Haruko Haruhara

Haruko Haruhara (ハルハラ・ハル子, Haruhara Haruko) is a central character of the FLCL series, Mabase's newest resident, and an extraterrestrial investigator for the Galactic Space Police Brotherhood. She becomes the Nandaba household's maid while working to find Atomsk, the most powerful space pirate in the galaxy. She leaves Earth in FLCLimax, but returns as a teacher in Mabase in FLCL Progressive. In FLCL Alternative, she's back on Earth again tackling a whole host of new Medical Mechanica problems.

She is voiced in Japanese by Mayumi Shintani and in English by Kari Wahlgren.

Appearance
Haruko is a tall, slender and unearthly young woman with cat-like facial features. She sports a pale complexion, salmon-colored bob cut styled into a medium-length flare, and yellow-colored eyes that are also cat-like. Her usual outfit is a bright red coat, black pants, white boots, a white scarf, and a pair of goggles. She wears many other outfits in the series, such as a nurse outfit she likely stole from a nurse after tying her up, but one fashion accessory she is never without is a large metal bracelet on her left wrist. The bracelet acts as a kind of radar device, reacting to N.O. power and letting her know where Medical Mechanica robots and/or Atomsk might be. It can also create red chains, presumably to immobilize Atomsk.

In FLCL Progressive, as a result of Julia Jinyu splitting off from her, Haruko's hair is slightly shorter, spikier, and orange, but she retains her yellow eyes. After reabsorbing Jinyu, Haruko's pink hair is restored and her eyes become red. This could be due to the both of them having absorbed some of Atomsk's power prior to splitting. Haruko takes Jinyu’s glasses as her own. Her belly also becomes larger after eating Jinyu, making her appear pregnant, but it eventually shrinks back to normal size. In Our Running, Jinyu is split once more from Haruko and her hair and eyes become orange and yellow again, respectively. In this season, she wears a different red jacket with black accents, but keeps her black pants and white boots. She stops wearing her gloves.

In FLCL Alternative, her hair seems to have turned back to its normal color, suggesting she and Jinyu merged again or have yet to be apart. She now has a different hair style, letting one bang loose to the left, with her hair tied in the back in a way that allows tufts to spike out in upward and downward directions. Her eyes are also yellow again, and she seems to have abandoned the wrist bracelet that she's known for having, implying that at some point she must have given up on capturing Atomsk and allowed him to have his freedom like Jinyu wanted, or has yet to encounter either Atomsk or the bracelet. It is revealed in the final episode that being an alien means Haruko cannot age past 19.

Personality
She has a tendency to switch between a variety of different dispositions to others on a dime, making her difficult to read and unpredictable. She can be very persuasive and stand-offish sometimes to get what she wants. When around the Nandaba men, she is often either promiscuous or found in suggestive situations. She can also act like a mom, a lover or a maid depending upon her mood.

While split from Julia Jinyu, Haruko acts a little different. She's a lot less manipulative and far more aggressive with her approach. She is very playful and selfish, intent on getting what she wants by any means without reason.

In FLCL Alternative, Haruko's traits appear to be more akin to Jinyu, as she is far more helpful than she's ever been in the past, and most that she's done is for the good of others. Despite her silly attitude, she's very wise, acting as sort of a mentor to Kana. Haruko guides Kana with simple advice to her problems, as well as protecting Kana and her friends. She is, however, still very mysterious and her motives are not very clear until the final episode, in which it's revealed that Haruko strongly wants to prevent Medical Mechanica from getting their way, a goal that Jinyu wanted to accomplish more than anything.

Haruko is deceptive and remorseless of the the things she has done. Ultimately, she is cause of the events of FLCL and most of the FLCL series, making her the true antagonistic catalyst of FLCL. On occasion, however, she does show positive traits akin to a more antihero type. Even though her actions in FLCL and FLCL Progressive were not pure, they ultimately changed the protagonist for the better.

There is a running gag in the series where Haruko is vastly impressed by larger objects coming out of people's heads. If the item is smaller, she will instantly lose interest in the person and mock him/her for as long as she knows them. In many ways, this joke is an interpretation of sexual encounters. This joke is stretched even further in FLCL Alternative, when Haruko stops Kanda from having sex with her and decides to pull an object from his head instead. When the item was revealed to be a small blaster, Haruko viewed him as pathetic.