1. Grace (aka. Shade Tail)

Status: shapeshifter

Grace is a shape shifter, one of several created in an attempt to manufacture the perfect assassin. One of her donors was intended to be a naturally strong male, but Dr. Sciuridae, after his daughter Grace Sciuridae died, replaced his DNA with that of the original Grace, resulting in the Grace we know and love.

Grace lives at Tedd's house and is in a relationship with him, but goes to school at Moperville South. She has several "brothers" from Project Lycanthrope: Hedge, Guineas, and Vlad. She considers Dr. Sciuridae her father, and Mr. Guyur her grandfather.

Read about Grace at Shiveapedia

2. Elliot (Elliot Daniel Dunkel)

Status: awakened

Elliot appeared in the first ever El Goonish Shive comic, and might be called EGS's main character. However, he is in a fierce battle for the top spot in story comic appearances with Grace.

Elliot is Tedd's best friend, and attends school at Moperville North with him. He trains Anime Style Martial Arts with Justin under Sensei Greg, and has a movie review show on the Internet together with Susan.

Elliot was originally Nanase's boyfriend, but she broke up with him so he could pursue Sarah after the latter said she loved him (Nanase then hooked up with Ellen, Elliot's female duplicate). However, he since broke up with Sarah and is now attracted to Susan (which may be mutual). Simultaneously, Diane is plotting to make him hers as part of a revenge plot, and Justin also has a long-time crush on him. Hold on, let me draw a chart...

Read about Elliot at Shiveapedia

3. Tedd (Tedd Drew Verres)

Status: dangerous rarity

Everybody's favourite pervert (yes, even Susan's) is another character that has been present right from the beginning. He met Elliot on the playground when the latter defended him against some bullies.

Interactions with his friends and his girlfriend Grace, as well as recent events, have caused him to gain a great deal more self-confidence. He even stopped wearing his glasses all the time.

Tedd attends school at Moperville North.

Read about Tedd at Shiveapedia

4. Sarah (Sarah Brown)

Status: aspiring wizard

Sarah has been around since the early days of El Goonish Shive, but has sadly been granted less screentime than other first-timers Elliot and Tedd. This is probably because Sarah is arguably the most normal of all the EGS characters, earning her the (somewhat undeserved) nickname "Unremarkable Girl" among bunnies. She is a good friend of Susan, and until recently was dating Elliot.

Sarah attends Moperville North, and draws comics that feature Dan, strangely enough.

Read about Sarah at Shiveapedia

5. Nanase (Nanase Kitsune)

Status: meddling teenager

Nanase is Tedd's cousin, and Elliot's former girlfriend. She takes martial arts classes together with Elliot and Justin, and met Susan in Paris where they learned magic, including the skill of using hammers. Nanase is Japanese.

Nanase has a very strict mother, and her father never steps in to help her. Fortunately, her sister Akiko is on her side. She attends school at Moperville South.

Since she is Japanese, her name should actually be written in kanji. My sources suggest this would be 狐七瀬 "Kitsune Nanase" (Japanese write names with the surname before the given name). Kitsune means "fox", and Nanase (when written with those characters) means "seven rapids" (rapids as in a river).

Read about Nanase at Shiveapedia

6. Ellen (Ellen Danielle Dunkel)

Status: meddling teenager

Ellen is Elliot's female duplicate, created by the dewitchery diamond. Although Ellen originally started out as a real duplicate of Elliot, Nioi made Ellen experience a "second life" in an alternate dimension (together with Nioi's own duplicate, Kaoli) in an effort to age her soul to match her body. As a result, Ellen's personality is now quite distinct from Elliot.

Ellen is in a relationship with Nanase, and goes to school at Moperville South.

Read about Ellen at Shiveapedia

7. Susan (Tiffany Susan Pompoms)

Status: feminist

The ever-cynical Susan was raised with a strong distrust of men because her father cheated on her mother leading to a divorce. Because she witnessed her father with another woman and was in fact the one who told her mother about it, she also has some repressed feelings of guilt about the whole thing.

Susan goes to school at Moperville North, where she is a good friend of Sarah, and met Nanase in France, where the two of them learned magic.

Read about Susan at Shiveapedia

8. Justin (Justin Tolkiberry)

Status: alive

Justin is a friend of Elliot, with whom he attends Sensei Greg's Anime Style Martial Arts dojo. Justin attends Moperville South with Nanase, Ellen and Grace, and works at Salty Crackers Comics, a store owned by his uncle.

Justin used to date Melissa, but broke up with her when he discovered he was gay. She unfortunately still thinks it's a phase, and was also responsible for outing Justin.

Read about Justin at Shiveapedia

9. Dan (Dan Shive)

Status: authoring

As the author of the comic, Dan occasionally appears in filler or sketchbook comics to answer questions or inform the reader of delays (or just to engage in wacky hijinks). He also seems to be a character in a comic written by Sarah, thus creating an endless loop between fictional universes that wound up destroying the multiverse (or maybe not).

Read about Dan at Shiveapedia

10. Diane

Status: interested in Elliot

Diane is a student at Moperville South, whose main occupation is attracting boys so they can spend money on her. For this purpose, she hangs out with Lucy and Rhoda.

Read about Diane at Shiveapedia

11. Ashley

Status: dating Elliot

Ashley is a student at Moperville North who is currently dating Elliot.

Read about Ashley at Shiveapedia

12. Mr. Verres (Edward Verres)

Status: demoted

Tedd's father works for the government, and his main job is to cover up those things that the general populace doesn't need to know, such as the existence of aliens.

Read about Mr. Verres at Shiveapedia

13. Amanda

Status: doofus

Amanda is Dr. Germahn's assistant. She's friends and roommates with Lisa.

Read about Amanda at Shiveapedia

14. Noah

Status: alive

Noah is a student at Moperville South and apparently the protégé of Mr. Raven. He is dating Melissa, and he occasionally takes on a superhero disguise to fight dragons and such; normal, everyday high school student stuff.

His first appearance was in during the "not a date at the mall" storyline in EGS:NP, and he made his intro in the main story comics a few months later as "The Child Left Behind", aka. the mysterious cloaked figure, although we didn't get confirmation that was him until years later.

Read about Noah at Shiveapedia

15. Mr. Raven (Adrian Raven)

Status: half-immortal

Mr. Raven is a history teacher at Moperville South, and also a half-immortal who hides his true appearance. He's the son of Pandora and the guardian of Noah.

Read about Mr. Raven at Shiveapedia

16. Sensei Greg

Status: martial arts teacher

Legend has it that after his girlfriend dumped him, Greg watched anime for 168 hours straight. Already a black belt in three disciplines, he was able to decipher the key to accessing the awesome power of a person's "ki", which usually involves participating in difficult, overly complex and fairly ridiculous activities that shouldn't yield such fantastic results and yet somehow do. Greg founded the Anime-style Martial Arts Dojo based on those principles.

He still can't believe they cancelled the "Lucky Bunny Bounty Show".

Read about Sensei Greg at Shiveapedia

17. Charlotte

Status: alive

Read about Charlotte at Shiveapedia

18. Jeremy

Status: not intended by nature

Jeremy is a cat with hedgehog spines: a creature nature never intended. He lives with Tedd. Jeremy likes catnip and is fond of Susan, and if Grace's Jeremy form is any indication, should be pretty powerful himself.

Read about Jeremy at Shiveapedia

19. Hedge

Status: under psychological evaluation

Hedge is one of Grace's "brothers", one of the lycanthropes created in an attempt to create a perfect assasin. He is a shapeshifter whose form is based on a hedgehog. He was created from an Uryuom egg using 25% hedgehog and 75% human DNA, resulting in a "roaisol seyunolu", or lesser chimera.

Read about Hedge at Shiveapedia

20. Mr. Tensaided

Status: role playing

Mr. Tensaided is the owner of the video rental store where Susan works. He is a big fan of table-top RPG's, and as such makes his employees solve "riddles" before giving them their paychecks, and also has a leveling system for clerks.

Read about Mr. Tensaided at Shiveapedia

21. Catalina (Catalina Bobcat)

Status: cat-like

Catalina is a (proud) member of Susan's feminist group, and frequently gets into trouble due to her temper and flamboyant personality.

Read about Catalina at Shiveapedia

22. Lisa

Status: attorney

Lisa is Amanda's roommate, and Dr. Germahn's attorney.

Read about Lisa at Shiveapedia

23. Rhoda

Status: shy

Rhoda is one of the members of Diane's gang at Moperville South, although one does get the impression that she doesn't really belong there. Certainly Lucy was looking at her quite condescendingly, but Diane has shown she cares about Rhoda.

Rhoda had several background and filler appearances as the previously unidentified "shy girl".

Read about Rhoda at Shiveapedia

24. Pandora (Pandora Chaos Raven)

Status: immortal

Pandora, named Chaos by Magus, is actually Mr. Raven's mother.

Read about Pandora at Shiveapedia

25. Tara

Status: griffin

Dame Tara came to our half of the universe to look for her wife, Andrea.

Read about Tara at Shiveapedia

26. Luke

Status: interested in Justin

Luke came to the card game tournament at Justin's comic shop to find out about magic, but may have found love instead.

Read about Luke at Shiveapedia

27. George

Status: possibly gay

Justin's colleague at the comic shop.

Read about George at Shiveapedia

28. Vlad (Vladia)

Status: under psychological evaluation

Vlad is one of Grace's "brothers", one of the lycanthropes created in an attempt to create the perfect assasin. He is the most complex shapeshifter created; although he can vaguely be described as a bat, his DNA sources included several bats, owls, hawks and even leopard DNA, in addition to human and Uryuom, which means Vlad is a "tulougol seyunolu", or "greater chimera", like Grace.

Because of the risk involved in transforming, he has chosen to remain human after being transformed into a human girl by Ellen's V5 beam, and currently goes by the name Vladia. He is in a government institution with Hedge and Guineas, being evaluated for fitness to return to society.

Read about Vlad at Shiveapedia

29. Damien

Status: dead (blew himself up)

Damien was a megalomaniac capable of controlling fire. He was created by a group of people trying to fulfill a prophecy, but he believed himself to be a god. He planned to use Grace to breed additional shapeshifters similar to Grace, Hedge, Guineas and Vlad, the four of whom he held captive.

In the end, Damien would rather destroy himself (in the hopes of taking Grace with him) than accept the truth that he might not be what he thought he was.

Read about Damien at Shiveapedia

30. Guineas

Status: under psychological evaluation

Guineas is one of Grace's "brothers", one of the lycanthropes created in an attempt to create the perfect assassin, and former captive/henchman of Damien. He is a shapeshifter based on 50% human and 50% guinea pig DNA, which means he is "roaisol seyunolu", or lesser chimera.

Read about Guineas at Shiveapedia

31. Melissa

Status: alive

Melissa first appeared annoying the heck out of Justin because as his ex-girlfriend she was convinced being gay was "just a phase" for him. By telling her sister about Justin, she's responsible for the news about his sexual orientation coming out, which Justin has never forgiven her for.

She attends Moperville South, and is currently dating Noah.

Read about Melissa at Shiveapedia

32. Abraham

Status: stoned

Responsible for the original creation of the Dewitchery Diamond, Abraham felt it was his reponsibility to kill all abominations created by it, including Ellen, until Nanase convinced him otherwise.

Read about Abraham at Shiveapedia

33. Goo

Status: dead, killed by Ellen

Originally thought to have been one of Tedd's chemistry projects brought to life, the Goo turned out to be a demon nucleus send by Lord Tedd to kill the Tedd of this dimension. Beta Tedd warned Grace of this fact, as well as alerting the crew to the existence of Lord Tedd.

Read about Goo at Shiveapedia

34. Little Nase

Status: summon

While this fairy doll looks like Nanase, she is actually linked to Susan's subconscious. She resembles Nanase because she was created by Susan summoning one of Nanase's inactive fairy dolls.

Read about Little Nase at Shiveapedia

35. Demonic Duck

Status: back from strike

Whenever people need a distraction, the Demonic Duck is around to help! Except when he is on strike, of course. Besides being used for distractions in the story, Dan has also used the duck to distract his readers when he was lagging behind with the updates.

Read about Demonic Duck at Shiveapedia

36. Larry

Status: playing card games

Larry and Rich were two of the contestants in the card game tournament at Justin's comic shop.

37. Carol (Carol Brown)

Status: alive

Sarah's sister is a reporter interested in the paranormal. She's also a trained parachute jumper.

Read about Carol at Shiveapedia

38. Dex

Status: used by Pandora

Dex was used by Pandora to summon several fire summons and a Taurcanis Draco which attacked our main characters. By himself, he's actually quite harmless and has the ability to summan a fairy.

Read about Dex at Shiveapedia

39. Brownie

Status: asleep

The Dunkel's probably narcoleptic cat is primarily known for falling asleep, and is generally un-phased by strange events such as Elliot creating a female duplicate of himself.

Read about Brownie at Shiveapedia

40. William

Status: alien

Getochol quyuch Gillian, chyuc Uryuom semgusgoja cho tebolmnomg hel fork quyuch nejyuhiot choyul glumchelnugyem jobyuso ceh choi searja reep nelo ryupo fanumc. Chyuc vleatfg chon yum semgusg quyuch Mr. Verres umja chleatf fyun, Tedd, quoyuseh yuc fequ cho ruggol teg cho glumchelnugyem tam.

Need some help reading this?

Read about William at Shiveapedia

41. Minion

Status: alien

Minion is Dan's faithful assistant. Although he would prefer to be referred to as an administrative assistant, it turns out minions get paid more.

Read about Minion at Shiveapedia

42. Gillian

Status: alien

Getochol quyuch William, chyuc Uryuom semgusgoja cho tebolmnomg hel fork quyuch nejyuhiot choyul glumchelnugyem jobyuso ceh choi searja reep nelo ryupo fanumc. Chyuc vleatfg chon yum semgusg quyuch Mr. Verres umja chleatf fyun, Tedd, quoyuseh yuc fequ cho ruggol teg cho glumchelnugyem tam.

Need some help reading this?

Read about Gillian at Shiveapedia

43. Fire summon

Status: unsummoned

This was one of the beings summoned by Dex under the influence of Pandora. First seen (and defeated) by Justin, more of these guys showed up later alongside the Taurcanis Draco.

44. Magus

Status: mysterious

Magus, also known as the Mastermind, is a mysterious shadowy figure from an unknown other dimension who is determined to be reborn, and somehow having Ellen transform Elliot in a wave of emotion is crucial to this plan. Unfortunately Helena and Demetrius keep getting in the way.

Read about Magus at Shiveapedia

45. Tengu ("Not-Tengu")

Status: defeated

Read about Tengu at Shiveapedia

46. Taurcanis Draco

Status: unsummoned

The Taurcanis Draco was a creature summoned by Dex when he was under the influence of Pandora.

47. Nioi

Status: in the alpha dimension

One of the underlings of Lord Tedd, Nioi came to our universe during Painted Black to find out if Dr. Sciuridae was alive here. In the process, she gave Ellen the infamous "nose-beep" which provided her with a past for her newly-born soul so that its age would match that of her body, in the form of a "second life" that Ellen shared with Kaoli, Nioi's duplicate.

Random note: her name means "scent" in Japanese, which is written as 匂い.

Read about Nioi at Shiveapedia

48. Agent Cranium

Status: alive

Agent Cranium works for the government together with Agent Wolf and Mr. Verres.

Read about Agent Cranium at Shiveapedia

49. Rich

Status: playing card games

Larry and Rich were two of the contestants in the card game tournament at Justin's comic shop.

50. Dr. Sciuridae

Status: alive

Father of the original Grace, Dr. Sciuridae was so distraught after she died that he added her DNA to the mix when the shady organization he was working for was creating their fourth lycanthrope, which resulted in the creation of the Grace we all know and love.

Read about Dr. Sciuridae at Shiveapedia