The manga and anime series Omamori Himari features an extensive cast of characters by Milan Matra. The series' storyline focuses on Yuto Amakawa, an orphan who, on the day of his sixteenth birthday, meets Himari, a buxom sword-wielding girl and a cat spirit. Yuto later learns that he is a Demon Slayer and that his family is one of the twelve Demon Slayer families that had slain demons for hundreds of years, and that Himari had sworn an oath set by their ancestors to protect him until his powers awaken. Throughout the series, Yuto, along with his childhood friend Rinko, later encounter other girls who soon take a liking to Yuto: Shizuku, a mizuchi, Lizlet, an artifact spirit and Kuesu Jinguji, an heiress to the Jinguji Family of Demon Slayers who is revealed to be Yuto's fiancée.
Main characters
Yuto is the main protagonist of the series. He is a student at Touryou High School in Takamiya City, and is the sole descendant of the , one of the twelve Demon Slayer families who had fought and slain ayakashi for hundreds of years. His parents died in a car crash when he was eight years old and he fell into a deep depression when he arrived in Takamiya until Rinko helped him out of it. He also has a terrible cat allergy, which would cause his eyes to water and his nose to run as well as causing him to sneeze uncontrollably whenever he is near one (revealed to be Kuesu's doing, but later when Kuesu dies from Shuten-douji's fatal attack, she purifies Yuto. As a result, Yuto's no longer allergic to cats).
Yuto spent most of his childhood with his grandparents in Noihara, and shared a close bond with Himari when she was a cat. He also had a close friendship with Kuesu Jinguji, who would later be his fiancée. However, due to the strong protection spell placed in the amulet that his grandmother gave to him (an omamori), most of his childhood memories were erased, though they were later regained after his visit to his grandparents' home and his reunion with Kuesu. He is usually portrayed with a friendly and caring demeanor, but he can be shy and nervous in perverted situations or harem acts, most of the time with Himari. Yuto has also been shown to be acrophobic, which resulted from his childhood when he tried to climb a tree to get to Himari only for him to fall each time and when he fell from a cliff during a trek through the mountains back to his grandparents' house, at which he suffered some emotional trauma after Himari passed out using her demon powers to call for help and remained unconscious for three days. Upon learning of his family's Demon Slayer heritage, he is initially dismayed, repeatedly declaring that he has no intention of fighting. This later changes after he witnesses Himari's demon side in Noihara and during the Christmas Eve incident followed by Shuten-douji and Tama's appearance, as he soon realizes that he needs to start fighting to preserve his way of peace, thus prompting him to officially accept his Demon Slayer mantle.
As a descendant of the Amakawa Family, Yuto has the power of the , an ability that imbues ordinary objects (such as a pole or branch) with light-based energy, turning them into powerful melee weapons equivalent to that of a legendary blade. He can also imbue other weapons, shield himself from harm, and enhance his physical senses with it, one instance is when he imbued Himari's Yasutsuna to defeat Shuten-douji.Omamori Himari anime; Episode 12: "Cats, Yuto, and a Maiden's Pure Heart" He can also use it to trap other enemies as well as explained by Hitsugi, once doing so against Tesuma. In order for him to control the Light Ferry, Yuto must keep a calm mind and have good composure. Prior to having some control over it, the Light Ferry ability only emerged when Yuto was in a near-death situation. Although the Amakawa Family is a higher-ranking family, they were not well liked by the other Demon Slayer families due to their association with ayakashi. In addition, the Light Ferry power has only been descended to the male half of the family.
Himari is a bakeneko, a shapeshifting demon cat, and the female protagonist of the series. She appears to Yuto as his bodyguard to protect him from the ayakashi out of an ancient oath set by her ancestor who was spared by one of the heads of the Amakawa family after he refused to kill her. She is known to other ayakashi as the due to her expert swordsmanship, and refers to herself as the Yuto. She is usually seen wearing traditional Japanese clothes (when not in her school uniform) and always wears her hair in a long ponytail with a large pink bow to hold it in place, and uses keigo in her speech. She is very close to Yuto, whom she refers to as , and is sometimes philosophical, worried that Yuto will kill her when his abilities awaken. However, she is deeply in love with him, as she wants to be with him as a person, and is very flirtatious with him because she and Yuto got along well in Noihara in the past when she was a white cat. This flirting often annoys Rinko to no end. In the anime, Himari is one of the only people to have kissed Yuto (the other being Kuesu). Despite this, she is also very serious about her duty as a bodyguard, and is willing to protect Yuto from harm by any means.
In the final episode of anime series, Himari voluntarily gives her heart in to the darkness inside of her to fight Tama at her full strength, assuming a demonic form called . Aside from the physical changes (white hair, pale skin with black markings, red claws, and a bushier tail), Himari also gains the ability to perform powerful claw swipes from a distance in addition to her increased demon powers, but the loss of her personality makes her a deadly killing machine, unable to distinguish friend from foe. After she was restored by Yuto and Shuten-dōji assumes his Oni form, Yuto imbues her Yasutsuna with his Light Ferry ability, allowing her to assume a powered-up form called , which consists of her wearing revealing samurai-like garments. As Super Himari, she gains the ability of levitation and can slice the strongest of demons in two with a single blow.
As a bakeneko, Himari can shapeshift from human to cat (the latter in which she can also talk in) and she can also reveal her cat ears and tail while in her human form (though this triggers Yuto's allergies while doing so). She also has superhuman speed, strength, and endurance (all of which surpasses Rinko, who was the school's top athlete prior, and she is extremely agile due to her cat-like nature. She is armed with , a katana crafted in the Heian period that was handed down to her by Yuto's grandfather and the legendary blade that defeated Shuten-douji in the past, and is almost never seen without it (its blade was burned in chapters 18–29 of the manga and episodes 7–10 of the anime following her duel with Kuesu). Himari is also proficient with other bladed weapons as well, once using a scythe against Ageha in the anime, and she is also skilled in close-range combat. Because she is a cat, however, she shares some of their natural instincts as well, such as having a fear of water (Rinko speculates that Himari is afraid of deep water), water in quantity), a penchant for seafood, and being very sensitive to winter temperatures. Also, due to her ayakashi nature, she becomes weakened whenever she is near a Shinto shrine (to the point where even a stone can knock her out, as shown by Rinko during the summer festival).
When Himari loses her sanity during a fight, she goes on a berserker rampage, which is depicted by her having red eyes, an uncontrollable bloodlust, and (in the anime only) a dark aura surrounding her body. Also, Himari loses all rational thought, becoming a mindless killing machine bent on hunting and killing anything that moves, which Shizuku states is part of her kind's true nature. Shizuku also warns Yuto that there is a much higher risk of Himari reverting to her kind's killer instincts should she continue to fight. Rinko's nickname for Himari is , while Shizuku and Kuesu simply refer to her as (or in Kuesu's case, "Demon Cat").
Rinko is Yuto's tomboyish childhood friend and next-door neighbor. She had a very close friendship with Yuto, as she helped him out of his depression when he first moved to Takamiya and cried along with him when his parents died. She also has feelings for Yuto until Himari and the other girls appeared, causing her to display a tsundere personality as a result of their constant flirting. She also suffers from an inferiority complex from their well-endowed breasts (sans Shizuku). She is also a remarkable athlete, excelling at nearly every sport at her school.
Rinko always tends to ruin every romantic or perverted moment Yuto has with another girl by hitting him with her signature nail bat (or any other object she could find) despite the fact that he had nothing to do with it in the first place. However, despite all of this, she still wants to support Yuto to the very end even if he does become a full-fledged Demon Slayer, believing that she is the only person good for him due to their long relationship and that all he ever wanted was a normal life. Rinko is always seen wearing two red ribbons in her hair; a tradition involving them is that, every year during a summer festival, Yuto would buy her a new pair for her to wear year round and she would tie last year's ribbons to a treebranch. She owns a pet cat named .
Shizuku is a mizuchi, a water deity (traditionally depicted as a dragon) who is introduced in chapter 5 of the manga (she had a brief cameo in chapter 3 prior). She assumes the form of a green-haired child with red eyes, looking like a drowning victim just pulled out of the water, abnormally pale, cold to the touch and dripping wet,In chapter 24, when Shizuku appeared out of a lake during a class art trip, one of the students pointed out that she bears a resemblance to Sadako Yamamura from the Ring Trilogy and has a cold-fish personality to match her appearance. Her demeanor can quickly change to a murderous grin when her desire to kill emerges. She first appears to Yuto at a nearby lake in the forest where Himari was killing other ayakashi, warning him to deviate from his Demon Slayer heritage or face death, and then disappearing. Later on, after witnessing Yuto's resolve to save Himari from her water whirlpool during her fight with the latter, she becomes puzzled about him and, in an attempt to understand him more, invites herself to live in his house, flirting with him on multiple occasions. She is shown to have developed feelings for Yuto and also tends to show signs of jealousy when another girl flirts with him. Her family was killed by the Jibashiri Family of Demon Slayers 100 years prior to the series' start, and she bears a grudge against them as a result. However, she lets go of it following an intervention from Yuto and Himari after meeting one of their descendants. She often ends her sentences with , and her name is a homonym for a drop of water (albeit with different Kanji).