Ryūko Matoi

**Ryūko Matoi** is the main protagonist of the *Kill la Kill* series. She fought Shadow the Hedgehog in the first episode of Riot Rumble Season 2.

## Description

As a child, Ryūko's father Isshin Matoi had no time to raise her, so he left her to the care of her elementary school, where she had no guidance and was constantly bullied by its students. She became a juvenile delinquent soon after and even went as far as joining a gang by middle school. Six months prior to the start of the series, Ryūko received a message from her father and returned home only to find him slowly bleeding to his death with a Scissor Blade plunged into his chest. Isshin told her that if she wanted to live a peaceful life, then she should walk away, but if she wanted to find his killer, then to take the blade from his chest. Ryūko catches wind of the shadow of her father's murderer, but is too late to both apprehend her and save her father. Since then, she has dedicated her life to a quest for vengeance against the killer.

At the start of the series, she enrolls into Honnōji Academy, thinking that the student council's president Satsuki Kiryūin has an idea on who her father's killer was. Though a scuffle with a council member fails the first time, she eventually meets Senketsu and begins getting into more fights against the student council, including the Elite Four and Satsuki herself.

## Quotes

Note: Senketsu's quotes will be highlighted in **bold**

### Before her fight with Shadow.

* Not until you tell me what you're doing. This whole portal thing looks suspicious.
* I don't want to play games, old man! Spit it out or else!
* It's going to take me more than that to bring me down! Let's go, gramps! (before going Fan-Service Mode)
* WHA THE HELL!?
* Huh?! Who are you?!
* Well, your dimension has been causing a lot of trouble around here! So you're gonna have to get through me first!
* Big mouth for a small fry! Let's see what you got, hotshot!

### Post Credits scene.

* Ugh... (waking up)
* Where am I?
* I see... Thanks for that, but who are you?
* **Ryuko, I think we're stuck in another world.**

## Trivia

* The name **Ryūko** means "flow, style, manner, method" (流) (**ryū**) and "child" (子) (**ko**).
* Ryūko's surname **Matoi** means "wear, wrap, tie, follow around, collect" (纏).
* Ryūko's unique gear-like pupils (and likely her single red highlight) are very likely side effects of her infusion with Life Fibers.
	+ They're also possibly a reference to a character from the creator's previous work, Gurren-Lagann, in which Nia Teppelin had flower-shaped irises, which are further a reference to Nono from Diebuster.
	+ The back of Ryūko's casual jacket, only seen at the beginning and end of the series, also resembles the look of the Team Dai-Gurren logo.
		- She had a black shirt with the same skull design as her jacket when she was younger.
* According to Shigeto Koyama, in the early concept designs for Ryūko, she had long black hair and an overall physical appearance similar to Satsuki Kiryūin. The fact that Satsuki briefly wears Senketsu later on in the series was a nod to Ryūko's original design.
* Studio Trigger outsourced the 12th episode of Yama no Susume and added a cameo of Ryūko as a student. There were some slight appearance differences like her red streak being noticeably blacker compared to her hair and her eye design to look more like other students.
* In the 2019 anime film, *Saekano the Movie: Finale*, a figurine of Ryūko dressed as a bunny girl can be see on the top of Tomoya Aki's figurine shelf. Both *Saekano* and *Kill La Kill* share the same anime distributor, Aniplex.

### XVX

* Ryūko is one of the first characters to appear in Riot Rumble Season 2, along with Shadow, Eggman, Taira Stellar and El Nene Choribanero.
* Ryūko's the first female character in Riot Rumble Season 2.