The Date A Live light novel and anime series features a diverse cast of characters created by Kōshi Tachibana and designed by Tsunako.

Main characters Shido Itsuka

The protagonist of Date A Live. Shido is a kindhearted young man who possesses a strange power that allows him to seal the powers of a Spirit in his body with a kiss; however, the seal will only work if the Spirit holds enough trust or affection toward him to allow it. This ability allows him to seal and contain 99% of a Spirit's power. After sealing a Spirit's powers, there will be an invisible link connecting him and the Spirit, through which a portion of the sealed power will flow back to the Spirit if said Spirit's mental state becomes unstable, and back to Shido once the Spirit's mental state stabilizes. In volume 5, he discovers he can access the powers of the Spirits, including Tohka's Sandalphon, other than Kotori's healing flames that he has sealed. While Shido normally maintains a close bond with each of the Spirits he saves throughout the course of the series due to promises he has made, he is most often shown to be particularly closest to Tohka and Origami. After sealing the power of multiple Spirits, Shido's own power goes unstable in Volume 12, changing his personality and turning him into a threat. To restore Shido's normal self, Kotori and the other Spirits must come together to kiss him, so as to calm down his unbalanced sealed power, which will cause a disaster worse than what had happened 30 years ago. While having a completely different personality, Shido is conceited, displaying a dark demeanor and tends to 'impress' familiar people, by showcasing the powers of the Spirits he had sealed (In this case, the power belonging to Yoshino, Miku, Natsumi and Origami). Near the end of volume 12, during his date with Yoshino, DEM interfered and tried to capture Shido, but he destroyed the team of 20 Bandersnatch easily using a powerful spirit flash. Later, Shido's sealed powers went completely berserk during his date with Tohka due to the Second Spirit's noise calling out for him. Fortunately, Shido was saved by Phantom, who then weakened Shido's spirit barrier, so the Spirits can successfully break through to kiss him. Assumed to have been abandoned by his birth mother, Shido lives with his foster sister Kotori. He has blue hair and brown eyes, and is in his second year in Raizen High School, class 2–4. He was in despair for a time after being abandoned and subsequently adopted, which made him sensitive to similar feelings from others and wanting to bring them out of it, fueling his desire to save the Spirits. He meets his real sister Mana Takamiya later in volume 3. In volume 7, Westcott briefly addresses him as Takamiya before switching back to Itsuka. Volume 17 reveals more details about his origin: born Shinji Takamiya, he actually lived around the time the first spatial quake hit and met the First Spirit, a nameless entity in the form of a girl, whom he called Mio. Over time, Shinji taught her about the world and life and the two fell in love with each other; until Wescott attempted to capture Mio and killed Shinji in the process. In an attempt to bring him back to life, Mio absorbed Shinji's corpse into her body and re-created him as a human/Spirit hybrid, explaining Shido's ability to seal and manifest Spirit powers. As it turns out, Mio has been distributing Sephira crystals among humans to perfect and refine their powers so that, in time, Shido can obtain them and become a being of unlimited magical power like herself so they can be together for all eternity.

Tohka Yatogami

Tohka is the first Spirit saved by Shido. She transfers into his class at the end of the first volume. Shido named her after the day of their first meeting, April 10th (though one kanji is different, the tenth day of a month is pronounced as Tohka). Reine later added the Yatogami surname for her. She has long dark purple hair and purple eyes. She is ignorant of the ways of the world, but nevertheless has a normal sense of embarrassment. As Shido was the first person to ever show kindness and acceptance towards her, Tohka develops strong feelings for him, which she is initially shown to be unable to understand when she gets jealous after seeing Shido accidentally kiss Yoshino. However, upon learning that Yoshino is a Spirit like herself, she decides to support Shido in his cause to save other Spirits such as Kurumi. She not only participates in battles at times, but even provides comfort and emotional support for Shido whenever he finds himself faced with a dilemma. As of volume 12, Tohka comes to fully realize that she is in love with Shido. Tohka gets captured once by DEM Industries at the end of volume 6. Then in volume 7 upon seeing Shido ambushed and about to be killed by Ellen, she is filled with such despair that she underwent a transformation called Inversion, becoming noticeably far more hostile, and attacking everyone in sight, including Shido. Fortunately, Shido manages to bring Tohka back to her senses by kissing her. Westcott calls her Inverse state the Demon King, adding that this transformed state is the actual form of Spirits like her in the bordering dimension that they come from before manifesting in this world. Her Angel is Sandalphon, which takes the form of a broadsword, usually with a throne that doubles as the scabbard, although at times it seems as though she can do just as much damage with or without it, using her hands to project dark energy spheres or bolts in order to slice through inanimate objects with ease. Her Astral Dress, Adonai Melek, consists of a purple ballgown. At full power she shatters the throne (volume 1) and combines the pieces with the sword turning the blade into Halvanhelev (the Last Sword) lengthening the blade several meters long, dramatically increasing her powers and can be charged to unleash an ultimate blow. Fortunately, the one time she used Halvanhelev Shido was able to stop and seal her before the unstable energy was unleashed. When she falls into utter despair, her Angel changes to Nahemah, the Qliphoth counterpart of Sandalphon and her Astral Dress becomes darker in color and more revealing. Her AST and Ratatoskr codename is <Princess>.

The original personality of Tohka Yatogami, who was born from the crystal of Sephira Malchut. Also known as Inversion or Dark Current. Shadow awakens and captures Tohka's body if Tohka is exposed to the strongest influence of negative emotions.

Kotori Itsuka

Kotori is Shido's foster sister and the commander of Ratatoskr. Her parents are also employees of Ratatoskr. Originally she was a human but gained the power of a Spirit five years ago, at the same time she was saved by Shido. There is no record of how Kotori obtained her Spirit powers; does not know why her and Shido's memories seem vague or missing from that crucial point. When her Spirit powers overwhelm her, she retains almost no memories of any events that transpire during that time. She temporarily takes back her powers from Shido to save him from Kurumi with her power being sealed by Shido once more later on. The reason another sealing was needed was because Kotori took all 100% of her power back breaking the Spirit Link between them that would cause her powers to return to Shido when she calmed down. At the second sealing, she and Shido both regain their lost memories of the first sealing: an entity called <Phantom> granted her Spirit powers when she was left alone at home and crying (with which she destroyed everything around her and nearly killed Shido), told her to kiss Shido if she wanted him to live (which was how Kotori knew about the method to seal a Spirit's powers, and also the ability to heal from serious injuries that Shido got from her), and afterwards stripped them of their memories of its existence, as well as the entire incident. This memory also disproves Origami's belief that Kotori was the one who killed her parents. Kotori is the first/third Spirit saved by Shido. She has long red hair, often in twin tails, and her eyes are red. She is almost always shown with a Chupa Chups lollipop in her mouth. She displays two very different characters, bordering on split personality. When she wears white ribbons in her hair, she is completely relaxed and peaceful and shows an immature, spoiled character that's always clinging to her brother. When on Ratatoskrs mothership, Fraxinus, or dealing with major situations, she switches to black ribbons taking on an arrogant, superior attitude to everyone including Shido, but nevertheless still cares deeply for him as shown on many occasions. This difference in character is revealed in volume 4 to be due to Shido giving Kotori black ribbons as a present for her ninth birthday after sealing her powers, and telling her to be strong as long as she wears them. However she is extremely weak to horror-related things, and reacts strongly to them regardless of character. Her Angel is Camael, a halberd with a flame edge that is capable of changing shape to cannon that extends to her right elbow. The cannon takes some time to charge up and absorb Kotori's flames and has a devastating attack that blew a hole clean through Zaphkiel and almost killed Kurumi. Kotori with her powers has the ability to recover from severe injuries, which Shido is able to use unconsciously while her powers are sealed inside him. It's represented by healing flames coming out of the wounds. Her Astral Dress, Elohim Gibor (meaning "Almighty God" in Hebrew), is a kimono which mainly consists of the colors pink and cream. In her Spirit form she also has horns growing on her head, with her black ribbons tied on them. Her irises are also a slightly brighter tint of pink in this state. Her AST codename is <Efreet>.

Origami Tobiichi

Origami is a highly intelligent classmate of Shido who is athletic, "beautiful", and the most famous person in Shido's school. She is often described as doll-like in appearance with short white hair and blue-grey eyes. She somehow knew Shido from a time he had comforted her in a distress state that he just doesn't recall at all. She is the only human "girlfriend" of Shido, and out of all the other girls who like him, she is the most aggressive in her pursuit of him showing no bounds in her attempts to learn more about him, get closer to him, or even on trying to get more intimate with him. Her hatred of Spirits stems from a Spirit who killed her parents five years prior when it blasted her parents after they managed to escape their burning home. Due to this, she joined the AST, in which she holds the rank of Master Sergeant, in an attempt to find the Spirit supposedly responsible for the fire <Efreet> and kill her. She managed to utilize the Ace CR-Unit <White Licorice>, when reluctantly believing Shido who tells her that while Kotori, who turns out to be Efreet, unintentionally started the fire, she did not kill Origami's parents and that there were several Spirits involved. This singular aim of revenge has enough drive within her to overcome her calm, calculating, and composed personality for her to go to the extent of disregarding orders and hysteria, getting her into trouble on more than one occasion. Notably, she was about to be discharged from the AST in volume 5 until Westcott intervened, after which her punishment was reduced to two months of not being allowed to use Realizers. At the end of volume 9, Origami left the AST to join DEM as a wizard, only for a short time.