Animal Motifs / Visual Novels

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• Ace Attorney, oh so much.
  • Phoenix himself is reminiscent of the legendary bird, returning from the brink, surviving getting tased, falling into a very cold river from a broken bridge, and many more. Everyone who interacted with him had their lives changed drastically. In the original, he has a dragon instead (being named Ryuichi), although this isn't brought up until Furio Tigre, who wears a shirt with a tiger chomping on a dragon, appears.
  • Horses for Franziska. She's a haughty girl (at least, initially) and is frequently called 'a wild mare'. Her younger attire resembled riding gear.
  • The Kitaki family has foxes as their family emblem; their youngest heir even has his hair styled like one.
  • Dahlia Hawthorne, The Ingenue college girlfriend of Phoenix, resembles a butterfly in many ways (and they're constantly fluttering around her which burn when she gets angry): on a surface level, she's delicate, doe-eyed and noted as especially beautiful by many characters. Butterflies also have a lot of association with the end and beginning of life, something that not only parallels the phoenix motif of the character she's strongly intertwined with, but also resonates with her character as you realize this young lady has a chillingly strong association with death, both in having one of the longest lists of both directly successful and attempted murders in the series and in quite literally managing to return from beyond the grave.
    • Later prosecutor Nayuta Sadmadhi is also styled like a butterfly, which may possibly be a throwback of sorts to this in order to fool the player.
  • In Spirit of Justice, Queen Garan has spiders as her main motif. When she reveals herself, her hairstyle is too styled like one. Her royal emblem is also a spider (but its legs folded up so it looks like a flower). This befits her cruel and manipulative nature.
  • In The Great Ace Attorney 2: Resolve, Adron B. Metermann and Quinby Altamont share a bee motif, with the former carrying a black, yellow-striped bag and the latter a similarly patterned umbrella. Quinby is the wife of Metermann's boss, making him — as their names suggest — the drone to her queen.
• Ballad of an Evening Butterfly: Butterflies, of course, are a major motif in this visual novel. Black butterflies are associated with Yoru and white butterflies with Chou. Given how butterflies are beautiful, yet very fragile creatures they fit Chou quite as she's an albino vampire that is forced to live her life in a basement.
• Collar × Malice:
  • Heroine Ichika is referred to as a cat by Sasazuka, "baka neko/idiot cat" becoming his Affectionate Nickname for her. The collar she is forced to wear by Adonis has a cat on it and it resembles a cat collar, not to mention how people mention her hair seems to bristle like an angry cat would when she becomes irritated.
    • In his route, Sasazuka also teases her by calling her a dog due to her habit of following orders and being quick to be delighted when praised for a good job.
  • Shiraishi is also associated with cats, particularly the stray cats in the city. He is very fond of said cats, naming and feeding them and even wears cat accessories such as cat ears when working. He can be sly, mischievous, quick to tease and has a hard time getting close to others.
• In Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony, Kokichi Oma is frequently associated with horses; one common translation of his name is literally "King Horse", his Evil Laugh sounds very similar to a horse's whinny, and the assortment of random scraps and junk you find hoarded in his room includes a horse mask and crown.
• Yumiko Sakaki and Michiru Matsushima in The Fruit of Grisaia:, with a cobra and bear, respectively, during their Lightning Glare showdown.
• Little Busters!:
  • Rin is strongly associated with cats, considering that she's constantly surrounded by them and looking after them, has a generally Tsundere, skittish personality, is occasionally drawn with cat ears when she gets angry or shocked, and wears a bell in her hair (and her name is the sound of a ringing bell, too).
  • Kud, on the other hand, is associated with friendly dogs, having a playful and easy to please personality, dearly loving two pet dogs of her grandpa's, and sometimes being drawn with dog ears when upset. She's even great at fetch! She's also associated with bats based around a story about a bat being excluded both from the village of beasts and village of birds, representing the isolation she feels being not entirely Japanese.
  • Sasami is an odd case - her hair ties strongly resemble cat ears and her battle title is 'self-centered cat queen'; but if you follow the mini-route focusing on her, it's revealed that she's actually a huge dog lover.
• Deliberately invoked by the faculty of Iris Academy in Magical Diary. All students are sorted into one of six houses based on their gender and personality traits. Horses, Butterflies and Snakes for girls. Wolves, Falcons and Toads for boys.
• Kazuko in Majikoi! Love Me Seriously! is heavily associated with dogs. She is frequently depicted with dog ears, and occasionally a tail. She's trained to respond to a whistle and will run to the person who blows it whether she wants to or not. Most notably, though, she has two nicknames referencing dogs, Wanko (used by everyone) and Inu (used by Chris). Mayucchi comes up with an animal motif for everyone.
• Nasuverse:
  • Fate/stay night:
    • While Saber (aka Artoria Pendragon, a gender flipped King Arthur) was often compared to dragons when she was alive, she more closely has an association with lions, as lions are often representations of bravery and leadership fitting Artoria being a king when she was alive.
    • Lancer has a dog motif, fitting his true identity as Cú Chulainn, the Hound of Culann, though Lancer himself hates being compared to one.
    • Rider gets both horses for her ability to summon Pegasus and snakes as befits her real identity as Medusa. She hates the snake comparison.
    • Souichirou Kuzuki has a snake motif, given that he specializes in a fighting style called Snake, which is based around Confusion Fu.
    • Berserker, aka Heracles, has a lion motif, fitting his mane like hair, slitted pupils, his animalistic roaring, and his legend as the hero who slew the Nemean lion.
    • The Shadow has a squid motif, given its body's resemblance to tentacles, Shirou likening it to a deep sea creature, and the fact that Lancer first discovers it while it's hiding in the lake near Ryoudou Temple.
    • Fujimura Taiga, although she really doesn't like being compared to a tiger. One would think that she would stop wearing the yellow striped shirt and take the tiger strap off her shinai if that were the case, but... well, logic has never been her strong point. As it turns out, she actually loves tigers but hates the comparison people constantly make. She calls it a "love-hate relationship".
  • Tsukihime: The series compares Arcueid to a cat a few times with her mood swings, occasionally impish nature and impulsive behavior. And Neko-Arc in the hints corner. Kagetsu Tohya took that and ran with it. Neko-Arc everywhere, a leopard booby trap in her underwear drawer (Yes, really) that eats Shiki, Arcueid in a catsuit, normal Arcueid with cat ears... Len also has a cat theme, but that really doesn't count considering what she is.
• Spirit Hunter series:
  • Spirit Hunter: Death Mark:
    • Shimi-O is associated with bees. He kills his victims with a drill and turns them into human beehives. He's also covered in hundreds of bees, and Yashiki has to navigate carefully around beehives during the chapter. In life, Shimi-O was a member of the cult, and the bees reflect the hierarchy of it.
    • Red Riding Hood from the final chapter is associated with spiders. An ancient torture method is brought up during the case, where a spider is forced down someone's throat to prove whether they're innocent or not (similar to witch drownings). Red Riding Hood was victim to it, which drove her to commit suicide later. Her final form is a giant, monstrous spider, and after she's defeated, Yashiki finds a dead spider on his way home that he associates with Red.
  • Spirit Hunter: NG:
    • The rabbit motif from Death Mark shows up in a few, subtle ways; the bathmat in Akira's apartment has a bunny design, his aunt's bar is called The Black Rabbit, and Kakuya, despite her fox-like appearance, is an explicit reference to The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, which is loosely connected to the Moon Rabbit myth.
    • Turtles are featured prominently in the Urashima case, inhabiting the lake that the Urashima Woman haunts. It's later revealed that the Urashima Woman's murderer dumped dead fetuses in the lake, which possessed the turtles and caused their shells to bear human faces. In one Bad End, Kaoru is found dead with turtles spewing out of their mouth. This is a nod to Urashima Taro, the hero of the folklore that the Urashima Woman is based off of, who was rewarded for saving a turtle's life.
    • Dogs are front and centre for the Kubitarou case, as they are the primary victim of her decapitations. Maruhashi's devotion and loyalty to Seiji are compared to that of a bulldog, which foreshadows him becoming one of Kubitarou's victims, later found wearing a dog mask and collar.
    • Birds are prominent throughout the Screaming Author case. The silhouette first seen outside the house resembles a crane, the titular screaming sounds like a bird warbling, and evidence around the house relates to a performance of "Lac des cane", or "Duck Lake". A young girl was slated to play the part of a princess becoming a duck, which Yakumo made a literal reality, kidnapping and mutilating her into a bird-shaped monstrosity.
• In Sunrider, it’s safe to say that Sola’s uncle Crow Harbor is heavily associated with crows. Apart from being named after them, when we finally see him during The Stinger of Sunrider Liberation Day he’s wearing a large bird’s skull on one shoulder and a cape made of what appears to be crow feathers on the other. Given that he plunged the entire galaxy into a bloody civil war just to put himself on the throne of the ancient Ryuvian Empire and is poised to do the same thing to the modern galaxy, he fits the motif of crows as harbingers of doom.
• In Umineko: When They Cry, Beatrice is most frequently associated with golden butterflies (appearing early on a cloud of them), signifying the questionable nature of reality as presented in the series. Bernkastel, the self-entitled "cruelest Witch in the world", has a cat's tail. In what may have been a partial Cultural Cross-Reference, Battler is a few times compared to a Phoenix (for his determination).

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