Reisuke Houjou

Reisuke Houjou (豊穣 礼佑, Hōjō Reisuke) is the Fifth diary owner and the youngest of the twelve Diary Holders. Ostensibly appearing as a harmless five-year-old, Reisuke is a master strategist and forces Yukiteru Amano and Yuno Gasai into a deadly chase in Yuki's own house. He is often accompanied with a pair of hand puppets, and owns the "Hyper Vision Diary".

Appareance And Personality
Reisuke is a child, with ginger hair and green eyes.

To the unsuspecting eye, Reisuke appears to be just an ordinary child - innocent, bright, curious and polite. However, Reisuke is really a complex child despite being a five-year-old. His parents were implied to be either abusive or neglectful, often fighting and more interested in their own personal hobbies (shopping and gambling). Because of this Reisuke seemingly grew to dislike his parents and learned to take care of himself. However, his parents were at least on one occasion nice enough to buy him a pair of hand puppets, both stylised to resemble a man and a woman, seemingly becoming faux replacements for Reisuke's parents. Reisuke often talks through the puppets and use them for other means, and he portrays them as the ideal parents he would have preferred to have had.

Reisuke uses his young appearance and age to fool people, acting like the normal toddler he should be. However, beneath that, he is really a sadistic, creepy and cruel child, and very intelligent for his age. Despite this, he still has the mindset of a child, referring to Yuki and Yuno as "big brother" and "big sister". He is particularly enthralled by the survival game, seeing it as just that, a game, and has great fun in "playing" against Yukiteru Amano and Yuno Gasai.

Reisuke's goal to win is to become a "super elite", presumably his view of a God or a better person than his parents were. Despite his goal and behavior, Reisuke does show some signs of kindness. He spares Yuki's mother Rea Amano from being killed, having enjoyed his time with her and even considered his whole time with Yuki, Yuno and Rea to be the family life he had desired. While at first, he considers killing Yuki and Yuno to avenge his parents, he quickly ditches the idea. However, as revealed in Future Diary: Mosaic, a spin-off story focusing on Minene Uryu, Reisuke is revealed to be upset by his parents' death and even abandons his hand puppets at one point after Minene points out to him how he should act like a child. Reisuke eventually visits his parents' corpses, realizing he did love them despite their negligence and sleeps in-between their bodies, Minene delivering the puppets back to him.

Diary & Abilities
Reisuke's Diary is the Hyper Vision Diary, which takes form of a colouring book that displays pictures alongside its written messages. The diary can make three predictions a day, one for the morning, afternoon, and evening; this means he can carry out a maximum of three attacks per day without any sort of potential risk. While limited compared to the scope of some other diaries, the Hyper Vision Diary's predictions give Reisuke plenty of time to plan out his strategies for the Survival Game by giving him an immediate idea of what will happen for the entire day. By depicting the future in words and pictures, it can also make it easier for him to interpret each event; as with other Diaries, the predictions will change if the future is altered by other users.

While his Diary itself may seem limited, Reisuke makes excellent use of it with his great intellect. Despite being five years old, he has displayed expertise in chemistry and physics, manipulating a wide array of substances to create poisonous materials. He generally uses these chemicals as injections or gas traps, keeping a gas mask and the antidotes on his person to prevent them from backfiring on him. Reisuke is also smart enough to use electricity with rubber gloves to avoid the danger of being shocked and was almost successful in electrocuting Yuno while bathing, having previously filled the bathtub with salt to increase the conductivity.

During his time in the Amano House, Reisuke proved himself a skilled infiltrator, using his innocent looks to deceive others and avoid suspicion as he sets his traps. After studying the house, he was able to transform it into a massive death trap filled with poisonous gas; when Yuno attempted to hunt him down, he used decoys to throw her off his trail, set tacks on the floor to impede her movements, and almost killed her by mixing water and electricity on the stairs.

As a child, Reisuke's actual chances of winning the Survival Game are difficult to measure. However, he is comparatively the smartest of the participants, based on his age.

Path to Revenge
Reisuke's parents were murdered by Yuno during the incident at the Omekata Temple; they were most likely two of the followers hypnotized by Yomotsu Hirasaka to kill Tsubaki Kasugano. Reisuke survived the incident and kept in a hospital for a time. Minene Uryu visited the hospital to get a fake eye after losing her right eye, noting Reisuke's presence. After getting the replacement and leaving, Minene spots Reisuke trying to gain some potassium cyanide from a storeroom. Minene rescues Reisuke from falling but is baffled when she finds a list of several dangerous items for a potential chance at revenge. Minene, holding Reisuke's puppets, teases him and tells him to seek revenge, suggesting he takes a nap with his puppets as if they were his parents. Reisuke suddenly starts crying and angrily runs off, claiming he never shared a bed with his parents.

Having left his puppets behind, Minene decides to give them back to Reisuke and also help him gather the items he wants, despite her opinions on revenge. She goes on a wild goose chase trying to return the puppets, but he continues to leave them behind. The other items including acid from a chrome plating factory, a gas mask, a stun gun, and money, although Reisuke ditches the money after Minene's attempt to rob a bank ends in disaster. Reisuke then visits Sakurami Elementary School, where the victims of the temple incident have been stored in the gym. Reisuke identifies the bodies of his parents, kept in body bags. Criticizing them for being laid side by side, which they never did when alive, Reisuke then lays down in-between them and recalls the time where his parents bought him his hand puppets, crying himself to sleep. Minene arrives and successfully returns his puppets to him before leaving.

The Fifth's Game
Reisuke managed to "infiltrate" Yuki's house, living under the care of Yuki's mother Rea for several days until he could be put up for adoption. Reisuke put on his innocent act, introducing himself to Yuki and Yuno and confirming who they are through his puppets. Reisuke immediately shows signs of hostilities, drawing a facemask of Yuno, and runs to give it to her only to trip over a rug and falls onto Yuno, nearly stabbing her with a pair of scissors. However, Yuno knew what was coming and blocked the attempt with a pillow.

Realizing that he has his work cut out for him, Reisuke locks himself in the bathroom and plans his next move, musing that the First and Second's Future Diaries make a dangerous combination. Following the predictions of his Hyper Vision Diary, he prepares a salad for lunch, injecting toxins into cherry tomatoes for Yuki and Yuno to digest. As Yuki is about to eat his, Yuno stops him and says that the tomato's weight is off slightly; claiming to be concerned for Yuki's health, she removes the salad. After lunch, she meets Reisuke in the hall and tells him that she hopes that his parents' killer will soon be found; an amazed Reisuke realizes that Yuno is suspicious of him.

Deciding to up his game, Reisuke rigs a new trap in the washroom; he mixes salt in the water and cuts live wires from the washing machine, intending to use them to electrocute his targets. When Yuno prepares her bath, Reisuke asks to join her, secretly using rubber gloves to carry the live wires behind his back until he can get close enough to drop them in the salt water. Unfortunately for Reisuke, Yuki receives a prediction of Yuno's electrocution via his diary and trips a breaker just as the Fifth shoves the wires into the bath; with the power out, Reisuke was forced to flee as Yuki came into the washroom.

Now aware of who they were dealing with, Yuki informed Kurusu of Reisuke's presence; in turn, the Fourth instructed Minene to keep an eye on things. While Yuki searched for Reisuke's diary, Yuno advocated the quicker option of killing Reisuke with a knife; Yuki objected on the grounds of the Fifth's young age and the presence of Rea. Aside from a brief taunt when he woke up, Reisuke acted normally throughout the morning, enjoying his time spent with Rea whilst keeping an eye on Yuki and Yuno as they continue to look for his diary. Unbeknownst to the others, Reisuke had mailed his diary to himself in a parcel the day before, correctly guessing that his opponents would spend the day searching for it and planning to take advantage.

Yuno eventually becomes impatient and attacks Reisuke with a hammer, accidentally knocking out Rea. When Reisuke's parcel arrived, Yuki snatched the parcel and opened it, only to release a toxic gas into the house. Yuki quickly succumbs to it, Yuno dragging him into the bathroom whilst Reisuke celebrates his victory. He urges Yuno to play a deathmatch of hide and seek. If she finds him, he will give her the antidote to the gas; if she loses, she and Yuki will die. Yuki objects, but Reisuke reveals he placed Rea outside to spare her. Yuno searches the house, finding it boobytrapped. In the anime, Reisuke has somehow taped all the windows shut despite his size, forcing Yuno to break a window to breathe.

Yuno eventually goes upstairs, finding Reisuke waiting for her, sitting on an overturned chair. However, Reisuke has left the taps in the upstairs bathroom running; the water quickly covers the landing and gushes down the stairs. Reisuke pulls out the stun gun Minene got him (or a lamp in the anime) and drops it into the water, electrocuting Yuno and causing her to fall down the stairs. Curious of Yuno's actions, Reisuke asks her why she protects Yuki, realizing that she managed to hold her breath despite his ambush. When Yuno replies that she simply loves Yuki, Reisuke decides to kill her. Yuki suddenly charges in, knocks Reisuke away and rescues Yuno by performing mouth-to-mouth. As Yuki faints and falls down the stairs, Yuno grabs her knife and confronts Reisuke.

The next scene shows Yuno has stabbed Reisuke in the chest with the knife. Accepting defeat, Reisuke hands over the antidote and tells Yuno in the end, only one diary owner can win the game; sooner or later, she will have to fight and kill Yuki. Yuno is shocked by this as Reisuke disappears from existence, putting his support behind her to win. His diary's final entries reveals whilst Reisuke died, he was happy with the outcome. Yuno finally succumbs to the gas, but Minene appears, healing Yuki and Yuno with the antidote.

Kurusu cleared up the situation using a cover story, although what he told Rea was unknown.

The Final Battle
Reisuke is reborn again when Yuno, Muru Muru, Yuki and Minene perform a time leap to the third world, appearing two years in the past. A two-year Reisuke is seen briefly, looking out of a window at the fight going on at the elementary school between Minene and Muru Muru. However, the fight alters history, saving Tsubaki's parents, and thus leading to Reisuke's parents being spared too. The final scenes show a happy Reisuke with his parents.

Future Diary: Paradox
In the spin-off Future Diary: Paradox, Aru Akise and Muru Muru temporarily replace Yuki and Yuno after Muru Muru accidentally killed Yuno, causing Yuki to be wounded by Takao Hiyama. During the incident at the Omekata Temple, Akise decides to alter the future by saving Tsubaki Kasugano from her fated death, escaping the temple with her and coincidentally landing in the convertible Reisuke is sitting in. Akise drives the car to safety with Reisuke coming along for the ride, and he agrees to aid Akise and Tsubaki in their plan to expose the cult's second-in-command Funatsu as the murderer of Tsubaki's parents.

In the 3rd World, because his parents are still alive and never got involved in the Omekata cult, Reisuke is shown to be much more cheerful and kind, running off to find Yomotsu Hirasaka whilst Akise and Tsubaki act as decoys for Funatsu to catch. Reisuke poses as a lost child, luring Yomotsu to him where Reisuke explains the situation, prompting Yomotsu to side with Akise and helps expose Fuantsu. Reisuke is later seen with Tsubaki, the Seventh diary owners Marco Ikusaba and Ai Mikami, and Orin Miyashiro, aiding Akise in stopping Muru Muru from erasing the alternate events of the survival game. However, Muru Muru ultimately succeeds and Reisuke's death occurs anyway.

Future Diary: Redial
In the newest spinoff, Reisuke is a normal, sane boy. He has formed a friendship with Aru Akise and is his detective assistant.

Trivia

 * Reisuke is named after Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture. His surname 豊穣 means 'rich harvest'.
 * Reisuke's character theme song is "Perfect Trap" by singer Annabel.