Izutsumi

Izutsumi, also known by her alias Asebi, is one of the tritagonists (alongside Senshi and Chilchuck) of the 2014 seinen series Delicious in Dungeon. 
Forcibly fused with a feline monster at a young age, Izutsumi was paraded around as a circus freak before her freedom was bought by Maizuru, who raised her to act as one of Shuro's retainers. However, she later defects to Laios's party after hearing of Marcille's black magic abilities, hoping to get her to release the curses on her. While it does turn out that Marcille is unable to revert her to a human form, Izutsumi still follows the party along, hoping for them to come up with a solution when they find Falin. 
She is voiced by Mitsuho Kambe in Japanese and in English.
== Appearance ==
As a tall-man based beast man, Izutsumi appears to be a teenaged girl of East-Asian descent, with neck-length black hair and fair skin. However, thanks to her curse she also has numerous feline features, most notably the two black cat ears poking out of her head and her cat tail. Izutsumi's fur coloration is that of a calico cat, having a white splotch on her right ear and tail tip, as well as skin-tone patches of fur on her hands, left arm, abdomen, lower right leg and sole of left foot, with most of her body being covered in black fur, including her chest (though in the anime her chest fur is white). She also has golden, cat-like irises, claws instead of nails and fangs in her mouth. Izutsumi's nictitating membranes are also more pronounced than other characters'. 
For clothing, Izutsumi used to wear a black ninja garment and veil that concealed her face and feline features. She discards the veil and later the hood after defecting to Laios's party. Later on, Izutsumi wears a brown sleeveless vest, red armor bracers, a red scarf (often tied as a bowtie), and a short brown skirt. Her cold weather outfit consists of a puffy maroon jacket with wool on the cuffs, a puffy gray innerwear, as well as brown boots with wool trim.
== Personality ==
Owing to her mistreatment and exploitation as a beast-man, Izutsumi is a brash and stand-offish person, frequently exhibiting distrust and at times, hostility towards those around her, being quick to abandon others as she sees fit, which she does when she decides to join Laios's party in favour of Shuro's. Arrogant and somewhat self-centred, Izutsumi tends to express her views very openly without considering the feelings of others, exhibited by how she throws away the mushrooms Senshi cooked for her, and also seems rather hostile to people that try to appeal to her feline side, responding with scratches to those who try to pet her. Furthermore, Izutsumi tends to offload unwanted tasks to other people, exhibited by her time living with Tade and the other retainers, and she also has poor table manners. 
Despite this, Izutsumi is not heartless and does have the capability to show positive traits. While mostly motivated by a wish to undo the curse transforming her into a cat monster, Izutsumi still stays with the party when she finds out that they still can't undo her curse, hoping to assist them to free Falin and in the process, find a cure for her own condition. Izutsumi also shows a capacity for change, slowly bonding with the party over time and building more positive bonds with her friends which she accepts as a genuine family. Furthermore, she does start to value teamwork over the course of the series and grows to genuinely like her teammates.
Fitting her status as a tall-man and feline monster hybrid, Izutsumi appropriately exhibits some cat-like behaviours such as curling herself up into a ball when hurt and clawing others when irritated. She also seems notably more docile upon entering the Golden Castle Village, a possible side effect of the village's anti-monster aggression barrier on Izutsumi's feline half, causing her to stay close to Marcille and even accept pets from others. This docility ends when she leaves the village, with Izutsumi even expressing embarrassment at her former behaviour.
== Trivia ==
* Izutsumi's alias, Asebi, refers to the Japanese Andromeda (Piers japonica), keeping up the plant theming of all of Shuro's retainers' aliases.
* Izutsumi's feline nature is briefly teased when Kuro, a dog-like kobold, shows bizarre amounts of aggression towards her and noting an inhuman scent coming from her. Similarly, Izutsumi shows a disdain towards him.
** Izutsumi's dislike of dogs is reflected in her appearance when she gets turned into a kobold, with her dopey appearance and berserk behaviour in the presence of blood reflecting how she sees canines as unintelligent barbarians.
* Similar to a cat, Izutsumi enjoys eating seafood but dislikes vegetables, particularly mushrooms, picking them out of her meal the first time she meets the party and having them excluded from all her servings. This is a reference to how cats are obligate carnivores and as such, Izutsumi would find the taste of vegetables bizarre to her feline biology.
* Thanks to her half-feline nature, Izutsumi has various quirks in her anatomy. For example, she seems to lack flat teeth to chew and thus must mash food on her palate, causing her to make a clicking noise as she eats.
** She also is unable to taste sweetness as she is unable to tell sweetened succubus milk from unsweetened succubus milk, possibly due to her lacking the proteins needed to taste sweetness like actual cats.
** Despite this, it's revealed in her official profile that Izutsumi has one pair of nipples like a regular human, answering Laios's query on her anatomy.
* Seeing as when mimicking her mother, a succubus wears what appears to be a Mongolian deel, Izutsumi's heritage could be from the series' analogue to Central Asia.
* Thanks to her cat-like nature and tendency to be drawn in comedic manners, Izutsumi has become a popular meme icon in the series' fandom, even being given the nickname Kbity which is a misspelling of kitty.
** A running gag within the series is that while the thought bubbles of other characters have actual subjects in them, Izutsumi just has a smaller, cartoonish depiction of herself within her thought bubbles.
* It’s unclear whether Izutsumi’s face is furred or not, seeing as non-canon art by the series mangaka Ryoko Kui of Izutsumi with different patterns depict her with different colours on her face, but Izutsumi’s face in-series is never depicted with a furry texture.
* At 150cm, Izutsumi is the third tallest member of Laios's party.
* Izutsumi’s scream in the English dub after Marcille uses a healing spell on her seems to be styled after Tom Cat’s iconic scream.
* As seen from sketches by Ryoko Kui, Izutsumi lacks human ears, only having the ones on the top of her head.
* Izutsumi has apparently used most of the retainers and her current party as pillows or warmers for her sleep, sans Shuro and Maizuru, the former who got scared when she tried to sneak in and the latter who kicked her out when discovered. Izutsumi has also rated her party members based on their comfiness and some additional notes:
** While Izutsumi does find Laios comfy, his fascination over her monstrous biology has made her quite uncomfortable with sleeping with him, especially when he treats her like a regular cat.
** Thanks to Marcille's powerful latent magic, Izutsumi experiences psychedelic dreams when she sleeps next to her, making her dislike sleeping nearby.
** Out of everybody she's slept on, Izutsumi finds Senshi the most uncomfortable thanks to his muscular body and poor hygiene. Likewise, Senshi dislikes Izutsumi sleeping on top of him.
** Izutsumi apparently finds Chilchuck the most comfortable owing to his small size, warmth and skinny physique. Chilchuck dislikes this and thus, has been noted by Izutsumi to move about a lot in his sleep.
* After being surprised by Marcille's hug, Izutsumi's face briefly turns completely feline before reverting. While this is probably just a visual gag, it's also possible that she partially transforms when shocked enough, seeing as it's revealed later that Izutsumi's body is that of the cat monster, only modified to be humanoid from the implantation of her soul.
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