The cast of The Unforgiving Flowers Blossom in the Dead of Night and associated tropes. Beware of spoilers from the first episode onward. Separated into pages due to number of Characters.
open/close all folders
Main characters
Marie Moriya
Marie Moriya / Mesomeso
Marie is a hopeless girl who is harassed by everyone in her class and abused by her homeroom teacher. While despairing over her troubles in the bathroom of the old school building where she regularly meets her teacher for "supplementary lessons", she accidentally starts the rumor of a youkai named Mesomeso who haunts the bathroom. Higanbana gives her the chance to actually become Mesomeso, which she does after being strangled to death by her teacher. Instead of seeking revenge, however, Marie uses her newfound status to help other bullied students in her school.
- Alliterative Name: Marie has the distinction of having multiple names that are all alliterative. Marie Moriya, Meso-Meso-san, and Meso-Meso Marie.
- All of the Other Reindeer
- Baddie Flattery: Izanami praises her for her honesty against the Black Tea Gentlemen's use of lies, instantly saying that he likes her for that.
- Break the Cutie: Though she's already broken by the time the story begins.
- Byronic Hero
- Curiosity Is a Crapshoot: In accordance with her ghost story, she's at her most threatening when she's hiding behind a door and daring her target to open it.
- Cute Ghost Girl: Face it, dead or not she is just adorable.
- The Dog Bites Back: After being abused by Kanamori for god knows how long, she get the chance to eat him once she becomes a youkai.
- First-Episode Resurrection: Her story in a nutshell, becoming the Eighth School Mystery and a youkai upon dying.
- Hot for Teacher: She says to Kanamori that she loved him… whether she still had feelings for him at the end is anyone's guess though.
- How Do I Shot Web?: Even as a youkai, she's still unaware of her full powers or how to use them. For example, she's unable to make use of Telepathy all Youkai have, nor can she fully change her clothes. This even extends to hunting, as while she doesn't seek to hunt people or eat souls souls, when she intimidates a boy to stop bullying Higanbana notes that she 'Bit his soul in half" with Marie looking confused.
- Kill the Cutie: Kanamori strangles her to death.
- Meaningful Name: Her youkai nickname is taken from the Japanese phrase meso meso, which is the sound one makes while weeping and sobbing.
- Morality Pet: To Higanbana. Other youkai have noted that she's become much more laid back in comparison since she became friends with her.
- Mundane Utility: For some reason she has the power to find sweets within a certain radius of herself. She usually finds what she can and brings it back to share with Higanbana.
- Nice Girl: For all of her traumatic ordeals she suffered under Kanamori's hands, she can't bring herself to hate him as he's slowly dying by her hands because he gives a cruel but valid point about herself not relying on others and she declares to him that she was grateful for saving her from bullies and loves him. After that, as a youkai she's willing go through helping other bullied students.
- Odd Friendship: With Higanbana.
- Rape as Backstory: Though her backstory is the first thing seen, and at the hands of her teacher no less.
- Red Baron: After becoming a Youkai, she's now referred to as "Mesomeso-San" or "Mesomeso Marie".
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: At first she appears to be the Blue Oni to Higanbana's red, with her willingness to try and deal with bullies seeming more thoughtful than Higanbana's playful cruelty and hamminess. In reality, she's the Red Oni to Higanbana's blue, being the one to react emotionally to situations and going in without thinking much into how things actually work due to lack of experience. Not to mention she's much more people oriented compared to Higanbana, who most people, even other ''youkai'' are afraid of.
- She Knows Too Much: When Marie got enough of a nerve to fight back against Kanamori, she chooses to tell him that she could use his threat of releasing the tapes against him, getting him into massive trouble. Kanamori kills her for this reason.
- Sailor Fuku: She wears one for the Yōkai's Tsukimi in the eighth story. She based it on the one her sister wore in middle school.
- Secret Test of Character: She and Kanamori were teleported to the bathroom to see who was capable of becoming Mesomeso. She wins due to Kanamori breaking the "rules" of Mesomeso.
- Sixth Ranger: Introducing Mesomeso, the eighth of the seven school youkai.
- Super-Strength: Part of her powers as a Youkai involves this, as the "Mesomeso" legend has the youkai grabbing those who break her rules with enough strength to break all their bones in their body and crumple said body into the toilet. She sometimes makes use of this.
- White Sheep: Compared to the other youkai who willingly hunt people to devour and doom them to And I Must Scream situations, Marie refuses to hunt and tries to help people instead of hunt. Even nicer youkai like Kyou and Renoir still hunt for their food.
- The Worf Effect: While she often tries to help the protagonists of various stories, she rarely manages to do anything, much to her dismay. Though she at least talks Yukari out of the suicide option the latter was contemplating.
- She actually battled with the Black Tea Gentleman in "The Princess's Lie", but accidentally broke his masquerade on Midori in the process.
- Youkai: Becomes this in the first chapter.
Higanbana
Higanbana
Higanbana is ranked third among the seven major youkai who haunt the school, also known as the "Dancing Higanbana". She often takes the form of a doll that sits on one of the shelves in the school infirmary, and is rumored to dance around in the middle of the night. She forms an Odd Couple with Marie after she effortlessly starts the rumor of Mesomeso, opening a spot for an eighth youkai. Is the main recurring antagonist of the story/stories.
- And I Must Scream: One of the fates that Higanbana's victims can suffer, as shown in "Before the Spider Lillies Bloomed", is that they're forced to dance eternally by strands of her hair for as long as she wants them to, even eternally. The boys who ruptured Shuuichi's eyes are still forcibly dancing there, even when Shuuichi is now an adult pianist.
- Anti-Hero: While she helps the desperate Marie from the awful situation her teacher has placed her in, Higanbana's intentions are not exactly good. Although the antagonists are just worse, and from there, just about everybody she ''does'' kill or inflict mind rape on had done something truly terrible and unforgivable.
- Bad Samaritan: Played with. There are times when she seems like she's helping people, but she really wants to eat them in the end. One good example of this is Takeshi's dealing with her. Then there's the fact that she whispers to bullied kids to teach them how to hurt themselves to get sent to the nurse's office to avoid being bullied, before leaving it up to them to consider suicide and eating their souls after they actually do so. Then again, she does have a few good moments to her name, but most of them are of the dog and son-of-a-bitch kicking kind and the exception rather than the rule.
- Break the Haughty: Played for Laughs in "Welcome to the Mirror World". Higanbana gets into a fight with Marie's Mirror Universe counterpart Geragera, who is ranked first among the youkai in the mirror world. By the end of their fight, the once-haughty Higanbana is turned into Geragera's sniveling errand-girl, and even continues to act this way when she meets the real Marie afterward.
- Catchphrase: "It's a pity."
- Creepy Doll: Likes to take this form. Her true form resembles a doll as well.
- Disc-One Final Boss: Averted. Despite being a pretty yet creepy girl who’s a big Troll and even somewhat resembles Bernkastel, most would make her out to be a potential villain. Then we meet Sumire and she causes even worse problems than Higanbana ever would.
- Cruel Mercy: Despite not batting an eye at killing people, there is a few moments she'll display mercy to someone... if only because it's a worse alternative than dying. Her star example is when Hikaru gets turned into a rabbit, left to the mercy of the rabbits he abused. She also offers for the three bullies who ruptured Shuichi's eyes to bite out each other's throats at the cost of the last one remaining to forcibly dance forever in her domain.
- The Dreaded: She's feared even amongst the other school youkai for her exceptional cruelty in the past. Well, School Youkai that don't happen to be Marie.
- Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: She's a youkai based off of a western doll in the Infirmary who invokes Uncanny Valley due to her doll-like appearance. It kinda comes with the territory.
- Emotionless Girl: What she started out as in "Before The Spider Lilies Bloomed." While she was indeed feared as an incredibly cruel youkai, she wasn't always the ironic Troll we know her as and only fought because she didn't want to die. It wasn't until she met Shuuichi that she began to experience actual emotions and question why she wants to live.
- Irony: Loves using it in her trolling, which is quite fitting to her Pay Evil unto Evil philosophy.
- Flower Motifs - Meaningful Name: Higanbana is one of the Japanese names for the red spider lily
. - Heel–Face Turn: Downplayed; while she doesn’t stop hunting for souls, she softened up after befriending Marie up to the point where she's abit more selective in her hunts. It's up to the point that she willingly goes against other Youkai who do even worse stuff, like screwing over Sumire.
- Hidden Heart of Gold: Looking back on the previous entries as a whole after seeing "Before The Spider Lilies Bloom" subtly implies that Higanbana's Lack of Empathy status might just be a front. Even she was disgusted at what happened to Shuuichi. The full awakening of her emotions and evolution into the Higanbana we know stems from her new belief that all youkai are beings of darkness whose job is to ensure that the night stays dark and that humans stay out of it. To that end, Higanbana creates a dark and terrifying night in order to shape a more beautiful and fulfilling day. While her cruelty towards her victims like Hikaru and the boys who crippled Shuuichi is indeed genuine, the apathy and twisted statements she makes about wanting to eat Marie's soul could just be things she does so people don't think she's weak.
- Lack of Empathy: Zig-zagged. On one hand, she curses and kills humans without a second thought, and she couldn't really care less about her fellow youkai. But on the other hand she does show some form of deference or respect to some fellow youkai (like the Headmaster and Renoir), seems to aid some humans at certain points (Yoko, Yukari) and of course she's quite interested in Marie as both a friend and due to her interest in her capabilities as a youkai.
- Further showcased as abit of a subversion in "Before the Spider Lilies Bloom" where she develops an unlikely bond with Shuuichi and actually tried to protect him from his bullies. She was sincerely repulsed when she saw the horrific damage the boys performed on him that last time, such as the fact that they ruptured his eyes. This solidified her philosophy of keeping the day bright and the night dark by taking people who darken the day out of the picture.
- Large Ham: Higanbana is a Youkai and she like to let people know that she likes her job.
- Leitmotif: Yoi no kagefumi.
- Necessarily Evil: As she puts it, the Youkai make the school's night dark so that way the day will shine even brighter. Those who're supposed to live in the day (humans) and who willingly step into the night without regard, respect or fear (aka: who do terrible things to other people) are acceptable targets.
- Pay Evil unto Evil: Her philosophy is that Youkai must paint the night darker so that the day shines brighter, or in other words being evil so that people remain good or do so out of fear of the truly wicked beings. As a result, she tends to solely target people who've done terrible things, been arrogant, and sometimes those who are purely the victim and wish to die so they don't suffer anymore. This becomes apparent in more chapters, like her targeting Takeshi because he was bullying Yoko horribly and made her commit suicide, killing all the bullies Sumire made in Yukari's class while sending her off to avoid dying in the same crash, and even aiding other Youkai in their hunts (like Renoir on Shintani) or the prey who were unfortunate enough to end up as such (Aya with Izanami).
- Pet the Dog
- Letting Yoko's ghost go to Heaven in "One Girl's Day". She's even stated to have done it on a whim.
- Getting Yukari sent to the infirmary with a gash big enough to take her out of school for a few days but not cause her permanent harm. This keeps her out of school long enough to not be in the school field trip, with her entire class of bullies on one bus. Higanbana proceeds to make the bus crash to kill everyone but the driver in it, effectively ending Yukari's current problems, getting a feast of 40 souls, and simultaneously ruining Sumire's plans.
- Psychotic Smirk: She tends to let them rip in her major trolling moments.
- Red Baron: The Dancing Higanbana.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: Granted that they're always red, but it becomes increasingly apparent when she pulls out her psychotic smirks.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: She first appears to be the red to Marie's Blue, with Higanbana indulging into emotional cruelty while Marie tries to think things through ethically. In reality, it's the opposite. Higanbana is the Blue Oni to Marie's Red, in which Higanbana has been around well enough to know how other youkai will act and think, and knows well enough how to act and survive as a Youkai compared to Marie. Despite not being as extroverted as Marie, Higanbana's method of hunting relies on manipulating people into committing suicide, letting them end their lives with their own hands while she reaps the results compared to Marie trying to brute force issues into better resolutions.
- Signature Laugh: You can hide under your bed, nobody will blame you.
- Smug Snake: Whenever she actually loses.
- Start of Darkness: "Before the Spider Lilies Bloomed" shows hers, detailing her transition from an Emotionless Girl to the Ironic Hell-loving Troll she is now.
- Telepathy: A trait common to all Youkai, Higanbana tends to liberally use it to respond to people's thoughts.
- Troll: What would be one of 07th Expansion's works without one? She loves to plunge her preys into despair to make their soul tastier, or to make hunts twistedly ironic. Not even other youkai are immune to this.
- Uncanny Valley: Even in her more human like youkai form, it tends to be noted that she looks like more like a doll in her more terrifying moments.
- Villain Protagonist: Played with. She interferes with lots of other stories and seems willing to kick everyone, be they a dog or a son of a bitch. But she's still one of the main characters regardless and more often than not goes by her Pay Evil unto Evil philosophy.
- What You Are in the Dark: At the end of "One Girl's Day" she begins to devour Yoko's soul. Marie leaves to prepare snacks and Higanbana decides to let Yoko ascend to Heaven.
