Ryūgū Rena (竜宮 レナ)

is one of the main characters in the Higurashi noNaku Koro ni series, the protagonist of Tsumihoroboshi-hen and the villain of Tsukiotoshi-hen. She is arguably the most well-known character of the entire series, despite the fact that she is not the main character, as she appears on much of Higurashi's official art and even serves as something of a mascot for 07th Expansion.

CHARACTER SUMMARY

Rena is in the same grade level as Maebara Keiichi, though she is slightly younger than him, with her birthday falling in July. As Higurashi takes place in June, Rena would not yet have turned 16.

Rena is known to have an obsession with all things cute and will often try to take those things home with her, whether they are hers to take or not. Such things include the "Kenta-kun" doll, Furude Rika, Hanyū, Satoko, 
and any of the club members in punishment game outfits. She spends much of her time "treasure-hunting" at the town's trash heap in search of cute things, which often appear appealing only to Rena and more often than not are rather odd. According to Mion, while Rena might seem cute herself, people should be careful not to anger her as she becomes quite scary. She is very sensitive about the topic of Oyashiro-sama, who she fears will curse her for leaving Hinamizawa.

Rena has a sort of secret base in the trash heap: an old van that has been hollowed out filled with the sort of things she likes, which she sometimes retreats to when she's distressed. In her words, no one else knows about her secret spot, and it is close enough to the middle of the dump that no one outside can hear anything.

The Higurashi fanbase tends to be argue over whether the item she found in the town's trash heap (anime), or a tool shed (manga and visual novels) was a cleaver, billhook, cane knife, or a hatchet. The popular term is "cleaver", however the most accurate term would be nata. A nata is a gardening tool used for clearing brush, though it generally does not have the spike on the end that Rena's does.

Rena's parents are both fashion designers, and while she was born in Hinamizawa, her family soon moved away to Ibaraki, for the sake of her mother's advancing career. Her mother soon started an affair with a co-worker, and Rena met him a couple of times. She found him to be generally agreeable, although she didn't understand the reality of her mother's relationship with him until her mother asked her come away to start a new family with the two of them. Her mother was pregnant with the man's child, and was planning to leave her father.

Her father was devastated, and Rena blamed herself. She remained very loyal to her father after her mother betrayed/cheated on him, and as shown in Tsumihoroboshi-hen she is willing to go to extreme lengths to protect him. She spurned her mother, saying she never wanted to see her again, and nearly went mad with the guilt. She would cut at herself, especially at and around the neck area, trying to get rid of the "filthy blood" that was left in her by her mother, and imagined it to be filled with maggots.The maggots in question, as seen inTsumihoroboshi-hen.

Rena started to behave in violent and erratic ways, and during this time she attacked three of her male classmates. However, there is some implication that they were the instigators of the incident since they decided not to press charges, and in Matsuribayashi-hen it is revealed that they had attempted to rape her. She also smashed all the windows in her school with a baseball bat and was eventually hospitalized.

Rena later claimed that what broke her out of this state was the Shrine God of Hinamizawa, Oyashiro-sama, who "said" to Rena: "If you want to live, move back to Hinamizawa; that's the only way you'll be safe." Rena and her father moved back to Hinamizawa, and Rena, whose birth name was "Reina", changed her name as a part of her new start (though English speaking viewers may find the difference negligible aside from spelling). According to the Tsumihoroboshi-hen TIPS, the other purpose of removing the "i" in her name was, as interpreted by Rena herself, to "remove the i-cky things" (いやなこと iyana koto), though later she realizes that "the "i-ncredible things" (いいこ ii koto) also start with an "i".
Mamiya Rina and Rena's first names, identical with the exception of the vowel, could be considered the two halves of the name "Reina", in which "Rena" is the good, untainted half of the name and "Rina" is the epitome and physical existence of all the "i-cky things" and the bad experiences in Ibaraki.

Rena's experience with Oyashiro-sama allowed her to bond with Hōjō Satoshi when he started having similar experiences. In Tsumihoroboshi-hen, Mamiya Rina and Hōjō Teppei, both scam artists, target her father. In an attempt to protect her father and herself, Rena ends up fighting and killing Rina, and although it begins as self-defense, she later leads Teppei out to the junk yard and kills him as well. Not long after this, Takano Miyo entrusts her with her scrapbook. Takano dies shortly after, but after reading the book Rena begins to question the nature of Oyashiro-sama and the honesty of her friends. She takes the school building and those inside hostage, and only the intervention of Keiichi stops her from making another horrible mistake and becoming another fatality of the Hinamizawa Syndrome.


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Rena's "Kawaii Mode"
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Rena's Angry Face
CAMEO APPEARANCES
  • In episode 1 of Seitokai no Ichizon, Ken says that he loves Kurimu who asks him how can he confess his love so easily. Ken answers that he's serious but Kurimu yells at him with a loud "Uso da!" while mimicking Rena's iconic face from Higurashi. Ken only replies that "I think it's more about Umineko than Higurashi nowdays".
  • In episode 6 of Seiokai no Ichizon, Magiru, the student council's advisor, says that she would prefer if the student council did it's meeting with a hatchet or a bat, and her dream is "getting sent to Hinamizawa".
  • In episode 15 of Kyōran Kazoku Nikki Kyouka turns into a magical girl. After Hiratsuka sees her cute outfit she says "Hau~ I want to take you home".
  • In Rose Guns Days (Also by Ryukishi07), the icon of the "Over Kill" emblem is a scary faced Rena holding a cleaver. 
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Ryugu Rena in Casual clothes.

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE
Rena has short orange hair in an angled cut with long sides, and her bangs part on the left of her forehead. Her eyes are blue and droop at the ends.

On her school days, Rena wears a fairly typical sailor fuku, complete with a yellow ribbon, and white socks with dark brown shoes. On her free days, she wears a white dress with a purple bow and sash and long silt up the middle, complete with "her favorite" white cap. She also wears thigh-high black socks with brown knee-high boots. Rena's blood-stained cap was used as a message to Sonozaki Mion in Taraimawashi-hen and a message to Hōjō Satoko in Yakusamashi-hen.

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Rena's appearance in Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai
In the first episode of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai, Rena appears as an adult in a purple business suit. She has the same hairstyle, though it is a bit longer, and seems to have grown much taller since June of 1983 even taller than both Akasaka Mamoru and Ōishi Kuraudo by a few inches, though that may have been just a simple production studio mistake.

On Rena's Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Matsuri sprite, her sailor fuku tie has a blue knot that has a small white cross in the center of it, similar to the pin Takano Miyo wears on her left side when she is wearing her black military uniform.

PERSONALITY
Rena seems to have a sweet and friendly nature, although situations in the story can cause that to change dramatically; in Onikakushi-hen in particular, she is shown to react strongly to one of Keiichi's remarks with a deafeningly loud "Uso da! (嘘だ! That's a lie!)". She occasionally comes off as a bit of an airhead, but she is actually surprisingly intuitive, especially when it comes to her friends.

Along with her intuition, Rena is shown to be capable of becoming quite frightening and dangerously hostile when she is determined, especially inMinagoroshi-hen. She was able to easily intimidate both the village council and the Child Welfare staff, moreso than Keiichi could through, her eyes and words, rarely losing emotional control like Keiichi and Sonozaki Shion both did frequently. During the last Watanagashi meeting of the village council, Rena got into a violent fistfight with one of the elders and even threatened to crush Sonozaki Oryō's head if Oryō refused to help Satoko. Keiichi often calls her the "quiet, blue flame that burns silently," referring to her capability of becoming incredibly powerful when push comes to shove, despite her normally girly and seemingly-airheaded personality; in such situations, Rena will always be the instigator of and the most bluntly offensive in the fight, as observed in many instances; by Shion in Meakashi-hen and Minagoroshi-hen ("I wonder how you were in Ibaraki. You don't even hesitate to attack people!"), Keiichi inWatanagashi-hen, and Furude Rika in Minagoroshi-hen. Rena also has the ability to fiercely and successfully retort in a very sharp and biting way when involved in heated debate.

Mion describes Rena, and Rena is often portrayed, as being hostile towards people who make light of or express disbelief in Oyashiro-sama's Curse. This is due to her own experience with it and her (correct) assumption that Oyashiro-sama physically exists. However, in Tsumihoroboshi-hen, Rena seems to completely contradict her strong beliefs and throw them away in a matter of seconds after Takano lent Rena a scrapbook about the existence of parasites causing the Hinamizawa Syndrome, originating from an alien spaceship. Why this occured so quickly is unknown, especially when the Syndrome is technically supposed to stimulate doubt in a general sense. On the other hand, she, like Rika, often empathizes with and is able to identify people who are afflicted with advanced symptoms of Hinamizawa Syndrome. It is implied that she feels guilty for not listening to Satoshi's problems before he disappeared, and asks Keiichi to tell her his problems, most notably in Onikakushi-hen, but as he was already afflicted with the Syndrome, he hallucinates that she was threatening him.

Rena appears to be very perceptive, as she is able to somewhat understand people just by looking at their face. She does admit directly that she can easily "tell if ___'s telling the truth or not… just by looking into ___'s eyes". She is also able to form detailed and eerily accurate hypotheses of crime scenes based on evidence she observed.

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Fan Art



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