Ren Sohma

Ren Sohma is Akito's mother. She appears only in the manga, and is depicted as an elegant but obsessive woman with long black hair similar to Rin Sohma's. According to an author's note, Takaya designed Akito and Ren to resemble each other; Shigure claims that if Akito had been raised as a woman, she would have looked very much like Ren, and Tohru once mistook Ren's voice for Akito's. Ren and Akito are extremely antagonistic towards each other; Shigure notes that she is obsessed with her child and dead husband. Her background and age were deliberately left vague by Takaya. Ren was originally a Sohma household maid who won Akira's heart by being the only one to notice his loneliness and treat him with kindness, instead of as just the head of the household.[63] When she conceived and her child received, as the new god of the zodiac, more attention than herself, and then turned out to be female instead of a proper male heir, she was afraid the baby would replace her in Akira's heart and demanded Akito be raised as a male.[39][63] Before his death, Akira told Akito, but not Ren, that Akito's place in the curse was proof that his and Ren's relationship was special. To feed Akito's fear of being abandoned, Ren continually claims that Akito's bond with the zodiac is fake, rather than the true love Akito claims; to prove her wrong, Akito tried to mold Yuki into a zodiac animal devoted to her (Akito). After Akito began sleeping with Kureno Sohma, some time before the series began,Ren told Shigure to make him jealous and then seduced him to infuriate Akito. When Rin Sohma approaches Ren for information about breaking the curse, Ren lies and promises to tell Rin how if she steals a black box owned by Akito, said to contain Akira's spirit; later, goaded by Shigure,Ren threatens Akito with a knife to get the box, only to learn that it is as empty as her obsession. Ren does not appear after this, though Akito mentions that Ren has rejected her attempts to reconcile after the zodiac curse was broken.