I just realized that while we talk a lot about the lore and trivia of Her Choice over on our Patreon and Ko-fi accounts (which we encourage you to follow *wink wink*, all our posts are free to browse), we haven't properly introduced our characters here on itchio yet.

So without further ado, let's get to it!

Let's start with our resident ineffectual-badass Hano.

Name: Deathdancer Danthula “Dancing Dagger” Hano

(That’s a lot of Ds.)

Trivia: Johden do not have surnames as such. The nearest thing to a surname for them would be adding “of the xx Tribe” or “son of xx” after their names. On the other hand, every Johden has a formal battlename, which they receive during their graduation ceremony and, for all official purposes, replaces their birthname. It is not strange for Hano to be referred to and called Danthula by his fellow Johden. Many grow so accustomed and attached to their battlenames, they will relinquish their birthnames altogether.

Nationality: Military Federation of Johden

Trivia: Among the countries that make up the Imperial Capital, Johden is one of the oldest. Located deep within the Ashen desert, Johden has always been isolated from external political and cultural influences. Their society is rooted in ancient traditions and a militaristic lifestyle, with “honour” at the core of their ideologies.

Role: spin-off protagonist

Trivia: Because of the interest shown by the fandom towards the drama’s Johden characters, TotES launched a spin-off titled “Blood of the Johden” (BotJ), which fans simply refer to as the Johden Arc. While the main drama airs weekly, BotJ is released in a mini-series format, with short seasons comprised of longer episodes, but also longer gaps between airings.

Personality: born without a sense of humour and raised with little in the sense of fun, Hano tends to take everything seriously and literally.

And now some fun facts about the Prancing – ahem – I mean, Dancing Dagger. Because even Mr. Brood & Sulk needs a laugh once in a while.

Fun Fact #1

Apart from lacking a sense of humour, Hano also lacks a sense of fashion. Despite this, he heavily criticized the costume that Director Dernol had originally designed for him. In Hano’s words, it was “unrealistic, impractical and generally lacking spikespun”, making it “dishonourable” to be worn by a Johden. Hano refused to wear it, so the shooting was done in the clothes he was wearing at the time. Amidst tears of frustration and unpaid overtime, the dressmakers remade all the costumes for the Johden Arc to match Hano’s outfit. And this is why, to this day, Hano does not change to a different outfit when acting.

Trivia: spikespun is a type of cloth usually died in brown or reddish shades, of which Johden are the sole makers in the Empire. Johden are also the only ones allowed to wear it, a law they unilaterally decreed and which they enforce by punching anyone who dares defy it.

Fun Fact #2

Johden are known for loving their spice, and it’s common for dishes to come heaped with a reckless amount of chilli and pepper. Hano is an exception, and has a hard time handling the heat. He’ll try his best to keep up appearances though, a feat he mostly manages thanks to Mune, who will secretly change all his orders to “extra mild”.

Fun Fact #3

The Johden guards, who make up the majority of the set’s security, all look down on Hano, to one degree or the other. This is because Hano has only earned 3 blood pearls so far, an amount that for his age is considered shameful by Johden standards. Zanas suggested he add some fake ones, a proposal that left Hano appalled. What truly “dishonourable” behaviour that would be!

Trivia: to Johden, blood pearls are their most prized possession. When a Johden achieves a feat deemed worthy of honour, they will be allowed to wear a pearl as tangible proof. Johden have to dive for their own pearls, a task which they call “fetching”, and from which many never return.

Next up, everyone's favourite mascot Kanzen.

Name: Kanzen the Kennen

Trivia: The Kennen is his character’s nickname in the drama. It has since become so iconic that his fans have attached it to his real name. The “kennen” originated as an elfen play on the words -kenen- (thunder) and -denen- (loyal, faithful), referring to “a thunderbolt that would never strike its master”. This phrase was first used by Esta mages to refer to the nature of their own magic, but became widespread as a way to refer to dangerous pets that nevertheless would not pose danger to their own masters. Kennen is in itself a play on Kanzen’s name: -nz- is not a native sound in elfen (the language the drama airs in), so Kanzen’s name often becomes “kannen” which, depending on pronunciation, can be indistinguishable from “kennen”.

Nationality: Kingdom of Barien

Role: main cast and official mascot

Trivia: Kanzen was scouted by Higre after the series had already started airing, so the lack of foreshadowing for his abrupt debut in the series angered many fans at the time. The Director and scriptwriter did their best to ret-con his presence in the main cast, to varying degrees of success. But it’s all water under the bridge now, and even the harshest plot-hole hunters have since yielded to Kanzen’s superb acting skills and overall charm.

Personality: making plans and sticking to them might not be one of Kanzen’s fortes, but riding the flow with wild abandon sure is.

And now on to the more useless facts.

Fun Fact #1

Many will be surprised to learn that Kanzen majored in Apothecary, and is an officially licensed Alchemist. Apothecary is widely regarded as the most taxing of alchemical disciplines, requiring disciples to spend years pouring over textbooks and rote memorizing thousands of formulas, so it is said that only those with a will of steel can hope to achieve greatness in this field. Now that is not something you’d expect from someone with the attention span of a 3 year old such as Kanzen.

Trivia: Alchemy, which originated as a discipline bridging magic and technomancy, has developed into many branches, the most notable ones being Healing, Apothecary and Transmutation.

Fun Fact #2

On a regular day, if you were to be looking for Kanzen, there are high chances you will find him at the set’s lounge, partaking in Deymera’s day-drinking habits. Recently he has only been allowed to have mocktails and herbal tea, after Higre found out and forbade bartender Bruel to serve Kanzen alcohol.

Fun Fact #3

Kanzen is the number one (and only) fan of Higre’s cooking. Among his favourite foods is a certain infamous banana seaweed beef stew, a recipe invented by Higre by combining Thasaru’s traditional meat stew dish with Roete seafruit wraps.

Trivia: While Higre mistakenly thought a Roete seafruit wrap is a dish of fruit wrapped in seaweed, there is actually no fruit in it. This misunderstanding stems for a mistranslation of the dish’s elfen name sulistor’tilber, whose original meaning is in fact “fruits of the sea”. In Roete seafruit wraps are composed of thinly sliced seafood served in a seaweed package.

And last, but not least, too-cool-for-school Zanas.

Name: “Starhunter” Tyetel Zanas

Trivia: Zanas’s surname Tyetel can be roughly translated to “star gatherer”, and is rumoured to be the reason Director Dernol originally thought of recruiting Zanas as TotES’s talent scout.

Nationality: Roete Archipelago

Role: spin-off main cast

Trivia: Zanas and Benio play out as Hano’s main rivals in Blood of the Johden (BotJ). But because of the secrecy kept around his actual role in the plot and its apparent difficulty causing Zanas to have no choice but to cast himself, there has been much speculation that it may contain major spoilers. For this reason, Zanas is the most closely followed and discussed character in the BotJ fandom. How much fuel Zanas himself has anonymously thrown to the headcanon fire, is currently still unknown.

Personality: gifted with talents aplenty, Zanas is used to always getting what he wants. But one step ahead of everyone else is also a very lonely place to be.

And now on to the fun facts.

Fun Fact #1

Zanas’s surname Tyetel is also used in the drama as his Johden battlename. As the story goes, young Zanas requested his first rifle from his father in order to “shoot down a star to take a better look at it”, thus earning himself the nickname of “star hunter”. Gossip among the set’s staff has it that this episode was inspired by Zanas’s real experience: as a child, having heard the saying “aim for the stars”, Zanas took it quite literally. Skeptical fans counter that Zanas would have never shared such an embarrassing memory, and the whole thing was made up by the Director as a play on Zanas’s surname.

Fun Fact #2

Around the set and the fandom, Zanas has become widely associated with the renewed popularity of the infamous Drunken Buck Song, to the point it has virtually become his character’s theme song. Of course, this is all much to Zanas’s own displeasure. It so happens that one day during rehearsals, Zanas started humming the tune, startling Frej who found his singing extremely creepy. Neither realized the cameras were rolling, but the Director decided to keep the scene, thinking it added to the character’s edginess.

Trivia: Despite having a catchy beat, the Drunken Buck Song is actually quite a sad song relaying Oren Lyon’s dying speech during the aftermath of his disastrous 4th month Campaign. The original lyrics are in elfarden, a language which nowadays hardly anybody except elfar can speak, so while the tune was maintained, every region made up new lyrics for it in their dialect. It’s said an elfar heard it sung in a tavern and, upon recognizing the melody but unable to understand the jumbled text, commented that the singer sounded “as drunk as a buck”, thus originating the song’s name. Johden delivered its own variation, probably one of the most terrible ones as the lyrics are supposed to be in elfen and not johdenden. The Johden use a very messy form of common that only vaguely resembles that spoken across the rest of the Empire, so what made Zanas’s singing so weird was that he didn’t actually understand the lyrics and was just imitating the sounds, randomly using the most similar johdenden words as they came to mind. To this day, he actually believes the song is about a dude who asked out his date for a fish-based dinner but got rejected.

Fun Fact #3

To the eyes of attentive fans, Zanas’s everyday outfit bears a striking resemblance with the costume he wore during the Light Festival episode. In the drama, the costume was supposed to have been lent to him by Benio for the festival, but in truth, they were Zanas’s real clothes. Right before the shooting, the costume that had been prepared for him was ruined in an accident, so Zanas suggested they just shoot with whatever he was wearing. While some critics were quick to comment on the anachronistic discrepancies of this outfit, it was a huge hit among the fans and marked the start of Zanas’s overnight popularity spike. He was nicknamed “Prince” and there were heated speculations he would turn out to be a long-lost royal heir by the drama’s end. Amidst tears of frustration and unpaid overtime, the dressmakers remade all Zanas’s costumes to match his character’s newfound sense of fashion.

Supporting cast coming soon, so stay tuned!