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I'm not a liar! A girl with horns really killed those people!

Kanae, minutes before her death.

Kanae was Kouta's younger sister. Aged 6-7 years old, her death occurred before the story began, but continues to affect events throughout the manga and anime versions.

In the series[]

Born and grown in Hokkaido, Kanae was protective of her brother and became jealous whenever other girls, such as their cousin, Yuka, showed him any given attention. She, Kouta, and their father visited with Yuka's family in Kamakura one summer.

At the end of a summer festival, Kanae watched from a hiding place as Lucy killed several people around her. She claims in the manga that she saw Lucy killing people using her vectors, which are usually invisible. Her claims were mostly dismissed by Kouta and her father from the start, as authorities stated that a bomb had gone off at the festival.

When Lucy finds her way aboard the train to see Kouta, she repeatedly tells him of what she had witnessed, but he yells at her to stop lying and then warns that he will hate her if she doesn't stop saying (what he thinks must be) lies. Seeking to protect her brother from Lucy (unaware that she and their father were the former's intended targets all along), she urges Kouta to run, only to be told once more that she is lying, and that he indeed hates her now. Before a heartbroken Kanae can indeed respond, Lucy uses her vectors to split her in two at the waist and eventually decapitate their father.

In the anime, Kouta and Kanae's father comes over to see what is happening, unaware of the fact that his daughter died before Lucy kills him as well. In the manga, however, he witnesses her death as well and apparently intends to avenge her by attacking Lucy, with the same tragic result. A traumatized Kouta represses memories of this horror and later tells himself and others that she merely died after a long illness in the hospital. He keeps her seashell collection as a treasure and yells at Nyu--ironically the childlike, alternate personality of Lucy, herself--when she snaps one of them in half, perhaps evoking the memories of her real death. Later on, Nyu cuts her hair to make herself look like Kanae so that Kouta can hear her forgive him for what he said to her. These memories fully returned after Kouta witnessed Lucy kill in that same way when protecting their home. This sequence differs from the anime, in which it is Lucy's killing of Shirakawa and her humming of Lilium that trigger his memories of Kanae's murder.

Trivia[]

  • In the manga, Kanae bears a different appearance in Kouta's flashback than her standard look during Lucy's flashback to her childhood. In her first appearance, she has shorter hair, similar to Kouta's hairstyle, and wears a tank top.
  • Monica Rial, the English voice actress for Kanae, is best known for voicing the more long-running character of Bulma in the Dragon Ball series.
  • In the anime, Kanae never mentions seeing Lucy's vectors. It also remains unclear in the manga whether she saw them because of some innate ability on her part, if there was blood on them or because the rage and pain driving the vectors at the festival were so powerful it pushed them into visibility, as happened with Mariko in captivity and the Clone Diclonii during their uprising. It could also just be a possible error.
  • Maria Yamamoto, Kanae's Japanese voice actress, also voiced the characters Kisaragi and Saito; all three met memorably gruesome ends. She also shares this voice actress with Aiko Takada, who is also killed trying to protect someone else.
  • Kanae appears by herself on only one manga chapter cover.
  • While it is unknown what colors were meant to be intended for her in the manga, in the anime Kanae is one of the few humans to have an unusual eye color having purple eyes.
  • The reason Kouta takes care of women and girls at the Maple House in the first place is because of the guilt and sadness he feels about Kanae’s death and sees many of these women like he sees his sister, and not just something he simply does out of random kindness. This makes her a minor yet very pivotal and essential character to a huge part of the story as without her tragic death and how Kouta was effected by it, he wouldn't have been so willingly to take in the girls as ways to fill in the gap for his lost sister, and if he didn't have his amnesia, he likely wouldn't have even been less naïve to let them all in very easily and quickly in his older years. The girl who is compared to the most to Kanae is Lucy, who’s real name Kaede is a near anagram of Kanae minus one letter. A bit ironic given how Lucy is the reason for the tragedy of Kanae and it's aftermath in the first place.
    • Going with the, albeit very unlikely, theory Kanae had some innate ability or power to see vectors, this would have been an interesting parallel to Lucy. Kanae also resembles Matilda Wormwood in the 1996 movie adaptation of Matilda by Roald Dahl and funny enough in the original book, Matilda’s telekinesis was described as invisible hands.
  • Lucy is the girl who Kouta compares most to Kanae and her real name, Kaede, is a partial anagram of Kanae with one of the letters being completely different.

Gallery[]

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