Mana Hinoki/Relationships

Although Mana carries herself as a primarily mature person, especially for her comparatively young age of 16, she is prone to fits of annoyance, anger, and fury towards even her best friends. Although sad that she has not been able to make friends, she seems to get along very quickly with strangers, such as Shotaro, Yohei, and Tool, and even former enemies such as Assi. She is prone to tease her peers, especially Yohei.

## Friends and Allies

### Shotaro

* Mana kicks Shotaro into the Governor's office
1/1
While initially finding Shotaro immature, Mana is impressed with his incredible abilities and his dedication to use those powers to help humans. Mana still thinks Shotaro is too passive in allowing other people to insult him for being Dokeshi, yet she will assist him in battle to help others.

Although she is Shotaro's friend, she is not above attacking him physically when she finds his behavior annoying, insulting, or dangerous.

### Yohei Nanami

* Mana persuades Yohei
1/3
Mana initially thought Yohei was a potentially bad person, based on his rough appearance, serious demeanor, and frequent cigarette smoking. Yohei was initially bemused at how awkward Mana seemed, thinking she was "birds of a feather" with the similarly peculiar Shotaro. Yohei seems to enjoy teasing Mana, whether tricking Shotaro to wear her bra or imagining her underwear are unsexy. He is also not above stealing her scooter for parts in his machines, albeit to rescue her and others.

Over time, Mana comes to admire Yohei's engineering skills and trust in his friends. She also shows concern for his safety during their battle against the Fear Factory. Mana and Yohei also seem to think in similar ways when it comes to combat. For example, while Yohei tells his opponent Nofix that he prefers to act without a plan, almost at the same time Mana makes a similar argument to Dr. Agei that she prefers to battle not with logic but with strength. As well, at almost the same moment, while in completely different rooms in Fear Factory, both Yohei and Mana think that they should kick Tool--she because she cannot handle carry his heavy weight and because it would be easier to kick him down the hallway, and Yohei because he bothered to listened to Tool's admittedly good advice to trust others but which has led him into a potentially fatal fight against Nofix.

### Tool

* Mana and Tool spar
1/3
Mana and Tool share similar traits in regard to how seriously they take certain situations, especially combat, although Tool thinks of the younger Mana can be more immature than he.

Upon first meeting, Mana was shocked to encounter a kappa. Despite how different Tool looks from humans, Mana quickly acclimated to his appearance, largely focusing on his character and agency rather than only on his identity as a kappa. Still, Mana is not without flaws, as shortly into their friendship, Mana desired to stroke Tool's bald head, annoying him.

The two are both interested in combat, at one point practicing martial arts together so Mana can teach Tool about Bassai.

Tool also reacts badly when he sees up Mana's skirt, arguing that as a man he should not see such things. Tool ended up passing out from seeing up her skirt, which may suggest Tool felt lust regarding Mana's underwear, or felt lust regarding sexual situations in general.

### Assi

Although initially assigned to attack, surveil, and even kill her, Assi becomes an ally and friend to Mana, even as she does not seem to recognize him from their earlier encounters. If Mana remembers Assi's previous attempts to harm her, she still seems to be friendly to him upon their last recorded encounter. For Assi, although he is annoyed that Mana and others do not remember him, he seems to be friendly to them as well, as well as concerned for Mana's safety along with that of her friends.

After Mana's arrival in I. C. Prefecture, Assi, along with his boss Zuno, are assigned by the Vice President of Fear Factory, Rodigy, to track the location of Yohei and his friends. Assi and Fear Factory soldiers attack Mana. After tethering Mana's ankles, he drags her towards him. This attack scuffs Mana's skirt, pulling it up a bit, a fact Assi notices (whether as part of his plan or out of his perversion). After Mana is removed from the tether by Tool, who happens to be walking by, Assi escapes, leaving Zuno to arrive, under the guise of being a traveling tailor to quickly repair Mana's skirt. Zuno threads her skirt with one of his nosehairs in order to overhear Yohei's plans. Assi congratulates his boss--but is surprised when Mana refers to Assi and Zuno as suspicious and expecting that they did something to her attire. After Yohei abandons Shotaro's group to infiltrate Fear Factory himself, he is captured by NoFix while Mana enters the Fighting Robot Tournament. After the Fear Robot's attack on the Fighting Robot Stadium, Zuno and Assi search for survivors, discovering that Get had pushed Mana out of the way of the Robot's attack and held up debris to prevent it from crushing her. Assi and Zuno ask Rodigy to spare Mana: with Yohei captured, she is no longer a threat. Rodigy demands that she be executed. However, upon taking her to Zuno's office, Assi cannot bear to kill her, reasoning that she is blameless and that, like Zuno, he does not want to be evil. Mana's survival convinces him and Zuno to let her escape: they change her into a wetsuit and oxygen tank and release her into the sewer through the office's garbage chute. Further inspired by Mana's survival, Assi and Zuno leave Fear Factory to join Mana's peers in Shotaro's group.

After Rodigy kills Zuno, Assi expresses concern for Mana and her friends survival but is happy to see that they defeated the Fear Robot and managed to escape the destroyed factory. Meeting with the group later, however, Assi is surprised that Mana along with Tool and Yohei do not recognize him. When Mana learns Shotaro is now a celebrity, she clutches Assi and slaps him on the back, while asking whether now she can become an idol. Assi remains confused by her behavior. Mana's pleasantness around Assi suggests she either does not remember he attacked her, does not know he was assigned to assassinate her, or has forgiven him.

## Enemies

### Dr. Agei

As Rodigy sends Agei to fight Mana and Tool, now separated from Yohei and Shotaro, Agei finds Mana to be simply a nuisance, mocking her as a little girl who has injured her hands punching his Tatihi 80's impenetrable armor. Angered by Agei's underestimation in her abilities, Mana simply punches her injured hand into a wall, increasing the pain and blood loss, to show that she can still battle. Despite these insults, Mana does not lose confidence, finding Agei to be more annoying and far too weak physically to fight her. Keeping her confidence against Agei, even if his robot's armor is too strong for her punches, Mana determines to simply kick his armor in one spot until she can shatter it. Mana also mocks Agei's tanuki appearance and eccentric design of Tatihi, whose features, such as an eye droplet dispenser, seat adjustment, and bedpan-seat appearance, are silly. After 21 kicks to destroy Tatihi's armor, Mana kicks Agei in the head to coerce a commendation from him.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Cite error: Invalid `<ref>` tag; no text was provided for refs named `Ch1`
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 *B. Ichi* Manga: Chapter 14
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 *B. Ichi* Manga: Chapter 13
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 *B. Ichi* Manga: Chapter 5
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 *B. Ichi* Manga: Chapter 7
6. ↑ *B. Ichi* Manga: Chapter 12
7. ↑ Cite error: Invalid `<ref>` tag; no text was provided for refs named `Ch19`