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Republic of Zirnitra
Irina Luminesk
- Voiced By: Megumi Hayashibara (Japanese), Tia Ballard (English), Gabriela Ortiz (Latin American Spanish)
A vampire from Lilitto with a strong will to go to the Moon. She is chosen as a test subject by the Zirnitra Union for their space launch testing.
- Acrophobic Bird: It's revealed in the second episode that she has a fear of heights, which is a no-no to anyone who aspires to become a cosmonaut. She eventually overcomes it in the next episode.
- Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: Well dark blue hair and sports a shorter build. Many commented on how beautiful she is with her dark hair that juxtaposes her pristine white skin. And she acts cool, distant and prideful in public, especially in the presence of humans. But she allows herself to smile and relax a bit more among the selected few she genuinely trusts and respects.
- Category Traitor: Believes herself to have been betraying her people after she voluntarily chose herself to accompany humans as a test subject because of her desire to get into space and the Moon.
- Clingy Jealous Girl: She might deny it as always, but she seems to be incensed when she sees Lev and Roza are getting along.
- Dark and Troubled Past: She barely survived when human soldiers attacked her village. Unfortunately, her parents were burned alive in front of her when she was three.
- Defrosting Ice Queen: She starts off as cold and bitter and often expresses hatred towards humans due to being part of a "cursed race", but slowly she warms up to Lev and Anya during her training.
- Emotionless Girl: She does not tend to show much emotion.
- Hopeless with Tech: Given that she lives in the mountains, she has no idea how movies work, believing it to be real until Lev tells her otherwise.
- In-Series Nickname: Her call sign is Lycoris.
- Interspecies Romance: She, a vampire, is in love with Lev, who is a human being.
- Ironic Name: Irina is a popular Slavic name that means "peace". Her life is anything but peaceful.
- MacGuffin: Her moonstone necklace, which is passed by generations as per the custom of her people.
- Motivational Lie: She lies to Lev that she will work at the Design Bureau as a technician when the truth is anything but that. It is to ensure that he will be focused on his training as a cosmonaut and knowing him if he knows the truth, he will act recklessly in order to get her into safety (as he did back when he defended her against Sagalevich that lead to his temporary arrest), jeopardizing his dream in the process. When Lev finds out about the deceit, he is understandably upset but understands why she did it.
- The Napoleon: She is the shortest among the main cast. And she certainly has an attitude.
- The Night Owl: She generally wakes up and does work at night, because she's vulnerable to heatstroke in the daylight. When she is forced to go outside on a sunny morning, she will bring an umbrella to protect herself.
- Noble Bigot: Irina has deep hatred and distrust towards humans and will not hesitate to trade barbs against them. Judging by her amicable interactions with Lev and Anya, however, it shows that she recognizes that while she holds her attitude for humans in general, exceptions can be found in individuals.
- Not So Stoic: Whenever she opens up more, Irina ends up being super adorkable.
- Our Vampires Are Different: She doesn't drink blood and still gets sustenance from human food, and while she won't die in the sunlight she will get heatstroke. When she walks in sunny weather, she sees the environment akin to a negative film or image. Outside of her being slightly more athletically capable of a fully trained human despite her small and thin physique, or being slightly more durable than humans, there's very little about vampires shown so far that would make them different from their human counterparts beyond pointed ears, red eyes, fangs or their issues with the sun.
- Sour Outside, Sad Inside: Her acerbic and arrogant personality is built thanks to her Dark and Troubled Past, but it is also her defense mechanism over her fear of dying in spite of her claims that she doesn't care if she dies during her flight and being disposed of by the Zirnitran government. She also dreads the possibility of not being with Lev again, whom she comes to care for. When the chips are considerably down for her, she leaves desolated and simply accepts her death unless someone pushes her away from such a mindset. She can be quite blunt and rude, but given her past and her place in the world, it is hard not to sympathize with her.
- Teacher/Student Romance: Downplayed due to their four-year age gap (she is seventeen while Lev is twenty-one). She trains to become a cosmonaut under Lev's supervision and she develops feelings for him throughout the series.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Lemon seltzer. While she can't taste the drink, it makes up from its crisp texture.
- Tsundere: A Harsh type. She is haughty and derisive towards humans, but she shows her softer side to those who manage to earn her trust like Lev and Anya.
- Weakened by the Light: While she won't die in the daylight like most vampires, she is vulnerable to heatstroke.
- When She Smiles: Irina is adorable when she smiles.
- You Are a Credit to Your Race: She deems Lev to be the only human that she doesn't dislike.
- You Are Number 6: Within the Nosferatu Project, she is classified as N44.
Lev Leps
- Voiced By: Kōki Uchiyama (Japanese), Stephen Fu (English) , Elliot Leguizamo (Latin American Spanish)
An air force lieutenant and reserved space flight candidate who helps train Irina.
- Adaptation Dye-Job: In the light novels, he has blue eyes. In the anime, he has purple eyes.
- Beware the Nice Ones: He might have lived in an oppressive country and just do what he is told by his superiors regardless of his personal opinion, but he will not be deterred when certain situations tick him off, from calling out and punching abusive superiors up to angrily proclaiming to Lyudmilla that he and Irina are not political pawns when he realizes that she and Gergiev are subtly pushing him to reveal her existence to spin it on their favor.
- Broken Ace: He shows disgust over how his government treats their people, still mourning over the loss of his elementary teacher who taught them that rockets are not for killing but for flight, and got her arrested by the Secret Police on the next day right in front of him. Also, he was once one of the top candidates for the space flight program, before getting demoted and effectively blacklisted from the Space Flight selection after punching a superior officer. The same incident happens once again, this time with him being arrested outright under threat of a full-on court martial, when he tries to protect Irina from being hit by Sagalevich. Against all odds, he eventually rises up to become the first human cosmonaut, but not without engaging into considerable angst over realizing that the government will dictate his every move, that Irina should be the one who receive the honors and not him, and his flight means that Irina will be disposed of.
- Embarrassing Nickname: "Snow-Thawing Lev", due to his sheer passion for anything related to space.
- Determinator: He has a strong sense of justice and often rebels against unreasonable things. This helps him get through to become the first human cosmonaut.
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: He has ash blond hair and is definitely an idealistic Nice Guy.
- In-Series Nickname: In the light novel, he is called Korovin as Zilant which means little dragon. He is later known by the name Aster as his call sign upon being chosen as the first leading cosmonaut.
- Interspecies Romance: He, a human, is in love with Irina, who is a vampire.
- Kiss of the Vampire: After allowing Irina to drink his blood to save her life, he finds this act pleasurable.
- Majorly Awesome: Just like his real-life inspiration, he is promoted to the rank of Major upon becoming the first human in space.
- Meaningful Name: Lev means "lion", which is fitting for his passion, courage, and his strong sense of justice.
- Nice Guy: He is one of the only people at Zirnitra who doesn't express Fantastic Racism towards Irina and corrects himself after Irina herself clears up the misconceptions about her race. Unfortunately, this makes him just as much of a target of his colleagues' own racism. Still, he treats them cordially and respectfully, especially with the likes of Mikhail and Roza, who treat him with exasperation and contempt, respectively.
- The Pollyanna: Despite living in a country that will likely kill him for speaking, being ousted from the test space flight candidates and being made fun of by his colleagues from it, and enduring discrimination, he keeps his head up and hopes that everything will be better for him.
- Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Considering the country he lives in, it is a miracle that he is still alive. The reason why he is demoted to the reserved status prior to events of the series was that he couldn't stand the son of an engineer chief mistreating and blaming a new graduate for the mistake that they committed. He fought back on behalf of the new graduate. In general, despite everyone telling him that he must treat Irina as nothing but a test subject, he still makes an effort to befriend her and treat her like a person. Later, he risks his already fragile position as a reserved cosmonaut to protect Irina when Sagalevich's abuse to her goes too far. And ultimately, he reveals to the entire world about Irina's existence and how she is the first cosmonaut and not him.
- Stern Teacher: He is between this and Cool Teacher when he trains Irina, in which he does not sugarcoat what will happen if she messes up will result in injuries or even her death. Which is justified, considering how immensely dangerous the undertaking is to become a cosmonaut. And while he tolerates Irina's abrasiveness and bullheadedness most of the time, he will not hesitate to call her out when it is obvious that she is not okay after seeing a corpse of a test dog on a rocket crash site left her in deep shock and turmoil.
- Teacher/Student Romance: Downplayed due to their four-year age gap (he is twenty-one while Irina's seventeen). He is the one who trains Irina to become a cosmonaut, and it is clear that he has feelings for her.
- Unknown Rival: Stands out among the rest of the space flight candidates who don't care about the competition and just simply wants to go to space.
Anya Simonyan
- Voiced By: Hina Kino (Japanese), Jad Saxton (English), Jennifer Medel (Latin American Spanish)
A researcher focused on the biology of vampires. She serves as a partner to Lev and Irina.
- Commonality Connection: She and Irina might have nothing in common, but both of them came from Lilitto (although Anya lived in the industrial part of it as opposed to the mountainside). This explains her familiarity with Irina's culture as shown when she gives her a dress for her to celebrate New Years.
- Consummate Professional: While she's as dedicated to the project as the rest of the science team, she refuses to be overly cruel and pointlessly sadistic towards Irina like the Vice Director, both because of her empathy for Irina, but also as a professional, seeing pointless risk to a valuable test subject as counterproductive to their goals, and considers caring for their test subjects as the most basic law of experimentation.
- Early Installment Character-Design Difference: While she didn't appear in any color illustrations in the novel, a few early grayscale illustrations made her hair look more blonde or perhaps white. So her pink hair in the anime could be billed as a case of Adaptation Dye-Job. However, after the anime started airing, the last novel volume also came out, and it matched her new hair color.
- Laser-Guided Karma: In the anime, she seemingly gets no punishment from the authoritarian regime despite her role in Irina's escape. Not so much in the novel, where she gets Reassigned to Antarctica. She still keeps in touch with Irina and Lev, however.
- Nice Girl: She is a kind girl and treats Irina with respect.
- Parental Abandonment: She is revealed to have lost her parents due to war. After enduring Orphanage of Fear, she is eventually being taken by the Zirnitran government due to her genius intellect.
- Rose-Haired Sweetie: She has pink hair in pigtails and is very kind.
- Science Is Good: While she is as dedicated to the project as the rest of the science team at Zirnitra, she refuses to be overly cruel and pointlessly sadistic towards Irina like Sagalevich, both because of her empathy for Irina, but also as a professional, seeing pointless risk to a valuable test subject as stupidly cruel and counterproductive to their goals.
- Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: She helps Irina escape from the Design Bureau to meet with Lev during his speech after his successful spaceflight, knowing that she risks imprisonment or even worse at the hands of the Secret Police. The only reason why she isn't punished severely is that Gergiev planned it all along to have Irina's identity be known to the world.
- Shipper on Deck: She pushes her and Lev to be together.
Roza Plevitskaya
- Voiced By: Mikako Komatsu (Japanese), Kimmie Britt (English), Mariana Ortiz (Latin American Spanish)
A member of the Test Flight Candidates. She comes off as very cold, especially towards Lev and Irina.
- Adaptation Dye-Job: In the light novels, she has gray eyes. In the anime, she has green eyes.
- Emotionless Girl: Barely shows many emotions beyond cold or tranquil fury.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Implicitly, Roza's hatred towards Irina is ultimately on the fact that Irina, who is a woman, managed to get into space while Roza struggles to get ahead due to the same reason as well. Adding insult to injury is that Irina is a vampire, so she will be disposed of eventually. So there is nothing for Roza to get so angry about it if Irina will be killed regardless of the outcome of the experiment unless it is for personal reasons.
- Hidden Heart of Gold: Which she unravels to Lev after he saves her life during a training exercise.
- Jerkass: Her first major scenes involves her taking great offense to Lev considering Irina and himself part of the Test Flight candidates, coldly pointing out both Irina was nothing more than a glorified lab rat to ensure the "real" pilots' safety, and that Lev was no longer a candidate after his incident.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: It's eventually revealed she has a Hidden Heart of Gold this whole time.
- Lack of Empathy: Even while stating she's aware Irina is being used as a lab rat to test dangerous space flight equipment to ensure the safety of pilots like herself, she has zero empathy for her treatment, and in fact is livid when Lev treats the vampire as if she were a part of the test flight candidates, along with stating to Irina's face that her accomplishments and triumphs will never be acknowledged or recorded.
- Meaningful Name: Her name means "rose". She is beautiful as she is prickly as the said flower's thorns.
- The Neidermeyer: A lieutenant in the Air Force who is generally unpleasant and hypercompetitive at being the best for herself.
- Noble Bigot: After having Took a Level in Kindness, she put aside her Fantastic Racism of Irina being a vampire and praises her being the ideal cosmonaut.
- Took a Level in Kindness: After Lev saves her life, prompting her to take back everything nasty she said about him and Irina.
- Ungrateful Bastard: The fact that Irina is being borderline tortured and being used as a sacrificial lab rat to ensure her and her fellow human pilots' safety on the Space Flight is moot to Roza, who is flat out more upset at the "embarrassment" of a vampire being the first living person in space before a human. Subverted after she Took a Level in Kindness, apologized for her earlier hostility and commended her for being a great cosmonaut.
Vice Director Sagalevich
- Voiced By: Shouto Kashii (Japanese), Jaime Vega (Latin American Spanish)
The vice director of the training center and lead researcher in charge of monitoring Irina's tests.
- Dr. Jerk: Even by the standards of most of the facility members sans Anya and Lev. He even goes out of his way to cause pain to Irina during their tests purely out of spite and mockingly dares Lev to punch him when he objects, mocking him for his demotion and knowing Lev can do nothing to him. He eventually just outright arrests Lev when he actually does hit him.
- Establishing Character Moment: Right out the gate he paints his character in a very bad light: Grumbling head to toe while decked out in a garlic necklace and this universe's equivalent to a Christian Cross while shouting Irina down for being a vampire and demanding she is muzzled and restrained like a dog.
- Fantastic Racism: Is probably the biggest offender of this trope so far: Always showing up to tests decked in garlic and a cross (which has been stated to have no effect on vampires) and has gone out of his way to demean and injure Irina during her tests.
- Foil: To Anya. Both are researchers who dedicate themselves to the Nosferatu Project and both being Reassigned to Antarctica. However, Anya takes up the Science Is Good approach and is genial to Irina and Lev, while Sagalevich does the opposite.
- Hate Sink: A lot of people in the story have Fantastic Racism towards vampires but some of them warm up to Irina over time. Sagalevich really takes the cake for being a grade-A Dirty Communist excessively crueler than the others, being willing to insult Irina, putting her through unnecessary pain in experiments, kicking her while she's weakened, and generally showing no redeeming qualities.
- Mad Scientist: Has several of the obvious traits - crazy hair, crazy beady eyes, and is mad in the sense he would perform experiments excessively unethically on Irina.
- Reassigned to Antarctica: His final fate after his conflict against Lev.
- Smug Snake: He takes great joy in harming and insulting Irina, knowing she can't do anything to him, and equally loves to demean Lev when he objects to his treatment of her, knowing he can't do anything both due to his reputation for punching superior officers and the fact he is well within his rights as the facility deliberately chooses to treat Irina worse than an animal and have Lev arrested and potentially court martialed altogether should he do so. The former does happen, but Lev is let off on a technicality when Franz's sabotaging of the centrifuge is revealed and dealt with accordingly. He is soon dealt with as well for his own involvement in the incident, being removed from his position and Reassigned to Antarctica.
- Stupid Evil: It doesn't cross in his mind that had the Nosferatu Project failed, the government (especially a government that does not tolerate failures) will shut down the research facility and their lives will be totally forfeit, as what Korovin told Lev back when he briefed him about the project. It will be counterproductive to have Irina harmed during tests, even if she is nothing but a test subject since results are paramount to any project.
Franz Ferman
- Voiced By: Yoshitaka Yamaya (Japanese), Brandon Santini (Latin American Spanish)
Vice Director Sagalevich's assistant during Irina's testing.
- Consummate Professional: While he shows signs of being perturbed by Sagalevich's pointlessly cruel treatment of Irina, he knows better than to raise a stink like Anya or Lev, and respects the chain of command. Despite showing some slight signs of sympathy for the vampire, he still maintains the directive to not treat her like a person, as he is well aware of what her fate will be after all is said and done.
- Everyone Has Standards: While he does little to stop it due to his lack of authority and his sense of self-preservation, Franz shows signs of being unnerved by the needlessly painful treatment of Irina during tests. Not that it stops him from trying to kill her just before the launch itself through sabotage.
- The Mole: It's later revealed that he sabotaged the centrifuge in an effort to make the mission a failure and get Korovin demoted.
- Reassigned to Antarctica: Would have been had not he attempted to sabotage the Nosferatu Project.
- Safety in Indifference: He's very well aware that Irina will either die during their tests or "disappear" soon as they're done. He's also aware of what will happen to anyone who tries to question or circumvent high-command orders. In the third episode, he very bluntly, but not coldly, reminds Lev of this fact and to not get attached to Irina, as "it will only make things harder." He's eventually proven right when Lev, who is noted as being The Fettered, is taken away until "further notice" after attacking Sagalevich after having enough of his abuse against Irina in the sixth episode.
- Un-person: All traces of his existence are wiped out from the military's records after his attempted sabotage.
Fyodor Gergiev
The leader of the Zirnitra Union, whom everyone answers to. Is determined to see the Space Flight be a success for country pride.
- Everyone Has Standards: Gergiev is very much a tyrant befitting a man ruling what is a fantasy counterpart to Soviet Russia, but behind closed doors, she berates his fanatical cabinet members' obsession with executing useful manpower like Irina, not out of any care for her but simply out of pragmatism and the pain of replacing useful people that were purged to appease their fanaticism.
- No Historical Figures Were Harmed: As the leader of a fantasy equivalent of the Soviet Union, Gergiev bears more than a passing resemblance to Nikita Khrushchev.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: By the very low bar that has been set by Zirinitra's High Command. When a member of his cabinet hastily demands Irina be executed after the space flight for no reason beyond Fantastic Racism and You Have Outlived Your Usefulness, Gergiev calmly says such decisions can be decided after they see how things go with the final test flight. Behind closed doors he bitterly berates his overzealous cabinet's "execute first, ask questions later" solution to everything, and the manpower shortage that inevitably happens after their purges.
