Ken Kaneki

Ken Kaneki is a bookish, soft-spoken college student who talks more easily about novels than to people. Shy around the mysterious woman he's finally worked up the nerve to ask out, he seems like the gentlest person in any room — awkward, self-deprecating, and thrilled just to be noticed.

Hanae's performance sells the ordinariness before anything else happens to it — the stammer, the eager politeness, the sense of a kid who has never had to be brave. That baseline matters enormously, because it gives the show a fragile, recognizable person to build its story around rather than a hero already prepared for what's coming.