Ryūko Matoi

## Voices

**Ryūko Matoi** (纏 (まとい)  流 (りゅう) 子 (こ) , *Matoi Ryūko*) is the main protagonist of *Kill la Kill*. She transferred to Honnōji Academy searching for the twin of her red Scissor Blade and the person who used the weapon to murder her father, Isshin Matoi.

It is later revealed that Ryūko is the daughter of Sōichirō and Ragyō Kiryūin and the younger sister of Satsuki. It was also revealed that Ryūko had supposedly died after she was born after Ragyō had attempted to fuse her body with Life Fibers, which was declared a failed experiment by Ragyō herself; however, Ragyō's experiment would later be revealed to be a success. Ryūko was later saved by her father, with her father faking her death and raising her under the alias of Isshin Matoi until his death at the hands of Nui Harime. Six months after Isshin's death, Ryūko transferred to Honnōji Academy.

## Appearance

Ryūko is a seventeen-year-old girl of medium height and mid-length dark-blue tinted hair with a single left-swept red highlight on her bangs. Her blue eyes have peculiar gear-like pupils with eight grooves around the edges. Her outfit at the start of the series is a simple white shirt with a red ribbon tie, a black miniskirt, white sneakers, and a black & white jacket with rolled-up sleeves. During her childhood, she wore a red collared shirt with a white skirt and white shoes.

Her clothing is later replaced by Senketsu, a living navy blue sailor uniform. Her shirt (Senketsu's upper jaw) is a crop top with mid-length sleeves that bares her midriff. Her sailor-style collar with red stripes is tied by a multicolored scarf that also serves as Senketsu's left "eye." Senketsu's right eye is covered by a black "eyepatch" with an X-shaped scratch over it (perhaps emulating her father's right eyepatch). Her skirt (Senketsu's lower jaw) is held up by suspenders attached to a belt. Aikurō Mikisugi later provides her with a Seki Tekkō (赤手甲, ***Seki Tekkō*** lit. "Red Gauntlet"), a red, finger-less, left-handed glove with a built-in syringe designed for Ryūko to conveniently draw blood and feed it to Senketsu.

Ryūko's appearance changes further when using Life Fiber Synchronize with Senketsu. Her hair becomes even more feathery and is accented with vibrant red undertones and horn-like clips. Senketsu himself also undergoes a significant change in appearance after Synchronization; his "eyes" extend into wing-shaped crests jutting out from Ryūko's shoulders and his upper and lower parts transform into a black, skimpy suit of armor with red stripes. The top section of the armor covers Ryūko's neck, lower-jaw, arms, and upper breasts, and possesses a red, triangular ventilation grill centered on Ryūko's upper back. The top armor piece is connected to her skirt by three red garter belt/suspenders (two in front, one in back), leaving everything between the underside of her breasts and her waist exposed. Her legs are also covered with thigh-height, high-heeled boots.

When Ryūko wears Senketsu Kisaragi, Senketsu's eyepatch is broken, revealing his hidden eye, his color scheme changes to reddish-orange and yellow, the headpiece becomes more elaborate like a rabbit's ears, yellow energy bands form a skirt that looks like jaws around Ryūko's waist and her hair becomes blonde.

## Personality

Ryūko has a relatively simple personality: fierce and stubborn. She fears little, which is demonstrated when she directly and disrespectfully addresses Satsuki Kiryūin, demanding that her questions be answered, and when she fights Takaharu Fukuroda even though she is clearly overpowered. Later on, she is shown to be quite embarrassed when she is forced to fight in Senketsu's very revealing alternate form, though she overcomes her embarrassment in Episode 3 showing that while she is not afraid of fighting to her death, she is somewhat self-conscious.

Even though most of the time she is seen stubborn and fierce, sometimes she can be shown calm, polite, content and warmly flattered. This is mostly seen when eating with the Mankanshoku family and Episode 7. She admires the way Mako's mother makes food and has kind manners. She later is seen telling Senketsu how fun dinner was with them because of how her mother died when she was young and her dad sent her to a boarding school, never knowing how a family dinner was like. Her flattery is highlighted in Episode 1 when Mataro tried to steal Ryuko's wallet and mug her. She was cool with the intention of fighting, criticizing how street punking doesn't work for him and how goofy his gang was. After defeating them, she lets it slide by not fighting people who can't fight back. This is also seen with most opponents she faces when she often states the obvious.

She shows fierce determination in finding her father's killer. Her stubbornness was taken up to ridiculous levels when she managed to free herself from Ragyō's mind control by merely punching herself. This same episode, however, has one of few demonstrations of shock on her part, when Ragyō defeats Satsuki, rips out Ryūko's heart and reveals to be her mother.

When Ryūko is brainwashed after being forced to put on Junketsu by Ragyō, her personality changes to be wild and sadistic, destroying everything around her without reason. After she is freed she goes back to her usual personality but is somewhat calmer and more mature. She also makes peace with Satsuki and is able to fight with her as a comrade, but is still having trouble recognizing her as her sister. Although, after Satsuki catches her when she is falling back to earth and welcomes her home warmly, Ryūko replies by calling her "sis."

## Trivia

* The name **Ryūko** means "flow, style, manner, method" (流) (**ryū**) and "child" (子) (**ko**). Incidentally, it can also be derived from "fashion, trend" (流行) (**ryūkō**).
* 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.