Chris Yukine

Chris Yukine is one of the main protagonists of Senki Zesshou Symphogear.
She was initially an antagonist working under the main villain, Finé, wielding the Nehushtan Armor stolen from the Zwei Wing concert two years prior to the story. During season 1, Chris switches sides and joins the protagonists to work against Finé, symbolized by her change of relic from the Nehushtan Armor to the Ichaival Symphogear. By season 2, Chris has become a full-fledged protagonist wielding Ichaival and is working to move on from her past.
==History==
Chris was the only daughter born to a famous musician couple, Masanori Yukine and Sonnet M. Yukine, a violinist and a vocalist respectively. Eight years prior to S1, as part of a non-government volunteer organization, Masanori and Sonnet took a young Chris with them to a republic that recently suffered from a coup and had suspended all diplomatic relations with other countries: the Val Verde Commonwealth. They entered the country through Guatemala and put on public music performances in different places while traveling, with the ultimate goal of lending aid to refugees. At first, the family traveled along with delegates from the United Nations, including a woman native to Val Verde named Sonia Virena, who shared the dream of Chris' parents and acted as an older sister to the young Chris. However, the Yukine family eventually got trapped by the expanding front-lines of the ongoing war and became isolated from their organization. The Yukine family were later declared missing. Shortly after that, outside sources confirmed that Masanori and Sonnet had died in a terrorist bombing, with terrorists managing to sneak the bomb into their camp due to Sonia's carelessness. However, outside sources were continually unable to determine what exactly had become of Chris herself.
It turned out that Chris had been kidnapped by the terrorists after being separated from Sonia in the chaos, and was sold into slavery, implied to be of a sexual nature. Two years prior to S1, Chris was rescued from the clutches of a local gang by the United Nations during their intervention in Val Verde. She was then returned to Japan. At the time, famous musicians were being looked into by Section Two in order to find candidates for the Symphogear. Genjuro Kazanari volunteered to take the lonely Chris in; however, upon her arrival in Japan, Chris went missing again, as she was kidnapped by Finé to be used as a tool in Finé's plans and experiments. Though many agents, Genjūrō included, were sent by Section Two to find Chris, Finé sabotaged all their efforts and made several die or even disappear. Thus, the search for Chris was called off.
Chris has since been living in isolation with Finé in Finé's Mansion in the remote country. Sometime during the two year gap between the Zwei Wing concert tragedy and Hibiki's awakening of Gungnir, Finé gave Ichaival to Chris and, after obtaining Solomon's Cane from the American government, proceeded to exploit her song to awaken Solomon's Cane and allow Finé full control over the Noise. Chris was trained for half a year in order to raise her coeffiency link with Ichaival so that she could produce a sufficient amount of phonic gain to awaken Solomon's Cane. However, Chris refuses to actually use Ichaival in battle, out of her guilt over awakening a weapon of destruction, and her hatred of songs caused by her refusal to accept the deaths of her musician parents, who had wished to use the power of song to save the world.
==Personality and Abilities==
===Personality===
As a result of her harsh life, Chris is hot-headed, antagonistic, and aggressive, quick to distrust others, especially adults, who have only ever treated her like objects. Chris wishes to bring about world peace by putting a stop to the flames of war; with Finé's manipulation, Chris initially decides to go about this by destroying everyone else with the power and will to fight, and willingly cooperates with Finé in order to achieve that goal, under the false impression that Finé is working for the same goal of bring peace to the world as her. However, Chris actually hates the thought of hurting innocent people.
Though Chris is aware that Finé is only using her and openly shows resentment towards Finé for using and mistreating her like all other adults, being regularly subjected to torture and sexual abuse at Finé's hands for Finé's amusement, she still holds some affection for Finé, seeking Finé's approval and believing that Finé is the only person who understands her. This is most prominently seen when Chris breaks down in tears after Finé abandons her, and later openly cries after she witnesses Finé "dying". However, Chris' affection for Finé is largely born of Finé's isolation and grooming of Chris.
Chris claims to hate singing because of the destruction she can cause with her relic, which is why she never uses the Ichaival. The manga and season 2 further expand on this, with Chris hating singing because her song was used to activate Solomon's Cane, which Finé made frequent use of to cause death and chaos. As a result of being reached out to by Hibiki Tachibana and Miku Kohinata, and abandoned by Finé, Chris relearns how to be kind and caring, culminating in her sacrificing herself and using her once-hated singing to protect the world, following in the footsteps of her parents and the dreams they wished to fulfill when they were still alive.
After the events of season 1, though Chris is still hot-headed and rough-natured, she has become much gentler in nature, open and honest to herself and others. She gets embarrassed easily and is somewhat socially maladjusted and awkward as a result of her near-constant isolation and friendlessness since she was eight years old. Notably, Chris shows an aversion to physical displays of affection, often getting flustered and telling the people to "Do that at home", sometimes going as far as hitting them (which she has so far only done to Hibiki) to make them stop. Other physical, intimate, or romantic gestures often lead to Chris getting flustered, even simple gestures such as hand-holding. This is most likely a lingering aftereffect of her time in slavery and being abused by Finé.
Despite her temper and apparent impulsiveness, Chris is actually skilled at improvising on the spot and making intelligent decisions, plans, and gambits with quick thinking, acting rather than hesitating in desperate situations. However, as Chris' decisions often lead to destruction or suffering, usually unintentionally, Chris often feels guilt and responsibility for the decisions she makes; still, she tries her best to fix them, rather than run away, such as with Solomon's Cane, shooting off Stephan Virena's leg, or blaming Sonia Virena for killing her parents as a child.
Symphogear AXZ reveals that even before being enslaved as a child, Chris was quick to lash out and blame others in a situation gone wrong. However, this may be simple childishness from her young age and her previous happy and sheltered life, on top of an impulsive stress reaction to a traumatic situation.
===Powers and Abilities===
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===Abilities===
Chris is the owner of Second Relic, Ichaival. As a Symphogear user, Chris has the ability to fight Noise with the use of the anti-Noise armour, the Symphogear, that clads her in battle. As a candidate for the Symphogear, she can activate her relics with her song and use Armed Gear in battle.
Her Armed Gear is a pair of crossbows that fire up to five homing beam arrows each. The Gear forms from her forearm armor and can retract at will to allow use of her hands. They also have a smaller pistol form more suited for close combat.
Chris is the first Symphogear wielder to use the Armor Purge.
==Trivia==
*According to notes from the manga:
**Chris is half-Japanese, half-American. She was born in Japan.
**Her strange way of speaking comes from her time spent overseas, and being home-schooled by her parents. It can be inferred from this that she never went to public school before season 2 of the anime.
**Her favourite food is anpan (bread filled with red bean paste).
***In the XDU event Kageri Saku Senkō — during a confrontation with alternate Hibiki, Chris mentions that her favorite food is anpan during her introduction, reflecting what Hibiki said to Chris in Episode 7.
**When she was living with Finé, Finé would "help" Chris with the shoulder and neck pains caused by her large breasts by electrocuting her with a low-power current on the parrilla.
*Chris' battle song genre is rock.
**Many of Chris' attacks appear to be homages to rock bands, specifically Nirvana, Megadeth, Iron Maiden, Led Zeppelin, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Queen, and Arthemis.
*Almost all of Chris's various attacks are references to the Mobile Suit Gundam franchise, most obvious in Billion Maiden utilizing the same weapons and firing pose as Heavy arms Custom but also in her superb song, which chains together the ultimate attacks of the Turn A, Double X and Wing Zero.
*Chris is the first person to have used two relics, the second being Maria Cadenzavna Eve.
*She is the first user to hold a full relic, the other being Finé.
*Chris is the only user to use a Spanish word in her song; she says "adios", which means "goodbye".
**This may be from her time visiting and living in South America, where Spanish is the official language and a frequently-spoken language of the continent.
*Finé gave Chris the clothing she wore as a teenager in season 1.
*In episode 8 of season 1, Chris appears to have on her back what looks like burn marks, most likely from being electrocuted on the parrilla given their patterned spread. In chapter 7 of the manga, Chris is instead depicted with a multitude of scars which are implied to be leftover from her years in slavery.
*In episode 1 of season 1, on the day of the concert tragedy, Miku's father can be seen reading a newspaper that mentions a Japanese girl missing and the South American civil war, referring to Chris. It can be inferred from this that Finé kidnapped Chris recently to the concert event, possibly a few weeks or even days before.
**According to the newspaper, Chris was returned to Japan after five years and eight months (roughly six years, rounded up) of absence. She was fourteen years old at the time.
**Her parents were killed in the Republic of Val Verde. Chris seems to have remained in the area during her slavery, as she was later rescued from Val Verde by the UN during their intervention.
**After being returned to Japan, Chris was placed in an accommodation (likely as a temporary place for her to stay while her permanent living place was arranged), which is when she went missing.
*Despite Chris having hair bows/ribbons in most concept art for season 1, and having hair scrunchies in the manga version, she has no such hair accessories as a teenager in season 1 itself; only her child self has hair accessories. G and onwards depicts her with the hair scrunchies from the manga, although they are rose-pink in colour compared to the manga's dark-red.
*Chris' short stature is likely in part because of her time in slavery, where she would have undergone a lot of stress and been underfed as incentive to keep her in line, thus leading to her growing up somewhat stunted. This can also explain why she has such a big appetite and is such a messy eater, from having to cherish every scrap of food she managed to get her hands on, and the harsh nature of slavery discouraging polite social etiquette.
**Her GX transformation sequence gives her a prominent rib cage, which may be related to this.
*GX shows Chris to be able to get good grades at school. This seems strange at first, as she lacked eight years of formal education due to slavery and living with Finé (though some fans speculate Finé homeschooled her to an extent, logically it wouldn't be enough to make up for the six years Chris missed with slavery). It makes sense when one considers Chris' fighting style: using guns and bows requires her to calculate range and wind direction and the best tactics to avoid mishaps and hitting her friends. This would give Chris a natural advantage in things like mathematics which she can apply to and from school and battle. Furthermore, Chris has also shown herself to be clever and creative when it comes to making up plans and gambits on the spot, such as in S1E10 where she suggests the plan to take out the Noise ships, and in later episodes of S2 where she subtly lets Tsubasa in on her plans to take out Ver and retrieve Solomon's Cane without alerting him to her betrayal.
*One of the main weapons of Ichaival is guns, which is a weapon constantly used in warfare, terrorism, and also sometimes in trafficking and slavery to keep slaves in line. It's possible that one reason Chris refused to use Ichaival is because of the role of guns in her time in South America.
*Chris' Lydian uniform is somewhat ill-fitting — the cardigan sleeves are long and wide, hiding most of her hands, and the waist gathers unnaturally on her hips. It's speculated that Chris wears a bigger-than-normal cardigan because of her large bust size.
*Chris' seiyu, Ayahi Takagaki, designed the rabbit key holder she has attached to her schoolbag.
*Chris has several references to Jesus Christ. Her first name is one letter off of "Christ", and both names come from the same origin word meaning "anointed"/"to rub in holy oil" (and can be transliterated into English as "messiah"); she bears a cross of sin/guilt (she mentions a few times in late season 2 that Solomon's Cane is "her cross to bear") and her character arcs involve atoning for and redeeming herself; she was born three days after Christmas; she is crucified at one point (by Finé, as punishment for a wrong); and at one point dies (episode 11) and resurrects (episode 12's ending). Interestingly, Finé, Chris' former mistress, has a few references to the Virgin Mary (the mother of Jesus).
*Finé's and Chris' characters, prior to Chris' character development, have many similarities. They both hate humanity and the world and wish to make it into something new, choose solitude over unity and friendship, wish to destroy powerful people other than themselves, and wield the Nehushtan Armor. While Chris' version of the armor has a mask, showing Finé's hold over her worldview, Finé's armor has no such mask. The main difference between them is compassion: Chris doesn't actually wish to see innocent people hurting, whereas Finé doesn't care at all. From all this, Finé can be said to be a failed version of Chris while Chris is the person Finé should have become; this is represented by Chris co-opting Finé's butterfly symbol at the height of her character arc, when she shoots down Kadingir, and later resurrects with butterfly-like wings attached to her X-Drive.
*In the original TV airing of Season 1 Episode 7, the Section Two monitor depicting Chris shows a portrait of her, presumably from right after her rescue from South America at age fourteen and before she went missing. However, in the BD, this portrait was replaced with one of her as an eight-year-old child before disaster struck. The reason for this change is unknown, but it may possibly be for alignment with the manga version, which also had the happy eight-year-old Chris' portrait used for her missing profile.
*Her backstory shares several similarities with Maria's. Both grew up with a loving family, who they then lost in a war (with Maria later losing Serena as well), becoming orphans; they suffered the consequences of that war (Chris was enslaved, and Maria became a vagrant); they were then "saved" by Finé (Maria was captured as part of the Receptor Children project, and Chris was directly captured as a pawn for Finé's plans); and then cooperated in antagonistic, destructive plans in hopes of saving the world (Chris cooperated with Finé to destroy all people in power to end war and conflict, and Maria was willing to destroy to save the world from the fall of the Moon under Finé's name), which both girls moved on from.
**Maria and Chris are also both foreign — Chris is half-American, and Maria is Yugoslavian.
*Chris also shares several similarities with Saint-Germain.
**Both Saint-Germain and Chris were subjected to slavery (both sexual, although only implied in Chris' case) at a young age; both lost their parents and became orphans at a similarly young age; and both wanted to end oppression because of their pasts by taking lives, although Chris eventually moved past from her destructive methods.
**Both were used, manipulated, and betrayed by a higher villain (Finé and Adam) with a vital relationship to the Custodians, who fooled Chris/Germain into thinking they were working for the good of world instead of their own selfish gains.
**Both use guns as their main weapons and have an arc revolving around learning to use their hands and their song instead of their weapons.
**Saint-Germain's voice actor, Minako Kotobuki, is part of the same J-pop group Sphere as Ayahi Takagaki, Chris' voice actor.
*Despite Chris' hair colour being officially changed to silver from season 2 onwards, some official art still depicts her with lavender or lavender-tinted hair.
*The AXZ OP reveals that Chris practices kyūdō.
*Chris' songs sometimes contain the word "future"/"mirai" (未来). The alternate reading for these kanji is "Miku". Chris shares this with Hibiki.
*On top of sloppy eating habits, Chris is also a sloppy sleeper.
Category:Villains turned to the Good Side
Category:Former Villains
Category:Tragic Heroes
Category:Action Heroes
Category:Cool Heroes
Category:Wrathful Heroes
Category:Symphogear Heroes
Category:Anime Heroes
Category:Main Heroes
Category:Aggressive Heroes