Rivals

Rivals are the main antagonists in Yandere Simulator. They are the most important students to eliminate, since they have a crush on Senpai. If the rival is not eliminated by the end of the week, they will confess their love to Senpai on Friday under a cherry tree, and Yandere-chan will be left heartbroken. A girl confessing to a boy underneath a cherry tree is a cliche in anime that will be drawn upon in the game.

There are no actual rivals in the debug build, so there is no way to win yet. In the full game, they won't be in the school until their week comes. There are ten rivals for the ten weeks of gameplay. Each rival will be introduced via a cut-scene conversation with Info-chan.

Senpai won't fall in love with girls of his own accord. He will start to develop of crush on her if a rival has five interaction events with him. Once a day, there will be an "event" with Senpai, with the final event being a love confession. You will be able to sabotage each event.

Even though their main desire is Senpai, all rivals will have a second crush other than Senpai. This is so you are able to matchmake each and every single rival with a boy instead of killing them. Each of these male suitors will have a unique texture or accessory which makes them stand out around the generic NPCs. Every rival will wear special stockings to make themselves stand out as well.

As the game progresses, each rival is more difficult to defeat than the previous one, sometimes because of popularity.

Rivals are seen in red in Yandere Vision, although this red outline might also be for others as traumatized students also have this look.

''The rivals will never know the player exists or that they have competition for Senpai... ''

Test Rivals
''These rival are only for testing and are unlikely to be rivals in the final game. Currently, there have only been two test rivals.''

Victim-chan
Victim-chan was the first test rival. Her look was a reference to the first rival, Osana Najimi. She was eventually removed from the game.

Kokona Haruka
'''Kokona Haruka is the current test rival. '''Although she might not be an actual rival in the final game, she is being used as a test subject. As it is shown, she has a crush on Senpai, and so, Yandere-chan has a reason to eliminate her - however, eliminating her won't do anything, since the player will still lose at the end of the week, due to official rivals not being programmed. There are many ways to kill Kokona, including drowning, fake suicide, poisoning and having a mind broken student do it, because she is a test rival.

Since there is so much work put into her, she may become an official rival.

Rivals
'''All rivals have been planned out. As of now, there is no official artwork or any more spoilers about rivals.  Everyone except for Osana and The Nurse don't exist in the game yet.'''

Osana Najimi
'''The first rival will be Osana Najimi. NOTE: The character who stands under the cherry tree is Rival-chan. Osana in a future update will be completely different.'''

Her AI is currently incomplete, so she cannot be interacted with. Because of this, the player cannot beat the game, and you will always lose on Friday at 6:00 PM due to Osana confessing her love to Senpai. She started off as Senpai's childhood friend and was denying she had a crush on him.

In the second intro her tsundere tendencies and her background as Senpai childhood best friend is not mentioned in the slightest. In I Want My Senpai Back it shows a girl who might have Osana's updated appearance, so she still might be this way.

Nurse
The Nurse is a planned rival later in the game. Her AI, like Osana's, is incomplete.The Nurse rival's character trait is an unintentional sexual innuendo. As of now, you can steal her syringe and tranquilizer to kidnap students.

Teacher
A substitute teacher is also a planned rival later in the game. The teacher rival's trait is an intentional sexual innuendo, as she will be sultry and seductive. She can be called upon by Teacher's Pets if they discover a corpse/witness a murder. You will be able to matchmake her with a student.

Imouto
The Imouto is Senpai's little sister and a rival. The Imouto doesn't exist as of yet. She doesn't lust after her brother. She loves her onii-chan so much that she doesn't want him to get a girlfriend. She wants all his attention. She is said to be 2 years younger than senpai.

Unknown Drills
There will be a rival in the final game with purple "drill-hair" like Kokona, but with a different name, face, voice, stockings, and other features, likely as a reference to Kokona Haruka who is the current test dummy.

Occult Club President
She will be a cross between the Hex Maniac from Pokemon: X and Y, Tharja from Fire Emblem: Awakening, and Tomoko from WataMote. The Dev wants to polish her design before showing it off.

Student Council President
The Student Council president is planned to look a lot like Nayuta from Yumina the Ethereal VN. She will be a strict disciplinarian.

Final Rival
The final rival will not be a yandere girl. She will be absent from school for nine weeks.

Info-chan was once intended as a rival who would battle you on the rooftop. Since it was a battle to the death, she was indeed a yandere. She was supposed to have all of your abilities. This has changed by as early as September 12th, 2015.

Elimination Methods
As of now, only some of the elimination methods to get rid of rivals are implemented. Kokona is a test rival for all of them. These elimination methods include:
 * Drowning
 * Electrocution
 * Poison
 * Dismemberment
 * Homicide
 * Kidnapping
 * Fake Suicide
 * Framing
 * Matchmaking
 * Gossip
 * Suicide
 * Rejection
 * Murder-Suicide due to torture.
 * Possibly Hanging
 * Crushing due to droppable heavy objects.
 * Possibly buried

There will be 13 elimination methods that will work on all 10 rivals. Each rival will also have one unique elimination method.

Endless Mode
In Endless Mode, the game will randomly generate a rival each week for an unlimited amount of weeks. The player will have to stalk Senpai until they identify the newest rival girl. They will not have special stockings. They will have the normal functions as a rival, and you will be able to eliminate them the same way as a rival in Story Mode.

Trivia

 * The player will not be able to threaten or intimidate rivals, only directly eliminate them one way or another. Blackmail will not be available either, because the game is about taking direct action against your enemies.
 * In the future, killing a rival early makes the game will ask if to would like to skip to next week.
 * There is an old page that tells all of the 10 rivals. The information is near the bottom of the page. This may be outdated, but it was right about Osana Najimi and The Nurse. There's also a screenshot of the post.
 * The confrontation with the final rival can be gone through a peaceful way, a violent way, and more!
 * If the player chooses to make Senpai female, then Yandere-chan is a lesbian and all of the rivals are bisexual because of their other crush you can matchmake them with.
 * Certain rivals may be capable of self-defense, but not the first rival since she's a tutorial.
 * Koharu Hinata has a crush on Senpai in the September 18th, 2015 Build, and is therefore a rival. This mistake changed with the October 8th, 2015 Update.
 * All of the rivals will be someone who Senpai is on good terms with. If he sees them bloody, he doesn't assume the worst. If one of the rivals are arrested, Senpai would be in disbelief, but he would have no way to overturn the evidence against her, so he would be powerless to help the rival.
 * Once a rival becomes a normal NPC after they have been eliminated non-lethally, all "normal NPC interactions" become available for them.
 * It will not be possible to get rid of one rival that instantly causes the elimination of another rival.
 * There will be a couple of rivals that will be able to catch thrown knives.
 * Each rival will have a short cut scene that shows how they met Senpai and why they are attracted to them. Some of the cut-scenes will be humorous to balance out the other dark elements of the game.
 * Only two rivals will directly combat Yandere-chan.
 * Each rival will have a birthday on a different month.
 * YandereDev released a parody of a popular Christmas song in December 26, 2014 which contained two possible Rival names: Miyuki-chan and Sadako-chan.
 * The Dev later revealed that he only used those names because he thought they were common, generic Japanese names.
 * The Dev also revealed he'd have names that reference who the character is, an example being Senpai's childhood friend being named Osana Najimi because the word Osananajimi means childhood friend in Japanese.
 * There originally was going to be a short loli rival, but now YandereDev is opposed to the idea because of all the work and problems it would create.
 * There's a page that shows most likely outdated designs of a few of the rivals. The artist even mentions that this is subject to heavy change. The Dev himself linked to the page on this page. To see his post, press "Control" and "F" and then search for "Occult Club". There will be a link to the page of the designs and he will also reveal in that conversation about what the Occult Club president might look like. Under the art for the Imouto in the first link tells us that YandereDev's characterization of the Imouto from the second link has changed.
 * Every rival will have unique panties.
 * One rival can be taken out by an effective car bomb in town, but this is not very yandere-like.
 * If the rivals were in Hogwarts, most of them would be Gryffindor.
 * Only rivals will have dark secrets, not regular NPCs. Certain characters like The Journalist might not count.
 * The game might get a pregnant rival because of the need for a secret.
 * Certain methods of elimination may be restricted to one rival.