Miyo Takano, originally named Tanashi Miyoko, suffered early tragedy when her parents died in a childhood train accident. This landed her in an orphanage where she endured severe abuse, including a traumatic incident where staff forced her to clean a toilet with her mouth. She escaped briefly to seek out her father's former professor, Takano Hifumi, who adopted her. Hifumi introduced her to his research on Hinamizawa Syndrome—a neurological condition causing paranoia and violence—and shared his philosophical belief that achieving historical recognition could grant godlike immortality. Following Hifumi's death, discredited by academic rivals, she vowed to validate his work at any cost, adopting the name "Miyo" as a numerical progression from Hifumi ("one-two-three" to "three-four"). In Hinamizawa, she posed as a nurse at the Irie Clinic, cultivating a friendly persona while secretly leading a government-backed research project. She commanded the elite paramilitary Yamainu (Mountain Dogs) and manipulated events to study Hinamizawa Syndrome. Her methods included faking her own death annually during the Watanagashi Festival to evade suspicion, typically using a charred corpse in an oil drum while continuing operations covertly. She seeded conflicting occult theories about Oyashiro-sama—such as alien parasites or sea creature origins—through scrapbooks given to villagers like Rena Ryūgū and Shion Sonozaki, exacerbating their paranoia to trigger Syndrome symptoms. Her core motivation was to induce a mass outbreak of Hinamizawa Syndrome by killing Furude Rika, the "Queen Carrier," whose death would cascade the syndrome through the village. She believed proving this phenomenon would cement Hifumi's legacy and elevate them both to godhood. To achieve this, she orchestrated the "Great Hinamizawa Disaster," a government-sanctioned massacre disguised as a volcanic gas leak, ensuring the village's destruction. She demonstrated ruthless pragmatism, murdering her lover, Jirō Tomitake, to maintain her plans. Despite her cruelty, she displayed occasional childlike traits, like gleefully spinning in joy when granted access to the Furude Shrine's ritual storehouse or playfully offering to wear cat ears for entry. In later timelines (*Higurashi Gou* and *Sotsu*), she survived the events of June 1983 and collaborated with Satoko Hōjō, who sought to trap Rika in time loops. Takano provided Satoko with Syndrome-inducing drugs and research access, facilitating renewed cycles of violence. This alliance ended when Satoko betrayed her, though Takano ultimately avoided death in these arcs. The *Saikoroshi-hen* spin-off presents an alternate timeline where her parents survived the train accident. Here, she remained Tanashi Miyoko, never meeting Hifumi or developing her god complex. This version appears in Ryukishi07's light novel *Kaidan to Odorō, Soshite Anata wa Kaidan de Odoru* as a melancholic high schooler with a similarly unsettling demeanor but lacking Takano's overt malice. Visually, she presented long blonde hair, drooping brown eyes, and a buxom figure. She typically wore a nurse uniform at the clinic or a green jacket with a pink shirt and black pants adorned with a yellow four-leaf clover ribbon. During military operations, she donned a black beret, cape, and skirt.