Koneko Toujou

**Shirone Toujou** (commonly referred to as **Koneko Toujou**) is one of the many female protagonists of *High School DxD*. She is a first-year High School Student at Kuoh Academy and a member of the Occult Research Club. She is a Nekoshou, a rare species of Nekomata and Kuroka's younger sister, as well as Rias Gremory's first Rook.

## Appearance

Koneko is a petite girl with white hair and gold eyes. Her body measurements are [B67-W57-H73 cm] [B26-W22-H29 in]. Her weight is [31 kg] [68 lbs]. The front of her hair has two long bangs going past her shoulders and several loose bangs hanging over her forehead, while the back has a short bob cut. She also wears a black cat-shaped hair clip on both sides of her hair, one of which contained the data on artificially making new Super Devils. She usually wears the Kuoh Academy girls' school uniform, without the shoulder cape. Koneko's height is 138 cm (4 feet 6 inches), making her one of the shortest female characters of the series.

In her Nekomata form, she grows a pair of white cat ears and a pair of matching white tails, and her eye pupils become more cat-like. In volume 24, she gained three tails.

In her "Shirone Mode" that she used for the first time in Volume 16, Koneko can make herself grow older, and her attire consists of a short white kimono and a light blue skirt. Her bust size grows significantly larger also when in this mode, making her look more similar to her sister Kuroka.

In the anime, during the Rating Game between Rias and Riser Phenex, she wore black fighter's gloves with pink cat pawprints on the upper palm.

## Personality

Due to witnessing her sister supposedly losing control over her nekomata power and killing her master, Koneko became traumatized by the event, causing her to become withdrawn into herself and stripping her of most of her emotions. As a result, Koneko originally had a quiet and cold personality, rarely showing any feelings or emotions, even when she was speaking. It is noted that her serious personality is a result of receiving influence from Rias and is contradictory to her sister's mischievous personality. She was also the only one in the group who did not initially get along with Isami, often insulting and rebuking the latter for her perverted nature, although she reveals that she respects her for never giving up and considers her a hard worker.

She shows the most concern for her comrades when they are in trouble, often lending her strength in fights. Koneko apparently has a problem with people calling her a midget (although the context of the phrase could be used to be called flat, as in bust size), as shown when she tried (and failed) to punch Jolo Toussaint. This may stem from her insecurity about her own small body and bust size.

At the end of Volume 5, Koneko experiences a change in her personality after Adrian helps her overcome her fear of using Senjutsu and now starts acting like a cat, often ends her sentences with "Nya" (にゃ), and/or showing attraction towards Adrian. Her love for Adrian grows so much that, at the beginning of Volume 11, she starts to go into her mating season (though this was later stopped by her sister Kuroka).

## History

Born as **Shirone**, Koneko is a young Nekomata who is part of a rare species among her kind, called the *Nekoshou*. She was born between a human father and a Nekomata mother named Fujimai. Her father was a scientist who did not acknowledge Koneko or was aware that she was his child, and merely used her for experiments. Her parents eventually died in an experiment accident. However, her older sister Kuroka, omitted the truth and any other details about them from Koneko to protect her.

After losing her parents, she and her sister were later taken in by an unnamed Devil from the branch family of the House of Naberius, who reincarnated her sister as one of the members of his peerage. However, Kuroka's power as a Nekomata supposedly soon grew out of control, eventually causing her to kill her master and become a Stray Devil on the run from her pursuers. In actuality, he had planned to experiment on Koneko in his research about creating a Super Devil, causing Kuroka to kill him in order to protect her younger sister.

Following the incident and the failed manhunt that came after, Koneko was sentenced to death by the Devils in hopes of preventing another incident like Kuroka's from happening. However, Sirzechs Lucifer, one of the Four Great Satans, protected her and left her under his sister Rias' care. Due to the trauma, she experienced with her sister's betrayal and murder of her master, she fell into a deep depression, eventually robbing her of nearly all of her emotions until Rias helped her out of it. It was around that time Rias gave Koneko her name and made Koneko her servant.

## Powers & Abilities

**Demonic Power**: Koneko has all the powers and abilities common to Devils, including the power to cast spells.

   **Senjutsu Master**: Being a Nekoshou, Koneko is able to use Senjutsu, she is still training under her sister, Kuroka as well as Magari. By taping into Senjutsu, she gains control over the flow of ki and greatly enhances her physical attacks. Koneko can use Senjutsu to detect the presence of others.

* **Touki** (闘気, *Fighting Spirit*): Koneko can cover herself in an aura of *ki*, drastically increasing her strength, defense, and speed. By Volume 24, she could cover herself in a tremendous touki and has surpassed her sister in terms of strength.
* **Healing**: Through the usage of Senjutsu, Koneko can use ki to recover both a person's physical and mental health, in addition to their stamina. Through being in physical contact with the person she's healing and can be used to even recover a person's life-force, which was damaged through different means and did so continuously after Issei used Juggernaut Drive.
	+ **Bouchujutsu** (房中術, *Bedroom Method*): A more effective and faster healing technique in which Koneko directly shares her ki with a man to heal life-force to a greater extent, this is done by the act of having sex. Though Koneko has never performed this, she claims to be capable of doing so when offering it to Issei should he need it.
* **Kasha** (火車, *Burning Chariot*): Koneko can summon multiple big wheels that are covered in white flames that have the power of purification.
* **Sealing**: Koneko had learned a practical use of Senjutsu from Kuroka as a counter-measure against the Evil Dragons revived using Sephiroth Graal, in which she uses a jewel from Issei's armor to seal their souls inside it, as shown with Grendel who was later stored and guarded in Heaven.

**Youjutsu Expert**: Being a Nekomata, Koneko is able to use Youjutsu, but she is still learning under her sister, Kuroka as well as Magari. She uses Youjutsu in tandem with her Senjutsu.

**Immense Strength**: Despite her size, Koneko has been described as having extreme strength, lifting opponents and things larger than herself such as Viser, who she then knocked a great distance from herself. She could fight against and defeat Xuelan, a Rook who she evaluated as equaling a Queen. After entering her Nekomata Level 2 mode, Koneko's strength is enhanced to where she could fight against Gandoma who has superhuman strengths from his clan trait and Rook Piece. In Vol 24, she surpassed her older sister in terms of strength who rivals that of an Ultimate-Class Devil.

**Immense Durability**: To match her strength, Koneko has high defense enough that most attacks such as being stomped on or being shot by a light bullet doesn't have much affect on her; bouncing off her.

**Immense Speed**: Despite being a Rook, Koneko also has above average speed, being able to move around far more than others due to her size and could handle almost all Xuelan's swift kicks. Through using either her touki or Nekomata Mode Level 2, her speed is increased letting her to move fast enough to catch opponents off guard. In Vol 24, having gained her third tail, Koneko's speed alone exceeded Kuroka's ability to detect her presence.

**Enhanced Senses**: As a Nekomata, Koneko naturally has heightened senses, such as the time she was able to smell Fallen Angels within the Church.

**Nekomata Mode Level 2** (猫又モードレベル2, *Nekomata Mōdo Reberu 2*): In this mode, Koneko is able to grow a second tail similar to her older sister after further increasing her abilities by covering herself in touki using Senjutsu, which gives her explosive power and increased physical abilities for a temporary amount of time.

**Shirone Mode** (白音モード, *Shirone Mōdo*): In this second mode, Koneko is able to make herself grow much older, appearing similar to her older sister temporarily by gathering the natural ki around her and syncing it with her touki. In Shirone Mode, she is granted full access to her nekomata powers, letting her use moves such as Kasha and becoming the power of purification itself, being able to make the enhanced Vampires disappear by merely touching them in Volume 16.

**Master Hand-to-Hand Combatant**: Koneko is a master hand-to-hand combatant which combined with her Rook trait let her overpower several enemies sending enormous foes much larger than herself backward and defeating trained former exorcists. In fact, she is able to defeat even Xuelan, a far more experienced Rook without any sign of exhaustion only losing due to a sneak attack from Yubelluna. After accepting her Nekomata power, she is able to combine Touki, Senjutsu, and purification powers to further increase her physical attacks. In Volume 17, Koneko has improved her skills to where she could fight against the mass-produced Evil Dragons and later fought a mass-produced Grendel in Volume 18. In Volume 24, Koneko could also fight evenly with Kuroka, whose power rivals that of an Ultimate-Class Devil, and even surpassed her.

**Flight**: Being a Devil, Koneko can use her wings to fly.

## Equipment

**Rook Piece** (戦車の駒, *Sensha no koma*): Koneko was reincarnated using the Rook Piece, which grants her enhanced offense and defense.

## Trivia

* Koneko's birthday is November 23, according to the Sodom Press Data File on her.
* Koneko's name translates to "Kitten" and "little cat", in reference to her being a Nekomata.
	+ Koneko's real name, *Shirone*, means "White Sound", in reference to her hair and tail color.
* Koneko's last name, *Toujou*, means "Castle", in reference to her being a Rook (in chess, the rook piece is a castle's turret).
	+ She has the same last name as Sae "Toujou" from Slash/Dog.
* In Rating Game fighting-types, Koneko is considered a Power-type.
* Koneko plays the mascot character, "Hellcat-chan" (ヘルキャットちゃん *Herukyatto-chan*), in *Breast Dragon Emperor Oppai Dragon*.
* Koneko loves rap music and is a fan of Salamander Tomita, who is a kappa rapper.
* Koneko is one of the two servants of Rias who had been given a new name by the latter; the other one being Yuuto.
* Koneko's name, along with the fact that she wears gloves with cat paw prints and is quite agile, all were alluding to that she is a nekomata before her reveal as one.
* Koneko likes to enjoy watching food reviews and game videos on DeviTube, as well as live streaming games.
* Koneko's job requests as a Devil are mainly cosplay requests for photo shoots or playing games with her clients.
	+ The nature of her contract requests coincide with that of Asia Argento.
* Koneko bears a striking resemblance to Yuki Nagato from the *Haruhi Suzumiya* franchise. In fact, Mr. Morisawa, one of her regular clients, even has her wear Nagato's outfit as cosplay.
* In the English Dub, Koneko is notably more foul-mouthed than in the Japanese version.
* Her seiyū, Ayana Taketatsu, eventually married Yuki Kaji, the seiyū of Issei, on June 22, 2019.
* According to a questionnaire,
	+ Koneko’s favorite type of man is one who is a very kind person.
	+ She's proud of her ears and tail because people say they are cute.
	+ Her special skill is eating a lot and not getting fat.
	+ She's not good at doing naughty things.
	+ If she didn't become a Devil, she would be living in an unpopular place somewhere.
	+ She likes going to cake shops.
	+ Her one wish is for her breasts to grow bigger.
	+ She said about Adrian not to be too picky and to please be kind to her forever.
	+ She starts bathing from her tail.
	+ She has white panties with a hole in for her tail.
	+ Her erogenous zone is her stomach.
* Her hobbies are collecting cat accessories and trying food at various restaurants.
* Her favourite thing is hot milk mugs.