Noro

Noro stood as an unsettling giant, his long black hair gathered into a ponytail. The mask he wore was white and grotesque, set with enormous black lips, a gaping mouth crowded with oversized teeth, and mere slits where nostrils belonged. His nails were black, echoing those of Kaneki before the timeskip, and after that timeskip his ponytail thickened noticeably. What the mask hid was a decapitated, seemingly mummified head with neither eyes nor nose, a state the story leaves unexplained. Back when he was Noroi, he had a solidly built frame and a calm face, and favored a hooded robe much like the one he would later wear among Aogiri.

Silence was his signature. Noro appeared to express himself through deeds rather than speech, and while fighting Tsukiyama, Yomo, and Uta he kept a clock on hand, leading Tsukiyama to guess he lived under some childlike curfew. Attacks and grievous wounds drew no flicker of pain or defiance from him; he simply closed the injuries and carried on. Only at the very end did he prove capable of speech and a measure of intelligence. To the CCG his conduct read as unpredictable, since he might disregard an enemy entirely or fall on them with savage fury.

Long before the main events, Noroi lived as a ghoul in the 24th ward when Kuzen, fleeing the organization V, placed the infant one-eyed child Eto in his care, and by all appearances he raised her tenderly. How he was later remade into Noro is never explained, though Eto blamed V, insisting they had taken him from her. As one of Aogiri's leaders he served under Tatara, who handed him the 11th Ward Base ahead of an expected CCG raid and told him to follow the plan; Noro simply waited for his clock to reach midnight before he stirred. After Kaneki and Ayato Kirishima fought, he gathered up the half-dead Ayato and slaughtered the CCG squad that stumbled onto them, then shrugged off Yomo, Tsukiyama, and Uta even as he was impaled, decapitated by a kick, and stabbed again and again, every wound sealing itself. When his alarm sounded he calmly carried Ayato off, retrieved Yamori's corpse, and left without engaging Juuzou Suzuya once he saw Yamori was already dead.

During the Owl Suppression Operation he stood beside Tatara to face Amon, Takizawa, and other investigators, and one of his kagune tore the arm from Takizawa. The Root A anime likewise shows him dealing Hideyoshi Nagachika a fatal wound. Once the Rose sweep opened, Eto issued his orders after the first clash, and within the Luna Eclipse he blocked the Itou and Quinx squads, sparing only Haise Sasaki. He split Yasuhito Nezu in two and swallowed Masami Umeno on rear support, then had his lunges at both Kuki Urie and Saiko Yonebayashi turned aside; Ginshi Shirazu and Tooru Mutsuki pinned him briefly with their kagune before Saiko cut him in half. He was up again in an instant, caving in Kuramoto Itou's ribs with one strike.

After the Nutcracker quinque's blast blew him into four pieces and Shinji Michibata drove a blade through his skull, his lower half revived, awakened its kakuja, and impaled nearly every investigator still able to stand except Shirazu and the drained Saiko. Shirazu wore him down, hurling relentless volleys from his own kagune, yet Noro kept regenerating and skewered him in midair. Spending his last strength, Shirazu shouted for Urie to finish the ghoul while the opening held, and as Urie brought down his kagune, Noro told Eto he was going on ahead before the final blow landed. Once the fighting stopped, Takeomi Kuroiwa looked down at the mummified head resting beside its mask, and afterward Noro's kakuhou was turned into the quinque Ginkui.