Kouzuki Yuuko (香月 夕呼) is one of the main characters that appears throughout Muv-Luv Extra, Muv-Luv Unlimited, and Muv-Luv Alternative. While smarter than the remaining cast and highly manipulative, she still holds close to her heart those she cares deeply for.
Extra[]
In Extra, Kouzuki Yuuko is the physics teacher in Shirogane Takeru's high school. Friends with Jinguuji Marimo since their high school days, Yuuko is a genius in her field, but decided to become a teacher due to various differences with the science community.
She loves manipulating people, and is often seen pulling Marimo, Takeru, and her other students into different circumstances, like betting Marimo's "freedom" in a Lacrosse match, often for her mere entertainment. Never the less, she cares deeply about her students and Marimo. More than once, she helps Takeru with his love troubles and provides support for other students.
Throughout Extra, Yuuko is seen developing a theory related to Quantum mechanics with an idea she got from playing an RPG, and even supposedly bringing the cat version of a student from a parallel world.
Unlimited[]
Yuuko is the first character from Extra that Takeru meets in Unlimited, but upon seeing him says she has no recollection of ever meeting him or being a teacher. She helps the confused and disbelieving Takeru adapt to the Unlimited world, but in doing so seeks to further her own goals (see: Alternative IV and History section below).
While her core personality is similar to Extra's Yuuko, her role and duties are much more serious, which leads to a very important difference in attitude. She is shown to be completely committed to her mission and to Alternative IV. She still bends rules that she finds troublesome or too bureaucratic if the situation demands it, but she never abuses her power for selfish reasons, unlike her Extra self. She has a close relationship with Yashiro Kasumi, but according to the latter [1], the feeling is merely "interest" rather than maternal feelings since Yuuko does not experience anything other than "interest" and "disinterest" to most things according to Kasumi, something extremely common among geniuses.
By the end of Unlimited, she is completely heart-broken when, as a Christmas present, the Alternative V faction manged to get Alternative IV cancelled and in the process officially initiated Alternative V. She is later seen drunk, having consumed excessive amounts of high quality alcohol, and in a state previously inconceivable with her demeanor: bemoaning her fate and the fate of humanity, crying to Takeru about being unable to fit "15 billion semiconductors in the palm of a hand", screaming that she's a genius and everyone else is just stupid and even laughably ordering Takeru to tell her that she's a genius.
She eventually sobers up and tells Takeru to leave. If Takeru is during his first time loop then he will leave without much hesitation, but if it is his second loop and onwards, his interactions with Yuuko would have allowed enough causality information to flow into Yuuko, thus increasing her affection towards him, that she becomes receptive to Takeru's romantic advances. If the two spend the night together, then Yuuko tells him about the UN's plan to end humanity's history on the planet: Alternative V. Takeru is horrified of the information Yuuko tells him and desperately asks her if anything can be done, but she says it's too late. She then tells him that if he wants to know more about Alternative IV then he should "ravage her more" and she might let something slip. Takeru stays and the two continue to sleep with each other and drink alcohol to drown out the thoughts of Alternative V, but Yuuko never tells him anything about Alternative IV.
If Takeru courted another girl besides Yuuko, then according to the manga, Yuuko would have boarded the migrant fleet and escaped the doomed Earth, looking devastated before boarding the shuttle. Her fate in The Day After and post Yuuko-Unlimited remains unknown.
History[]
Unlike her Extra-self who's top priority was to research why girls were attracted to Takeru in order to help her friend Marimo with her love problems, Unlimited Yuuko puts her intellect to good use and is a lot more serious and dedicated towards scientific research because of the war of extinction mankind is facing against the BETA.
Yuuko, 1995. Imperial University.
At 17 years old, she submitted a paper on her own original theory, the "Quantum Causality Theory", which caught the eye of the Alternative Plan bid committee in 1991. This resulted in her admission to the Japanese Imperial University's Applied Quantum Physics Laboratory in order to hasten fundamental research on the next plan; the United Nations eventually invites her at the age of 20 in 1994 to advance the verification of quantum causality theory, eventually resulting in the creation of Alternative IV. She initially works from the Imperial University's Applied Quantum Physics Laboratory as the head of Alternative IV in 1995, and after the recapture of Yokohama in 1999, has her base of operations shifted to Yokohama Base on her request, where she is also currently acting as the vice-commander and has almost complete authority over the base in order to complete Alternative IV.
Her research however hits a dead end a few months before the events of Muv-Luv Unlimited [2] and she begins to doubt herself and her theory. Instead of giving up however, she continues on, determined to find a solution besides Alternative V, even coming up with false threats [3] to scare off the Alternative V faction away from cancelling Alternative IV.
A new hope presents itself when one day a dead man comes back to life and wanders to the Base.
Alternative[]
Alternative Yuuko is, like other characters, the same as in Unlimited, with the same history up to the 22nd of October. However, due to circumstances, her initial reaction towards Takeru and certain events change dramatically, further fleshing out her character. Like in Unlimited, she is still the major source of most explanations and information to Takeru, and also helps him steel his emotions and nerves throughout the story through efficient logical methods instead of humane or kind ones.
Unlike everyone else who is in awe of Alternative Takeru, Yuuko considers him an inexperienced child despite him being much more impressive compared to his first iteration. It was not until Takeru overcame an extremely traumatic period of time in Alternative, that she admitted to him that she's finally ready to see him as an equal to her.
Because of Takeru's properties as a Causality Conductor, past interactions with the boy flow into Yuuko as the two interacted, most notably the memories of Alternative IV being cancelled, and the resulting tragedy that awaits the human population post-Alternative V [4]. All her past failures made her much more determined to prevent Alternative V. Her cold-hearted decisions, her knowledge of how humans and human society works and her ability to manipulate people are seen to their full extent when she realizes that unless she's prepared to sacrifice everyone and everything then she's doomed to repeat history.
For the first time ever, Yuuko is seen with a sarcastic, monstrous and borderline evil attitude towards innocent people she's purposefully endangered, killed or sacrificed for the sake of completing Alternative IV [5]. Most of the time this was either an act by her so she could control her emotions and focus on the ongoing war with the BETA, or the common "victim blaming" symptom of PTSD taking over her. She hints at this when, after Takeru refuses her offer of killing her, she tells Shirogane it's a good thing he can control his emotions because otherwise he would just be another BETA and would be unable to win this war. Ironically, some of the necessary sacrifices, and indeed the most terrible ones, Yuuko made to complete Alternative IV would not have been possible without Takeru's help, yet Yuuko always made sure to inform Takeru of this fact after it was too late for him to take any part of the blame, instead choosing to carry the burden herself.
Despite the fact that her actions were completely logical in the BETA universe and all the sacrifices she made were extremely trivial compared to the results they produced, Yuuko still harbors extensive guilt due to her own actions [6].
Apart from her character, Yuuko's genius, influence and connections are further demonstrated in Alternative:
- She develops a flawed device that allows Takeru to travel to his original world. The device was flawed, because unless someone was "remembering him at all times", in this case it was Kasumi, then everyone in Alternative would lose all their memories of him. Yuuko fixes the problem later to make sure that Takeru returns safely after his breakdown post XM3 trial accident.
- Using an idea that Takeru first thought of in Unlimited but didn't bring up until Alternative, Yuuko together with Kasumi, Takeru and many Alternative IV supporters begin working on a new OS for TSFs, the XM3. Though initially she worked on the OS as a distraction from her being unable to find a breakthrough in her research, the results during tests and during the 12/5 incident made her reconsider its strategic value and then focused more on it in hopes of trading it for the XG-70 superweapon.
- She is also responsible for "completing" the 00 Unit, though it was in a completely unusable and useless state. Her theory was that Takeru, as a Causality Conductor, should be able to "fix" or "tune" the 00 Unit through his interactions with it. This was the primary reason she allowed Takeru to prematurely leave to his original world, to transfer the data from Extra Sumika into the 00 Unit through Takeru.
- She was partially responsible for the successful transfer of the Hi-MAERF Project to Alternative IV's jurisdiction. The US government agreed to supply the weapons in return for the XM3, and according to Yuuko, it seems the US was unimpressed by the results of the trials themselves and were only impressed by the performance of the Shiranui piloting STF A-01 and Shirogane during the outbreak of the BETA during the Yokohoma Base Incident.
Towards the end of Alternative, she is the third person - the first being the 00 Unit and through her 1st Lt. Hayase - to realize that the Yokohoma Hive was deliberately left by the BETA to closely study humans and breaks down mad with laughter, surprising everyone around her. After the BETA attack is narrowly thwarted, she is the one - possibly at the behest from the 00 Unit - to convince the world that the BETA have begun to adapt human strategies and tactics through the 00 Unit and subsequently forced them to start Operation Ouka.
Yuuko, Inia, and Kasumi remember all those who had sacrificed themselves.
Though it was largely thanks to her and her allies that the greatest threat to humanity was destroyed (Spoilers), giving the human race an estimated 30 extra years in the war, it is still likely that the Alternative V faction will hold her and the Alternative IV faction responsible for the BETA adopting human thinking in warfare. This was hinted at when, after Ouka, she is heard on an interrogation tape (presumably imprisoned) repeating over and over that a certain bratty savior had saved their world to a disbelieving audience.
Even if death seemed the much more merciful path for her, Yuuko took her friend Marimo's resolution to heart, carrying her guilt and dedicating herself to improving the lives of everyone else for as long she possibly could. Though she likely felt as if she did not deserve it, Yuuko did live on, surviving the BETA and unification wars. Despite being well into her 70s by the middle of the century, Yuuko has managed to retain her looks via genetic engineering.
Altered Fable[]
Yuuko is much like her Extra counterpart, except she has more characters to manipulate into her schemes. Thanks to her, the exchange student Kasumi switches from her original host family to live with Sumika. In addition, she convinces both Meiya and Yuuhi both to avoid using their servants in order to win Takeru's affections, causing a great amount of trouble for the boy and his friends.
Most of the events of Altered Fable occur due to Yuuko's influence, either in suggesting the event or organizing it herself; what she doesn't create, she often involves herself for her own amusement, much to the exasperation of the rest of the cast due to the inevitable complications that come with her presence.
The story of Altered Fable starts with Yuuko stirring trouble among Takeru's harem by suggesting they all participate in a cooking event, with the winner getting to spend time with Takeru. Inevitably, all of the girls find an excuse to involve themselves without confessing their feelings to the already frustrated Takeru, who was forced to give up trying to convince everyone not to participate.
The event itself was setup in the Mitsurugi mansion, with a set resembling a famous TV show where the judges eat horrible food made by the contestants and judge which was the worst meal: Takeru was to be the one and only judge. Unfortunately (or fortunately), the event was permanently called off after both Meiya and Yuuhi were convinced to dismiss their chefs and attempt to cook their meals themselves: the resulting explosion sent everyone to the hospital.
Yuuko's next scheme involved taking advantage of the fact that the Mitsurugi sisters and their vast connections had arrived at Hakuryou at the same time as a mass teacher exchange, which offered her the perfect opportunity to take control of the school's upcoming ball sports festival planning. She spun a carefully worded speech meant to inspire the youth of the school to think outside of the box and escape society's established rules by turning the traditional festival on its head and proposed a single tournament involving the entire school with a new sport: airsoft.
The real reason she wanted to change the ball tournament was because she became frustrated while playing a "crappy" game on the Playsta 2 for one of her personal research projects and thought recreating the conditions in real life might help her get back on track, and also because it would be fun to win. It also offered her another chance to beat Marimo, something she always found entertaining.
Her lies were accepted by not only the students but many of the faculty, and only after the approval was given for Yuuko to proceed did Marimo and the others realize Yuuko only used the speech to make them forget about the ridiculousness of her request, by which time it was too late to take the decision back.
In addition, Yuuko managed to get Marimo to bet on her New Years plans again, meaning that if Yuuko won, she would be cosplaying again without any chance of getting a date.
Using the Mitsurugi's influence, Yuuko managed to get her own team into a very famous sports training center to prepare for the tournament. After a week of intense training by the entire school, the event commenced and Yuuko's team, led by Akane Suzumiya, easily made it to the finals. Not one to shy away from a contest, especially one she devised herself, Yuuko personally led the team as general with her assistant teacher Irina Piatif her tactician.
Just as Yuuko had expected, the tournament came down to her team against Marimo's. During the course of the game, Yuuko made sure to exploit the absence of certain rules thanks in large part to her being the one to write the rulebook: the artificial jungle habitat flown in for the final battle had cameras and sensors inside, with which she used to observe Marimo's team and accurately predict their moves. Despite her team's skill and use of legal loopholes they were still at a distinct disadvantage in skill and enthusiasm, and after Mikoto discovered her use of the cameras and Walken disabled them from the outside, Yuuko had no choice but to play her 'Ace' card: calling in reinforcements from the outside, in the form of previously graduated upperclassmen Isumi Michiru, Hayase Mitsuki, Suzumiya Haruka, Munakata Misae, and Kazama Touko.
Using a loophole that said a team could only have 10 players on the field at one time, Yuuko could call in these new players after the original team had left the battlefield from "dying". This worked in her favor as she quickly overwhelmed Marimo's team, who thought they had already won by taking out the rest of the girls on Yuuko's side.
Her one mistake was allowing Kasumi, who had managed to make it to Yuuko's base, to remain there with her until the end of the game: Kasumi, either on purpose or out of habit, held onto Yuuko's lab coat which technically counted as a knife attack in airsoft rules, by which Yuuko as general was "killed" the moment she was touched, winning the game for Marimo's team. Only moments after that, Mitsuki had managed to convince Yuuhi to surrender by mercilessly shooting Takeru at close range when he used his body to shield the Mitsurugi heiress. These two events were captured by cameras that were powered by backup generators, separate from the ones that Alfred Walken had taken out to stop Yuuko's use of the sensors, and were used by Mana and the rest of the judges to determine the victor.
Yuuko initially had a moment of triumph when her team was considered the winners by Takeru and the others, before the camera evidence had been discovered. During this time, she rebuked Akane and Chizuru both who called her a cheater by stating they should have thought outside of the box and learned to go against the established rules if they wanted to win, and that Yuuko was trying to teach them a lesson by manipulating the game in that way. The exchange principal Radhabinod later declared Marimo's team the winner after acknowledging the knife attack found in the recovered video recording, to which a flustered Yuuko could say nothing but promise vengeance against everyone in a fit of rage not unlike that of a child in a tantrum.
Later, Yuuko attended the Christmas party at the Mitsurugi mansion with Marimo after they came from another costume party. Disappointed in the lack of excitement at the last event they had attended, Yuuko managed to liven things up with her students and had fun, despite the fact Marimo escaped her cosplay plans with a tame Reindeer outfit.
She was the one that paid for the trip to the Ski lodge and hot springs, though she was somewhat annoyed when the Mitsurugi corporation ended up flying in different food than what she had already paid for. At the Ski lodge, rather than bother with the cold, she stayed inside and entertained herself at the poolside by putting on a photoshoot with her female teachers used as assistants. In the hot springs, she enjoyed a drink with Marimo and sat in with Takeru in the man's side of the hot springs, and listened in as the girls all confessed their affection for Takeru on the other side of the wall. She would have congratulated him, but the boy had already collapsed from a combination of the heat and the sake she had offered him. Yuuko left him to his fate, dragging an apologetic Marimo along.
When Takeru and Sumika on a whim asked Meiya and Yuuhi if they could take a vacation to the ocean for Kasumi to see it for the first time, Yuuko managed to arrange it so that she, Marimo, the exchange teachers, and even her students from the airsoft tournament could tag along to the Mitsurugi-owned tropical island. She declared that Marimo would definitely find a man on this trip, though she doubted he would be any better than her last one. Along the way, she managed to convince Takeru and the rest to enter a volleyball tournament so that she could win the prize money.
If Takeru so happened to visit his homeroom teacher as often as he could during the story up to that point, Yuuko participates in a certain erotic dream of his by both observing from afar and directly interacting with the two during a certain beach outing.
She also happened to know the truth about why the exchange teachers are at Hakuryou, but kept quiet about it simply because she thought their presence was amusing. The fact she could discover this information so easily intimidated Irina and Irma to the point they both acknowledged they would have to be wary around Yuuko if they wanted to attempt any direct action.
Strike Frontier[]
Yuuko falls victim to an Allegiance double agent in Strike Frontier.
Yuuko acts as a mentor for the temporally displaced protagonists (and they in turn, as her lab rats). Things progress mostly as they do in the main timeline, with some deviations from the tech boosts from reverse engineering the protagonists' smartphones, and the protagonists managing to directly or indirectly save characters, such as Marimo, who'd otherwise die or to resolve situations in a more satisfactory manner.
Her greater successes drew the attention of the Master and his shadowy cabal, and Yuuko is fatally wounded by an assassin. Curiously, the assassin, Carrie, had been subjected to the same CIA-style hypnosis that had compelled Irma to fire on Sagiri's squadron.
Before dying, Yuuko had her daughter, Yuuki, transfer her consciousness to a backup 00 unit.
Quotes[]
EXTRA: "Time is the cruelest kindness."
EXTRA: "They say you can redo your life while you're still young, but the young don't know how..."
UNLIMITED: "I couldn't be... the holy mother."
ALTERNATIVE: "From now on, you and I---will be heading into a hell where you won't be able to even care about death anymore."
ALTERNATIVE: "Goodbye...you bratty savior."
POST-ALTERNATIVE: "That's why I've said it so many times... this world was saved by a hero. Crying and stumbling along the way, fighting for so long... an inexperienced hero. Though, it's funny... everyone still went along with him...and when I found out, I also thought...ah...I'm one of them as well. Really...I can only say it's childish...Looks like talking to you trees is a futile effort."
Etymology[]
- Kouzuki means "fragrance, fragrant" (香) (kou) and "moon" (月) (tsuki/zuki).
- Yuuko means "evening" (夕) (yuu) and "call" (呼) (ko).
Trivia[]
- Like her sisters, she drives an expensive Italian car (Lancia Stratos) and is very dangerous at the wheel.
- In the Unlimited universe she is known as Professor Kouzuki Yuuko, implying that she obtained a phD on her Quantum Causality theory.
- According to her Unlimited self, high quality alcohol is extremely expensive in the BETA universe.
- Yuuko admits in her Alternative ending that Shirogane is the first man to sexually dominate her.
- In both Extra and Altered Fable, Yuuko is known for being an attractive teacher, and Takeru says that many boys from his school lust after her, noting her large bosom as the main reason. She often takes advantage of her looks by using them to win contests, such as during the Hakuryou school festival where she wore a skimpy swimsuit for a photoshoot in order to beat Marimo's food stand.
- She isn't above using her looks outside of contests, such as when she and the other teachers went to a Ski resort and she put on a photoshoot simply for the fun of it. Yuuko also used it as an excuse to force Marimo, Irma, and Irina to act as her "assistants" for the day.
- In Extra, Yuuko plays fast and loose with school rules and regulations when it comes to just about anything relating to the faculty and student body. It is revealed by Marimo that she has dirt on the principal as well as most of the rest of the faculty, Marimo included, which allows her to get away with her usual schemes.
- This is somewhat subverted in Altered Fable, as the principal is temporarily replaced by the transferred Radhabinod, who she has no power over. This leads to her eventual defeat in the school airsoft tournament when Radhabinod gets the final say in who wins. Yuuko doesn't take defeat well.
- She is the tallest girl in the Trilogy, at 174cm.
Gallery[]
References[]
- ↑ Actual scene takes place during Alternative
- ↑ Muv-Luv Alternative Chronicles Resurrection
- ↑ Muv-Luv Alternative Chronicles Resurrection: Fake virus threat
- ↑ Muv Luv Alternative: Yuuko hints that she's remembering all the past times Alternative IV was cancelled when she angrily tells Takeru "I don't care if its this world or another... I will never repeat those same failures again...!".
- ↑ Muv Luv Alternative: XM3 trials arc
- ↑ This is hinted at twice: the first time when Yuuko asks Takeru to kill her even though she had completed all previous Alternative IV hurdles and she had everything to lose at that point and the second time during the ending of the game when Yuuko again asks Takeru to kill her. Other examples include the last lines she tells Takeru directly before the afternoon trials and the interrogation with Takeru directly after the trials.