Maya Kitajima北島マヤ

Who is Maya Kitajima?

A talented young actress who originally worked as a waitress in a Chinese restaurant alongside her mother. Her father died when she was a little girl and her mother, Haru, is mentally unstable and for a long time she thinks of Maya as useless. She is discovered by the former diva Chigusa Tsukikage and starts a promising, yet thorny acting career under her wing. Her mother discouraged her daughter from an acting career, believing that her daughter would be a laughingstock. Maya's mother didn't even attend a school play that Maya was in, especially since Maya took on the role of a pitiful and wretched character. Yet Maya performed the role magnificently, giving more depth and sadness to the character, when the character was originally meant to be portrayed as laughable and pathetic. Later on, Maya is given the decision to take on a living of being an actress. Maya proclaimed that she wanted to be an actress. Tsukikage cuts off Maya's ties with her mother, making the decision of becoming an actress adamant. Maya is consistently given encouragement through an anonymous fan who sends her a bouquet of purple roses. The person who sends these bouquets is none other than Hayami Masumi, whom Maya shows an antipathy towards, especially since she believes he took malicious enjoyment in bringing down Tsukikage's acting school. Maya's talent for acting comes from both her natural skill and emotional personality, unlike Ayumi whose skills are more technically-driven; in fact, Maya practically 'becomes' her characters when she plays, so brutal her training methods are and so intensely she performs. During the beginning of her training sessions, Maya has always displayed unconventional performances of the assigned tasks, such as laying on the floor to "sit on" a toppled chair. People often note how unremarkable Maya is until she takes the stage. In fact, the prodigy actress Ayumi comments that Maya knows how to captivate the audience, even though she isn't aware of doing so. Despite having enormous potential and raw talent, Maya doesn't seem to recognize her own abilities. She thinks of herself as unremarkable and "useless", as her mother constantly referred to her as, though she is compelled to pursue a career in acting because "acting is all she has". She also harbors moments of inferiority in comparison to Ayumi, who is beautiful, talented, and rich. Despite all this, Maya doesn't harbor any malice or ill will toward Ayumi, though Ayumi is secretly competitive toward Maya. Her nicknames are "The Stage Storm," referring to her innate ability to drown the other actors' importance in the play even Maya isn't playing the main role. Tsukikage even referred to Maya as "the girl with a thousand masks" as a tribute to her versatility whenever taking on character roles. And "little child" (���ゃん, Chibi-chan) by Masumi Hayami, a diminutive called due to their broad disparity in age, sometimes for satirizing her immaturity and sometimes for true affection.