Ayato Kirishima

A slim youth whose long, unruly blue hair falls across a pair of blue eyes, Ayato resembles Touka closely enough that the family likeness is unmistakable, though his expression carries a harder, defiant edge. His usual outfit pairs a hooded black leather jacket with dark trousers and boots that climb to the knee, finished off with a piercing in his left ear and a ring on his right pinky. The anime tends to show him in a spired black mask beneath an overcoat trimmed with white fur.

Once the story jumps ahead in time, he stands noticeably taller and favors a long black coat worn over shin-high boots. He owns several masks over the years: an early one grinning with red eyes and jagged teeth, the rabbit-themed piece that earned him his alias, and a plain conical mask covering only his mouth and chin during the auction.

As a teenager Ayato was brash and quick to anger, forever wearing either a scowl or a menacing smirk, and he shared his sister's habit of crude, foul language. The smallest slight set him off, and he would kick people over trivia, whether Kaneki using the wrong honorific or Banjou failing to return his calls. Losing both parents hardened his conviction that strength decides everything and that the weak simply perish. He resented his father, Arata, for leaving the siblings to fend for themselves, and admitted that Kaneki's resemblance to Arata was the true root of his hostility.

Beneath the cruelty, though, he cared for Touka far more than he let on, beating her unconscious rather than allowing Yamori to torture her slowly and later borrowing her Rabbit alias so the CCG would pursue him instead. Three years on, most of that temper had cooled into something calmer and more approachable, and he grew protective of subordinates such as Hinami and Naki, even when it meant defying orders. Old instincts lingered all the same, and he kept hiding his softer feelings behind flat denial.

Ayato was raised in the 20th ward beside Touka under their father Arata, a ghoul who tried to live the way the humans around him did, taking his children to the library and coaxing them to eat human food. Ayato rejected that outlook, certain the world belonged to humans and that ghouls could never be normal. He promised Arata he would look after Touka, but when their father vanished on a scavenging run and never returned, the pair were nearly betrayed to investigators before Touka's kagune saved them. The experience turned Ayato against humanity for good.

Sheltered at Anteiku by Yoshimura, the siblings grew stronger, yet Ayato drifted toward violence and eventually left in search of raw power, seizing feeding grounds across the wards. His talents caught Tatara's eye and drew him into Aogiri Tree, where he rose to executive. During the Aogiri arc he stormed Anteiku, helped seize Kaneki, and battered Touka before Kaneki cornered him and methodically snapped more than a hundred of his bones. Afterward he took up the Black Rabbit identity to pull the CCG away from his sister.

In Tokyo Ghoul:re he guarded Big Madam at the auction, pressed repeatedly for a rescue of the imprisoned Hinami, and finally broke into Cochlea with Banjou, reuniting there with Touka and Yomo against Arima. Following the failed lab raid and the birth of Dragon, he joined Goat's alliance with the CCG, explored the ruined underground city beneath the 24th ward, and descended with Kaneki toward the source of the ghoul toxin. He survived to the end and took up duties with the United Front. In battle his vermilion ukaku wings spray crystalline bullets, and he trained himself to harden them for the close-range fighting that ukaku ghouls normally struggle with.