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Mayu AmakuraOne of Zero ~Akai Chou~'s heroines, and Mio's older sister. Since her spiritual power is strong, she is possessed by Sae Kurosawa. Although she and Mio are twins, Mayu is more fickle and weak and is always falling apart. Contrary to the way the human heart wants to live, she wants to go back to her infancy. Perhaps it could be said that she desires to regress to the womb*, or is nostalgic about death. She is fascinated by the way she and Mio were both born from the side of "death", and is a very shadowy character.
*Referring to the belief that all people carry within themselves the memories of their time in the womb, and feel nostalgia towards places or things reminiscent of it.
One of Zero ~Akai Chou~'s heroines, and Mayu's younger sister. In order to save Mayu, she runs through Minakami Village. She was created as a brighter and livlier character than Miku. She has none of the shadows that hang over Miku. At the beginning of development, her innocence and bravery felt out of place, but gradually began to feel right. Now she is quite a well-liked character. They were originally very close twins called Mio and Mai. Their surname, Amakura, was initially written using different kanji, meaning "seat of heaven", but it was changed as it was too difficult to understand.
Seijiro MakabeA folklorist who was researching customs from all over Japan. He visited Minakami Village to investigate its hidden ritual, but was sacrificed as a Kusabi. His own faith is unwavering, and he is strong-willed in an almost animalistic way, and he is one of the rare characters in the Zero series who willingly submits to his own fate. After arriving in the village he was gradually charmed by its quiet atmosphere and and the land of the dead, and eventually saw into the Hellish Abyss.
Itsuki TachibanaA ghost who gives Mio advice on many occasions. He was one of the Altar Twins who were sacrificed just before Yae and Sae. He was originally an enigmatic, mature-looking girl with white hair, but female staff members who wanted more male characters pushed for him to be a man. In the end, I think it added to the story in a good way. Things like writing in the story of his and Munakata's friendship. His image was taken from two tanka poems - one by Kuni Tsukamoto about "a boy and a moth shining brightly in a grey field", and another by Taeko Kuzuhara comparing a boy to a pale daffodil.
Changing CostumesAn array of costumes, a greater volume than in the last game, have been added, but unfortunately some were cut out right at the end for fear that they might be too too risque. This was due to pressure from those who thought it would be too much fanservice. The gothic lolita costume was designed by a woman on staff who actually dresses that way, so I wasn't worried(?) about it. Since male opinion was devided over whether cute yukatas or chic yukatas were better, we eventually decided to put in both. Strangely, the men liked the chic yukatas best, while the women were overwhelmingly in favour of the cute ones.