Character · Macross
Hikaru Ichijo
A stunt pilot who flew to an air show and was still in a cockpit years later, for entirely different reasons.
In Otakana the clue reads: Stunt pilot who ends up flying a Valkyrie
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Macross
- Letters
- 6 · Hard
Hikaru Ichijo is a civilian aerobatics flier who visits Macross Island for a launch ceremony and is caught there when an alien fleet arrives. He ends up inside a Valkyrie with no training at all, talked through the controls by radio, and never really leaves the military again. The series follows him from a reckless show pilot into someone responsible for other people's lives.
That arc gets a love triangle and the show takes it seriously. Lynn Minmay is a teenage singer who becomes a pop star in the middle of a war. Misa Hayase is the bridge officer who spends most of the series telling him what to do. Macross refuses to make either choice obviously correct, and the triangle runs the length of the series rather than resolving in an episode.
Super Dimension Fortress Macross aired in 1982 from Studio Nue, with Shoji Kawamori designing the transforming fighters. When Harmony Gold cut it together with two unrelated series for American television as Robotech, Hikaru was renamed Rick Hunter, which is how a large part of the Western audience met him first and how many of them still think of him.
Spelling HIKARU
HIKARU is six letters, three beats, and means to shine. The game wants the given name rather than the family name Ichijo, which English releases have spelled several different ways. The final U is barely voiced in speech, so anyone typing what they hear stops at HIKAR. Consonants and vowels alternate, so one green tile unlocks the row fast.