Stuff I am trying to create. Any help is appreciated.
Possible new pages:
Shinza Bansho Analysis Page
A page trying to cover all of the distinct terminology of the series. Still a work in progress. Just something I might work on when the urge hits me. Not sure if anything will come of this.
Common Concepts
This section covers terminology that is common across all eras.
- The Throne: The Throne is the mythical device that allows for an individual to spread their desire across the cosmos as a new natural law to remake it in their image and it acts as the cornerstone of the whole series. The Throne itself resides in the very root of the world, a region beyond the very idea of reality that cannot be described in any language, with only the closest approximation is to simply call it "a place". On top of allowing for the repainting of all of creation, the Throne also acts as a scaffolding and stabilizing structure for the current God, as the Gods are walking universes by themselves reality would collapse under their spiritual weight if not for the Thrones support. This also means that should the unthinkable happen and the current God would fall without any worthy replacement being around, reality would not be wiped clean as the Throne would keep on maintaining the old Gods law until a worthy replacement appears.
The Throne was originally a device made by an ancient and powerful civilization during a time of vast interstellar wars, it was eventually taken by the powerful warrior known as Mithra who would become the very first God to rule the universe using this device. The Throne has changed hands multiple times since then, each time by someone who desires to overwrite the current world with a new one. Things would only escalate after the Third Heaven, Nerose Satanel, took the Throne. Due to the rather unorthodox methods in which he seized it, a paradox was born, a paradox that would go on to seize the Throne and give birth to new timelines and universes. This in turn resulted in the Throne transforming into a device capable of not only manipulating the cosmos alone, but to alter the very multiverse itself.
A secondary function of the Throne is also to serve as a historical record of sorts with a library containing the vestiges of past Gods laws as well as details of their eras. The current ruling God may also call upon these vestiges to use as they see fit, these are however far weaker than the original and may be unusable if they conflict too heavily with the current Law. - Heaven:
- Law:
- Emanation:
- Transcendence:
- The Singularity:
- Observer:
- Sensory:
- Apoptosis:
- Sorcery:
Specific Concepts
This section covers each era and concepts specific to them.
- Ahura Mazda
Ruling God: Mithra, The Truth
Duration: Ca 30,000 years
The very first era- Avesta:
- Commandment:
- Star Spirit Divine Blessing:
- Paradise Lost
Ruling God: Magsarion, The Remorseless
Duration: Ca 5,000 years
The second era- Sin:
- Zoar
Ruling God: Nerose Satanel, The Morning Star
Duration: Ca 30,000 years
The third era- (Further info unavailable)
- Omega Ewigkeit
Ruling God: Mercurius, The Mercury
Duration: Immeasurable
The fourth era- Die Ewigkeit:
- Assiah:
- Yetzirah:
- Beri'ah:
- Atziluth:
- Ahnenerbe:
- Foreknowledge:
- Die Ewigkeit:
- Anima Entelecheia
Ruling God: Marguerite Breuilh, The Twilight
Duration: Ca 10,000 years
The fifth era- (Further info unavailable)
- Mahamara
Ruling God: Māra Papiyas, The Evil One
Duration: Ca 8,000 years
The sixth era - Amaterasu
Ruling God: Hirume, The Dawn
Duration: Ongoing
The seventh and current era- (Further info unavailable)
Maitetsu -Pure Station- (VN)
Main
- Afterlife Express: Variation, Sotetsu have frequent dreams of his dead sister Michiko being stuck on a train bound for the afterlife, never reaching her final stop. He hopes that one day she will be able to move on and join their parents.
- Body Surf: Raillords have both whats called a maintenance body and an operation body that they switch between to suit their current needs.
- End of an Age: The Track Closure Era which signaled the end for most kinds of railway traffic. While it still survives to some extent thanks to both fans known as maitetsu and determined companies, the golden age is far gone.
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture: As it takes place in a slightly different version of our own world, most other countries mentioned have slightly altered names.
- Genre Deconstruction: The novel does not shy away from showing the difficulties in logistics as well as the costs of operating trains and keeping everything functional. It makes it clear that blind idealism get's you nowhere in these kinds of scenarios, something Sotetsu had to learn.
- Good Versus Good: The story has a very lighthearted tone with everyone just doing what they are doing cause they think it is the best thing to do. Even Kisaki who is the closest this story comes to a "Big Bad" is just a friendly and polite girl.
- Moe Anthropomorphism: A story all about trains being anthropomorphed little girls.
- Puni Plush: The VN has a very soft and cute art-style to match the laid back tone of the story.
- Ridiculously Human Robots: The Raillords are supposed to be artificial creations capable of switching bodies to meet different needs, yet other than being shorter than most humans as well as having odd feeding habits, are pretty much indistinguishable from humans.
Characters
Sotetsu Migita
- Can't Hold His Liquor: He has very low tolerance for alcohol.
- "Eureka!" Moment: After having found out that the very frame of the 8620 is badly damaged, he ends up stuck on trying to solve the issue. When Hibiki suddenly pops up and offers to split her lunch with him a light-bulb goes off making him realize that he doesn't have to repair the frame, but rather to swap it with a functional one.
- Happily Adopted: Has been living quite happily with the Migita family ever since he was adopted after the loss of his family.
- Hates Being Alone: The events of the crash has left deep psychological scars within him, including a near pathological fear of losing those close to him. This is in part why he grew so close to Hachiroku as he believed that, since she was artificial, she would be able to stay with him forever. However he eventually has to accept that not even Raillords last forever.
- Past Experience Nightmare: He is suffering from frequent nightmares about the night of the huge crash.
- Scars Are Forever: Has a pretty nasty scar on his body as a result of the crash that took his family.
Hibiki Migita
Makura Migita
- Anger Born of Worry: Got quite angry at Sotetsu at one point in the past due to him walking up the local stream all alone. She ended up giving him quite the scolding for making everyone worried.
Hachiroku
- Berserk Button: She hates Aircra with a passion and view them as the very embodiment of evil. Speaking positively about them in any way will set her off.
- Big Eater: Don't let her petite size fool you, she needs a lot of fuel to run and will chow down if given the chance.
- Big "NO!": Can't help but scream when she sees the locomotive she is part of and remembers the terrible accident she caused.
- Fish out of Temporal Water: Mild case, but as she had been inactive for several years she finds things such as digital cameras and tablet computers quite fascinating as back in her active years they just had old photo-roll cameras and the like.
- Godzilla Threshold: At the day of the crash she was forced into making a hard decision due to the conditions making her unable to stop the train in time. Either let the train continue as is and let it go over the broken bridge into the flooding waters below, or deliberately derail the train to try and bring it to a stop faster. She ended up choosing the later which lead to the death of Sotetsu's family but saved the rest of the passengers.
- Massive Numbered Siblings: As Raillords are artificial and refer to others as siblings, it of course leads to quite the big family. Hachiroku says that she has 671 siblings from direct lineage alone.
- Scars Are Forever: Has a scar stretching from her right shoulder to her elbow, mirroring the damage of the locomotive she was managing at the time of her crash. Hibiki even wonders why scars never fully disappear.
Navi
- Deadpan Snarker: For a supposed navigational computer she has quite the sharp tongue.
- Tin Man: Claims that she is just an object, but Sotetsu is sure that she is really capable of emotion. she just don't want to admit it.
Reina
- Terse Talker: Speaks in a very relaxed manner and rarely for very long.
- Third-Person Person: It's apparently normal for Raillords to refer to themselves in Third person with Hachiroku and her sisters being the exception.
Paulette Hinai
- But Not Too Foreign: She is quarter French, sorry Franc, and was raised in Franc for most of her childhood.
Michiko
Nagi
Fukami
- Huge Schoolgirl: Is quite a good deal taller than her classmates and is as a result rather self-conscious about it.
- Shrinking Violet: She is quite shy and easily flustered.
Kisaki Hosho
Urakami Kazuki
Mototada Hosho
Akai Kiyoharu
Mouri Aki
- Delicate and Sickly: She has an illness that limits how she can move about, so in order to talk with Sotetsu she has to make do with a video call.
Unzan Nagayama
YMMV
- Unconventional Learning Experience: Suffice to say, if you didn't know about the various aspects of trains before reading this visual novel, you sure as hell will afterwards.
Meikei no Lupercalia (VN)
"There is only one method to equal gods.
It's to become cruel like gods."
It's to become cruel like gods."
In the city of the arts, Nyx
One day, a young actress, a rising star and young prodigy, dies under mysterious circumstances when performing the play "Caligula". Some say she was murdered, others say it was an accident. But those who knew her say that she put her all into her acting, so much so that she would even take her own life for the sake of the play.
Macarios Academy
Meaning roughly Lupercalia
in the Underworld
The VN currently has no official English release but a fan translation is available courtesy of Isylphia, allowing English speaking fans to read this story.
Main
- All Work vs. All Play: A recurring theme throughout the novel is the concept of those who take acting very seriously vs those who do it simply cause they enjoy it.
- Anti-Escapism Aesop: Repeatedly throughout the story, characters are tempted to give in to their desires and to reject reality and live in their own idealized world. It is always stressed that facing reality is always better than trying to run away from it. That said, the story is not afraid to show that some can have pretty good reasons for preferring the fantasy such as with Meguri where it is literally a question of life and death.
- Bland-Name Product: Apparently there exists social media sites called Tsuritter and Instregram.
- Cerebus Syndrome: Starts out fairly silly and lighthearted despite the rather tragic opening but slowly starts to become increasingly grim as the dark side of theatre and the lengths some people go for the perfect play starts to be layed bare with characters being brought to the brink of insanity or outright break from what they put both themselves and others trough.
- Clap Your Hands If You Believe: For some reason, as people make various kinds of wishes they seem to start affecting reality and peoples memories. People can seemingly vanish with people none the wiser while others that are supposed to be dead show up alive like they had always been there.
- Dysfunction Junction: According to Rairai, to be an actor you have to be broken in some way as the work that goes into the whole career can be likened to a sort of madness. Due to this, the Lampyris Troupe is composed largely of social outcasts.
- Ironic Hell: The whole setting is in effect a hell meant to contain Tamaki and shower him in happy memories and scenarios for eternity, all to strip him of the punishment he so craves.
- Method Acting: A recurring theme is the lengths characters are willing to go in order the put themselves in the shoes of those they are acting out as, sometimes to unhealthy levels. A big part of Kohaku's character arc is the understanding of madness and emotional pain to act her role of Odin in Philia, and then of course there was Hyouko Orihara who went as far as taking her own life in order to truly live into her role.
- Multiple Endings: There are several endings centered on different characters depending on the various choices available.
- Non-Indicative First Episode: The first act is a fairly basic slice of life story with some superficial acting elements. Then the second half of the second act begins with the introduction of Kyouko and things start going off the rails in a very new direction with things not being as straightforward as it initially seemed.
- Not Himself: During Meguri's route, various characters start to act in odd ways, talking in a very stilted and obviously acted manner with odd lines as if reading from some kind of script. This is all cause Tamaki was unable to tell Meguri the truth about the Lampyris Troupe and thus ensuring that the fantasy continues.
- Performance Anxiety: Both Futaba and Kohaku ends up having quite a bit of trouble being convinced to go on stage for the first time, and worse when it is revealed that it will be an open showing rather than the closed performance that they initially believed.
- Serious Business: The various characters of the Lampyris Troupe treat acting as the height of art and something you put your very being into.
- Prophetic Names: The Surtr Theater, a place named after the fire giant of Norse myth, burnt down to the ground and took the lives of seventeen people with it. Rairai, Yuuen, Hana and Oumi being among those lost in the blaze.
- Starts with a Suicide: The story opens with the young master actress Hyouko Orihara committing suicide on stage all as part of the play "Caligula"
- Wham Episode: Act 6 with the reveal that Rairai, Yuuen and Hana are all dead and have been for some time and the ones seen throughout the story are in a similar situation to Kyouko, phantoms still walking among the living.
- Wham Line: For the first real twist of the novel:Tamaki: "Orihara Hyouko's real name is... Sewa Mirai."
Characters
Tamaki Sewa
The main character and a former child actor. He gave up the limelight to pursue a carrier in scriptwriting and then directing.
- Brother–Sister Incest: He certainly seems to hold his sister figure in close to his heart in more ways than one. Futaba even calls him a sis-con at one point. Of course, things were that he did indeed hold feelings of romantic love towards his blood sister and it was part of the whole reason to why he and Mirai hate each other with such passion.
- Dead All Along: He like so many others died in the Surtr fire during the Hamlet performance, getting trapped by the blaze and then crushed by a piece of falling debris. The whole story takes place within his own personalized hell.
- Fanboy: He is quite a big fan of Norse Mythology, something that came about as he studied literature and plays from all over the world and was subsequently smitten by.
- Former Child Star: He was considered a prodigal actor in his youth, but this was only cause he was cast in the perfect role. In actuality he had very little talent and when cast as other roles it all became too apparent. He was eventually cast aside in favor of his sister.
- Green-Eyed Monster: As a child he both loved and hated his sister as her talent was of such magnitude that no one could compare, especially after he lost a role to her.
- Inferiority Superiority Complex: The reason for why he quit acting was due to his sister being such a shining star on the stage that he had no way to measure up, doubly so given how much of a one trick pony he was himself. This caused him to wish that he was the more talented and had a little sister that looked up to him rather than the other way around, a wish that got granted in a way when Nanana took the place of Mirai who was even worse at acting than he was.
- Irrational Hatred: When he meets with Kyouko he is assailed by some strange kind of hatred and disgust that he is unable to quite determine as to why. This is cause she is wearing the face of his dead sister and that his mind is subconsciously trying to divert him from the truth that the sister he has in his room is not the person he thinks it is.
- My Greatest Failure: Before her death, he and Mirai ended up in a nasty argument where both were at the end of their ropes and snapped at each other. The reveal that all the abuse they had faced at the hands of their mother and that Mirai had been faking being poor at acting and was now taking Tamaki's former spotlight served as the catalyst for their falling out. During this he let out that he hated his sister with every fiber of his being, pushing her to abandon everything for the sake of the theater that she holds such talent and spite for. This while at the same time holding feelings of lust towards her. Eventually it got so bad that he raped his sister with Mirai egging him on to have it serve as the contract of their hatred for each other. This whole incident was so bad that he forced the memories of it from his mind yet is also the reason he is now trapped in this false world of Mirai's design.
- Oblivious to Love:
- Despite the ever more obvious clues to the fact that the girls are all falling for him, he remains clueless to most of them. It is only when they are the most forward or blunt with their feelings that it registers.
- This ends up becoming important in Nanana's route where it is revealed that it was exactly this trait that cause her step mother, Mika, to have the girl fake her love towards him without any risk of him returning those feelings.
- "Not So Different" Remark: In Nanana's route he bitterly notes to himself how his relationship with the girl was really no different from the way her step mother had treated her. Sure the feelings involved were different, but the end result was the same. This all made him feel like he really had no right to her love.
- Spotting the Thread: As Rairai is chewing out Meguri over the small scandal he himself created for her, Tamaki notices that Rairai let slip that he is 23 years old which clues him in to him not truly being a student. Unfortunately Kyouko stops him from interfering. This is cause Rairai is in fact older than he looks as he has been dead for years alongside Yuuen and Hana yet has maintained the his appearance from his student days.
- Terrible Artist: While he wants to pick up a carrier in scriptwriting, he has to face the music that he is pretty awful when it comes to writing. While he has good ideas, the execution tends to be bottom of the barrel. Fortunately, Nanana turns out to be a very good editor while he himself being a decent director.
- Through the Eyes of Madness: He did not take the death of Hyouko Orihara, or rather his sister Mirai Sewa, very well. This mixed with his own inferiority complex leading him to wanting a meek and helpless little sister made him begin to see Nanana as Mirai after he rescued her from nearly being sold into the sex trade and then kept her locked in his personal room at home, still thinking she was his sister.
- Trauma-Induced Amnesia: He had pushed away the memories of the whole argument he and Mirai had due to the mental scars the whole thing left him with.
- The Un Favourite: After his lack of talen became clear his parents would only really care about Mirai, neglecting him which birthed a deep animosity within Tamaki towards his sister. It got so bad that his mother would outright act like he didn't even exist.
- The Voice: He never appears within the novel, and as he has no voice actor, is not really heard either, only ever experienced from a first person perspective.
Futaba Kurashina
"I was born not to be loved, but to love others."
Tamaki's childhood friend. Hates men.
- Can't Live with Them, Can't Live Without Them: It is clear that despite her misandry, she still likes Tamaki in her own weird little way.
- Cuteness Proximity: When seeing Nanana for the first time she completely melts into a pile of gibbering idiocy as she is exposed to her cuteness. And as seen later, this continues to be an issue for her, especially when the two has to act together.
- Does Not Like Men: She really does not like men at all. Tamaki is about the only one she even tolerates being in the general vicinity of.
- Emotionally Tongue-Tied: When told to act as a married couple together with Nanana she once again completely breaks down into incoherent rambling as she struggles to even call her by her first name, just managing to blurt out a bunch of nonsense.
- The Final Temptation: She is approached by Kyouko who tempts her with the possibility of getting Nanana to love her back. Futaba shoots it down as to her, that would be trampling over the very idea of love and would be nothing more than domination.
- Gayngst: Defied. While Oboro was concerned about Futaba's future given her sexuality, it turned out that she had already made peace with her reality and when Kyouko tried to ensnare her by playing into this, Futaba simply shoots her down.
- High Hopes, Zero Talent: She wants to get into acting, but her severe lack of talent hinders her dreams quite severely.
- I Just Want to Be Special: She has felt like she always was just average at everything, like there was nothing special about her. As such she decided to pick up acting as a means to perhaps stand out in something.
- Little Miss Snarker: She packs a sharp tongue in the tiny body of hers, often coming with cutting quips at Tamaki's expense.
- No Social Skills: Of the shy variety. She will stumble her way around discussions and have a general difficulty interacting with other people.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: She delivers a scathing retort to Kyouko in response to her Deal with the Devil, picking apart just how shallow her understanding of love and relationships truly is.
- Romantic Runner-Up: She loves Nanana, but she also knows that Nanana loves Tamaki and decides to respect that. While she knows that her love will be forever unrequited, she also knows that it is true, and that is good enough for her.
- Shrinking Violet: Very shy around other people save for Tamaki.
- Spanner in the Works: As Tamaki get's swallowed up by yet another dream, now thinking Kohaku is Mirai, Futaba stumbles on the both of them and without any restraint immediately breaks down the illusion.
Nanana Amatsuka
A famous idol who also had the unfortunate circumstance of being a bastard child.
- Addressing the Player: At the end of her route she directly questions the player about the nature of her relationship with Tamaki, repeatedly expressing and reinforcing how happy she is.
- Armor-Piercing Question: When talking with Kyouko after having made up her mind about cutting ties with her mother, Nanana asks her if she ever fought with Tamaki. This causes Kyouko to immediately drop her smug smug act and suddenly becomes a lot more serious, making it clear that the question struck a nerve.
- Attempted Rape: She was the victim of almost being raped by a man that her mother sold her out to for the sake of a favor for her half-brother Reiji.
- Bastard Angst: One of the few words she remembered from her father was how he wished for her to have never been born. This mixed with other circumstances caused her to try and wish herself away as she came to view herself as at fault for what happened to the family.
- Broken Pedestal: She genuinely believed her step mother loved her. Only after nearly being sold into the sex trade and having her true feelings exposed did Nanana realize what a lie she had been living in, causing her to accept the similarly broken Tamaki's proposal to become his new little sister.
- Brother–Sister Incest: Zigzagged. In her own route she makes a wish for her ideal world with Kyouko, making Tamaki her brother and family instead of the one she had with Amatsuka becoming a stage name instead. However, as she still has romantic feelings for Tamaki they still make out despite that as far as they know, they are brother and sister.
- Bunker Woman: She was kept locked inside Tamaki's personal room with him thinking that she was his dead sister Mirai. Interestingly, compared to her past situation she viewed this as an improvement.
- The Cutie: A former idol who maintains an air of naive sweetness and causing those around her to melt by her cuteness.
- Dead All Along: While Tamaki saved her from being raped in this reality, this never actually happened and it is revealed in Kohaku's route that she committed suicide after learning of what her mother thought of her.
- Deal with the Devil:
- Before the start of the story she made a joint deal with Kyouko together with Tamaki to become the ideal little sister and big brother together.
- At the start of her own route, as she finally accepts just how depraved her step mother truly is, she once again accepts Kyouko's offer to rewrite the stage to suit her wishes and live in a more idealized fantasy.
- Driven to Suicide: In Kohaku's route it is revealed that in reality, Tamaki never came to save her from being raped by the manager. Instead she succumbed to despair upon learning about her mothers true nature and what she thought of her, hanging herself not soon after.
- Everyone's Baby Sister: After she joins the Lampyris Troupe she becomes the kind of person that everyone flocks around and protects whenever the is something troubling her and in general acts as The Cutie of the group.
- "Freaky Friday" Flip: A rather convoluted one. She wished for a reliable big brother while also that she herself would vanish for causing all the pain within her family. This caused her to take the place of Mirai Sewa while Hyouko Orihara took her own place. The thing is, both of those are the same person just under different names and is also already dead. And worse still, Tamaki was of questionable sanity and kept her locked in his personal room where he still believed his dear sister was safe.
- Heroic Bastard: She was born as a result of an affair between her father and another woman. When that woman died she was taken in by the wife, Mika, while her father disappeared from the public eye.
- Hidden Depths:
- Despite her lack of talent in most fields other than standing there and looking cute she turns out to be a quite skilled editor and writer, able to turn Tamaki's sorry excuse for a script into something genuinely excellent.
- In her own route it starts to become clear that she has a second half to her personality that is far more cynical and bitter when compared to how she usually is, almost bordering on a Split Personality. It is to the point that she is unable to complete her script for The Tempest as she is unable to grasp the concept of forgiveness over revenge.
- Meido: After the whole mess with her disappearance is cleared up she comes to live at the Petrichor Café and working as a maid to help around the place.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: At the start of her own route when Mika reveals that even her love for Tamaki is faked, she snaps with her speech becoming smooth, her voice deepens and she becomes a lot more forceful as she rejects everything about her mother.
- Prefers the Illusion: At the end of her own route it is revealed that she is aware that she is living in a false reality, but that she is happy and wouldn't want it any other way. This even as her voice starts to crack and begins sounding less and less happy and more like she is trying to convince herself.
- Prone to Tears: She is a very fragile individual and tends to tear up very easily at the smallest thing.
- Rage Breaking Point: In her own route, after having been her mothers punching bag for most of her life, when told that even her love for Tamaki is fake, she snaps and breaks down as she rejects Mika once and for all before accepting a deal with Kyouko.
- Romantic Fake–Real Turn: Since childhood she had been trained by her step mother to love Tamaki after a chance encounter in a theatre specifically cause Mika knew he wouldn't return her feelings which ends up coming all crashing down when her mother reveals the truth and even the one thing she believed was her own comes undone.
- Shrinking Violet: She is shy and highly insecure with herself, often seeking comfort with those she trusts whenever push comes to shove.
- Speech Impediment: She normally has a pretty pronounced stutter, usually a result of her being so shy.
- Tranquil Fury: When she has finally had enough and snaps at her step mother she becomes almost alarmingly calm as she unloads all of her own spite towards the woman she once saw as her mother.
- Unperson: After having been famous in Nyx as an idol all of a sudden no one can seem to remember her with everything about her existence having seemingly vanished. Even when Tamaki talks with both her adoptive mother and half-brother neither can remember her and act as if she had never existed.
- "Well Done, Son" Guy: For the longest time, all she wanted was to make her step mother proud and to be a good daughter for her. When it finally sinks in just how much Mika hated and controlled her she ends up rejecting her as a mother completely.
- You're Not My Father: In her own route, after her step mother Mika reveals that even her love towards Tamaki was just another thing that she had gotten trained into her, Nanana snaps and thoroughly and completely rejects her mother with all her being, having now lost the one thing she believed was truly her own.
Rize Hakodori
An old acquaintance of Tamaki. She acts as the fitness and acting instructor of the Lampyris Troupe.
- All Just a Dream: Of a sort. Her route was nothing but a giant dream that intrudes on reality thanks to Kyouko. As she falls in love with Tamaki she fails to realize that it is like the world is shrinking until it is only her and him. Oboro eventually manages to snap her back to reality.
- Can't Hold His Liquor: She has very low alcohol tolerance. A single sip was enough to make her completely sloshed.
- Clingy Jealous Girl: In her own route she becomes quite wary of finding items belonging to the other girls in Tamaki's house and immediately order for everything to be cleaned out. Though she later admits she was getting worked up over nothing given she knew why everything was there in the first place, but she found herself unable to ignore it.
- The Confidant: As Kyouko is worming her way further and further into the Lampyris Troupe, fully convincing both Meguri and Kohaku to take her in despite Tamaki's warnings, Rize ends up being the only one who he can rely on as she like him knows of Kyouko's true nature.
- Cooldown Hug: As Tamaki had yet another breakdown from having to deal with Kyouko, Rize ends up bringing him home and hugs him to help him calm down.
- Cute Clumsy Girl: Despite her attempts to appear as the orderly sort she is very clumsy and sloppy. Hana notes one instance where Rize wanted to take her own measurements for a costume rather than having someone else do it only to end up tangled in the measuring tape.
- Green-Eyed Monster: She is deeply jealous of those with natural talent after she herself had to put so much work in and yet never measure up.
- Hard Work Hardly Works: Despite working her ass off to get better at acting she still could never measure up to the geniuses of the acting world and thus came to despise them.
- Heroic Wannabe: The main reason for her seeking out the theater was mostly in a vain hope that she could stop others from meeting the same fate as Hyouko, being driven to the utmost extremes for their performance, destroying their bodies, minds and hearts. Unfortunately, she was far less effective than she hoped with the worst case scenario still happening time and time again.
- Hidden Disdain Reveal: While she loved theater, she also hated it, something she eventually reveals to Tamaki. Specifically, she hated how it brought people to insanity, destroying themselves for the sake of the play. That said, afterwards she manages to resolve herself to continue to love the stage.
- Naughty by Night: Normally a fairly meek and soft-spoken girl with a mild Tsundere streak that also turns out to be quite sexually aggressive.
- Not a Morning Person: She is not really an easily started girl during the morning hours, often getting up way later than anyone else and even then tend to be slow for quite a while before she has gotten her brain into gear.
- "Not So Different" Remark: She brings up concerns in regards to Kohaku as she fears that if she continues down her current path, she could end up the same as Hyouko with all that it implies as she is exuding that same kind of madness.
- Secretly Selfish: It is revealed that her route was nothing but a giant dream made into reality. She is at first adamant that the part about Tamaki loving her was real, but she eventually has to accept that the whole thing was only her wish and he was made to fill a role to fit her own desires.
- Shattering the Illusion: At the conclusion of her own route she realizes thanks to Oboro that all these past years she thought she had experienced was only a dream made manifest and thanks to some encouragement from him she is able to break free of this saccharine prison, with a glass shattering effect made to accompany it.
- Tired of Running: After having been awoken from her dream she decides to not take Tamaki's hand and run away and instead decides to stay in the world of acting despite the pain it might hold. That said, she later collapses in tears as this meant she also gave up her chance of being together with him.
- Trash of the Titans: While she can appear strict and by the books during training, at home she is a total slob with her room looking like an active warzone.
- Tsundere: A fairly traditional example with her strict and harsh exterior and her sweet and bubbly interior that she works to keep hidden. It doesn't last long as everyone figures her out.
- Twisted-Knee Collapse: After having rejected Tamaki's offer to run away together she at first stands and walks away, her head held high, but as soon as she is out of sight she collapses to the ground and breaks down crying.
- Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: Her ending reveals that everything she had experienced in her route was in fact just a dream brought about by her own desires and just as it seems like she is about to marry Tamaki the whole thing comes crashing down and it is revealed that things are far from over.
Kohaku Kakehashi
A strange girl who seems like an empty husk. Prone of random bouts of solo acting by mimicing others, and is as a result taken into the Lampyris Troupe to further refine her skills.
- Anthropomorphic Personification: She is the living incarnation of Mirai's acting talent. As she only had that talent and nothing more, she ended up as an empty shell with nothing else to really go on. This in contrast with Oboro who carried Mirai's love and who already was his own complete person even before this.
- Book Dumb: While she is talented at acting, she really struggles with literature which is a problem as she has problems putting herself in the characters shoes when on stage. She is good at mimicing others performances and struggles to create her own.
- Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: As she feels like she is empty with no real direction in her life she is trying to find some kind of raison d'etre for her existance with acting becoming a small outlet for her.
- Emotionless Girl: Downplayed, while she can look cold and aloof, she can emote when needed but she still struggles to understand emotions and express them properly when on stage.
- Empty Eyes: Whenever she starts acting her eyes glace over as if she is in a trance.
- Empty Shell: She claims to be an empty husk that has no emotions and she certainly seems out there most of the time. This is cause she really is an empty shell. She is the embodiment of Mirai's acting talent that the girl desperately wanted to get rid off. Due to this, the acting talent is the only thing Kohaku really has, with nothing else to help make her a complete person.
- Hair Color Spoiler: She shares her hair color with Oboro and Kyouko, a signifier that they are linked to one another. In this case, Kohaku and Oboro carry parts of Mirai's soul, her talent and her love respectively.
- Lost in Character: To make up for her emotional deficiencies she sometimes acts one of her roles to compensate. As she keeps on practicing for her lead role as Odin in the play Philia however, the line between her acting and real behavior starts to increasingly blur with her even maintaining regular conversation in her acting mode.
- Mood-Swinger: In a way, she is prone of switching on her acting in the middle of a conversation which can lead to her appearing to change her mood on the fly.
- Secret-Keeper: As part of his training for her to be Odin in Philia, Rairai shares the truth with her that he Yuuen and Hana are all dead and have been for a few years, having died in the fire at Surtr Theater.
- Shadow Archetype: She is the embodiment of Mirai's acting talent, a part of her that she desperately wanted to get rid of, seeing it as the cause of her misfortune.
- Tsundere: A fairly mild example, but she tends to act aloof but provide the right incentive and she can drop the attitude in a heartbeat.
- What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: She struggles to understand the concept of love which becomes a problem when she wants to act a role the requires that understanding. It leads to her trying to express her love for Tamaki and then requesting that he rejects her love, all so that she can feel the pain of that rejection.
Meguri Niounomiya
A young star actor within the Lampyris Troupe. She is the granddaughter of Oumi Niounomiya, the previous head of the troupe.
- Break the Haughty: While calling her haughty might be a bit much, she can still be a bit full of herself at times, but Rairai's fake scandal piece really hit her emotionally with his subsequent verbal lashing breaking her down into tears as she finds herself unable to stand against him.
- Compassionate Critic: While she can be harsh at times, she means well and just wants things to be as good as they could be.
- Dark and Troubled Past: She is in fact a survivor from the Surtr Theater fire where she was caught right in the middle of it while performing Hamlet and she had to watch her grandfather alongside a large part of the troupe die right in front of her. She only survived thanks to a desire to live which trapped her within Tamaki's world. However, eventually she has to face the fire and perish amongst the flames.
- First-Name Basis: She only ever refers to Rairai by his first name. This is mostly due to him being a jerk and she knows he hates being called by his first name.
- The Gadfly: She has a rather impish personality and likes to tease and get under people's skins in various subtle ways.
- Hates Their Parent: Or grandparent in this case. Meguri absolutely despises Oumi due to how strict and neglectful he was towards his family and herself in particular. She was trained for the stage by him from day one and his spartan way of doing things did not endear him in her eyes. It did not get better when he formed the Lampyris Troupe and kept rejecting her from joining it. All this stuck with Meguri well after the old man passed away and she hates him to this day.
- I Never Said It Was Poison: Mundane example. As the girls are asking for refreshments at Tamaki's place and he reveals he has some black tea at home, Meguri let's slip that it is Earl Grey even though she isn't supposed to know this unless she had meet with Tamaki previously. This leads to a chain of small blunders where she is eventually forced to reveal that she slept over at in his home.
- I've Come Too Far: The reason she carries on acting despite her hatred for her grandfather is simply from the fact that her skills is all she has. Her youth was so controlled that she can't think of any other life than the one on the stage.
- I Wished You Were Dead: In her final conversation with her grandfather where he tells her that she will be fired from the troupe and the reasons for it after the next performance, she shouts at him that she wished he would just go and die already. The next day was the Hamlet performance and the ensuing Surtr fire.
- Rejected Apology: After Philia has ended, Rairai approaches Meguri and apologizes for what he put her through. She shoots him down and admits that she will hold a grudge towards him for a long time to come. He takes it in stride as he fully expected this outcome as he knows what he did was awful and deserves no redemption for it.
- Sanity Slippage: As part of her role as Loki in the play Philia, Rairai makes up a slanderous story in order to have her feel genuine rage. However, while her acting for the role improved, it also caused her to become increasingly consumed by her hatred, getting more and more hot-tempered, with everyone becoming increasingly worried to where she was headed. This eventually blows up at the most critical moment where during the play her emotions boil over for real and she starts going off script and starts unloading onto Kohaku who is acting as Odin. Fortunately it all worked out in the end and she starts to recover.
- Secretly Selfish: The reason to why Oumi refused to let Meguri enter the Lampyris Troupe was for the simple reason that she was a pro whereas the troupe was meant for those who were failures and had nowhere left to go. By forcing herself into the troupe, all she did was steal the spotlight from everyone else, feeding resentment among them. She really didn't take it well to be told this.
- See You in Hell: Done in a rather heartbreaking manner. If Tamaki tells her the truth about the Lampyris Troupe then the illusion shatters and she is forced to return to the Surtr fire and die in the flames alongside the rest. Her final words to Tamaki are her wishing to meet him again one day in hell.
- Supreme Chef: She is a surprisingly talented cook, something largely brought about by her desire for independence and thus learned cooking in order to take care of herself.
- The Tease: When practicing for the upcoming play at Tamaki's place she decides to stay over the night, much to the flustered Tamaki's surprise, and then she begins flirting with him in some rather unsubtle ways including lifting her skirt in a seductive manner and even dropping a condom for him to pick up. While Tamaki's common sense won out in the end, it is clear that Meguri is far from done with teasing him. That last bit however comes back to bite her in the worst possible way.
- Touché: When she calls out Rairai on his selfishness he only fires back that she is pretty selfish herself with it most likely coming from her grandfather. Meguri is forced to yield the point as even she can't deny it.
Oboro Shiina
- Abusive Parents: His suffered from having a drunkard father who would beat him up regularly as well as a mother who was desperate to please him, thus leaving no time over for Oboro. In fact, Oboro saw Oumi's ruthless training as a step up from his own family situation as at least from him, there was a purpose to the violence.
- And Then What?: He ends up being quite concerned for Futaba as the way she is currently going, she is developing genuine feelings for Nanana even though they are only supposed to act together for the next play. But what about after the play is done? Nanana after all is clearly having eyes for Tamaki and then comes in the whole issue of how the rest of the world view same sex relationships, especially during the school years, which could open Futaba up for all kinds of unpleasant experiences. Though as it turned out, his fears were unfounded and Futaba had already made peace with the idea.
- Dead All Along: Like with the Lampyris Troupe, he had been dead for quite a while, though in his case it was cause of the brutal abuse from his father. One day he had been hit in the head so hard it left him dazed with a continuously worsening headache. The next day as he was waiting for a train it all finally came to ahead as the injury he suffered caused him to lose balance and fall in front of the train as it arrived, killing him.
- Dull Eyes of Unhappiness: Due to the abuse he had suffered throughout the years he was left with an empty gaze that Oumi noticed and thus took him under his wing.
- Dying Declaration of Love: As he jumps to his death he gives a final "I love you" to Tamaki.
- Even the Guys Want Him: In terms of his acting, he is the most at home at playing the manipulative playboy and his charms are to the point that even other men can't help but get pulled towards him.
- Hair Color Spoiler: He shares his hair color with Kohaku and Kyouko, a signifier that they are linked to one another. In this case, Kohaku and Oboro carry parts of Mirai's soul, her talent and her love respectively.
- Hates Their Parent: He mentions in passing that he hates his mother with it being related to acting in some way.
- Heroic Suicide: In order to break the grip of the world that is made to imprison Tamaki, Oboro jumps to his death from the school roof with a few succinct parting words aimed at Kyouko intent on bringing forth Mirai. Specifically, he holds Mirai's love for Tamaki within himself and by killing himself he frees it and awakens the true Mirai.
- Shadow Archetype: He contains Mirai's love for Tamaki and thus represents the part of her she so desperately wanted to get rid off.
- Spanner in the Works: He realized the true nature of Kyouko and thus took actions that threw her whole plan into disarray. One key fact he realized was that he carried Mirai's love within himself and that by killing himself he freed it and returned Kyouko to her true self.
- Spotting the Thread: He eventually comes to realize the truth of the world and manages to figure out a way to break it by simply using the fact of Kyouko's insistence that she is not Hyouko nor Mirai as a baseline to pick apart her whole logic and in his own words, destroy the world with truth.
- Stepford Smiler: Underneath his smiling façade is a jaded and bitter individual who has never really known happiness due to a long life of abuse from his father. Even Oumi was able to figure out that something was wrong when Oboro kept on smiling even through the worst of his training.
Hana Shirasaka
A bright and energetic girl in charge of the Lampyris Troupe's costumes and miscellaneous behind the scenes stuff.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Her train of thought is... odd, and is able to derail even normal conversations with ease.
- Dead All Along: She died in a fire at the Surtr Theater alongside Rairai, Yuuen and Oumi where they were supposed to perform Hamlet. The Hana seen throughout the story is a ghost in a similar position as Kyouko.
- Genki Girl: Energetic, excitable and is willing to help at the drop of a hat. This is stark contrast to Rairai.
- "Just Joking" Justification: When Tamaki makes clear that the Stripperiffic maid outfit that was initially prepared for Futaba was just a joke as it wouldn't fit a serious play like "The Red Chamber", Hana of course says that she knew all along and that she was just joking that Futaba would wear it. Tamaki was far from convinced.
- Put on a Bus: Partway through the story after the Philia performance, she alongside Yuuen and Rairai are quite literally written out of the story by Kyouko as to her, they have served their purpose, though from their perspective it was more that they were finally able to pass on from the world of the living.
- Trademark Favorite Food: She absolutely loves cappuccino and will take very change to get it.
Yuuen Tatsuki
- Crippling Overspecialization: She is very skilled at playing sultry and seductive roles but struggles outside of that narrow niche. This is something she is frustratingly aware of and is the source of no end of grief given how she will be unable to do those kinds of roles as she gets older as well as simply wanting to act as the hero and the like.
- Dead All Along: She died in a fire at the Surtr Theater alongside Rairai, Hana and Oumi where they were supposed to perform Hamlet. The Yuuen seen throughout the story is a ghost in a similar position as Kyouko.
- Put on a Bus: Partway through the story after the Philia performance, she alongside Hana and Rairai are quite literally written out of the story by Kyouko as to her, they have served their purpose, though from their perspective it was more that they were finally able to pass on from the world of the living.
- Sex for Services: Nearly got trapped into using sex as a means of career advancement if not for Rairai creating a slanderous article to get her out of it. While cruel, it was clear it was the only way to get the message across.
Rairai Tengaku
Chairman for the Lampyris Troupe. He took over for the troupe after the death of the previous head Oumi Niounomiya.
- At Least I Admit It: He knows he is an asshole and makes no excuses about it. Though this is mostly done for him to hide his caring side.
- Brutal Honesty: He is nothing if not blunt. He will say exactly what is on his mind with zero care for what others think of his opinions.
- Cruel to Be Kind: While Yuuen realizes it later, Rairai's act of slandering her was at the end an act of mercy as if he hadn't done it she would have gotten into the world of selling herself to others for the sake of advancing her own career, something there would have been no going back on once she was trapped in it.
- Dead All Along: He died in a fire at the Surtr Theater alongside Yuuen, Hana and Oumi where they were supposed to perform Hamlet. The Rairai seen throughout the story is a ghost in a similar position as Kyouko.
- Death Glare: He has a permanent one plastered onto his face.
- Enforced Method Acting: Taking a page from the late Oumi, he comes to the belief that the best way to bring out an actors potential is to break them and put them through the same scenarios as the characters they act. Horror stories include the likes of throwing a girl into a late with weights tied to her in order for her to learn the reality of drowning, and another involving him lighting another actress clothes on fire to simulate the experience of being burned at the stake. Needless to say, he has earned a rather infamous reputation amongst other troupes.
- Exhausted Eye Bags: Has permanently under shadowed eyes.
- Ghostly Goals: His main goal driving him is to help make Meguri able to stand on her own, both as a person and within the world of theater. With the completion of the Philia performance and Meguri acing the role she was given, he is finally able to pass on together with the rest who perished in the Surtr Theater fire.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Due to his own failures he holds a deep jealousy towards those he calls geniuses and an ever deeper one towards those who are normal but still succeed. He is aware of this and tries to keep it under wraps, but it bubbles to the surface every now and again.
- Hidden Depths: A large part of why he is such a jerk is that deep down he is a deeply insecure person who is afraid that him trying to show any kind of kindness or a caring side will just come across as self-serving. As such he acts as the jerk that he thinks he is rather than the person he actually is.
- Hidden Heart of Gold: Abrasive and unpleasant something fierce and yet he has a hidden softer side that he will furiously hide even if it peeks through from time to time.
- Insult of Endearment: From the way he insults the late Oumi, calling him "shitty gramps", Tamaki is able to tell that Rairai really looked up to the man.
- Jade-Colored Glasses: While he has always had a rougher-than-sandpaper personality, in his youth he used to be quite the idealist but repeated exposure to the dark side of theatre slowly made him more and more jaded with the industry and the world at large.
- Jerkass: He is rude and abrasive and is very good at finding faults in everyone. While part of it is deliberate in order to make others dislike him, even at his best moments he is difficult to deal with.
- Jerkass Has a Point: He can be deeply unpleasant even at the best of times but everyone in the troupe admits that he knows what he is talking about.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: While he does a good job at hiding it, underneath the aggressive surface is a truly caring individual.
- Large Ham: Despite not being an actor himself, he sure likes to make his presence larger than life all the same.
- Malicious Slander:
- As Meguri is getting closer to Tamaki, Rairai has an article made up for the school newspaper that slanders her about her flirtatious behavior by making it seem like they are in a sexual relationship. All this to create a scar in her heart for the sake of the play Philia.
- A flashback shows that he did something similar towards Yuuen back in his youth, though that time with the intention of ruining her career in a fit of jealousy as he couldn't stand seeing her succeed where he himself failed. The troupe he was with at the time found out and promptly fired him over this, but Yuuen still quit as she couldn't bear the rumors. Though this incident also improved her acting which acted as the catalyst for putting Rairai onto his current path in becoming more and more like the late Oumi.
- No Social Skills: He is painfully aware of his own lack of social skills, but this mixed with his unpleasant attitude and dead focus on the world of acting can make him downright toxic to be around even when he means well.
- The Perfectionist: While is normally more lenient, when there is a big play for the troupe looming he lets his nasty side show and will settle for nothing less than the very best out of everyone involved, even if it means even more trouble in the long run.
- Put on a Bus: Partway through the story after the Philia performance, he alongside Yuuen and Hana are quite literally written out of the story by Kyouko as to her, they have served their purpose, though from their perspective it was more that they were finally able to pass on from the world of the living.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: The lengths he goes to make a play the best it can be can be downright chilling at times and is not above doing things that will emotionally destroy those around him if it means their performances will improve. While he is aware of how this makes him look and is filled with no small amounts of self loathing over it, his perfectionist nature allows for nothing else.
Hyouko Orihara / Kyouko Orihara / Mirai Sewa
A young prodigal actor known as the Twilight Girl. She died under mysterious circumstances while performing the play "Caligula". She was the sister of Tamaki and was acting under a stage name. Her true name was Mirai Sewa.
- Armor-Piercing Question: As Tamaki is trying to find out what happened to Nanana, Hyouko as Kyouko drops a rather harsh question on whether what he is doing now is any different from what the paparazzis that destroyed the Amatsuka family were doing.
- Bad "Bad Acting": As Meguri asks her about her acting skills before letting her into the Lampyris Troupe, Kyouko decides to read a poem which ends up rather flat and unimpressive. This is of course just another act as she is skilled enough to convincingly make a bad act.
- Big Bad: She serves as the central antagonist for most of the story, mentally torturing the main characters and prodding at their weaknesses to get them to give in to their vices.
- Break Them by Talking: She is very good at digging into the other characters personal flaws and slowly working her way in, breaking them down piece by piece with cutting arguments, giving them no room to argue back. Even when there are holes in her logic and conclusions, her victims are usually to emotionally distressed by that point to be able to fire back.
- Cute Ghost Girl: She reappears in Nyx as Kyouko, some kind of phantom that seems to both love and hate Tamaki, seemingly having been wished into existence by someone.
- Fatal Method Acting: In Universe example. As part of the play "Caligula", she took her own life on stage all in the name of fully selling the suicide in the play. Needless to say, it left an impression on everyone present.
- Freudian Excuse: After Tamaki failed to live up to their mothers lofty wishes, Hyouko became her sole focus and was raised with an iron hand for the stage. Needless to say, she hated this as it was ultimately what lead to her death. And she loves to bring up this troublesome upbringing to others, but while she sometimes get some understanding of what it was like, rather than sympathy she most of the time receives pity from others.
- Hair Color Spoiler: She shares her hair color with Kohaku and Oboro, a signifier that they are linked to one another. In this case, Kohaku and Oboro carry parts of Mirai's soul, her talent and her love respectively.
- Holding Out for a Hero: Back when she was still alive she wished for nothing more than for someone to come in and save her from the prison everyone else called acting. That of course, never came.
- I Shall Taunt You: She likes to taunt Tamaki by acting out various things Mirai used to do back when she was alive.
- Jerkass: When she was alive it became clear to people such as Rize just how much of Hyouko's fame had been allowed to get to her head and she became a deeply unpleasant person who would routinely insult and emotionally kick others down for not being up to her own insane level of talent.
- Lonely at the Top: She was so talented that no one could even come close to her. Full plays became effectively solo performances due to her overwhelming talent, and as such she was only ever surrounded by jealousy and spite from others.
- Mad Artist: She would go to some truly horrifying lengths for her acting. In one flashback she was supposed to act as a mentally unstable individual with an eating disorder and as such put herself in a situation to match. Rize was shocked when she saw her in that state and pretty much shouted at her to go to the hospital rather than the stage. And of course, there was the infamous instance of her committing suicide on stage for the sake of the play.
- Opinion Myopia: While she was an actress without peer, she herself hated the stage and saw it as a prison, having been exposed to all the dark sides of theater. However, she is also of the belief that as she hates it, the only sensible thing is for everyone else to hate it as well. To her, anyone who states otherwise is either lying or deluding themselves and she is often found trying to force others into this way of thinking, seeing herself as the only sane one around.
- Our Ghosts Are Different: Kyouko can be described as both different and yet the same as the original Hyouko. A phantom or doll that exists to live her life but at the same time also serve a more mysterious goal.
- Posthumous Character: She died at the start of the story, committing suicide as part of the play "Caligula", literally dying for her art. Though due to the strange circumstances around her death, rumors start to circulate that she might still be alive.
- Reality Warper: She seems to be able to change elements of reality on a whim, even seemingly change things such as perception and past history if someone wishes strongly for it.
- Rewriting Reality: Whenever she alters reality she brings out a pen and rewrites the script of the world, bringing out immediate changes to both the past, present and future.
- Satanic Archetype: She often appears to tempt the various characters and tries to exploit their personal flaws with honeyed words in order to make them reject reality and choose the fantasy.
- Shrouded in Myth: Few knew her well personally and her death caused a lot of stories to spread about her.
- Stage Names: Hyouko Orihara was the name she took in order to separate herself from her brother Tamaki Sewa.
- Stealth Hi/Bye: She is prone of showing up at random seemingly out of nowhere and then disappear just as fast, much to everyone else annoyance.
- Uncanny Valley Girl: When she appears as Kyouko, several characters can't help but note that her smile and general presence just feels really uncomfortable, like there is something seriously wrong here.
- Unperson: She suddenly reappears seemingly out of nowhere, now under the name Kyouko and no one seems to be able to remember that Hyouko existed or how she meet her end.
- Villainous Breakdown: As Oboro starts to increasingly poke holes in her logic and ways of thinking she starts to more and more lose her smug attitude before finally breaking down into mad laughter as the very fabric of the world starts to come apart.
- Willfully Weak: When she was young she was repeatedly beating and abused by her mother for not being good enough. However, this was simply cause Mirai didn't want to take to the stage. In truth she had plenty of talent even back then but hid it despite her mothers constant abuse. Tamaki does not take it well when he finds out that not only was she better than him, but that she could jump in and out of it as she pleased.
Oumi Niounomiya
The founder of the Lampyris Troupe and the grandfather of Meguri. He had grown weary of everyone taking acting so seriously and founded the group as a means for those with less talent to still act for their enjoyment of it.
- Break the Haughty: Following the scandal of one of his students committing suicide due to his actions he was changed completely as a man, going from a strict and almost cruel man to someone who only wanted to find the simple joy of acting.
- How the Mighty Have Fallen: His strictness ultimately ended up being his undoing as one of his students committed suicide due to his tutoring. This started a chain of troubles for Oumi that caused the once renowned director to be reduced to a shadow of his former self, being stuck tutoring for children's school clubs and the like.
- I Regret Nothing: Of a sort. He does not regret his past actions, even the one that lead to someone taking their own life, but this is cause he views regretting it as a blasphemy to the sins he committed.
- "Not So Different" Remark: He gives Rairai a stern warning that the young man is becoming more and more like Oumi himself with the potential for all the same ills that befell himself to repeat again.
- Posthumous Character: He is long dead by the time the story starts, yet the impact of his actions resonate throughout the narrative.
- Took a Level in Kindness: According to Meguri, he used to be incredibly strict and downright spartan in his approach to acting which earned him the ire of many but that in his later years he softened considerably and became much easier to be around. That said, he was still very strict and harsh with Meguri herself.
- Training from Hell: He was infamous for putting those under him through some absolutely horrific scenarios in the name of improving their acting skills. It eventually got so bad that one of those under him committed suicide which kickstarted his own fall and eventual humbling. He gives Rairai a stern warning when he notices that the young man is headed in the same direction he himself once had been.
Mika Amatsuka
A former idol and adoptive mother of Nanana. After a scandal involving her husband having an affair with a woman that had now passed away, Mika took in the young daughter that resulted from this as her own, molding her to fit her own ends.
- Abusive Parents: While on the surface she was a caring step mother to Nanana, spoiling her, she secretly despised the girl for having the same face as the women who took her husband. The only reason she was kept around was as a valuable bargaining chip that could be sold when the need arose in order to further the career Mika's own son Reiji. When the mask finally comes off, Mika wastes no time showering Nanana with spite and hatred. To really hammer the point home, after the success of Philia, Mika requested that she come back, but it is clear to everyone that this was only cause of the fame she got from having been in the play and that she would thus be useful to her mother, nothing else.
- Becoming the Mask: She only acted as Nanana's caring mother as a means to further her own ends and to carry out a roundabout revenge against the man who cheated on her. However, somewhere along the line she developed a faint glimmer of genuine maternal feelings towards the girl, something she only realized after Nanana had taken her own life.
- Belated Love Epiphany: Mika was nothing short of a real bitch mother for Nanana and only used her for her own benefit, viewing the girl with nothing but pure hatred. After Nanana committed suicide however, she became aware of a stinging pain within her heart, that against all reason she had developed genuine feelings of love towards the child, something she only now realized after she was already gone.
- Hate Sink: Whereas someone like Rairai is an asshole but ultimately has understandable reasons for his behavior, Mika is purely self serving and only cares about Nanana as far as she being able to make money of her and it is clear that she exists solely to be as awful a human being as possible with no sympathetic traits whatsoever.
- Manipulative Bitch: She was incredibly controlling of Nanana's life and had her dancing in the palm of her hand to be a useful product to ensure her own success. Even matters of love she had her act out in order to be more valuable.
- Stepford Smiler: Due to the scandal involving her husband, she had to put on the veneer of normalcy while doting on Nanana. However in reality she hated the girl and was only using her as a means to assure that Reiji, her own son and Nanana's half-brother, would find success.
- Was It Really Worth It?: It is revealed that in reality, Nanana killed herself after the incident with the manager. While Mika was at first elated given that this was her revenge complete, she couldn't escape the pain within her heart, realizing that she had a fragment of love for the girl. Eventually she was overtaken by guilt and confessed to her son who promptly abandoned her and she was left alone and broken, only able to reflect on what a horrible human being she was.
Minami Sewa (Walking Spoiler)
Mother of Tamaki and Mirai and a former star actor, or at least, that what she told her children.
- Abusive Parents: She was never the best mother, but after her husband left her she became downright devilish, repeatedly beating both Tamaki and Mirai when they failed to live up to her expectations under the guise of "training". And while she started to dote on Tamaki when he found success with the Red Chamber while getting even more abusive with Mirai, the moment his true lack of skill became evident, she immediately dropped him in favor of his sister.
- Broken Pedestal: For the longest time she lied to her children that she had been a truly great actor. In truth she had only really been a background extra at best and was only training the kids in acting to make up for her own failings.
- High Hopes, Zero Talent: She had always wished to be an actor but lacked any real talent and was thus relegated to side roles at best, and that if she got to act at all.
- Metaphorically True: When she said she had a past in acting, she was technically not lying, just that she had only been a side extra and never the leading star like she had made it out to be.
- Never My Fault: Her husband eventually leaves her for another actress which Minami immediately starts blaming on either her former husband or his mistress. It is however implied that the real reason he left was due to Minami's rather questionable sanity and abusive behavior.
- Parental Favoritism: A downright twisted example. She favors her kids entierly depending on how skilled they were at acting. The moment one was superior she would spoil and dote on that one while abusing the other for not being good enough, and she could switch like this in a heartbeat.
- Sanity Slippage: She was never a particularly sane woman to begin with, but when her husband left her she really went off the deep end. After Mirai died she got so bad that her parents had to intervene and take her away.
- Unreliable Expositor: Due to her inability to admit to her own failings she repeatedly lies and warps whatever information she gives out. Her being a former star actor was just a bluff. Even her whole spiel of her husband leaving her for another woman is implied to just be her blaming someone else for leaving her for rather justifiable reasons.
- Went Crazy When They Left: She wasn't exactly sane to begin with, but after Mirai died she completely lost it and practically ceased as a functional human being.
YMMV
- Base-Breaking Character: Rairai Tengaku, the chairman of the Lampyris Troupe. Either he is seen as a deeply flawed and complex character who will do anything for the perfect play or as an unrepentant asshole who is impossible to root for in any capacity whose actions only make him more hateable.
