Because of her cute and innocent looks, it's hard to believe that she's actually dangerous. By the time a person realizes that, it's probably too late. She doesn't hesitate to kill others and doesn't have any remorse for it and isn't afraid to lose her life.

Click here to visit Misaki's shrine for Rio to find out more about her.

She's cute alright, but is also quite dangerous as well and is an important character in Spiral since she is a member of the Blade Children. I love how she can create plans so quickly and have them be quite effective and yet they can appear to be simple or complex.

I have to admit that for the most part, I don't like female characters since many of them just plain get on my nerves (it's not like I like ONLY male characters, since some do annoy me to death) and aren't really appealing at all to me.

Rio, for one, is definately an exception to that. She has her cute moments and has her more serious moments as well. To me, she's a well-rounded character who isn't so uber happy all the time or sad/angry/depressed all the time and can control her emotions quite well.

She knows when to be serious and times where she can show her more innocent and cute side to her. An example of her cute side would be when she calls Kosuke, "Kouske, no baka!" in Japanese. It's really cute and is quite funny to see how Kosuke reacts after she says that phrase to him.

An example of her serious side would be how she's not afraid to die like in the episode where she severely injured herself so Ayumu and Hiyono wouldn't find out about what the cursed mark of the Blade Children is.

Two years have pasted since his older brother's disappearance, the Blade Children being Ayumu's only clue, and soon enough a series of murders and incidents occur-- all of which involve the Blade Children.

He soon finds himself involved with the Blade Children and tries to figure out his destiny as a result.

Personally, I haven't seen all of the anime yet (just up to DVD 3) or read all of the manga (just up to vol. 2), but what I've heard is that the later manga volumes become quite dark and bloody and was pretty much cut out in the anime, let alone that a lot was changed as the series continued.

Both the anime and manga are complete in Japan: the anime consisting of 25 episodes and the manga consisting of 14 volumes. The anime's been licensed by Funimation and all 25 episodes (in 6 volumes) have been released. The manga, though it has been licensed by Tokyopop, there hasn't been a release date set yet.

I've heard that there have been some issues that revolve around Square-Enix, which could be a reason why the manga hasn't been published yet in the states. I could be wrong, but it's a possiblity.

Okay, and before I get any e-mails asking what Square would have anything to do with Spiral. Well, simply put, the manga was originally published by Enix before they merged with Square-Soft (which is now Square Enix), so that may be an issue.

After watching some of the episodes, the answer hit me. Rio's uber smart and is also mischievious as well, so why not combine the two for the new name? Soon enough, I came up with the name Mischievous Genius and it stuck ever since. :P