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The ReRe Club
As A Group
- Birds of a Feather: They were all, for one reason or another, terribly alone. This shared experience is the only reason why the group has endured so long.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
- The girls are not good people, yet they often compliment and support each other. It takes over a decade (and mental pressure from the Land God) for their competition over Yuuya to escalate to serious violence (compared to the one day before Yuuya's unnamed girlfriend was attacked). Haruka's route actually ends with Polyamory.
- This is subverted in relation to Yuuya, whom they have no problem killing on various routes.
- Every Scar Has a Story: While playing at the Land God's shrine, a feral dog attacked the group. Each of them bears scars from it.
- Evil Virtues: It is possible for the Trio to all go yandere simultaneously- yet remain teammates. Yuuya almost died the last time this happened. The second time, he isn't so lucky.
- Inevitable Mutual Betrayal: There isn't an even number of people in Yuuya's Unwanted Harem, and all of them consider Polyamory an imperfect compromise rather than a permanent goal, so they mutually undermine each other on a daily basis.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Kayako's advances were a pretty transparent attempt to flirt with Yuuya (an underage boy), and if he had listened to the girls' demand that he cut all ties with her, she would probably never have been able to sexually assault him. But the girls' motivations for making that demand were purely greedy.
- Mark of the Beast: When the Land God rouses within them, their pupils turn red.
- Passive-Aggressive Kombat: Yuuya hates it when the situation gets too openly hostile, so everyone in the club (except Haruka) is well-versed in this trope.
- Personality Powers: The Land God- being a dog- identified so strongly with the group's codependence that he granted them the power to resurrect its lost member.
- Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Lampshaded by name. None of the club's members are disreputable individually, but they become so as part of the group, because its bond gives them the courage to grow past their issues and enjoy life like normal people instead of obsessing over society's expectations of their talent(s). Their determination to succeed at the festival is partly motivated by wanting to prove that the club is worth something.
- True Companions: Their families are respectively dead/abusive/neglectful, so the Club have developed a very insular, 'us-against-the-world' mentality. This extreme dependence causes half their problems, but on the plus side it means they're really good at working as a team.
- Undying Loyalty: They've transferred schools, risked parental abuse, overlooked crimes, and threatened suicide, all to keep the group together. The acceptance and emotional stability it provides are practically irreplaceable.
- Urban Legend Love Life: The girls in the club are all in love with Yuuya, so their peers and teachers assume he must be sleeping with them. In truth, Yuuya fears them way too much to do that.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: Exemplified by the sleepover scene. The girls brawl over Yuuya's attention, and minutes later they're chatting and washing each other like nothing had happened.
Yuuya Kisaragi
- All-Loving Hero: In routes where Yuuya overcomes his fear, he grows into a person who can reassure and empathize with just about anybody- bullies, his torturer, the corrupt cop who gaslighted him, etc.
- Animal Motifs: Dogs. He intermittently has visions of a snarling dog, one of his most important memories involves a dog attacking him and his friends, and the Land God (which manifests as a Hellhound) has taken up residence in his soul. The usual connotations of loyalty and sociality apply.
- The Atoner: Yuuya blames himself for the Trio's attack on his then-girlfriend, which is why he's reluctant to seek help or protection from others (and therefore endanger them).(to Shizuka, after saving her from Sayuri's attack) Sorry for dragging you into this mess.
- Beautiful Dreamer: Presumably the reason that Sayuri drugs his food.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Yuuya wished as a child that he and his friends would be together forever. But due to his possession, that means they will always be together and anyone that threatens their friendship will be eliminated. Thereby giving Yuuya a harem of yanderes.
- Belated Injury Realization: He barely feels Sayuri's scissors cut his cheek during the climax of her route.
- Berserk Button: He absolutely hates unsafe drivers because his parents were killed by one.
- Body Backup Drive: Present-day Yuuya isn't the Yuuya that died in the dog attack, but because Izaemon 'cloned' both his mind and body, the difference is minor. He just doesn't remember the last few minutes of the original's life.
- Break the Cutie: The poor guy is put through so much that it's a miracle that he isn't emotionally and mentally scarred from it all.
- But for Me, It Was Tuesday: He does not remember The Promise that gave rise to the Club's...situation (or, rather, he remembers it as a wish, not an explicit pact he made with them. Literal Genies suck that way.) so he is rather confused when Kanna and Haruka kill him in a bad end for breaking it.
- Cassandra Truth: When being investigated by Kudou. Even though he saw someone murder Kayako in the Izaemon costume, no one else saw the murderer leave in the costume.
- On Sayuri's route, Yuuya tells her the real reason why he's been distancing himself from the group. She doesn't listen, and continues to lash out at the people she thinks are manipulating him into leaving.
- Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: It has been his role since childhood to keep the group unified and (relatively) sane. He knows this, and increasingly grew to resent it as years passed and the girls (contrary to his hopes) got more volatile, not less.
- Conditioned to Accept Horror: He is mildly annoyed when the Trio break into his house (several times).
- Conveniently an Orphan: His parents' death serves absolutely no role in the plot other than to answer the question; "How can someone be so lonely they'd have such low standards for their friends?" And to enable Sayuri's kidnapping of him on her route.
- Covered in Scars: The dog attack left him with injuries that required surgery.
- Covert Pervert: He usually doesn't express attraction for fear of destabilizing the group dynamic. Kanna lampshades that he's this trope.
- Curtains Match the Window: Blue hair and blue eyes.
- Deadpan Snarker: He tends to drift into this territory sometimes.
- Demonic Possession: Turns out he is possessed by the Land God/demon.
- Dig Your Own Grave: Inverted. After remembering the truth, he goes to the shrine and digs up the original Yuuya's corpse to confirm it.
- Doom Magnet: Aside from having three sociopathic love interests, Yuuya got hit by a train, beaten up by the Miyasu clan's guards, and mauled by a wild dog before even reaching adolescence.
- Double Standard: He lampshades this trope in Sayuri's route, saying that the police will be reluctant to listen to anything he tells them about her crimes because she's upper-class and a girl. It's unclear whether this belief is true, because the matter is ultimately solved by Kudou tipping off his colleagues.
- Dude in Distress: If he gets kidnapped.
- Easily Forgiven: Usually the forgiver. For example, he gets ticked off when Kanna and Haruka stalk him, but considers Sayuri's "punishment" (which amounts to little more than a stern talking-to) for that excessive enough that he feels bad for them.
- Everyone Has Standards: He knew the trio could be bullies and tolerated that, but he is shocked when they stoop so low as to celebrate someone's murder.
- Exact Words: Yuuya acquiesces to Kanna's request for a sleepover, because he has to...but she never said it had to be just them at the sleepover, something he takes full advantage of. He acknowledges that this was unfair to her.
- Extreme Doormat: Because of his lack of familial support, he stubbornly refuses to abandon anything even resembling love and affection...even if that means not asserting his own desires much. Or having them acknowledged when he does.
- Fatal Flaw: He believes that all his problems can and should be solved diplomatically, which means he has no recourse when people use force and/or refuse to listen to reason.
- Foil: In Sayuri's route, her fanatical faith in the Knight's story is contrasted with Yuuya's faltering faith in his friends.
- Forceful Kiss: Kayako subjects him to one. He didn't enjoy it.
- Genre Savvy: He's upgraded to this by the finale of Sayuri's route, using the knowledge that she's pursuing him to lure her into a public place where she can be restrained (or defeated, if that proves necessary).
- Gilded Cage: Yuuya's been trapped in one by the trio. The game is absolutely littered with bad endings showing what happens if he steps out of line.
- Good Is Not Soft: In Sayuri's route, he learns from Kudou's example and frankly tells her that her delusions are just that. As he intended, this motivates Sayuri to seek professinal help.
- Grew a Spine: He is disgusted when the trio gloat to him about Kayako's murder, and cuts ties with them because of it.
- The Heart: He is basically the only club member who cares about anyone outside it, or is willing to prioritize the group's wellbeing over his own selfish desires. All interactions with the "outside world" must be mediated by him.
- The Hero: The game ends if Yuuya dies or becomes incapable (because of insanity or disillusionment) of redeeming the Trio, because the latter is its main plot.
- Heroic BSoD: After seeing Kayako's murder, he goes into shock and can barely remember anything he says or does on that day.
- Heroic Sacrifice: A nonfatal example. As Kanna and Haruka fled the Miyasu's property, Yuuya stayed behind to distract the approaching guards.
- Honor Before Reason: In Sayuri's route, after she has attempted to murder Shizuka, Yuuya tries to talk some sense into Sayuri over lunch...and then actually eats the food she offers to him. Surprise, surprise, it turns out to be drugged.
- Horrible Judge of Character: He is shocked, shocked when the girls who publicly threatened to beat up his First Love are glad someone who kissed him got murdered. Shizuka lampshades this, suggesting that the girls have always been this savage, and it's only Yuuya's perspective that changed.Yuuya: If someone got close to me, they might try to scare them away, but only to a reasonable extent... [...] They'd never actually get violent!
- Hero with Bad Publicity: His only friends are all girls in love with him, so the town considers him a playboy. Shizuka refuses to walk next to him for this reason.
- Humble Hero: Yuuya's so desperate to navigate through the Club's romantic situation that he doesn't realize what having three girls in love with him says about him as a person.
- Featureless Protagonist: His sprite is only shown during certain CGs.
- Idiot Hair: He has an ahoge on top of his head.
- I'm a Man; I Can't Help It: He says this to justify why he was staring at Haruka's chest.
- Insecure Love Interest: Yuuya's fixated on the knowledge that anyone could (see Ridiculously Average Guy below) continuously support the trio like he has, so he hasn't realized yet that few people would.
- I Just Want to Be Free: One of the reasons he came up with the Izaemon idea was to encourage the club to be less emotionally reliant on him. He claims outwardly that this will encourage them to reach their full potential, but as the plot progresses it becomes clearer and clearer that he wants to be free from their stifling codependence and sees no other way to achieve that.
- I Just Want to Have Friends: He really, really wants to believe that his friends are still the same compassionate, well-meaning people that (he thinks) they were months ago, and because of that he ignores a lot of the stuff they do. Even when he does start objecting, it's more along the lines of "maybe if I talk to them, they'll snap out of it" than "oh God, Sayuri just attacked someone, I should call the police". This mindset does not help him or anyone else in the long run.
- Know When to Fold 'Em: Yuuya makes three unsuccessful attempts to coax Sayuri back to sanity. After the third fails, he just runs away screaming.
- Living Emotional Crutch: For Sayuri, although he is unaware of it until Kudou tells him about her past.
- Long Game: Shizuka's ultimatum gave Yuuya an unexpected opportunity to realize his goal of freeing the Club, but he'd been trying to achieve it years beforehand, ever since the Trio attacked his girlfriend in middle school.
- Love Martyr: In the platonic sense. Yuuya cares about the girls, but he saw their true selves years ago. He dated someone outside the group, and they nearly killed her in retaliation. Ever since, he's been reluctant to even talk to anyone female, because he knows what the consequences would be if his "friends" caught them. For similar reasons, he considers himself obligated to stay with the club and defuse conflicts within it. The time comes when even this is not enough.
- Lying to Protect Your Feelings: The reason why he doesn't tell Haruka that her drawing sucks.Kanna and Sayuri: (thinking) Coward.
- Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: Given the large amounts of canonical Ship Tease, Yuuya could be this trope with almost every female character. He self-identifies as a "herbivore male
" and occupies a traditionally feminine role in the narrative- that of the emotional, empathic peacemaker. Kayako is actually bemused by his lack of romantic initiative. - Mr. Exposition: Yuuya narrates the game (excepting certain bad endings) because only he knows enough about the girls to explain their motivations and provide a neutral perspective.
- Minor Living Alone: Because his parents are dead, Yuuya is living in their house without anyone else. Of course since he's under eighteen, his landlady occasionally comes to check up on him.
- Nice Guy: Why the girls love him so, poor him.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: He died trying to protect his friends, and will again if the player makes a wrong choice. This is one reason why they want to "protect" him so much.
- No Social Skills: A downplayed example. Since childhood, he's barely communicated with anyone outside the Club, so he grew into something of an...odd duck. For example, he doesn't understand that bicycling a fridge to school or admitting to spending two hours waiting for someone is weird.
- Number Two: Kanna very rarely does anything, so it falls to Yuuya to provide incentives, manage public relations, and keep the club members from killing each other.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: He feigns ignorance of the Club's romantic Mexican Standoff because if he made a move one way or the other, things could get very volatile very fast.
- Only Sane Man: He seems to be the only rational character in the series.
- Out of the Frying Pan: While being held captive in Sayuri's route, Yuuya is saved from the threat of her impulsively killing him by Kudou's arrival on the scene. Unfortunately, Kudou is also considering killing him for different but equally arbitrary reasons. The only difference is that he will do so in cold blood.
- Passive-Aggressive Kombat: He calmly, politely accuses Sayuri of drugging him."You know the reason why, don't you, Sayuri-san?"
- Ridiculously Average Guy: He's basically described as this by Shizuka when she's explaining why the ReRe Club is being threatened.
- Rousseau Was Right: Strongly believes in this trope, and his narration shows it. The policeman baselessly accusing him of murder is just a Reasonable Authority Figure with a strong sense of justice. Sayuri is merely "misguided" when she kidnaps and sexually assaults him- and that's partially his fault anyway! He should have handled the situation better! And the list goes on.
- Shut Up, Kirk!: He occasionally has the option of calling out the Trio, but doing so may be fatal.
- Stockholm Syndrome: He reacts to Shizuka's injury and near-murder by apologizing to its perpetrator for keeping his distance from her and asking if they can be friends again. Unfortunately, Yandere!Sayuri is not interested in his capitulation and, in fact, it only encourages her to kill more people. After finding this out, Yuuya is shocked enough that he goes back to avoiding and fearing her, although he does note while being held captive that resisting Stockholm Syndrome has become difficult for him.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: Yuuya's opening narration (which describes the story as harem-genre Wish-Fulfillment) is eventually revealed to be this. He wants to believe he is happy and safe with them, but after Cerebus Syndrome kicks in, he admits that he's been trying to escape the Trio for a long time.
- Talking the Monster to Death: He tries this several times in Sayuri's route, but is unsuccessful until the finale.
- Token Good Teammate: His role is to balance out the girls' proud, combative personalities.
- Undying Loyalty: To everyone in the Club. When Kanna is choked during her route, Yuuya unhesitatingly shoves her attacker off a roof, even though she's murdered everyone Yuuya loves. She is still Kanna and he won't let her get hurt.
- Unreliable Expositor: Unbeknowst even to himself. The injuries he got from that dog attack were rather more fatal than he thought.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Once, he asked someone on a date. The girls nearly killed her in retaliation, and in fact would have if a nearby train hadn't given her time to get away. Fortunately (?) for Yuuya, he saw what they did.
- What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: No one outside the group sees what Yuuya contributes to it, so many assume that he's 'playing' the girls. What they don't know is that he's the only thing keeping them sane.
- Wide-Eyed Idealist: He believes so hard that the Trio have changed from the violently jealous bitches they were in middle school. (So hard that he barely cares when Sayuri tells him, upfront, that she had a duplicate made of his house keys. Or when Kanna plants a tracking device on him. Or when Haruka practices batting in the clubroom...) It takes several hours of game-time before he realizes that The Power of Trust will not save him.
Haruka Arisue
- Berserk Button: Being rejected by Yuuya.
- Book Dumb: No matter how she tries, she still fails her tests.
- Brutal Honesty: She is the most open about her romantic intentions, and emotionally expressive about them and everything else.
- Cool Big Sis: She seems to act like this to the kids in the park. She even refused to take the mascot head off in front of them because she doesn't want to disappoint them.
- Dark and Troubled Past: She grew up with a father who beats up her and her mother. Her abuse has caused her to hate all men and beat up Yuuya when he first tried talking to her.
- D-Cup Distress: She has a large bust, which makes exercising and getting bras a difficult task for her.
- Does Not Like Men: This was spawned because of her abusive father. Yuuya is the only man she will ever love.
- Fiery Redhead: She gets angry pretty easily.
- First Girl Wins: Haruka mentions this trope when explaining why she's so upset about Kayako.
- Foil: Haruka's Club is otherwise composed of introverts and repressed/dishonest people, so it's very often her that gets the plot going.
- Heroic Self-Deprecation: She claims to have been completely useless during the dog attack, but the attack's CG shows her standing defensively in front of Kanna and Sayuri.
- He Who Fights Monsters: She tried so hard to prevent history from repeating itself, but it still did...just not in the way she feared.
- I Can Explain: When Sayuri discovers Haruka spying on her and Yuuya, Haruka impulsively insists this...only to realize that she can't back it up.
- Genki Girl: She's the most energetic of the bunch.
- Girl Next Door: Lives in the same neighborhood as Yuuya and often walks home with him.
- Lethal Chef: A cake she made gave Shizuka food poison. By accident.
- Mood-Swinger: Haruka is actually the least dangerous of the yanderes, because her emotions change so often and she never hides them.
- Ms. Fanservice: When she's getting changed out of the mascot outfit, it's shown that she had stripped herself to her underwear so that she could easily wear it. In her eyes, she was worried that her underwear wasn't cute enough for Yuuya to see.
- Murder-Suicide: She threatens to do this when she thinks Yuuya doesn't need her anymore. It's just played for laughs... the first time.
- Passionate Sports Girl: She's so athletically talented that the sports clubs are always asking her to help them, and she even gets scouted for college teams.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: The red to Kanna's blue.
- Rosehaired Sweetie: Is extremely doting to Yuuya.
- Skewed Priorities: When Yuuya accidentally walks in on her changing, her main concern is that her underwear wasn't cute enough for him.
- Worthy Opponent: When Yuuya asks the Club to help him save Sayuri, Haruka's answer is that she has always really admired Sayuri's skills and appreciated her affection towards the group. She wants to fight for her, even though they're rivals.
Kanna Toutoumi
- Accomplice by Inaction: Kanna considers herself this in Sayuri's route, because she knew that Sayuri had broken the law as a child, including why, and did nothing to stop Sayuri after she repeated her behaviour. This pity indirectly enabled Sayuri to do what she did.
- A-Cup Angst: Invoked by Sayuri. Yuuya states that her chest is like the Great Plains.
- Bragging Rights Reward: Kanna invokes this trope about the omelette Yuuya made specifically for her. She doesn't want to eat it so much as lord it over the other girls.
- Brilliant, but Lazy: Yuuya claims that Kanna's only flaw is her lazy personality.
- The Cracker: Her solution to dealing with obstinate teachers? Hack into the webcams on their computers and blackmail them with the illicit footage gathered.
- Crazy-Prepared: Presumably the reason why she memorized all school regulations (despite her hatred of studying). That comes in handy when Shizuka tries to use them against the Club.
- Didn't See That Coming: She's actually taken aback when Izaemon suddenly kills Sayuri, but decides to roll with it. This comes back to bite her as she also doesn't realize that Izaemon is also out to kill her.
- Ditzy Genius: Even though she's smart, she can be absentminded sometimes.
- Dull Eyes of Unhappiness: During the finale of her route.
- Everybody's Dead, Dave: Her route ends with all the named characters dead, aside from herself and Yuuya. Shizuka was killed by Haruka, Kayako, Sayuri, Haruka, and Shinsuke are murdered by Kayoko Yuzuki, and Kayoko herself is pushed off the roof of the school by Yuuya when Kanna's life is threatened by her.
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Kanna interpreted Yuuya's fear when she threatened his girlfriend as being solely self-concerned (see False Reassurance below). The idea that he might actually have cared about her life was lost on Kanna. For this reason, she didn't expect Yuuya to remain so upset by it for so long that he'd try to leave note them.
- Evil Gloating: When revealing her 'plan B', Kanna takes the opportunity to monologue about how brilliant an idea it was. Haruka lampshades that Kanna is ignoring everyone else's interruptions.
- False Reassurance: As the trio attacked Yuuya's girlfriend, Kanna reassured Yuuya that they weren't going to hurt him.
- Fanservice with a Smile: During the Academy Festival, she wears a maid outfit.
- Heel Realization: When Yuuya talks to her for the first time on her route, she says she's come to realize how twisted she and the rest of the trio really are. Instead of making amends however, she fully commits to her dark nature in order to protect Yuuya.
- Hime Cut: She has the proper hairstyle for this trope (the sidetails, even bangs and long hair) along with related traits like class president, school idol, etc. but her personality doesn't fit at all, being absentminded, lacking empathy and laughing evilly.
- Icy Blue Eyes: To match her cool behavior.
- I Just Want to Have Friends: When young, she wanted to befriend other children but didn't know how, so she deliberately riled them up. Only in hindsight did Yuuya recognize this as a cry for attention.
- In the Hood: During her route, she wears a white hoodie note .
- Lack of Empathy: Not only does Kanna enjoy the thought of Kayako's murder, she can't understand why other people don't.
- Leet Lingo: She uses internet terms like "rekt" and "burn".
- No Social Skills: It's not immediately apparent (as the story is told from a friend's perspective), but Kanna was very poorly socialized during her childhood and still struggles to interact politely with people. After three days of putting on an 'honor student' act, she deals with the stress of it by cocooning herself in a classroom's curtain.
- Non-Action Big Bad: Despite being the Yandere of choice in her own route, she doesn't actually do any killings personally outside of a single bad ending. She instead leaves most of the dirty work to "Meiko" and focuses on stalking the rest of the ReRe Club.
- Nothing Is Scarier: Subscribes to this belief, as shown with her reaction to Kayako kissing Yuuya: she says nothing about it, never lets on that she knows, but days later, Yuuya finds a picture of the kiss anonymously sent to his email account. Fittingly, the climax of her route involves Yuuya searching for her through their darkened, empty school.
- No Honor Among Thieves: She refuses to let Haruka hide behind her when Sayuri catches both of them spying.
- Proper Tights with a Skirt: She's the only girl who wears tights under her school uniform's skirt.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: The blue to Haruka's red.
- School Idol: Averted. Kanna is capable of being one, but she finds the politeness involved frustrating and exhausting.
- Shrinking Violet: Around everyone but Club members. The attention of unfamiliar people scares her, as seen in the cafe rehearsal and TV interview scenes. During the latter, she could barely finish sentences.
- Stalker with a Crush: She put a tracking chip on Yuuya so that she could see where he goes.
- The Stoic: She barely emotes and speaks in monotone. The latter can turn into Creepy Monotone when she goes Yandere.
- Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Cold and aloof towards her friends and other characters, but sweet and warm towards Yuuya.
- Too Clever by Half: Sometimes, Kanna's great knowledge only makes her more anxious: during the dog attack, she froze with fear, whispering the statistics of rabies-related deaths.
- Totally Radical: She quotes several Internet memes.
- What the Hell, Hero?: In her own route she reveals Haruka and Sayuri's misdeeds within her route (Haruka for killing the Student Council President and Sayuri for spreading lies about illegal club activities in order to drive Shizuka away from Yuuya) exposing their true Yandere selves. She also does it to a lesser extent to Yuuya for treating them all too equally and being indecisive.
- When You Coming Home, Dad?: Both Kanna's parents are rarely home due to their work, and neither of them originally wanted a child. The Club had to take her to the doctor's, for example, when she fell ill.
- When She Smiles: There are times where she shows off her smile, especially to Yuuya.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: She compares bathing with Yuuya to a Dating Sim 'event flag'. Unfortunately, her story isn't quite that simple and Yuuya isn't about to fall in love with anybody.
Sayuri Miyasu
- Affably Evil: She is less verbally malicious than the other girls, but malicious nonetheless.
- Alpha Bitch: After going yandere, Sayuri shows shades of this.(to Shizuka) "In times like these, one of us ought to be the one to help him. [...] Why...why would he go to you for advice? That role is not yours to fill."
- Arranged Marriage: During middle school, her parents chose a fiancé for her.
- Beneath the Mask: In response to Yuuya's pleas that Sayuri go back to normal, she tells him that this is normal for her. She's wrong, but it's some time before she realizes that.
- Berserk Button: In her first Bad End, she doesn't take it well when Yuuya calls her a demon.
- Also, she hates her parents' attempts to disband the club.
- Big-Breast Pride: Which she uses during Marshmallow Hell scenes.
- Cold-Blooded Torture: Presumably the reason why she...kills?...Kayoko with a bat rather than the scissors she favors- she wanted Kayoko's death to be slow.
- Consuming Passion: Sayuri has this...thing...for eating Yuuya. No, not eating Yuuya out, but literally eating stuff like his hair and nail clippings.
- Covert Pervert: Beneath her generosity and gentle approach, she's just as possessive as her friends.Yuuya: I tend to forget she's after the same thing the others are.
- Dark and Troubled Past: She's the daughter of a rich family. When she was younger, she was forced to attend her lessons without any friends. When she finally made friends, she was almost taken away from them and would have lived a lonely life if they hadn't made an effort to see her. After the dog attack, Sayuri realized that her parents cared more for her as a ticket for more power than a daughter. This added with her being forced into a boarding school away from her friends, eventually drove her crazy. It was her meeting Kudou that allowed her to regain some sanity.
- Deadly Euphemism: The secret ingredient in her food is "love", by which she means 'sleeping drugs'.
- Driven to Suicide: The reason her parents let her attend school with her friends is that she threatened to kill herself if they didn't.
- Et Tu, Brute?: While murdering Kudou, one of her few friends, in retaliation for his "betrayal" (read: helping Yuuya to escape), she screams in disbelief.
- Fanservice with a Smile: During the Academy Festival, she wears a maid outfit.
- Feminine Women Can Cook: She's regarded as the best cook in the club.
- Gaslighting: In her route, after Yuuya asks the club to give him some privacy, Sayuri calmly tells him that he didn't really mean what he said and that she'll "forgive" him for "lying".
- Good Scars, Evil Scars: The dog attack gave Sayuri terrible scars which her clothing conceals. Her parents were upset because these scars made her less valuable as a wife.
- Heroic BSoD: After being attacked by a feral dog, separated from her only friends, and forced to get engaged to a total stranger, she snapped and went on a rampage through her school. It was destructive but victimless, unlike the ones which would follow.
- He Who Fights Monsters: She despised being caged in her house (see My Beloved Smother below) yet in her route, she becomes a jailer even crueler than her parents were.
- Hypocrite: Despite Yuuya's kindness being so important to her, she doesn't want him to be kind to anyone else.
- I Just Want to Be Badass: Her delusions of knighthood speak to this.
- I Just Want to Have Friends: Her one wish during her childhood.
- Inferiority Superiority Complex: Sayuri fears that she's the only rival who's jealous of Yuuya's affections- essentially, that she's a bad person. Her need to remedy this feeling influenced the nature of her delusions (although their actual cause was something else).
- Irrational Hatred: Yandere!Sayuri's hatred of Haruka and Kanna is more motivated by her admiration of them (and consequent self-doubt) than anything they actually did. She achieves catharsis after realizing this.
- It Was a Gift: The picture book she received from her grandfather. It was one of the few indications she received during her childhood that anyone truly cared about her.
- It's All About Me: She's so bitter that Kayako gets any of Yuuya's attention that she acts as if Kayako got all of it.
- Knight Templar: Even as Sayuri preaches about demons and corruption, she's starving Yuuya half to death to "protect" him and murdering anyone who even slightly disagrees with her, even Kudou, one of her friends.
- Lap Pillow: She lets Yuuya rest his head in her lap on a couple of occasions, (at least) one of them being after she drugged Yuuya's food.
- Like Brother and Sister: In hindsight, she considers Kudou to be more like a surrogate elder brother than the squire her delusions painted him as.
- Lonely Rich Kid: What she could have turned out to be if not for Yuuya, Haruka and Kanna.
- Mark of the Supernatural: She has purple eyes and her family used to be shrine maidens, so she knows about a lot of occult stuff.
- Mr. Imagination: In her route, as she goes further and further into insanity, she believes that Yuuya is the reincarnation of a Prince of Light who killed demons years and years ago, that she is the reincarnation of his knight, and he is currently being threatened by demons. The demons being any girl close to him.
- Murder the Hypotenuse: In addition to killing Kayako in her route, she will attempt to kill Shizuka. Should Yuuya not take this seriously, she will succeed.
- Muscles Are Meaningless: She doesn't look it, but she's strong.
- My Beloved Smother: And father. After Sayuri skinned her knee playing with other kids, her parents shouted at them as if they were at fault. This is why Sayuri is so dependent on the Club- they're the only kids she knows who won't be intimidated by her parents.
- Nightmare Fetishist: She secretly likes horror films. If her choice is deflected, she'll go into great detail about horror movies that she's watched.
- Older Than They Look: In the finale where she spends several years in prison, when she serves her sentence she looks no different than when she was a teenager..
- Ojou: She seems to act like one. One character even addresses her in a formal fashion.
- Passive-Aggressive Kombat: "I envy Haruka-san. Apparently if the debut performance is a success, she gets a reward."
- Purple Prose: After going yandere, she starts using opaque, fantastical metaphors to describe events and people. For example, her abusive parents' house is translated into a "labyrinth".
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: During especially crazy moments, her eyes go red.
- Reluctant Warrior: She didn't want to join in the sleepover brawl, but did anyway out of jealousy.
- Replacement Goldfish: Sayuri was one for Kudou's sister, and Kudou was Sayuri's replacement for Yuuya. Due to Sayuri's confused mental state, she didn't really see any difference between the two.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: She is correct that Yuuya is the hero of their story- but he is such because of his compassion, not in spite of it.
- Stepford Smiler: She starts off as a Type A in her youth due to her parents' controlling behavior. She turns into a Type C, hiding her broken mind and insane behavior.
- Sweet Tooth: Apparently she once ate five strawberry shortcakes in one evening.
- Team Mom: Sayuri can often be found breaking up fights between Haruka and Kanna.
- There Are No Therapists: Averted. After her first outburst (see Heroic BSoD entry), she was committed to a psychiatric hospital.
- Tragic Monster: Much of her cruelty is caused by legitimate mental illness rather than her own will.
- Villainous BSoD: After Kudou's "betrayal", Sayuri curls up and wails. Then she gets back up and stabs him.
- Wish-Fulfillment: Why Sayuri originally loved her picture book: it provided an escape from endless tutoring, abusive parents, and loneliness. But as her madness deepened, this love was twisted into the source of her fanatical delusions.
- Workaholic: While preparing for the festival, she initially overburdens herself by making all of it fresh and the highest-quality she can.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: She wants so badly to live in a fantasy story where evil is easily recognized and violence solves everything that she makes decisions as if she did.
Shizuka Kujou
Shizuka Kujou
- Debt Detester: Shizuka's dedication to justice means she must reciprocate generosity, even if it comes from members of groups she personally hates. One reason she's frustrated with the ReRe Club is because it's difficult to repay them without being unfair to the other clubs.
- Designated Victim: In every route, something bad happens to her.
- Eye Scream: In Sayuri's route, Yuuya finds her being taken away with bandaging over her eye. A classmate of hers informs him that her desk was rigged with scissors. Post Time Skip, she's regained her vision.
- The Farmer and the Viper: Shizuka accepts Sayuri's apology for injuring her and- rather than publicly embarrass Sayuri by calling for a teacher- offers to discuss the matter with her in private. The instant Shizuka's back is turned, Sayuri pushes her down the stairs.
- Good Scars, Evil Scars: Subverted. The scars she got from being victimized in Sayuri's route are said to have "ruined" her beauty.
- Icy Blue Eyes: Even colder than Kanna's.
- Jerkass Has a Point: She calls out the ReRe Club because they're not doing any activities. She even looks through the log and states that nothing they've done is a real accomplishment.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: When Yuuya goes to her for advice on the outdoor café, she has him explain everything so that she can point out the flaws and help correct them.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: She offers Yuuya a shoulder to cry on after Kayako's murder, and the trio attack her in retaliation.
- Only Sane Man: She is the only character to recognize that the girls's possessiveness of Yuuya is bad news and that his fear of them is entirely reasonable.
- Student Council President: For two terms running, which speaks to her competence.
- Tsundere: She acts like a jerk, but she turns dere during certain scenes.
- When buying tissue paper for her mother, she becomes flustered and shyly thanks Yuuya for helping her.
Kayako Yuzuki
Kayako Yuzuki
- Cool Big Sis: Kayako is pretty much this trope personified for Yuuya. He even calls her "Kaya-nee".
- Curtains Match the Window: Green hair and green eyes.
- Forceful Kiss: She grabs Yuuya and kisses him, despite him saying earlier he wasn't interested in her. Yuuya feels distinctly uncomfortable afterwards.
- The Gadfly: Kayako deliberately riles up the Trio because she finds their jealousy entertaining.
- Identical Twin ID Tag: Kayako wears glasses and casual clothing.
- Kiss of Death: A symbolic example. Because she kisses Yuuya (in every route, mind you), she dies at the hands of the selected Yandere.
- Signature Scent: According to Haruka, anyway.
- Mugging the Monster: She mistook the Trio's yandere-ness for mere jealousy, and paid for this mistake with her life.
- One Degree of Separation: Not only is she Yuuya's friend, Kayoko's sister, and the subject of an investigation by Kudou, but if not for her advice to Yuuya during his parents' funeral, the dog attack years later would have happened completely differently and Yuuya wouldn't have made his plot-relevant promise with Kanna, Sayuri and Haruka. And she has several conversations with Shizuka, which ties her to all the named characters.
- Theme Twin Naming: With Kayoko.
Kayoko Yuzuki
Kayoko Yuzuki
A shrine maiden at Okiba Shrine, and Kayako's sister.- Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: Much more reserved than her sister.
- Apologises a Lot: She feels pretty guilty over having assumed that Yuuya was a burglar when they first met, although Yuuya himself acknowledges it was a perfectly reasonable mistake (the night was dark, he didn't respond when she called out to him, etc...).
- Cain and Abel: She murders her own sister in Kanna's route.
- Cassandra Truth: She tries to tell people that idolizing the Land God is a bad idea, but only Yuuya even slightly listens. Justified, as few people believe that the God is real to begin with, much less that it's evil.
- Curtains Match the Window: Green hair and green eyes, like her sister.
- The Dragon: In Kanna's route she offers her services to Kanna to grant her desires of being alone with Yuuya under the guise of the spirit of Meiko Shido, a schoolgirl who committed suicide 10 years ago. She serves as Kanna's muscle to kill anyone she desires.
- Identical Twin ID Tag: Kayoko doesn't wear glasses and is always seen in her hakama.
- Miko: Right down to the hakama.
- The Starscream: She betrays Kanna at the end of her route and attempts to murder both her and Yuuya.
- Theme Twin Naming: With Kayako.
Detective Shinsaku Kudou
Detective Shinsaku Kudou
Detective Kudou is the detective put in charge of Kayako's murder.- Corrupt Cop: In Sayuri's route however, he tries to suggest that Yuuya, the witness, killed them, despite lacking any evidence or motive linking him to the crime. It's because he knows Sayuri committed the crime and is trying to obfuscate the truth to cover her tracks.
- The Dragon: As the "squire" to Sayuri's "knight", he considers it his duty to cover up her crimes and keep Yuuya imprisoned.
- Dying Moment of Awesome: Two; trying to redeem Sayuri after she stabs him and revealing to to his colleagues (through a posthumous automated email) that she murdered Kayako.
- Exact Words: He promises not to tell Sayuri about Yuuya's true opinion of her insanity. And he doesn't. But he does murder Yuuya himself, if the player chooses wrongly.
- Hardboiled Detective: He has the look and attitude of one.
- Gaslighting: An inadvertent example. Kudou didn't really think that Yuuya killed Kayako, but he pretended otherwise as an excuse to check up on him. He didn't tell Yuuya the truth because it would've made him distrust Sayuri.
- Knight Templar Big Brother: He sees Sayuri as a surrogate little sister. And in one bad end, he kills Yuuya when Yuuya refuses to play along with her delusions.
- Lack of Empathy: He guilts Yuuya for not enjoying the food Sayuri cooked for him. At this point, Sayuri has kidnapped and handcuffed Yuuya, but apparently that doesn't excuse Yuuya's rudeness.
- Laser-Guided Karma: It turns out that being the accomplice of a paranoid, torture-happy traitor puts you in the vicinity of a paranoid, torture-happy traitor. The days that pass before Sayuri turns on him can literally be counted on one hand.
- Like Brother and Sister: With Sayuri. He had a little sister that died and would have been Sayuri's age if she lived. When he met her when she broke some windows at school. He started seeing her as his sister and has been dedicated to protecting her.
- Love Redeems: Deconstructed. Kudou's basic plan is to placate Sayuri's insanity by helping her find a guy who will accept and love her unconditionally (as in, 'no matter how much she abuses him or others'). Unfortunately, enabling her delusions only makes them get worse, to the detriment of Sayuri's own sanity and sense of self. He realizes that a compromise must be reached between protecting Sayuri and letting her do whatever she wants.
- Make It Look Like an Accident: After smashing Yuuya's skull into the floor, he claims Yuuya committed suicide.
- Mr. Exposition: On Sayuri's past and familial situation.
- Redemption Equals Death: He eventually decides to free Yuuya from Sayuri's clutches. Unfortunately, Sayuri overhears him planning this and promptly murders him.
- Saying Too Much: He often lets out details of the murders within earshot of Yuuya, mostly to trip up either him or the culprit watching over him.
- Undying Loyalty: Sayuri is Kudou's main priority at all times. Even his freeing of her captive is motivated more by his belief that Sayuri's delusions are unhealthy for her than any morality or empathy.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Kudou believes that the best way to help Sayuri is to enable her delusions and keep them secret. If Yuuya disagrees, Kudou will murder him. Kudou later receives this trope, courtesy of Sayuri, because payback is a bitch.
The Land God
The Land God
Inegami's patron deity. It inspired Izaemon's design.- Animal Motifs: Dogs. Its shrine is decorated by dog statues, a feral dog attacks some of the God's petitioners, and its face is that of a Hellhound's.
- Clap Your Hands If You Believe: At the story's beginning, the God only has one, rarely visited shrine. As "Izaemon" grows in popularity and the God's story is spread amongst more people, its power grows exponentially. This is NOT a good thing.
- Deal with the Devil: The God is actually a demon. Its first priest was a Well-Intentioned Extremist driven by the need to protect Inegami.
- Equivalent Exchange: How its powers work. The God does not give good fortune to worshipers so much as it takes good fortune from someone else and redirects that to its chosen. So, in the past, Inegami prospered while towns around it fell into famine and ruin. The God's summoner/first priest knew this would happen, but felt the safety of his people was more important.
- Exact Words: It doesn't matter that Yuuya didn't believe in the God. It doesn't matter that he didn't know the God demands a cost for every wish it fulfills. It doesn't matter that Yuuya had no idea what that cost would be. It doesn't matter that he didn't even agree to pay that cost. Yuuya wished that his friends would be together forever, so he is going to get that. If he changes his mind, or the God misinterpreted his words, well- that's his problem.
- Real After All: No one but Kayoko really believes in the God, so the Club have no qualms about appropriating its legend for their mascot design. And then the murders start happening.
- The Theme Park Version: Only a few people had enough skill and access to translate the one book there is of Inegami folklore. Unfortunately, all of those people had agendas, so their translations censored everything really important about it. This is why nobody realizes their worship is empowering a murderous hellbeast before it's too late.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: The Land God has little importance in Sayuri's route because her mutilation of Shizuka cuts off note the 'book translation' subplot before it goes anywhere.
