Please be forewarned that this section will contain SPOILERS, so unless you want the TV series, parts of the New Vampire Princess Miyu: The Shinma Menace manga, or the OAV revealed to you, I would advise that you read with caution. Spoilers will usually be in the second half of all the bios. If any of my information seems querky or inaccurate then please let me know via e-mail, thank you! Onwards!

TV Series VA: Miki Nagasawa. OAV VA: Naoko Watanabe. She is the pivot around which everything in the TV series, and indeed the manga, revolves. Miyu is a guardian amongst a long line of descended guardians, charged with returning stray shinma, or demons, to the dark abyss from whence they emerge by use of the guardian's flame. The shinma take many forms, and are usually attracted to the human world by feelings of hatred, fear, and insecurity, or the intense need of an individual. Miyu is a shinma herself, being a vampire, but her destiny is made that much more difficult, as she is the only one who is charged with returning the shinma to the darkness. Her trusted servant and companion Larva aids her in her fight, as well as a fluffy bunny thing called Shiina. According to the TV series storyline, Miyu was a girl of fourteen, living in a small village with her mother, who seemed to have gone mad from bearing a child who was half shinma. In this storyline, Miyu's deceased father was a guardian, and the shinma half of her heritage. In one of the episodes, Miyu's past is shown, where she is made to awaken at the age of fourteen, during a circus play, in which she plays the role of a mother who had borne a half-shinma child. Witnessing the play is Miyu's mother, who for a moment regains her senses and explains to Miyu that her destiny is to awaken to become the next guardian. Her mother is killed by the blade of the boss bird shinma, which would explain Miyu's aversion to birds. However the theme of bird shinma is important, especially towards the end of the series. Here's something funky, in the TV series there is no mention of the guardian spirit or whatever it's called, the tree-looking thing in the OAV. Another interesting note, in the OAV Miyu awakens as a vampire at the beach after talking to Larva and drinking his blood, and not at a circus performance, plus her mother seems perfectly sane, and her father's the one with the lost marbles. Also in the OAV I believe her mother is the shinma side being a vampire herself, and her father simply a human who was lured by Miyu's mom.

TV Series VA: Shinichirou Miki. OAV VA: Shiozawa Kaneto. Miyu's protector and servant. Larva accompanies Miyu and fights alongside her (lucky so-and-so!), though he is a shinma himself. Unlike the shinma which Miyu battles against, Larva is a western shinma, who came to Japan during his transient phase to see if there was anything worth claiming. It is here that he meets Miyu, and ultimately becomes her companion, though there is a darker secret to their alliance. Larva uses his elongated nails in battle, or the hugest damn scythe you've ever seen. He's almost always masked, which was a hassle when getting screen caps because he almost never takes his mask off (talk about shy!), and he wears a large navy cloak that hides him from head to toe (pouts). Larva's bond with Miyu was created when they first battled at a beach in Japan (according to the TV series). During this battle, Larva injures Miyu mortally, but she in turn bites into his neck and drinks his blood. Because of the mixing of their blood, and Miyu drinking Larva's, their companionship bond was forged, but much more than that. Miyu asks Larva to accompany her, in exchange she asks if Larva will terminate her life should she ever give up her guardianship right. This doesn't make much sense in the beginning, but during the last episode, while Larva battles with a particularly tough shinma, he uses the guardian flame to send the shinma into the abyss, along with his followers. This explains those enigmatic words of Miyu's. Since Larva's blood had combined with Miyu's, he had also inherited her guardian's flame, and so if Miyu ever decided to give up being a guardian, Larva would have to destroy her with her own flame. In the New Vampire Princess Miyu manga series, Larva is kidnapped by his western shinma friends, and we learn that his earrings represent the curse of control Miyu has upon him, though in the TV series, I got the sense that Larva was more Miyu's equal rather than just her servant. Indeed he seems different personality-wise. In the TV series, he advises Miyu and discusses what is the best action to take, but in the manga he is more subservient and meek. A bit of extra info: in the OAV Larva cannot remove his mask, nor can he speak except in the episode where Lemules, his best friend in the OAV and the Shinma Menace manga, tries to bring him back to the ways of the shinma. This is explained in one of the episodes where it is said that because Larva joined forces with Miyu, or rather succumbed to Miyu and became her slave, he was punished by his own kind and they sealed his face and voice.

TV Series VA: Maiko Shirakura. In the TV series, Miyu makes three friends at highschool, Hisae, Yukari, and Chisato. Chisato becomes very close to Miyu, and Miyu enjoys her love of life and energetic enthusiasm, while Chisato always tries to encourage Miyu to go out and have fun. She buys a pair of keychains, one for herself and one for Miyu, which supposedly symbolize their friendship, and mean that they will be friends forever. Chisato is pretty much a happy, bouncy, energetic highschooler with a lot of personality but very little in the mental department. The keychains Chisato buys are in actual fact two seals. One of them conceals her presence as a shinma from Miyu, and the other is designed to keep Chisato from awakening too soon. It turns out towards the end of the TV series, that Chisato was the ultimate bird shinma, designed by the other bird shinma, to destroy Miyu. Because of Miyu's fondness for humans and their diverse lives and her deep attachment to her friend, it is thought that she will not be able to defeat Chisato, and in fact Miyu's flame has absolutely no effect on Chisato when she uses it. Chisato draws power from those she kills through a double-headed blade (that just sounds SO wrong :P) bequeathed to her by her brother Tokiya. She awakens as a shinma when the keychain vendor meets her at school one day and breaks the keychain seal and hatches her from her egg. Chisato's first victims are Hisae and Yukari, the friends she and Miyu have.

TV Series VA: Mika Kanai. I don't really know what to say about Shiina, except for how cute it sometimes is, and then how completely creepy in the very next frame. Shiina is a fuzzy pink rabbit creature, also a shinma, which accompanies Miyu in some of the TV episodes. Shiina has the ability to look through certain things to determine their aura, be it evil (a shinma), or mysterious, like an anomaly in nature, hence the huge frikking yellow eye *shudders*. I think Shiina sticks around Miyu most of the time to try and figure out why she likes humans so much, and why she feels compelled to protect them.

TV Series VA: Megumi Ogata (Reiha + Matsukaze). Another creepy character, the blizzard shinma Reiha. She's always holding a doll called Matsukaze, and in the beginning it seems that she and Matsukaze are two separate beings, since the doll can talk as well, and seems to have a very different personality to Reiha. She shares the same sort of background as Miyu, with a shinma mother and a human(?) father. Reiha came into her powers when she was very young, and out of desperate necessity. There seems to be a large rift between Miyu and Reiha, and as mysteriously as Reiha appears in the TV series, the relationship between Miyu and her is just as mysterious. Reiha does not have Miyu's respect for human life, nor does she have the tolerance that Miyu does when dealing with stray shinma. Reiha was part of the circus group Miyu joined for the performance on the day she awakened. It turns out that the magician and circus ringleader is Reiha's father, or so she refers to him, I'm not certain if he is her biological father. However he and another of the performing troupe are what is known as scarecrows, or guardian protectors. They ensure that Miyu is not in danger until the day she awakens. However, the bird shinma of Miyu's time wages an attack just as Miyu is about to awaken, and during the battle Reiha's father dies but calls out Miyu's name with his last breath. Resentment for Miyu bubbles up in Reiha's heart, and she can't understand why the most precious person in her life did not recall her name in his last moments. She leaves the circus, and during her wandering happens upon a stray shinma who almost attacks her, but her power steps in and saves her. She discovers that her mother was a blizzard shinma and Reiha inherited her powers. Reiha continuously challenges Miyu during the series to see who can kill the shinma first, or tormenting Miyu by killing innocent bystanders. Both she and Matsukaze think that Miyu is too soft-hearted to be a guardian and swear to defeat her someday.

Gorgeous in't he? Say hello to Larva's best friend! In the TV series Garline, a western shinma, is traveling across the sea in a ghost ship along with his faithful servants Barrow and Lilith. Knowing that Larva disappeared a long time ago while visiting Japan, the shinma Garline as naturally curious to see his old friend again to rekindle their ties. Naturally he's not absolutely thrilled to discover that Larva is now aiding Miyu in her battle against shinma, and decides to kidnap his friend to make him see that being good is just not a very lucrative career move. Garline also weilds the the death crystal sword, a very pretty purple affair shaped like a rapier. The death crystal sword slowly kills its victims once they have been touched by it, showing a rather pretty rosette of crystals somewhere on the victim's body. In the manga, there was a ghost ship similar to Garline's, but it carried a whole host of western shinma, and not just three of them. There are shounen-ai hints between Garline and Larva, especially how Garline caresses the latter, and how Larva strokes the hair of the former before killing him. Though Garline dies, it is by Larva's hand, in what he calls a dignified death, rather than being stabbed by the death crystal sword as Miyu would have had done. Garline's last reflected thoughts are those of Larva still calling him a friend, despite being kidnapped and generally treated like crap, by supposed friend.

Another cutie-pie! This is Chisato's brother Tokiya. You don't see him for the entirety of the series, except towards the end. Tokiya returns home from a long nature trip to a bird sanctuary in Hokkaido after having had problems with school. The trip was his parents' idea, and was supposed to help Tokiya get a grip on himself and make him stronger emotionally. Unfortunately, Tokiya happens upon a shinma on his travels, and so he comes back a bit different... As Chisato is a bird shinma, that would naturally mean that her brother is a bird shinma as well. You discover that he is a shinma before you find out about Chisato. He has a tattoo of an eagle on his back, which he shows off proudly on more than one occassion *wink wink*. I must say though his 'true' form, that is his shinma form, is uuuuugly. He is the reincarnation of the nastybadevil bird shinma man that harrassed Miyu and killed her mother when she was still living with her in the village, unawakened to her guardian destiny.

One of the men that performed with the theater/circus group in Miyu's old village before she became a guardian. This young man, whom you never learn the name of, horribly enough, is a scarecrow. Yes, he's stuffed with papers, isn't that hard to believe? Just look at that face! Anyhow, the scarecrows are intended to protect the guardian before he/she awakens, and as such stick around Miyu at that crucial stage. This unlucky fellow becomes Miyu's first victim of vampirism, though how she can suck blood out of a scarecrow is beyond me.