Aki Sasada

In her youth Aki is small and slight, her dark eyes set beneath a fringe of blunt, squared bangs. Her pale hair is cropped short.

As a teenager Aki chases thrills with little thought for anything else. School barely registers for her; she skips class often and runs with a pack of bikers that draws police chases. Losing her eye breaks that recklessness apart, and she comes to read both the wound and Ryou's death as the price of her heedless living. Adulthood leaves her calmer and more grounded, and she is protective enough of her daughter to forbid her husband from smoking indoors.

Aki, Fura, and Ryou come up together and drift into delinquency during their high school years. One night, while tearing through the streets on motorcycles to shake off police, the group is set upon by the ghoul Lantern. Two of their unnamed friends die in the assault, and when Lantern turns on the survivors, Aki's right eye is torn open. Ryou, her boyfriend, gives his life shielding Fura. Recovering in the hospital, Aki has a change of heart and tells Fura she is paying for her crimes, though he insists their friends were killed by a ghoul rather than any demon.

In the years that follow she marries Fura, takes his surname, and relocates to the 7th ward once he is posted there in command. Their only child, Natsu, is born about a year before the events of Tokyo Ghoul. Later, Fura recalls to fellow investigators how Kishou Arima once saved the two of them from a ghoul.