Inori Yuzuriha (楪 いのり, Yuzuriha Inori) was the female protagonist of Guilty Crown and a member of the resistance guerrilla group called "Funeral Parlor." She was the voice of the internet artist Egoist.
Appearance[]
Inori was a beautiful girl with light pink hair that ombres into hot pink and is tied into pigtails, she tied her hair using two tubes, and had a small red clip on the left side of her face. Inori had red eyes, she was about 166cm tall with small glossed lips. She looked very fragile, having a very slender figure and thin legs.
Her usual fighting attire is a red leotard with the middle mostly cut out, red-orange spoilers with flowers on the side and high red gloves. She also wears a black short dress with white lining on the bottom and red ribbons on the bottom, which she wears it when she is not fighting. When attending school, she wears the standard school uniform. She also wears a white outfit in place of her red flowery leotard outfit.
Personality[]
Inori is first shown to be emotionless and only cares to follow Gai's orders. Inori was made by GHQ to "contain Mana's mind", and Gai was the one who woke her up and gave her a name. Thus, she shows absolute respect and devotion towards him. She is very quiet, rarely saying anymore than necessary. However, she does have her own opinions; when Shu is beating himself up over the idea that nobody would ever choose him over Gai, she tells him to stop it, saying she hates people feeling sorry for themselves. She then allows Shu to see Gai's vulnerable side, with the hopes that the two would settle their differences. Inori is also shown to be a somewhat cold-blooded person; being able to kill enemies without much hesitation, though she also gives them a warning beforehand.
After meeting and living with Shu, Inori gradually becomes more emotional, smiling a lot more and even showing embarrassment when she gets too close to Shu. While she initially tells Shu that she belongs to him because Gai told her to, overtime her declaration becomes genuine. However, she is shown to have cared about him even before telling him the truth, as when Shu got captured by the GHQ, she felt very cold and didn't know why. She would later tell Tsugumi that was the only time she ever felt lonely. In general, Inori is often shown not to understand her own emotions, to the point that she has to be directly told by Gai that she loves Shu. Overtime, she becomes a much friendlier and more open person, not only to Shu, but to everyone around her.
Inori is shown to love singing; not only is she the lead singer of the highly popular internet band Egoist, but she also frequently sings to herself whenever she's alone, and Shu walks in on her singing on more than one occasion. She also willingly goes along with Souta's plan for an Egoist concert, which is to be the main event of the Tennozu cultural festival, saying that it sounds like a lot of fun. At one point, she even quotes one of her songs to comfort Shu, as a way of stating her undying loyalty to him.
Inori has shown extreme loyalty to the people she cares about, and this loyalty is arguably her most defining trait. When Shu asks her to leave Funeral Parlor and go somewhere with him, she refuses, saying that Gai gave her a name and a purpose, so she won't leave him. Later on, this loyalty shifts to Shu; even when all of the students betray Shu for his mistreatment of him, she tears her way through a group of Endlaves in order to protect him, and comforts him that she will always be on his side, even if the entire world turns against him.
After Hare's death, Inori started to display a darker side noted by the fact that she killed or injured a group of students who attempted to undress her in hopes of revealing a tattoo, smiled maniacally before stabbing Arisa, and later injured a group of thugs while smiling. But the consciousness that led her to these actions was revealed to be Mana, who began to survive in Inori's body after the failed ritual to resurrect her. Inori, after finding out she was meant as a vessel for Mana, starts to wonder if her feelings and heart were real. She also starts to be bothered by the fact that she is a monster after regaining consciousness in the aftermath of Mana's actions. Ultimately, however, she resolves that even if she is a monster or her emotions were fake, she will always be herself.
Background[]
Inori is part of the band Egoist where she is the lead singer.
Plot[]
Inori is seen running away from what is believed to be the "GHQ's" base, holding the "key." However, before she could meet up with Gai, the "GHQ" military endlaves catch up to her and attack her, causing her to be injured. She tells Fyu-neru to carry the 'key' to Gai so that she could face the enemy force without losing the key.
However, Ayase soon appears for support, and she tells Inori to hurry while she covers the situation. Inori runs again only to be knocked off the edge of the bridge by an enemy's missile and falls into the water. She takes shelter in the abandoned grounds of what used to be the Tennouzu University. Later, when Shu arrives at this location (where he does his after school activities), he finds Inori there and tries to talk to her. Soon however, members of the GHQ arrive to take Inori away, telling Shu he would get in trouble if he defended her, causing him to duck in fear. Inori then loses consciousness when she was kicked in the face by one of the men and is taken away. She is seen again being threatened by the same GHQ members, saying they will attack every resident in the neighborhood if she didn't tell them where it is. However, Inori doesn't show a single bit of fear and sits quietly, saying nothing. The GHQ then gives permission for some of its members to attack the residents of the town. Due to the attacks happening all over the place, the truck Inori was held in was attacked but she escaped unharmed. Shu saves her from being attacked again but at the same time the 'key' (which is revealed to be called the Void Genome) which was in Shu's pocket breaks. Inori asks Shu to "use her" and Shu pulls the weapon out of her, resulting in a bright light shooting upwards to the sky much to everyone's amazement. After this, Inori loses consciousness and awakens when Shu brings her to Gai. Inori seemed sad when Gai states that he was disappointed in her for failing the mission, saying that the Void Genome was for his use and watches as Gai and Shu talk about her Void and what the "King's Power" is. She is later seen watching Gai tell the rest of the Undertakers what the plan was; to rescue the hostages along with Shu, who agreed to the plan.
To carry out the first stage of the plan, Shu and Inori had to sneak through a vent with Inori to the front of him (she didn't know that Shu was looking at her butt). They reach their destination and witness the cruelty of the GHQ and she gives Shu words of encouragement when he was hesitant, saying she belonged to him now. After they win the battle Shu goes to school normally, rejecting Gai's offer to join them, only to witness to his shock, that Inori is his new classmate. Everyone in the class is amazed that the Egoist singer was their classmate and began talking to Inori until Yahiro intervenes, saying they should calm down because she'll be with them for the rest of the year. Later, Inori enters Shu's home with the help of Fyu-neru, to his dismay.
She changes her clothes in front of him and then proceeds to tell him that she wanted rice balls. After she ate, she revealed that she knew about Shu's mother and he is impressed that she did a background check on him.
Inori then asked Shu if she was a burden to him and when he wonders why she was there, Inori replies saying it was to protect him. They are interrupted by Yahiro, who appears at his front door. He said that Shu was acting weird so he decided to come to watch a movie together and is shocked to see Inori there too. She states that she has received a message and that they should go and Shu follows her. They soon meet Gai who says that someone from his school witnessed the events that happened the day before and states that the only way to identify him is to take out their Void, then assassinating him to prevent him leaking out information.
They go along with the plan and Shu calls out the rules that make the Power of Kings work. They go after their first target, which is Kanon, however, Shu's power doesn't activate and he ends up groping her. Afterwards, Shu confesses that he gets nervous whenever he has to look someone in the eyes, since eye contact was critical when using the Power of Kings, as stated by Inori. She teaches him how to look someone in the eye without being nervous.
They test this out on Souta, who is seen unconscious after. Shu says he's finally gotten the hang of it and proceeds to remove all the students of the school Voids. Inori explains further on what Voids are before Kanon finds them and Yahiro appears, telling them to follow him. It is soon revealed that Yahiro was indeed the one who saw what Shu did the day before and yells at Shu saying that, he shouldn't pretend they were friends, before having his Void pulled out by Shu. Later, after Shu tells Inori to not shoot Yahiro, they made a promise to each other that Shu wouldn't say anything about the Norma Gene and Yahiro wouldn't say anything about the Undertakers. However, this promise is broken when Yahiro pushes Shu out of a train when they were traveling to school the next day. Inori looks in shock as Shu is arrested by the GHQ who is accompanied by Segai. Inori goes back to school and is saddened and upset over Shu's arrest. She however, builds up the courage to rescue Shu by herself. She jumps off a tower and falls only to float after the effect of Kido's Void. Shu pulls out her Void and destroys all the mecha in the area. She is seen unconscious in his arms after, as Shu joins the Undertakers. She appears along with Gai as Shu is introduced to the rest of the Undertakers and helps him learn how to shoot a gun, but gets up too close to him allowing her chest to touch his back. They blush and Inori tells him not to get close to her.
She meets with Shu later and asks him why he came with her. Shu however, is unable to give a straight answer and asks her if they could leave together. She refuses however, saying Gai gave her a name and a world, so she can't leave. Inori reveals to Shu that Gai told her to say and do everything up until now and that she had no feelings for him. Shu is heartbroken at this and runs after her only to find Gai and Inori going into a room together. Inori and Gai are seen in the room, with Gai hooked up to a machine getting blood from Inori. He tells Inori that she looks more like her everyday and she asks if it bothered him. He replies saying he didn't know. She also watches as Shu passes his mock battle until they receive news that Gai might be dead, to which she showed great worry. They eventually regain contact and they save Gai, who tells them they'll have to think of a different plan.
However, Shu protests, saying that they'll put too much people in danger. Inori watches as Shu runs away after he gets embarrassed and follows him. She tells him to do exactly what she says and allows him access to Gai through her DNA on a glove. She is seen listening outside soon after.
On the day of the mission she, Gai, Kido, and Shu sneak through the GHQ's base to destroy the Leukocyte. There, she tells two Anti Bodies to stay away or she'll kill them. However, they charge towards her and she shoots them, earning a shocked reaction from Shu. After the Leukocyte malfunctions, Inori appears before Shu but with a different voice. She asks him if he wants to save everyone and he says yes. She smiles at him and reveals a completely different Void, which was formed by joining her Void with Kido's. She is seen looking up at the sky after waking up from her unconsciousness. She is seen later returning to school with Shu, who is very nervous about it. Upon arrival, they are immediately questioned by a few students, who bully Shu by saying he's a criminal and warn Inori. She seems angered by it only for Shu to hold Inori's hand and pull her away, something she carefully looks at. They hear a slap from behind and look back, only to see Arisa Kuhouin slap the boy who said those things to them.
Later at Shu's home, Haruka sees Inori and notices the resemblance between her and the girl in Shu's memories but shakes it off. On the day of the 'party' Inori is seen with Tsugumi and Ayase who watch as Shu and Gai carry out their plan and rejoice when they become victorious.
In Episode 8, Gai told Shu to take his friends which include Sota, Hare, Kanon and Inori to summer island. Shu must use Sota void to unlock the gates on the island to take the stone of beginning, so he's forced to use Inori as a decoy and bring Sota out and withdraw his void. Later Sota and Inori were coming together to the beach side, but Shu hides in bush and watches them. Sota shows his own handmade video to Inori, the music video of Euterpe like Shu did before him, and Inori says "it's beautiful." Shu then could not hold in his anger as he ran off from the bush where he hid and pulled Sota's void out, claiming "Inori is my everything!"
In the end, while they head back to Tokyo, Shu feels curious about void why they have different shapes, and what is a void. When he asks Inori, she responds that voids will change if people's hearts change too.
Later on the mission, Shu must take Inori's void to fight, but he cannot do it and runs away from Inori, so Gai is forced to cancel the mission. Shu begins to say he wants to give up Funeral Parlor, and wants to live like normal people. After he went home, he finds Inori waiting for him to say farewell and give him a brand new song she made, but Shu starts to see illusions of Inori as Mana with the cancer virus like a monster. He panics and slaps Inori's hand away, causing the music drive to break apart and yells "Monster!" Inori starts to cry and says "It doesn't matter" then walks out of his apartment.
A few days later, Funeral Parlor plans to take the Stone of Beginning back, so they attempt to takeover the plane at the airport which wanted to take the stone to another country. Before the mission, Inori asks Gai about Shu, feeling curious about Shu and asked him if is she loves Shu. Because she feels that way, Gai avoids it and says they'd talk about it later.
The mission starts and Gai's group takes over the plane they believe the stone's on, but it's a decoy and the plane hits a tower at the airport. At the same time the Stone of Beginning started to sing and corrupt, causing lots of people almost turn to crystal and become infected with the apocalypse virus, dying within seconds, Gai becoming somewhat infected as well. Inori then says the song was not right, and that chaos was going to happen causing her to scream, "Stop it!"
Everything begins to get worse as Inori and Gai run into the airport tower and find Haruka. They come up with a plan to soothe the virus, meanwhile Funell found Shu in a movie clubroom near the school, Tsugumi speaking to him through Funell, says everything was destroyed because he didn't come to help, and because of that Gai and Inori might be dead all because he abandoned them. He manages to get back into shape and with the help of Hare he calls Arisa, Kanon, Sota, and Yahiro for their help.
Inori stands on the top of the radar building in the airport and sings "Departures," and the lights that stand over the building cure the people affected with the crystal cancer. Gai's cancer disappeared and he was able to rest. Shu came with his friends to rescue Inori using their Voids, managing to defeat the obstacles and reach Inori.
However, just as Shu was about to reach Inori, a mysterious boy appeared from behind her and pull her Void out, which forced her to stop moving. The boy attacked Shu with Inori's Void, but it ended up slashing Gai, who protected him. Inori was then taken away by the young boy.
Inori was used as a sacrifice to bring back Mana, so she could cause another outbreak of the virus around the world but Mana's rebirth was prevented by Shu and Gai, however the sacrifice was already over and Mana's consciousness was already installed in Inori's body. Gai told Shu to use the sword (Inori's void) to stab him along with Mana's main body(as they were binded together by crystals). Following the stab, the all the crystals disappeared and they (Inori and Shu) managed to escape. In the end of this chapter Shu's holding Inori and watched GHQ headquarters collapse, and Inori tells Shu that she could hear Gai saying "Thank you."
The whole city was chaos because of the Apocalypse Virus spreading everywhere. During this, Shu, Inori, Tsugumi, and Ayase hide out in the school and try to find a way to escape together. Sota had an idea to make a culture festival to cheer everyone up and have concert of "Egoist" in the festival.
Inori turns out to have a split personality which actually is Mana's infected side controlling her which makes Inori stab Arisa's hand, kill forceful students, and kill a group of bandits. Inori starts to fear that she might end up killing Shu if it continues then remembers telling her about her void but remarking that Inori is Inori, which helped her understand that even if she was a monster with a fake heart and emotions, to her they were always real.
After they can escape from school through the red line, some group of students want to get revenge on Shu, just as Gai appear and cut Shu's right arm off, and "The King's Power" was absorbed into Gai. Inori holds Shu and runs from Gai, because they were together all the time. Shu feels hopeless by losing his power and his right arm. One day Shu heard some music and found Inori singing Euterpe. Inori stopped and comes to Shu, she says thank you and she'll always be on his side, then she makes him sleepy and go out, and fight with Ghost unit. She uses the Apocalypse crystal as weapons like the claw, which is the power from the unfinished sacrifice, it's Mana power. In addition she fell to Gai, he used the bow void and shot her, which it become rope and stopped her.
Gai takes Inori to top of the headquarter tower, pulls her up and awaits to erase her memory, and use her body as Mana's vessel. Before Inori's almost devoured, Gai blame's himself because he helped Inori out from that day, but Inori didn't feel that way. She's grateful that she could survive, because she could feel the experience, and that let her meet Shu, who shows the regrets side of this world to her. She says it's sad but beauty, Shu suffered and doubted himself, he has hurt people and she felt shame of what he did, and that's the reason why Inori loves Shu. Shu shows her the way to live like a human, even though she knows the truth that she's not human, she's just a vessel that one day her body'll be the others. Because of Shu, she could learn how a human is and get a chance to fall in love with someone like ordinary people. Then Inori lost the memory about Shu. By that time Shu came into the headquarters, Inori with empty memory couldn't do anything, she sings Euterpe, only Shu could hear it and that sounds lead Shu to Inori, after the song, Inori's crying, and her tears turn into a crystal flower, after that she is fully devoured by Mana.
Mana was reborn in Inori's body. Shu arrived by that time, and Mana went to Shu, but he punched her because she insulted Inori. Mana felt sad and angry, that she let Gai use her void, which is the same void as Inori's. Shu began to fall, but then he saw some lights from Inori's flower crystal, her tears as crystal lets Shu use her power, her void and Shu meet Inori. Inori tells Shu not to give up, helps everyone and stops Mana.
After Shu defeats Gai, Inori is restored. She appears in front of Shu, almost crystallized, and walks towards Shu blindly and embraces him. She cannot see Shu and climbs to find him, but Shu holds her hand and says "let's go," then Shu puts his hand up and absorbs crystal cancer and Apocalypse virus into himself. Shu is then almost fully crystallized.
Inori tells Shu to take the "Guilty Crown" (a form of Cat's Cradle) which he accepts, and Inori's fading away in front of him, thus saving Shu. However, through a fan theory , it is believed that only Inori's body breaks away while her soul becomes one with Shu's.
In the last few scenes of Guilty Crown, Inori's soul is seen embracing Shu’s in a park surrounded by a surreal background of bluish clouds. The exact same clouds seen in episode 9, right before Jun was killed by Shu with Yahiro's void. Shu was seen conversing with Jun's soul even though he was in a coma, indicating souls can exist in the Guilty Crown universe without any connection with their actual body. Hence explaining Mana's soul’s survival after a decade since her body dissipated. Hence Inori's soul now resides in Shu's body, as Mana did in Inori's body before Inori's body was destroyed in episode 22.[1]
Abilities[]
As a member of the "Funeral Parlor," Inori was extremely skilled in forms of combat such as hand-to-hand fighting and marksmanship, to the point where she is able to outmatch and kill several soldiers of the "GHQ" forces by herself. Like Yuu, she displayed the ability to render a person unconscious with a simple touch to their forehead.
As a vessel of Mana, the patient zero of the Apocalypse Virus, it seems that her blood has the ability to delay the symptoms of those infected by the virus. Her body can be also used to communicate with Mana via unknown means (perhaps through telepathy). After Mana's death and the transfer of consciousness to Inori, Inori started to display violent instincts of Mana, as shown when she attacked Arisa, during which she produced a crystal spike of sorts to stab her. As time went on, Inori started to display more and more of Mana's abilities due to her constant contact with those whose Voids contained pieces of Mana.
In Episode 18, this culminates as she adopted a new form where her hair became longer and wilder with several crystal spikes appearing around her back, waist and arms and two crystals forming in her cheeks. In this form her physical abilities are greatly enhanced, and she can use the spikes in her hand as blades. With this form she fought in a berserk-like fashion and was able to destroy multiple Ghost Endlaves before being captured by Gai himself, who had to use Yuu's Void to catch her by surprise.
Inori's Void was the Singer's Sword, a massive broadsword at least twice as long as she is tall. Hers stands as one of the most powerful Voids shown in the series.
Etymology[]
- The name Inori means "prayer" (いのり).
- Inori's surname Yuzuriha means "lacquered dish" (楪).
Trivia[]
- In Episode 16, Inori started talking the same way Mana Ouma did. At one point, she also, at the end of the episode, stabbed Arisa Kuhouin after giving her a maniacal smile; This could mean that Mana's rebirth was not actually prevented. This fact was later confirmed by Haruka Ouma in Episode 20.
- Inori's character bears resemblance to Pandora girls from the manga Freezing. Both Inori and the girls have special auras or voids in this case, that can be used as weapons in combat. Both have male partners and both fight to protect the world from the apocalypse (in Freezing, aliens called Nova from another dimension). Additionally, Inori's English voice actor (Alexis Tipton), also voices Kaho Hiiragi.
- Like many other anime girls (and some guys), Inori entered Saimoe Contests.
- Inori is commonly agreed to be the most recognizable character in the anime.
- Inori shares the same English voice actor as Emi Kizaki from Linebarrels of Iron.
- Both also share similarities overall.
- It was revealed that Inori's measurements were 89-48-87 when she was 17.