Rena Ryuuguu

Rena Ryuuguu (竜宮 礼奈) is a major character in and a member of the club. She is the protagonist of as well as the villain of  and. She is arguably the most well-known character in Higurashi no Naku Koro ni despite not being the main character. She appears in much of Higurashi's official art and often serves as a type of mascot for 07th Expansion.

Background
Rena was born in Hinamizawa as Reina Ryuuguu. She lived in Hinamizawa with her family for several years. However, Rena's mother was offered a promotion that required the family to relocate to Ibaraki. As a result of the move, Rena's father was forced to give up his job and largely became a homemaker. Rena often helped her father around the house with cooking and cleaning. As Rena's mother advanced in her career, she began to spend less and less time at home. Rena's mother eventually became romantically involved with a man named Akihito and began bringing Rena to office parties and similar events in an attempt to deepen their relationship while diminishing Rena's relationship with her father.

Eventually, Rena's mother became pregnant with Akihito's child and she revealed the affair to Rena and Rena's father. Rena's mother was intent on marrying Akihito and asked Rena to join their new family. Rena, seeing this as a grave betrayal, angrily rebuked her mother and repeatedly blamed herself for not seeing Akihito as a "bad person" earlier. She destroyed all of her mother's possessions and began to cut herself in an attempt to rid herself of the "maggots" she imagined were writhing around in her blood. Rena became increasingly violent, culminating in an attack at her school wherein she destroyed the school's windows and beat three male students with a baseball bat. As a result of the incident, Rena was hospitalized. While in the hospital, Rena claimed that she was visited by Oyashiro, who told her to return to Hinamizawa if she wanted to be safe. After her release, Rena and her father moved back to Hinamizawa. Upon their return, Rena decided to change her name. In the English translation, she decides to change her name from "Reina" to "Rena" by removing the "icky" parts of her life. "Icky" starts with "i", thus Rena removed the "i" from her name.

Appearance
Rena appears as a young girl with auburn hair and blue eyes. Her hair is styled with an angled cut with longs sides and a part on the left side of her forehead. She typically wears her school outfit, a white and blue seifuku with a yellow ribbon. Otherwise she wears a white dress with a deep slit up the middle decorated with a purple bow and sash along with a white hat. She also wears black thigh-high socks with brown knee-high boots.

In the first episode of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai, Rena appears as an adult in a purple business dress suit. She has the same hairstyle, though it is a bit longer, and seems to have grown taller since June of 1983.

In, Rena's seifuku tie has a blue knot that has a small white cross in the center of it, similar to the pin Takano Miyo wears on her left side when she is wearing her black military uniform.

Personality
Rena has an obsession with cute things, and often attempts to "take them home with her", whether they're hers to take or not. These things can include people such as Rika Furude, Hanyuu, and Satoko Houjou. She spends a lot of time at the garbage dump searching for cute things that have been thrown away. Though she comes off as an airhead, she is often very intuitive.

In contrast with her typically sweet nature, Rena becomes frightening and hostile when angered. Situations that can trigger this anger are be the topic of Oyashiro and lying. The phrase Uso da! (嘘だ！) has become associated with Rena's character due to how she reacts when she knows she's being lied to. Mion describes Rena as being hostile towards people who make light of or express disbelief in the curse of Oyashiro. This attitude is due to her experience with it and her assumption that Oyashiro physically exists. On the other hand, she, like Rika, often empathizes with and can identify people who are afflicted with advanced symptoms of Hinamizawa Syndrome. It is implied that she feels guilty for not listening to Satoshi's problems before he disappeared.

Rena is shown to be very perceptive and is almost always capable to figuring out when she's being lied to. When determined, she can somewhat understand people just by looking at their face. She claims that she can quickly tell if someone is lying by looking into their eyes. She is also able to form detailed and eerily accurate hypotheses of crime scenes based on evidence observed.

In addition, Rena possesses a comic relief persona which is instigated when she is embarrassed or when she finds something cute. Once she enters this mode, Rena's senses are heightened to an extreme extent, making her inhumanly agile and vigorous. This causes frequent trouble for many of the club members, who have to expend all of their energy to barely control her; Keiichi and Mion have been knocked out cold a large number of times by Rena's flurries of punches, while Rika and Satoko have often been kidnapped (especially when they were wearing club punishment outfits). Satoko and Rika have learned to use this persona switch to their advantages—by either crying to her or posing in an adorable fashion, they can manipulate whom Rena knocks out opponents or how Rena can support them, thus giving them a huge advantage in eliminating competition easily in club games.

During the first episode of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai, an adult Rena appears to have been permanently affected from being one of the few people who survived the events that occurred in Hinamizawa in.

Onikakushi-hen
Rena serves as the primary antagonist of Onikakushi-hen and ends up being bludgeoned to death along with Mion Sonozaki by Keiichi Maebara.

Watanagashi-hen
Rena plays a fairly minor role in Watanagashi-hen. She is part of the instigating reason why Mion becomes psychotic and is the one who calls the police to surround Mion and break into the Sonozaki torture chamber.

Tatarigoroshi-hen
Rena plays a side character in Tatarigoroshi-hen with minor appearances throughout.

Himatsubushi-hen
Rena does not appear in Himatsubushi-hen.

Tsumihoroboshi-hen
Rena serves as the protagonist and main villain of Tsumihoroboshi-hen. Rena becomes consumed with conspiracy theories written by Miyo Takano and ends up taking the Hinamizawa school hostage in an attempt to uncover an imminent bioterrorism attack. After she dies in the Great Hinamizawa Disaster, she becomes known among occultists as "Girl A", the girl who unraveled a massive conspiracy laid out in File No.34.

Trivia

 * Rena directly kills more people than any other character in . Rena successfully kills all 15 children attending the Hinamizawa school (including herself) as well as Teppei Houjou and Rina Mamiya.
 * The name "Rena" comes from Lenna from Final Fantasy V, known as "Reina" in Japan. This is also where the pen name "Ryukishi07" comes from.
 * In the English translation, Rena is the only character other than Miyo Takano who refers to Oyashiro as female. This is likely because she is one of the few who has heard Oyashiro speak.
 * The reason Rena is referred to as "Girl A" by the police in is because Japanese law prohibits the disclosure of the identities of minors involved in criminal cases.
 * Rena's name is stylized as Rena Ryugu in the 2020 anime adaptation of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni.