List of Rosario + Vampire characters
He meets Moka Akashiya, a vampire who soon takes a liking to the sweet taste of his blood, and throughout the series, befriends and attracts a variety of monster girls including: Kurumu Kurono, a succubus; Yukari Sendo and Ruby Tojo, who are witches; and Mizore Shirayuki, a snow fairy.
[1] While protecting Tsukune's identity as a human, they join the school's Newspaper Club; they wind up fighting a variety of monster gangs as well as some teachers.
In the second manga serialization, the Newspaper Club faces more monster characters and a larger organization known as Fairy Tale, whose members include Moka's own family.
[2] In developing the characters for the series, Ikeda cited influences from Tim Burton's works, and research on various monsters from encyclopedias and the Internet.
In an interview at Lucca Comics 2012, Ikeda said he is a big fan of Tim Burton and was inspired by his works, including The Nightmare Before Christmas, and particularly Edward Scissorhands because the monster has a sensitive soul.
[3] He introduced San Otonashi to reflect the feelings and struggles of young people as they ponder their futures and transitioning into the working world.
[a] When her rosario is removed from her necklace, she undergoes a personality change (along with a physical transformation sequence in the anime) to a ruthless, arrogant and skilled martial artist who easily beats opponents with powerful kicks.
[S1 v2][S1 v4][S2 ch 17] In her succubus form, Kurumu has long fingernails that can cleanly slice through tree trunks, pointed ears and tail, and bat wings that enable her to fly and to carry people.
Upset that Moka sealed her powers, Kokoa enrolls in Yokai Academy to be with her, picking fights with her in order to draw out her inner personality.
[S2 ch 8] In the Season II epilogue bonus comics, she and Haiji Miyamoto officially go out, but their outings end up being non-romantic sparring sessions.
[S2 ch 18-19] Prior to the manga series, "Mad Dog" Morioka enjoys fighting and getting into trouble until the Newspaper Club president San Otonashi defeats him.
[4] Fangfang Huang (黄 芳芳, Won Fanfan) is an effeminate-looking first-year student and the son of a Chinese mafia leader whose family controls many of the country's dangerous monsters.
[S2 ch 23][S2 v7 char profiles] In an interview at Lucca Comics 2012, Ikeda said that he introduced Fangfang to increase the number of male characters and to attract a more female audience.
[S2 ch 48] Yokai Academy (陽海学園, Yōkai Gakuen) is a private boarding school with the purpose of teaching monsters how to coexist with humans.
Some of its members are revealed to be "monstrels": half-breeds that take no definitive, physical form of anything classified as a supernatural creature (such as vampires and werewolves).
[S1 v5] Fairy Tale (御伽の国（フェアリー・テイル）, Fearī Teiru) is an organization dedicated to throwing harmony into chaos and ruling over the human world; the group appears in the second serialization of the manga series as the primary antagonists.
[S2 v5] Their base of operations is the Hanging Garden (空中庭園, Kūchū Teien), a large sky fortress above Japan which is hidden by a magical barrier similar to that of Yokai Academy.
[S2 v8] His dormant body is then moved to Fairy Tale's main headquarters,[S2 ch 42] where Gyokuro attempts to awaken him by capturing Moka and unsealing her rosario.
[e] In addition to Tenmei Mikogami, there are: The characters of Rosario + Vampire have received criticism from publications dedicated to anime, manga, and other media.
Theron Martin of Anime News Network describes Tsukune as a "cookie-cutter harem male lead, an unfailingly kind-hearted, indecisive wimp who primarily has a thing for Moka but still treasures the other girls as friends.
"[7] Carlo Santos of Anime News Network, in reviewing the manga, noted Tsukune's character design as lazy: "shove in any other male protagonist from a harem series and nobody would notice too much".
[12] He called antagonist Hokuto Kaneshiro a "dead ringer for Light Yagami from Death Note" and smarter than the usual monsters of the week, but the storyline he is placed in is predictable.
He found the canned phrases of the girls fighting in some of the comedy chapters to be entertaining, including Kyoko's gold mine of one-liners.
[13] Høgset found the bat to be really obnoxious with its spouting useless trivia, repeating what happens to Moka, and things that bring the story to a grinding halt[8] or "make you want to bludgeon your brain out of your cranium with something made of metal.
He found the character introductions repetitive, and wished they would deviate from the harem formula and develop into lively, sympathetic ones like with Ouran High School Host Club.
[8] Deb Aoki found the fanservice in the manga to be a bit unwholesome and cheesy, but underneath were teen themes about friendship, loyalty, and courage.
In the bonus comics at the end of Season II, Volume 6, Ikeda responds to a fan letter that criticizes that the Newspaper Club girls artwork in the manga is not as moe as in the anime by having them go over aspects of moe that has already incorporated such as cat ears, knee socks, large breasts, twin tails, long bangs, as well as what the girls would look like when drawn with large eyes, distinguishing accessories and speech inflections.
[S2 v6 omake2] When asked in an interview about the fewer panty shots compared to other shōnen manga; Ikeda replied that he favors showing less as it would be more erotic and intriguing.
[3] Høgset compared Tsukune to the main male protagonist Riku Aoba from Tokimeki Memorial ~Only Love~, "right down to the nasally whiny voice".
[8] Martin noted the voice performances of the English dub to be very solid, with Alexis Tipton "exactly hitting the mark in the key role as the human-form Moka", Todd Haberkorn as "Funimation's go-to guy for wimpy male leads", Monica Rial as natural for Yukari, and Jerry Jewell as "great but nearly unrecognizable as the bat."
