Takatori Family

It's not a family you want to belong to. Sure, you're rich, famous, and powerful, but you're also mad and likely to die at a relation's hands. It's quite hard to find pictures of any of the family, becuse hey, who'd want merchandise with most of these ugly mugs on them? Anyway, that's why the illustrations on the page tend towards the character sketches.

Takatori Saijoh

He's old. It's hard to find pictures of him. Not much else to say here.

Quite a frightening man. Lives in Tsukiyono castle, has identical twins who keep trying to sleep with Omi and he's deeply obsessed with 'The Mother' when we first meet him, the Mother being pretty much every woman in his family. He wants to create a large powerful family for his own mother's sake. Done pretty well. Also collected wax dolls of every member of his family who had died. Except, well, some of them weren't dolls. Those who's bodies were still whole actually were the wax dolls, though neither Hirofumi nor Masafumi did too well out of it (neither of their bodies were in quite the 'perfect state' Ouka's was). Mamoru believes he doesn't know. Looking at the track record, the rest of us are going "Yeah, right".

He pretends to have had a stroke so people underestimate him. He also has a tendency to get ill when Mamoru needs his advice. Kritiker is a vehicle for his family's power, not the altruistic secret police (now there's an oxymoron) Weiss were always led to believe. He's happy to let Rosenkreuz do as it will.

He's old, he's at least marginally evil, and he's got a passion for emotional blackmail when it comes to Mamoru.

Takatori Reiji

And, as every Weiss fan before me has observed, he looks like a koala. Do you suppose any one ever pointed that out to him?

I always get Reiji and Shuichi mixed up. One of the reasons I made that family tree. Reiji is the evil one, who employs Schwarz. His wife fell in love with his brother and, after Mamoru's birth, committed suicide. Reiji seems to have been involved with Shizuka around the same time, so he can't exactly complain. Except he does, and he resents the hell out of both Shuichi and Mamoru. you'd think it would be hard for someone so much in the public limelight to refuse to pay his son's ransom without revealing his reasons, but he gets away with it. He also protects both of his sons' illegal activates and worships his daughter.

Takatori Shuichi

Mamoru's father. Head of police. Watched his brother run over Aya-chan (in the anime, anyway). Runs a secret police force, handed down to him by his father, to arrest everyone he can't in his normal job. I have trouble working out if his name is spelt Shuichi, Shuuichi, Shuiichi, Suichi, Suuichi or Suiichi. You'll probably find all of them scattered throughout the site. I'll check it one day, I swear.

Shuichi's a bit of a prat, really. Never twigs that Mamoru's his son, despite Saijoh's implications that he did (anyone worried that Grandpa knew and daddy didn't?), until Reiji tells him. I suppose if Reiji's getting it on with Shizuka, he's neglecting his wife, and if she got pregnant than he'd have known it was someone else. He also has a tendency not to arrest people who deserve it, especially while they're committing crimes. Reiji is watching a bank getting blown up, happy as Saturday, and then runs over a little girl. What does Shuichi, chief of police, do? Wait two years and have a team of teenaged boys kill him with archaic weapons.

And he screws up Kritiker. Not a good track record, all in all. His obsession with his brother causes two seconds-in-command to both go off and start their own organisations. One takes the second Weiss and sticks around in Japan, setting up more and more killing groups and eventually emerging in Dramatic precious. The other goes to England and sets up Weiss Side B, and eventually appears in the manga of that name. Shuichi really screwed up, you see, because we can blame him for the events in the DP CDs. People dying, people going mad, people reuiniting.

Takatori Kikuno

She appears in a single flashback. Apparently she hung herself. it's very hard to find screencaps of this, so this picture of her is taken from a sketch of a Takatori family photograph. That's baby Mamoru she's cuddling. Aww!

She fell in love with her husband's brother. She had his son. She committed suicide. Not a fun life, but easy to summarise.

Takatori Hirofumi

Not much to say about how he looks. Better than Masafumi.

He wants to take after his father. It seems no one pointed out his father was mad. Nor did anyone point out that politicians aren't suppose to organise hunting parties together and chase teenagers through woods. Though it did provide for a touching family reunion. Touched in the head, possibly.

First one to recognise Omi, and give the poor kid a dose of identity crisis. When Mamoru isn't interested in returning to the fold, Hirofumi decides blood is no thicker than lead, and tries to kill him. Gets killed instead. Ouch.

Takatori Masafumi

Whee, fluffy. Well, not here, but that's a damn scary face he's pulling.

The interesting evil brother. He wants eternal life. He wants super soldiers. He wants to continue the family tradition (see Saijoh) of having 'dolls', though at least his are alive and kick people's butts for him. He dresses said dolls, Schreient, in rather frightening outfits, and most people suspect their undying love for him isn't exactly natural. he has a knack of picking girls who, by dint of being some of the only females in a male dominated series, tend to get romantically involved with other main characters.

Compared to Hirofumi he's definitely cooler. He has Schreient, for a start, and steals kidneys, and turns into a monster. He's in charge of a much larger chunk of plot, as well. He brings Sakura into play, he's in charge of Tot, who's involvement with Nagi is critical, he's in charge of Neu, who drives Yohji round the bend, and he's even still around when Schwarz come to claim Aya-chan from Schreient, though he doesn't do much except die, which most of the viewers thought he already had. And then he turns up in the drama CDs. Tough guy to get rid of, even when he's dead.

Takatori Mamoru

An excuse for a Gluhen character sketch! Omi all growed up.

I'm not sure being born on February 29th is a good omen. For a start, when he first meet him he's technically only four.

None of the Takatoris are particularly healthy, mentally. Mamoru gets amnesia and identity crises, though that's still probably better than turning yourself into a giant hairy monster. Being kidnapped is a deeply traumatic experience. Being brought up to kill people isn't much better. Killing your brothers and having your sister (cousin) die in you arms won't help either. Never quite figuring out who was you father, but knowing either way he's dead, can't be fun. Oh, and then there's being emotionally blackmailed by a very old man into taking up a political position and losing all your personal morals.

Poor Mamoru, really. And by the end of Gluhen, he's really settled into his roots. He's Persia, not Bombay, Mamoru, not Omi; cold political bastard, not cheerful idealistic assassin. There's one last mission where he allows himself to be Omi, but after that he sends all of his friends away (convincing other Kritiker members they're dead) and draws a wide line between 'now' and 'then'. He's hiring people who tired to kill him now, which Omi would never have done (never forgive the bad ones!) and he's wearing some very odd clothes. We'll miss Omi, but at least Mamoru is better looking than any of the rest of his family. It would be unforgivable if he grew those sideburns as well... I need to make a picture of that now.

Sakaki Shizuka

Now here's someone it's almost impossible to find pictures of.

Reiji's lover. She's a pretty cool woman. Runs her own restaurant, must have been between fourteen and sixteen when Ouka was born (she's 34 in the anime) and supports herself and her daughter. She's even on good terms with Reiji. Much cooler than Kikuno. I can't remember if she survives. I'll have to check.

Sakaki Ouka

She irritates a lot of fans. Well, with the yaoi following Weiss has it's not surprising. Asuka can be dismissed as a bitch and Ken's brief girlfriend as completely forgettable (so much so I can't even remember her name), but Ouka's just a bit spoilt. Well, her father's taking over the world, so it's hardly surprising.

She's happy, she's well adjusted, she's forthright, she's got blue hair and she's Omi's cousin. Except she dies thinking she's his sister, and messes up Omi's head in a bad way. And her half brother tires to kill her, which was probably a bit of an oversight on his behalf. You think he'd give his henchmen a picture of her, what with her being a clubbing girl and all, and point out that when kidnapping the brightest and best from the most expensive and exclusive clubs in the country, she's just a bit too brightest and best.

Of course, the other reasons fans hate her is because her death gets Schuldig and Farfarello beaten with a golf club. But the way Schuldig gasps is so adorable...