Keiko Numata (沼田 峯子 Numata Keiko) was the wife of Kensaku Numata and the grandmother of Ikuo Takabayashi, who is the proprietor of Sakitani Kinenkan along with her husband.
Keiko Numata
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| Gender | Female |
| Age | 60+ |
| Family | Ikuo Takabayashi (Grandson) Kensaku Numata (Husband) |
| Anime debut | "Rough Sketch" |
| Romaji | Numata Mineko |
| Kanji | 沼田 峯子 |
| English | Vicki Barosh |
| Birth | around 1938 |
| Eyes | Brown |
| Hair | Brown |
| Affiliation | Sakitani Kinenkan Manager |
| Occupation | Owner |
| Seiyuu | Rie Takahashi |
| Status | Deceased |
| Height | 5'4 (160 cm) |
Appearance
Keiko appears as an overweight elderly woman with short brown hair that is swept to the left and brown eyes.
She wears a white t-shirt and a yellow apron.
Personality
Keiko was introduced as a kind, gentle, and welcoming grandmother, but she soon manifests a cold, murderous side of herself.
At the end of Episode 12, Tatsuji Chibiki mentions that she and Kensaku were depressed about the death of Ikuo Takabayashi, their grandson. This, along with the fact that the calamity seems to affect people in a way that makes them do things that they would normally never do, may have led Keiko to plot a revenge murder spree in the last two episodes.
Plot
Keiko was first seen in Episode 10 when she and Kensaku welcomed part of Class 3-3, who came to the Yomiyama Shrine to pray, hoping that this action would stop the calamity. The class was accommodated at her restaurant-pension. Unbeknownst to anyone, she was mentally unstable, and after dinner, she began preparations to murder her husband and set the inn on fire.
In Episode 11, Keiko was eventually revealed to have gone insane to the point of wanting to murder everyone else. By this point, she had already killed her husband in a very brutal way and started a fire in the dining room. Manabu Maejima witnesses this, and Keiko stabs him, though he manages to survive. After Yūya Mochizuki and Naoya Teshigawara found her in a room with a bloody knife, she attempted to kill them. In the process, Yūya pushed her away from Naoya, causing her to drop her knife and wound the latter's leg. She continues after the two down the hallway. After Yūya and Naoya escape from Keiko, he opens an emergency door, and Keiko was inside waiting to kill them.
In Episode 12, when Yūya and Naoya escape out the window, Keiko grabs Yūya's leg. Naoya grabs Yūya and pulls both of them out of the window. She grabs Naoya and tries to kill him, but is stopped by Tatsuji Chibiki, who stabs her to death.
Etymology
- The name Keiko means "top, peak, summit" (峯) (mine) and "child" (子) (ko).
- Her name is translated incorrectly in the anime as "Keiko", due to the enormous number of values of kanji, as in the original novel in Japanese, her name "Mineko", in fact, 峯 (mine) means "top/peak" and 子 ("ko") means "child", respectively. Even more confusingly, the official English translation of said novel renders her name as Meiko. No official name has ever actually been given.
- Keiko's surname Numata means "swamp" (沼) (numa) and "field, rice paddy" (田) (ta).
Trivia
- In the original novel, Keiko killed Manabu Maejima, Izumi Akazawa, Takako Sugiura, Junta Nakao, Shigeki Yonemura, and Kensaku Numata with a knife at Sakitani Kinenkan, where she then proceeded to commit suicide by biting off her tongue.
- The reason for this wasn't revealed in the original novel and remains unknown. In the anime, her body count is significantly lower (apparently limited to just her husband), though not for want of trying, as she was hunting Yūya Mochizuki and Naoya Teshigawara from the second half of Episode 11 to the first half of Episode 12.
- While everyone else is focused on Izumi and Mei Misaki's confrontation at dinner, there are two scenes showing Keiko preparing to murder her husband and set the inn on fire.