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The Date A Live light novel and anime series features a diverse cast of characters created by Kōshi Tachibana and designed by Tsunako.
Spirits are extraterrestrial beings whose arrival is usually preceded by a spatial quake. These spatial quakes are usually involuntary, but they can also cause spatial quakes voluntarily. Each Spirit has a numerical kanji in their name. They also each possess an Astral Dress as well as an Angel, which are respectively named after the Divine Names of the Sephiroth of the Kabbalistic Tree of life corresponding to the numerical kanji in their names, and the archangels governing the corresponding Sephirot. Each Spirit has a unique ability, and each displays different levels of knowledge about Earth. When a Spirit inverses so does the angel who gets replaced by a demon of the corresponding Qliphoth, e.g. Tohka's angel Sandalphon of her Malkuth Sephira is replaced by the demon Nahemah associated with the corresponding Qimranut Qliphah, and Tobichi's angel Metatron of Kether Sephira by Satan of the Bacikal Qliphah. It is later revealed that the source of a Spirit's power is a gem known as a Sephira Crystal. When a human is exposed to a crystal, they receive whatever power the crystal stores inside.
These spirits do not appear in the Light Novel and are not part of the series' main canon, only featured in games and films based on it.
Ratatoskr (ラタトスク機関, Ratatosuku Kikan) is an organization created for the purpose of resolving the issues of Spirits and the spatial quakes through peaceful means. Commanded by Kotori Itsuka, it was created for her brother as he has the means to peacefully seal a Spirit's powers. Ratatoskr's command center is located upon their airship known as the Fraxinus, located 15,000 meters (49,000 ft) above Tengu City. The headquarters for Ratatoskr is at an undisclosed location which houses the records for Ratatoskr as well as being the location for high-ranking members of Ratatoskr and the Rounds to operate from.
The Anti-Spirit Team is a special unit within the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force that is designed to suppress and kill the threat posed by Spirits. They utilize Combat Realizer units (CR Units) layered on top of combat wiring suits to enhance normal human capabilities while providing offensive and defensive combat capabilities. The CR Units are based upon equipment that utilizes technology recovered by humans after the original spatial quake that have been described as "magic through science". The CR Units of the AST have an operating area otherwise known as the operator's "personal territory" that can be expanded or contracted at the will of the operator, thus leading to a decrease or an increase in the territory's effective capability. In this personal territory, the impossible can occur thus leading to the description of "magic through science".
One of the largest corporations in the world, it is based out of Britain having originated out of a defense industry and it is the only known industry that is able to manufacture Realizer Units. The Realizer units equipped by the world's military, police forces, and especially the AST are all made by DEM Industries. They are economic rivals with Asgard Electronics, the company that supports Ratatoskr, with operatives who are able to utilize CR Units with experience exceeding that of special forces groups from different countries. The "DEM" within their name stands for Deus Ex Machina. They're marginally inferior to Ratatoskr in the development of aspects related to Realizer units due to advancing in various fields and oppose their policy of protecting and sheltering the Spirits, as according to them the only way to deal with the Spirits is by destroying them. As long as their goals are realized, killing hundreds of people in the process is an acceptable loss and not worth losing sleep over.
The main antagonist of Date A Live, who is the founder and managing director of Deus Ex Machina Industries (DEM), the world's largest military megacorporation. Though physically appearing to be a man in his early thirties, Westcott possesses knowledge far beyond that of any ordinary human, displaying intimate awareness of Tohka Yatogami's Inverse state, the true origins of the Spirits, and even Shido Itsuka's forgotten past. Revered almost as a deity within DEM, every elite Wizard addresses him with the honorific "-sama", demonstrating absolute loyalty and a willingness to commit any atrocity at his command.
Beneath the façade of a refined and charismatic businessman lies a man almost entirely devoid of empathy or conventional morality. Westcott treats torture, genocide, and mass casualties with the same detached indifference one would discuss routine business, showing no remorse regardless of whether the victims are civilians, loyal subordinates, or lifelong companions. He calmly devised methods to psychologically break Tohka through prolonged torture, welcomed the destruction caused by her Inversion as a successful experiment, and viewed the deaths of his own soldiers and the loss of DEM's assets as inconsequential so long as they advanced his objectives. Despite his composed demeanor and gentlemanly manners, nearly everyone who encounters him remarks upon the overwhelming sense of dread surrounding him, describing his presence as suffocating, inhuman, and profoundly unsettling.
Westcott was born into a secluded community of magi alongside his childhood friends Elliot Baldwin Woodman, Karen Nora Mathers, and Ellen Mira Mathers. Their peaceful lives came to a brutal end when human extremists, fearing the existence of magic, massacred the village and exterminated nearly its entire population. While the tragedy filled the other survivors with grief and a desire to protect others, it awakened something far darker within Westcott, becoming the catalyst for the ambitions that would shape the rest of his life. Determined to surpass the limitations of both humanity and magic, he and his companions devoted themselves to researching sorcery, eventually laying the foundations for the creation of Spirits—beings born from the world's mana whose power they believed could reshape reality itself.
Following the massacre, Westcott was adopted by a wealthy British aristocratic family. Years later, after his adoptive parents died under "suspicious" circumstances, he inherited their immense fortune, using it as the financial foundation to establish DEM Industries. Although he initially claimed to seek a utopia where magi could live free from persecution, this ideal gradually gave way to a far more horrifying ambition: to remake reality into a world consumed by endless suffering, despair, and conflict, where he alone could indulge in the greatest pleasure he had ever known—the agony of others.
Raizen High School (来禅高校, Raizen Kōkō) is a high school located in Tenguu City within the Kantou region where Shido and other major characters attend. Having been built on the disaster area that affected Japan from the spatial quake thirty years ago, the school is installed with an underground bunker for whenever there is a spatial quake in the area.