Animalia is the in-game identity of Maria Itsukushima, a twenty-two-year-old woman and the leader of the player clan SF-Zoo in Shangri-La Frontier. Her real-world existence is defined by a deep and genuine love for animals that she is physically unable to satisfy due to a severe allergy that causes dangerous reactions upon any direct contact. This lifelong frustration has driven her to seek solace in the virtual world, where she can finally interact with creatures without risking her health, making the game a personal sanctuary.

In the game, Animalia presents as a young woman with a lightly tanned complexion, messy light-grey hair, and purple eyes. Her typical attire consists of a tan yellow sorcerer's robe, and she carries a distinctive wooden staff. Her personality within the game is a complex and extreme expression of her repressed desires. She possesses a profound and overwhelming fascination with monsters and animal-like non-player characters, treating them not as threats or data, but as objects of intense affection. What she perceives as loving interaction, however, often crosses a line into obsessive behavior that other players find disturbing or even comically abusive. Her actions, driven by a lack of real-world experience with animals, can include relentless chasing, hugging, and petting to the point of exhaustion, revealing a disconnect between her innocent intentions and the alarming reality of her actions.

Animalia's primary motivation is simply to touch and interact with as many virtual creatures as possible. This goal dictates her entire playstyle and her role in the story. As the founder and leader of SF-Zoo, a clan dedicated to observing and photographing monsters, she has organized a group of like-minded players around her singular passion. Her reputation precedes her, and she is known for her chaotic energy, having been permanently banned from the region of Rabituza, the land of the Vorpal Bunnies, for inappropriate conduct that included harassing the rabbit inhabitants instead of completing the assigned scenario objective.

Her key relationships are often defined by this obsession. She develops an intense fixation on Emul, a young Vorpal Bunny, which leads to her first direct interaction with the protagonist, Sunraku. While Sunraku finds her antics troublesome, he also recognizes and respects her genuine skill as a leader and coordinator in large-scale battles. Her own clan members follow her despite often being bewildered by her excesses. A pivotal relationship is with the concept of powerful monsters themselves; after a humiliating defeat by the colossus Lycaon, her view shifts from seeing all creatures as cute playthings to acknowledging their inherent wildness and potential for danger, an experience that leaves a lasting psychological mark.

Initially, Animalia's combat style was purely non-lethal, focused on using her mastery of debuff magic to paralyze or incapacitate monsters so she could interact with them freely. Her primary job is Yin-Yang Master, with Sorcerer as a subclass. She wields a unique weapon called the Underworld Keystaff, which grants her the spell Hands of Tartarus, an ability that can completely immobilize any living target for a full minute. Her ultimate technique is a sacrificial suicide spell named Fellow Traveler, which trades her own life to inflict an instant death debuff on an opponent. After her defeat by Lycaon, she began to evolve her approach, taking on a secondary class of Monk-Fighter to engage creatures more directly, seeking what she considers a more authentic form of interaction through physical confrontation rather than magical restraint.