Reiji Sakamaki

Reiji Sakamaki (逆巻 レイジ Sakamaki Reiji) is the second eldest son of the Sakamaki household. Reiji and his older brother, Shu, are the sons of Beatrix, second wife of Karlheinz, the Vampire King.

Appearance
Reiji is a tall, slender young man. His hair appears differently in different depictions, but in the original Haunted Dark Bridal depiction it is a dark plum purple which fades lighter towards the ends where the tips around his face and neck are a light blond. It is almost an inch away from being shoulder length at the back, and it is neatly combed. Reiji's eyes are pale magenta. He wears rectangular glasses with silver frames.

Reiji usually dresses smartly even when in casual clothes, which change across the series.

In Haunted Dark Bridal, he wears a lavender vest over a white dress shirt with black trousers and a black belt.

In MORE,BLOOD, he wears a black long leather jacket with a white dress shirt and black trousers.

At the end of DARK FATE, Reiji grows his hair out to emulate his father.

In CHAOS LINEAGE, Reiji wears the clothes of the Scarlet Family which consists of a dark red almost black jacket with large gold buttons, a popped collar red shirt and a string neck tie held together with a black fastener baring an emblem which looks somewhat like a fleur de lis.

His Haunted Dark Bridal school uniform consists of the black school jacket with a buttoned dark red vest over a black dress shirt and red tie. He wears it with along with the black tartan trousers and dress shoes.

In LOST EDEN, his school uniform consists of a military-esque burgundy blazer with a white undershirt and a white cravat. He also has a black belt with black tartan trousers.

According to Cordelia, if he weren't so stiff, Reiji would look just like Karlheinz when she first met him. She says that even his eyes are just like Karl's. This was said in an effort to tease Reiji, since he admires his father and dreams to be "him".

Personality
Reiji has refined manners. Although he might have a polite, sophisticated way of speaking (which the creators describe to be "butler-like"), his words tend to come with a biting edge. He values rules and demands that they are followed by others, no matter how strange they may be. Despite how rigid he may seem, he has a sense of humor. Reiji is portrayed as a no-nonsense character in the anime, yet Reiji's sprites in the games are often grinning. He is viewed as intelligent, yet pessimistic.

Although Reiji is the second son, he takes it upon himself to manage the Sakamaki family as if he were the eldest son. He cleans the house, manages household affairs and funds, and keeps his brothers in line. His role in the family combined with his gentlemanly behavior often causes him to appear more like the eldest instead of his older brother Shu.

Reiji is strict towards himself and others. He is an arrogant man who demands perfection and dislikes submitting to weakness. His personality takes after his mother Beatrix, as he admired her throughout his life as the ideal lady, despite being ignored by her. Reiji orchestrated his mother's assassination in response to years of neglect and bitterness towards his older brother. He wanted her to finally recognize his abilities, and thus killed her so that she would acknowledge him.

In Haunted Dark Bridal, when Reiji realizes that his mother suffered because of Cordelia's behavior, he loses respect for her, and realizes that she was never a perfect woman.

Though Reiji's words are harsh, they shouldn't be taken at face value. Sometimes he says things in order to invoke a reaction that amuses him. He is a sadist like the rest of his brothers, but also has a masochistic side shown in HDB Ending 2. His particular phrase is schadenfreude ("happiness in the misfortune of others").

Along with his passion for experimenting and making drugs and poisons, Reiji loves to collect tea sets and kitchenware. His brothers sometimes use Reiji's interests to coerce him into cooking for them by saying that they'll use the kitchen themselves - his brothers have a penchant for destroying it. Ayato teases Reiji the most and usually blames his pranks on one of the other brothers. Kanato treats Reiji like a butler, and blackmails him with tantrums. Although he could be rough with outsiders, he is often kind (still strict) with most of his brothers.

History
Reiji is the second son of the Sakamaki family. Since his ambitious and stoic mother, Beatrix, wished to usurp Cordelia's station as Karl Heinz's main wife, she focused on her first born son, Shu, and neglected Reiji despite his ambition and achievements. Beatrix would only encourage Reiji to study in order to become a better servant for Shu when he inherits the throne.

While Shu hated the restrictions Beatrix imposed on him, Reiji craved his mother's attention, leading him to burn down an entire human village and kill Shu's human friend, Edgar. Reiji did this in an attempt to impress and aid his mother, who was suffering whenever Shu ran away to the human village. Reiji also wanted to teach Shu about responsibility. Reiji's bitterness towards Beatrix continued to grow when Shu became more withdrawn after the death of Edgar. Eventually, he hired Seiji (the heroine's father), a vampire hunter, to kill Beatrix, thinking that his mother would finally acknowledge him.

Unfortunately, he was left disappointed as he watched Beatrix die feeling at peace and she would finally be free from her own unhappy existence of competition. In addition, she was proud to witness Reiji's full power (for the vampires, killing an "opponent" is considered a mark of becoming an adult, but most of all it is a symbol of ultimate love). Reiji seeks to resurrect Beatrix in an effort to kill and cause her unbearable suffering by his own hands.

Beatrix
Reiji admires his mother, and partially idolizes her as the perfect woman. As a child he sought her affection, although she neglected him in favor of his elder brother. This made Reiji jealous of Shu, particularly noting Shu's disregard for their mother's attention. Reiji also began to view himself as a second-rate person because he was not the eldest child. Beatrix's neglect deprived him from a normal childhood. As she lays dying, she was pleased to know that Reiji had grown up well knowing that he had orchestrated her death and that was a vampire's mark of adulthood. In a flashback of More Blood, Beatrix briefly interacts with Reiji when she finds him studying in the library. She praises him by saying it is good to see he is working hard to become his brother's right -hand man. Reiji replies by telling her that she has just disturbed him, thus making their conversation a little awkward. Beatrix apologizes and makes her leave after encouraging Reiji to keep up with his studying.

Karlheinz
Reiji has always admired his father, although Karl was not present in Reiji's childhood. Reiji always wanted to be acknowledged by his father, and he is the only one among the brothers who doesn't hate Karlheinz.

For Reiji, the greatest compliment is to be compared to his father. Despite the evil his father has done, Reiji accepts Karlheinz's actions as something necessary. In DARK FATE, when Reiji obtains Karlheinz's power and acknowledgement, he begins to imitate his father's speech, and also grows his hair out.

In childhood, Reiji received a gift from his father: a pocketwatch that shows the time left until the end of the world. Reiji said that he could not understand the meaning of that present through most of his entire life.

Shu
Reiji resents Shu as a result of their complicated childhood, and he developed an inferiority complex because of his jealousy. Reiji caused the fire that lead to the death of Shu's first and only friend, Edgar (Yuma). Reiji's nickname for Shu is "Good-for-Nothing" (穀潰し Gokutsubushi). He also calls Shu spineless. Yui remarks that when Reiji uses these names, it seems that he is trying to push Shu to accept responsibility as the eldest son, rather than simply berate him for his lazy behavior.

Yui Komori
At first Reiji only viewed Yui as food. He would frequently discipline her for poor manners and use her as a test subject for some of his poisons, though he always gave her the antidote. His relationship with her does not grow much in the anime, although he went from hurting her to claiming he will make her "feel good" when sucking her blood.

Abilities
Like all vampires, Reiji has inhuman stamina, a more resilient body, can move very quickly and has an enhanced sense of hearing and smell. Being a vampire, he also has inhuman regeneration abilities and healing saliva which over time close up the bite marks on humans after feeding. Vampires are also resistant against all human viruses.

Teleportation
It's shown in the prologue of Diabolik Lovers ~Haunted Dark Bridal~ that Reiji along with this brothers are capable of teleporting between rooms in an instant.

Flying
On the night of a full moon, vampires possess the ability to fly.

Bat Transformation
Although it's never witnessed that Reiji can turn into a bat, in Lunatic Parade it's seen that lower blood vampires can, so it's implied that Reiji also can as a higher ranking pure blood vampire.

Swordsmanship
Reiji is able to spar with fencing swords. As he's shown in Shu's Brute Ending to use a fencing sword and in Reiji's Dark Fate route to be able to use a saber in duelling Karlheinz.

Mind Control
As seen in his Haunted Dark Bridal route, on a full moon, Reiji possesses the ability of mind control when he makes Yui drink a tea she believes to be poisoned.

Sciences
Reiji has an interest in chemistry and creating various drugs and potions. During a flashback in Reiji's More,Blood route he's shown as a child to make a healing cream and learnt how to treat vampires. However this rendered him feared by the others in the castle due to not trusting his experiments. He's also made drugs which can numb nerves, stop motor function, aphrodisiacs and his end goal in Haunted Dark Bridal is to make a resurrection drug to bring his dead mother back to life.

Language
Despite all of the Sakamaki brothers being required to learn Japanese when moving to Japan, Reiji is also fluent in German and the native language of the Demon World.

Other
Since Reiji is a pureblood vampire, he can only die if his head is cut off or the heart is destroyed, however if his body is so severely damaged that it is unable to heal, it may result in a permanent coma or death.

Etymology

 * Reiji's surname Sakamaki means "reverse winding" (逆巻).
 * It can also mean "inverted, reverse, opposite, wicked" (逆) (saka) and "volume, roll, reel, book" (巻) (maki) separately.

Trivia

 * The name Reiji means a few things depending on how it is written but due to it being written in katakana (レイジ) it may imply a more westernised reading, making it more of a play on the English word 'rage' referring to how Reiji is holding in a lot of anger.
 * Some ways that Reiji can be written however can be ( 零児 ) which means 'zero child', which in this case could mean 'forgotten child' as he is neglected through his childhood. It can also be written as ( 零二 ) which means 'zero two', or in this case 'the second born who was forgotten'.
 * Reiji can also be written as ( 怜児 ) which means 'wise child' reffering to how intelligent Reiji is.
 * In More Blood, Reiji is the only brother who tries to kill Ayato in his route.
 * In the games, Shu kills Reiji in multiple endings, while Reiji doesn't kill any of his brothers in any ending.
 * In the Drama CD "Vampire Juice Year End Gift, Reiji is shown to become highly emotional when drunk.
 * In Chaos Lineage, he is the leader of the Scarlet Family.
 * In Lunatic Parade, it's shown Reiji has a fear of ghosts (though doesn't openly admit to it).
 * In the CD Drama "Vampire's School Trip ~Princess Land's Flames~" Reiji states he enjoys rollercoasters, finding them interesting and fun.
 * In a Dark Fate short story, he admitted to not completely hating living with his brothers. In fact he enjoys it a little bit since like he said, if he truly hated it, he would have left the mansion long ago.
 * In the CD Drama "Delicious Pasta and Macaron" Reiji once combined Vongole Bianco and Macaron to make a new dish to appease both Kou and Laito's interests.
 * He's the tallest Sakamaki brother.
 * He is good at chess.
 * He is right-handed.
 * His foot size is 27cm.
 * He can play the piano.
 * He can cook very well.
 * Reiji glasses lens size is 0.5.
 * He is fluent in German.
 * In his song “Toaru Yogensha no, SCHICKSAL” he sings some German words.