Reni Milchstraße

Reni Milchstraße (レニ・ミルヒシュトラーセ, Reni Miruhishutorāse) was a member of European Star Division and is a member of the Teikoku Kagekidan's Hanagumi and joins in Sakura Taisen 2.

Apperance
Reina is an androgynous young woman with shorter silver hair and a fair complexion. She usually wears traditionally masculine clothes, like suits and dress pants.

Personality
Initially tense and seemingly emotionless, Reni opens up more to Oogami and the others as the game progresses. Reni possesses many skills which prove useful both on and off the battlefield including lip reading, fast reflexes and being skilled in close quarters combat. Like the other members of the Imperial Assault force, she is also a skilled dancer and performer. Similar to Kanna, she is usually given male roles in plays because of her physical appearance.

Background
As a young child in Germany, Reni was part of a program that engineered high spiritual power children called "Wunderkind" (translated from German as lit."Miracle Child", also meaning prodigy) to be used as child soldiers. As a result of being a subject of that project, Reni did not have a normal childhood and had her emotions suppressed, only thinking in militaristic terms of how to best bring about victory in battle. Thus, she was largely cold and distant when she first joined the Imperial Assault Force.

Sakura Taisen 2
Reni joins the Imperial Assault force very early in the game, immediately following Orihime. Between her physical appearance and her disposition, Oogami and the others initially believed Reni was male, with Sakura commenting that she thought it was unusual Reni was the first male to become a member of the Imperial Assault Force under Oogami. This misunderstanding was further spurned on by Reni never directly answering questions or acknowledging remarks whenever her gender was brought into question.

Humourously, until the second disc of the game, the game ruses the player into believing that she is male, as she does not appear in the menu that displays the player's friendship levels with their team mates and she can not be romanced until fairly late in the game. Reni does her best to keep up this image by never allowing herself to be seen undressed around her comrades. It is only when the Imperial Assault Force is on vacation and Oogami accidentally sees Reni nude at the side of a hotspring (believing that she was bathing alone away from the others as the only other "male") that the player can begin romancing her. When asked why she never revealed her gender until then, Reni simply remarked that she didn't think it was important to talk about it.

From this point on the player is free to romance Reni as she slowly begins to open up and socialize with the others. Her thawing is greatly aided by Iris' genuine efforts to befriend Reni. Iris, being the first person in her life to ever give her a gift, appealed to the core of Reni's humanity and greatly sped up her thawing process. During this time Reni tries her best to become more of a normal human being, finding things to enjoy and making an effort to immerse herself in the local Japanese culture.

If the player chooses to romance Reni and do her story route, she will open up even further. Some of the things Oogami will do with her include celebrating her birthday and taking her out to visit a shrine as part of Japanese New Year's celebrations. If Oogami chooses to make her the lead role in the Imperial Theatre's Christmas play, he will take her out to pray at the local church after the performance, despite neither of them being religious; his goal being to make her reflect and find something or someone she loves and wants to protect.

Sakura Taisen 3
Like the other members of the Imperial Assault Force, Reni only plays a minor role in Sakura Taisen 3. Together with Orihime, Reni is part of the final group of the Imperial Assault Force to separately visit and assist with the operations of the Paris Assault Force. Together with Orihime, Reni was responsible for spying on and relaying information about the Kaijin and their operations in Paris, but she was captured due to her recklessness and held as a hostage, later being rescued by the surprise intervention of Kayama. Shortly after this debacle, Reni and Orihime returned to Tokyo.

Sakura Taisen 4
If the player transfers clear data of Reni's ending from Sakura Taisen 2 when making a new file in Sakura Taisen 4, Reni will be the one to fetch Oogami from Yoneda's room and speak to him on the balcony of the Imperial Theatre. In this scene Reni apologizes for her errors back in Paris which resulted in her being held hostage, begging Oogami's forgiveness, which is readily granted. Oogami tells her not to worry about it. After this Reni leads him to the salon where the others are waiting for him to hear the details of his new responsibilities around the theatre and about the upcoming drama they will be performing.

Etymology
Leni's astronomical namesake:Milky Way (German: "Milchstraße")

Trivia

 * It is possible that she is named after Leni Riefenstahl, a German filmmaker whose most famous work was the Nazi propaganda film The Triumph of the Will (however the Sakura Taisen series takes place in the 1920s, predating the Nazi government period in actual history).