Kosuzu Motoori (本居 小鈴, Motoori Kosuzu) is the main protagonist of Forbidden Scrollery. She is a Human Village resident and a worker at the Suzunaan book renter. According to her, she's the No.1 collector of the demon books in Gensokyo.

General Information [ edit ]

Personality [ edit ]

Kosuzu has a sweet personality, considerate and optimistic, polite and cheerful with her customers and her friends, and enjoys telling stories to village children. However, she is very confident in herself and her abilities, which frequently gets her into trouble. She thinks she knows better than most other people, distrusting Reimu and often taking matters into her own hands, with disastrous consequences. She's highly curious, and often dangerously so, being unafraid to read and make use of the Demon books she owns, even after learning that they contain the power of youkai, and goes to many different measures to acquire information.

Despite this confidence, she can be quite cowardly as well. She develops a temporary fear of snakes after hearing a rumor that they can eat a human whole, and gets worked up over a horror story she hears from a pair of children, even after dismissing it as illogical. She's also prone to fainting when startled, whether it be in a dangerous situation or even if it's actually something benign.

Kosuzu is very conflicted over how she should feel about youkai. While Hieda no Akyuu, her good friend, and Reimu warn her that youkai are not to be trusted, she is on good terms with Aya Shameimaru and Mamizou Futatsuiwa, both of whom she is aware are youkai, and have never attempted to hurt her. She wants a definite answer over whether or not youkai are her friends or foes, and wants to understand her purpose in Gensokyo, but the conflicting opinions of her various friends cause her great frustration, and she struggles to form her own.

Once the true relationship between youkai and humans is explained to Kosuzu at the end of Forbidden Scrollery, she reacts with excitement and expresses interest in one day participating in danmaku duels.

Ability [ edit ]

Ability to decipher books by only touching them

At the beginning of Forbidden Scrollery, Kosuzu had recently gained the ability to decipher any sort of text, no matter what language it is written in, just by touching it. Despite her ability, she appears to have difficulty writing in other languages (for example, English), so it appears her ability only applies to reading, or only partially applies to writing. Additionally, her ability fails to work if the text has been mirrored (such as on a woodblock used for printing).

Ability to read youkai auras

By chapter 16 of Forbidden Scrollery, Kosuzu's deciphering ability had improved to the point where she could "read between the lines" by sensing the energies and emotions imprinted in writing, allowing her to detect demon books and helping her to distinguish real texts from forgeries. Hieda no Akyuu theorises that Kosuzu gained this ability from prolonged exposure to demon books.

Occupation [ edit ]

Kosuzu is a part-timer that works at Suzunaan, a library specializing in books that appeared in Gensokyo from the outside world. She lends books to various characters throughout her manga.

Possessions [ edit ]

Kosuzu claims to have the largest collection of demon books in all of Gensokyo stored in the library she works at. It's essentially her pet project and hobby.

Backstory [ edit ]

Not much is known about Kosuzu's past, but she appears to have known Reimu Hakurei and Marisa Kirisame for at least some time. At some point she started working part-time in the library Suzunaan.

Character Design [ edit ]

Name [ edit ]

Her full name is Kosuzu Motoori (本居 小鈴). Her surname Motoori (本居) literally means "residing books" while her given name Kosuzu (小鈴) means "little bell".

She is very likely a reference to Norinaga Motoori, a prominent 18th century Japanese scholar in Kokugaku (ancient Japanese literature study) - his greatest achievement was deciphering the Kojiki. Norigana was also known to love old bells very much, which is called "kosuzu" (古鈴) in Japanese.

Design [ edit ]

Kosuzu is a young girl with red eyes, light red hair and twintails adorned with bells. She wears a checkered kimono and apron with Kosuzu and 鈴奈庵 (Suzunaan) written on the front. She uses glasses to read. When she goes outdoors she'll wear a coat.

Story [ edit ]

Games [ edit ]

Kosuzu made her first game appearance in Hopeless Masquerade as a background character on the Human Village stage. She can be seen with a broom watching the fights that happen in this game behind all the other humans.

Literature [ edit ]

Kosuzu is the main protagonist of Forbidden Scrollery. She recently gained the power to decipher all writing, though it hasn't yet been explained how. She was responsible for letting loose a smoke youkai called Enenra in an attempt to smoke out a word-eating worm youkai. Her reading of the Night Parade Picture Scroll caused objects around the village to transform into tsukumogami at night, though once this was traced to her she began restricting her reading to once per month to avoid suspicion. After attending Hata no Kokoro's performance at the Hakurei Shrine, an old scroll lead Kosuzu to deduce (correctly) that Kokoro is a youkai and (incorrectly) that Reimu was helping her steal emotions, though Mamizou managed to convince her that Reimu was being tricked and that the menreiki's next play would be under proper supervision.

Relationships [ edit ]

Family [ edit ]

Kosuzu is known to have a family. On several occasions, she'd talk or yell to her parents in the shop, but they were always off-panel. One example is the beginning of chapter 13 where she asks her mother if she knew where her shoes were. She also made reference to her grandfather, in which he was the one who taught Kosuzu about the "word-eating worm", but it's unknown if he's still alive.

Mamizou Futatsuiwa [ edit ]

A regular patron of the store in her human disguise, Mamizou Futatsuiwa speaks to Kosuzu in a friendly manner and offers her advice on supernatural matters. While Reimu frequently warns Kosuzu of the dangers of interacting with youkai artifacts, Mamizou has no such compunctions and merely advises her to keep her hobbies secret so that people like Reimu won't take her books away. Unaware of Mamizou's true nature for most of the story, Kosuzu looks up to her as a role model, seemingly trusting her more than any other adult.

Hieda no Akyuu [ edit ]

Akyuu is Kosuzu's closest friend, and the two often meet to discuss books and strange happenings. Kosuzu is noticably more casual and outspoken around Akyuu than while speaking to her elders like Reimu and Marisa.

Minor Relationships [ edit ]

Kosuzu seems to know and respect Reimu very well, speaking to her in a friendly and polite manner. However, she has heard the rumours of the Hakurei Shrine being infested by youkai and it sometimes colours how she interprets Reimu's actions. Reimu addresses Kosuzu as "Kosuzu-chan".

Kosuzu is friendly with Marisa, but does not appear to know her as well as Reimu.

Kosuzu and Aya have become business partners in the selling of the Bunbunmaru Newspaper for the Human Village.

Gallery [ edit ]

Covers [ edit ]

Kosuzu on the Vol. 1 cover of Forbidden Scrollery

Kosuzu on the Vol. 3 cover of Forbidden Scrollery

Others [ edit ]

Character design of Kosuzu, from the volume 1 omake

Character design of Kosuzu, from the volume 1 omake

Additional Information [ edit ]

The logo of Suzuna'an, Kosuzu's shop is a turnip (you can find it in 庵 on the graphic design of title logo of Forbidden Scrollery). It should be derived from the fact that a traditional name of turnip is suzu na (菘 / 鈴菜 ), which is also used these days when they celebrate new-year festival as one of the special seven vegetables of spring, but is normally called "kabu" (カブ / 蕪 ). This vegetable also appears in the 恩頼図 ("onrai-zu" or "mitama-no fuyu-no e". It means "the graph of influence".), drawn by the adopted child of Norinaga. This turnip-like picture explains graphically the lineage of Norinaga's Japanese Study; Norinaga stands in the center, the upper part lists the names of people who affected Norinaga, and the lower does those who are affected by him.

on the graphic design of title logo of Forbidden Scrollery). It should be derived from the fact that a traditional name of turnip is na (菘 / 鈴菜 ), which is also used these days when they celebrate new-year festival as one of the special seven vegetables of spring, but is normally called "kabu" (カブ / 蕪 ). In chapters 10 and 11, Kosuzu uses a kimono with a hat that resembles the famous fictional Japanese detective Kosuke Kindaichi created by Seishi Yokomizo.

Fandom [ edit ]

Official Sources [ edit ]

Official sources 2012/10/26 ~ current Forbidden Scrollery - All chapters







