Nozomu Okaya is the main antagonist of the revenge tragedy series Maria No Danzai. He is an incredibly sadistic and manipulative psychopath who is the target of Maria's revenge and is responsible for the bullying and assault of his fellow classmates.
Prologue[]
Nozomu Okaya is shown bullying Yuda Akihiro, a shy meek and cowardly student who is very timid. Nozomu Okaya is participating in this act of assault with his four friends, Shikimi Kumiru, Kinugawa Atsuyoshi, Mutta Ajiki, and Tsubasa Kowase. The quintet are known for being a feared presence in their school, that is until a student named Kiritake Nagare chooses to volunteer in place of Akihiro. Nozomu, who hails from a wealthy family, is used to being in control of absolutely everyone and everything, but is caught off guard by the defiant look in Kiritaka's eyes.
Soon enough, the quintet force Kiritaka to undergo acts of torture, such as force-feeding him cockroaches, stuffing his mouth full with thumbtacks, and beating him up daily. All while this is happening, Kiritaka's mother, Mari, is oblivious to all of this. Kiritaka assures her that nothing is happening and that she should not concern herself with him.
Until one fated day, the quintet decide to create a deepfake video of Kiritaka's mother engaging in sexual acts. They promise not to upload the video, in exchange for him jumping off a cliff. Kiritaka obliges, and breaks his legs upon impact. Mari, having traced his whereabouts, follows him and sees his mangled body on the side of the road. Before she can save him, he is ran over by a truck.
Using his mother' Shizuka's connection in the police force due to her status as Chief Police Inspector, Okaya and his gang get off completely scot free, and Kiritaka's death is framed as suicide with the motive being that his parents abused him. Driven to despair, Mari discovers a diary and multiple incriminating videos of Kiritaka being bullied and tortured mercilessly. The videos contain evidence of all the bullies with the sole exception of Okaya himself. Engulfed in hatred, Maria sets herself on a mission to seek vengeance on Okaya and his entire gang.
Maria plans meticulpusly for 2 years, she changes her face and body with extensive plastic surgery, and changes her legal name back to her maiden name. From Mari Nagare to Maria Akeboshi. She then uses her past credentials as a school nurse to land a position in the Saint Spring High School school nurse position, finally being able to exact a long awaited vengeance on the quintet of perpetrators.
Maria No Danzai (Volumes 1-2)[]
Maria first starts off her vengeance against Tsubasa Kowase, the class gopher and the servant of the group. Tsubasa is desperate to get on Okaya's good side due to his immense connections to powerful individuals. Tsubasa is shown to be mercilessly bullying a girl named Yashima, and blackmailing her via a picture of her shoplifting. (Shoplifting is considered a cultural taboo in japan and is considered condemnable in contrast to other places in the world.) Maria starts by blackmailing Kowase with a video of him masturbating. Driven to paranoid-driven insanity, Kowase accosts Yashima and attempts to drown her to death. Fortunately, Maria saves her and pricks Kowase in the neck with a syringe designed to knock him unconscious.
Kowase wakes up in a cell, and is bound by a chain with a lock on it. Maria explains that he must find the date of the day he committed the worst act he has ever done. If he is unable to do that, he must then use a knife to saw off his own hand. Kowase jumbles and attempts to free himself, and intuitively recognizes that the date Maria is referring too is the day he killed Kiritaka. Kowase however, does not remember the date, and is therefore unable to solve the code. Kowase attempts to chop off his own hand, and is shocked when the blade is dull, instead mutilating his wrist and causing him to go into a deranged fit of screams, before consecutively drowning to death. Maria tells his dying corpse whilst cradling him that it wasn't Kiritaka's death that was the worst act he commited, it was instead the fact that he was ever born into this world that was his greatest wrongdoing.
Moving onto the next target, Shikimi, a jezebel with a talent for fraud and deceit. Shikimi is known for working with a wannabe gangster known as Iijima. Shikimi often cons older men out of massive amounts of cash by pretending to not be a minor. She heads to Love Hotels and later blackmails them threatening to have them arrested for "assaulting her" all the while Iijima ties up loose ends and sets up the scenarios.
Maria concentrates her efforts onto isolating Shikimi from everybody as the first part of her revenge. Okaya on the other hand begins to suspect that something is amiss due to Kowase having been missing for 2 weeks. He recognizes that someone with an "unjustified resentment" may be after the group, and instructs them to be careful. Shikimi and Kinugawa later get into a fight which was constructed by Maria herself. Shikimi is viewed as the perpetrator when she accuses Kinugawa of stealing her gym clothes. However, Maria knowing this would happen, turns the hate towards Shikimi by claiming that Kinugawa was with her all day, making it impossible that he was the one who stole her gym clothes. Shikimi then storms out of the class in a rage, and is confronted by Maria in the hallway, telling her that she would be "All Alone" forever if she continued with this behaviour.
Later that night, Maria is attacked by Iijima, under Shikimi's orders. Maria however, seduces Iijima into bed and later has sex with him, making Shikimi's attack completely useless. Maria later goes to Shikimi's house and knocks her out with an unspecified method, before transporting her to a isolated cabin in the middle of the woods. Maria tells Shikimi that she can use her cellphone too send one text message, but cannot use that text to overtly exclaim her distress. To Shikimi's anger, Maria tells her that she can look through a box filled with razor blades to search for her sim card. Shikimi uses her tongue and ends up having her bottom face completely mutilated beyond recognition, including her lips and tongue.
Shikimi thinks on choosing Okaya, but before realizing that Okaya does not care about her, chooses Iijima instead. However it is revealed that Maria tricked Iijima into believing that Shikimi was planning to sell him out to the authorities, thus causing him to want nothing to do with her. Heartbroken and enraged, Shikimi vows death on Maria by Okaya's hands as she plummets into a well filled with bugs and insects that eat her alive.
Elsewhere, via triangulation of all the relationships of his past victims, deduces that it is one of Kiritaka Nagare's parents who are after him and the group, due to Shikimi having been missing for over 2 weeks similar to Kowase, demonstrating that it is no coincidence and it is indeed a pattern.
Maria No Danzai (Volume 3)[]
Due to the beginning of the break for all of the students of Saint Spring's Secondary School, Maria is forced to adjust her plans to take care of Kinugawa, Ajiki and Okaya. Maria decides to search for Iijima. However she is plagued by hallucinations of her sons mangled corpse. Maria however decides that she must find a way too find Iijima before the cops do. However, she discovers that Iijima has been killed, having been found in a park with his eyes gouged out and multiple blunt injuries to his skull.
Elsewhere, Okaya and Ajiki are at an arcade, along with Kinugawa. Okaya deduces that since the style of killing is different from Maria's style of killing, and that since they are two different styles of killing that conflict each other, the two seperate killers must not be related. Okaya later deduces that if the killer who dispatched both Shikimi and Kowase (Maria) is not related to the person who killed Iijima (Akihiro was responsible) that Maria must be on edge and later decides that the gang can use this opportunity to discover the identity of the culprit.
Meanwhile, Maria gets into contact with Akihiro, and Maria refuses to work with him as Akihiro was loved by Kiritaka as a friend, and refuses that anyone else be dragged into her schemes that would be innocent or otherwise uninvolved. Maria decides to record Akihiro confessing to stalking her and holds that as leverage over his head. Meanwhile- Kinugawa is searching for evidence under Okaya's orders whilst Okaya and Ajiki are seen at the Culture Festival of the school. Okaya through Kinugawa is attempting to gain evidence on Kiritaka's mother, whom he is convinced is involved in the attack against his group. Akihiro, upon realization that Taiichirou is home and is about to see Kinugawa, chooses to send a rock over to distract Taiichirou, because if Kinugawa were to be caught and sent to jail, the revenge plan would be ruined.
Kinugawa uses the opening left by the rock as an attempt to escape, but is caught off guard when Taiichirou intercepts him, causing the two to engage in a bloody fight. Kinugawa gains the upper hand when he touches a portrait of Maria prior to the divorce, and Kinugawa smashes the glass portrait on Taiichirou,s head, causing a glass shard to be stuck in his eye. Kinugawa escapes, and later tracks down Akihiro. Kinugawa later plans to use a screwdriver to kill Akihiro, but Maria intercepts the duo and rams Kinugawa with her car, knocking him unconscious. Elsewhere, Okaya smirks upon realization that his plan had worked. Okaya had placed a GPS app on Kinugawa's phone and plans to use it to find the killer.
Kinugawa is later brought to a forest. Maria has slit his achilles tendon and has stripped him of all of his clothes. Maria tells Kinugawa that he has to attempt to evade her until the fireworks at the culture festival end. Kinugawa attempts to run, but Maria effortlessly catches up to him and predicts his every move. Maria shoots him in his ear, but Kinugawa due to his strength and adrenaline escapes from it easily, and runs to a nearby mansion. Maria has set up things so that Kinugawa would head back to this exact house, because it is the same house that Kinugawa used to torture Kiritaka in. Kinugawa heads up the stairs and attempts to attack Maria, but he is caught off guard by numerous traps that fire arrows at him from all sides that were set up by Maria to immobilize him. Kinugawa threatens to rape Maria in the same spot where he tortured Kiritaka.
In a series of events, a stray arrow manages to strike Kinugawa in the eye. In pain, he grabs it out, and is driven to a state of pure primal fear. Maria later approaches him with a chainsaw, and saws up his lower torso and his genitals, down to the pelvic bone. Kinugawa begs for his life and surrenders to Maria, but Maria later tells him that she feels no joy in the things that she is doing and asks "where the fun is in all of this:. Even claiming that she tried to mimic the smiles that the group showed when they were torturing their innocent victims. Kinugawa in his last moments of life, wonders how someone out there could possibly not enjoy having a servant at their beck and call and later begs Okaya to save him.
Okaya and Ajiki are being driven in a private vechile by the Okaya Family's personal chaffeur. The duo are attempting to track down Kinugawa, while Ajiki asks Okaya if he "truly cares" about any of his friends and what his definition of. afriend is. Okaya is left puzzled and even shocked, as he doesn't know the answer to it himself. Okaya later decides to change his plans since he realizes that they could be possibly walking into "The Mother's trap". In a flashback, it is revealed that Okaya had been implicitly threatening Akihiro by talking to his mother in order to keep tabs on him and to ensure that Akihiro had held his tongue. In a recent meeting between the two, Akihiro's mother had revealed that he had recently left the house. Combined with the previous deductions of Iijima having been killed by a seperate individual, this leads Okaya to believe that Akihiro and Maria are working together, and that Akihiro himself has some role in this incident.
Okaya and Ajiki later go to Akihiro's house to threaten his mother. Akihiro is horrified when his mother calls him and Okaya's voice is heard in the back. Maria, noticing this attack, coaches Akihiro on how to defend against Okaya. Maria instructs Akihiro to lie that he along with many other people are on a mission across Japan, with all of them being victims of bullying or suffering with severe agoraphobia or porn addictions. Akihiro later tells his mother not to worry about him, causing his mother to be "relieved" that her son has finally growed up. Meanwhile, Okaya and Ajiki are later forced to retreat as they cannot tread any further for fear of exposing their own crimes. Okaya later reflects on the fact that Yuda's speech seemed to resemble Kiritaka Nagare's choice of words, and that the choice of words was hereditary, strengthening the fact that Okaya believes Maria is responsible for the killings on the group.
Okaya later phones his mother, due to Taiichirou, who is now hospitalized becoming suspicious of his inspector, Taiyou Reiji, because Taiichirou is confident in the fact that he had absolutely nothing to do with his son's death, and that Taiyou is hiding something from him. Taiyou later dismisses him, but later reports to the chief Police Inspector. (Shizuku Okaya, and Okaya's mother) that Taiichirou has begun to suspect their involvement. Okaya, through an earbud coaches his mother to dissuade Taiyou's suspicions and continue to deceive Taiichirou.
Volume 4[]
TBA
Volume 5[]
TBA
Personality[]
Okaya is initially presented as a kind, model student who is graceful and is acknowledged for his top marks in all of his subjects. Underneath it all however, Okaya is a being of evil and malice who relishes in the pain of others. Okaya has no loyalty to anyone but himself, and showcases personality traits aligning with Malignant Narcissism.
Extremely intelligent, Okaya can easily decipher the intentions of anyone, and combine that with the wealthy background of his mother, and the connections and resources of his father- Okaya has been in absolute control of everyone his entire life. This control extends to his parents as they are seen worshipping him and prostrating themselves before him. Okaya shows no real value to his friends and is even excited at their deaths as he believes that he finally has "something to prove to somebody" when Maria begins her onslaught against his group of perpetrators. Okaya shows no semblance of empathy and is shown to be quite disturbed. He is feared by absolutely everybody in his group, but his charisma still draws all of them together, making it impossible for any of them to leave for fear of incurring his wrath.
Capable of great sadism, it is worth mentioning that Okaya often manipulates situations and people to do his dirty work for him as opposed to doing it himself. As showcased in Kiritaka's video archives of evidence, Okaya is never seen or mentioned in any of them, demonstrating his intellect.
Trivia[]
- Okaya's favourite animal, the cockroach is of a symbolic significance. Cockroaches multiply fast and are regarded as pests. Despite this they are extremely resilient and can even live decapitated. This demonstrates Okaya's resilience in his day to day life and a pest that bothers everyone around him. Cockroaches also reproduce fast, and Okaya's friend group can be viewed as his "offspring" of sorts.