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| “ | You guys are funny. And cute too. So cute in fact, somebody might want to eat you up. | „ |
| ~ Mei playfully threatening Erma, Mistu and Momo |
Toru, Kiko and Mei are the main antagonists of the Yokai District arc in the Erma webcomics by artist Brandon Santiago. They are a trio of evil yokai who want to torture and kill Erma for unknown reasons, presumably due to her heritage as a Yureimoto or because of her status as a half-yokai.
Appearance[]
Mei is a slender female Taka Onna, possessing long, sharp nails, eyes of a reversed coloration and medium black hair with white bangs on her left. She wears a light singlet with black markings, black pants with tears and light sneakers. In The Gift, she wears a straw hat to conceal her yokai nature and her nails are shorter.
Kiko is a Yuki-Onna with black hair tied up in a ponytail, with her bangs turning white at the tips and becoming mist-like at the ponytail. Her eye coloration is also reversed, having white pupils and black sclerae, and she wears a surgical mask with a skull motif. She wears a fur-rimmed dark sleeveless jacket, a black long-sleeved shirt, white jeans, black thigh-highs and black boots. Her fingertips and toes also appear to be frost-bitten.
Toru is a tall, muscular Oni with two small horns on his head and short black hair as well as a small beard, being the only member of his team to have normal eye coloration. He wears a black tank top and gray sweatpants and always carries around a kanabo with retractable spikes.
Personality[]
Presumably being the leader of the gang, Mei is cheery and sadistic, happily introducing herself to Erma and her cousins as she sadistically taunts them and later on, expressing her happiness at being able to torture Erma and make her scream. She's also shown to be the more patient and calculative one, slowly explaining Erma's fate to her as she places her within the Jubokko tree and calming her partners down when they try to attack the latter. Mei also appears to be racist, making negative remarks on Erma's status as a hanyo, calling her a "half-breed". As revealed in The Gift, she also enjoys crafting figurines in the likeness of her past victims, giving them to the unwitting relatives of said victims.
Cold and snarky, Kiko is equally as ruthless and cruel as her partners, enjoying to make snide remarks about her enemies and mocking their weakness. She also seems to be quite murderous and destructive, freezing an innocent bystander without any remorse and causing mass destruction on the town bridge. However, she is shown to be rather cowardly and panicked when the situation goes out of control, and, as shown from when she accidentally freezes Toru, Kiko truly cares for her partners as she panics to find a way to save him. That being said, she is still rather sadistic and unfeeling as in the comic On Ice, she skates in a beach full of people, freezing all of them to death as she turns the ocean to ice.
Being the brawn of the group, Toru is much more hot-headed and belligerent, enjoying to use his massive size to intimidate opponents and upon confronting Erma once again, he threatens to bash her brains out. Like his partners he is arrogant and enjoys mocking his opponents with insults, but unlike them he gets much more personal when insulting them such as calling Mitsu and Momo's disappeared father a coward, angering them so much that they fire a firework into his mouth, injuring him and his partners. Toru is also quite a coward. When he saw Erma in a rage, he immediately started running, but Erma quickly knocked him out.
Biography[]
Background[]
As established from The Gift and On Ice, it seems that the trio were always sadistic serial killers ,with Mei preying upon the parents of little children before making figurines in their likeness to sell to the children as they returned home to find their parents dead. Judging by the mountain of figurines Mei has on her cart, it's likely that she has orphaned hundreds of children though it's possible that those are regular figurines she carves for fun. Kiko was also responsible for the deaths of many beach-goers after she purposefully froze the ocean they were in whilst skating there.
Yokai District Arc[]
Family Reunion Sub-Arc[]
While searching for Rin, Erma, Mitsu and Momo traverse a bridge where they encounter Mei. She cheerily introduces herself, playfully threatening them as she corners the kids. She knows that the kids are searching for their aunt and asks for Erma to show her Rin's picture, only to rip it up and insult her drawing skills as a "half-breed", insulting Mitsu and Momo as well. They attempt to back away only to be cornered by Toru, with Kiko arriving as well and the three all intent on attacking Erma. However, just as the twins prepare to square off, Erma drags them into the shadows and escapes, hoping to find Rin quickly.
The two emerge at the other side of the bridge, where Mitsu and Momo scold Erma for taking away their fun. Suddenly, Mei, Kiko and Toru arrive at a nearby tower, still hounding them but under persuasion from Erma, the twins decide to leave as well. However, Toru begins insulting their father, commenting on how he disappeared soon before they were born and how he probably got scared off by Osamu, so Momo fires a firework straight into the oni's mouth, causing an explosion. Together, the 3 children leave to find Rin but unbeknownst to them, the three yokai are still alive.
Flying around town, Erma accidentally bumps into a yokai who attempts to help her up but just as he does so, he's frozen into ice. Kiko reveals herself, with Toru attempting to ambush the kids, smashing the unfortunate bystander to pieces in the process, with Mei revealing herself in a nearby tree. Angered at the twins' firework, Kiko and Toru attack them at full force, leaving Erma to fight Mei alone. She attempts to use her hair to grapple her but the latter simply slices her hair off with her claws, angering Erma so greatly that, using telekinesis, she sends Mei flying into a tree. Descending upon the fight between the twins and the other two, Erma steals Toru's kanabo and bashes him into a pond before finally, after launching a volley of items at Kiko, sneaking up on her and throwing her into the same pond, causing her to accidentally freeze Toru.
Mei arrives, applauding Erma's strength but after slicing a log clean in two, she too is overwhelmed by the hanyo's sheer power and, in a powerful gust of wind, is thrown off the bridge as well into the distance. Noticing Kiko desperately trying to save Toru, Erma feels a bit remorseful for her actions but quickly leaves to find Rin.
Night Parade Sub-Arc[]
Sometime after the events of the Family Reunion sub-arc, the 3 yokai manage to reunite, with Toru being unfrozen and, kidnapping two of their friends, make use of the yokai kids' frustration at Erma to convince them to kidnap her and bring her to them. Using a bundle of magic chains and seals, the yokai kids capture Erma after the Night Parade and, escaping through a painting portal, arrive at the Jubokko tree she found Rin at earlier. There, Mei, Toru and Kiko cheerily greet Erma and hand the kids back their friends. Toru and Kiko threaten to beat up and freeze Erma respectively but Mei calms them down, reminding them of the torture they have planned for the girl.
Before she puts Erma into the tree, Mei, following one of the yokai kid's demands, briefly lets him talk to her. There, the kid expresses his anger that not only did Erma not help them stop Mitsu and Momo from bullying them but every time she arrived, the twins' bullying got even more severe. Mei giggles at the betrayal, but assures Erma that it'll all be over soon once she's placed in the tree and she dies a slow and painful death. Mockingly waving her goodbye, the 3 place her in the tree's hollow where she's tormented by the souls trapped inside.
Waiting outside the tree, Mei offers for the yokai kids to stay behind and watch Erma's suffering, mockingly remarking that even if they leave and report the trio for their crimes, she, Toru and Kiko will be long gone by that time and that they will be the ones suffering for the incident. Suddenly, Mei notices a red tint on her hands and with all of them looking up, notice the moon and sky have both turned bright red. The trio watch in horror as the Jubokko tree is uprooted from the ground and Erma emerges, enraged and now in a horrifying, demonic form. Seeing the little yokai, Toru flees in panic but is crushed/consumed by a huge pillar of hair, followed by Kiko and Mei. As more pillars of hair envelope them, the yokai kids all huddle together in terror, all while the Invisible Man watches on.
Afterwards when Erma is calmed down and the carnage ceases, the yokai kids are freed from their prisons, mostly unharmed though quite traumatised. Mei, Toru and Kiko however appear to have somehow been turned into small figurines, which an unknown yokai picks up, loads in a sack before leaving. It's also revealed later that a manhunt lead by Fumiko is ongoing for the three villainous yokai after one of the yokai kids tipped them off to her. The trio's figurines later show up as decorations on Osamu's desk, with this significance left to interpretation.
Trivia[]
- It's unknown what kind of yokai Mei is and she might be a kind of yokai that has been created purely for the Erma webcomics.
- It's later revealed that she's a Taka Onna, a species of female yokai that can extend parts of their body at will.
- Due to the trio being turned into small statuettes upon being defeated by Erma, some theorise that they could have been artificial yokai puppeteered by an unknown third party, while others believe they took on this form as they were killed by Erma's attacks or weakened into this state.
- As the trio's statuettes appear on Osamu's desk later on, some have theorised that they were his puppets all along, while others believe that they were claimed by Osamu via the manhunt and he is keeping them as trophies or to punish them.
- Unlike regular Taka Onna, Mei can stretch all parts of her body instead of just her midsection, leading to some confusion over her species.
- As Mei addresses Toru as "honey", it's possible that they are romantically involved.