Lily Hoshikawa

Lily Hoshikawa (星川 リリィ, Hoshikawa Ririi) was a breakout star in a long-running drama show and a famous actress who starred in multiple primetime shows of multiple networks. When she was born, she was named Masao Go (豪 正雄, Gō Masao) who died of a sudden heart attack stemming from a combination of severe exhaustion and the mental shock from growing a facial hair. She's also a member of the idol group Franchouchou.

She is titled as the Legendary Child Actress Prodigy (伝説の天才子役 Densetsu no Tensai Koyaku).

Appearance
As a human, Lily has two bright blue pigtails with dark blue bows. She also has one large orange star and other stars in the middle of her head. She has orange-yellow eyes and pale skin. She wears a green school uniform with a dark blue bow and a white skirt. Her height is average for a 12-year-old, but she is much shorter than the rest of Franchouchou. On her feet, Lily wears brown shoes with white socks.

As a zombie, Lily has her heart sticking outside of her body. Like the other zombies, she has grayish-blue skin and red eyes.

In Episode 8, Lily has a strong resemblance to her late mother.

Personality
Lily is often seen with a smile. She is shown to be quite playful due to her young age. She has also demonstrated some professionalism, which she learned from her experiences before her death.

Lily does not like nicknames. She forcefully emphasizes her name when being called "squirt" or any reference to her former name by Saki Nikaidō; especially early on in their relationship. When it comes to things she finds lame and/or ugly, she becomes very honest and blunt about it.

character concept
They said he was aware of the "childish" aspects of Lily's design, such as the width of her shoulders. They liked to design Lily's clothes, since she seems to be very important to the tenderness of the show, "Pappy's design may seem like a joke, but it becomes more meaningful when you understand it in the context of the script."

Early Life
Lily's mother passed away when she was young and she lived a peaceful life with her father Takeo Go. She later took up acting roles with Takeo as her manager. She became renowned for her cute persona, appearing in many series and shows. Sometime between Lily's birth and before taking up acting she began identifying as a girl. Her birth name was "Masao Go."

Over the course of her acting career, Lily was overworked numerous amount of times by Takeo, who had now become too attached in career management and neglected Lily's feelings. As his ignorance continued, their relationship soon rifted apart as Lily began to shut herself away from Takeo for ignoring her. She later expressed worry she was going to be an adult. While keeping herself away, she looked into a mirror and --- to her shock --- sees facial hair growing on her. The combined mental shock and exhaustion caused Lily to have a heart attack and died as a result. When Takeo found her body, he was riddled with grief as he became alone.

Sometime in the future, Lily's body was found by Kotaro Tatsumi and revived her as a zombie to become part of his zombie idol project. Her zombification made her into an eternally young girl and Kotaro used her stage name to cover her real identity. From this point onward, she uses Lily Hoshikawa as her preferred name.

Episode 1
After their successful death metal performance in a death metal festival, all of the zombie girls regain their senses, she wakes up along with Ai Mizuno and Junko Konno but was frightened upon seeing Tae Yamada's primal nature.

Episode 2
With Lily's senses restored, she can now think and act freely like a normal human. However, she lounges back doing nothing like the rest of the girls, while Sakura Minamoto remains proactive with Kōtarō Tatsumi. Nevertheless, when the girls are later given a performance opportunity at the Saga Castle, they try to follow Kōtarō's performance instructions, even though Tae Yamada almost compromises the all of girls' human disguises. As Sakura tries to keep everything under control, Saki pushes Sakura aside and mocks everyone in the audience with Tae's head. Sakura eventually snaps and knocks Tae's head away, then verbally fights Saki in a rap battle. Lily and Yūgiri join alongside the fight as background rappers to appeal to everyone in the audience and intuitively make the performance a success.

Episode 3
Before training to meet with Kōtarō Tatsumi's expectations, Lily suggested that they should elect a leader among them, where Saki Nikaidō stands up to elect herself as the leader. Secondly, Lily says they should come up with a new group name as she feels that Kōtarō's provided ones are too bland. She insists on a cute name, but the rest don't feel comfortable with that. Just then, Tae Yamada sneezes and interrupts everyone. The sneeze inspires Lily and she comes up with an original name: "Franchouchou." Everyone agrees with her idea and so they've decided to be called Franchouchou.

Episode 8
As Franchouchou enjoy a string of new gigs and events, a large man named Takeo Gō comes to one of their events after noticing something familiar about child star named Lily Hoshikawa. Lily then explains to Sakura Minamoto that the man was her father, further revealing that she was a boy named Masao Go. She died from the shock of growing facial hair, made worse by many months of overwork. Realizing how much Takeo cared for Lily, Franchouchou invites him to a concert where Lily performs a special song to give him a proper goodbye.

Etymology

 * The name Lily is a feminine given name directly derived from the flower, lily.
 * Lillies are often used to represent purity, passion and rebirth.
 * Lily's former name Masao means "right, proper" (正) (masa) and "hero, manly" (雄) (o), which literally means "righteous man".
 * Lily's surname Hoshikawa means "star" (星) (hoshi) and "river, stream" (川) (kawa), which a possible homage to the stars she has in her hair and her attire (idol ribbon and in a flashback in Episode 8).

Trivia

 * Lily was only 12 years old when she died in 2011.
 * Lily died one month after her twelfth birthday.


 * Lily is the only one out of the zombie girls with an exposed organ. Her exposed and often rapidly beating heart represents her cause of death, a heart attack/cardiac arrest which was caused by mental shock.


 * Lily is the only Zombie not shown with bandages or stitches (likely due to her death not being from an outward injury).
 * Lily is the first (and so far only) official LGBT+ character in the series and the first canonically transgender character in a popular idol franchise.

(Upon seeing Saki's over-enthusiastic reaction to working with a restaurant mascot) : Yeah, that's not cute at all.
 * The Baby of the Bunch: Not only is she the youngest of the zombies in terms of her age at death (twelve years old), but she's also the youngest in terms of date of birth (1999); taking all these into account, this means that, were she still alive, she would've been nineteen as of 2018, which still makes her the youngest overall. In comparison, Ai would've been technically around 26, Sakura 27, Saki 39, and Junko 54; Yugiri would've been long dead (though for statistics' sake, she would've been around 155), while Tae, though her origins remain ambiguous, could be safely considered no younger than 29.
 * Be Careful What You Wish For:
 * Her father was a big TV fan, so she wanted to make him happy from inside the TV. She succeeded, but it came at the cost of their relationship, and the stress was a big contributor to her demise.
 * When Lily was still alive, she desired to never grow up out of fear of developing a male body. She got her wish by dying and becoming a zombie, which means she can't go back to her father.
 * Brutal Honesty: Befitting her age, Lily is prone to saying exactly what's on her mind without thinking it through first, or sometimes just not caring to. For instance, when Kotaro reveals the Franchouchou shirts they're to wear for the Gatalympics, she immediately and cheerfully declares them to be the ugliest shirts she's ever seen.
 * Child Prodigy: She was a highly prolific child actress when she was alive. Despite having no experience before deciding to become an actress, she took to it very quickly and every show she was in became a hit.
 * Cry Cute: The normally happy, cheerful Lily breaks down crying in Sakura's arms as she comes to terms with the realization that her father Takeo truly loved her and was deeply regretful for neglecting her, and that she still loves him in spite of their unfortunate history.
 * Daddy's Girl: When she was alive, Lily was very close to her father who raised her on his own. Since her father loved to watch TV, Lily decided to become an actress in hopes she could make him happy by appearing on TV. Her father was indeed very proud about his daughter's success, but sadly, their relationship became strained when he started paying more attention to her career. After coming back as a zombie and meeting her father again, Lily realizes how deeply he regrets what happened to her and forgives him. While she can't tell him she is his daughter, she writes a song for him expressing how happy she was that he was her father.
 * Death by Despair: She suffered a fatal heart attack from the shock of discovering that she had gained a single facial hair.
 * Do Not Call Me "Paul": For understandable reasons, Lily hates to be called by her birth name Masao.
 * Does Not Like Spam: Her profile states she doesn't like mozuku and hijiki, which are both seaweed foods. Episode 8 suggests this is because she thought she had leftover seaweed on her face before realizing it was hair.
 * Exhausted Eyebags: Had these when not made-up for the camera in the period leading up to her death, signalling she was getting overworked.
 * Faux Horrific: She died of a heart attack upon seeing a single strand of facial hair on her face.
 * Growing Up Sucks: Shortly before her death, Lily was highly troubled as her body began to enter puberty because she never wanted to become an adult and develop a body that would conflict with her gender identity. Now that she's been brought back as a zombie, she's happy that she can stay a child forever.
 * Heart Beats out of Chest: More directly than the usual example, as her cartoon-shaped heart is totally exposed from her chest and balloons to improbable sizes when she's scared. Episode 7 confirms that, while the cartoony appearance is there for comedic effect, it actually  is  her real heart bursting from her chest.
 * Heroic RRoD: While she did die of a heart attack after discovering an unwanted burst of male puberty, it also didn't help that the stress from her acting career had been taking its toll on her very young body, with her father/manager Takeo not noticing her health turning for the worse until it was too late.
 * Hidden Depths:
 * One of the interests listed on the site is in heavy machinery magazines, which she'll often be seen reading in the background. The ending credits of Episode 8 also reveal a flashback of Lily and her father sitting in a power shovel together.
 * In Episode 7, Lily argues it's better that they do Saga Rock even if Junko doesn't return, explaining the event is their big chance, and even if they pass on it for Junko, Lily knows that won't make her come back. Yugiri lampshades how mature the reasoning is for Lily.
 * In Episode 10, she adeptly constructs a bonfire in the mountains, presumably using the old-fashioned "two sticks together" method. She says she learned to do it for a role she once played.
 * Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: In Episode 8, a really large man shows up and seems a bit too interested in Lily. She later explains that the man was actually her real father, and while she was still alive he spent a lot of time with her. Though she's already the smallest of the bunch, she's extremely tiny when standing next to him. A photo reveals she got that from her mother, who only came up to her absurdly large husband's waist.
 * Image Song: Lily has one in Episode 8, known as "To My Dearest". She sings this song to her father, as a way of thanking him for being part of her life, through all the good and bad parts. It is performed in the vein of a slow, ballad-like, Broadway musical number.
 * Insult of Endearment: Saki calls her "Chinchiku" (translated as "Shrimpy"), which is initially derisive and annoys Lily, but eventually becomes just a playful nickname. She even accidentally calls her that during a performance, but Lily doesn't budge.
 * Intergenerational Friendship: With Yugiri, who's technically the oldest member of the crew, and the one furthest from her in original time period.
 * Ironic Name: Lily is a cute and very feminine girl. Her birth name is Masao Go, the kanji for which literally translate to "Righteous Man Grand", which Saki laughs herself sick at for being so cartoonishly manly. She left that name behind for a reason.
 * The Last Straw: Her panic over growing facial hair, added with the stress of being overworked by her father, was what led to her death.
 * Little Miss Snarker: Lily can be  very  dry, usually when somebody is being a genkier girl then she is.
 * Meaningful Rename: "Lily Hoshikawa" is not her birth name; that would be Masao Go, which she dropped due to being a transgender girl.
 * Mega Twintails: She wears two pigtails that are larger than her head.
 * Missing Mom: Lily's mother died well before she went into acting, leaving her and her father.
 * Replacement Goldfish: She apparently becomes a downplayed positive version of this for her father, who's under the impression "Number 6" is an Identical Stranger who happens to look like Lily. Her 'farewell' song to him helps him find catharsis over her death, and she says that she hopes she can make him smile when he sees her on TV. Sakura subsequently notes that he's started coming to Franchouchou's shows, suggesting he's following her career.
 * The Reveal: Episode 8 reveals she's a transgender girl, born Masao Go. She appears to have identified as a girl from a very young age, certainly before she went into acting, if her flashback's anything to go by.
 * Stage Name: "Lily Hoshikawa" seems to have originated as one; a flashback in episode 8 shows her being called by that name during a TV interview, but it's later revealed that it's not her birth name and she was originally called Masao Go, which she changed due to being a transgender girl.
 * Strong Family Resemblance: Lily states she looks more like her mother, and flashbacks reveal that they look nearly identical.
 * Technicolor Eyes: Golden eyes when alive or in makeup.
 * That Man Is Dead: Once she was revived as a zombie, there was no longer anything in the way of her identifying as a girl (since zombies don't age), so she renounced her birth name "Masao Go" for good and also dropped her Saga accent for a "cuter" way of speaking.
 * Third-Person Person: Lily has a tendency to refer to herself by the third person due to her desire to be cute.
 * Token Mini-Moe: She's the smallest girl of Franchouchou and her personality is quite childish too, having died at the tender age of 12.
 * Trans Tribulations: Lily is a young transgender girl which caused her to experience gender dysphoria when she started growing body hair. Her father tried to calm her down by telling her it was natural and she had to accept she was growing up. Unfortunately, this only made Lily more frustrated because she was afraid she would grow up to look like her father. This is, in fact, the cause of her early death; Lily was so horrified when she grew her first facial hair that she died from the shock.
 * Transgender: Originally named Masao Go and assigned male at birth, Lily identified as a girl from a very young age, but her growing body defied that wish and the shock of growing facial hair—on top of already being overworked and having to deal with a father/manager who cared more for her as an actress than as a daughter—resulted in her heart finally giving out.
 * The Ugly Guy's Hot Daughter: Cute daughter in this case, but her dad still isn't that much of a looker compared to her.
 * Undead Child: She's the youngest of the zombies in terms of when she died.
 * Undignified Death: Saki is quick to make fun of how she died due to having a heart attack at seeing her first facial hair.
 * When You Coming Home, Dad?: Her father was her manager, and he ended up more interested in her career than in spending time with her.
 * You Gotta Have Blue Hair: She has teal hair, like her mom.