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Ichigo is the former secondary antagonist, later one of the main protagonists of the DARLING in the FRANXX series. She is a Parasite with codename "015" of Thirteenth Plantation, where she is partnered in boy-girl pair with Goro to pilot a FRANXX called Delphinium. She was also the official leader of Squad 13 and is Zero Two's former rival, later ally.
Due to her feelings for Hiro, she struggles between her arrogance and selfishness and her responsibilities as a leader. Out of the entire squad, she antagonizes Zero Two the most and almost succeeds in separating her from Hiro for good until she realizes that Zero Two is the only one Hiro loves, which prompts her to redeem herself and give up on her plan to separate both Hiro and Zero Two away for good for the sake of their happiness and she eventually finds a new love in Goro at the end of the series.
She is voiced by Kana Ichinose in the Japanese version of the anime, and by Brittany Lauda in the English version of the anime.
Appearance[]
Ichigo has a petite build and is the shortest among the parasites in Squad 13. She has soft green eyes. She has straight, razor-cut blue hair that mostly covers her right eye with a white hair clip holding back the bangs on her left side. She dons the standard Pistil Parasite uniform.
Personality[]
Ichigo is an honor student who is seen as a natural-born leader. Because of her high aptitude, she was chosen as Squad 13's Leader. While normally a very considerate and level-headed girl, her crush on Hiro impairs her judgment, especially as regards to his possible partnership with Zero Two. She initially hated the possibility of a stranger like Zero Two becoming Hiro's partner. One of her motivations for agreeing to be Hiro's partner in the training match was because she believes she should be the one to bring out his full potential.
As a leader though, she is reliable and very considerate and caring for her friends. She tries to see everything in a good light, even if she herself doesn't want to. She can also be encouraging towards her squadmates and insist that teamwork is important for all of them to survive. This is further emphasized when VIRM left earth and abandoned humanity; Ichigo becomes so dedicated to looking after the others and ensuring they have enough food, clean water, etc. for survival that she forgets to take care of herself, until she collapses outright in the fields. However, she is strongly emotional and has always been impulsive and driven by her feelings. She is forced between acting as a leader and her own feelings, such as knowingly putting Hiro's life on the line while also acknowledging he's needed, this strain of commanding weighs her down. She would initially let her personal feelings get to her head when in a crucial mission, only to reflect over it when being placed in a dangerous situation. She would think about her poor skills as a leader and blame herself for her putting her friends in danger. She also expresses her anxiety far more inside her FRANXX than she does outside of it, and is seen breaking down only to be supported by her FRANXX partner, Goro.
She is fiercely protective of Hiro since she has known him since childhood, and supports Hiro the best she can. She is not afraid to voice her own opinions and get people to follow her orders as a leader. She has been deemed by Zero Two on several occasions as "bossy". She is a straight-laced person but also always follows the orders she receives, and holds a deep respect for Papa. Despite her serious disposition, Ichigo is capable of giving some notably snippy remarks, as seen in her interactions with Nine Alpha. Ichigo feels that failure of any kind, no matter how justifiable, reflects laziness on her part. In Episode 09, it is seen that she tends to panic when the slightest thing goes wrong, which of itself leads to more things going wrong.
Over the series, Ichigo slowly learns to put Hiro's feelings and Squad 13's well-being before her own. She learns to accept and support Hiro and Zero Two's relationship, and become nicer to Zero Two to the point of considering her an integral part of Squad 13. She becomes just as fiercely protective of Hiro as the others. She also becomes a much better leader; she learns to see the big picture and not let her tunnel-visioned emotions consume her, making decisions that benefit the whole group rather than just Hiro or her designs for him, and she isn't as badly shaken when things go wrong.
Relationships[]
Hiro[]
Hiro is Ichigo's Childhood Friend alongside Goro.
While being around him, she begins to views him as a love interest. However, since Hiro shows interests towards Zero Two than her, she behaves jealousy towards him. While she tries to keep Zero Two away from Hiro because of realizing that she might turn him into a half-demon, she eventually shooks off her love for him and just becomes best friends with him.
In the final episode, she mourns at his death. It's unknown if they will ever meet again after a thousand years have passed.
Zero Two[]
Zero Two is Ichigo's Love Rival turned Best Friend.
After they met each other, Ichigo was very unsure if she was a stranger. But when Zero Two begins to fall in love with Hiro, she becomes her bitter love rival.
In episode 5, they had a confrontation with each other when Ichigo orders her to stay away from Hiro but the latter brush it off, causing Ichigo to slap her and shouted at her for being heartless and saids that she is not a human, But in Retaliation, Zero Two gets enraged at her and violently lashes at her to not get in her way, making Ichigo scared and runs off.
In episode 14, she tolds her to never let her see Hiro, who was hospitalized, but still brushes it off. But after realizing what she is, she finally tell her that although they had a rough start in the beginning, she think that she was teammates with her. Zero Two still orders her to let her see Hiro and Ichigo agrees. However, she thinks that the squad have tricked her and Zero Two starts attacking them with rage.
Although she is hostile to Zero Two in the beginning, they eventually make peace with each other after episode 15 and as the series progresses further, they decrease their status as love rivals and gradually become best friends.
In the final episode, like Hiro, she mourns at her death. It’s unknown if they will meet again after a thousand years have passed.
Etymology[]
- Ichigo's nickname may use some of the numeral's readings from her real name "Code:015": ichifrom 1 (, ichi) and go from 5 (, go).
- Sharing the same name pun scheme with other characters, Ichigo is also the Japanese for strawberry.
Trivia[]
- Ichigo is the only member of Squad 13 outside of Hiro to give another Squad member a name, as everyone else’s name was given to by Hiro.
- Ichigo was the one who gave Ikuno her name.
- Ichigo likes cats, and she often plays with them off-duty.
- Her possessive, stubborn, jealous, selfish, arrogant, berating, assaulting, insensitive, bossy, erratic, explosive-tempered, aloof, cold-hearted, harsh, naive, and overprotective behavior had caused her to be the secondary antagonist, but she was by no means a villain.
- And because of these negative personality traits, Ichigo is most considered to be the worst and hated character by anime fans for that.
- However, after Ichigo starts reforming her behavior and makes peace with Zero Two, fans don't seem to hated her and begins to love her.