Mai Taniyama is the main female protagonist of the Ghost Hunt anime and manga.
A 16 year-old first-year high school student who becomes involved with the Shibuya Psychic Research (SPR) after she accidentally breaks an expensive video camera that was being used by the SPR in an investigation of an old building at her school. In the same incident, she is saved from a falling bookcase by Lin Koujo, who is injured instead; to repay her debt, she fills in for Lin to assist SPR's manager Kazuya Shibuya. After the conclusion of the first case, she is offered a paycheck for her work and a part-time position at the SPR.
In the AWA fics, Mai is a student at the AWA Academy and is part of Class 8.
Appearance[]
Mai is pretty short, she has a short brown hair and has brown eyes. She wears a light-brown long-sleeved sailor fuku with a dark-blue collar and red ribbon tie, black miniskirt, black thigh-high socks and brown loafers.
Personality[]
Mai often believes the best in people; when Naoko Kuroda and Chiaki Kasai are suspected, she sticks up for both of them, despite knowing neither very well. She is also very compassionate, as demonstrated in Volume 2, when she forms a close bond with the child involved in the case, and Volume 7, when she comforts a kidnapped Masako Hara, despite the two not getting along. Mai is easily annoyed and quite jealous.
Starting with the very first volume, Mai expresses enjoyment of her work with SPR because it is exciting, as she tends to be an adventurous-romantic. This attitude is prevalent in all the cases she takes, but only when no one is being harmed. She is very brave, and asks Houshou Takigawa (Monk) and Ayako Matsuzaki to teach her spells and counter-curses in order to feel more useful. She is also quite impulsive; deciding to exorcise a multitude of spirits last-minute, despite her lack of skill.
Although not dumb, Mai is the least experienced of the group, and appears not to take schoolwork too seriously. She is very intuitive and good with people, rather than traditionally intelligent, something Naru likes to poke fun at. Her sympathetic nature leads her to be a big target for spirits. Mai is shown to be very stubborn in her beliefs. She isn't afraid of expressing her reasoning, regardless of authority. Mai is hinted at to be very lonely, which is why she so eagerly accepts SPR as a family.
Abilities[]
Mai has latent ESP. She has extremely good intuition. When sleeping, she also demonstrates an ability to receive visions and have out-of-body experiences, (Astral Projection). Mai demonstrates this when she gives Masako Hara her key to comfort her, after she is kidnapped by Urado, in episode 21.
However due to her psychic abilities, she has telepathic visions, often experiencing what the victims did during a case. This happened during The Bloodstained Labyrinth case, where Mai experienced how a victim was killed by Urado. This was also shown in The Nightmare Dwelling: she had experienced the last moment of a child, who was killed by someone who broke into the house at night and killed the whole family. Because of this experience, Kazuya Shibuya (Naru) had to make sure she was under 'over protection'. Her dreams are often categorized as post or retro-cognitive.
Trivia[]
- Her name Mai means "linen robe".
- Mai's surname Taniyama means "valley" (tani) and "mountain, hill" (yama).
- Mai is older than Masako Hara by several days.
- Out of all the members, Mai has been attacked the most by spirits.
- Mai was able to perform exorcisms and a cleansing after being taught by Eugene Davis, Houshou Takigawa (Monk) and Ayako Matsuzaki. Although her psychic level was not too strong in the beginning, Takigawa had warned her not to aim it on people.
- Mai keeps her old family's house-key as a good luck charm.
- Mai has an affinity to kotatsus, and by The Blood-Stained Labyrinth case, is ecstatic that she was able to afford one.
- Naru gave a photo of him with his twin brother to Mai in the novels.
- Mai's favorite drink is Green Tea.
Gallery[]
