Kei Nagase (Ace Combat 5)

Kei Nagase is the deuteragonist of the video game Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War and a minor character in Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown. She is an Osean Air Defense Force pilot assigned to the Wardog Squadron. She is notable for being strongly attached to her flight leader and having a fondness for space.
In The Unsung War, she was voiced by Wakana Yamazaki in Japanese and by Karen Strassman in English, while in Skies Unknown, she was voiced by Seiko Yoshida in Japanese and by Julie Ann Taylor in English.
==Biography==
===Past===
Kei Nagase was born in 1987. In her youth, she was fascinated by the Arkbird spacecraft, studying its blueprints for hours, and was a fan of the book A Blue Dove for the Princess. Eventually she joined the OADF as a pilot, being tutored by Captain Jack Bartlett.
===The Unsung War===
On September 23, 2010, Nagase and a few other rookie pilots were attacked by the aircraft that intruded into Osean airspace. Nagase and Bartlett were the only pilots to survive the attack. Later, she, Bartlett, Chopper and Blaze intercepted a Yuktobanian recon plane, only to be attacked by more Yuktobanian aircraft, violating orders in order to fight them off.
After another such incident, which saw Bartlett get lost at sea, Yuktobania declared war on Osea. Wardog Squadron, Nagase included, took part in various missions, during which Nagase was determined not to lose her new flight leader, Blaze. During a mission to storm the Yuktobanian prison camp, when Nagase learned that Jack Bartlett was not among the prisoners, she lost her concentration and was shot down by the air defense. A rescue mission was conducted to evacuate her, only for the would-be rescuers to see Nagase take her own pursuers prisoner.
Soon after losing Chopper and getting ambushed by the Grey Men conspirators who were behind the war all along, the Wardogs were branded as traitors by Major Hamilton in an attempt to get them out of the picture to prevent the war from ending. Nagase knocked Hamilton out and escaped with the rest of the squadron, assisted by the mechanic Wolfgang Buchner. The runaways managed to fake their deaths and were delivered to the aircraft carrier OFS Kestrel.
Now considered criminals by their own, the Wardogs operated from the shadows. They managed to rescue President Harling, after which they were rechristened "Razgriz Squadron" and operated on the President's behalf, continuing to foil the Grey Men's plans. Eventually, Razgriz Squadron, Nagase included, and pilots and soldiers from both Osea and Yuktobania stormed Sudentor to prevent the conspirators from using the nuclear-armed SOLG satelltie. Though Blaze managed to destroy the satellite's controls, it went off the orbit and threatened to crash into and destroy the city of Oured. Razgriz Squadron intercepted and destroyed SOLG before this could happen. After the war, Nagase quit the air force and became a writer.
===Post-Circum-Pacific War===
In 2012, Kei Nagase was informed that an asteroid comparable to Ulysses 1994XF04 was threatening to hit the Earth, and that she was needed to lead the mission to prevent the impact. She agreed, and took command of the spaceship that went on a journey towards the asteroid field.
===Skies Unknown===
On November 1, 2019, at the very end of the Lighthouse War, the spaceship carrying Kei Nagase returned to Earth, docking at the International Space Elevator.
== Gallery ==
File:F-14A Edge.png|Kei Nagase's F-14A.
== Trivia ==
* Kei Nagase's aircraft number is 007, a reference to James Bond's code number. Her line "Nagase. Kei Nagase." is also a reference to the way James introduces himself.
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