Yoko (The Animatrix)

Yoko is the heroine of the short "Beyond" in the 2003 film, The Animatrix. She is an ordinary 14-year-old girl living in her flat located in a suburban city somewhere in Tokyo, Japan where the short takes place. When Yoko discovers her cat Yuki has gone missing, she sets out to find her. With a suggestion from a gang of neighborhood kids, Yoko's search takes her to the "haunted house", an off-limits abandoned building within the city that contains a number of reality warping anomalies that the kids exploit for their own amusement. These occurrences capture Yoko's interest as well.
Yoko is voiced by Hedy Burress who voices Yuna in Final Fantasy X and X-2 as well as Brigitte "Rosie" Stark from Valkyria Chronicles.
== Appearance ==
Yoko is a tomboyish yet vibrant teenage girl Japanese origin with pale skin, pink lips, bright green eyes with black underliner makeup and thin dark eyebrows. Her medium length hair is dyed bright orange with an aquamarine interior and ends with spiked locks and bangs that partially cover her brow and across the bridge of her nose. Yoko has an orange star tattoo on her left cheekbone. Yoko has an average yet slender physique with a moderate bust and firm athletic legs. 
When she is introduced in her home, Yoko wore a cropped white camisole top that exposes her navel with black shoulder straps and a yellow star in the middle of her chest, a necklace with a small diamond pendant, small light blue boyshorts and no footwear as she lounged in her bedroom. As she heads out to find Yuki, Yoko changes out of her intimate bottoms for a pair of black compression shorts, dons a red hooded jacket over her top and red low rise sneakers with white socks. 
The next day her outfit consisted of a pink tank top with the same yellow star, green capris pants and the same sneakers.
== Personality ==
Yoko is at first a regular inner-city girl living a normal life. When she's introduced, Yoko is seen multitasking via talking with her friend on the phone while preparing a meal for her cat, showing how responsible and active she is despite her young age. When her cat Yuki doesn't show up after being called, Yoko starts to worry her to the point where she quickly stops what she's doing to look out her window. This starts her adventure to head out and search for Yuki. 
Yoko becomes even more determined to find Yuki, especially when the gang of neighborhood boys suggest that the latter may have wandered off to the haunted house. Though frustrated that Yuki (despite being an indoor cat) would run off, Yoko becomes dead set to proceed with this new heading in mind. As she comes across the strange occurrences in the abandoned house, Yoko becomes swept in a number of reactions whilst keeping her mind focused on finding Yuki: from agitated, curious, then frightened to exhilarated and finally happy. 
Apart from her cat, Yoko has a fondness for the kids from her block who've ventured into a suspicious building and feels the need to watch over them in case they get into trouble. Despite being the eldest of the neighborhood kids, Yoko is shown to be as fun-loving and carefree as they are when she joins in on their gravity defying antics. And in turn, the kids accept Yoko as their own when they let her in on the fun. 
When the Agent arrives with his team of Exterminators to purge the neighborhood of the haunted house, Yoko shows defiance towards their authority as she tries to convince them not to tear down the building so the children can keep having fun inside. This proves to be in vain as the house is leveled and promptly converted into a parking lot days later. 
Yoko shows initial disappointment when she sees what's become of the haunted house: an empty parking space under construction. But after trying to reactivate the zero gravity from before, Yoko is seemingly left unsure whether it was all real or not. 
== Plot ==
=== Beyond ===
When Yoko is first introduced, she is seen reaching into a cupboard to grab a can of tuna whilst calling for cat Yuki for lunch time while also chatting with a friend on the phone. Yoko seemingly lives by herself in an apartment somewhere in a Japanese urban metropolis. 
While she's relaxing in her bedroom clad in her small clothes, Yoko continues chatting on the phone with a friend of hers about not wanting to go out on a date and lecturing the person on the other line to make up their mind, she calls Yuki but to no avail. Concerned after calling out twice, Yoko starts to worry Yuki hasn't shown up for her meal, especially when the latter never misses said meal times. Yoko looks at the afternoon time on her alarm clock ( 2:00PM) before she hears a bell ring outside. Believing the sound to be the one on Yuki's collar, Yoko promptly hangs up her call and dashes to her bedroom balcony. Opening the sliding doors, Yoko calls out to Yuki a few more times. Distressed, Yoko prepares to go outside to find her. 
Yoko begins asking her neighbors, to which they haven't spotted said missing cat. She then asks a gang of younger local boys hanging out by the fence of her complex. She gives them a clue in the form of a small bell that hangs from Yuki's collar. Unsure, one of the boy's suggest that Yuki may have wandered off to the "haunted house", the ruins of an off-limits housing complex that has a number of strange occurrences happening. Frustrated as to why Yuki (being an indoor cat) would sneak out, Yoko ultimately decides to go to the haunted house, determined to get Yuki back. The other boys decide to tag along with her. 
As the group makes their way to the area's perimeter, Yoko first looks in the shrubbery, only to lose sight of the boys. Left on her own, Yoko enters the perimeter of the run-down building with caution. The moment she ventures further, Yoko spots a number of surreal anomalies such as a hovering metal can that rotates a few inches off the ground, a stray dog eating a carcass as a black miasma flows up and down it's body and broken light bulbs that flicker and light up without any electrical source. While dashing through the ruins and yelling for the boys, Yoko encounters a rain shower within the house that drizzled from a sunny skyline. She then ventures down a darkened hallway only to be set upon and knocked off her feet by a gust of wind that pelts her with newspapers, followed by a digital buzzing noise. This alone was enough to agitate the girl, pondering aloud what was going on within the house.
Once she gets up, Yoko hears Yuki's bell ring again. Turning around, she sees Yuki chasing a fleeing shadow on a sunlit courtyard. Relieved, Yoko runs up to her cat and warmly scoops her up in a tight embrace. Happy to have finally found Yuki, Yoko asks if she's hungry. The sound of a deep growling spooks Yoko for a split second. 
Yoko then relaxes after recovering Yuki on the courtyard pavement. Looking down, Yoko notices Yuki playing around with another surreal quirk: shadows that don't align with their physical origins. Close to her is a local girl who assures Yoko that her cat was well looked after before the latter showed up. Thanking the girl, Yoko and the latter perk their heads up, alerted by the noise caused by the gang of boys inside the house. 
Yoko, followed by Yuki and the little girl, enter the haunted house just as the boys have made a game of the zero gravity effects of the open clearing their in. Wandering about, Yoko ponders if the house really is cursed. Then, something in the air catches her attention: A pigeon's feather rapidly fluttering in midair. 
Clutching it in her fingers, Yoko balances the feather for a few moments before giving it a blow from her lips. In doing so, Yoko loses her footing and weightlessly drifts to her side as everything slows down in bullet-time. 
In this surreal state, Yoko gasps as she watches a dove flap its wings in slow motion as it flies by in front of her view. Once the dove passes, Yoko's expression slowly turns from shock to amazement. Overcome by the sensation, Yoko turns euphoric and serene as she floats to the ground unharmed. The other children huddle around her, amazed. On the ground, Yoko hugs herself, elated by what she just experienced. Wanting to have some more fun, Yoko joins the kids herself by performing a head-over-heels flip before landing gracefully. Around the kids, Yoko acts as their supervisor as two of the boys toss one girl in the air as the zero gravity breaks her fall before the all jump around and enjoy the afternoon in the clearing. 
Soon their fun is cut short as a swarm of rats invade the clearing, scattering the kids. Yuki runs off again, prompting Yoko to chase after her once again. As the day outside gets darker,a strange vehicle crashes through the front of the house, producing a team of men dressed in hazmat suits. Back inside, Yoko runs up a flight of stairs looking for Yuki. Hearing her bell ring, Yoko runs back down to find her cat scratching against a door. When she crouches down to pick up Yuki, Yoko hears a voice coming from the other side of the door. Yoko opens the door to see that it leads to an endless dark void with a seemingly bottomless pit. Within the void, Yoko hears the echoes of what sounds like her own voice, from the phone chat she had earlier that day. 
Soon, a bright searclight flashes on Yoko and Yuki. The girl and her cat are approached by two of the Exterminators and are forced out of the building. Slowly turning her head, Yoko can only clutch Yuki tight to her chest while standing motionless with a terrified expression as she's being approached by these menacing figures as well as what's happening with the other kids at the moment. 
Outside, the kids are being escorted from the premises by the Exterminators with Yoko being the last one out. After the one leading the operation, an Agent, orders the men to examine Yoko before releasing her, she breaks free from their grip. In a frenzy from having an amazing place be defiled, Yoko protests that there aren't any bugs or hazards in the building. She screams aloud that it's only the kids having fun before the Exterminators tug Yoko by her hair. Her yelling only falls on deaf ears as the Agent orders the men to immediately "seal the area off" . They do so by gassing the entire building with fumigation hoses. 
Some time passes and the area where the haunted house once was has been converted into a parking lot under renovation. Yoko appears (with Yuki safe at home this time) and peers through the fence. She hears a glass break and sees the same neighborhood kids from before trying to use the quirks to no avail. After a few more tries, they give up and leave to find something better to do. Yoko runs over and finds a familiar object in the grass: the tin can that used to hover. Examining it in her hand, Yoko attempts to beckon an anomaly herself as she lets it fall out of her grip. The can falls to the ground, but curiously enough, it rolls towards the parking lot gate as if by memory. While unsure if the anomalies are still there, Yoko seems to have cut her finger in the process. Letting the blood seep and drip from her fingertips, Yoko breathes heavily as she reflects on the events of the haunted house and everything that came with it. 
Yoko presumably returns to her normal life afterwards while pondering what she and the kids remembered. 
== Trivia ==
* According to Koji Morimoto, Yoko was created as a pitch for a concept of "someone who is happy and enjoys playing inside the Matrix without pursuing the hard truth behind it".
* In order for her animations to look realistic to the anomalies in the haunted house, Morimoto photographed a reference model for Yoko to see how a girl would react to different situations.
== Gallery ==
File:Yoko getting food for Yuki.png
File:Yoko converses as she finds a can of tuna..png
File:Yoko in her room..gif
== External Links ==
Yoko on the Matrix wiki - https://matrix.fandom.com/wiki/Yoko
Category:Female
Category:Teenagers
Category:Adventurers
Category:Thrill-Seekers
Category:Anime Heroes
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