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Playable Characters
Kyoya Suda
- Clothing Damage: He gets a bullethole in his shirt after being shot once in the prologue, and another one later after being shot again.
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Kyoya Suda either incinerates the Datatsushi with the Sword Uryen, or decapitates the Eldritch Abomination with the Homuranagi and sets off the collapse of everything around him in the Dark World.
- Failure Hero: He is unable to prevent Miyako's death from the ceremony.
- Fragile Speedster: He isn't very resistant to damage. To compensate, he is one of the fastest characters.
- The Hero: Effectively the main protagonist.
- Hide Your Children: His age was raised from 16 to 18 for the American release.
- Innocently Insensitive: Doesn't have a lot of tact and tends to be brutally honest at times.
- Took a Level in Badass: The blood transfusion he receives from Miyako grants him immunity to becoming a Shibito at the cost of never leaving the underworld. Also, upon being shot a second time and getting separated from Miyako, he ventures the Shibito Nest with Yoriko in search for her. The repeating partial ending has the Shibito wreaking havoc across all the fields... and Kyoya packed with grenades, the Homuranagi, and an assault rifle. And he kicks off the massacre by calling down a celestial artillery strike on the Shibito with the Uryen.
- Walking the Earth: It's implied that this is what he's been doing between the first and second games. Not much else he can do, being stuck in another dimension and all.
Tamon Takeuchi
- Badass Bookworm: He is a university professor who dons a cool revolver like nobody's business. He also comes with a .38 revolver and is not afraid to use it.
- Bat Deduction: Theorized that if an entity like Datatsushi existed, some force surely existed to oppose it. He was right, even if he had no idea about the existence of the Uryen.
- The Lancer: To Kyoya to an extent, particularly when they briefly team up in day 3.
- Lightning Bruiser: Arguably the most durable and fastest character and comes equipped with a gun and later a melee weapon. Ironically, he has the slowest Instant 180-Degree Turn.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He can be rather harsh with Yoriko. However, despite this behavior, he's trying to protect her.
- Parental Abandonment: His parents were buried under a landslide when he was just a child. They come back... sort of. Tamon's childlike, almost giddy regression upon finding them, while presumably affected by the red water, seems to suggest he's been holding onto some considerable angst.
- Revolvers Are Just Better: Except for his last mission, he always carries a revolver.
- Zombie Infectee: Gets pretty far along in his transformation into a Shibito. Though being exposed to Kyoya's blood seems to have halted it, he starts seeing the hallucinations they do.
Yoriko Anno
- Butt-Monkey: Yoriko Anno is inept and oblivious, constantly getting herself into trouble. The only reason she came to Hanuda was because she had a crush on Professor Takeuchi, and he has no patience for her. Unlike most of the other characters, Yoriko being berated and left behind, then getting herself lost and chased by Shibito, is generally played for laughs. Even her reactions to Akira shooting himself and then, as a Shibito, shooting her are so abrupt as to be comical. As seen in the final unlockable cutscene, when she finally catches up to the professor in the heart of the nest, she's lost her glasses and manages to fall through a hole in the floor, and in the ending she interrupts the professor's long-awaited reunion with his parents — hitting them over the head with a baseball bat (they're admittedly partly Shibito-fied at this point) and dragging the professor out of his first moment of happiness in decades. This is all used as comic relief.
- Hot for Teacher: Not only is she fond of her tutor, she keeps a photo of him in her wallet, and gets embarrassed if she suspects anyone trying to take a look inside.
- I Know Mortal Kombat: Yoriko manages to cut through a gate by a skill that she says she saw in a comic book.
- The Load: For Tamon during his levels, as well as Akira's and Kyoya's, when he is separated from Miyako. Granted, she gets better.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: She manages to survive Day 3 all by herself despite losing her glasses and by the time the game's ending rolls around, she's shown to have picked up a baseball bat and a solid level in badassery.
- Once More, with Clarity: One of the final "movie stages" unlocked in the first game is Yoriko's reunion with Tamon on Day Three. As the player should have guessed by now, he was the half-Shibito at the time, while she was doing perfectly fine; it also seems that she was unable to see Datatsushi because of this.
- Thinks Like a Romance Novel: A big fan of Ouke no Monshou and others, she thinks of being taken to the Other World as an adventure with her as the Plucky Girl heroine. All things considered, it works out pretty well for her—she may be trapped in the Other World, but Siren Maniacs mentions that she's probably taking it as an opportunity to explore and have strange experiences.
- Too Dumb to Live: Early on, when Tamon leaves her alone and tells her to stay put, she decides to go searching for something she dropped in a completely different area without any means of defending herself.
- Took a Level in Badass: By the end of the game, her and Tamon's roles appear to be reversed, as she's the one taking charge and dragging his helpless ass along.
Kei Makino (né Takaaki Yoshimura)
- Actual Pacifist: Refuses to use a weapon at all, even if it means having to fend off a Shibito to save someone's life. Near the end of the game, 'Kei' finally mans up and takes Tamon's .38 revolver to defend himself.
- Aloof Older Brother: Zig-zagged. He is the older twin and has more respect in the community than Shiro, but Shiro is the stronger, more capable individual who is cold and distant towards Kei...who feels inferior to Kei.
- Always Identical Twins: With Shiro.
- Always Someone Better: Shiro sees him as this due to his position in the community.
- Back from the Dead: Siren Maniacs' "Another Story", Chapter 5 implies that he Came Back Wrong after the events of the game.
- Cain and Abel: The Abel to Shiro's Cain. A very one-sided example; Kei is unaware of Shiro's jealousy towards him and one of his first instincts when Hanuda mixes into the underworld is to look for Shiro; Shiro never bothered to try and find out whether Kei was safe or not.
- Dark Is Not Evil: His black priest's robes contrast with his brother's white doctor's coat, but Kei is a kind, moral, if inefficient person, in contrast to the unstable and homicidal Shiro.
- Failure Hero: He is unable to protect Tomoko as he tries to escort her to safety, and could not protect Risa from Mina, twice. This indirectly causes Tomoko's and Risa's transformations into a shibito.
- Family Relationship Switcheroo: Kei was adopted by Reiji Makino (older brother of Ryoko Miyata, Shiro's adoptive mother) and he and Shiro were raised as cousins. However, Shiro and Kei figured out their true relationship early on in life, and their twinship seems to be an open secret among Hanuda's residents.
- Freudian Excuse: Lived a cosseted life as the heir to the Makino family, a life which also left him embracing Hisako Yao as a mother figure—and utterly dependent on her guidance. When she fully awakens and abandons him, he's completely rudderless.
- Happily Adopted: His adoption by Reiji Makino in contrast to Shiro's adoption by Ryoko Miyata (Reiji's younger sister). However, Reiji loses points for committing suicide when Kei is 12, leaving Kei to replace him as guiding priest, but not preparing Kei for his duties.
- Heroic BSoD: He is used by his mother figure in order to control the village and make things right for summoning an eldritch creature. As a result, Kei goes nearly catatonic.
- Identical Twin ID Tag: His hair is parted in the middle and still has its natural black color, while Shiro brushes it forward and dyes it brown. He also has a beauty mark on the left side of his face, above his lip, which Shiro lacks.
- Parental Abandonment: His birth parents died in a landslide when he was an infant, and his adoptive father committed suicide when he was 12.
- Separated at Birth: An odd example with Shiro. He and Shiro were separated as infants after the death of their birth parents. Unlike most examples of the trope, they were raised in the same isolated village and their respective adoptive parents were brother and sister, so even though they weren't raised as brothers, they still had some presence in each other's lives and figured out their true relationship by themselves early on. Unfortunately, the warm Kei and the cold Shiro find it too difficult to get along and do not develop a healthy brotherly relationship. They remain so distant from one another that by the time Siren takes place and they are 27, they still refer to each other by their respective adopted last names.
- Sibling Yin-Yang: The kind-hearted, yet passive counterpart to the cold but effectual Shiro.
- Took a Level in Badass: Subverted. In his final two missions, he is suddenly no longer afraid to fight shibito, but the "Kei" that appears in these final two missions is in fact Kei's already badass twin Shiro, impersonating Kei after killing him.
- Twin Switch: If you want to get technical, it's not much of a switch per se, as he gets killed in the process...
- Twin Telepathy: A mild version with Shiro. They often cross paths even though they try to avoid each other and they share a recurring dream about the previous Miyako.
- You're Insane!: Said verbatim upon seeing what Shiro did with the Onda sisters.
Shiro Miyata (né Katsuaki Yoshimura)
- Abusive Parents: His adoptive father was emotionally neglectful and refused to be a father to him, while while his adoptive mother would compare him unfavourably to Kei and pressure him to become a successful doctor in order to surpass Kei, telling him that if he did not, he would be "discarded" by the family. To this end, she did not allow him to play with toys or other children and made him spend all his free time studying.
- Aloof Older Brother: Zig-zagged. He is the younger twin, is far more capable than Kei whom he is cold and distant towards, yet he is the one who feels inferior towards his brother, instead of the other way around.
- Always Identical Twins: With Kei.
- Always Someone Better: He sees his brother as this due to the respect he has in the community as a religious leader.
- Cain and Abel: The Cain to Kei's Abel. Despite his success in his own field, Shiro's somewhat jealous of his brother's position in the community. He eventually winds up killing him and masquerading as him.
- Dead Person Impersonation: Ultimately, he ends up killing Kei and posing as him. A somewhat interesting example because by the time he does this, there is nobody around for Shiro to interact with who understands the significance of him being Kei and he intends to kill himself very soon; he just wants to "be" Kei instead of himself that badly.
- Dr. Jerk: Zig-zagged. He is never shown performing his duties as a doctor so we don't know anything about his bedside manner, and he isn't a jerk in terms of personality and temperament... but he commits several horrible actions over the course of the story.
- Driven to Suicide: After confronting his twin Kei for the final time, he puts a gun to his head, though it's ambiguous whether he did this to drop his brother's guard down to kill him, or Kei intervened and ended up shot dead by accident.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Cold-hearted as he is, even he is horrified by the fate of the half-Shibito who have been Buried Alive for decades and willingly sacrifices his life by using the Uryen to Mercy Kill them.
- Evil All Along: He appears to be a man simply looking for his missing girlfriend, but it turns out he murdered her before the start of the game.
- Evil Brunette Twin: Inverted. He dyes his naturally black hair brown, but his good twin keeps the naturally darker shade.
- Family Relationship Switcheroo: Shiro was adopted by Ryoko Miyata (younger sister of Reiji Makino, Kei's adoptive father) and he and Kei were raised as cousins. However, Shiro and Kei figured out their true relationship early on in life, and their twinship seems to be an open secret among Hanuda's residents.
- Freudian Excuse: His adoptive mother was mentally unstable, while his adoptive father was emotionally neglectful and indifferent towards him. This leads to Shiro himself growing up to become mentally unstable and emotionally cold towards others.
- Heel–Face Turn: What he settles on, but it is more due to being compelled by the spirit of the previous Miyako, than any epiphany/change of heart on his own part.
- Identical Twin ID Tag: His hair is brushed forward and dyed brown, as opposed to Kei who parts it in the middle and keeps its natural black color.
- Kick the Dog: His murders of the Onda sisters and his brother.
- Light Is Not Good: His white doctor's coat contrasts with his brother's black priest's robes, but Shiro is the Evil Twin, not Kei.
- Mad Scientist: Shiro seems a little too happy in cutting up the Onda sisters.
- Mask of Sanity: His mental instability is not readily apparent.
- Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: Shiro Miyata is quite possibly a sociopath. He crosses the
Moral Event Horizon several times, including when his twin brother Kei Makino happens upon him conducting an experiment on the Shibitofied Onda Sisters that wouldn't be out of place in Herbert West's science book. Extra Squick when he stomps on the Shibitofied fetus that Mina had been carrying before her murder. He later murders his brother for no real reason and takes not only his clothes but his role in the rest of the game - later levels playable as Kei Makino clearly feature Shiro wearing his dead brother's robes. - Murder Is the Best Solution: Just prior to the game, Misa Onda, his annoyingly clingy (to him) lover told him she was pregnant with his child. When he first gets spotlighted, he freaks out at at what looks to be a recently-evacuated shallow grave, so evidently he didn't take it well.
- Parental Abandonment: His birth parents died in a landslide when he was an infant and his adoptive parents passed away at some point. We know his mother had some sort of illness, but it is not said how his father died.
- Pet the Dog: Maybe. It's open to interpretation, but he seems genuinely concerned with keeping Risa safe...before he goes crazy and strangles her to death when she impersonates Mina.
- Redemption Equals Death: Shiro Miyata, who literally sacrifices himself to power the Shield Uryen and open up a gigantic Shibito Roach Motel sinkhole. The freed souls of the Onda sisters beckon him to join them before he plunges into the blazing sinkhole himself.
- Replacement Goldfish: Was adopted by Ryoko Miyata for this purpose; she lost her infant son Shiro in the same landslide that killed his birth parents.
- Separated at Birth: An odd example with Kei. He and Kei were separated as infants after the death of their birth parents. Unlike most examples of the trope, they were raised in the same isolated village and their respective adoptive parents were brother and sister, so even though they weren't raised as brothers, they still had some presence in each other's lives and figured out their true relationship by themselves early on. Unfortunately, the warm Kei and the cold Shiro find it too difficult to get along and do not develop a healthy brotherly relationship. They remain so distant from one another that by the time Siren takes place and they are 27, they still refer to each other by their respective adopted last names.
- Sibling Yin-Yang: The cold and competent opposite to his kind and ineffectual brother.
- This Is Something He's Got to Do Himself: Shiro nearly quotes the trope verbatim as he goes to finish off the Ondas. But by that point, he had shot his brother Kei and assumed his identity, making the quote darkly funny.
- Twin Switch: Shiro kills his twin brother Kei early on Day 3 and goes on to do a Dead Person Impersonation of him. Even the game doesn't tell the player about it at first, only hinting at it by giving Kei the same weapons Shiro acquired, making them believe they play as Kei in some of the later levels, when they are actually playing as Shiro.
- Twin Telepathy: A mild version with Kei. They often cross paths even though they try to avoid each other and they share a recurring dream about the previous Miyako.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: When Miyata activates the Uryen, two rotting Shibito slink off the screen rather than get caught in the chasm. They have a touching reunion with their son in the ending, until that goes to hell.
- Weaker Twin Saves the Day: Inverted. Shiro is without a doubt the stronger twin in terms of having courage and drive that Kei lacks. However, since Kei is the village's guiding priest, he is the one that has important duties and expectations thrust upon him. Unfortunately, Kei is too incompetent to carry out these duties, and cannot handle the pressure placed on him. However, Shiro can handle these duties and keep a cool head, so he murders Kei and assumes his identity so he can fulfill the duties of the guiding priest.
- Wild Card: Good luck trying to guess his next move and motivations. His senseless murder of Kei in particular comes out of nowhere.
Akira Shimura
- Ate His Gun: His fate. When he realises that there's no way out of the alternate dimension, he turns his hunting rifle on himself. Sadly, it doesn't have any effect outside of blowing his brains out, as he soon wakes up as a shibito.
- Cold Sniper: He doesn't particulary care about meeting survivors and prefers his own company but he is still willing to save lives if the opportunity comes along.
- Cool Old Guy: Akira is 70 years old, but he is pretty spry for his age and a great shot who enjoys going on occasional hunting trips, and he is more than capable of standing up to the shibitos who gets in his way.
- Driven to Suicide: He tries to kill himself in an attempt to escape the curse. It doesn't work.
- Glass Cannon: He is an expert at sniping and is never seen without his rifle, which is the weapon with the most raw shibito stopping power in the game, but because of his age, he is slow and has terrible endurance.
- Properly Paranoid: Part of his backstory. In the weeks before the plot kicked off, Akira was quite aware that something very strange was going on in Hanuda, noticing on his hunting trips that the forest around the town was unusually quiet and the animals seemed strangely nervous and on edge, and he also saw frequent evidence of an increase in the local cult's activities and was convinced that they were about to do something terrible. He, of course, was completely right. As he ruminates on all of this on the day before the cult sets the ritual in motion, Akira laments that he feels pretty powerless to stop or even call attention to whatever it is the cult is doing, as he fears people would just dismiss him as a crazy, rambling old man if he was to try telling anyone about it.
- Survivor Guilt: Part of his backstory. He once had a wife and a son, but he lost them both during the 1976 earthquake. Ever since, Akira has deeply regretted that he Never Got to Say Goodbye and he sometimes wishes he had died with them back then so they could be Together in Death.
Hisako Yao
- Amnesiac Dissonance: Has lived for so long that she's forgotten her task, which is why she helps Kyoya early on before remembering what she was supposed to be doing.
- Big Bad: Is the real villain of the story, as she willingly carries out the atrocities in Hanuda to appease the God that had inflicted a curse on her, and in extension, the village as well.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: The apparently kind and selfless nun of the Mana cult who goes out of her way to rescue wandering survivors, is eventually revealed to be the one responsible for the curse that had befell Hanuda centuries ago.
- The Fog of Ages: Hisako has been alive for so long that she occasionally forgets who she really is, and her mission to revive Datatsushi. That's why she helps the protagonists in the early parts of the game. Twenty-seven years ago, posing as the servant of the Kajiros, she felt sorry for their daughter (also named "Miyako"), the next destined Bride of Datatsushi. So, Hisako tried to rescue her... from Hisako.
- Immortality: She gained eternal life after feasting on the flesh of the fallen god Datatsushi, based on the myth of Yao Bikuni ("800-year-old priestess") and the ningyo
("human fish", often translated as "mermaid"). Her descendants in the Kajiro clan gained Age Without Youth instead, with their twisted, inhuman forms supposedly entombed underneath the ancestral mansion. Hisako also has a bad case of The Fog Of The Ages as well, having forgotten the purpose of the ritual over the years, to the point where she's helping Kyoya to stop it during early missions. - Locked into Strangeness: Upon her witnessing the death of her God, her hair turns white.
- Nice Girl: Cares for a scared and confused Kyoya in the beginning, and is concerned with the disappearance of Tomoko and sets off to help find her. Then she recovers from her amnesia and drops her nice demeanour altogether.
- Nuns Are Spooky: Becomes this upon recalling her true identity as the immortal Yaobikuni, an immortal woman who ate the flesh of the God Datatushi.
- Oral Tradition: Hisako Yao is based off the Japanese legend of the Yaobikune, the Eight-Hundred Year Old Nun who became immortal after consuming mermaid flesh. Given a Lovecraftian twist, of course. She even dresses up in a manner similar to a Catholic Nun to hang a Lampshade on this.
- Really 700 Years Old: Thousands of years old, actually.
- Walking Spoiler: There is more to her than it meets the eye, in spite of appearing as a kindly nun who aids a wounded Kyoya.
Miyako Kajiro
- Blind Seer: She was born with the ability to sightjack, and is able to use it even outside the Other World, allowing her to compensate for her blindness by using her trusty dog as a literal eye-seeing dog.
- Disabled Snarker: She has her moments, such as teasingly calling Kyoya a "dummy" for clumsily destroying a broken floorboard with his foot.
- Friendless Background: With the exception of Harumi and later Kyouya, she doesn't even seem to be allowed to speak to other people.
- Generation Xerox: Like the Miyako alive during the 70s, she exists only to quell the mysterious presence overlooking Hanuda - and like her ancestor, doesn't actually exist in any legal or social sense. She isn't happy about it.
- Kill the Cutie: She is killed upon her capture and her forceful participation in the ceremony created by Hisako Yao and the Kajiro siblings.
- The Load: She is arguably even moreso than Yoriko. Since she's blind, you have to stay close to her and occasionally turn back and look at her so she is able to follow you.
- Macguffin Girl: She is a sacrificial bride to the God of Hanuda village.
- Mystical Waif: Miyako is very much an archetypical example. She is a young girl Kyoya meets quite early on and he feels driven to protect and help her. Miyako, on the other hand, is deeply important for the cult's ritual, and she is implied to possess some form of Psychic Powers, having been able to sightjack her entire life even without entering the Other World.
- The Power of Blood: She's got a stronger concentration of supernatural blood than other Kajiros' and thus Hisako (correctly or incorrectly) believes her to be "the perfect fruit" to restore Datatsushi. Even if she was, giving Kyoya some of her blood caused the resurrection of Datatsushi to be incomplete.
- Sarcastic Devotee: To Kyouya. She's as sarcastic and blunt to him as she is with her negligent family, but unlike them cares for him immensely.
- The Stoic: She'll only get very emotional whenever a shibito comes near her or Kyoya. The only time she loses her cool demeanor outside of gameplay is when Jun shoots Kyoya through the chest, and Hisako soon arrives to capture her and complete the ritual Miyako had desperately tried to escape from.
- Unperson: She doesn't legally exist.
Reiko Takato
- Badass Teacher: The fact that she is willing to protect her pupil Harumi at all costs definitely earns her this title. Her title is well-earned when considering her backstory, as explained in an archive file. During a summer break, disaster struck in a beach, resulting in a number of students drowning or vanishing. Reiko was able to save the lives of two other students during the incident, but tragically her own daughter was not found until it was too late.
- Heroic Sacrifice: When trying to hide Harumi in a cart used by the shibito, the siren sounds and the shibito is alerted to Harumi's presence. With no other options, Reiko decides to sound the horn from an abandoned truck, leak the gasoline, and ignite it. The resulting explosion not only disables the shibito, but it also kills Reiko.
- Lightning Bruiser: The strongest female character and has the fastest Instant 180-Degree Turn. Her downside that is her melee weapon, though powerful, is slow and difficult to use.
- Mama Bear: Toward Harumi. Even after being shibitofied.
- Tragic Monster: As a shibito, she wanders in search for Harumi or her late daughter Megumi, crying to herself along the way.
Harumi Yomoda
- Dreaming of Things to Come: Harumi's intro in the website mentions that she had a dream about the dangers awaiting her.
- Improbable Infant Survival: Unlike the other characters, she is never shown dying when a shibito catches up with her, merely cowering instead as the screen fades out. She's also the only character who makes it out of the otherworld alive.
- One Hitpoint Wonder: Harumi being unable to make contact with a shitibo at all is one of the main contributors to Reiko Takato's notoriously difficult first level, as Harumi being near a shibito's attack range counts as a game over if Harumi panics and cowers to the ground.
- Only Friend: A part of her backstory. She is quite good friends with Miyako, and is the only person from Hanuda who is known to have befriended her.
- Orphan's Ordeal: She lost both her parents to a freak accident. It has very much marked her.
- Psychic Powers: She's one of numerous people in Hanuda with a degree of psychic ability, having visions of what was about to happen and being able to sightjack without being exposed to red water.
- Replacement Goldfish: For Reiko's daughter.
- Sole Survivor: Is the only confirmed character to escape the cursed village and survive with her life.
- Wise Beyond Their Years: A ten-year-old is ensnared into what is essentially hell filled with the most unspeakable monsters that have driven many adults mad or to suicide. Despite this, Harumi gets by on her own exceptionally well and is ultimately the only survivor of her ordeal.
Risa Onda
- Always Identical Twins: With Mina Onda, her sister. Though the resemblance is no longer applicable upon Mina having become a shibito. Even as Risa becomes a shibito herself, she still looks nothing like her twin.
- Creepy Twins: With Mina, though only after the two become a shibito.
- Damsel in Distress: Tends to fall into this at times.
- Fragile Speedster: Has the worst endurance in the game, even compared to Tomoko who is a few years younger than her. Unlike Tomoko, Risa does find a weapon to defend herself with, even if it is just an umbrella.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: The player is required to use a wooden stake to impale Shibito Risa to the ground, in order to fulfill one requirement of Kei Makino's last mission's secondary objective.
- Implacable Woman: Upon becoming a Brain Shibito just as Mina Onda is, Risa shares her twin sister's incredible endurance to all sources of attacks. It takes being impaled by a wooden stake to keep Risa down.
- Kill the Cutie: After being linked by her Shibito twin sister and used to provoke Mina's killer Shiro, Shiro strangles Risa with his bare hands. Seconds later, bloody tears fall from her eyes, and she starts laughing...
- Laughing Mad: Shortly after being killed and returning as a shibito.
- Parasol of Pain: She uses a simple umbrella, of all things, as her main weapon. Even more surprising is that Risa can still take out the Spider Shibito in the hospital, and even knock out her twin sister Mina Onda if the player chooses to. Upon becoming a Brain Shibito, Risa chooses the more practical pickaxe instead.
- Twin Telepathy: There is definitely a connection between her and Mina. It's implied that the reason Risa turns into a shibito is because her sister is infected as well.
- Unwitting Pawn: She is forced by her shibito and twin sister Mina to aggravate Shiro enough to kill Risa, and then reanimate as a Shibito herself in order to work together with Mina to kill Shiro.
Naoko Mihama
- Break the Haughty: Her introduction shows her to be a rather snooty and vain woman who accidentally ends up in a nightmarish version of Hanuda in the middle of her report. After having endured the horrors in the village, along with her growing issues of her own beauty declining with age, Naoko drowns herself in a pool of water in the hopes of her beauty being preserved as a Shibito. It doesn't work.
- Driven to Suicide: She drowns herself in a pool of red water, having been driven mad by the events of the game, along with her erratic desire to having eternal youth and beauty due to her insecurities running rampant over the course of the story.
- Fountain of Youth: Naoko misinterprets an offhand remark from Akira Shimura and a fairy tale from a random book she found, which lead her to believe that bathing in the red water will make her eternally young and beautiful. Since Dog Shibito can't talk, we can't ask her what she thinks of how it turned out.
- Hidden Depths: According to her resume, one of her skills is playing the bagpipes. It says she plays the quena in the manga.
- Laughing Mad: As a half-shibito she's constantly laughing as the others do, and overjoyed with her newfound eternal youth.
- It's All About Me: She cares about her looks, her biggest flaw aside from being a rude bitch. When she misinterprets Akira's talk of the red water, this alongside Sanity Slippage and/or Driven to Suicide cause her to walk into a pool of the stuff.
- Irony: She voluntary chooses to become a shibito in the hopes she will get to stay young and pretty forever once she is one. Shortly after being shibito-fied, however, she starts mutating, and just so happens to transform into the rather grotesque crawler form, which was probably not was she was hoping for when she chose to convert herself.
- Jack of All Stats: She is average in health, speed, and picks up a small firearm to use.
- Madness Mantra:
- "Eternal youth. Eternal youth. Eternal youth..."
- Later, she is constantly heard saying things like "Won't you look at me?" and "Tell me I'm beautiful!" following her transformation into a shibito.
- Ms. Fanservice: A few racy pictures of her can be found throughout the game as archive items.
- Precision F-Strike: (as the fact that she's been separated from her crew sinks in) "Shit."
- Rich Bitch: Subverted. She's not actually rich, but she sure acts like she is.
- White-Dwarf Starlet: Her biggest flaw, since she had been demoted into a low-budget occult TV series after having a promising career as a model and actress. Unwilling to accept this, along with the stress and horrors she had endured in Hanuda, Naoko eventually chooses to 'preserve' her beauty by becoming a Shibito.
Tomoko Maeda
- Hide Your Children: Her age was raised from 14 to 16 in the US version.
- Tears of Blood: Sheds them in front of her parents after she finds them in the church, much to their horror and despair as they realize that their daughter was no more.
- Tomato in the Mirror: During her final stage, none of the shibito attack her. At the end of the mission, you find out it's because she's already turning into one of them.
- Tragic Monster: She isn't aware of her own transformation into a shibito, and falls into despair after her terrified parents' rejection, though they are truly reunited once her parents become shibito themselves.
Antagonists
Mina Onda
- Advancing Boss of Doom: Is this in Risa's second level. Weapons don't make her flinch, and getting too close prompts Mina to strangle Risa to death, no matter how many times Risa tries to shake her off. The only option is to run.
- Always Identical Twins: With Risa Onda, her twin sister. Although their resemblance to each other is compromised due to Mina having already become a Shibito, with Risa eventually becoming one herself.
- Anti-Villain: Despite being a shibito, her only goals seem to be reuniting with her sister and sharing the world of the shibito with Shiro. Notably, she simply knocks out Shiro's twin Kei even though she has an easy opportunity to kill him.
- Easily Forgiven: According to Siren Maniacs, she seemingly holds no ill will against Shiro for killing her. Rather, her actions against him are for the same purpose as other Shibito: to make him a Shibito so he can share the joy she's experiencing.
- Expy: To Pyramid Head and Maria, mainly due to their symbolic role of a main character's guilt of killing a loved one, as well as Pyramid Head and Mina Onda both carrying a distinctive weapon.
- Creepy Twins: With Risa, though only after Risa becomes a shibito herself.
- Implacable Woman: Being one the earliest characters to become a shibito, she grows strong over time to the point where gunshots doesn't even faze her.
- Posthumous Character: She is dead before the start of the game, killed by Shiro. She doesn't stay dead for long, and quickly returns as a Shibito right after Shiro had finished burying her in the woods.
- Shovel Strike: She carries a gardening spade, which she uses as her personal weapon. It is also implied to be the tool she had stole from Shiro, the same tool he planned to use to dig a grave after killing her.
- Twin Telepathy: There is definitely a connection between her and Risa, especially since Mina was able to briefly control a still-alive Risa into donning a nurse costume and taunt Shiro into killing Risa, all so Risa can become a Shibito and work with Mina to kill Shiro.
- Walking Spoiler: The fact that she's been long dead, at the hands of Shiro.
Datatsushi
The Big Bad that Hisako has been trying to resurrect. He was an extra-dimensional being whose ship crash-landed on Earth in 683 AD, specifically in Japan during a great famine, and was eaten when the people of Hanuda saw him as food that was a gift from the gods.- Ancient Astronauts: An accidental visitor. His ship crash-landed on Earth, setting the game's events in motion.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: Hisako thinks that he wants her to make sacrifices of her most psychically-gifted descendants for him to make up for the villagers' feast, but we have no idea if that's the case, since his personality and mentality are probably completely alien to us. The only thing we can say for certain about Datatsushi is that it's not too hot on being eaten alive.
- Came Back Wrong: When the ritual to restore Datatsushi failed, it pulled Hanuda into the Netherworld, and caused a landslide. The people trapped within the landslide awakened as Shibito (due likely to the presence of red water in the mud), but trapped in the landslide, they couldn't immerse themselves in red water properly and evolve into full Shibito. So, they spent twenty-seven years as Type 4s, rotting away, all while cognizant of their fate. "Eternal life brings eternal pain" indeed.
- Crucified Hero Shot: When he was being eaten, he was laid out on two planks of wood. Since he's seen as a god (or rather, God in general) by the Mana religion and Hisako, this actually fits in with his faux-deity identity.
- Draconic Abomination: Though it's an extradimensional alien that's draconic in the vaguest sense, but considering its seahorse-like appearance and the fact that some cultures considered seahorses as dragons, Datatsushi can be seen as a draconic entity. It helps that its name roughly translates to "fallen dragon child", and its appearance in Inferno gives it a divine image.
- Fish People: Its incomplete form looks just like a ghostly weedy sea dragon with six extra sets of humanoid arms. Its name is even a bit of wordplay; it means "fallen dragon child" in loose Japanese. The Japanese name for seahorse also means "dragon's child".
- Flying Seafood Special: A floating extraterrestrial being that resembles a seahorse.
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: What with his experience with Hanuda's people before dying, it's justified.
- Our Mermaids Are Different: It is a hybrid between a seahorse and a human, and a common Japanese folktale states that consuming mermaid flesh makes one immortal.
- See the Invisible: Though never directly stated, in the first game, it seems that one can only see Datatsushi's mature form if they're in the process of turning into a Shibito — Kyoya and Yoriko, having Kajiro blood in them by that point, are thus blind to its presence. In Kyoya's case, this forces him to locate Datatsushi in the final battle by either sightjacking it or looking at its (visible) reflection.
- Tragic Villain: Imagine it; you've just made a violent landing on an alien world, and then get swiftly eaten by its habitants. The sympathy can be laid out moreso when at the time, his body was in a small, larval form.
- The Voiceless: Because of this, we don't know how he feels about being resurrected, or even if he wanted to be, let alone how he feels about Hisako giving him strength in the final battle. Given how he crash-landed, got his flesh eaten, and just going berserk with ripping the Nest apart, he's likely to be very angry with humanity.
