What are Nues exactly?

No one really knows when or how the Nue was born but it was theorized that the Nue was born during the prehistoric times from the fear of humans. Across the years, the number of Nues multiplied and started spreading fear across the world.

The Nues are split in different clans and while most are rather normal and average, there are five clans that represent the five parts of the supposed chimera form of the beast. The five parts of the Nue are

• Tanuki

• Tiger

• Monkey

• Snake

• Bird

And the five clans that are representative of each part, in the order I showed above.

• Miyamoto → Tanuki

• Kurosawa → Tiger

• Yukimura → Monkey

• Houjuu → Snake

• Inoue → Bird

These five clans are considered the most important, not just because they represent the five parts of a Nue but because they are considered the most powerful clans of Nues. So basically Nue’s like established royalty.

Now that we got out of the way, let go into the Houjuu Clan.

The Houjuu Clan were known for two things: having the swirled tomoe symbol (I’ll explain later) as their clan symbol and their rare power of identity manipulation.

\Now the tomoe symbol. Some view the mitsudomoe, the three-way swirled tomoe as representative of the threefold division (Man, Earth, and Sky) at the heart of the Shinto religion. The Houjuu clan was known for being contradictory. They all had names that were opposite of their natures, they would live where the humans were or at least tried to live as close as they could to humans.

They were old-fashioned youkai yet revolutionary in their own right. Having the tomoe symbol was a way to show that they were essentially cursed creatures who loves pissing people the hell off.

Now their ability of identity manipulation. Only someone born into the Houjuu family, not entered into through marriage or other means, can wield this ability. It is an ability given through blood and blood only. It allows a member of the Houjuu family to have unprecedented abilities in disguising, enabling them to become any identity right to voice and thought process. It allows them to distort identities, manipulate them, along with making things “unidentifiable” and manipulating those as well.

The signature weapon of the Houjuu family was Kuriyama (name means darkness), a trident made from a magical metal. It is a very strong, durable, and powerful weapon. It can heighten a Houjuu family member’s ability of identity manipulation along with the strengths of the Nue. Only a Houjuu can wield it for that to work and even more, only a youkai can wield the trident.

If a human takes the trident, they will die a slow, painful, and gruesome death. Basically a human, if they take the trident, will melt slowly into black tar. A youkai can hold the trident but not with having their mind corrupted by the dark energy of the trident thus only a Nue can hold the trident to have no effects happen to them.

Kuriyama is wielded by the leader of the Houjuu clan and when they need to be succeeded or the leader dies in battle, then the trident will go to the eldest member who wields the most skill in combat. The only reason Nue has it is because they got from their dad after he was killed.

The Houjuu family were fierce, malicious, and preferred youkai to be at the top which made some other Nue clans uneasy because the power of the unknown, while still strong, was diminishing. Some wanted to integrate with humans to preserve their species but the Houjuu clan was stubborn and stood their place.

I should add that once that happened, the Houjuu clan was ambushed and a big chunk of them were slaughtered and after that slaughter, they never were the same.

Now to Nue’s family.

Nue’s father is Akihiro Houjuu who at the time was the current leader of the Houjuu clan. He’s tall, attractive, dark, battle hardened, and fucking pissed at humans. Nue takes after their father in terms of physical characteristics and personality (black hair, red eyes, tall height, lean frame, sadistic, hating humans)

Akihiro is fucking sadistic as hell. He’s malicious, cocky, violent like geez he could give Yuki Terumi a run for his money (it’s funny because my friend Knell compared Akihiro to Terumi) but he has his moments of kindness, and he’s overprotective of his family, especially his children.

He despises humans because of the slaughter. The ambushers were humans and the ambush resulted in the deaths of his mother, father, and younger siblings. Thus he will kill a human on sight, I’m not kidding.

Akihiro basically roamed around, setting a name for himself and trying to bring his family back to their glory. After meeting Hiromi and running off with her (we’ll get to that later), he married her and they had kids together.

If you want to marry his kids, he will fight you to see if you’re worthy. He believes that whoever his kids decides to marry should be strong enough to protect them from anything and anyone.

Now to Hiromi.

She looks like Yuko from XXXholic no joke

Hiromi is Nue’s mother who was from a different clan of Nue, the Mitsuki clan, who left her family when she was of age because she just wanted to see life from beyond the life of the Nue. When she was walking in the forest, she noticed the daughter of a nearby ruler who ran away from her family in order to get away from tight protection.

She probably need that protection because Hiromi killed her and wore her identity. Now I said that identity manipulation is a rare power only to the Houjuus, wearing identities and disguising one self is standard Nue powers along with fear manipulation.

Believing Hiromi’s disguise, she was taken in as the ruler’s daughter and brought up like a princess. This would explain her regal, elegant, well polite personality and how she wears very elegant clothing. When she had to choose a suitor to get married, one of the suitors was Akihiro in disguise.

A summary of their interaction is Akihiro would have secret meetings with Hiromi which resulted in falling in love with each other. He easily pointed her out as a Nue and asked her why she would dare live like a human to which she merely replied “because it’s fun to put on a disguise though I do wish I could go on other

After that, long story short, Akihiro broke into the palace and stole away Hiromi, literally, and also killed the other two suitors while pissing off the ruler at the same time. Then they banged and had kids

Now to the kids

Nue had an older sister. Her name was Michiru Houjuu and she is angst incarnated. No but she’s so dark and pessimistic and anti-social. She actually dislikes the status of being a Nue because it’s a pretty lonely life and would actually prefer that one day she could be friends with humans.

She even looks angstful, black hait tied into a side ponytail, dark color kinomos. ANGST

and then there’s Nue. We all know about Nue so Imma skip some stuff  unless you want to but Nue wasn’t their birth name. Their birth name was actually Toshimi, which with their surname means “sacred sealed beast” which brings back to the naming pattern of their family. They changed it to Nue after living with tanukis and realizing that why should they follow a naming system for humans like hell yeah my name is Nue and I’m gonna be the damn scariest Nue ever.

So yeah that’s basically the gist of the entire Houjuu family headcanon! I wish Nue’s family was still alive so they didn’t have to experience so much heartbreak, help me god