Chris Yukine

"Vivio taught me to never lost any hope regardless no matter what happened back then! She also taught me the true meaning of friendship and to rely in other…how to believe in other as well as how they believe in yourself…I pity you for not being able to feel such thing!"

- Chris Yukine

"I think this old geezer is pretty desperate for summoning these not so suitable heroic spirits for open frontal battle! Let's rock!"

- Chris Yukine

Chris Yukine (雪音 クリス) is one of the main characters of Senki Zesshō Symphogear.

She is initially an antagonist working under the main villain, Finé, wielding the Nehushtan Armor stolen from the Zwei Wing concert two years prior to the story. During season 1, Chris switches sides and joins the protagonists to work against Finé, symbolized by her change of relic from the Nehushtan Armor to the Ichaival Symphogear. By season 2, Chris has become a full-fledged protagonist wielding Ichaival and is working to move on from her past.

Appearance
Chris is a short girl with purple eyes and long lavender hair that falls to her knees, separated into twintails that further split into three curly strands each, and an ahoge. She wears a maroon, skin-tight one-piece with a black choker, short puffy sleeves and shorts, a translucent red-violet cutout exposing some of her chest and upper back, detached long sleeves with black accents that go past her wrist, black lace trim on the end of the shorts, black stockings with maroon ribbon garters attached to the dress, and maroon pumps. She wears her relic pendant around her neck. In the manga, this outfit lacks the translucent material in her chest and back cutouts, leaving those areas bare; her relic pendant is attached to her choker (the choker itself disconnected from her one-piece), and Chris' hair is tied with pink scrunchies. The manga also shows that the one-piece is done up at the back with a zipper.

When she was eight years old, Chris wore a pink dress with a light-pink front tied with cross-laces, short puffy sleeves, long light-pink or white sleeves, white lace-trimmed kneehigh socks, and red-brown shoes. Her hair is still in twintails that separate slightly, but shorter and at the front of her head instead of her back, draped over her shoulders, and tied with pink bows. In the manga, this outfit is significantly different: Chris' dress buttons up at the front and has a more flared skirt with white frills, and she wears a long-sleeved white shirt with arm cuffs and a buttoned-up collar. Instead of kneehigh socks, she has socks rolled up just above her foot, and she has buckle shoes instead of slip-ons.

Briefly in episode 5, Chris is seen dressed in a leather bondage outfit consisting of a black choker with a silver ring, tied at the back with a long ribbon, a black zip-up bustier that exposes her breasts and upper back, with straps attached to the ring and belts running down her exposed stomach and back attaching to straps on her thighs, black elbow gloves, and either black or pale-purple underwear (the colour changes in different shots, which was not corrected in the Blu-ray releases). The concept art shows her wearing heels with this outfit, but she is barefoot in the anime.

Though not seen in the anime or manga, Chris wears a long and loose pink dress with frills that exposes her upper shoulders and back as pajamas.

In season 2, Chris' hair color is changed to white, and she wears pink scrunchies in her hair. Her casual outfit is a low-collar, long-sleeved, and multi-layered red and maroon dress with lace trim and puffy white shorts underneath, white thighighs done with red bows and garters, and maroon pumps.

In season 3, Chris' casual outfit consists of a sleeveless pink button-up shirt with frills, maroon shorts, black thighhighs with garters with rose buttons on them, and maroon pumps. She wears a light-blue, low-collar shirt and shorts with pink trim and a red bow as pajamas; while wearing these, she has her twintails tied together with red ribbons.

As of season 2, Chris has joined Lydian Music Academy and is subsequently seen wearing the school uniform. Her uniform is reasonably loose-fitting due to her large bust and smaller stature, and the cuffs of her sleeves are occasionally seen to go past her sleeves.

Personality
As a result of her harsh life, Chris is hot-headed, antagonistic, and aggressive, quick to distrust others, especially adults, who have only ever treated her like objects. Though she has declared her personal goal to be to destroy everyone else with power, and willingly cooperates with Finé in order to achieve that goal, under the false impression that Finé is working for the same goal of bring peace to the world as her, Chris actually hates the thought of hurting innocent people.

Though Chris is aware that Finé is only using her and openly shows resentment towards Finé for using and mistreating her like all other adults, being regularly subjected to torture and sexual abuse at Finé's hands for Finé's amusement, she still holds some affection for Finé, seeking Finé's approval and believing that Finé is the only person who understands her. However, this is largely born of Finé's isolation and grooming of Chris.

Chris claims to hate singing because of the destruction she can cause with her relic, which is why she never uses the Ichaival. The manga and season 2 further expand on this, with Chris hating singing because her song was used to activate Solomon's Cane, which Finé made frequent use of to cause death and chaos. As a result of being reached out to by Hibiki Tachibana and Miku Kohinata, and abandoned by Finé, Chris relearns how to be kind and caring, culminating in her sacrificing herself and using her once-hated singing to protect the world, following in the footsteps of her parents and the dreams they wished to fulfill when they were still alive.

After the events of season 1, though Chris is still hot-headed and rough-natured, she has become much gentler in nature, open and honest to herself and others. She gets embarrassed easily and is somewhat socially maladjusted and awkward as a result of her near-constant isolation and friendlessness since she was eight years old.

History
Her father, Masanori Yukine, was a violinist. Her mother, Sonnet M. Yukine, was a vocalist. Both parents were famous musicians being looked into by the Second Division in order to look for candidates for the Symphogear.

Eight years prior to S1, as part of a non-government volunteer organization, Chris' parents took a young Chris with them to a republic that recently suffered from a coup and had suspended all diplomatic relations with other countries: the Val Verde Commonwealth. They entered the country through Guatemala and put on public music performances in different places while traveling, with the ultimate goal of lending aid to refugees. At first, they traveled along with delegates from the United Nations, but they eventually got trapped by the expanding front-lines of the ongoing war and became isolated from their organization. They were later declared missing. Shortly after that, outside sources confirmed that Masanori and Sonnet had died in a terrorist attack, but they were continually unable to determine what exactly had become of Chris.

It turned out that Chris had been kidnapped by the terrorists and sold into sex trafficking. Two years prior to S1, Chris was rescued from the clutches of a local gang by the United Nations during their intervention in Val Verde. She was then returned to Japan. Genjūrō Kazanari was arranged to be her legal guardian after he volunteered to take her in, but upon her arrival in Japan, Chris was instead kidnapped by Finé to be used as a tool in Finé's plans and experiments. Though many agents, Genjūrō included, were sent to find her, Finé foiled all their efforts and made several die or even disappear. Thus, the search for Chris was called off.

Chris has since been living in isolation with Finé in Finé's mansion in the remote country. Sometime during the two year gap between the concert tragedy and Hibiki Tachibana's awakening of Gungnir, Finé gave Ichaival to Chris and, after obtaining Solomon's Cane from the American government, proceeded to exploit her song to awaken Solomon's Cane and allow Finé full control over the Noise. The awakening of Solomon's Cane took half a year to complete, according to Chris. Since then, Chris has refused to use Ichaival, out of her guilt over awakening a weapon of destruction, and her hatred of songs caused by her refusal to accept the deaths of her musician parents.

Attacks and Abilities
Chris is the owner of Second Relic Ichaival. As a Symphogear user, Chris has the ability to fight Noise with the use of the anti-Noise armour, the Symphogear, that clads her in battle. As a candidate for the Symphogear, she can activate relics with her song and summon armed gear in battle.

Her Armed Gear is a pair of crossbows that fire up to five homing beam arrows each. The Gear forms from her forearm armor and can retract at will to allow use of her hands. They also have a smaller pistol form more suited for close combat.

Etymology
Chris (クリス) - short for "Christian". Initially derived from a Greek word meaning "anointed".

Yukine (雪音) - written with the kanji "snow" and "sound".

Trivia

 * According to notes from the manga:
 * Chris is half-Japanese, half-American. She was born in Japan.
 * Her strange way of speaking comes from her time spent overseas, and being home-schooled by her parents. It can be inferred from this that she never went to public school before season 2 of the anime.
 * Her favourite food is anpan (bread filled with red bean paste).
 * When she was living with Finé, Finé would "help" Chris with the shoulder and neck pains caused by her large breasts by electrocuting her with a low-power current on the parrilla.
 * Chris' battle song genre is rock.
 * Many of Chris' attacks appear to be homages to rock bands, specifically Nirvana, Megadeth, Iron Maiden, Led Zeppelin, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Queen, and Arthemis.
 * Almost all of Chris's various attacks are references to the Mobile Suit Gundam franchise, most obvious in Billion Maiden utilizing the same weapons and firing pose as Heavy arms Custom but also in her superb song, which chains together the ultimate attacks of the Turn A, Double X and Wing Zero.
 * Chris is the first person to have used two relics, the second being Maria Cadenzavna Eve.
 * She is the first user to hold a full relic, the other being Finé.
 * Chris is the only user to use a Spanish word in her song; she says "adios", which means goodbye.
 * Interestingly, she lived in South America for six years. It's possible she picked up some Spanish from the time she was in trafficking there.
 * Finé gave Chris all the clothing she wore as a teenager in season 1.
 * In episode 8 of season 1, Chris appears to have on her back what looks like burn marks, most likely from being electrocuted on the parrilla given their patterned spread.
 * In episode 1 of season 1, on the day of the concert tragedy, Miku's father can be seen reading a newspaper that mentions a Japanese girl missing and the South American civil war, referring to Chris. It can be inferred from this that Finé kidnapped Chris recently to the concert event, possibly a few weeks or even days before.
 * Despite Chris having hair bows/ribbons in most concept art for season 1, and having hair scrunchies in the manga version, she has no such hair accessories as a teenager in season 1 itself; only her child self has hair accessories. Season 2 and onwards depicts her with the hair scrunchies from the manga, although they are rose-pink in colour compared to the manga's dark-red.
 * Chris' short stature is likely in part because of her time in sex trafficking, where she would have undergone a lot of stress and been underfed as incentive to keep her in line, thus leading to her growing up somewhat stunted. This can also explain why she has such a big appetite and is such a messy eater, from having to cherish every scrap of food she managed to get her hands on, and the harsh nature of trafficking discouraging polite social etiquette.
 * GX shows Chris to be able to get good grades at school. This seems strange at first, as she lacked eight years of formal education due to trafficking and living with Finé (though some fans speculate Finé homeschooled her to an extent, logically it wouldn't be enough to make up for the six years Chris missed with trafficking). It makes sense when one considers Chris' fighting style: using guns and bows requires her to calculate range and wind direction and the best tactics to avoid mishaps and hitting her friends. This would give Chris a natural advantage in things like mathematics which she can apply to and from school and battle. Furthermore, Chris has also shown herself to be clever and creative when it comes to making up plans and gambits on the spot, such as in S1E10 where she suggests the plan to take out the Noise ships, and in later episodes of S2 where she subtly lets Tsubasa in on her plans to take out Ver and retrieve Solomon's Cane without alerting him to her betrayal.
 * One of the main weapons of Ichaival is guns, which is a weapon constantly used in warfare, terrorism, and also sometimes in trafficking and slavery to keep slaves in line. It's possible that one reason Chris refused to use Ichaival is because of the role of guns in her time in South America.