This article lists the characters who have appeared in the Japanese Ring films, based on a series of novels written by Koji Suzuki.
In Ring, Ryūji Takayama is a strange man with a dark sense of humor, who as such claims to be an occasional rapist and seems to fear nothing.
Ando and Ryuji's student Mai Takano destroy the original tape after he watches it to end Sadako's curse for good.
Disgusted at Ryuji, who ostensibly worked with Sadako, Ando keeps a distance from both and does not participate in the search for the cure to the virus, electing to live a quiet life with his family.
As part of the agreement to help Sadako spread the Ring virus, she promises Mitsuo that she will resurrect Takanori through her womb.
His investigations suck him into the cases that his father once delved into, revolving around the ring virus and Sadako Yamamura, the person responsible for his means to live.
In the novels, she is the daughter of Shizuko Yamamura, a fellow psychic, and Heihachiro Ikuma, a professor who was married to another woman, making her a bastard child.
As a teenager, she moved to the mainland to become an actress, but her hopes were dashed when she was implicated in the death of her theater director, forcing her to become a recluse caring for her ill father in a TB ward in the Izu Peninsula.
In the film series, Sadako is not hermaphrodite but fully female, and Ikuma is not her biological father but rather a man who took care of Shizuko when she became sick.
Despite Kazuyuki managing to save himself, Shizuka and Yoko still end up dying from the curse despite having copied and showed the tapes to Toru and Setsuko.
It is later revealed that the two die because the virus had mutated into a far more dangerous form by the time they watched it, meaning they were doomed from the start no matter what they did.
As for Shizuka, she is usually excised in the adaptations which change Kazuyuki's gender; her counterpart is not present in the Japanese, Korean, and American theatrical films.
This leads him to obsessively expand his field of research into paranormal activity, resulting in Yoichi being ostracized by his peers and termination from his position at the university.
Yoichi then participates in the normal gameplay of Dead by Daylight, an endless trial in a strange dimension where he must work with other survivors to escape various killers.
Ikuma displayed Shizuko's powers to gain fame, but soon the couple had to face the attacks of the scientific community, who branded them as frauds.
Driven insane, Ikuma tried to activate possible psychic powers of his own by meditating below a waterfall, causing him to develop tuberculosis.
Akane came from a lower-class background, having been raised in an orphanage after her mother's death, and sometimes feels that she is unworthy of a man of Takanori's status.
After Takanori receives a USB file containing the suicide video of Seiji Kashiwada, she becomes drawn by a force to watch it.
In addition to this, Akane also feels stalked by a figure, whom she deduces is Seiji, a serial killer who nearly killed her ten years ago.
The similarity of her case with a male college student who died at the same time, as well as another couple, leads Kazuyuki to begin investigating the ring virus.
In Ring 2, Mai encounters Masami in hospital and she is used by Doctor Kawajiri in his first attempt to destroy Sadako's powers but is killed in the process.
When she accidentally stumbles upon the cursed tape in Ryuji's bedroom, she feels the urge to watch it, after which she experiences morning sickness.
As later revealed, because Mai was ovulating when she watched the tape, the virus infected her ovum, causing it to develop rapidly into a Sadako clone.
Rasen sticks with the plot of Spiral, with Mai helping Ando investigate what truly killed Ryuji and learns of the tape and Sadako.
The experiment goes awry and everyone present save Mai and Yoichi die, who end up in the well but escape thanks to Ryuji and Sadako allowing them to leave.
A week later, Toyama suffers a heart attack and sees Sadako, reborn from the womb of Mai Takano, approach and caress him as he dies.
Shizuko had an affair with a married professor from the mainland, Heihachiro Ikuma, and gave birth to his daughter, Sadako, as well as a stillborn boy.
Ikuma displayed Shizuko's powers in public demonstrations, gaining the couple fame, but backlash soon appeared from the scientific community.
In Birthday, Yoshino meets with Hiroshi Toyama, who dated Sadako as a young man, intending to learn more about her past and informing him about his potential fate.
He cameos in the first film, and has a prominent role in the retconned Rasen, where he comes into possession of Reiko's journal, which carries the Ring Virus, and he is eventually killed by it.