Haruko Haruhara

Haruko Haruhara is a central character of the FLCL anime series.

Haruko is Mabase's newest resident, and an extraterrestrial investigator for the Galactic Space Police Brotherhood. She becomes the Nandaba household's maid while working to find Atomsk, the most powerful space pirate in the galaxy. She leaves Earth in FLCLimax, but returns as a teacher in Mabase in FLCL Progressive. In FLCL Alternative, she's back on Earth again tackling a whole host of new Medical Mechanica problems.

Appearance
Haruko is a tall, slender and unearthly young woman with cat-like facial features. She sports a pale complexion, salmon-colored bob cut styled into a medium-length flare, and yellow-colored eyes that are also cat-like. Her usual outfit is a bright red coat, black pants, white boots, a white scarf, and a pair of goggles. She wears many other outfits in the series, such as a nurse outfit she likely stole from a nurse after tying her up, but one fashion accessory she is never without is a large metal bracelet on her left wrist. The bracelet acts as a kind of radar device, reacting to N.O. power and letting her know where Medical Mechanica robots and/or Atomsk might be. It can also create red chains, presumably to immobilize Atomsk.

In FLCL Progressive, as a result of Julia Jinyu splitting off from her, Haruko's hair is slightly shorter, spikier, and orange, but she retains her yellow eyes. After reabsorbing Jinyu, Haruko's pink hair is restored and her eyes become red. This could be due to the both of them having absorbed some of Atomsk's power prior to splitting. Haruko takes Jinyu’s glasses as her own. Her belly also becomes larger after eating Jinyu, making her appear pregnant, but it eventually shrinks back to normal size. In Our Running, Jinyu is split once more from Haruko and her hair and eyes become orange and yellow again, respectively. In this season, she wears a different red jacket with black accents, but keeps her black pants and white boots. She stops wearing her gloves.

In FLCL Alternative, her hair seems to have turned back to its normal color, suggesting she and Jinyu merged again or have yet to be apart. She now has a different hair style, letting one bang loose to the left, with her hair tied in the back in a way that allows tufts to spike out in upward and downward directions. Her eyes are also yellow again, and she seems to have abandoned the wrist bracelet that she's known for having, implying that at some point she must have given up on capturing Atomsk and allowed him to have his freedom like Jinyu wanted, or has yet to encounter either Atomsk or the bracelet. It is revealed in the final episode that being an alien means Haruko cannot age past 19.

Personality
She has a tendency to switch between a variety of different dispositions to others on a dime, making her difficult to read and unpredictable. She can be very persuasive and stand-offish sometimes to get what she wants. When around the Nandaba men, she is often either promiscuous or found in suggestive situations. She can also act like a mom, a lover or a maid depending upon her mood.

While split from Julia Jinyu, Haruko acts a little different. She's a lot less manipulative and far more aggressive with her approach. She is very playful and selfish, intent on getting what she wants by any means without reason.

In FLCL Alternative, Haruko's traits appear to be more akin to Jinyu, as she is far more helpful than she's ever been in the past, and most that she's done is for the good of others. Despite her silly attitude, she's very wise, acting as sort of a mentor to Kana. Haruko guides Kana with simple advice to her problems, as well as protecting Kana and her friends. She is, however, still very mysterious and her motives are not very clear until the final episode, in which it's revealed that Haruko strongly wants to prevent Medical Mechanica from getting their way, a goal that Jinyu wanted to accomplish more than anything.

Haruko is deceptive and remorseless of the the things she has done. Ultimately, she is cause of the events of FLCL and most of the FLCL series, making her the true antagonistic catalyst of FLCL. On occasion, however, she does show positive traits akin to a more antihero type. Even though her actions in FLCL and FLCL Progressivewere not pure, they ultimately changed the protagonist for the better.

There is a running gag in the series where Haruko is vastly impressed by larger objects coming out of people's heads. If the item is smaller, she will instantly lose interest in the person and mock him/her for as long as she knows them. In many ways, this joke is an interpretation of sexual encounters. This joke is stretched even further in FLCL Alternative, when Haruko stops Kanda from having sex with her and decides to pull an object from his head instead. When the item was revealed to be a small blaster, Haruko viewed him as pathetic.

Abilities
Haruko has a wide array of abilities, both from the tools at her disposal and her own natural strength. Most notably, she rides a super-powered yellow Vespa that allows for flight and super-speed and wields an electric bass guitar that opens N.O. channels. She also possesses superhuman strength, such as when she launched a bomb into space and when she fights the Medical Mechanica robots who tower over her, and can consume and absorb the strength of other beings, as seen in her attempts to absorb Atomsk and when she devoured her other half, Jinyu. She survived being electrocuted by a Medical Mechanica robot in Fire Starter and in LooPQR, Raharu and Jinyu generate a red and blue aura, respectively, during their fight. It is possible that they both carry remnants of Atomsk’s power. She is fast enough to dodge bullets and has also demonstrated that she can hypnotize weak-minded people. In Our Running, it is revealed Haruko’s bracelet can produce red chains, which she tried to use against Atomsk. In Alternative, she is able to make an ordinary car fly and control it like a surfboard, suggesting that other things she's been using to fly may not normally be capable of doing so.

Bat
Haruko's first bass in FLCL is a 1974 left-handed Azureglo Rickenbacker 4001c64 electric bass guitar, first seen in episode one of FLCL when she hits Naota in the head. It seems to have a saw attachment that can improve its melee capabilities, and can be used as a gun and hoverboard. It is also used by Haruko as a bat and is referred to as such on a few occasions. It's indestructible and is her main tool. At the end of FLCL, she leaves it behind with Naota, but seemingly gets it back at the end of Progressive.

After the events of FLCL, she acquires Atomsk's bass (a Gibson EB-0) and it works in about the same way, save for the lack of a saw function.

Vehicle
In FLCL and Progressive, Haruko drives a yellow Vespa SS 180. This vehicle can fly, reach incredibly high speeds, and can almost stop on a dime. It is also able to weave through tight traffic despite its incredible speeds. A real world version of this Vespa is featured in the credits of FLCL driving itself around Japan in a series of photographs.

Trivia

 * Haruko drives a 1965 Vespa Super Sport 180. In FLCL, its license plate's jurisdiction is labeled Mabase(Japanese: and its serial number is "56-56" (Japanese: goro-goro). 56-56 is a homophone for (gorogoro) which is an onomatopoeia sound used for thunder, purring, scattering, and inactivity. In FLCL Progressive, its license plate's jurisdiction is labeled Oozu and its serial number is "43-43" (Japanese: shisan-shisan). This is likely because 42 in Japanese is considered an unlucky number as it is a homophone for "die" (Japanese: shini), and thus is not used for license plates; 56 is also considered an unlucky number when paired with 42, as 42-56 is a homophone for "time to die" (Japanese: shini-goro). 43 can be read as a homophone for "scattered" (Japanese: shisan).
 * Oozu is also the name of a place containing a facility Masurao and Eye Patch visit with Canti's shell, as well as the home to the amusement park.
 * The name "Raharu" can be found in her last name if read backwards in the Japanese alphabet. That is her given nickname by two characters in the series.
 * Haruko's age is inconsistent. She claims to be 19 in FLCL, is labeled as 16 during interview snapshots in Progressive (despite the fact that it is confirmed in episode 6 that the series is not a prequel. It's also worth noting that she could have lied about her age to appear younger), noted as 20 in early concept art of her appearance, and explains she can't age past 19 in Alternative.
 * Executive producer Jason DeMarco stated on Twitter that Alternative was “designed” to be a prequel to FLCL, further adding confusion not only to just Haruko’s age, but the entire story itself, as Alternative was designed primarily as a sequel to Progressive. This is hinted in Haruko no longer chasing Atomsk, the riddance of the Medical Mechanica iron, and in the final episode, while she was being warped to Mars through the time stream, glimpses of her former experience with Naota could be seen.