Mahoromatic

Mahoromatic (まほろまてぃっく, Mahoromatikku) is a sci-fi romantic comedy manga and anime series which contains the elements of the literary genre of tragic dramas. It is about a former female android soldier, Mahoro. Driven by guilt from her actions during her combat days, she decides to dedicate the rest of her life to serving the son of her late commander as a maid. The manga proved popular, and was adapted into two anime series by Gainax: "Mahoromatic: Automatic Maiden" and "Mahoromatic: Something More Beautiful" (まほろまてぃっく~もっと美しいもの~, Mahoromatikku: Motto Utsukushii Mono?) The first series consisted of twelve episodes and ran from September 10, 2001 to January 28, 2002 on BS-i in Japan, and more or less followed the manga to the third volume. The second series also followed the manga, culminating in the story's end. This series ran from September 26, 2002 till January 16, 2003. A television special, "Mahoromatic: Summer TV Special" (まほろまてぃっく夏のTVスペシャル, Mahoromatikku Natsu no Terebi Supesharu), set in the days when Minawa had become a regular part of the household, was produced and aired around Summer 2003.


Main Character

• Mahoro Andou (安藤 まほろ, Andō Mahoro) (CODE: V1046-R MAHORO) - Mahoro is an android created by VESPER to fight an alien invasion in the 1980s. She is immensely powerful and fast, and is considered to be a formidable opponent by her enemies.Being an android, she has a limited life span. At the beginning of the story, she has just 398 days to live, and is given the choice to do anything she wants by VESPER. She chooses to become a maid for Suguru Misato : his father was her superior commander, and she was forced to kill both him and an alien when the alien took him hostage.She is, however, extremely hostile towards anything ecchi, or perverted. A good portion of the story's humour comes from Mahoro chasing after Suguru's secret stash of pornographic magazines which, given her training, she is easily able to find. She is well known for this attitude from her catch phrase: "Ecchi na no wa ikenai to omoimasu" ("I think that dirty thoughts are bad"). Mahoro and Shikijo-sensei's dislike of one another stems from this — Shikijo is constantly trying to have an illicit relationship with Suguru.

• Suguru Misato (美里 優, Misato Suguru) - Suguru Misato is a junior high school student living in Tokyo. He lost both his parents earlier — his mother, and years later, his father. While he believed his father was killed in an accident during a business trip, he was actually a commander (and Mahoro's commanding officer) in VESPER and was killed-in-action during the alien war. Although relatives offered to take him in, he refused and lived alone prior to Mahoro's arrival. He is smart and has an IQ of 130. He makes a favorable impression on members of the opposite sex. Suguru had a whole stash of dirty magazines which were all thrown away when Mahoro first arrived. Although he continues to try to smuggle them in and hide them, Mahoro will often find them — leading to comical confrontations between the two. Suguru uses a whole range of creative tactics to conceal his magazines, and is capable of running away very fast when being chased.

• Minawa Ando (安藤 みなわ, Andō Minawa) （CODE: 370) - Minawa is first introduced in Mahoromatic ~Something More Beautiful~. Clumsy and anemic, she ends up living with Mahoro and Suguru and going to school under the pretext of being Mahoro's younger sister. She claims to be a runaway member of The Management, but is later revealed to have been sent to gather information on VESPER's battle android Mahoro after being promised a heart in return. Mahoro, however, convinces her that the fact that she can cry means she already has a heart. Suguru's friend Hamaguchi develops a crush on her, and, despite her shortcomings, it is later insinuated that they form a relationship.

• Slash (スラッシュ, Surasshu) （CODE: V1046 R9-SLASH ZERO) - Slash is known as a "support mech" and assists Mahoro during combat. He has the form of a panther and can be summoned at any time by Mahoro. Although he can speak, his mouth never moves except during times when he expresses emotions. Although used for combat in the past, he often now acts as a guard dog around the Misato residence and a friend to the Misato's dog — a role he was not thrilled to take in the beginning. He is friendly but tough and will lend a helping hand when asked. Although Mahoro is Slash's master, he will now take commands from Suguru: since Suguru is Mahoro's employer, he is also her master and thus Slash's master as well.
  

• Saori Shikijo (式条 沙織, Shikijō Saori) - Saori Shikijo is Suguru's teacher in junior high school and is extremely attracted to him. She has a shota complex, or an attraction to young boys. Many of the jokes stem from her attempts to openly seduce Suguru and the ways in which her attempts are foiled by Mahoro.

• Rin Todoriki (等々力 凛, Todoriki Rin) - Rin is the brown-haired and tallest member of the "Triomatic". She has designs on Suguru but does not let it affect her strong friendships with Miyuki (who has an equal "crush" on Suguru) and Chizuko (who at times has expressed interest in Suguru).

• Chizuko Oe (大江 千鶴子, Ōe Chizuko) - Chizuko is a cheerful and bright, short blond-haired girl, and is the most innocent of the "Triomatic". Chizuko enjoys devouring food and has an extremely adept sense of taste, being able to identify the exact restaurant that a dish has come from and the exact origins of ingredients.

• Toshiya Hamaguchi (浜口 俊也, Hamaguchi Toshiya) - One of Suguru's male friends who also enjoys looking at porn. He has a crush on Minawa but has much trouble expressing it because Minawa doesn't realize it.
  

• Kiyomi Kawahara (川原 清巳, Kawahara Kiyomi) - One of Suguru's male friends who also enjoys looking at porn. He is a kendo student (hinted very obviously in one episode) and is usually with Suguru's other friend Toshiya.

Elfen Lied

Elfen Lied revolves around the race of diclonius, a mutant human species identified by two cat-ear like horns and transparent "vectors", and the ways in which the humans abuse and reject them as part of society, instead seizing them for storage and experimentation in an offshore laboratory. The series is centered around the teenage diclonius girl "Lucy", said to be the first diclonius, becoming sadistic as a result of her vengeance and delivering it on the humans who rejected her. Elfen Lied involves themes of social alienation, identity, revenge and the value of humanity. The series employs graphic violence and nudity, especially the graphic opening sequence of the first episode. So far, only the thirteen-episode anime series has been licensed in the United States, by ADV Films. ADV Films said the series was one of their bestselling and "most notorious" releases of 2005.

"Major characters"

• Kohta (コウタ/耕太, Kōta, also romanized as Kouta) - He is a 18 year-old student and one of the main characters of the series. Kohta enters the story when Yuka's family rents him a closed down inn as long as he maintains it, and begins living there with Yuka while going to a university. Kohta understandably has traumatic memories from witnessing the deaths of his father and sister, late in the series revealed to be by Lucy's hand, which he has repressed, ending up in a psychiatric ward for over a year for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Due in part to his loss, Kohta is sympathetic towards girls in trouble and is extremely generous and protective to the girls around him, because he can relate to them and they remind him of his late sister. He feels guilty because the last thing he said to her was that he'd hate her for her whole life if she didn't apologize to Lucy when he didn't believe that she had actually killed so many people.

• Yuka (ユカ, Yuka) - She is Kohta's cousin around his same age and lives with him at the inn. She is in love with Kohta, and is therefore jealous of Kohta's attention to Nyuu, to the point of being very irrational. Mayu once described her as the "mother" at Kaede House, and Kohta as the "father"

• Mayu (マユ, Mayu) - Mayu is a young teenage girl of around fourteen years old (she turns fourteen in the anime and turns thirteen in the manga). The viewer first meets Mayu when she arrives at the inn being inhabited by Kohta, Yuka and Nyu to return an umbrella she found at the beach where she met Bando, lying in the sand with his eyes gouged out and his arm ripped off from his encounter just a few minutes before with Lucy. Mayu is also the one who gets help for Bando. Mayu is also a homeless girl who subsists mostly on bread crusts from a bakery. Mayu had endured molestation by her stepfather before she ran away from home. Her own

• Kurama (蔵間, Kurama) - He is the chief of research, aged in his mid-30's, of the diclonius children in the research containment facility. He is also the surrogate father of Nana and biological father of Mariko. His wife, Hiromi Kurama, died from Caesarean section complications shortly after she gave birth to Mariko. Although he had previously been tasked with killing all diclonius births, he falters when he must kill his own daughter. Lucy carries a deep hatred toward Kurama, stemming from his failure to save Aikon Takada (seen in the Elfen Lied OVA); however, she states that she will not kill him but will kill everything that loves him. It is revealed late in the series that the General Director of the diclonius research program kept his daughter alive, increasing Kurama's perceived debt to him. Kurama dies at the end of the anime after the explosives inside Mariko (whom he is cradling in his arms while walking away) are detonated at his command. It should be noted that right before the explosion, Kurama has a series of images flash in his mind. In them, his wife is still alive and Mariko is a normal baby, and together the images make up Kurama's idea of how life presumably would have played out if Mariko had been born normal (Mariko as a toddler, Mariko on her first day of school, etc.).
  

• Bandō (坂東, Bandō?) - He is an operative in his mid-30's for the National Police Agency's Special Assault Team (SAT). Though he is fully human, he is as homicidal and apathetic to other people as the worst diclonius are. He is a hardy and effective soldier. After being maimed by Lucy and repaired with bionic, cybernetic and prosthetic implants, he escapes on a quest for revenge against her. He gets two or more Desert Eagle hand guns. In the manga he gets other weapons such as an RPG. The guns fire custom .50 Action Express rounds which are so powerful the rounds can not be blocked with vectors. But the bullets can be pushed off course at long range though; however at close range not even Lucy can stop them. He gets sidetracked several times in this quest, and ultimately receives aid from Kurama to "kill a diclonius that was coming." Bandō is driven by the will to fight and to prove his superior ability in combat, not to mention avenge the wounds he suffered at Lucy's hands. At the end of the anime he is crippled again by Lucy. In the manga his role is extended a bit more and he is shown to have a more compassionate side, such as saving Kurama, and burying the dead. He is reluctant to accept positive emotions from others, such as Mayu and Nana. While he is violent, ruthless and all too willing to kill, he takes great offense to acts of perversion, such as child molestation; when Mayu asks for his aid when she is attacked by the Unknown man (see below), Bando expresses intense disgust over the Unknown man's actions. In the manga, Bandō eventually dies while protecting Mayu from an attack by Lucy after the latter is exposed as a killer to the young girl. Lucy rips off his remaining arm and cuts him in half, then flees. While dying in Mayu's arms, Bandō reflects that he had always wanted someone to cry for him after he died, since he had isolated himself from human contact for all his life. He seems to be at peace when he dies; Mayu continues cleaning the beach where Bandō had come to live in his memory.
  

• Kanae (カナエ, Kanae) - She was Kohta's younger sister between the ages of 8-10 years old. She was protective of her brother and was jealous of other girls' attentions to him. Kohta cares about her very much, but repressed much of his memory of her after Lucy murdered her on a train by ripping her torso in half. Kohta's mourning of her death makes his father come closer to the body. Although he doesn't see Kanae's body, he is quickly decapitated by Lucy anyway. In the anime, Kouta's repression of the events leads him to believe she just "got sick and died.".

• Lucy (ルーシー , Rūshī) - is a teenage diclonius girl around 18 years old, Lucy has four vectors with a limited range of two meters.[3] However, she can be swift and lethal within that range, and will use any nearby objects as high velocity projectiles to kill at greater distances. She is also capable of stopping or deflecting most standard ammunition when she concentrates on the task. Lucy hates humans mainly because of how she was treated by her human peers as a child. Consequently, she discounts non-diclonii, claiming they are not real people, to the point of telling Nana that she has "not killed anyone yet". She seems to lack empathy, kills without much concern, and acts somewhat sadistically. Despite this lack of concern for human life she will not harm Kohta, crying and apologizing for killing his family. She refrains from killing in his presence, except at the end when she kills a whole army in front of him, which reminds him of his suppressed trauma.

• Nyu (にゅう, Nyu) - is a split personality of Lucy that developed after an .50 BMG round ricocheted off a metallic helmet encasing her head. Nyuu has a childlike personality and infantile knowledge of the world, and lacks spoken language skills, only able to say "Nyu" and "Kohta" most of the time. Near the end of the anime, she develops a wider vocabulary, being able to say phrases like "Don't cry, Kohta!". Nyu is innocent and incapable of violent acts, a foil to the normally cold and sadistic Lucy; she is the manifestation of her "good side". When Nyu is attacked violently (or hit on the head), she regresses into Lucy; likewise, when Lucy is treated with love and kindness, or wants to hide herself from Kohta, she will uncontrollably switch back into Nyu. While Nyu exists first due to trauma, it is believed that Lucy subconsciously encourages her presence due to her feelings of guilt towards Kohta and to prevent her from harming him (directly or indirectly). In the manga, this is confirmed by Lucy herself.

• Nana (ナナ, Nana) - Also known as Number 7, she is a young Silpelit girl who has the physical appearance of being 12-14 years old (though because Silpelits age rapidly, she is actually only about 6-7 years old). Her name, 'Nana', is Japanese for the number seven, the number by which she was called at the research facility ("Nana" is also a fairly common female name in Japan). Most diclonius babies are euthanized at birth in sweeps of hospital maternity wards, but Nana was one of a handful kept alive for use as a test subjects; as a result she has spent her entire life in the diclonius research facility. Nana sees Kurama as her father, whom she calls "Papa," because she needed something to keep her from going insane during the torturous experimentation, believing that she is making him proud. Kurama in turn sees her as his daughter and cares very much for her. In an attempt to recapture Lucy, Kurama sent out Nana to find her (diclonii can telepathically sense each other), then retreat until Kurama could arrive with soldiers, but Nana wanted to impress Kurama so she tried to capture Lucy herself. Lucy and Nana engaged in a brutal telekinetic battle that ended with Lucy dismembering Nana. Kurama personally came to stop Lucy and save Nana, then also disregarded Director General Kakuzawa's order to kill her by giving her new prosthetic limbs and setting her free with money to survive. Unlike many other Diclonius, because Kurama treated her with kindness, she is not homicidal or sadistic. She has the ability to temporarily disable other Diclonius' vectors by having her vectors go through their pineal gland. Although her vector power is slightly superior to Lucy's in terms of range (5 meters to Lucy's 2) and certain abilities, she lacks Lucy's sheer strength (Lucy can lift and throw many times heavier objects than Nana can), and violent nature; Nana's empathy for others does not allow her to fight as vigorously. With her vector arms, she is later able to manipulate prosthetic appendages and even throw them like a rocket punch.
  

• Mariko Kurama (蔵間マリコ, Kurama Mariko) - Also known as Number 35, she is a young girl described as the only surviving "third generation" Silpelit (a Silpelit born from one infected by another Silpelit, as opposed to one born from one infected by a Diclonius), and the daughter of Kurama at five years old. She is described as the most powerful of the Silpelits. During an escape attempt by Number Three (who was actually Nana's sister), Kurama was infected by her vectors and thus turned into a carrier of the diclonius virus, and his daughter was born a silpelit. In the anime she possesses 26 vectors (up to fifty in the manga), each with an approximate range of 11 meters (the number and range is much higher in the manga). Mariko was imprisoned as an infant and raised inside a steel container with human contact consisting of nothing more than a scientist acting as a sort of foster mother through speakers and monitors. Her physical impairment is seen in her atrophied limbs as she moves around in a wheelchair. It is ironic that the most sadistic and bloodthirsty of the diclonii is also the youngest and cutest.
  

• Chief Kakuzawa (角沢長官, Kakuzawa Chōkan) - He is the head of the research center at 70+ years old performing experiments on diclonius. He is from a long line of diclonius ancestry that has been watered down by inter-breeding with humans (much of this is, however, only revealed in the manga). As a result of this he has no vectors and much smaller horns on his head, which he hides under a wig. His and his son's aim is, in part, to replenish their bloodline with the diclonius they are experimenting on (of which Lucy is the first to be able to reproduce) and thus gain power as "kings" of the new race, which would wipe out humanity and replace it whole. In the manga, he even claims to desire the position of a god of the new, Diclonius-ruled world he envisions. He is the father of Anna Kakuzawa, professor Kakuzawa and one or more other male offspring.
  

Chobits

The anime consists of 26 episodes and was broadcast across Japan, East Asia and Southeast Asia by the anime satellite television network, Animax and the terrestrial Tokyo Broadcasting System network. Episodes 9, 18, and an extra 27th OVA episode are used as "recap" episodes, looking back on the events that happened previously. The episodes were re-numbered for the DVD release; the original recap episodes were not included in sequence, instead being published together on the final DVD and re-numbered as 8.5, 16.5 and 24.5 making the series itself only 24 episodes. There is a 6-minute special episode: "Sumomo and Kotoko on a Quest", or "Chibits", concerning Sumomo and Kotoko. The series was directed by Morio Asaka and animated by Madhouse while Hisashi Abe acted as character designer and chief animation director. The ending to the anime series is different from the manga on many levels; perhaps the most notable being removal of all true allusion to Hideki never having Chi because of her switch location, and of Freya taking over Chi's body and asking her mother Chitose to shut them down, saying the Chobits series is a failure, and the activation of the program after all, although the effect on Persocoms is not the same as described in the manga.

Main Character

• Hideki Motosuwa (本須和秀樹 , Motosuwa Hideki) - is a 19-year-old (in the anime, 18) repeat student (ronin) attempting to get into university by studying at Seki cram school, which his parents have sent him to. They have also severed his allowance, which means he has to work at Yorokonde (My Pleasure), an izakaya, to make ends meet. One night, while walking home from work, he finds a persocom lying in a pile of garbage. He takes her home, and upon activating her, finds that the only word she can utter is "Chi". Because of this, he gives her the name "Chi" (in the anime, "Chii") and takes her into his care, doing his best to protect and teach her.

• Chitose Hibiya (日比谷 千歳 , Hibiya Chitose) - is the landlady at the apartment where Hideki is staying. In the manga, she was previously an employee of Piffle Princess Enterprises and participated in the development of Angels and later, persocoms. She was married to the president of the company, the late Ichiro "Icchan" Mihara, who used the data gathered from the Angelic Layer research to create the Chobits to be Chitose's children, because she was unable to have children of her own. She also authors the "A City with No People" series of books to help Chi find the Person Just for Her.

• Hiromu Shinbo (新保弘 , Shinbo Hiromu) - also spelled "Shimbo", is Hideki's best friend and is also studying at Seki cram school. In the anime, Shinbo lives in the same apartment complex as Hideki and is his next-door neighbor. Shinbo is usually the first person Hideki turns to for help with persocoms. Shortly after beginning school he becomes romantically involved with his teacher Takako Shimizu, after finding her in a park late at night because she had been unwittingly locked out of her house by her husband, who was too busy with his persocom. He later elopes with her and convinces her to marry him.

• Sumomo (すもも, Sumomo) - whose name means "plum" in Japanese, is a miniature "mobile persocom" – the equivalent of a laptop computer. Wearing an outfit that makes her resemble a genie, she is programmed to be cute and tends to be quite hyperactive, for example leading Hideki in wakeup exercises each morning and dancing when she is standby mode. Shinbo was the original owner of Sumomo, but left her with Hideki after leaving with Takako. He later transfers Sumomo's registration to Hideki, giving him permanent ownership. At the beginning of the series, Shinbo uses Sumomo in an attempt to analyze Chi, and Sumomo is nearly broken in the process, requiring new main memory, and in the manga, a new video card as well. Once Kotoko joined Hideki, she quickly came to the conclusion that Sumomo was mad, with her nonsensical ways.

• Chi (ちぃ, Chii) - is a fictional character in the manga series Chobits, and its anime adaptation. She is a Chobit, a type of persocom that is far more technologically advanced than regular persocoms, and who are said to possess true machine intelligence rather than relying on the execution of pre-loaded software programs like other persocoms. She is also a minor character in Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle

• Minoru (国分寺 稔 , Kokubunji Minoru) - is a wealthy twelve-year old genius, whose specialty is persocoms. In particular, he has built a custom persocom named Yuzuki, designed to look like his late sister, and has given her self-teaching software, meaning that she can learn things on her own instead of having to have programs loaded into her as if the case with most persocoms.

• Takako Shimizu (清水多香子, Shimizu Takako) - is Hideki and Shinbo's teacher at the Seki cram school. Like Yumi, Shimizu has had a negative experience with persocoms: Her husband bought a persocom, and eventually she became unimportant to him compared to the persocom. He spent more and more time with it until he forgot about his wife completely, locking her out of the house one night because he was so enamored with it. Because of this, Shimizu is no longer able to trust human men. Later, she elopes with Shinbo. In the end, she returns to the cram school, married to Shinbo.

• Yumi Omura (大村裕美, Ōmura Yumi) - is a seventeen year old girl who works at the Japanese pub [My Pleasure] alongside Hideki. In the anime, she is the daughter of the club's owner, but in the manga, she is only an employee. It is initially implied that Yumi is interested in a relationship with Hideki, but as the series progresses it is revealed that she initially approached him because he also worked at Club Pleasure, and that she thinks of him as an older brother. Throughout most of the series Yumi has an inferiority complex toward persocoms, and becomes upset at any mention of a human-sized persocom.

• Freya - was the first Chobit, who was created before Elda by Hibiya's husband, Ichiro Mihara. Freya was created to be Hibiya's daughter, because she was unable to bear children of her own. Freya's development was kept secret from Hibiya; she did not know of Freya's existence until she was called down to the lab one day, without explanation. Upon awakening for the very first time, she was given the name Freya by Hibiya.

• Hiroyasu Ueda (植田 弘康, Ueda Hiroyasu) - is the owner of Chiroru, a local bakery which Yumi (and in the manga, Hideki) once worked in and which Chi ends up working at. He is thirty-eight years old, although he looks as though he is only in his mid-20's, at one point noting jokingly that he has a "baby face".

• Zima (ジーマ, Jima) - is one of two government persocoms who are looking for Chi. They do not want her to execute her final program, which they believe would destroy the person-recognition abilities of every persocom on the planet. It is believed that the program will execute when Chi finds the person just for her. Zima, however, believes that this may not necessarily be true, and genuinely wants Chi to find happiness. He lies to Dita about Chi's whereabouts and stalls as long as possible before finally going to stop her. However, upon arriving Zima physically restrains Dita from attacking Chi. Zima is also the Japanese government's national data bank, and during the course of the series an attempt is made by Yuzuki to hack into him to gain information concerning Chi. In the anime, Zima remarks that he and Dita were created from the same basic system that Chi is, rendering them immune to her ability to immobilize persocoms.

• Dita (ディタ, Dita) - is the second of the two persocoms looking for Chi. Her role is to protect Zima both physically and as a pro-active firewall, hacking into any persocom who tries to hack into Zima and shutting it down. Dita appears to love Zima, but tries to deny it, believing the persocoms cannot or should not experience such feelings. In the manga, when Zima asked, "Do you love me", she replies, "We're persocoms! Be serious!"

Bleach

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The story opens with the sudden appearance of the shinigami, Rukia Kuchiki, in Ichigo Kurosaki's bedroom. She is surprised at his ability to see her, but their resulting conversation is interrupted by the appearance of a hollow, an evil spirit. After Rukia is severely wounded while trying to protect Ichigo, she intends to transfer half her powers to Ichigo, hoping to give him the opportunity to face the hollow on equal footing. Ichigo unintentionally absorbs almost all her powers instead, allowing him to defeat the hollow with ease. The next day, Rukia appears in Ichigo's classroom as a transfer student. Much to his surprise, she appears to be a normal human. She theorizes that it was the unusual strength of Ichigo's spirit that caused him to absorb almost all her powers, thus leaving her stranded in the human world. Rukia has transferred herself into a gigai — an artificial human body — while waiting to recover her abilities. In the meantime, Ichigo must take over her job as a shinigami, battling hollows and guiding lost souls to Soul Society.

The Hueco Mundo arc - is the seventh story arc of the Bleach anime series. The episodes are directed by Noriyuki Abe and produced by TV Tokyo, Dentsu, and Studio Pierrot. It is based on Tite Kubo's Bleach manga series, and will adapt volume twenty-seven onwards to an as-yet undetermined number of episodes.

List of Main Character

• Ichigo Kurosaki (黒崎 一護, Kurosaki Ichigo) - Ichigo is a 15-year-old who attempts to cultivate a detached image, for which he keeps his eyebrows constantly furrowed. Ichigo has natural orange hair, a fact that annoys many upperclassmen in his school, who constantly pick fights with him. Ichigo claims that he does not care what others think (both about his hair and other subjects) and seems to enjoy fighting the bullies.

• Rukia Kuchiki (朽木 ルキア, Kuchiki Rukia) - Initially born into a lower class, Rukia retains her modesty even as an adopted member of the nobility: she is graceful and "clean", yet chooses to talk to ordinary people. However, her cool and reserved demeanor often forces her to hide her personal troubles even from her friends. Although she tells Ichigo that she is nearly ten times older than he, she is endearingly clueless about the ways of the modern living world (since Soul Society resembles Japan's Edo period). She is initially unable to figure out how to drink from a simple juice box, and learns to speak modern Japanese through the manga she reads. According to Tite Kubo, when (in book five) the semester final exam scores were announced, Rukia's rank was 302 out of 322. With the exception of Japanese, she failed most of her exams.

• Renji Abarai (阿散井 恋次, Abarai Renji) - Renji is one of the most unusual characters in Bleach in terms of his appearance, long crimson hair, usually kept in a high ponytail, and his entire upper body is covered in tribal tattoo work. How he got these tattoos is unknown, but it appears that with every achievement Renji attains, his tattoos increase as well, starting from his early days as a shinigami candidate until when he was imprisoned by Byakuya Kuchiki (his tattoos cover his entire back at this point of time). He dresses in the standard shinigami outfit, though he usually includes some sort of elaborate headgear (usually expensive-looking glasses or a white headband). All of Renji's sunglasses are from Seireitei's popular "Silver Dragonfly Glasses Store" and cost half a year's worth of his paycheck. Unfortunately, every time he wears a pair, they are broken in one way or another (usually in a fight with Ichigo).

• Yasutora Sado (茶渡 泰虎, Sado Yasutora) - Chad is a teenager of Mexican descent. He is extremely tall and appears to be much older than he actually is. Chad has a tattoo on his left shoulder which reads Amore e Morte ("love and death" in Italian) and consists of a heart, a snake and angel wings around the heart. In the series, he is usually seen wearing either his school uniform or a tee shirt. At one point in the series, he is seen wearing a dark, long-sleeved shirt with a rose emblazoned on the left sleeve. The rose may be in honor of his grandfather seeing as how his grandfather's name was Oscar Joaquin de la Rosa, de la Rosa being Spanish for "of the Rose."

• Uryū Ishida (石田 雨竜, Ishida Uryū) - Uryū Ishida is a black-haired, bespectacled teenager of average height. At school, Uryū wears the school uniform along with a tie, while outside he dons white Quincy clothes with blue stripes representing the Quincy cross, and a mantle. Uryū is generally shy and quiet, but tries harder to act cool when other people are around. For example, during the Soul Society arc he wears a mantle that serves no purpose other than to make him look cooler, despite the fact that it hinders his movement. He even keeps a spare to that effect. In addition, he also has a tendency to say things with characteristic drama.

• Orihime Inoue (井上 織姫, Inoue Orihime) - Orihime Inoue has long orange-brown hair which she wears with the bangs behind her ears and hairpins. She does not remove her hairpins, except to sleep (she is seen without them in episode 64 when she wakes up), as they are worn in memory of her brother, while her hair is worn long in honor of the promise Tatsuki Arisawa once made to protect her. Her large breasts are occasionally made the subject of jokes in the series . She also has an amazingly hard head, which has injured Uryū, Chad, and Ichigo. The only person who has been able to damage her head has been Yachiru Kusajishi in a comical moment when she is riding on Kenpachi Zaraki's shoulders. Orihime has brown eyes in color pictures of the manga, but gray eyes in the anime.