A list of characters that appear in the Oshimi Shuzo manga Blood on the Tracks.
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Osabe Seiichi
The main protagonist of the story, a thirteen year old junior high student.
- Broken Bird: By the time he's become an adult, Seiichi has very little fighting spirit left in him. The events of his pubescent years have left him with the ghost of his cousin haunting him, he works a dead-end job that he's numb to, and he has no close relationships be it platonic or romantic.
- Bungled Suicide: After seeing to burying his father's remains and refusing to contact Seiko again, Seiichi opts to kill himself in his room. A last minute hallucination of Seiko causes him to panic and stop.
- Despair Event Horizon: Pole vaults right over it in the final chapters before the Time Skip. As Seiko disowns him during his trial, Seiichi disassociates from the world around him, evidenced by the art becoming less comprehensible to show his fragmenting mind. He remains in this state for much of the story, post-Time Skip.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: By the time of the final chapter, he's lived a long, quiet life without any more problems. His only consolation for a childhood and later adulthood with Seiko is that any memories of her have long since become vague pictures in his mind.
- Elective Mute: For several chapters in the story he loses the ability to speak after suffering trauma from his mother's abuse.
- It's All My Fault: Once he is able to visualize what Seiko must have felt throughout her life as a mother and up to the point where she pushes Shigeru off the cliff, his mental image of himself is an ugly goblin whose apparently spoiled and rotten personality led his put-upon mother to lash out by nearly killing the boy.
- Meaningful Name: His name is a combination of both his parents' own names.
- No Romantic Resolution: He never gets any real closure with Fukushii, and when we last see him as an old man, he's never stated to have gotten married.
Osabe Seiko
The mother of Seiichi, and the primary antagonist of the story.
- Big Bad: Her desire to keep Seiichi under her thumb and deny him any independence is the driving conflict in the story. Even when she ceases to be an active antagonist after the Time Skip, her actions continue to affect Seiichi in his adult life.
- Breaking the Cycle of Bad Parenting: Seemingly wanted to do this with Seiichi by giving him all the affection her neglectful parents never gave her, only to go way too far in the opposite direction.
- Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: Seiko is objectively beautiful and is frequently drawn as a beautiful young woman. This is deliberate, as it makes a sharper contrast with her more horrific acts as the story goes on.
- Lack of Empathy: She barely even recognizes that she's hurt Seiichi. When he snaps and tries to strangle her in the courthouse when she admits to the judges that she's ready to stop playing the mother role with his verdict, all Seiko does is give him an empty stare and dismissively ask if he's done.
- Meaningful Name: The kanji in her given name "静", translates roughly to silent, calm, and quiet. Reflective of her ability to maintain an eerie composure when engaging in monstrous and manipulative behavior. Thus her full name, "静子", translates to "quiet child", describing her own childhood that would shape her into what we know her as in the manga.
- Offing the Offspring: Attempted when Seiichi was only three years old. She intended to drop Seiichi off a small cliff and leave him to die, but he survived the fall, so she continued life as normal.
- Resentful Guardian: She has no love for her family, and as Seiichi sadly realizes later, none for her child either. She initially believed that having a child might make her feel whole, but as time went on, she discovers that she feels just as empty inside as she did when she got married. She tries to throw a child Seiichii down a cliff when she was younger, and is all too happy to disown him when he gets arrested for leaving Takeru to die.
- Scatterbrained Senior: She ends up going senile after the Time Skip, resulting in Seiichi having to care for her full-time for what little time she has left.
- The Sociopath: Has no qualms with attempting to murder her own nephew, and generally keeps up a cold and calloused demeanor punctuated by sudden fits of rage throughout the story. And as we learn in Chapter 77, she's been dangerous Seiichi's entire life and what she did to Shigeru, she already did to Seiichi as a toddler.
- The Unfavorite: Her flashback reveals that she was actually this for her family, as they spent all their time caring for her Delicate and Sickly younger sister Etsuko while berating her or taking out their anger over various family disputes on her. In fact, when Etsuko died, they blamed her for "taking away the family's happiness" by leaving and getting married.
- Used to Be a Sweet Kid: She was always confused and didn't know what she wanted out of life, but she was a much more quiet and compliant person as a child. This is mostly due to her wanting to be seen as a good girl and not make trouble because of how her parents treated her. She was also able to make friends for a time.
Osabe Ichirō
- Good Parents: While he was ignored and ill-treated in his family life, not helped by his working tendencies, Ichirō shows himself to be objectively the better parent. After Seiko exits their lives forever, he works to the bone to recompansate his extended family for Shigeru's death, and in the meantime ensures Seiichi finishes school and checks on him every once in a while.
Shigeru
Seiichi's similarly aged cousin, who suffers brain damage after Seiko pushes him off a cliff during a hiking trip.
- Walking Spoiler: His incident with Seiko is what pushes the entire plot into motion, and it's hard to talk about him without mentioning this.
Fukiishi
Seiichi's junior high classmate and eventual Love Interest.
- Love Confession: Confesses her love to Seiichi in the form of a note she delivers to him in person. And then Seiko finds it.
