Tomoko Maeda (前田 知子 Maeda Tomoko?) is one of the 10 playable characters in Forbidden Siren. She ran away from her parents after finding out that they read her diary. When Hanuda was under siege from the Shibito, Tomoko had to find a way to reunite with her parents (Takenobu and Mayumi Maeda).
Story[]
Before the incident[]
A 14-year-old girl who is a student at Hanuda’s high school. When she finds out that her parents had looked into her diary, she runs off out of anger, but ends up getting lost during the failure of the ritual.
After the incident[]
In Day 1, Kei Makino manages to find her, and decides to lead her back to his church, where they could be safe. While journeying, they witness the Shibito walking into the red water, wishing to evolve in more advanced forms to become closer to Datatsushi. During this, the siren, Datatsushi’s voice, rings throughout the area. Kei and Tomoko get separated by a sniper Shibito they were trying to get past, leaving Tomoko to wander off on her own again.
Later, Tomoko is hiding in the Mizuhiruko shrine of Hirunotsuka, scared and wishing that her parents were there with her. Knowing that she has to escape somehow, she is able to distract several Shibito by dropping the coins of the temple and setting off a police car’s alarm, allowing her to escape the area. As she continues to make her way across Hanuda, she notices the corpse of Akira Shimura and is horrified. Luckily, she meets Hisako Yao, who informs her that her parents are waiting for her back at the church.
Hisako takes Tomoko to the Tabori settlement and leaves her, there she might have been attacked and turned into a shibito without her being aware, then she goes to the church, but just as she nears the end of her traveling, she sees beautiful, angelic patterns around her. Her amazement is interrupted by the appearance of a Shibito-transformed Naoko Mihama. Rather than attacking her like the previous Shibito, Naoko runs off laughing to herself. To Tomoko’s surprise, the other Shibito in the area, also do not harm her; they simply ignore her.
Unknown to Tomoko herself, the truth too horrifying for her to imagine – she has gradually transformed into a Shibito, due to contact with red water from being in the red rain for too long. Upon finally reaching the church, she knocks on the window to call her parents from the inside. Seeing their daughter cause Mr and Mrs Maeda to scream in terror. What Tomoko is oblivious to is the fact that she is a Shibito – her eyes are bleeding as she calls out to her mother and father. When they shoo her away, she is saddened as she leaves the very people that she has been searching for all along.
As a shibito[]
Later, Harumi enters the Tabori house to hide from the Shibito. After waking up from her sleep inside a closet, she realized that the Maedas, all of them are Shibito, inside the house – just outside the closet itself, later Harumi manages to evade Tomoko and her parents and escape from the house and flee to safety.
After Tomoko turned into a Shibito, her parents did not resist the call of the siren and they bathed themselves in the red water and became Shibito. They later find their daughter and they become a family again (a Shibito family) and they use the abandoned house as a way to start over as a happy family. Tomoko spends her time drawing on the floors with a crayon. Her father smokes a cigarette then heads to the bathroom to urinate and to take a shower while her mother watches the television and enters the kitchen to prepare dinner.
After this, it is unknown what happened to the Maeda family, though it can be presumed that they were destroyed by Kyoya Suda at the end of the game.
Characteristics[]
Personality[]
A note that Tomoko left at home before running away for her parents to read reveals that she hates them for having looked through her diary. This shows that, because of her age, Tomoko is immature, and takes anything small but personal to her seriously. However, it is evident through her mission that she desperately wants to reunite with her parents, showing that she can be regretful and loves her parents deeply.
She is scared of the shibito that she has to evade, and of the prospect of never reuniting with her parents. When she appears to her mother and father as a shibito, she cries when she is pestered away from them. As a shibito when her parents also transform, she draws on the floors with a crayon, showing how her young age has affected her shibito personality.
Relationships[]
- Akira Shimura = Encounters his corpse.
- Kei Makino = Looks after her and tries to send her to safety, but they get separated.
- Hisako Yao = Consoles and sends her into the Tabori house, where she is attacked and transformed into a Shibito.
- Naoko Mihama = Encounters her as a shibito during her gradual transformation.
- Parents = Finds them at church; driven away by them; lives in the Tabori house with her Shibito parents.
- Harumi = She was hiding in the Tabori house when Tomoko and her family arrived.
Miscelany[]
Missions[]
Level |
Location |
Mission 1 |
Mission 2 |
Day 1 17:00 |
Hirunotsuka, Mizuhiruko shrine |
Escape from Hirunotsuka |
Escape from Hirunotsuka within 1 minute and 15 seconds |
Day 2 06:00 |
Karuwari, Tanada |
Reach road to church |
Reach road to church without being discovered by shibito |
Trivia[]
- The characteristic aspects of being separated from her parents, turning into a Shibito during her journey to find them, and eventually calling to them from outside the church are used for the character Bella Monroe in Siren: Blood Curse.
- Tomoko is playable in two levels, each with a primary and secondary objective
- She is the only character in the game to be playable during visible signs of her transformation (such as seeing the angelic butterfly-like patterns in the sky and being immune to Shibito attacks; even though Tamon Takeuchi is undergoing a slow transformation in his final mission, he does not display physical or visual effects of it, namely the effects Tomoko underwent in her last mission)
- She is the second youngest character in the game (14 years old in Japan, 17 years old in the US), with Harumi being the youngest (10 years old)
- She is the same age as Ichiko Yagura from Forbidden Siren 2, who also suffers throughout her respective game.
- Her father has a liking for photography, many of the pictures in the Misumi Daily gazette were taken by him.
- As a Shibito, Tomoko's skin appears to be more blue in shade than her parents. This is likely due to because she has become a Shibito for longer than her parents have.
- It is not known exactly how Tomoko has come to be a Shibito after being separated from Hisako Yao, though it is likely due to coming in contact with the red water for too long.
- The Maeda surname is taken from "Tsumiki Kuzushi (積木崩し)", subtitled "the 200 day war between parents and their child", based on a true story. In the TV drama version, the father was played by Gin Maeda.