Overview
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Haruhara Haruko, 19 (or so she claims), is a pink-haired girl from outer space. She rides a yellow Vespa and wields a left-handed Rickenbacker bass guitar as a bizarre weapon of sorts. She becomes the Nandaba household’s maid and plays on a rival team of the Mabase Martians for extra money. She has also apparently had past relations with Amarao. This mysterious character is the catalyst for FLCL’s entire plot. Her real name is revealed to be Haruha Raharu by Amarao; this may be another alias, however. She is known throughout the series as ‘Haruko’. |
Haruko, derived from Child of the Spring, the most eccentric of the characters, first appears in episode 1 when she runs over Naota with her Vespa and hits him on the head with a left-handed Rickenbacker bass guitar with a pull cord start motor. Naota gets more than a bump on his head, an N.O. portal opens which Haruko uses for her own selfish purposes. Haruko is soon hired by Naota’s father, Kamon, as a house maid.
It is eventually revealed that Haruko is in a confrontation with a company named Medical Mechanica (whose factory building looks like a giant clothing iron) located on the outskirts of Mabase which is holding a being named “Atomsk” which she is after, and she’s using Naota as a means to her own ends, which are revealed in the final episode.
Haruko rides a yellow Vespa (and is also known as The Vespa Woman, a pun on the word Vespa, which means wasp) and wields a blue left-handed Rickenbacker bass guitar model 4003 (similar to the 4001 used by Sir Paul McCartney, whom she mentions in Episode 2) as a bizarre weapon of sorts. She hits people with it and can fire bullets from the neck. This weapon is used several times to conjure robots from Naota’s forehead. She plays on a rival team of the Mabase Martians for extra money. She has also apparently had past relations with Amarao, most likely similar to her relationship with Naota.
This mysterious character is the catalyst for FLCL’s entire plot. She is called Haruha Raharu by Amarao; this may be another alias, however. Haruko has connections to the Nandaba family cat, Miu Miu. The cat serves as a “walkie talkie” to her superiors. We never hear the cat say anything [besides a grunt or a "mewwww..."] but it is obvious that Haruko is getting some kind of reply as her conversations with Miu Miu are reminiscent to that of a telephone conversation.
Haruko pictures
Voice Actor
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Kari Wahlgren is a well-known voice actor with credit in hundreds of titles. Some include Curious George, Robotech, IGPX, Star Wars Episode III, Halo 2, and Samurai Champloo. |
Also see… Haruko video game
