Rena Ryuuguu

Rena Ryuuguu is one of the main characters in the Higurashi no Naku Koro ni anime, manga and games.

Rena is a signature character as she is featured more than once during the first anime season-opening, as well as appearing on most of the album and game covers. She appears in much of Higurashi 's official art and even serves as something of a mascot for 07th Expansion.

Rena attends the same grade as Keiichi, but she is younger than him.

In the AWA fics, Rena is a student at the AWA Academy and is part of Class 4.

Appearance
Rena has short reddish to brown hair in an angled cut with long sides and her fringe parts 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 deep silt up the middle, complete with "her favorite" white cap. She also wears black thigh-high 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.

In the first episode of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai, Rena appears as an adult in a purple business dress suit. She has the same hairstyle, though it is a bit longer, and seems to have grown taller since June of 1983.

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

Personality
Rena initially is sweet and friendly by nature, but she can be quite scary when threatened or angry. Certain situations in the story cause her personality to change dramatically. In Onikakushi-hen, she reacts strongly to one of Keiichi's remarks with the infamously deafeningly loud "Uso da!. Though part of her extreme reaction may be imagined by Keiichi who is suffering from the Hinamizawa Syndrome in this arc, Rena's reaction strongly suggests that she does hate lies, especially from friends.

Along with her intuition, Rena proves capable of becoming quite cunning and viciously cruel when she is determined, especially in Minagoroshi-hen and Tsumihoroboshi-hen. She was able to intimidate both the village council and the Child Welfare staff with her eyes and words easily, rarely losing emotional control like Keiichi and Sonozaki Shion both frequently did. During the last Watanagashi meeting of the village council, Rena gets into a violent fistfight with one of the elders. 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 seemingly girly and 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 in Watanagashi-hen, and Furude Rika in Minagoroshi-hen. Rena can also fiercely and successfully retort in a very sharp and biting way when involved in a heated debate.

Rena retains these abilities when she suffers from the Hinamizawa Syndrome. She reveals her capability for extreme cruelty in Tsumihoroboshi-hen when she holds the entire school hostage. Rena orders Keiichi to tie up all the students, including Satoko, Rika, and Mion. She viciously bludgeons Mion with her hatchet claiming that Mion "betrayed" her. She fully intends to kill all of the children and herself if her demands are not met. However, she does show remorse when Keiichi succeeds in calming her down with their fight on the roof.

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 attitude is due to her experience with it and her actually correct belief that Oyashiro-sama exists. On the other hand, she, like Rika, often empathizes with and can 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.

When determined, Rena can be very perceptive, as she can somewhat understand people just by looking at their faces. She does admit directly that she can quickly "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 observes.

Rena possesses a signature "Kaa~ii Mōdo" or "Cute Mode," a comic relief quirk which is instigated when she is embarrassed or when she finds something cute. Once she enters Kawaii Mode, Rena's senses are heightened to an extreme extent, making her inhumanly agile and vigorous. This causes frequent trouble for many of the club members, who have to expend all of their energy to barely control her; Keiichi and Mion have been knocked out cold a large number of times by Rena's flurries of punches, while Rika and Satoko have often been kidnapped when she progresses further to Take Home Mode, especially when they wear cute club punishment outfits. Satoko and Rika have learned to use Rena's Kawaii Mode switch to their advantages. By either crying to her or posing in an adorable fashion, they can manipulate whom Rena knocks out or make Rena can support them, thus giving them a huge advantage in eliminating competition easily in club games.

Trivia

 * Just behind Rika, Rena has the second most expanded-upon backstory.
 * Rena has the highest number of murders because in the alternate version of Tsumihoroboshi-hen, Yoigoshi-hen, she successfully blows up the whole school which killed 15 children, including herself, Mion, Satoko, Rika and Keiichi. She also murders Hōjō Teppei and Mamiya Rina in Tsumihoroboshi-hen and Mion and Keiichi in Tsukiotoshi-hen. Multiple murders of the same person do not count towards the total.
 * Rena survives in more arcs than any other main character: Watanagashi-hen, Meakashi-hen, Matsuribayashi-hen, and, at least in the anime version, Tsumihoroboshi-hen.
 * Reina: "Rei" can mean 0 and "Na," from "nana" can mean 7 which possibly references the author's pseudonym: Ryukishi07. This may also explain why Rena appears the signature character of the series. 4chan's anime boards and Japanese image threads celebrated "Rena Day" on July 7th, 2007 (07/07/07), by flooding Rena pictures.
 * Rena's real name "Reina" is also the Spanish word for "queen".
 * Rena's catchphrase "I wonder, I wonder?" ("Kana, kana?") is homophonous with ("kanakana"), an alternative name for the Higurashi cicada based on the sound it makes.
 * In addition to the 07 implication of Rena's name, it has been pointed out that both her real name and her nickname are the same as the Final Fantasy V character Lenna Charlotte Tycoon's Japanese names. In the game, Lenna's name is "Rena,". In the FFV anthology, Lenna's name is "Reina."
 * 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 proper, untainted half of the name and "Rina" is the epitome and physical existence of all the "icky things" and the bad experiences in Ibaraki.
 * In the English versions, Rena is the only character besides Takano, who acknowledges Oyashiro-sama as female. This may be because she remembers hearing Oyashiro-sama (Hanyū) speak to her. In Japanese, in which talking about someone without mentioning their gender is easy, Oyashiro-sama is not referred to as either male or female.
 * Rena often speaks and writes in third-person, but mentally, she speaks normally in first-person. Where this habit came from is unknown, but she has had it ever since she was very young.
 * In Tsumihoroboshi-hen TIP "The Demon's Script" and Reunion, Rena is referred to as "Girl A" by the police, as Japanese law prohibits disclosure of the names of minors involved in criminal cases. The identities of both the culprit and the victim of the Sasebo slashing are still officially unknown, albeit popular topics of Internet speculation. The law is not without its critics: Weekly Bunshun magazine declared that "monsters have no human rights" and published the alleged new names of the murderers of Junko Furuta.
 * It is revealed in the Tsumihoroboshi-hen manga that Rena goes grocery shopping with Keiichi's mother. It can be deduced that this is how she knew the type of instant noodles Keiichi eats in Onikakushi-hen.
 * In Onikakushi-hen, Detective Ōishi mentions to Keiichi that during her hospitalization, Rena was diagnosed with dysautonomia by a neurologist. Dysautonomias, systemic dysfunctions of the autonomic nervous system that manifest primarily in symptoms like lightheadedness/dizziness; heart palpitations; and changes in body temperature, do not explain Rena's violence or mental state during the incident at her school in Ibaraki. Moreover, though dysautonomia starts in the nervous system, the diverse bodily symptoms make a neurologist somewhat less likely to diagnose a dysautonomia than a physiologist or a cardiologist.
 * Despite being her signature weapon, in the Sound Novels and the manga Rena never uses her nata to lethal effect in the "core" arcs of Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni and Kai. She commits all of her murders with other weapons. However, in the anime adaptation of Tsumihoroboshi-hen she uses the nata to kill Hōjō Teppei, while in the Sound Novel and the manga she uses a broad ax for that purpose.