Character · Kill la Kill
Ryuko Matoi
She arrives at the school gates carrying half a giant pair of scissors and asks who killed her father.
In Otakana the clue reads: Transfer student with half a giant scissor blade
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Kill la Kill
- Letters
- 5 · Normal
Ryuko Matoi transfers into Honnouji Academy, a school run as a small dictatorship where uniforms grant power and the student council president grants uniforms. She has no interest in the hierarchy. She has half a scissor blade, taken from the scene of her father's murder, and a plan consisting of hitting the school until the other half turns up.
What she gets instead is Senketsu, a sailor uniform woven from Life Fibers that talks, drinks her blood and turns her into something capable of winning fights she ought to lose. The transformed outfit is deliberately, aggressively revealing, and the series makes her embarrassment about it into a real theme rather than a running gag. She fights better once she stops being ashamed.
Trigger built the show around her temper. Ryuko is impatient, quick to swing, and consistently wrong about who her enemies actually are, which keeps the plot moving because she will never wait long enough to find out. Ami Koshimizu voices her with a rasp that holds up across a series where almost every line is shouted.
Spelling RYUKO
RYUKO is five letters and hides a long vowel. The Japanese 流子 has a long U in the first syllable, written Ryuu or with a macron, and English releases flatten it. RYU is also one Japanese sound rather than three, an R kana with a small yu attached. So the answer is RYUKO: five tiles, one U, nothing doubled.