Kana Koumoto

Kana Koumoto (河本・カナ?, Kōmoto Kana), or Kana-bun (カナ-ぶん) to her friends, is the protagonist of season three, FLCL Alternative, and is a supporting character in it's sequel, FLCL: Shoegaze.
==Profile==
Kana Koumoto, age 17, is the main character of the third season, FLCL Alternative. She spends her days hanging out with her friends, Mossan, Hijiri and Pets. They had lived unremarkable lives throughout high school, until the day a strange mech fell out of the sky, along with a mysterious woman named Haruko. Her plans for Kana and her friends involve the force known as Atomsk.
In Shoegaze, she is now a 27 year old who is brought in to assist with Bureau of Interstellar Immigration Chief Tsukata Kanda as Tsuganei Tower is taken over by two teenagers. It is revealed that at the age of 20, she was recruited by Kanda for a top secret project. The project involved using Kana's N.O. powers to help power up Tsuganei Tower, which would have essentially acted as a massive brain to amplify her N.O. power. He convinced her to be part of the project by telling her that with the power, she could return the world back to its previous state and become a hero. For 4 years, the experiments continued unsuccessfully, as Kana's N.O. powers grew weaker and were unable to reach the necessary level that Kanda demanded.
It is implied that she attended nursing school after high school and had recently graduated by the time Kanda brought her in for the top secret project at the age of 20. During an experiment run, Kanda told her that he had taken the liberty of turning down a nursing job offer that she had interviewed for earlier to ensure that she could focus on the experiment. In the third episode of Shoegaze, she confirms to Masaki that she had trained as a nurse, but was recruited by Kanda before she could start working in the medical field professionally. She then used her medical training to save Harumi after she was shot.
==Appearance==
Kana has short, brown hair worn in a bob cut and round brown eyes. She can typically be seen in her school attire of a blue jacket and skirt, a yellow vest, white undershirt and loosely worn red tie. She also wears brown loafers that she acknowledges are worn-out, a small, pink backpack for school, and a white apron during work. She colors her nails green, matching a gold clip with a green flower worn in the hair by her left temple.
In flashbacks of her early childhood, Kana has chubby cheeks that lessen the sharpness of her chin and jawline, pink blush spots beneath the eyes, and lacks eyebrows. Her skin is paler and her hair is closer to a very light brown. She wears her hair in roughly the same style, with the exception of letting her shorter bangs cover her forehead. Her eyes are the only feature that is consistent, looking much larger on her younger self's face as a result. She wears a pink backpack, light-pink sweatshirt, a pleated champagne skirt, light-brown calf-high socks, and brown shoes. In a photo of her and Pets in their later childhood years, Kana's face is less round and her hair is closer to its present appearance, though still somewhat curlier at the ends. The pink blush circles became reddish blush patches, her hair clip is silver with a red flower, and they are both wearing white physical education uniforms with blue trim and stripes.
When using her full N.O. power, Kana's hair becomes synonymous with a flame, turning orange-red and defying gravity to move like fire. It also grows in length as she gives her speech until it could reach down to her hips. The rest of her body has a thin rainbow aura surrounding it, making her clothes billow and float a little as well. This transformation does not stick after she returns to her normal life.
In FLCL: Shoegaze, she is dressed in professional business attire, consisting of a dark blazer and pants with a white dress shirt and black pumps. She also sports a bandage over her forehead that was original believed to cover her N.O. connection. Though she later noted that it was to cover the bump after she had a little too much to drink the night before.
==Personality==
Compared to the other protagonists, Kana is more enthusiastic and energetic, but she displays an unwillingness to become an adult. Her monologue in Flying Memory shows she believes all her days unremarkable and everything around her will always be the same, but she is content with it. She even acknowledges contributing to this sameness by wearing worn-out loafers. She spends those uneventful days with her three close friends, gossiping, shopping, and living a generally relaxed life. She's kind to customers at work and doesn't let playful teasing or mistakes bother her. When faced with danger, however, she freezes up, cries without even noticing, and is often unaware of danger. She comes off as defenseless towards everything that morphs from her N.O. connection as a result. She manages to drive very well while Haruko is fighting the second robot, but still needed to be hit out of her state of shock beforehand.
She is very hyper-emotional and has a hard time controlling herself. She is infatuated with wanting to become mature, but she hasn't mentally matured to the level she aspires to be at yet, which drives most of her emotional meltdowns. Kana cared an exorbitant amount for Hijiri's relationship, seeing her nonchalant way of handling it as wrong. She projects her idea of how to handle the turmoil onto her friend, resulting in quarrels about her self-insertion into the relationship. When Mossan is overworking herself on a fashion show and part-time job, Kana pushes Haruko and her friends to spend a night doing construction work so she can rest. However, Mossan confronts her because she dislikes others putting in work on her dream without asking. Despite this, she allows Kana to help with the fashion show and her assistance gets Mossan noticed in the contest. Unlike most of her friends, Kana lacks goals and doesn't know what she wants to do in life. This plays a huge part into why she constantly inserts herself into the business of others that she cares for. This reaches a tipping point in episode 5 when Kana goes searching for Pets after she ran away form home, discovers from her mother that she's been lying to Kana throughout their whole friendship, and decides to take it upon herself to "fix" Pets' home life. She finds Pets trapped inside the Terminal Core's wires and starts questioning why she lied so much, which causes Pets to start lashing out. She perceives Kana as rude, nosy, and recognizes that her "fixing" their lives is unwelcome even to their other friends. After calling her many names, including several variations of selfish, and venting relentlessly, she chooses to run away after Kana saves her.
She has a certain confused affection for Sasaki that she realizes deep down, but denies it to no end to others and becomes flustered any time he attempts to talk to her. Haruko's attempt at manipulation through him makes Kana surpass her usual immaturity, allowing her to deny a kiss that would have been forced and admit to him that she's "not ready" the next day. Kana also has a deep love for all of her friends, especially Pets, who was her first friend. Ever since she was a child, Kana has always been insecure about what people think of her, which reveals that Kana suffers from low-self esteem and depression. This may be due to a brief snapshot showing her alone in a hospital with an I.V. drip in her arm as a child. She lets out her true feelings in the final episode when Haruko convinces her not to hold back.
In Shoegaze, she appears to be more serious and somewhat bitter compared to her younger self. She mentions that she is upset that she had to come in on her day off and miss her hair stylist appointment, but Kanda reminds her that are no days off nor personal time in their line of work. He also reminds her that she was the one who saved the world 10 years prior, though she quickly points out that it was actually a pink haired woman with a guitar that did it. After agreeing to do the assignment, Kana then asks Kanda to finally get rid of her assigned security detail that been following her around for over 10 years now, believing that even stalkers get bored and move on at some point. 
In the second episode, it becomes more apparent as to why she is bitter. After confronting Harumi, who mocks Kana for being a boring adult, she yells out in frustration, telling the younger girl that because people believed that she would do big things, she had been burdened with responsibilities that she had not been prepared for. She also said that all of her friends had abandoned her (as Pets left for Mars at the end of Alternative, while it is implied that both Mossan and Hijiri had moved out of town after high school, as they unable to attend the "Coming of Age" ceremony for Kana). Yet, Kana was willing to admit that while she has regrets with the choices that she had made, she was still wiling to keep going on in life.
==Powers==
After a kick to the head from Haruko, an N.O. channel she already suspected was activated in Kana's head, sprouting a small, pink flower. With a great deal of pulling, Haruko was able to retrieve the guitar that was manifesting. Haruko also manages to knock a food van out of her N.O. channel during episode 2's robot fight, and Kana is shown to be incredibly skillful at driving it under pressure, despite not yet obtaining a driver’s license. Although she is easily affected by emotions, Haruko's manipulation tends to fail on Kana. Her N.O. channel rarely produces anything, often only giving extreme headaches or requiring force to fully transport things. However, robots seem to be attracted to her N.O. activity regardless. When her N.O. finally does activate in full as a result of feelings related to Pets' choices and harsh words, Kana uses it to suck up the Terminal Core entirely, saving herself and Pets, and possibly even the town as a whole. Kana's N.O. channel is so powerful that when fully unleashed in the final episode that it created a space-time rip known as the Naked Focal Point, which sucked in the Medical Mechanica iron that threatened her city. It also warped Haruko directly to Mars, created a pink atmosphere on Earth, and left behind a strange blue ball resembling a planet right next to Earth. The creation of the Naked Focal Point also resulted in a bright explosion enveloping Kana's city, contributing to forcing Haruko into the Focal Point and possibly other effects to the environment.
In Shoegaze, starting at the age of 20, Kana's powers were used to help with the top secret project within Tsuganei Tower. The goal was to use her power to help the accelerator and bring the two separate worlds back together. At the age of 24, her powers became weak to the point where she could not even sprout the pink flower from her head. Kana later explained that she had essentially "grown up", which meant the end of her N.O. power, causing the project to be abandoned.
==Relations==
===Haruko Haruhara===
Haruko is interested in Kana's N.O. channel capabilities because she is on a mission to stop Medical Mechanica once and for all. Kana respects and listens Haruko, despite Haruko harming her at times. Kana often comes to Haruko for help, with Haruko usually giving her small pieces of advice so she can learn how to deal with her problems. However, Haruko has been equally as sly towards her as she has been nice, purposely messing with Kana's emotions in order to trigger her N.O. channel. Haruko finally gets what she wants from Kana in the end, which is to get Kana to fully open up about her feelings so that she can suck up the Medical Mechanica iron. This plan succeeds, but also backfires on Haruko, as she ends up being sent to Mars by Kana's Naked Focal Point.
===Tomomi "Pets" Hetada===
Kana really loves Pets. They spend every day together, along with their other friends, and never seem to fight. Pets was her first ever childhood friend, but there is a lot about Pets that Kana did not know, including how fed up Pets was becoming with Kana's quirks. Kana hears from Aida that Pets' family is rich and leaving for Mars due to Earth becoming uninhabitable, something confirmed by a visit to her family home. Kana had never been there before and realizes that Pets even lied about her hatred of being in pictures. She also learns that Pets' father is a government official who is extremely strict and her mother tries to trap Kana in the house while Pets is missing because she believed Kana was hiding her. Kana eventually finds Pets and Pets tells her she hates how nosy she is and the way she tries to help without ever asking. Pets makes the decision to leave while Kana is unconscious after using her N.O. to rescue the other girl. In the end, Kana comes to accept Pets leaving for Mars, as well as her own flaws, but is still ultimately hurt by the decision.
In Shoegaze, despite feeling hurt from Pets choosing to leave, Kana still thinks about her constantly. At the age of 20, Kana had briefly imagined Pets, Hijiri and Mossan dressed in kimono and were able to join her for the "Coming of Age" ceremony, though the trio were no longer living in Tsuganei at that point. It was also revealed that Kana had been writing letters to Pets, but kept them in her car since there was no way to send them to her on Mars. In the final episode, Kana briefly sees the now 27 year old Pets when Masaki's N.O. power activated the accelerator within Tsuganei tower, which began a merging process between the two worlds. At the end of the episode, she had Masaki deliver her letter to Pets after he was able to travel to Mars with the help of Atomsk in order to see Harumi once again.
===Hijiri Yajima===
Kana really looks up to Hijiri, mainly because Hijiri appeared to be the most mature of their group of friends. She dates older men, dresses stylishly, looks much older than she is, and doesn't take things like relationships seriously. However, Hijiri was merely pretending to be mature. Kana wants nothing more than Hijiri to be happy, but also wanted Hijiri and her boyfriend to remain together, as Kana has an infatuation with maturity due to her own immaturity. She first learns that sometimes her actions are unwelcome through her failure to "fix" Hijiri's relationship behind her back and the resulting confrontation. Hijiri learns from her breakup that she should enjoy being the age she is instead of trying to act older.
===Man "Mossan" Motoyama===
Mossan is Kana's tough friend. She is a hard worker and has big dreams, including being an artist and fashion designer. Kana looks up to Mossan's talent because she doesn't have a talent of her own, which is why Kana wants to see Mossan accomplish her goals and be happy. She attempts to help her when she realizes she is getting overworked by her part-time job, fashion dream, and school, recruiting their friends and Haruko to do her construction work for her at night while she rests. She is confronted by an angry Mossan, however, and learns that part of her dream is doing all these things on her own. Even so, she lets Kana help her with a fashion show she's been designing a dress for. They get the attention of the fashion agencies in the audience as a result of their work, as well as help from Haruko and Dennis.
===Mon Sasaki===
Kana is Sasaki's biggest supporter. She goes to every basketball game to spectate his managerial work and can also be found at practices or coincidentally walking along their jogging route on occasion. She does this while claiming not to like him in any way, but can't take her eyes off him during class or stop blushing when he's brought up by others. Sasaki is aware of the attention and seems to share the affection, though he is less devoted to involving himself in her life. When Haruko starts to romance him to affect Kana's N.O., he doesn't outright refuse her uncomfortable sexual behavior and creates a faux-love triangle as a result. Kana is walking the halls during this period of time and notices Sasaki trying to shoot baskets in the gym, walking in to toss the ball back when he misses. They start a meaningful conversation about Sasaki's medical condition, with Kana's friends and Haruko listening in. Haruko finds herself frustrated with the lack of progress her manipulation is doing and hits Kana with a basketball, making her fall on top of Sasaki in a rather sexual position. The two blush and she leans in for a kiss, but stops when she begins to feel she "lost that spark" which her N.O. may have emphasized. She finds Sasaki the next day and apologizes, admitting she doesn't feel ready to take that step yet. She overall matures regarding talking about him and dealing with her feelings for him from that point onward.
===Tsukata Kanda===
Originally a regular customer at the noodle shop operated by Dennis Yoga, Kana usually took pity on him after a large amount of shichimi would accidentally spill into his order of tsukumi-soba (lit. "Moon-viewing soba", consisting of hot buckwheat noodles in broth topped with a raw egg) and he would then force himself to eat it. In "Full Flat", he tried to switch his order up and have cold soba instead, leaving an emotional distraught Kana confused and hoping that he would just stick to his regular order. 
In Shoegaze, he appears to be her boss, as it implied that she is working for the Bureau of Interstellar Immigration. Following the events of "Full Flat", he had assigned a security detail to follow her around, which they have continued to do since then, much to her annoyance. After she chose not to attend the "Coming of Age" ceremony due to her friends no longer living the same area, he recruited her at the age of 20 for his top secret project. He even went so far as to turn down a nursing job offer she had interviewed for in order to keep her focused on the project. After the project is shut down due to Kana's N.O. power no longer being active at the age of 24, Kanda seems to take pity on her and plays a game of catch outside. He tells her the story of how he was on the baseball team in high school, but when they made it to the national championship known as Kōshien, he did not get to play or even serve as a benchwarmer. He then uses it as analogy to show her that despite the failure of the project, she essentially got to be the player who stood on the field at Koshien instead of just someone watching from the stadium seats and that she should be proud of what they had accomplished up to that point.
==Gallery==
Kana/Gallery
==Trivia==
*After unleashing the full power of her N.O. in the final episode, Kana's appearance changes to resemble Nono from Diebuster.
**Yukari Fukui, who voiced Junko Miyaji in FLCL was the voice of Nono.
*In episode 5, a girl wearing a familiar flower hair clip is emphasized in Kana's childhood flashback, suggesting this stranger was part of the inspiration for her future signature hairstyle.
*Even though she was using a guitar in the ending credits she never been using one in her actual plot.
*During the ending credits for FLCL Progressive an image of Hijiri, Pets, Kana and Mossan, along with Tsukata Kanda can be briefly seen, despite these characters starring in Alternative. 
*In FLCL: Shoegaze, besides showing Kana as a 27 year old, several images of her with Mossan and Hijiri from FLCL Alternative are shown in the scenes involving the giant pink bird atop of the Tsunganei Tower. The scenes are of the trio hanging out by the stairs after lunch in "Flying Memory", posing together for a photo in "Grown-Up Wannabe", and sitting on a barrier wall while looking at the ocean in "Full Flat".
**Notably, in the first two mentioned photos, "Pets" is cropped out of them, despite her being in the original scene.
**There is a also a close up shot of Kana in a sports jersey from "Freestyle Collection", where she was about to give Mossan a high-five after the fashion show.
*The etymology for her last name can be translated as "River" (河, kou) and "Origin" (本, moto)
**The name is an alternative reading of the more common "Kawamoto", that is also read as "河本" or "川本"
Category:Characters
Category:Females
Category:Alternative
Category:Shoegaze
Category:Principal Characters