Kyo Sohma

Kyo cuts a striking figure as a tall, athletically built teenager whose looks turn heads among the school's girls. His hair is a vivid orange that reaches the nape, spiking softly with stray cowlicks, and long bangs hang over eyes of the same shade that can narrow into a sharp, feline slit.

He wears the Kaibara High uniform loosely, collar open and tie absent, since anything snug around his throat bothers him, and off campus he leans toward roomy shirts in warm reds, oranges, and yellows. A string of red-and-white prayer beads circles his left wrist at all times, an object he can never take off without turning into a foul, clawed beast of monstrous strength.

Hot-tempered, blunt, and quick to bark at anyone within range, Kyo hides a great deal of pain behind his sharp tongue and constant scowling. His openness with his feelings actually draws people toward him, yet he pushes them away on purpose, convinced that closeness will only bring them hurt or pity, of which he has endured plenty. He carries heavy guilt and self-loathing, much of it tied to his exclusion as the Cat and to the deaths of his mother and Kyoko Honda, and he props himself up by casting Yuki as a villain he can hate.

Patient, genuine attention from Tohru slowly reshapes him. Beneath the brash exterior lies someone tender, easily flustered, and fiercely protective of the few he loves, and through her he becomes calmer, kinder, and brave enough to want a future. He struggles to voice what he feels, coming off as a classic tsundere, but he eventually apologizes to Tohru, makes peace with Yuki, and chooses to keep living in spite of his regrets.

Kyo's early years were spent shut away by an overprotective mother who dreaded anyone glimpsing his true form and checked his beads obsessively; her worn love, he felt, masked her fear of him. Scorned by the wider Sohma clan as the Cat, he served as the family scapegoat. A childhood friendship with Kagura ended in terror when she forced his bracelet off and saw the monster beneath. His mother, herself abused by her husband and blamed for bearing Kyo, took her own life before a train, after which the five-year-old was condemned by relatives until Kazuma Sohma stepped in, adopted him, and taught him martial arts.

As a boy he also came to know Kyoko Honda, whose warmth gave him hope, but he froze when a car bore down on her, unable to save her without transforming in public; her dying words of blame haunted him for years. Summoned by Akito, he accepted a cruel wager: defeat Yuki before graduation, or be shut away inside the Cat's Room for good. That vendetta carried him into Shigure's home alongside Yuki and Tohru, where love slowly took root.

The Cat's curse, born when the Rat cheated it out of the zodiac, forces him to wear a bracelet of human bone and blood lest he become his grotesque, foul-smelling other self, a form of superhuman speed and power. In the end, as he embraces Tohru, his curse simply breaks, and he weeps to find himself finally human. He goes on to marry her, raise a family in the countryside, and teach at a dojo, with his eldest son Hajime growing to look more like him by the day.