Matsumae

Matsumae is a young woman whose most striking trait is her eyes, drawn nearly solid black with only a thin margin of white showing at the edges. Her dark hair falls in a chin-length bob, the bangs pushed over to the left. In earlier years she wore it down to her shoulders, cropping it shorter over time until it reached its current cut. Her wardrobe mirrors that of the household's other servants and shifts with the task at hand; for her final battle she dons a black suit over a white blouse with black trousers, and a knotted ribbon, black in the manga and red in the anime, sometimes dangles at her collar.

Only fragments of Matsumae's character surface, most of them tied to her charge over Shuu Tsukiyama. She keeps a level head in situations that would rattle most, standing calm amid ghoul investigators and directing her own fighters in battle with the same poise her master shows under pressure. Beneath that composure runs deep feeling: she confesses that she loves Tsukiyama as though he were her younger brother and is ready to give her life so he can escape. Cornered against Hairu Ihei, she turns brutal out of sheer desperation to protect him, and her inner reactions betray more alarm than her outward calm lets on.

Back when Tsukiyama is still in high school and Chie Hori uncovers his secret, Matsumae draws him aside and offers to eliminate the girl, though he waves her off. She also trains the servant Kanae, who routinely ends up on the floor afterward, and she is among the first to realize Kanae is actually female. At the Auction she escorts Kanae in search of a prize for their master, reassuring the younger servant after a lost bid on Mutsuki. When the raid erupts and the Quinx defeat Kanae, Matsumae arrives to recover the fallen servant, sealing off pursuit with a wall formed from her detached kagune.

During the Rose extermination Mirumo charges her with getting Tsukiyama to safety as the CCG marches on the family manor. She drives her young master toward a company building with a helipad, stressing how vital his survival is as the sole heir, and refuses his pleas to turn back for Mirumo. Once they reach the Luna Eclipse, she tells Tsukiyama that she and Mairo will buy him time. Noticing she has left her mask behind, he grasps that she does not intend to return and begs for her promise; she can only offer a silent apology and a confession of her sibling-like love before sending him up to the helipad.

Matsumae meets Hairu Ihei again and holds her own against the First Class Investigator, recalling Mirumo's lesson that emotion is what makes her strong and running the investigator through when Ihei slips on spilled blood. The dying investigator's T-Human quinque answers with a concentrated bolt of lightning her kagune shield can barely withstand. Mairo throws himself into the finishing blow and beheads Ihei, and together they cut down Kijima after he taunts her. Facing the last trio of investigators, Matsumae is caught off guard when Nimura Furuta shields himself with his own comrade, then jams his fingers into her eyes. Blinded and unable to track him by sound, she is finished with his Rotten Follow. Her power rests on a koukaku kagune she can detach at will, taking the shape of jagged tentacles, a protective wall, or a sword-and-shield pairing sturdy enough to hold off T-Human's assault.