Lion

*"Do you want to be a hero?"*

—Lion to Wolf after he expresses his desire to save everyone.

**Lion/Pride/Asahina/Asakura** is the deuteragonist and a third main antagonist of the movie, portrayed by actress Kasumi Arimura and voiced in English dub by Mae Whitman.

## Biography

She was born in 1996. She was a young girl with many health problems. She had a very weak body, frail health and weak heart. She was also asthmatic and had many mental problems. She represented the worst sin, a sin of sins, a cardinal sin of pride. She became a celebrity, idol, actress, singer and model, however, one day, she had a panic attack and nervous breakdown on stage when she was subjected to harsh criticism and received many insults and accusations. This seemingly traumatized and caused her to develop sociophobia, anthropophobia and misanthropy and she apparently left the stage after that. According to her, she feared and disliked humans ever since and always wanted to just be left alone. She lived alone in her suburban house and had many dark secrets and a dark past which she was very ashamed and protective of, hiding it from everyone. She was kidnapped from her house by The Judge and taken to The Base like the others. She was the youngest member of the group and the only minor among them. On first sight she was the most nice and gentle member of the group and the only pure and innocent soul among them who seemed to be there by mistake and looked competely out of place. She wore a very light attire which was quite baggy and oversized and could in fact be her pajamas. Her shoes were supposedly damaged during her kidnapping so she discarded them early on and was barefoot thoughout her ordeal. Despite initially being afraid of Wolf like of everyone else, she almost immediately took a liking to him and became his only ally and love interest, though, as it turned out, they were complete opposites. She mentioned hearing the kidnapper's voice before being abducted, which is the only thing that could directly imply that The Judge is a human, though she didn't elaborate on what the voice was like and whether it was masculine or feminine, the voice could as well belong to its accomplice or underling, like Fox for example, and she notes that she did not see him which could as well imply that they were abducted by invisible man or incorporeal voice. When they took off the masks, the others saw her face and noticed that she wasn't on the screen. When Rabbit selected her on the screen, she seemingly tried to protest against it and quickly got up from the chair, but was too late and just helplessly sat back and watched at the screen as the computer told her story. Her story was second-to-last one to be told by computer, before Fox's story, and it seemingly left out some important details like crimes themselves. However, she was still ashamed of it and claimed that she's innocent and that all she wants is to be left alone. She said that she is not used to humans and asked if this is such a sin. She added that she is the victim here and not a criminal like them. However, her initial innocent attitude eventually turned out to be just an act and a bunch of lies as she revealed herself to be callous, sadistic, misanthropic, calculating, prideful and vain manipulator with psychopathic tendencies, a wolf in sheep's clothing, a predator in disguise, who was only putting the mask of virtue on to hide her twisted nature behind it and subtly manipulated the events and the group from behind the scenes, rivaled the Fox and The Judge itself and even tried to manipulate them and game itself. She was very smart, cunning and intelligent and a constant liar and hypocrite, putting on many masks and pretending to be anyone the circumstances demanded, displaying great acting skills and rarely letting her true nature slip which only happened under extreme stress and pressure. She was fully capable of murder, however, her methods were subtle and she killed people by manipulating them to their deaths, making them kill each other or making the loosely-related circumstances kill them while she was nowhere near when it happened, making it look like she's innocent and unrelated to it and remained pure in everyone's eyes. She quickly noticed that Wolf will be the most easy to manipulate and use and manipulated him in becoming her protector. She pretended to be his like-minded friend and ally and wanting to save everyone like he did, but, in reality, was his complete opposite and opposed his efforts and deliberately spread doubt and distrust among the group, making them fight and kill each other, doing it so subtle that no one, except Fox, noticed it. She deliberately lead the group to their deaths so in the end she would remain alone, would be the only one left, would win the game and survive. She had a hand in nearly every death in the group, having indirectly caused them and her skill and experience and unamused and accustomed atitude while doing it, implied that she's used to it and has done it before many times. She even tried to manipulate Fox and The Judge itsef, using it as her tool and murder weapon to get rid of her opponents. She believed that Wolf's efforts to save everyone were useless and meaningless and was pessimistic about their chances of survival, believing that it's impossible and that their death is unavoidable. She didn't regret her actions, didn't feel any remorse or empathy for her victims and justified herself by saying that she did what she had to do to protect herself and survive, saying that every living being has the right to at least struggle for survival. She turned out to be the most dangerous, treacherous, sinful and vile member of the group, rivaling Fox and The Judge itself. Despite this, she still had at least some good and redeeming qualities to her as she returned Wolf's affections and too had a strong affection for him as she desperately wanted to survive and escape together with him. She also didn't want him to find out what she's really like and he was also able to influence her in her thinking and decision making to some degree, being the only thing to make her doubt herself and her actions. However, her affection was more selfish and egotistical as she mostly viewed him as a tool and her evaluation of him was based on his usefulness to her. When they were locked and isolated together in the smaller room, prolonged stress and exhaustion finally caused her to gradually lose her composure, snap under the pressure and let her nature to start to slip through and they began to clash. For the first time, they didn't agree with each other. She wished to escape with him and leave others to their deaths, however, he did not agree with her on that and refused to leave them, believing that there's still hope to save everyone, an opinion she apparently did not share with him, as she wasn't so altruistic, idealistic and optimistic and didn't care about others, unlike him. She didn't agree with him, disapproved his decision, was unsatisfied and disappointed by it and commented it by somberly asking him, does he want to be a hero or something. He tried to free her and began sawing her handcuff off, accidentally cutting her wrist in the process, causing it to bleed. After she killed Rabbit, he finally found out it was her doing all along and saw her true colors, behavior and nature. He was scared, disturbed, disgusted and enraged by it and she was visibly hurt and distraught by this too, futilely trying to justify herself in his eyes, saying that she didn't have a choice as they wanted to kill them. However, he grabbed and pinned her to the ground and said that he couldn't believe that she, of all people, would betray him. However, she just looked at him with hollow and expressionless face and then quickly got up and ran away from him, saying that she did everything he said, but the deaths were unavoidable and were bound to happen anyway sooner or later. She repeatedly tried to justify herself, saying that she had to do it and that she didn't have a choice, but he only said that now he sees that she's not a helpless ailing girl, but in reality a devious and ruthless woman. Nevertheless, he still freed her and took off her handcuff. She looked at her arm in disbelief and happily walked away. Thinking that now that she's save and free, she has advantage and has nothing to fear anymore and drops her facade altogether, letting her true nature and sin finally take over, making her arrogant and overconfident. She decides to show and use her perceived advantage and superiority over Wolf and Fox to kill them for fun and satisfaction to ensure her own safety and victory in the game and mockingly asks them what if she still participates in the game and chooses to kill them now that she's free from it while they are still in danger. She pointed out that she no longer has the handcuff and showed them her hand. However, when Wolf grabbed her hand, forcibly pulled her to the table and asked her not to do it, she hesitated and eventually decided against it. She instead listened to him and decided to choose herself instead, confident that nothing will happen to her now that she's free anyway. This proved to be her fatal mistake as because of that, Fox finally managed to outsmart and defeat her in game allowing The Judge to finally judge and sentence her to death. When it passed down it's judgement, she was shocked and petrified by it. Only now she realized that she is not safe as she thought she was and her confidence instantly dissipated, revealing the coward underneath that she really was. When The Judge started to carry out its sentence, she was horrified and in complete shock, not understanding how this can be. A panic attack struck her once again and she screamed in fear and begged Wolf to help her and save her. He understood what's happening and ran up to her frantically trying to help her, though there was nothing he could do to save her from her pride. In panic she pushed him away and fell from the chair. She ran accros the room screaming, while he followed her. Then she fell on the floor and crawled to Rabbit, muttering that she doesn't want to die. Despite everything, Wolf was by her side and tried to comfort her in her last moments, while she was cowardly begging for her life on the knees, utterly humiliated and unable to face the fate that she subjected her victims to. At the last moment, she managed to partly regain control of herself and looked at the Fox for the last time, realising that he did this and sealed her fate, before intense fear apparently caused her weak body to finally fail and she suffered heart attack and acute organ failure and stopped breathing. She fell on the floor next to Rabbit, let out her last breaths with gurgling sounds, twitching in agony, and died from fright and critical heart and organ failure. Her own sin became the thing that killed her. As a result of being too overconfident, in a pivotal moment, she listened to Wolf and not her instincts and essentially sold her life and victory to him which eventually lead to her own humiliating defeat and death at the hands of The Judge. Wolf was absolutely shocked by her death and initially even couldn't and didn't want to believe it, for she was by his side for so long and was such a constant and prominent presence that he couldn't even imagine that she could die too like the others. When he checked her pulse and realised that she really is dead, he was completely broken and just sat and cried beside her. Fox even noted that he really did liked her. He was heavily shaken and mourned her for the rest of his life, blaming himself for her death, believing that he could've prevented it and saved her. Her death and his guilt and grief eventually caused him to finally snap and kill Fox with her handcuff in rage, despair and revenge for killing her, symbolically avenging her death by killing Fox with the thing that belonged to her, before proceeding to trash The Base.

## Trivia

* She debatably turned out to be the most dangerous player in the game, second probably only to the Fox himself.
* Like with others, her real name wasn't revealed, but she is the only one with at least its variants mentioned, them being Asahina and Asakura, though it's unknown if any of them is correct.
* She was the only one to be released from the handcuff, without The Judge releasing it itself.
* She was the fifth and last one to die from The Judge and its game, as Fox was killed by Wolf and Wolf's fate is unknown.

## Gallery

Lion, next to Wolf, on the cover.Ditto, with masks.Her mask.Lion watching Rabbit's death.A distraught Lion after her true nature was revealed.Wolf releasing her.Lion right before her death.Kasumi behind the scenes.Kasumi and Seto behind the scenes.