Rika Takahara

**Rika Takahara** (高原理化, *Takahara Rika*), often referred to as **Doctor Takahara** (高原医師, *Takahara-ishi*) is a scientist who leads a scientific group called **Koeteiku** and is in close association with Aogiri Tree.

## Appearance

Rika is a middle-aged woman has sharp brown eyes with thin lashes and black hair that is tied into a bun, with loose, long bangs that hang down from the sides. She wears a light green dress shirt and dark jeans beneath a white lab coat. Typically, she conceals her hands in light blue latex gloves and exclusively wears a white surgical mask that covers her lower face.

## Personality

On the surface, Rika is a level-headed intellectual who speaks in a honeyed tone and bears respectful mannerisms. She is always seen in a calm mood, at her most tranquil and friendly when around other ghouls. As a doctor and scientist, she shows twisted, manipulative, and sadistic tendencies and makes little effort to either. She is straight to the point and fairly uncaring in her intentions, often blatantly asking her comrades if they wish to engage in agonizing experimentation for the sake of 'science'. Rika has stated that her true goal is to advance the capabilities of ghouls to their peak and beyond, thus evolving and making them the ultimate species over humans.

Like other ghouls, she is able to compartmentalize her ghoul and human alter egos with relative ease.

## Plot

### Background

So far, not much is known about Rika's past other than the fact she read *On the Origin of Species* by Charles Darwin as a child, which inspired her scientific work and goal of evolving the ghoul species.

## Powers and Abilities

### Strengths

**Keen Intellect:** Rika proves herself to be a highly charismatic and intelligent woman, from being able to convince colleagues into undergoing tests and experiments on them at her leisure. She also plans ahead in most cases, giving her exceptional foresight.

**Medical Expertise:** Rika is a scientist whose medical skills and knowledge of the body and medicine are astonishing, allowing her to perform operations or create supplements capable of advancing the abilities of a normal ghoul and the activity of RC cells.

**Abnormal Regeneration:** Due to experiments performed on herself, the binding ability of Rika's RC cells evolved past its regular potency, granting the woman a healing speed far beyond that of a normal ghoul at the cost of stunning the other properties of her body. In most cases, she can mend wounds in but a few moments.

### Weaknesses

**Sub-par Fighter:** Rika doesn't partake in fights too often, thus resulting in somewhat poor battle sense, which in turn subjects her to a more supportive role on the battlefield. Combined with her weak body, this makes her an amateur in combat. Though if forced to, she uses her kagune to defend herself.

**Low Physical Strength:** A regularly untrained body makes for a weak one. This implies to Rika, who has strength well below the average for ghouls.

**Poor Sense of Smell:** Constant self-experimentation dampened Rika's natural sense of smell, making it difficult for her to detect ghouls or human that are nearby.

## Kagune

**Rinkaku:** Rika has been shown using a large, scaly, bright blue rinkaku tentacle in combat. Favoring one for all uses, the kagune possesses the same strengths and weaknesses as others of its type.

## Creations

**RC cell Energizing Serum:** Mainly referred to as its shorter name, RES, this drug was created by Rika and the many assistants of Koeteiku. Is it designed to temporarily increase the abilities of ghoul's body, as well as their kagune. Currently, it's a prototype deemed too dangerous to be used on ghouls regularly.