Characters
One of the major stories of the series centers around a girl named Yoko Nakajima from Japan, who is suddenly transported to the world of the Twelve Kingdoms and searches for her destiny. However, neither the series nor the anime concentrates solely on Yoko, and they do tell stories of other characters. The anime uses Yoko as a framing device for telling other stories, while the novels do not.
The novels focus on several characters other than Yoko, including Taiki, a timid rare black kirin who serves the ruler of Tai, and Enki and Shouryuu, the kirin and King of En, respectively. Other major characters include Keiki, the blunt and apparently cold minister of Kei who brings Yoko to the Twelve Kingdoms; Gyousou, a general chosen by Taiki to become King of Tai; Shushou, the Queen of Kyou; Shoukei, the disposed princess of Hou, and Suzu, a peasant girl who is unexpectedly transported from Japan to the Twelve Kingdoms.
Each of the Twelve Kingdoms has a monarch and a kirin, a mythological beast who first selects, and then serves, the monarch of his or her kingdom, and can assume human form. Though only a few rulers and kirin are in the main focus of the story, many are encountered in the series and play a significant role.
Read more about this topic: The Twelve Kingdoms
Famous quotes containing the word characters:
“No one of the characters in my novels has originated, so far as I know, in real life. If anything, the contrary was the case: persons playing a part in my life—the first twenty years of it—had about them something semi-fictitious.”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)
“Animals are stylized characters in a kind of old saga—stylized because even the most acute of them have little leeway as they play out their parts.”
—Edward Hoagland (b. 1932)
“The more gifted and talkative one’s characters are, the greater the chances of their resembling the author in tone or tint of mind.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)