Ai Shinozaki
Considered one of the most talented students at Doumori Elementary, Ai Shinozaki is a 6th grader in class 6-5, one year ahead of Nube’s class. A member of the Shinozaki zaibatsu, she’s a beautiful girl who looks older than she really is (tall, slender, and with a big bust that rivals Miki’s and Ritsuko-sensei’s), has mastery of several musical instruments including the violin and piano (in the anime, her episode happens right after she wins a violin contest), as well as fluency of three foreign languages other than Japanese. However, under this perfect exterior, this spectacles-wearing female has many problems of her own.
Ai grows tired of consistently practicing under the pressure of her family in order to succeed, detests being treated as a goddess by others who only think of her as someone who’ll make them look good for being her friends, and also has problems in occasionally shoplifting to get things without paying for them (according to her, she developed this habit to reassure herself that she was a normal person with flaws). It is these problems that get her in problems with the occasional youkai, who illuminate her own problems and end up exposing her to Nube and the right path.
In this case, Ai was possessed by a demon that manifested itself as tell-tale eyes that would appear on her hand and later on her whole body, and didn’t disappear until she openly confessed to Nube and Makoto, until then her only friend, that she was a shoplifter and the reason why she stole things.
While Ai seems to hold a lonely life, she somehow has befriended Makoto and may feel something more for him, though he doesn’t really notice any romantic feelings and would rather use her to sing the theme songs of his favorite sentai shows. Ai’s name is connected to a series of horror films involving another set of children named “Ai and Makoto” (explaining possibly why she has connections towards him).
