Rena Kurono is a Succubus and a third year student at Yōkai Academy. One of her goals was to take Tsukune Aono from Moka Akashiya. Rena is a very innocent character and genuinely yearns for Tsukune's love. Rena is actually a very innocent character compared to her mother, Ageha Kurono. Her mother, Ageha, in a way, is a sexual deviant who plans to steal all men with her kiss. Rena used to be like that, until one fortunate day, when she met Tsukune, Moka and Shiro, that all changed through Tsukune's saving her life from Inner Moka and Inner Shiro.
Appearance[]
Rena has ankle-length, violet hair, with a black ribbon placed just above her bangs, which cast a heavy shadow over her eyes, causing them to be devoid of shine, appearing darker than usual, and often lend her a sad demeanor overall. She wears a long, black dress with gray trimmings, and has a prominent bust.
Personality[]
As a succubus, Rena has the ability to easily seduce men. She is well liked by most of the boys in her school, but fell in love with Tsukune Aono when he saved her, Rina and Kurumu from two angry Inner Moka and Inner Shiro. Rena initially acts calm and shy to attract Tsukune, and later tells him that he is her one true love and will try to make him love her without her succubus power.
Rena is very fragile. She is normally very soft-spoken and pacifistic, however, the Root of Calamity can cause that to change when she's frightened or angered.
When under the influence of the Root of Calamity, her personality briefly changes significantly. She begins talking in a much lower voice, and makes an active attempt to kill the target of her anger, often screaming loudly in the process.
Notably, Rena has a fairly cynical outlook on life. She considers the idea of friendship to be a lie, and rejects the notion that having people counting on you can make one stronger. In her own words, she believes people to be lonely creatures by nature. Her cynical outlook is reflected in her preference in media, with her favorite story being full of dark themes such as murder, depression and drug abuse.
Rena also has a strange ability, learned as a result of spending all of her time in her dark bedroom: Her nose is much better than her eyes, and she can even sense details about one's character, such as personality and social status, through smell alone.
At a glance, one could get the impression that Rena is a childish and selfish person, however, she's actually more mature and kindhearted than she seems, as she truly cares about her friends and would gladly risk her life for their sake. She is quite stubborn and brave and a loyal person who wants to win Tsukune's love without using her charming skills.
Powers and Abilities[]
Powers[]
- Succubus Physiology: As a succubus Rena possesses abilities that induce illusions and lust allowing her put many monsters and humans under her control. She also possesses basic yokai abilities such as enhanced physical prowess and other ones unique to her kind. Though as a yokai of love and lust if her heart is broken after falling in love herself then she could potentially die.
- Flight: As a Succubus, Rena possesses wings that give her the natural ability of flight.
- Superhuman Strength: Rena has notable strength, being able to slice trees in half with her claws and carry multiple people at once. After training for a month to fight against Fairy Tale, Rena can easily slice through metal guns and easily defeat the grunts of the organization.
- Superhuman Speed: Rena has shown to be fast enough to defeat several enemies at once. Her speed after training allowed her outpace most of the grunts of Fairy Tale and slice apart their weapons before they were able to react.
- Superhuman Reflexes: She has been able to react to a barrage of gunfire from a Fairy Tale Soldier. Her reflexes are heightened after her training that she was able to immediately cast an illusion of herself when Akua attempted to kill her in the Floating Garden.
- Superhuman Durability: The tissues and bones of Rena's body are considerably stronger and more resistant than those of ordinary humans or lower yokai. This is shown when she survives attacks coming from powerful vampires such as Moka, Kahula, and Akua. In fact even before her training, Rena possessed enough durability to forcibly bypass a powerful barrier casted by Touhou Fuhai which he noted is capable of killing almost any yokai attempting to force their way in or out of it to reach Tsukune, something Fuhai complemented her for though she was still moderately injured from the attempt.
- Superhuman Stamina: Rena's musculature produces considerably less fatigue toxins than the musculature of ordinary humans or lower yokai, allowing her to stay physically active for longer periods of time. This is shown when she and Mizora engaged Kahula Shuzen even after being defeated and severely injured by Akua which Shiro noted that she didn't fully recover at all and was just ignoring her injuries. Despite being further injured by Kahula in her second release state, Rena and Mizora still had the strength to douse the vampire with holy water thus weakening her for Kokoa to finish off. Her stamina is also shown when she utilizes her mind entering ability (that she notes is a taxing ability of the succubus) to forcibly enter Shiro's mind to retrieve Touhou Fuhai, Tsukune, and Mizora for a considerable amount of time. Though she did collapsed in exhaustion and lost consciousness for a few hours after depleting her energy.
- Allure and Illusions: Being a succubus, Rena possesses powers of Allure, which she can use to hypnotize males. This technique, however, only seems to last a few minutes. Rena can also use Illusions, displaying the ability to affect an entire crowd of males with her Allure. Her allure eventually grew strong enough to hypnotized Tsukune for several hours. Her illusions also became strong enough after her training to be able to trick even Akua Shuzen into thinking that she killed Rena with her initial surprise attack.
- Telescopic Claws: Rena can grow claws out from her fingers that can easily cut through trees and enemies with ease. After training for a month her claws became sharp and strong enough to easily slice through metal guns and weapons.
- Mind Entering: Recently, she has shown her ability to travel into people's minds via her tail. It's revealed that she can't stay in the dream too long or it will exhaust her body. Later, she shows that she can enter a person's mind with a kiss, like she did with Tsukune to bring his soul back when he was consumed by his Shinso blood.
- Root of Calamity: Rena is able to focus her mental power into an explosion, making her body several times stronger. The Root of Calamity seems to be activated at high emotional states such as extreme anger or distress.
Abilities[]
Expert Hand-to-Hand Combatant: Rena mainly relies on her claws to defeat most of her enemies in fight and thus did not show much skills. After training with Mizora for the purpose of defeating Shiro to gain Tsukune's affections she exhibited greater skills. After training under Ginei for a month her skills developed even further being able to utilize acrobatic movements with her claws to easily defeat multiple grunts of Fairy Tale.
Team Worker: Due to their mutual rivalry with Shiro, Rena decide to train with Mizora to form powerful combinations of their illusions and ice. In fact out of all the newspaper club members, she and Mizora are the most seen pair in any sort of activity right behind Tsukune and Shiro. Their combination are as such that after training for a month Akua Shuzen herself admitted that their combination was powerful enough to defeat almost any of the sub-division leaders of Fairy Tale though she defeated them with ease.
Techniques[]
Partner Techniques: Due to their mutual rivalry with Shiro, she and Mizora made various combination attacks in order to defeat Shiro and eventually it became powerful to contend with Akua Shuzen for some time and played a role in defeating Kahula Shuzen.
- White and Black Duet, Number 3: After Rena has transformed into her true form, she will pick up Mizora before twirling around. As this happens, Mizora seems to release a barrage of ice shards from her Ice Claws.
- White and Black Duet, Number 9: After appearing behind a target, Rena and Mizora will both slice him/her with their claws and launch the target into the air. Based on what Mizora said, they had waited a long time to use this against Inner Shiro.(English Translation of Manga called this duet "Anti-Reverse Shiro Esoteric")
- White and Black Duet, Number 13: Last Waltz: After clasping hands with Mizora, ice will begin to form in the air above a target. It quickly forms into a good-sized piece of sharpened ice that descends towards a target. The true power of this technique is known, though she and Mizora had to jump away to avoid the shock wave that it caused, the ice shatters causing the ice crystals to change into water. It was a attack only meant for Vampires.
- Divine Rain Waltz: A technique that causes ice shards in the air to melt and to become rain that falls down towards an enemy. It is a useful technique against Vampires as it acts as a limiter to their powers while also causing them pain.
Relationships[]
Tsukune Aono[]
After Moka and Shiro (unintentionally) ruined her's, Rina's and Kurumu plans to enslave all the boys at the academy, Rena planned to prove that she couldn't lose to Shiro by stealing Tsukune's heart. Because of his feelings for both Moka and Shiro, Rena failed to seduce him. Enraged by this, the sisters decided to kill him instead, but were stopped when Moka and Shiro intervened. Before the Vampires could seriously hurt them, Tsukune stood in their way and defended the sisters. Touched by this noble act, Rena became convinced that Tsukune was her "mate of fate", and planned to win his heart without the use of her powers.
Trivia[]
- Aside from evil Yōkai, Rena isn't truly able to feel hatred; this could be an effect of being a Succubus, which lives on love. (Love is usually regarded as the emotion opposite to Hatred as love broken and the heart poisoned can become full of hatred)
- Rena boasts the largest breasts to date in the Rosario + Vampire universe.
- Rena adamantly refuses to give her chastity to anyone but Tsukune.
- Bebeby is most likely based on the Kumamoto Prefecture mascot, Kumamon.
- Given how different Rena acts from her mother, its possible a succubus's morality grows lower the more they follow their nature to seduce victims.
- She has effectively chosen a slow suicide by continuing to love Tsukune, as a Succubus needs to be loved to live. However, she has implied that she can survive off superficial love if she enters Tsukune's dreams and changes it so he dreams about them being a loving couple.
- Rena became a bit hysterical when Akua Shuzen said she'd fallen for Tsukune. This says while she acts casual about her love rivals, she's getting a bit upset at the growing number of rivals.
- Most of Rena's traits are based around her Animal Spirit, the Bear.
- Rena has an unusually sharp sense of smell, a reference to her Animal Spirit.
- Rena's stuffed animal, Bebeby (Bebe-tan in Japanese) is a bear, another reference to her Animal Spirit.
- The Root of Calamity can be best described as "going berserk", this has a deeper meaning for her as a character, as berserk is derived from the Berserkers, an ancient Viking tribe, whose warriors were known for achieving a "trance-like state of rage", and wore no armor, but pelts made animal skin, specifically bearskin, one of the greatest references to her Animal Spirit.