Rei, in a way is similar to her half sister Rie, minus the impulsive need to draw attention to herself. She loves listening to music, singing and dancing. Although, she’s much better at singing more than dancing while dressing up for the occasion. She doesn’t dress up in revealing outfits but she is very fond of cosplaying, mostly due to her interesting in manga, anime, and video games. She even enjoys playing the popular card game called ‘Duel Monsters’, being quite good at it in fact. Another thing she’s good at is cooking. While she may not be some grand master chef, she can whip up a good tasting meal or two with ease. In her free time, when she’s not playing video games, she loves watching movies. Romance and chick flicks due to her admiration and crush on one of her classmates named, Hayate Nishikawa. Generally, she’s easy to make friends with and is very close to her parents, younger sister and cousin Kaku Sakuma.
Rei while at first appears like a kind and gentle person, but in reality, if you so much as badmouth her, her family or any one she’s close to, she will not hesitate to violently give someone a tongue lashing when they deserve it. However, this causes her to often get into trouble with her parents in which she ends up being grounded a lot. Especially if she gets into a fight with someone. She gets irritated when another girl tries to compete with her for Hayate’s affections. This is because Rei feels that there is no point in having a crush if she has to get into a girl fight with another female over a guy. She also feels estranged because of her lack of a relationship with her half sister, thus she constantly tries to come up with ideas of some things that the both of them could do together whenever she comes face to face with her.
Appearance[]
Rei is 5’3” with long black hair that stops at the middle of her back and brown eyes (sometimes appearing gold in different shades of light). As for her attire, she is usually seen wearing a light blue sleeveless shirt with dark blue and white sleeveless jacket, black shorts that stop below the thighs, black knee high stockings and brown boots that stop a few inches below the knee. She also wears a brought belt that is looped through her pants with a carrying case attached on the side which is where she keeps her duel monsters cards. She does not wear a girl’s uniform when attending Tsukuba, wearing her other outfit the most instead. Rei does occasionally cosplay when she has the money, but other than that, she wears casual and comfortable clothing. However, there have been some occasions where she has been mistaken as a boy, mostly because of her hair that makes her look like one from the back.
History[]
Rei Flannigan is the daughter of an American man named Terrance Flannigan and a Japanese woman named Yumiko Flannigan, previously known as Yumiko Saotome. Rei was born as the product of an affair when her half sister Rie Saotome was only two years old. Because of that, his caused a gap of mistrust between Yumiko and Rhinjiro because he’d thought the child was his, especially when she tried to pass it off as his. But it didn’t work and Yumiko handed the child off to her father whom she grew up with for the past five years in America, the state of Florida to be more precise while also being visited by her mother whom she adored seeing very much, not at the time realizing why she couldn’t stay with them longer than just a day or two. It wasn’t until Rei was ten when Yumiko finally came to Florida in Tallahassee to live with them. This is because she’d divorced her lawyer husband to be with Terrance and at the same time, she was also pregnant again with his child which turned out to be another girl they’d named Rina.
Rei holds no hard feelings towards her mother for how she came about and what she did which caused a decent family to fall to pieces. Though she longed to know what her mother’s other family was like, her parents did their best to try and get her mind off of it by keeping her focused on her studies in school, in which she attended Sable Palm Elementary. Her school life there was fairly easy but the school had been known for the constant trouble some of its students get into. Mainly fighting. And she was part of it. Anytime someone tried to badmouth her or tell her to do something that she didn’t want to do, she’d instantly run off at the mouth, giving them a tongue lashing out of this world. And if that didn’t work, then she would fight them if they threw the first punch at her. Which had been quite often this would happen, causing her to be repeatedly sent to the principal’s office for her behavior. Like always, she’d explain to the principal and her parents that she was only standing up for herself and her friends that were being bullied.
Yes, Rei cannot stand bullies. More so than she can stand girls who use stupid tricks to get a boys attention and would drag her into the middle of it if she too had a crush on one of the guys caught in the middle. Only eight at the time when she’d had her first crush which was on a fifth grader and it didn’t even last all that long. Reaching the age of ten two years later is when she’d gotten into the card game craze called ‘Duel Monsters’, all the kids at school playing the game. So much that she’d even begged her parents to let her have some cards of her own. In the beginning, she sucked very badly at the game. She used her idol, a famous Japanese duelist named Hayate Nishikawa for inspiration. Eventually, she’d gotten better when she actually started winning her duels against her friends, instead of losing when she first started playing the game. She was even allowed to participate in local card game tournaments that were hosted across the world whenever her parents could afford to send her, so long as one of them went with her and the other stayed home to take care of Rina.
Out of all the tournaments she’d partaken in, she won at least four of them, earning herself a trophy and checks with money amounts written on them with the amounts being between the hundreds and thousands. By age eleven, she’d took it upon herself to use some of her prize money to enroll herself into a dueling prep school as a transfer student, where her idol attended without her parents knowledge. She’d scored perfectly on the entrance exam but because she was new, she had to start from the bottom and would move up a few days later. Of course, she didn’t as herself, but disguised as a boy in which, she bunked with three other boys because of the extra space they had in their room. She’d done this out of the intention to get closer to Hayate, whom she saw a more than just an idol, but she’d fallen in love with him. Going as far as sneaking around his dorm room, only to be caught by her dorm mate, Kenta, who discovers her secret and pursues her on the matter late at night after the confrontation. The two duel, and although Rei is defeated, she finally has the opportunity to meet with Hayate. He is flattered by her affections, but turns her down, telling her to go home.
Being a fifth-grade elementary student she is forced to leave the school on the technicality that she is too young to stay. Even though she had to depart, her feelings for Hayate remained the same, however, when she got home, her parents were outraged that she’d left without no noticed as to where she’d gone. Thus, she’d been grounded but during that, time she began to teach her little sister how to play the game while also being made sure that she attended school everyday like she was supposed to. A year and a half passed and although Rei was old enough to re-attend the prep school she’d snuck into, she’d decided against it. This was because Hayate had decided to finish his education at a regular school in Tokyo, Japan, which is also where her half sister lives. Rei, at the time being a first year junior high student that was attending sixth grade at Belle Vue Middle school.
Yumiko was dead-set against sending her daughter to Japan, the reason being that she didn’t want to have to cross paths with her ex-husband after their uneventful break up. This prompted Rei to suggest that she should be put in the care of any other family there that she wasn’t trying to avoid, which was still a bad idea but it’d been better than nothing. So, if she was going to attend school in Japan, she was placed under the care of her ex-husband’s brother and law, Raihito Sakuma, Rhinjiro’s half brother (whom came to be when their mother remarried but was not the product of an affair) who works in the business of architecture while having three children of his own which were also girls. He’d had a son but he’d died during childbirth. Kaku Sakuma is among one of his children that’s been a well known teen model since she was the early age of five (the two of them are cousins). Rei easily got along with the girl, despite their father’s having different careers (Terrance’s being construction).
Both girls were of the same age (ages twelve) and shared some similar interests but they were still two very different people. Rei wasn’t into modeling but she thought it was very cool. No, her interests lie into the popular craze of anime and manga that was sweeping the nation but of course any anime brought over was dubbed for children audiences, removing any sort of violence, profanity, nudity, sexual references and innuendos, etc. from the dialog and series itself. Leaving what the girl considered to be crap for babies who can’t handle things. Rei even enjoys playing video games and enjoyed cosplaying once she moved to Japan. However, since Kaku was born and raised in Okinawa, that is where she lived anytime she came back in town from one of her many modeling gigs. Because of that, she needed a tutor to help her catch up in the school she attended which is Tsukuba Academy, the very same school that Hayate Nishikawa was attending. So, Rei out of the kindness of her heart helps her cousin catch up in school while also attending Tsukuba, but not wearing the required girls’ uniform, feeling that it is way too feminine and gives perverted guys an excuse to look up under her skirt.
She stays in Kaku’s dorm room since she’s rarely ever in it and Raihito pays for her tuition as well as room and board. He didn’t mind doing it as he couldn’t bring himself to hate his former sister in law. Rei, for the past two years, have managed to make some new friends while also becoming friends with Hayate but anytime the two of them are together, there is an air of awkwardness between them because of her having outwardly admitting her feelings to him a little over three years ago (she is fourteen now). Needless to say, he was surprised to see her at his school, hoping that she didn’t sneak off this time from her home in Florida. But she addressed that issue, telling him that she hadn’t and was staying with her cousin who also attended school there. Rei still duels occasionally but the game isn’t as popular in Tokyo as it is in other places so it makes finding an opponent hard so she mostly duels against Hayate out of fun, despite knowing that she won’t win. Kindly, she even fixes him snacks for the two of them to eat on when they’re together and it’s usually muffins, sweet rice cakes, among other things.
Much recently, since Kaku hasn’t had any recent modeling gigs as of late, she mostly spends her time if not on the Tsukuba campus or around the town, she goes and to harass her cousin Rie and her friend Airi whose boyfriend she is in love with. Kaku suggested to Rei that this may be her chance to finally get to know her half sister if she still wanted to. The idea is very tempting. Like Rina and Kaku, Rei wants to also be close to Rie if the girl would let her. She has no doubt in her mind that Rie probably hates her mother and wants nothing to do with the family she had that’d caused her own parents to break up. Though Rei hopes her sister can look past that and allow them to become close. In the meantime, until she gathers up the courage to confront Rie, her time is spent at Tsukuba with her new friends and crush that she hopes will someday fall in love with her. It’s because of Hayate that she enjoys watching romantic movies and other such chick flicks of how two people fall in love and end up together in the end. Even going as far as downloading some of the songs used in the movies she watches only to sing along and dance to them for fun.
Plot[]
Rei came to Tokyo in order to get to know her older half sister Rie Saotome but due to her cousin Kaku talking about how much Rie wants nothing to do with her family and makes it a point to not be a part of anything that they're involved in, she thought it'd be a bad idea to reveal that she is her sister to the other girl out of fear of being mistreated. She wants so much for her family to put aside the things that happened in the past and focus on the future but doesn't seem like that would be happening anytime soon. So she focused all of her energy on trying to fit into life as a Tsukuba Academy student, not only that, she wanted to attend this school specifically because her crush Hayate Nishikawa attended it and was to be graduating pretty soon.
She didn't get to see him all that much so she'd thought of a way for them to spend more time together and that's when she'd realized that the game of Duel Monsters was not widely popular in Tokyo so she decided to make a Duel Monsters Club for students at Tsukuba who was aware of the game and played it. She of course is the President of this Club and she'd made Hayate the Vice President and he would be the one to choose who takes over his position when he graduates. Meaning he would have to duel the person he deems most worthy for such a position. So far, things seemed to be going great and she was able to make friends with students like Asuka Tenjoin and her friends Dallas Knight and Tracey Peterson.
She later became friends with guys like Judai Yuki, Maxwell Blackwell and many more duelists that surprisingly attended the school. It wasn't until later that her sister Rina Flannigan had decided to come on down to Tokyo for a visit and she convinced her to attend school there but was not aware that Rina had originally planned to attend either T-A Private Girls Academy or Juuban Municipal Academy. She didn't find this out until much later when her day was starting out perfectly fine as her and Asuka have music class during the same period and she'd asked of her to go shopping with her for the Duel Monsters Club Halloween Party. It was then Asuka was called away by three other girls who did not like Rei for unknown reasons but seemed to pick her out of the bunch of Asuka's friends, telling her that she should not hang around her and that she was doing all the things she does just to be popular and to be the center of attention.
Rei became extremely angry and took her frustrations out on her desk which she showed an amazing amount of strength enough to cause it to break but in the process she'd injured her hands. For half the day she ignored it and began to vent to herself until she saw her sister walking across the courtyard, trying to call out to her but Rina didn't hear her due to having her headphones on. Then two girls in the courtyard who apparently knew the Flannigan sisters also began saying the same things that the three girls said to Asuka which depressed Rei even more. Asuka managed to later find Rei in the girls bathroom washing her hands to clean them so the cuts on them wouldn't get infected and after a much needed pep talk from Asuka who thought of Rei as a good person who deserved to have friends just like everyone else and could care less about her background history, Rei was able to smile again and go find her sister to make sure that she was not having the same difficulties with people like she was.
She caught up with them and the two headed to the Tokyo Central Park to talk where she discovers that Rina wanted to go to another school and not Tsukuba. She didn't tell Rei before because she thought she'd get upset but Rei assured her that she had the right to choose wherever she wanted to go to school despite what she thinks. So Rina agrees to stay at Tsukuba for awhile but transfer to another school a little later. Both girls are happy but then Rina finds a youma seed that is 'sleeping' and Rei tells her to put the strange looking rock down but unfortunately the dormant seed awakens and attacks Rina. Rei tries to help but gets caught up in it and ended up being subdued by the overwhelming power of the seed and her energy was drained in the process. Though she was fine in the end as she and Rina awakened unharmed as they were saved with the help of Sailor Senshi's Jupiter, Orin, and Moon along with the Constellation Knights.
Relationships[]
Hayate Nishikawa[]
Rei's one and only love interest has been Hayate Nishikawa and she literally will have a one track mind sometimes and forget the things she's supposed to do whenever he appears. Rei doesn't like guys like Max who have to make everything out to be a competition and therefore, like Asuka Tenjoin, she treats him more like an acquaintance than a friend but probably a little bit nicer than Asuka though. From time to time, she does think of Max as an idiot because he doesn't know when to drop something when told to shut up or thinks others are showing off when they're not. Example of that is when she wanted to see Asuka's fiancee Orin Fujin duel first hand and Max acted unimpressed by the fact that he used brand new cards that haven't been widely released yet and they're known as 'Synchro Monsters'. When Orin won the duel she immediately made him the club's secretary since that was the only position in the club that had not been filled yet and Rei wasn't going to hand that over to just anybody even though Max offered at one point but she answered him with a 'Hell to the no'.
Maxwell Blackwell
In an AU plot version, there may have been a moment where Rei might have liked Max but she was more confused on what and who she wanted because she was starting a new year with trying to grow up and try and get over her feelings for Hayate after much pressure from Max and a few others. The confusion was caused when Max had asked Rei would he go out with her but she could not give him a full answer. Mainly because while she still had some feelings for Hayate, she was not about to be Max's rebound after just getting out of a relationship with ex-girlfriend May. As a result of much persistent from him, she'd ended up being the target of an evil plot, being granted what is known as a 'Dark Pactio' an evil version of a regular Pactio and targeted Max, Asuka and her brother Fubuki, turning him evil. It is a possibility that this will not be used into any future plots. There is an off chance Rei might become evil but not because of love or because of Max.
Rei Gallery
Rei Flannigan's Deck Lists[]
THE POWER OF LOVE DECK[]
| Monsters | Spells | Traps |
|---|---|---|
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|Win: 0||Loss: 0||Draw: 0|
SERENE SILENCE DECK[]
| Monsters | Spells | Traps |
|---|---|---|
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|Win: 1||Loss: 0||Draw: 0|
Trivia[]
- Rei was a product of an affair between her father and Rie Saotome's father.
- She has a younger sister named 'Rina Flannigan'.
- Rei speaks using old nineties lingo from time to time where she will say things like 'As if', 'Slammin', 'A'ight', and 'Chillin' considering that she was born as well as raised in America. Though she does speak Japanese, she instead of referring to herself using 'Atashi' the female version of 'I', she addresses herself using the male version which is 'Boku'. Since she hasn't been in Tokyo for very long, the only honorific she uses is '-kun' and that's only when she is speaking to Hayate.
- Kaku Sakuma is her cousin.
- Rei's favorite pastime is dueling.
- She has a flip mouth on her when necessary.
- She hates competing for Hayate's affections. If it is not meant to be she can accept that. But she does find it annoying that other girls throw themselves at him.
- Rie Saotome is her half sister.
- She and Rie have a few things in common.
- It is believed that her mother named her 'Rei' after her first daughter but spelled it with an 'ei' instead of an 'ie'.
- Her nationality is Japanese American.
- Rei will probably still have a crush on Hayate Nishikawa for a while but eventually she will fall in love with someone else in the events that Hayate doesn't make some sort of move in stating whether or not if he returns her feelings or not.
- While Rei is disappointed that Rina doesn't want to stay at Tsukuba and graduate, she's happy just to have her sister there in Tokyo and is satisfied with that.
- Rei will probably make a pactio eventually once she realizes that there are strange things happening around Tsukuba Academy but at this point it is unknown that if she does, who she will make that pactio with and if it will be a good or evil one.
- In an AU Plot, Rei originally disliked May whereas in the current plot, she does not. The reason behind her dislike was because May was a hunter and believed she was out to harm her friends who weren't human and not bothering anybody. But now they share the same common thing: they both dislike Max.
- Rei and Rie share similar interests in music, dancing and cosplaying.
- Her character design was based off of Rei Saotome from Yu-Gi-Oh! Gx with major changes such as:
- She followed Hayate Nishikawa to the Duelist Prep School he attended instead of following Zane Truesdale to Duel Academia.
- While she duels Hayate, she does not fall out of love with him like Rei did and fell in love with Judai Yuki whom this version of Rei likes but no more than just a friend. She is probably one of many girls who has not crushed on Judai.
- Rei in Gx as far as it is known is an only child whereas this Rei has two siblings and a cousin which could be considered non-canon.
... Also See[]
- Rina Flannigan
- Kaku Sakuma
- Hayate Nishikawa
- Asuka Tenjoin
- Max Blackwell