Characters / AI: The Somnium Files - Iris Sagan

AI: The Somnium Files | Main Index
Protagonists: Kaname Date | Mizuki Date
AI: The Somnium Files (Iris Sagan) | AI: The Somnium Files - nirvanA Initiative

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A-set / Iris Sagan

Voiced by: Nao Shiraki (Japanese), Jackie Lastra (English)

^{See her in nirvanA Initiative} 

"Good evening, good morning and hello! It's the brand-new star of the net world, Tesa, also known as A-set, you bet!"

An internet idol and videogame streamer working for Renju's company; Lemniscate. She's an energetic young girl who's friends with both Mizuki and Ota. In spite of seemingly having nothing to do with the case at hand, she voluntarily gets involved with Date's investigation, much to his annoyance.

What Date learns about her unearths several of the first game's biggest mysteries.

She returns in nirvanA Initiative in more of a minor role. She's one of the people alongside Ryuki and Mizuki to see Jin Furue's corpse appear in front of them live on TV. She appears throughout the game to aid Mizuki and Ryuki in the Half-Body killings. Alongside the return of (the now named) Amame, you also meet her other best friend Kizuna.

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Because of volume, all spoilers of the first game will be left unmarked. Please be warned.

A-H

• Advertised Extra: She was very prevalent in the marketing leading up to nirvanA Initiative, having revamped character art and being part of the advertised cast. Her actual impact on the plot though is pretty minimal in the grand scheme of things, being eclipsed in screentime by other characters like Amame.
• All Love Is Unrequited: She cares for Ota as a friend and supporter but doesn't reciprocate his feelings for her.
• Animal-Eared Headband: Never seen without her cat-like headband, except during flashbacks. Near the very end, she reveals that she actually wears it for a purpose; it's meant to keep her brain cancer from spreading. However, it should be noted that she continues to wear it in the Golden Ending after she gets the tumors removed via nanosurgery and even further after that in the past segments of nirvanA Initiative, which are set three months after the first games ending and loses them somewhere in the three year Time Skip.
• Back from the Dead: After Date stops Dream Iris from dying in So's Somnium, several characters, including him and Iris, begin to speculate that Date must've somehow changed reality to resurrect her. Of course, this gets subverted twofold; first on Iris's route, she dies to her brain tumor, then we find out that So's Somnium is actually his memory of watching Manaka being murdered.
• Best Friend: To Mizuki
  • The two often looks to each other for comfort and support, especially with all the horrific events that happen in these games, and Mizuki pretty regularly stays over at the Sagans' house.
  • Mizuki is worried sick when Iris goes missing on her near the climax of the Resolution route. And when she finds the guy that kidnapped Iris, she beats the living shit out of him.
  • Iris asks Mizuki to be her partner on Komeji's show in the second game, though when things take darker turn as Jin's body appears, Mizuki comforts a shocked Iris.
  Iris: "Mizuki is like... a cute little sister! And, and! My favorite friend! I like her a lot!"
  Mizuki: "How much?"
  Iris: "About three universes worth!"
  Mizuki: "But just three universes...?"
  Iris: "What about... 271,828,182,845 universes?!"
  Mizuki: "Well I like you double that!"
  Iris: "Hey, no fair!"
• Beware the Silly Ones: In spite of her bubbly personality, she's more than willing to blackmail Date as soon as they met. She seems to get even shadier in the route on the left but it's not really Iris by that point, but Saito pretending to be her. It gets Lampshaded by Tama when she expresses excitement at being the first girl to be brought into Ryuki's limo, although Ryuki for his part thinks she's just reading too much into it (and he may not be totally wrong, given Tama's mild Clingy Jealous Girl tendencies).
  Tama: "What is this woman plotting...?"
  Ryuki: "I think she's just like that."
  Tama: "No, I can sense it..."
  Tama: "Careful Ryuki, she's very calculative..."
• Big Damn Reunion: She gets to have a long overdue reunion with Falco/Date prior to defeating Saito for good.
  "Uncle... It's really you, right?"
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Subverted. She is initially set up as one in the left paths, with all of the evidence pointing to her being Renju's killer and then teaming up with Ota to manipulate Date. But as it turns out, she was Dead All Along, with her suspicious actions actually carried out by Saito in her body.
• Bound and Gagged: When Date comes to rescue her from Saito, she's tied up with her mouth covered in duct tape, Saito being moments away from shooting her head off.
• Cain and Abel: The Abel to Saito's Cain; Saito successfully swaps bodies and murders her in the Annihilation route. And even in coinciding routes, she's still effectively dead due to being swapped into Renju's body.
• Character Catchphrase: She has a play-along slogan that her fans memorize, all based around a series of prompts with respective word chains that rhyme with her name.
  Iris: "Water!"
  Ota: "Wet! Sweat! A-Set!"
  
  Iris: "Memory!"
  Moma: "Forget! Fret! A-Set!"
  
  Iris: "Fears!"
  Mizuki: "Regret! Upset! A-Set!"
• Cheerful Child: She had her exuberance even back when she was a little kid. Hitomi loves to tell Date stories about Iris when she was young and how energetic she'd be. The flashbacks she has spending time with Falco also reinforce this trait.
• Cheery Pink: Pink is her signature color, as seen with her hair and outfit, emphasizing her energetic and sweet demeanor.
• Chekhov's Hobby: Claims to be a particularly fast runner, a fact she gets to prove to Date personally. It also helps her easily avoid capture from Saito-as-Renju near the start of the right path, though the fact that he was suffering from serious injuries at the time was also undoubtedly a factor.
• Cloudcuckoolander:
  • Deconstructed: She acts like one because her brain tumor is harming her cognitive functions. After her condition is cured, she still has her quirks, but it's a far cry from her Naix delusions.
  • Performing Wink Psyncs on her shows that her internal thoughts mostly consist of her doing goofy dances and wordplays.
• The Cloudcuckoolander Was Right: Her fears about Naixalotz in the first game are completely a result of her brain tumor-induced delusions...until the sequel reveals that they are in fact a real and dangerous organisation (for different reasons and motives) which she does end up help in the fight against them.
• Conditioned to Accept Horror: Of her trio of friends, she's got the (relatively) calmest reaction to seeing Komeji's corpse. Granted, she's already been the target of another Serial Killer and already saw a dead body dropped in front of her, so it makes sense that she's used to this sort of thing.
• Connected All Along: With Date, and on several levels. His body is actually Saito Sejima's, Iris's half brother on So's side; she has no idea because she doesn't even know who her father is. Then the double whammy is that Date is Falco, her father surrogate who shes been trying to find for years.
• Conspiracy Theorist: She holds a delusion of an organization known as Naixatloz targeting her for uncovering their secret project regarding the spread of A.I. across the universe. Her Somnium's residual effect on Date's psyche might cause him to believe the same delusion if he continually has Aiba follow her instructions.
  • The sequel shows that even after her brain cancer is cured, she's still into conspiracy theories and occult stuff. Just lacking the element of said conspiracies being a threat to herself specifically.
• Cool Big Sis: Considers herself to be this kind of figure to Mizuki, describing the latter as being like a "little sister" to her. In the Resolution route ending, Date officially adopts Mizuki and shows signs of getting back together with Hitomi, hinting that Iris might become this to Mizuki for real.
  Mizuki: "Who is Iris to me?... a friend, a big sister...and I kinda envy her"
  Iris: "Oh, stop it!"
  Mizuki: "It's true though! I look up to you a lot, Iris!"
• Coy, Girlish Flirt Pose: You can tell when she's about to get really cheeky by this posture.
• Damsel in Distress:
  • In her route, Date and friends have to rescue her from a group of mercenaries, driving an armored truck and blasting at a small army to reach her.
  • Saito kidnaps her in the final act to lure Date to the prototype Psync. She gets freed when Mizuki and the rest of The Cavalry come to help.
• Dead All Along: In the left paths, courtesy of being kidnapped and murdered by Saito who then puppets her body.
• Death of Personality: Notable in that in three of the five routes, Iris has been killed by Saito who is inhabiting her body. He forced her to swap into Renju's body, then strangles her to death.
• Demoted to Extra: Downplayed; while she still participates in the plot of nirvanA Initiative, she's nowhere near as central to it as she was in the first game, as the latter's biggest reveals often hinge on her backstory.
• Designated Victim: Something horrible manages to happen to her in every route of the first game.
  • Ota and Mizuki's routes: she's body-swapped into Renju's body and strangled to death by Saito, her body at the end being inhabited by So's conciousness.
  • Annihilation route: The same as Ota and Mizuki's routes plus having her body grusomely sawed in half.
  • Her route: she gets briefly kidnapped by mercenaries and then dies to her brain tumor at the end.
  • Resolution route: Although it's definitively the best outcome for her: she's kidnapped and held hostage by So, and likely would have died had it not been for outside intervention.
• Disappeared Dad: Date questions at several points whether or not she has a father since Hitomi is single. Then we learn she's the illegitimate child of So Sejima, and that he refuses to associate with her out of fear of damaging his career. Not only that, but her father surrogate, Falco, disappeared before the events of the first game, only for it turn out that he was Date all along.
• The Ditz: She is rather...out there. Though she can be clever when she wants to, by default she's generally pretty bubbly yet... dim. At "present day" in Nirvana Initiative, one of her friends sort of acknowledges that this is part of her charm, and if you Wink Sync with her, you see her just spinning in circles until she gets dizzy like an 8-year-old for no discernable reason.
• Dub Pronunciation Change: Her name is pronounced with a short "i" (i-ri-su) in the Japanese version, whereas it's pronounced with a diphthong "ai" in the English version (ai-ris).
• Dude Magnet: Ota and Moma simp for her like crazy, something she tries to lay down gently when she can so as not get their hopes up, and while Date does have a stronger preference for older women in general, it's strongly implied he finds her attractive as well (that one doesn't last). And as a celebrity, her appeal likely goes even further online.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: All characters have this to a certain degree, but it especially applies to Iris. She is the only character to explicitly die in every single route EXCEPT the Resolution route after Boss gets her expensive brain surgery paid for and she's completely healthy at the end.
• Easy Amnesia: In the second game, Ryuki finds her in So's garden with a concussion and takes her back to HQ with him for the investigation. Psyncing with her reveals that she witnessed So speaking with the Tearer, and in a state of panic, she slipped and fell on some rocks, messing up her memory of what she saw.
• Entendre Failure: She's not so innocent that she's completely ignorant to sexual things, but as far as innuendo goes? Tends to fly right over her head, often much to Date's chagrin.
  • Then there's a conversation with Mama that milks her naïveté further:
    Mama: "As you can see, I'm a little tight, honey."
    Date: "How could I 'see' that?"
    Iris: "I do! I wanna see!
    Mama: "You want to?
    Date: "Do you even know what she's referring to?
    Iris: "Huh?"
  • Seemingly subverted in the epilogue of the first game where she mentions that Date (as Uncle) used to make jokes about the speaker system in her home looking like a dick.
  • She doesn't bat an eye to Gen saying he and Date have seen each other's butts.
• Entertainingly Wrong: She believes that she is being targeted by an international conspiracy ruin by an Illuminati-esque organization due to a brain tumor. And on the right-side routes, she nearly gets kidnapped by a group of masked men which only convinces her more than she is being targeted, which is why she keeps trying to get Date to spend time with her: to protect her. In reality, the masked men were sent by the Cyclops Killer so that he can continue his scheme that was interrupted due to Date's earlier interference. And for bonus points, the sequel reveals that while she was right about Naixatloz being a dangerous conspiracy, they're nothing at all like she thought they were and they're not remotely concerned with her.
• Extremely Protective Child: In a conversation with Date, Hitomi recalls how Iris, back when she was little, would come to her aid whenever the mothers at their nursery would gossip about them. Hitomi's gun injury was also an incredibly traumatic moment for Iris, so much that she cried by her hospital bed begging Hitomi to stay alive. And by the end of the first game, Iris joins Date to save her mother from Saito.
  Hitomi: "Heh, I'm supposed to be her mother, but it's always Iris protecting me."
• Eye Scream: In the first game, she (or at least her body) survives all left routes except for the Annihilation one, but not before Saito removes an eye from her head. The damage from that leaves her briefly comatose and in need of surgery.
  • In her route, Date is forced to remove one of her eyes in order to use the prototype Psync with her. That unfortunately doesn't help to save her in the end.
• Fangirl: Of Egyptian Mythology. And ShovelForge, which is an Expy of Minecraft.
• Fanservice Pack: Played with. Technically she's showing less skin than before, but her older design definitely places more focus to some of her curves, such as her hips and thighs, thanks to Sensual Spandex. Contrary to her prior image as a cute and perky young girl, her new look implies more awareness of herself as an attractive woman.
• Fanservice with a Smile: She used to work at Sunfish Pocket with Amame, presumably performing similar duties to the other mermaids to please customers.
• Flanderization: While she was quite the occult geek in the first game, it was hardly her only character trait, and she was considerably knowledgeable on other topics as well, such as mythology and even psychology. The sequel doubles down on her interest with the occult specifically, to the extent that there is rarely a scene with Iris that doesn't involve her talking extensively about the paranormal, turning it into an obsession. And as a result, her interest in those other aforementioned subjects has all but completely vanished as well.
• Flower Motifs: If the name didn't give it away, she has a lot of connections to Irises. They signify good news and hope, are a part of the eye, and are the namesake for the Greek goddess of rainbows who delivered messages for the gods. Iris will always remark on the flower when she spots one, being the one that draws the motifs to it.
• Foil:
  • A lot of parallels can be drawn between her and Mizuki: children of single parents (and both adopted), disappeared dads, have close relationships with Date, and both end up being heavily involved in the New Cyclops Killings. But the dynamics to their similarities are starkly different.
    • Mizuki being Date's kid is the result of a very abusive childhood, and as a result their relationship, while mutually caring, is very tense. Iris meanwhile grew up happily with Hitomi and has utmost gratitude for her love, but Hitomi also keeps the darker elements of their relationship, like Iris's adoption and Hitomi blackmailing So, a secret from Iris.
    • Mizuki's father Renju, while he cared for her, was very distant because of his Workaholic habits, and then he suddenly completely disappears at the start of the game. Iris meanwhile never got to know her birth father, and her father surrogate disappeared at some point in the past (and it turns out Date is said father surrogate, meaning both Mizuki and Iris are effectively his kids).
    • While Iris is very friendly and teasing towards Date, Mizuki is prickly and hard to approach for him; even Iris has to mediate for the two. Date is fiercely protective of the two as a result, though while Mizuki joins him in the action, he's usually the one to bodyguard Iris.
    • Mizuki gets dragged into the investigation by the death of her parents, not having any kind of significant relation to the killer on her own, and ends up becoming one of the biggest contributors to bringing in the killer. Iris as it's revealed is personally tied to a lot of players involved in the case, including the killer himself, the victims, Date, and the man who tried to cover everything up in the frist place.
  • To her half-brother Saito: Both of them were children raised by single parents, developed crippling disabilities in their youths, and are both perpetual smilers to an extant. Iris however is a sweet, bubbly, and compassionate girl, while Saito is an psychotic, murderous, and needlessly cruel young man. Their relation to their respective parents is also opposite to the other; Hitomi was a devoted and loving mother to Iris who put her all into raising her right, while So was highly neglectful and grew fearful and spiteful towards Saito as the latter grew more violent. Iris therefore loves Hitomi, while Saito was willing to murder So in cold blood. Hitomi also was willing to resort to blackmail in a desperate attempt to treat Iris's brain tumor, while So let Saito's brain disorder go untreated for years, resulting in Saito turning to murder to cope with his chemical imbalance.
• Freak Out: At the start of nirvanA Initiative, she has a complete panic attack seeing half of Jin Furue's corpse suddenly appears in Studio Dvaita. She's so rattled that Ryuki can't speak to her afterward because she's still being calmed down by Mizuki. That helps, but she later asks for support from Amame to help her get through it. The latter has tragic consequences that she couldn't have possibly accounted for.
• The Gadfly: It can be hard to tell how much of it is intentional at times, but she definitely has her moments, such as telling Moma that she and Date slept and bathed together at a hotel for no other reason than that it would be funny.
• Gamer Chick: She's a video game streamer on top of her musical career. The game that is mentioned the most is ShovelForge (a Bland-Name Product version of Minecraft), and her Somnium is based on that game.
  • In nirvanA Initiative, her Somnium is now based on a Pokemon GO parody called "Kusemon", complete with a collecting units to fight enemies with.
• Genki Girl: She fits this trope like a glove; energetic, friendly, easily excited, and sometimes just a plain goofball, especially when she's filming her videos.
• Gift of Song: In a Freeze-Frame Bonus on Ota's To-Witter account towards the beginning of the game, it's revealed that the lyrics for Iris' new single, Invincible Rainbow Arrow, were written by her for a child suffering from a brain tumor. It's a bit suspect at first, since it comes from Ota but in a darkly ironic twist, Iris herself also just so happens to be afflicted with the same condition, so not only is the story likely true, but the lyrics likely hold just as much personal significance to her as well.
• Girlish Pigtails: Her child and teenage selves sport variants of this hairstyle, emphasizing her youthful charm. It really shows once she changes her hair up as an adult.
• Girls Love Stuffed Animals: Mizuki introduced the Adorabbit toy to Iris and she really liked it, prompting her to buy Adorabbit merchandise.
• Go Out with a Smile: If she succumbs to her brain cancer, she dies with a peaceful smile in Date's arms.
• Good Wears White: Her white and pink palette make her seem approachable and sweet, but they also serve a double meaning when you realize she's the White Sheep of her family on So's side. So and his sons (plural) by comparison wears lots of dark colors.
• Guest-Star Party Member: She joins Date on his investigation through several routes of the first game, including along the one to the Golden Ending.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: The Annihilation route sees her end up this way courtesy of an ice-cutting machine. Her body, that is. She was really strangled in Renju's body earlier.
• Happily Adopted: Even after finding out the truth about Hitomi and Manaka, she still considers Hitomi to be her mother.
• Heroic Bastard: The kindhearted love child of a Corrupt Politician and a high school graduate.
• Hidden Depths:
  • She shows a lot of interest in conspiracy theories and phenomena such as the Mandela Effect. She also knows a lot about Greek and Egyptian mythology.
  • Like Aiba, she's very knowledgeable on insects.
    Iris: "Uncle, look! It's a Thyreocephalus orthodoxus"
    Date: "You too? How do you know this stuff?"

I-Z

• I Will Find You: She's been looking for Falco for years ever since he disappeared from her life. "A-Set" was actually a name he came up with as she told him about her dreams to be an idol, so she uses that name in the hopes that he'll recognize her if she makes it big one day.
  • Saito takes advantage of stealing Falco's body to lure Iris into a trap, under the pretense of being "the person she trusts most". This sets her up to be his bait to bring Date towards the prototype Psync machine.
• Idol Singer: She works for Lemniscate as a singer and dancer. Her duties go way beyond that too including streaming and podcasts.
• In-Series Nickname: Her fans call her "Tesa", which is "A-set" spelled backwards.
• Innocent Blue Eyes: To let you know that she wouldn't hurt a fly... Presumably.
• Insistent Appellation: In Nirvana Initiative, she continues to refer to Date as "Mr. Date" instead of "Uncle", which she started using at the end of the first game upon Date reclaiming his old identity as Falco, the man she referred to as "Uncle".
• Intergenerational Friendship: She's best friends with Mizuki, who's more than five years younger and goes to a different school.
• It Amused Me: Her motivation for wanting to go to the scene of the first murder. She's never been to a crime scene before and really wants to check it out just to satiate her curiosity. Made much more understandable once it's revealed that she's terminally ill. She only has a few months left to live at most, so she knows this might very well be her only chance.
• It's All My Fault: In the Hidden Bats Alternate Reality Game, she blames herself for the car accident that forced Kairo Goshiki to stop skateboarding, even in spite of knowing his cigarette smoke caused her brain tumors to become as bad as they got.
• Killed Offscreen: Played With in the Annhilation Route; she's technically killed offscreen after being swapped into Renju's body but Saito has her body at that point, which he then saws in half on live camera after switching out of it.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: nirvanA Initiative gives away that she survives the events of the first game, especially given that she's got a lethal brain tumor in the latter.
• Leitmotif: The melody of "Invincible Rainbow Arrow" appears in several tracks related to Iris, including a general background track and two tracks related to her death in different routes.
• Like a Daughter to Me:
  • Date develops this dynamic with her as the two bond, becoming increasingly protective of her through the game. This was all true as well for Falco, who decided to give up his old life to let her and Hitomi live peacefully away from his life of danger. The two are able to fully rekindle their bond by the end of the Resolution route.
  • Renju also cared greatly for Iris, what with her being the daughter of his dear friend. He even babysat her regularly. He was also the one to offer her idol job in the first place after seeing her natural love for dancing.
• Like Brother and Sister: This is how she views her relationship with Ota. Though Ota likes to think otherwise, he once describes Iris as "a sister that isn't blood related." Though it's questionable.
• Like Parent, Like Spouse: She quickly starts developing feelings for Date, who reminds her a lot of her missing father figure, Falco. She confirms her crush is gone in the Playable Epilogue after learning the two are one and the same.
• Likes Older Men: A somewhat Downplayed example as it's not explicitly stated but the only two people she is even remotely hinted to have an interest in are Date (at least until she finds out who he is) and Ryuki, two men (and detectives, specifically) that are several years older than her. Which makes her total lack of romantic interest in Ota all the more pronounced.
• The Load: She purposefully acts like this to Date at first by interfering his investigations with ShovelForge requests or asking him out on a date. (She even blackmails him just to take her to the crime scene at the beginning of the game at one point.)
• Locked Out of the Loop: By the end of the first game, she knows all about ABIS, the identity of her birth mother, and the body swapping that went on with Falco and Saito. What she doesn't know about is that So is her birth father. She's even still confused in the sequel why he's trying to be nice to her.
• Long Hair Is Feminine: She lets her hair down as an adult in nirvanA Initiative, showing that she's now a grown woman.
• Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Comes across as this given her personality, hobbies, and looks, though she secretly hides a more scheming attitude. However, the "Manic" part becomes a serious thing when learning about her brain tumor affecting her mentality, which Date can be afflicted with if he lets her disorder get the better of him during her Somnium in the first game. She was also this alongside Hitomi for Hayato Yagyu, whose happy experiences with them convinced him to quit his assassin job.
• Mascot: So much so that, on the first game's boxart, she shares an identical presence with Aiba. Leading up to the first game's release, a series of ARG videos based on Iris's streams were aired, making her a huge part of the game's marketing.
• Meaningful Name:
  • "A-Set" is a version of "Eset", one of the many names of the Egyptian goddess of magic who many believe to be one and the same with the Greek Iris.
  • Iris...let's see...
    • The colored part of the eye.
    • The flower, which is referenced to mean good news and hope.
    • The rainbow goddess, whom Iris herself is also aware of.
    • It has 'ai' in it, as in 'love'. Hitomi reasoned that 'ai', 'love' would always be part of 'Iris'.
    • Hitomi also chose it since 'Manaka' reminded her of 'Manako', 'eye'.
• The Mentally Disturbed: Her manipulative, deceptive and rather ridiculous way of acting can all be traced back to her malignant brain tumour.
• Meta Twist: Players of the Zero Escape trilogy and its love of Cute and Psycho characters might come to believe that Iris is one of them, especially given her manipulative behaviors in the left routes. As it turns out, while Iris is The Mentally Disturbed, she's genuinely nice, and left-route Iris is Saito joyriding her body.
• Nice Girl: There doesn't seem to be one mean bone in this girl's body. She manages to get along with almost every major recurring character, even complete assholes like So. And when she meets Mayumi, who dislikes Iris and thinks she's trying to manipulate Ota, Iris completely flips Mayumi's perception and gets along with her in the end.
• Nightmare Fetishist: Contrary to her peppy and cute idol image, she shows a strong fondness for and knowledge of the occult and other things most people would find unnerving. She also shows no discomfort at being at a crime scene and even displays a kind of playful curiosity about it. That being said, she still has her limits. In nirvanA Initiative, when half of a corpse suddenly appears in front of her, she has the worst Freak Out out of everyone there, although by the next day she's mostly recovered.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • Normally she sounds extremely cheerful and is prone to randomly dropping animal-themed Non Sequiturs, but she suddenly drops this in the left-side routes and starts acting more composed and subdued. This is because that's actually Saito in her body.
  • Her usual cheeriness is replaced with abject horror when she sees Jin Furue's body.
• Out of Focus: Despite being a critical character during the right paths (and being heavily featured on the cover), Iris is not very prominent on the left paths after her interrogation. This is mainly due to, in the left-hand path, being killed in the Annihilation route and in a coma for the entirety of the Ota and Mizuki routes after a certain point. It also doesn't help that the actual Iris was murdered by Saito before you even see her again after the initial split, meaning her Somnium on the left path is actually Saito's.
  • Applies to nirvanA Initiative as well. She goes from being a major heroine to a relatively minor character with little to no involvement in the plot, with several of her friends getting much more prominence than her. Although slightly downplayed in that she at least gets her own Somnium again, which is more than many of the returning characters get.
• Parental Favoritism: A stranger case than most. Renju isn't Iris's actual father, but Renju spent more time in helping Hitomi and Iris out and making sure Iris could do what she aspired to be than he did attempting to defend his actual daughter Mizuki from his ex-wife's abuse.
• Pervert Revenge Mode: She smacks Date for requesting, on Moma's behalf, to see her panties. She's more mad that she believes Date is putting words in Moma's mouth (which Moma uses to deflect suspicion from himself).
  Iris: "That's messed up, Date! I know Moma would never say that! Right Moma?"
  Moma: "Y-Yeah, yeah, o-of course! Date, you... evil pervert!"
  Date: "Seriously?..."
• Pink Is Feminine: Wears mostly pink and is unabashedly cutsey in her presentation.
• Plot Tumor: You won't hear anything about Naixatloz until Iris mentions she's being targeted by them, and if Date agrees with this assessment, you'll find yourself wrapped up in this conspiracy completely and the Cyclops killings take a sudden backseat. Justified, as this is the result of Date succumbing to mass hysteria and believing the delusions of a terminally ill girl with a literal tumor on her brain that's killing her.
• The Pollyanna:
  • All things considered, the girl's had a lot of rough obstacles in her life that are easy to forget due to her exuberance. Her birth mother was murdered when she was a baby, her only father figure disappeared without a trace, her adoptive mother was shot and permanently injured, she developed a lethal brain tumor as a teenager, and the events of the first game put her in the crosshairs of her sadistic, long-lost Serial Killer brother. Despite all of that, she manages to stay as optimistic as always.
  • In the second game, she bounces back pretty quick after seeing a bisected corpse the day prior.
    "I'm okay! I recover pretty quick from these things... See? I'm bouncing right back! Bouncy, bouncy, bouncy bunny!!"
• Precocious Crush: A bit older than usual, but Iris has something of a crush on Date during the story. During the epilogue, Boss asks her if she still is crushing on him. Instead of denying that she ever was, she just laughs for a moment and then says no. This makes sense considering Date is back in his original older body and in said body was originally something of a father figure to Iris.
• Protectorate: Date, and several others, finds themselves coming to her aid at several points in the first game.
  • A group of myterious thugs attack her and Date in Golden Yokocho, leading to Iris delving even further into her Naix delusions because she thinks the men are part of it.
  • Exaggerated in her own route once Date becomes convinced into believing her Naix conspiracy theory. This takes a tragic turn for them as Iris dies from her brain tumor at the end.
  • In the Resolution route, Mizuki and Ota stay on the lookout for her on Date's request, only for Saito in Falco's body to trick her into following him somewhere.
• Rainbow Motif: True to her namesake, she has a recurring theme around rainbows; the song she sings—"Invincible Rainbow Arrow"—obviously emphasizes them as well as symbolizing Iris's optimism even in the face of crushing events.
• Shared Family Quirks: It turns out that, like her biological mother, Manaka, she has an implied attraction towards older men. Thankfully, Iris's general taste in men is a lot better, as both Date and Ryuki are far better people than So ever was.
• The Schizophrenia Conspiracy: Justified. Her tumor's symptoms include paranoid delusions - this causes problems for the investigation, because she genuinely thinks a Government Conspiracy is after her, and she acts shady and manipulative to cover her tracks. Hitomi admits this isn't the first time she's developed delusional beliefs. The second game double subverts this. It turns out Naix is a real, secretive, and sinister, organization, but they're nothing like what Iris thinks - they're a semi-public Church of Happyology who believes reality is a Lotus-Eater Machine they want out of, but everything about aliens and ritual sacrifice is just baffling to them; they didn't even know Iris existed until the second game, and even after that, they don't care either way.
• Secretly Dying: Iris has brain cancer; she's not expected to live more than a year without an insurmountably expensive surgery. She hasn't told any of her closest friends about it and makes excuses or tries to change the subject whenever her friends notice symptoms like nausea and hand tremors. Thankfully in the Golden Ending, she receives the aforementioned life-saving treatment and is healthy by the end, even reappearing in the sequel.
• Sensual Spandex: While not very obvious in-game due to the jacket she wears over it and her reduced screentime in general, concept art◊ for her older design shows that the new bodysuit she wears is surprisingly skintight, accentuating her hips in particular.
• Serendipitous Survival: In the first game, she's technically one of the earliest victims of the New Cyclops Serial Killings due to being tricked by Saito and put in Renju's body before being strangled to death in the left side of the flowchart. She avoids this in the right side after Date panics from a misunderstanding and orders Iris to stay home a mere eight minutes before Saito tried and failed to call her, resulting in him getting into a car accident and the ensuing chaos ultimately prevents him from killing Iris.
• She's All Grown Up: The timeskip in nirvanA Initiative sees her aged up to a young adult, having grown out her hair and features and changing up her outfit.
• Sheep in Sheep's Clothing: Iris is sweet, charming, and bubbly, which will just make her look more suspicious to players (particularly if they're familiar with Spike Chunsoft's other works) even before the left routes start incriminating her. But no, Iris is genuinely as nice as she seems, and her actions on the left paths were pulled by Saito in her body.
• Shipper on Deck: Isn't shy about hinting that she wants her mother, Hitomi, to be together with her 'Uncle', Falco, aka. the actual Kaname Date. She is especially pushy during the epilogue.
  Young Iris: "Hey Mommy?..."
  Hitomi: "Yes?"
  Young Iris: "Are you gonna marrryyy him?"
• Small Role, Big Impact: She has much less overall screen time in the sequel and minimal involvement in the plot. Despite this, calling Amame for emotional support starts a chain of events that leads to the latter killing the Big Bad of the story. She also provides a valuable Somnium to Ryuki that reveals some of Tearer's plans.
• Smarter Than You Look:
  • She has the image of a ditzy, peppy idol, and while she does have her genuinely ditzy moments and can be pretty immature, she's overall significantly more intelligent than you'd think. She's very knowledgeable about a number of subjects that the average person would know very little about, can be quite cunning and calculative when she wants to be (even if it's usually just to tease others), and even immediately figures out the meaning behind Aiba's favorite number when she hears it. Even Aiba can't help but admit that she underestimated her intelligence.
  • She knows very well how quite creepy Ota's fanboyism is, and is always ready to bluntly reject Ota on his face whenever he suggests they are anything more than friends, but Iris is business savvy enough to know Japanese Idols like her can greatly benefit from people like Ota, as long as they aren't actually dangerous stalkers or worse, so Iris does drip fed Ota with some minimal and timely appreciation for having a devout fan like him.
• Stepford Smiler: Her terminal illness troubles her a lot more than she let's on, but she's almost all smiles. Whenever her symptoms manifest outwardly, she usually either deflects with humor (jokingly claiming it's "morning sickness" when she gets dizzy) or quickly brushes it aside.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: She's got a similar sense of humor to Boss of all people. Iris is the only to like Boss's jack-o-lantern joke, and the two get hyped over throwing darts together,
• Strong Family Resemblance: Looks almost exactly like her biological mother, Manaka, which creates a lot of confusion when people mistake Manaka's corpse or Somnium visions of Manaka for Iris.
• The Tease: Certainly not to the extent of Boss, as she's still a teenager, but there are definitely times where her usually innocent-natured teasing takes a...not-so-innocent tone, such as when she accuses Date of imagining her pole-dancing, or the infamous rock-paper-scissors scene, where she offers to do anything Date asks of her if he wins, with a suggestive look, even implying in one outcome that she wouldn't particularly mind if he wanted to see her naked. This ceases completely once he returns to his old body, presumably because it would feel weird to keep up that kind of behavior with someone she looked up to as a father, as well as wishing for him and her mother to hook up.
• This Is Unforgivable!: Invoked: while Date is Easily Forgiven by Hitomi for her gun injury, Iris points out that he should be doing his best to support Hitomi after such a long absence from her life.
  "You're too nice, Mom. (To Date) I will never forgive you!"
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: The Girly Girl to Mizuki's Tomboy; Mizuki is regularly snarky to Date and is an exceptional fighter while Iris is a professional idol with a particular love for dancing.
• True Companions: She'd do anything to help out Mizuki and Ota who likewise feel the same towards her. The second game adds Amame and Kizuna to the mix who spend a lot of time with Iris throughout the game.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: After Jin's corpse appears and greatly rattles her, Iris calls Amame and asks if they can spend some time together to calm down. Because of this though, Amame can't be there for her father, who was also troubled by the same event, and this leads to the path of his death and later Amame's murder of Tearer, or so Amame believes.
• Voice for the Voiceless: Played for Laughs; she speaks on Mizuki's behalf while she and Date are in the middle of an argument and neither will speak to each other.
  Iris: "Uncle wants to know why you're here."
  Mizuki: (Whispers to Iris)
  Iris: (Imitating Mizuki) "'No particular reason. Am I not allowed to be here?'"
  
  Iris: "Uncle wants to know if you're graduating soon."
  Mizuki: (Whispers to Iris)
  Iris: (Imitating Mizuki) "'So what if I am? Just buy me a new junior high uniform. And hire a tutor! I want to go to a good school! And a new smartphone, and a new iron pipe!'"
  
  Iris: "Can you cut this out already?! What happened?!"
• What the Hell, Hero?: Downplayed; she chides Date for refusing to eat the breakfast Mizuki made for him (because the eggs weren't made the way he likes them).
  Date: "How could I eat eggs like that?! I want my eggs over-well! Burned to the pan at the bottom and chew on top!"
  Mizuki: "Why don't you just eat an eraser!?
  Date: "An eraser would taste better than what you served!"
  Iris: "You shouldn't say that about Mizuki's cooking, uncle! That's mean! You're in the wrong here, Uncle. Why don't you just be honest with her and apologize?"
• White Sheep: Is a very friendly and goodhearted girl, while her father is a corrupt politician with little regard for anyone but himself and both of her half-brothers are serial killers (albeit for very different reasons, as Saito is The Sociopath while Uru was born normal, but warped into a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds).
• Your Days Are Numbered: Iris declares to Date early on in the game that she knows that she's going to die soon. Date briefly believes she has some form of precognition, especially after she is seemingly murdered later on in the same timeline. In truth, however, she means that she has terminal brain cancer, and isn't expected to live to the end of the year. She ends up dead at the end of her route, though in the Golden Ending she finally receives the extremely expensive nanosurgery treatment that can save her thanks to Boss's help.