatch rather than having her broken eye replaced (again).
- Glass Eye: She's revealed to have one when she trips over a pipe and falls hard enough to knock it out. Taizou finds it, but it breaks in his hand. He then uses some of the money he stole to buy her a new one, although it's damaged beyond repair near the end of the story.
- Genki Girl: She's very energetic and cheery.
- Moe Greene Special: She lost her eye way, way back when the Spanish colonials shot her with an arrow.
- Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Helena is very strong for her build and stature.[Helena literally tosses Leader out the front door of the hotel]
Leader: That dumb maid... she's so tiny. How can she be so dang strong? - Really 700 Years Old: Helena may look young, but the devil Ashkelon knew that the Mothers were in Russia before coming to Blefuscu, the Spanish controlled the island until 1846, and she's been around the entire time. She says in ch. 63 that it's been 3000 years since she was last in Russia.
- Skeletons in the Coat Closet: Helena possesses a number of masks crafted from animal skulls, and after picking out a skull bracelet in a store, she tells Taizou that wearing bones calms her.
- Tranquil Fury: Even in the moments when Helena has every right to be furious (seeing what Holon did to Berna and what the Yakuza did to Taizou), she remains surprisingly calm, simply laying a world of hurt and, in the latter case, taking no prisoners.
- Violently Protective Girlfriend: Over the course of the story, Taizou's life is endangered by two sets of assassins and members of his clan. Helena kills one of the first assassins, beats the next group unconscious before they can even leave the airport, and annihilates the Yakuza.
Berna
Click here to see Suspiriorum
The other maid. She's very strong like Helena, but is much calmer and more reserved.
- Emotionless Girl: Because of what she is, she's normally completely neutral. She also doesn't show pain when hurt, even for injuries that would incapacitate a normal person, like severely broken fingers or dismemberment.
- Frankenstein's Monster: After Suspiriorum was beheaded and dismembered, Lachrymarum collected as many of her body parts as she could recover and stitched them together to create Berna. It's mentioned that the severed head of a witch — strongly implied to be Suspiriorum's — is a tourist attraction somewhere in Europe.
- The Matchmaker: She encourages Helena to pursue Taizou, partly to ensure that the bloodline continues and partly because she can see how happy it makes Helena.
- No Sense of Personal Space: Berna doesn't seem to care much about getting close to people. She moves Taizou while he's passed out on the couch in the lobby so she can provide him a Lap Pillow, and when he and Haraki visit her and Helena's room, she sits directly between them where there's no room to spare.
- Replacement Goldfish: Lachrymarum, arriving too late to stop Suspiriorum's beheading and dismemberment, took what was left of her and made a replacement body for her sister.
- When She Smiles: The one time she shows a hint of emotion is when she's speaking kindly of Helena to Taizou, which draws a slight smile from her. Taizou definitely notices the change.
Emelia
- The Eeyore: She lost her parents and brother to a landmine, suffered from anorexia till the owner snapped her out of it, and has an unrequited crush on the owner which she expresses in very creepy ways.
- Establishing Character Moment: Putting rat poison in the meal she's making for Taizou as a leadup to her own suicide, only for Helena to smell the dish, dump it in the trash, and tell her to remake it without the poison.
- Suicide as Comedy: She thinks she's better off dead than alive, but can't bring herself to commit suicide unless she tries to take someone out at the same time.
- Yandere: She's in love with the Voynich's owner. Being rather messed up in the head, she not only stalks him, she expresses her love by drooling in his food before serving it. She also tries to kill Alice's sister with a poisoned cake after seeing the owner give her a package, which she sees as a ring and leads her to think Alice's sister is his mistress.
Candollei Umeda
- Masked Luchador: Although he's retired, he still competes on the side and always wears his old masks. He even beat Chuck Norris during the latter's stay at the Voynich, in an impromptu exhibition match.
- Nice Guy: He makes it a point to regularly visit and assist orphans from the war, giving Alice's sister money to distribute to shelters.
- Perma-Stubble: When he pulls his mask up to eat, he's always shown with a bit of scruff.
Guests
VIP Suite: The Assassin Sisters
- Black Eyes of Evil: Exaggerated. They're both drawn as if their eye sockets were filled in with ink.
- Frankenstein's Monster: Berna took pity on the younger sister after she ran afoul of Snark and stitched her back together. Unfortunately, she swapped the girl's hands.
- Dual Wielding: The younger sister is armed with a pair of large knives and is quick to draw them if she even thinks someone's giving her guff.
- Genki Girl: The younger sister, who has a passion for the mascot Guilty-chan and in two separate places excitedly calls for the chef when she's served delicious desserts.
- Older Than She Looks: The younger of the sisters is actually 21, making her a Psychopathic Womanchild.
- Professional Killer: The sisters have several hits under their belts, and have been hired by Taizou's clan to take him out.
- Revenge Before Reason: The younger sister vows to avenge Mamiya's death, despite them making a promise years earlier that neither would pursue revenge if the other was killed.
- White Hair, Black Heart: They have snow-white hair, are high-ranking assassins, and are much more bloodthirsty and hair-trigger than Kurosawa.
Room 805: Kuzuki Taizou
A member of the Kouryuukai Yakuza clan, Taizou pays for an extended stay and becomes one of the central characters of the overall story.
- Ambiguously Bi: His very last flashback with his aniki shows them both naked under the same sheets. The only other time this happens is when he was with Helena, his explicit love interest. While we don't see many instances of their relationship, it's still clear that his aniki meant a lot to him.
- Cold-Blooded Torture: Kuzuki had an eye put out, fingers and an ear cut off, and some teeth yanked by the members of his clan for taking the clan's money.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Taizou and his aniki were both in the Yakuza, but they became disillusioned with the life and planned to leave the country with a chunk of their clan's money. His aniki didn't make their rendezvous, so he went on as they'd agreed.
- Distressed Dude: The final chapters cover him getting caught by his old gang and tortured to the point of severe mutilation. The only thing that saves him from death is Helena showing up and, a few chapters earlier, relocating his heart.
- Mayfly–December Romance: He and Helena fall in love, but he doesn't realize (at first) that she's actually Lachrymarum.
- Official Couple: He and Helena gradually become a couple over the course of the first half of the story. When he first starts developing feelings for Helena, he tries to shrug it off on account of her youthful appearance but eventually decides to just roll with it.
- Only Sane Man: Of everyone in the cast, Taizou has the least weirdness to his character by far, being nothing more than a normal man with ties to organized crime who's just trying to lay low and stay out of trouble.
- Scars Are Forever: Helena is able to fix all the damage done to him by his torturers except for his right eye. On the plus side, their injuries match now.
- Tattooed Crook: His Yakuza tattoos feature a large cockatrice on his back, as it's his favorite animal. His brother had a manticore on his back.
Room 804: Kurosawa
- Back from the Dead: His ghost briefly appears to Mamiya and tries to get her to walk away from the hit on Taizou, but she doesn't listen.
- Boom, Headshot!: His specialty as an assassin. He snipes the two male Mercero dealers from his hotel room in one of the early chapters, and then uses the Ferris wheel in the amusement park as his nest to try to snipe the female Mercero dealers in their hotel room, but they escape.
- Bury Your Gays: He's killed by Snark in chapter 30, ironically right after confessing to being in love with her.
- But Not Too Gay: Despite otherwise identifying as gay, he falls for the female Snark. Incidentally, this leads to his death.
- Hitman with a Heart: Kurosawa may be one of the world's best assassins, but he's a genuinely good guy as long as you don't have a bounty on you. He isn't even upset when Carrie and Mischa figure out how to get away from him, and seems impressed by their ingenuity.
- True Love is Exceptional: Despite otherwise being gay, he falls in love with Snark to the extent that he actually planned to propose to her after finishing his work in Japan. Unfortunately, she happens to be a Serial Killer who targets men she considers attractive.
Room 402: Haraki
- Starving Artist: He always seems to be fretting over deadlines and the like, but never seems to be able to draw until the last minute—or past it.
- A True Story in My Universe: In the epilogue, he has written and published a manga based on the events comprising the series, titled The Voynich Hotel.
Room 303: The Mercero dealers
L - R: Tamara, Mischa, and Carrie
A rather interesting trio, they're growing a huge crop of the plant the drug Mercero is made from in their room.- Becoming the Mask: Carrie's actually a DEA agent who went undercover to bust the Mercero dealers and put a stop to trafficking of the drug. However, she discovered that life as a drug dealer (and sampling the goods) is a lot more fun than her job and stopped reporting in to her superiors. She admits this to Mischa after they're forced to burn their crops to escape from Kurosawa, but Mischa doesn't seem to mind.
- The Bus Came Back: After they escape into the forest to get away from Kurosawa, they vanish from the story until ch. 67, where it's revealed that Carrie and Mischa are still on the island, Carrie is still having withdrawal symptoms, and Mischa has apparently caught Fatty's eye.
- Ms. Fanservice: They're the most consistently fanservicey characters in the story. Carrie is introduced in her underwear, both she and Mischa wear midriff-baring tops, and all three are shown in bikinis in the pool.
- Only Mostly Dead: Tamara appears to come back to life after being sniped by Kurosawa for just long enough to demand Carrie pay her back for the pilfered drugs before dying for real. Then again, Carrie may have been hallucinating in the heat of the room, as she and Mischa were pinned down for several hours after Tamara was killed.
Paranormal
The Drug Dealer Ghosts
- The Corrupter: They were Mercero's drug dealers when she was alive.
- Jacob Marley Apparel: The bald ghost is missing a large chunk of his head due to being sniped by Kurosawa.
- The Mafia: They apparently were members, as the bald one says "Mobster's honor" when asked if he's lying about something and the pointy-haired one's inner dialogue references the omertÃ
blood oath. - Scarily Competent Tracker: The pointy-haired one tracked down people who betrayed omertà when he was alive, and uses his skills to determine what happened to the manga Haraki had made for Mercero.
- Those Two Guys: There really isn't anything too remarkable about them... except that one is a dead ringer for Vegeta.
Mercero
- Boy Meets Ghoul: She appears to Haraki as he's going through Mercero withdrawal, gives him the rest of the mathematical equation she'd been working on when she died as a gift to help with his financial worries, and then gives him a big smooch to motivate him.
Tenebrarum, the Mother of Darkness
- Jacob Marley Apparel: Played with. While she's technically undead, the hole in her chest from the poisoned arrow that killed her is still there, although because of her body's decay it's now about the size of her hand and her ribs can be seen through it.
- Potty Failure: Because of the state of Tenebrarum's body, any food she eats just goes right through her. There's excrement on the floor of her chamber, and she has an accident not long after her picnic lunch with Professor.
- Power Incontinence: Her bowels aren't the only thing that's leaking. Professor's legs slowly heal the more time he spends around her, although she's not in control of this, and it makes her body start to fall apart and rot much more noticeably.
- Revenant Zombie: Ashkelon says that if a witch isn't killed properly, they fall into an undead state. Sure enough, Tenebrarum is up and moving, although she's noticeably withered and decayed, and her mind isn't all there.
- She Cleans Up Nicely: Subverted. Thanks to Sexy borrowing her mother's clothes and doing a lot of work with Tenebrarum's hair, she's actually able to get Tenebrarum prettied up nicely for the harvest festival. However, this can't hide the state of her skin and the gaping hole in her chest.
Locals
Tepes
- Addled Addict: He's smoked a lot of Mercero over the years, and according to Mischa, it's done things to his mind.
- Artificial Limbs: With thanks to the war. Not entirely a bad thing; his leg acted as a ground and saved him from that one time he got struck by lightning seven times in a row.
- The Hermit: Tepes lives in an abandoned mine. He stays away from civilization due to his tendency to be struck by lightning and his overall mental state.
Snark
Alice's older sister. Owner of a local restaurant, an excellent chef who can make a fabulous torte...and a merciless killer.
- Apologetic Attacker: She apologizes to Mamiya's sister shortly after slicing her in two, saying she didn't want to harm a child.
- Artificial Limbs: She lost both of her arms in the war, but has fancy prosthetic arms that function as well as her real arms did. They're also her murder weapons.
- Buxom Beauty Standard: She decides to spend her last wish from Demona on large boobs.
- Code Name: Her real name isn't revealed, but "Snark" is the name given by the police to the Serial Killer plaguing the island and the pieces that reveal it's her fall into place fairly early in the story. The Sleuth Brigade only ever call her "Alice's sister".
- Cool Big Sis: For all her flaws, she truly loves her sister. The rest of the Sleuth Brigade also see her as this, as she lets them mooch food from the restaurant and has a kind of den mother role to them.
- D-Cup Distress: This sets in after Demona boosts her bust. She's initially happy with the results, but since she's not used to the extra weight, they throw off her balance and tire her out. Even worse, her preoccupation with them blunts her effectiveness at seduction since she can't stop herself from talking about them whenever she gets into a conversation with a man.
- Hidden in Plain Sight: She's the proprietor of a popular cafe and a wanted serial killer.
- Karma Houdini: She dies before she can be brought to justice, as Leader doesn't turn her in after finding out who she is and Demona collects her soul. The police find her body the next day; Olga says the case ending in this manner leaves a sour taste in her mouth.
- Lovable Sex Maniac: Snark really likes to get it on with hot guys...and then kill them.
- Mundane Utility: Her prosthetics really come in handy for all sorts of things.
- Out with a Bang: Her modus operandi is to seduce men, have sex with them, and then kill them post-coitus. Her one victim that doesn't fit the pattern is Kurosawa; since he was about to return to Japan, she kills him after he comes to her restaurant for a torte.
- Serial Killer: She's been terrorizing the town and stymying the police for quite some time, as the case is well underway when the story actually begins.
- Wolverine Claws: The true form of her "Demon's Claw +2" prosthetics. When she shows up to kill Kurosawa, the fingers of her left hand have turned into blades as long as her forearm.
Officer Olga
- Covert Pervert: The lines on her palm indicate that her sex drive is distressingly insatiable. Assuming you trust Kikaida, anyway.
- Only Sane Man: She's quite responsible and mature compared to... well... pretty much most of the island.
Kikaida
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: One of the rumors floating around the island is that a secret facility is producing killer robots. It's possible he is a faulty model.
- Bumbling Sidekick: Along with his flaws and missteps in judgment, he drives Olga crazy with his goofiness and is frequently getting his head bashed in for inappropriate things he says to her.
- Expy: Visually he's one of Robot Keiji K.
- Ridiculously Human Robot: According to the droid himself, they really went out of their way to make him as human as possible. They succeeded—a little too well, actually...
- Sex Bot: It's not what he was originally built for, but he's certainly "well equipped", and he tells Olga that one of the lines on his palm means that he has an insatiable drive. Later on, he makes an offhand comment that implies that his and Olga's mutual insatiability is being taken care of and gets his head bashed in again.
The Sleuth Brigade
General
- Code Name: The Brigade members only ever seem to refer to themselves by their code names. Leader dubs Berna "Maid" when she's brought into the Brigade.
- Kid Detective: They dig into the legends and myths of the island, with the Voynich and whatever is in its basement as the real treasure they've yet to uncover.
Leader
- Berserk Button: He has a huge grudge against the Japanese in general for their occupation and abandonment of Blefuscu during the war. He angrily confronts Taizou when they first meet and is tossed out by Helena.
- Buxom Beauty Standard: He seems to think so after getting a hug from Alice's sister post-boob job, but in a later chapter he recounts a nightmare in which giant boobs are smothering him and seems to have sworn off of them forever (to Sexy's delight).
- The Leader: He calls the shots in the Brigade's Five-Man Band.
- Scars Are Forever: The left side of his face is heavily scarred from the the landmine detonation that killed Peace. He's proud of his scars and declares to Berna that they're "better than any medal".
- Survivor Guilt: He seems dismissive about it at first, but he's gradually revealed to be one of the two to have taken Peace's death hardest, since she died saving his life.
- Walking Shirtless Scene: He is always wearing open button-down shirts. In the flashback to Peace's death, his shirt was buttoned, hinting that he wears his shirts open now to go along with his scars as a sign of survival. However, when he's shown post Time Skip, he appears to have ditched this look for T-shirts.
Sexy
- A-Cup Angst: She suspects that one reason Leader liked Peace was her assets, and is irritated that she can't compete. When she hears that a certain brand of milk will make a girl's boobs grow, she starts knocking it back like crazy.
- Everyone Can See It: She tells Berna that she's irritated that her affection for Leader is so obvious to everyone around except Leader.
- Fiery Redhead: She's a spitfire and has quite the temper on her.
- Fille Fatale: Well, she tries to be one, at any rate. Leader seems oblivious.
- The Lancer: She falls into a right-hand-man role to Leader in the Brigade's Five-Man Band, mainly because her efforts to be The Heart keep falling through.
- Survivor Guilt: Like Leader, although her guilt is more about knowing that Leader loved Peace and feeling inadequate in comparison.
- Tsundere: She loves Leader but can't bring herself to outright admit it, and stays in a snit with him because he isn't picking up her very blatant hints.
Professor
- Amnesiac Lover: The state of his and Tenebrarum's relationship at the end of the story. Her mind has decayed to the point that she can't hold memories for very long, so he visits her once a month in a 50 First Dates-like cycle.
- Boy Meets Ghoul: He falls in love with Tenebrarum immediately upon meeting her and doesn't seem to be fazed by her condition or the problems it causes at all.
- The Smart Guy: He's the Brigade's resident fount of knowledge on the island's lore and mysteries.
- Throwing Off the Disability: He's wheelchair-bound, but his legs heal the more time he spends around Tenebrarum due to her Power Incontinence. However, when he cuts his time with her down to once a month, his legs become nonfunctional again.
Fatty
- Big Eater: He can put away huge helpings of food, and enters an Eating Contest during the harvest festival. Alice's sister helps him practice.
- The Big Guy: Downplayed; he's definitely the largest member of the Brigade, but mainly falls into a support role alongside Sexy.
- Formerly Fat: In ch. 67, he's slimmed down considerably, and appears to be on the verge of making a Love Confession to Mischa.
Alice / Arisa
- Alice Allusion: Lewis Carroll references are everywhere with her: a young girl code-named Alice (as her sister calls her Arisa) in a strange place with weird shenanigans happening almost constantly, who wears a rabbit mask all the time and who has a sister called "Snark".
- Buxom Beauty Standard: Downplayed; while she's nowhere near her sister's upgraded proportions, in ch. 67 she's secretly tickled that in those 5 years she's grown up to be more buxom than Sexy.
- Cassandra Truth: Because of the Rabbit of Truth, she can see that Holon is a devil and that his hotel has replaced the donut shop. However, no one believes her when she tells them.
- Expressive Mask: The Rabbit of Truth is drawn with a face that changes expression as hers might under it.
- The Heart: Alice has more or less taken over Peace's role as this in the Brigade's Five-Man Band, as the others make a point to look after due to her age and she is much better at being this than sexy.
- Insistent Terminology: In ch. 67, Leader is apparently annoyed that she now always calls him "big bro" instead of Leader.
- Mask of Power: The Rabbit of Truth makes her thoughts come out as speech, and is later revealed to let her see through demonic illusions.
- Shrinking Violet: Alice is extremely shy and withdrawn. Wearing the Rabbit of Truth, she can function like a normal kid, but when it's taken off, she turns into a stammering mess and practically throws a tantrum. However, in ch. 67 she seems to have gotten past this, in large part due to being adopted by Leader's family after her sister's death, and has made a shrine of sorts out of the Rabbit in Leader's house.
Peace
- Buxom Beauty Standard: She was five years older than anyone else in the Brigade and quite endowed. Leader noticed, or at least Sexy thinks so.
- The Lost Lenore: The entire Brigade still carries grief for her loss to some degree, especially Leader as he had fallen in love with her.
- Meaningful Name: She was formerly the group's diplomat and glue.
Devils
Holon
- Manipulative Bastard: He's fond of toying with people's insecurities, as he convinces Alice to not reveal his true nature by playing on her fear that her friends will see her as a freak and abandon her. However, when he tries this with Helena, making a remark about the Sisters not having nearly as much power as they used to, she just beats him bloody.
- Nice to the Waiter: Although his treatment of Berna was rather cruel in the moment, when she serves him in the Voynich's VIP suite he says there's no hard feelings and gives her an extravagant enough tip that Helena, who'd previously made up her mind to kill him as soon as he checked out, runs up to wait on him.
- Reality Warper: He replaces the local donut shop with his own hotel for a little while, but closes it down so that Helena doesn't kill him.
Demona
- Cyclops: Her mask conceals her single eye.
- Deal with the Devil: These seem to be her stock and trade. In exchange for Snark's soul, she supplied Snark with her prosthetics, the Rabbit of Truth, and a boob job. She also reveals herself as the devil Robert Johnson traded his soul to for a guitar.
Ashkelon
- Bullying a Dragon: Averted; unlike Holon, who (at least at first) is either too unfamiliar with circumstances or just plain arrogant to know better, he knows not to mess around with the Sisters and is nervous whenever Helena's attention is focused on him.
- Luck Stat: When he, Demona, Emelia, and Taizou are playing cards for Taizou's soul, he says before the game that he has "the devil's luck" and indeed he keeps getting winning hands...at least, until Helena shows up and starts giving Taizou pointers.
