Top 5 Book of the Shadows Monsters, 5 to 2
For the Book of the Shadows, practically every day is Halloween. But there are some characters who are a bit more monstrous than any others. In honor of the day dedicated to spirits, ghouls, and monsters of all sorts, here are the most monstrous characters of the Book of the Shadows.
First, some technical points. The BotS has 8 major sagas; 1st and 2nd Moon and Star, 3rd Moon, and Overture. Additionally there are about as many smaller sagas under Looking Glass. None of the Looking Glass stories are included. An interesting coincidence, the one story with the most monsters, the First Star Saga, also doesn’t make the list. Even though this story has more than 60 characters, all of whom are in one way or another a type of monster, even featuring a minor retelling of the story Umineko no Naku Koro Ni, Pandora Hearts, and Nurarihyon no Mago, there isn’t an instance that rises to the level of being truly monstrous – at least not at the pinnacle of this Top 5 list. I’ll do 5 through 2 today, and you’ll have to come back for No. 1 and some honorable mentions tomorrow. So, let’s get started.
Number 5 on the list is Yune in the Third Star Saga. Third Star follows a Rosencraft family different from any other. They generally aren’t all that supernatural, and in fact the lead of the story, Kyouske Rosencraft, is the lead of the story precisely for the fact that he has no supernatural abilities. He is, in fact, the last pureblood human male on earth. This leads to him being a pawn in a battle between heaven and hell for the future of humanity, because if he doesn’t marry one of the few human woman left, humanity in a pureblood sense will go extinct.
In this story, Yune is introduced as a very powerful angel, a once in several generations type powerful angel. The angels are trying to preserve humanity, while the demons are trying to ensure humanity ends. But Yune betrays her angel siblings, revealing she is actually a demon who killed and replaced one of the angels. She later rapes Kyouske so she can have his child out of jealousy over his soon to be a father with his actual wife, and then launches a war on both angels and demons. Centuries later when she’s reunited with her daughter and it seems like there will be a chance at redemption, she tries to use her daughter, and Kyouske’s other daughter, to finally destroy the angels and demons and take control of the planet.
Number 4 is Drusilla Arenzai of the First Sun Saga. First Sun is about an alternate version of First Moon, but the Rosencraft have taken a backseat of sorts. Destiny Rosencraft-Ushiromiya is the child of Anzu Rosencraft and Rudolf Ushiromiya. Destiny eventually travels to an adjacent dimension simply called C. There she learns about her family’s connection to that world, her ancestor Drusilla Arenzai.
Drusilla is one of the creators of the world order in C. But she wound up there at first because she was a manic personality, using the cover of her royal status to take innocent people right off the street to conduct all manner of magical experiments on them. Like the “madness wavelength” of the Soul Eater series, Drusilla exudes an aura that causes people around her to go homicidally insane. When she’s locked up by her family, her aura gets her servants to abide her will, bringing her more victims. When restrictions on her get more stringent, she discovers a way to C, where she further continues her experiments, killing at least a hundred people whose souls she harvested and trapped in “living” weapons. To ensure she can see the fruits of her labor, she split her soul into thousands of tiny spiders all over her home dimension and C. Those spiders then invade the body of one of her ancestors, Sakura, so that she can revive and take measure of her experiments, and start new ones.
Number 3 is Lilith of Second Moon Saga. The Second Moon Saga is about an island, Artemis, where the residents have lived there for generations upon generations, with a fervid adherence to a ritual that celebrates the moon, and a repulsion of anyone who is not from the island or leaves the island. The first few books of the story covers a 4 times retelling of the main character, Kouhei Lutelu’s, return to the island after having been in a coma in a hospital on the mainland for a few years. Over several months Kouhei uncovers many secrets, including the reason for his falling into a coma in the first place.
Kouhei learns that a long time ago, the island was the home base of a clan of demon slayers. A very powerful demon, Lilith, was wreaking havoc all over the world, thousands dying by her hand, and thousands more on her orders. Sacrificing themselves, the clan bet on a plan to fight Lilith. They managed to seal her on the island. A young girl, Luna, was the center of that seal, and has been with Lilith in the seal for the two and half or more centuries. Almost without end for the entire time, Lilith used any and all means of torture on Luna she could devise as a form of her own entertainment, including repeatedly tearing apart and re-forging Luna’s soul. Kouhei ends up breaking the seal and freeing Luna from Lilith’s torture, but Lilith gets free too. Because they’re connected Lilith can’t kill Luna, so she instead begins to torment Kouhei by filling his dreams with visions of her gruesome acts, particularly memories of how she tortured Luna over the centuries. All of this while she restarts her campaign of worldwide menace.
Number 2 is Kurohime Tennyo and the Ascended of First Moon Saga. As you must well know by now, the First Moon Saga is the first entry into the Book of the Shadows Series that covers the life and exploits of the Rosencraft family, led by Yami Rosencraft and his cousins Anzu and Rini. Tennyo is introduced as Tennyo relatively late in “Book of the Shadows” the first of three entries under the First Moon Saga.
It’s not until late in Advancing Shadows (the second entry to First Moon) that we learn more about who Kurohime Tennyo really is. Long, long, ago in one of Anzu’s earliest past lives, she broke a taboo by allowing her anger and rage to overflow after her lover was murdered in front of her. She massacred an entire village before further violating taboos in reviving her dead love. As a consequence her brethren, the Ascended, killed her revived lover again, and for her refusal to admit fault and renounce her lover, the sum total of her anger and rage was extracted and given form as her twin, Kurohime. Anzu was then cursed, fated to constantly be reborn alongside her evil doppelganger, to watch it cause endless tragedy, forced before her own death to recall every vile act Kurohime perpetrated in the past. These acts include destroying several planets, corrupting the leadership of Spirit World, and the murder of millions for the sake of nothing more than trying to bring Anzu despair. Even when Anzu manages to finally put an end to her wicked counterpart, the Ascended seek to kill Anzu for it, and to revive Tennyo once again, claiming Anzu still hasn't learned her lesson, leading to the death of most of the Rosencraft family by the end of Advancing Shadows.
There you have it, 5 down to number 2. See my next post tomorrow for the number one most monstrous character of the Book of the Shadows series.
First, some technical points. The BotS has 8 major sagas; 1st and 2nd Moon and Star, 3rd Moon, and Overture. Additionally there are about as many smaller sagas under Looking Glass. None of the Looking Glass stories are included. An interesting coincidence, the one story with the most monsters, the First Star Saga, also doesn’t make the list. Even though this story has more than 60 characters, all of whom are in one way or another a type of monster, even featuring a minor retelling of the story Umineko no Naku Koro Ni, Pandora Hearts, and Nurarihyon no Mago, there isn’t an instance that rises to the level of being truly monstrous – at least not at the pinnacle of this Top 5 list. I’ll do 5 through 2 today, and you’ll have to come back for No. 1 and some honorable mentions tomorrow. So, let’s get started.
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| Yune - Ikoku Meiro no Croisse |
In this story, Yune is introduced as a very powerful angel, a once in several generations type powerful angel. The angels are trying to preserve humanity, while the demons are trying to ensure humanity ends. But Yune betrays her angel siblings, revealing she is actually a demon who killed and replaced one of the angels. She later rapes Kyouske so she can have his child out of jealousy over his soon to be a father with his actual wife, and then launches a war on both angels and demons. Centuries later when she’s reunited with her daughter and it seems like there will be a chance at redemption, she tries to use her daughter, and Kyouske’s other daughter, to finally destroy the angels and demons and take control of the planet.
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| Arachne - Soul Eater |
Drusilla is one of the creators of the world order in C. But she wound up there at first because she was a manic personality, using the cover of her royal status to take innocent people right off the street to conduct all manner of magical experiments on them. Like the “madness wavelength” of the Soul Eater series, Drusilla exudes an aura that causes people around her to go homicidally insane. When she’s locked up by her family, her aura gets her servants to abide her will, bringing her more victims. When restrictions on her get more stringent, she discovers a way to C, where she further continues her experiments, killing at least a hundred people whose souls she harvested and trapped in “living” weapons. To ensure she can see the fruits of her labor, she split her soul into thousands of tiny spiders all over her home dimension and C. Those spiders then invade the body of one of her ancestors, Sakura, so that she can revive and take measure of her experiments, and start new ones.
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| Lisette - 11Eyes |
Kouhei learns that a long time ago, the island was the home base of a clan of demon slayers. A very powerful demon, Lilith, was wreaking havoc all over the world, thousands dying by her hand, and thousands more on her orders. Sacrificing themselves, the clan bet on a plan to fight Lilith. They managed to seal her on the island. A young girl, Luna, was the center of that seal, and has been with Lilith in the seal for the two and half or more centuries. Almost without end for the entire time, Lilith used any and all means of torture on Luna she could devise as a form of her own entertainment, including repeatedly tearing apart and re-forging Luna’s soul. Kouhei ends up breaking the seal and freeing Luna from Lilith’s torture, but Lilith gets free too. Because they’re connected Lilith can’t kill Luna, so she instead begins to torment Kouhei by filling his dreams with visions of her gruesome acts, particularly memories of how she tortured Luna over the centuries. All of this while she restarts her campaign of worldwide menace.
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| Kurohime - Mahou Tsukai Kurohime |
It’s not until late in Advancing Shadows (the second entry to First Moon) that we learn more about who Kurohime Tennyo really is. Long, long, ago in one of Anzu’s earliest past lives, she broke a taboo by allowing her anger and rage to overflow after her lover was murdered in front of her. She massacred an entire village before further violating taboos in reviving her dead love. As a consequence her brethren, the Ascended, killed her revived lover again, and for her refusal to admit fault and renounce her lover, the sum total of her anger and rage was extracted and given form as her twin, Kurohime. Anzu was then cursed, fated to constantly be reborn alongside her evil doppelganger, to watch it cause endless tragedy, forced before her own death to recall every vile act Kurohime perpetrated in the past. These acts include destroying several planets, corrupting the leadership of Spirit World, and the murder of millions for the sake of nothing more than trying to bring Anzu despair. Even when Anzu manages to finally put an end to her wicked counterpart, the Ascended seek to kill Anzu for it, and to revive Tennyo once again, claiming Anzu still hasn't learned her lesson, leading to the death of most of the Rosencraft family by the end of Advancing Shadows.
There you have it, 5 down to number 2. See my next post tomorrow for the number one most monstrous character of the Book of the Shadows series.
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