Azumaki Kazuha

**Azumaki Kazuha** (*東木かずは Azumaki Kazuha*) is a protagonist in Destiny Star PreCure. She transforms into **Cure Manticore** (*キュアマンティコア Kyua Mantikoa*), the maiden of the East.

## Personality

Kazuha is a nature girl through and through. She loves nature and spending time outside, admiring flowers or trees, or just sitting in her favourite tree while watching her surroundings. She rarely wears shoes and has a favourite outfit she almost always wears, so she dislikes her school uniform. She used to skip school a lot but begins to attend more often to be able to meet her new friends. She is quite the trickster, loving to play pranks on various people or just annoying them, one of her frequent victims being Natsuko. It seems like she can talk to birds, as she regularly talks to a bird that has taken a liking to her and which she has named “Toriri”. Surprisingly, Kazuha is a big fan of poetry and literature, one of the walls in her room is decked with books. While most people don't notice, she tends to quote these books or poems too.

## Appearance

Kazuha has light green eyes and dark green hair, styled into two pigtails that reach just beyond her shoulder blades. She has straight bangs and two longer parts at the side of her face. Usually, she can be seen wearing a simple white dress with dark grey shorts as well as a dark grey undershirt. She also wears simple green slippers. Like the other maidens, sometimes her Heth-mark on her chest glows.

During her transformation, the letter Heth shines on her chest before her outfit appears.

For halloween, Kazuha dresses up as some kind of fighter/demon inspired by eastern asian culture, with a giant battle axe made by Natsuko.

When transformed into **Cure Manticore**, her hair turns light green and lengthens to reach beyond her knees, held in place by two yellow bows. Her outfit consists of a short green dress with yellow stiching and a yellow belt with a ribbon and her PreLead attached to it. There is a dark grey cape attached to the dress and at the center of it, at chest height there is a light green jewel featuring her signature letter, Heth. The dress's sleeves are detached, the same colour as her dress and reusing the same yellow stiching. The sleeves are quite long, reaching just beyond her waist. The outfit is finished by long, dark grey stockings with the same yellow stiching as before and dark green shoes.

## History

Kazuha is the current maiden of the east. Kazuha has lived with her grandmother as long as she can remember in a secluded area far seperated from the main town on South Cross Island, as her parents left every early on in her life, leaving her grandmother to raise her. Her grandmother doesn't really tell Kazuha about them, but Kazuha also doesn't ask about them. Her grandmother's house always had a big garden, in which the two of them spend a lot of time together, her grandmother often telling stories about the various flowers that fascinated her granddaughter. Other stories she enjoyed were stories about the maidens and ancient times, Minerva being one of the few people to remember them. To find more stories, Kazuha began researching literature in her free time and fell in love with it.

Since her grandmother is getting older, Kazuha started helping around the house from early on, especially the garden and area aaround the house. In fear of something happening while she might be away, Kazuha started skipping out school to stay at home.

(TBA)

After meeting Momo and becoming Cure Manticore, Kazuha starts coming to school more frequently, leaving some birds or other animals to watch her grandmother.

(TBA)

During the final episode, there is a glimpse at where Kazuha's life is leading. Her saying goodbye to Sumire, becoming part of the student council after she leaves and even becoming the council's president. She gets to publish her first work, which is a major achievement to her.

After the highschool graduation of her and Ruri , the Cures meet at the café Natsuko works at and watch the stars, promising to meet each other again for this anniversary before going their own ways.

Her works start getting popular and she's gaining fans, which she first notices when she is stopped on the street for an autograph.

She starts work as a librarian and helps out her customers with whatever problems they might have, while continuing to work on her books.

The last scene focused on Kazuha is her winning some kind of book prize, thanking her friends for helping her reach this point.

## Cure Manticore

**"The lawless wild beast, Cure Manticore!"** (*無法野生の獣、キュアマンティコア！Muhō yasei no kemono, Kyua Mantikoa!*)

Kazuha can transform into **Cure Manticore** (*キュアマンティコア Kyua Mantikoa*), the Cure of earth and nature with a green colour scheme. She is represented by Heth, the 8th letter of the Phoenician alphabet and her cardinal direction is the east. Like the other Cures, she transforms using her **PreLead**, while her weapon is called the **Manticore Scythe**. Manticore can fill **any position** on the team, she's a **jack of all trades** (kind of), an **all rounder**.

#### Transformation

**PreCure, Manticore Calling!** (プリキュアマンティコアコーリング!)

#### Attacks

**Manticore Hurricane** (マンティコアハリケーン) - Cure Manticore's first attack

**Haibun Recusatio** (俳文・レクサチオ) - Cure Manticore's second attack, performed with the Manticore Scythe.

## Etymology

Azumaki (東木) - composed from "Azuma" which means East and "Ki" which means tree; making her whole name "east tree"

Kazuha (かずは) - kanji spelling: 和葉; composed from "Kazu", meaning peace, harmony and "Ha", meaning leaf

Manticore (マンティコア) - a manticore is a legendary creature similar to an Egyptian sphinx

## Relationships

**Azumaki Minerva** - Her grandmother who raised her. She told her stories about the maidens and all her knowledge comes from her. Kazuha helps her around the house and she loves her very much.

**Tsunashi Momo** - Like the rest of the cures, they are friends. Momo is the reason Kazuha has started to come to school more frequently. Kazuha likes her gullibleness, as Momo falls for most jokes she tells.

**Minamihara Natsuko** - Natsuko is a frequent victim of Kazuha's pranks, which annoys her greatly. She's easily enraged by Kazuha's antics, leading her to chase her around a lot.

**Kitamatsu Ruri** - The two of them have an exchange of jokes in text form almost daily. The two of them balance each other out, Kazuha talking and Ruri listening.

**Nishimura Sumire** - Surprisingly, there has yet to be a problem between those two. They like each other, but Kazuha sometimes is sad because Sumire never falls for her jokes. However, since sometimes Sumire knows the jokes, she tends to joke back sometimes. On several occasions, both remark that they feel like they could easily live as each other, hinting at the fact that their places in the story were switched.

## Trivia

* Originally, Sumire's and Kazuha's places in the story were switched. This was changed for unknown reasons
* Her weapon is a scythe, which is also used as a farming tool, reconnecting with her theme of nature and plants
* Two other possible Cure names for her would have been Cure Mandrake (*キュアマンドレイク Kyua Mandoreiku*) and Cure Alraune (*キュアアラーヌ Kyua Arānu*), but they were ultimately decided against
	+ Still, Alraune was reused as a villain's name and Kazuha actually befriends said villain
* Kazuha is the youngest in her team despite her birthday being relatively early. This is due to her and Ruri being a year younger than the other three
* Cure Manticore's outfit seems to be inspired by traditional japanese kimonos and similar things