Main Characters: Arachnid, Caterpillar, Blattodea
The Organization's "Bugs": Recurring, Exclusive to Arachnid, Exclusive to Caterpillar, Exclusive to Blattodea
Other Characters
Related series: Jackals, Choubu no Shinobi, Himenospia
Minor characters from Arachnid, Caterpillar and Blattodea.
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Series-wide:
Army Ant zombies (Unmarked Spoilers)
During the Arachnid Hunt, most of the student body of Shouran Highschool became mindless servants of the Army Ant Queen. After her death, they are set loose and start a pandemic of zombifying rape that engulfs the whole country in a month.
- Animal Motifs: Male ants are pretty much just walking sperm resources for a colony and Army Ant species are agressive nomads which forage in large groups and normally have no replacement if their queen dies. This is portrayed as people turning into a horde of rapist zombies doomed to die of starvation. The zombies charged with raping people are considered* soldier ants/major workers, while the Literature Club members sent to spring a trap on Kabutomushi are minor worker ants. Although they're just normal people drugged into going berserk, they can fight like ants by climbing on each other to form barriers and chains to drop down on their opponents.
- All Men Are Perverts: Three thugs who had already tried to rape Chiyuri that day start taking turns raping Dinoponera but end up zombified by her, and the infected middle-aged hobos who help Yamato take care of Chiyuri try to rape her while claiming that is what they wanted all along.
- All Women Are Lustful: The mess began with a bunch of sleazy schoolboys lured into an orgy with a supernatural rape victim who was driven to madness by her past and the Organization. For the rest of Arachnid, the female zombies are only shown as victims, but the sequel begins showing them attacking other people as well.
- An Arm and a Leg: They're not dead but instead driven insane for sex, so the survivors are advised to chop all of their limbs off if killing is to be avoided. As they are incapable of feeling pain, "even a single limb is dangerous".
- Attempted Rape: You know it's bad when a large group of schoolboys becoming brainwashed into having gratuitous gang rape orgies is not a far cry from how they already were characterized. It gets to the point Japan is ruined from their zombie apocalypse, though Dinoponera is the only named character who actually gets raped by them.
- Blank White Eyes: They're usually depicted with blank or dull eyes. However, sometimes their eyes look normal... like they're actually well aware of what they're doing and fully enjoying it.
- Body Horror: The zombies can withstand gruesome damage like nothing happened so long as enough of their brain remains.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: Due to the Army Ant's Queen's Rule ability, they became mind-controlled by sex, of all things. The absurd amount of orgies and rape going on at the school is to spread the effect among the students and the remaining Organization people who are nearby.
- Chekhov's Gunman:
- The Literature Club members first seen in chapter 36 are the ones who set a trap on Kabutomushi later.
- A specific female zombie at the Ouran school is focused on for a single panel before she's the first who tries to attack Kabutomushi at the rooftop several scenes later.
- Decapitated Army: They fall asleep when Kuramoto is killed, but are still brainless after they wake up. Without Kuramoto around the zombies seem somewhat harmless, but they eventually turn hostile again for some reason and the zombie apocalypse begins. Ironically, as stated in the story itself actual army ant colonies that get lost or lose their queen walk around in circles
until they all die but the zombies just keep going. - Delinquents: Sara picks 26 of them and lets them rape Kuramoto in exchange for their loyalty. It only gets worse from there.
- Depopulation Bomb: Ironically one instigated by sex. After Kuramoto's death, the Boss hopes for them to infect and kill half of Japan's population from starvation but they become a possibly greater threat than that.
- Dissonant Serenity: Seen when Kabutomushi is defeating the Media ants. While Sara goes into a panic, the brainwashed people behind her remain emotionless. Some even look at the scene with hands on their pockets as Kabutomushi shoves them away.
- Dumb Muscle: The small relative brain size of Dorylus army ants is used by the narrator to justify why the zombies act on pure instinct and can still move despite mortal injuries.
- Elite Mooks: Powerful characters presumably turn into more difficult army ants, but so far this is only seen in the short time Dinoponera spends as one.
- Empty Shell: They're zombified and limited to wandering while rambling about sex. When Kuramoto dies, all the students pass out but remain brainless when they stand back up. Even Sara, the only one assigned a mostly sane "role" by Kuramoto, suddenly got reduced to a zombie and it doesn't look like anyone can fix them. The only exception is Dinoponera, who struggles to resist the brainwashing and is able to come to her senses and help her friend Chiyuri.
- Gonk: Most of the male zombies are comically ugly, especially the adult ones. The women are all beautiful.
- Hive Mind: They seem to run under this condition and are dead-set on infecting as much of Japan's population as possible after their Queen was killed.
- Horror Hunger: The zombies are supposed to die of starvation, but in Blattodea on top of being able to turn fully undead they are suddenly established to be able to spread the infection through cannibalism.
- Innocent Bystander: A bunch of teens who are turned into sex zombies in order to depopulate Japan.
- Implacable Man: The zombies can ignore any injury except for sufficient brain damage or decapitation.
- Knight of Cerebus: Arachnid wasn't so lighthearted and rape-free to begin with, but once the zombies show up the series begins revolving around rape.
- Mooks: They become servants of the army ant queen, and turn berserk once she is killed.
- Major Injury Underreaction: One guy gets his arm broken by Geji, but likely as an effect of being mind-controlled, he feels nothing and tosses her down. Another one is impaled through the head and still gets back up.
- Not Using the "Z" Word: They're first referred to as "sex zombies who copulate endlessly" by Hanakamakiri, who later just calls them "ants" to dehumanize them. Scientists in the story are said to call them "Eciton virus victims" and Dinoponera even invokes the trope, saying they're more like human-shaped ants than zombies.
- Our Zombies Are Different: Sex zombies who fight like ants. Dinoponera even points that they act as literal ants rather than as plain old zombies... which comes off like a Distinction Without a Difference.
- Out with a Bang: They're supposed to fuck half of Japan to death-by-starvation, somewhat like how male ants exist solely to manufacture sperm and die, but in practice the whole mess is still in full force a year later in Blattodea with no mention of the starvation aspect of the Depopulation Bomb plan.
- Plague Zombie: Of the sexual kind.
- Technically-Living Zombie: They're still alive but cannot think of anything but raping others. It is then shown that mortal damage, such as Dinoponera impaling one guy through the head, will turn them into undead — which is likely the actual reason "leaving even a limb is dangerous".
- Unskilled, but Strong: They lose their weird ant techniques and team tactics once Kuramoto is killed, but they're zombies with increased strength and resilience after all and there's more than enough of them to keep even Kabutomushi busy offscreen for a dozen chapters.
- The Virus: The cause of the zombiefication is Kuratomo somehow being able to secrete a variant of the "Queen substance" found in the Hymenoptera order of insects. The only cure is the antibodies produced by Dinoponera's ponerine venom. As an aside, it also turns up in the author's Himenospia to make female-only wasp mutants who turn into terrorists upon the death of their queen.
- Walking Spoiler: A story about a girl fending off crazy bug-themed assassins somehow ends with Japan destroyed by a "rape zombie apocalypse". By Blattodea, this is a Late-Arrival Spoiler.
- Your Days Are Numbered: They're supposed to die of starvation so the Organization can control the culling of Japan's population... but it doesn't seem to have quite have worked as expected.
- Zerg Rush: Army ants are known for doing everything in swarms and so do those zombies during their gross takeover of Japan.
- Zombie Apocalypse: Their behavior after being brainwashed by the Organization boss is analogous to that of zombies. And the Queen wouldn't mind having a world-wide orgy... They eventually leave the school grounds, even more brainless from the death of their master. It seems the Boss's plan all along was for them to become exactly like that so they could cause a mass infection and then die from starvation, cutting in half the population of Japan and beyond. At the end of the original story, this comes to pass.
- Zombie Gait: They wander around the school, grumbling about virgin women in mindless zombie fashion. However, depending on what the Queen orders them to do, they are also seen standing obediently in lines or even fighting with techniques based on ant behaviour. After Kuramoto dies, they remain like this and eventually destroy the entire country.
From Arachnid:
Yoshio Fujii
Yoshio Fujii (藤井 義雄; Fujii Yoshio)
- Advertised Extra: He's of no importance to anything in Arachnid, but remained on the introduction page for every Gangan Joker issue since it never had its relevant character list updated. Having Yoshio appear in promotional material was also a Running Gag that went all the way to the end of the series. He even got a cameo in a joke crossover with Akame ga Kill! that didn't feature Alice.
- Asshole Victim: A recurring theme in Murata's stories is people having a twisted sense of gratitude for their abusers. Alice has practically no positive influences in her life, but Yoshio, the uncle who neglected, abused and attempted to rape her, is the only person whose death she doesn't regret. She is practically thankful to Kumo, her kidnapper, for killing him.
- Attempted Rape: Tries to rape his own niece a few pages into the first chapter.
- Creepy Evil Uncle: He's an abusive Parental Substitute to Alice.
- Expy: It's very likely he's intended to be the "Uncle Ben gone wrong" to Alice's Peter Parker. Ironically, when Shinya Murata later shared a fanzine featuring his own take on Spider-Man, there's no Uncle Ben in the origin story at all.
- Fat Bastard: He's fat, lazy and rough-looking so you know from a look that he's a douchebag.
- Forceful Kiss: Gives Alice's first kiss while nearly raping her, disgustingly enough. Actually Played for Laughs later on, when Alice laments she doesn't have any good memories of kissing and it's seen she can't help but equate Dinoponera's playful yet dangerous "Take That!" Kiss to what Yoshio did to her.
- Jerkass: Over the span of a half-dozen pages he calls Alice out on her bad grades at school only because he might lose child support, guilts Alice about her mother's death and then tries to rape her just for kicks.
- Plot-Triggering Death: His assassination causes Kumo to meet and kidnap Alice, putting Arachnid into motion.
- Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Only a few pages into Arachnid, Yoshio sets the standard most of the other antagonists in the series follow.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: Gets killed shortly after being introduced.
Ayana Fujii
Ayana Fujii (藤井綾那; Fujii Ayana)
Alice's late mother. Supposedly commited suicide around 6 months prior to the start of the series, which left Alice to live with her brother Yoshio.- Deadly Hug: How she actually died, at Suzumebachi's hands. He injects a syringe with deadly toxin into her.
- Driven to Suicide: Due to depression, on Alice's birthday and despite promising the previous day to take Alice to an amusement park sometime. Alice eventually realizes it didn't make sense for her caring mother to go like that, and discovers she was murdered by the Organization.
- The Faceless: Until chapter 48 she is portrayed like this, as until then Alice avoided thinking much about her suicide.
- Given Name Reveal: Her name is revealed in chapter 64.
- Mum Looks Like a Sister: Looked exactly like Alice, down to her hair length in flashbacks from before Alice's birth.
- Parental Abandonment: She and her brother were abandoned by their father.
- Plot-Triggering Death: Suzumebachi is forced to kill her but resists killing Alice, leading to the Boss manipulating all the following events in order for Alice to become a formidable assassin.
- Posthumous Character: She's dead before the story begins.
- Struggling Single Mother: She suffered from depression over the disappearance of her husband, worked on a low-profile job to provide for Alice and wasn't able to see her much.
- Surprisingly Sudden Death: Gifts Alice a ticket to a park and dies from suicide the next day. After a year dealing with the trauma, Alice thinks it over and realizes it was a murder staged to look like a suicide.
- Undignified Death: Suzumebachi kills Ayana while she's in the middle of begging him to stay and leaves her lying on the floor with a horrible gaze on her face. The Shidemushi people then set her corpse up like she died from medication overdose.
- Walking Spoiler: The truth behind her death is part of a major twist later on.
Kuramoto
Ai Kuramoto (倉本 藍; Kuramoto Ai)
- Attempted Rape: She gets raped by the students Sara convinces to help with the Arachnid Hunt. The scene cuts off before the act, which according to the author was out of censorship from his editor at the time. However, it is later revealed Kuramoto was in control of the situation, having long been corrupted to enjoy orgies since she fully awakened her sex powers.
- Bespectacled Cutie: She wears cute round glasses and has a friendly personality. The Glasses Come Off when she needs to be seductive.
- Buxom Beauty Standard: Kuramoto has such large assets that Alice, Oki and Yoriko became speechless when they first saw her, and it's the reason she's a constant target of Attempted Rape. Her huge breasts actually relate to how ant queens are bigger than normal ants.
- Damsel in Distress: Kuramoto gets ambushed by Sara on chapter 45 and isn't seen again for a while. Upon realizing that she is missing, Alice delays her escape from the school and asks Oki and Geji to search for her. However, things weren't as they seemed.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Rape as Backstory, to the point she developed an ability to mind control anyone she has sex with.
- Friendless Background: Had no friends before meeting Sara.
- I Just Want to Have Friends: This is why Kuramoto lets Sara do as she pleases with her. It's actually the other way around, though Kuramoto doesn't seem too bad of a master to Sara despite suggested abuse and how she manipulated her feelings.
- Last-Name Basis: She's usually called by her surname, until her first name is revealed to be Ai. Her full name did briefly appear early on when she gave her contact card to Alice.
- Only Friend: Sara, who is abusive towards Kuramoto. Kuramoto comes to befriend Alice later. Or rather, Sara is Kuramoto's subordinate and Alice's goody two-shoes nature ticks her off.
- Rape as Drama: It's shown that Sara uses Kuramoto as... "incentive" for her minions to behave. Turns out she had always been a victim of sexual abuse, until she learned an ability to make servants out of her assailants.
- Reluctant Fanservice Girl: On a blogpost regarding Kuramoto in Arachnid chapter 25, Murata wrote that the most appealing aspect of breasts to him was how anxious women felt about them. So in the story Kuramoto feels insecure about her large chest and is harassed by men over it, to the point of being raped for maximum woobie moe points. And then it turns out Kuramoto is actually a seductive villainess who tries to rule over a rape apocalypse, so then she's Evil and it's Ok to horribly murder her...
- Shameful Strip: She's forced to strip before a group of people so they would work for Sara in exchange. And later both her and Alice become surrounded by Sara's forces while naked. Both instances are intentional on her part.
- Shrinking Violet: Very meek and shy despite her attempts to look reliable as a student council member.
- Stepford Smiler: Kuramoto puts on a kind facade but is fueled by rage at how she's been abused for her entire life.
- Unreliable Narrator: When she tells Alice about Sara's "Queen's Rule" ability, she's swapping their roles. Sara was the friendless person having her head stepped on at that time.
- Walking Spoiler: There's a lot more about Kuramoto than she lets on.
Kuroiwa
Kuroiwa
- Badass Teacher: The way Yoriko speaks of him to Alice, she makes it sound like Kuroiwa tried to fight Dinoponera, but sadly he didn't even get a chance.
- In the Back: Gets his chest stabbed from behind by Dinoponera. It appears to have been an instant kill, without even a reaction to her poison.
- Innocent Bystander: He's shocked to see a student carrying a polearm in a ruined classroom, then bam, douchey ant kills him from out of nowhere.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: After a couple lines of dialogue, Dinoponera kills him just to be mean. We only learn his name because Yoriko warns Alice about what happened later.
Minor students from Shouran Highschool
- All Men Are Perverts: Literally every male student in the story is shown or said to have been sexually harassing or raping women even before they're affected by the ant queen's mind control.
- Jerkass: As far as we know, the schoolboys were always trying to rape the girls and the girls were always bullying Alice.
- Asshole Victim: It's not like everyone in the school would fit into this, but any time a student does something it is to either be a jerk to Alice or try to molest random girls for Alice to save. For the most part, no previously-known characters appear among the zombie people, though.
- Girl Posse: Kawanishi and Muraoka, the two friends of Yoriko who used to bully Alice.
- No Name Given: Yoriko's friends, Kawanishi and Muraoka, are mentioned by name in a side chapter but they aren't present, so which one is which?
- Pet the Dog: A pair of girls who at first were wary of Alice for taking revenge on Yoriko's group became nice to her once she saved them from being assaulted by some schoolboys.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Have Kawanishi and Muraoka been raped too? What about those unnamed girls whom Alice befriended in a side chapter? Did they all really die between the Arachnid ending and the epilogue?
Masashi Ushijima
Masashi Ushijima (丑縞雅史; Ushijima Masashi)
Japan's Minister of Foreign Affairs and a former Suzumebachi from 15 years ago. He gave the current Suzumebachi the job interview of his life.- Animal Motifs: One of the various men who held the Giant Japanese Hornet title.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Turns out he's the man we saw talking to Yoriko in a flashback about her "childhood". And he's not her father, but her adopted son instead.
- The Dragon: Was the Boss' right-hand man during the latter half of the 20th century.
- Driven to Suicide: Calmly shot his own head off when passing the Suzumebachi title to Ashinagabachi, which drove the point of how fearsome the Boss's authority is. However, he and his foster mother Yoriko were actually in an agreement that things should end that way.
- Exact Words: When promoting Ashinagabachi, he tells him that the Boss needs "renewed vitality". The Boss is ageless for as long as they have complete mental control over a Suzumebachi.
- More than Mind Control: As a Suzumebachi he is unable to defy the Boss' mind control but also genuinely loved them as family.
- Posthumous Character: Dead since around 15 years before the series begins.
From Caterpillar:
Tomoe Fukunaga
Tomoe Fukunaga
A high school student who is forced to take part in a pornography filming.- Bring My Brown Pants: Wets herself as Imomushi nonchalantly kills everyone else in the room.
- Damsel in Distress: And Imomushi just leaves her there, tied up.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Imomushi doesn't kill her for being a witness of her assignment, but doesn't seem to untie her from the chair she was bound to, either. Once Shidemushi got there to dispose of the corpses, did he let her go?
Mika Inou
Mika Inou
Miki "Imomushi" Inou's late older sister.- Animal Motifs: Swallowtail butterflies, with a death and rebirth motif. Mika is strangled to near-death and gains a split personality that makes her pretend to be her own abuser.
- Big Sister Instinct: Miki was always going on about how she would always protect her sister, without realizing Mika was enduring years of horrible abuse for her sake. Even after gaining a grudge about how Imomushi ruined everything by attempting to avenge her and being turned into an assassin, Mika still ends up sacrificing herself for her sister in the very end.
- Chekhov's Lecture: Told Imomushi people have "rules" to not let their feelings control them. After finding how much of a Stepford Smiler Mika had to be to take care of her, Imomushi took her lesson to heart.
- Cool Big Sis: Imomushi's mature older sister.
- Corrupt the Cutie: Mika goes mad and starts behaving like Ageha, which only worsens when Mika nearly dies and is made to replace Ageha after she's killed by Imomushi. Since all Mika went through was pointless as Imomushi turned into a killer-for-hire anyway, she makes the Death Caterpillar to get Imomushi beaten, raped and killed as well.
- Dead Man Writing: She had written in detail about the abuse she endured in a diary, which Suzumebachi gives to Imomushi after her death.
- Death by Origin Story: Imomushi's backstory details her death.
- Don't Split Us Up: Mika got blackmailed into becoming Akiho's "dog" so Miki wouldn't be sent away to a reformatory.
- Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: The responsible of the two.
- Kill the Cutie: She was raped and strangled to death.
- Posthumous Character: Dead before the prequel begins. Or is she?
- Stepford Smiler: Behaved normally around her sister despite what she was going through.
- Too Good for This Sinful Earth: She selflessly becomes Akiho's sex slave to ensure that her sister would be protected and is later brutally killed.
- Walking Spoiler: Imomushi comes to find there was a lot more to Mika's death than it seemed at first.
Inaho Enoki
Inaho Enoki (榎 稲穂; Enoki Inaho)
An urban entomologist who uses her vast knowledge of insects to help people.Originally from Saikachi - Manatsu no Konchuu Kakutouki and Vector Case File - Inaho no Konchuuki by Fujimi Yasutaka, she's also featured in that author's The Island of Giant Insects series, particularly as one of the protagonists in the Kyomushi Sanmyaku spinoff.
- Badass Bookworm: She knows everything about insects and how to survive in the wilderness. In her home manga, this saves lives in all sorts of unusual situations. In Kyomushi Sanmyaku she's an Action Girl who can fend off deadly giant insects. In Caterpillar she might as well be a bug assassin like everyone else.
- The Cameo: Inaho is the protagonist from fellow bug manga Vector Case File. She only appears in a couple of funfact narration scenes in Caterpillar, without any effect on the actual plot.
- Eyes Out of Sight: She's depicted with Hidden Eyes most of the time, even when her hair isn't completely covering where they are.
- Ms. Exposition: Appears to do the insect lectures in chapters 45 and 86 of Caterpillar. They're done in the same style of her source story,
- Mythology Gag: Her denial that cockroaches can become huge and agressive is a nod to the premise of The Island of Giant Insects. And she better be right, as Arachnid is bleak enough as it is...
- Take That!: While talking about false information in entomology, she answers one student that cockroaches cannot be mutated to become huge and agressive. Specifically mentioning roaches makes it sound like a derisive allusion to TerraforMARS, which stands out among the many affectionate references to other series in the story.
Moriyama
A nerdy student from Killing Bites.
- The Cameo: He's a minor character from Killing Bites who makes at least two brief appearances in this series. In chapter 45 of Caterpillar he is listening to a lecture from Inaho, and in chapter 8 of Blattodea he appears failing to woo a girl in a insect trivia scene about cockroaches.
From Blattodea:
Makoto Shirane
Makoto Shirane
The director of the Hibarigaoka Prison's "relaxation facility" for their Takobeya labor camp.- D-Cup Distress: Makoto and the other slaves have very large breasts due to being forced to consume estradiol by a serial rapist and their nudity is only ever presented as being humiliating.
- Foil: Her looks and situation are too similar to the Army Ant Queen from Arachnid, but unlike her she appears to be a truly nice person to Chiyuri and Setsuna after her abuser is dealt with (at least so far).
- Forced into Evil: Makoto and the other civilian girls are forced to obey the evil rapists at Hibarigaoka Prison not just to survive in the post-apocalypse but also to protect their family members who live in the residential sections of the building. Chiyuri and Setsuna don't even think to hold the spiked water incident against them for that reason.
- Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: After Juzuhigemushi's defeat, one of Makoto's co-workers starts scolding Chiyuri because she's afraid of how they can be punished for defying the Organization's agents. Makoto then slaps her and says they can't let this opportunity to be free of him go to waste.
- Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: After Juzuhigemushi and Hebitonbo are both defeated, their boss Megumi lets Makoto be in charge of the hard labor room. Makoto is glad that she won't need to sell her body anymore, and then we see the bashful look on her face turn to a smug and vengeful smirk as Megumi leaves.
- The Mole: Three months after Makoto gets promoted in the prison's hierarchy and is seen staring daggers at Megumi, she welcomes Serena into the prison under the excuse of the American queen being some skilled resource manager she found among the refugees. The implication is that Makoto was loyal to her the whole time, and Serena doesn't even bother hiding her identity at her enemies' HQ.
- Nice Girl: Does a warm greeting for Chiyuri and Setsuna at the prison, after all the trouble they went though to get sheltered there. She even pats Setsuna's head in what's a rare Normal Human Interaction for the ant-girl. However, under Juzuhigemushi's orders, Makoto and the other female staff begrudingly trick the two girls into drinking water mixed with aphrodisiacs to let him attempt to rape them.
- Pet the Dog: Makoto pats Setsuna on the head and is genuinely concerned with improving the quality of life at Hibarigaoka Prison, making her appear way nicer than all the scumbags in charge of the prison in spite of how she also seems rather ominous for being allied with Serena.
- Sex Slave: She and the other female staff are servants of Juzuhigemushi, under threat of starvation or expulsion from the prison-shelter. They are forced to drug both Chiyuri and Setsuna and then disrobe to perform an orgy for him.
