If
Arisa were Tank Girl, Kyoko would be Tech Girl.
She's the more thoughtful, cautious half of the
Office Lady team, and while Arisa favours guns
Kyoko is more at home with computers. Arisa is
really into 'all that warrior-battle-maid stuff'
but Kyoko would really like to be just an ordinary
office lady, I think.
In
fact, of all the characters in Nuku Nuku,
Kyoko is the one who seems the most like a normal
person who caught the wrong bus or something and
ended up in Loony Land. She reminds me a bit of
Byers in The X-Files - you know, the Lone
Gunman who always wears a suit and looks very
gentle and conservative. But like Byers, of course
Kyoko is where she is for a reason.
Kyoko
tries to act as a moderating influence on Arisa,
and this works up to a point. Arisa is pretty damn'
hard to moderate, of course. On one very memorable
occasion (see Phase OV) she managed to get Kyoko as
carried away as she was. Kyoko with a rocket
launcher on her shoulder, laughing gleefully as she
pops off catnip gas grenades, is not a sight soon
to be forgotten. Indeed, Kyoko lets Arisa talk her
into things far too often.
Although
they are very different in temperament, a lot of
the lifestyle things that are true of Arisa are
true of Kyoko too. Owing to the various
débacles that are always occurring, her
salary is wildly unreliable, and she doesn't even
get Sundays off. Almost the only way Arisa and
Kyoko can get a free day is by getting too badly
injured to go to work. They share a small apartment
with a broken air conditioner.
Kyoko
has a tendency to whine when she is unhappy. I
think she feels rather sorry for herself, but this
is justified. She often has things awfully tough.
Privately, she thinks most of the people she knows
are nuts.
I
find Kyoko exceptionally cute. I think it's the
eyes and the shape of her face. Although Arisa is
the one who looks dangerous, Kyoko should
not be taken lightly. She once completely
brainwashed Yoshimi in her sleep using an ingenious
doohickey the workings of which I do not pretend to
understand, but it had 'CD-Rom Kyoko' printed on
the case, which I thought was a nice
touch.
Kyoko
doesn't exhibit as strong a personal dislike for
Nuku Nuku as Arisa does; I think she's more scared
of her, as demonstrated by her line in Phase OI:
'Are you the Terminator or something?' It's also
hard to be sure why she sticks with Akiko, since
she doesn't love and admire her the way Arisa does.
Akiko just seems to have a knack for inspiring
loyalty.
Kyoko
can really act quite evil when she feels like it,
and does a particularly good wicked laugh. She is
one of life's losers, but I like her.
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