Midori, a young girl in 1938 Japan, grows up in poverty with her bedridden mother after her father deserts them. Forced to abandon her education, she sustains her mother by selling paper camellias. Her fragile world shatters upon discovering her mother’s corpse, partially devoured by rats. Desperate, she follows a customer’s address to the Red Cat Circus, a macabre freak show overseen by the enigmatic Mr. Arashi. Within the circus, Midori endures physical, sexual, and psychological torment from its grotesque inhabitants: a leprous mummified man, a serpentine woman, and a hermaphroditic fire-breather. Her role evolves from caretaker to victim, forced into fetishistic performances and public humiliation. A tentative lifeline appears in Masamitsu, a magician with dwarfism who becomes her protector, mentor, and possessive lover. Their bond oscillates between fragile refuge and toxic control, fracturing further when Midori pursues an acting career—a hope crushed by Masamitsu’s violent interference. Midori’s life teeters between transient optimism and crushing despair. A talent scout’s offer ignites escape, only to be sabotaged. After a catastrophic magic act triggers mass hallucinations, destroying the circus, she flees with Masamitsu, only to lose him to a thief’s blade. Haunted by spectral visions of her tormentors, she spirals into violent confrontations with these phantoms, ending in solitary confinement within her unraveling mind. Adaptations diverge in her fate: the original manga and 1992 anime leave her weeping in an existential void, the anime subtly suggesting suicidal undertones. The 2016 film reimagines her path—brief stardom as actress "Hanamura," amnesia after Masamitsu’s death, and eventual inheritance of his magic, implying fractured empowerment. Central to Midori’s identity are her unyielding innocence amid relentless exploitation, her fraught entanglement with Masamitsu merging vulnerability and coercion, and her psychological fragmentation under cumulative trauma. Her narrative, across iterations, orbits themes of resilience against dehumanization, with adaptations modulating explicitness and closure while preserving her essence as a survivor navigating grotesque brutality.