Mr. Torino was an astronomer and a close friend of Mr. Yokota. He is one of the many characters who was cut from the movie; however, some people do not consider his chapter canon.
Appearance[]
Torino was a short-ish middle-aged man with short curly black hair and some wrinkles from age. He developped intense dark circles under his eyes from staying up all night stargazing because of the Spiral galaxies, and was usually drawn with a maniacal expression.
Personality[]
When first introduced, Torino seemed like a normal (though a bit overly enthusiastic) astronomer. However, after becoming contaminated by the Spiral, he becomes selfish and obsessed with fame and world renown to the extent at which he tries to murder Shuichi and Kirie in order to claim credit for discovering the spiral-galaxies.
Plot[]
In chapter 20, Torino is consulted by Mr. Yokota in order to confirm that Shuichi had in fact discovered a new galaxy. He is elated by this new discovery, exclaiming enthusiastically that "they might even name it the Shuichi galaxy, after you!"
After staying up all night to study the galaxy, Torino starts to become obsessed with the idea of what it would be like to be hailed as the discoverer of an entire new galaxy, and begins to hear a voice in his head (presumably that of the Spiral) telling him that to achieve this, he needs to murder Shuichi Saito.
Not wanting to commit murder, Torino instead goes to Shuichi's house to negotiate, and quickly gets his way when Shuichi automatically relents and claims to have no desire to be associated with the galaxy. However, this quickly becomes confusing to the rest of Kurôzu-Cho, who have all heard from Kirie that Shuichi discovered the galaxy, and from Torino that he did. This causes Kirie to become angry with Torino, take credit for herself, and attempt to force it onto Shuichi to prevent Torino from being accredited with an amazing accomplishment that was in fact not his own. Torino tries to explain that Shuichi gave him full permission to do so, and rants about receiving "radio waves" from the galaxy, which were in fact the Spiral's way of communicating. Kirie and Yokota are not convinced.
Days later, when new galaxies are being spotted all over town, Torino goes outside to massacre people in order to claim as much credit as he possibly can, spots Kirie, and tries to murder her with a knife--however, he is stopped when he sees all of the spiral-galaxies above him in the sky, now fully visible to the naked eye. He begins frenetically screaming at the Spiral to confirm that he was the first human being to see them all, by transmitting all of their radio waves into his head. However, when the Spiral actually does this, his head swells grotesquely, explodes "like an egg in a microwave," and turns into another spiral-galaxy. None of his (or anyone else in Kurôzu-Cho's) sightings are confirmed by the national astronomy board.