Rika - BASIC INFORMATION
Name: Makino Ruki 牧野留姫
Age: 10 (13 in dub)
Voice actor: Orikasa Fumiko
Melissa Fahn (dub)
Luise Helm (ger)
Digimon: Renamon
D-Power: blue
/ The Digimon Queen who is invincible in battle / (digimon series memorial book: digimon animation chronicle)
どこか謎めいた雰囲気さえ漂わせている少女。デジモンは戦うためだけに生まれてきた存在だと固く信じ、パートナーのレナモンと共に最強のテイマーを目指して孤独な戦いを続けている。しかしタカトたちとの交流の中、デジモンとの関係が変化していった。
A girl with a somewhat mysterious aura around her. She firmly believes that Digimon only exist to fight and continues to fight alone with her partner Renamon to become the strongest Tamer. However after meeting Takato and the others her relationship to Digimon changes (TOEI).
Rika's personality changes drastically throughout the series. Initially she only thinks of Digimon as data rather than living creatures, and all she wants Renamon to do is fight, destroy as many opponents as possible, and absorb their data, even telling her to kill Guilmon despite him not being evil. She starts to become friends with Renamon after Renamon nearly sacrifices herself to save her from Dokugumon, and their friendship becomes stronger when they nearly leave each other but come back together during the fight with Harpymon. By the time they traveled to the digital world, Rika was angry at the Jagamon for killing Meramon, and wished she could change Leomon's fate so Jeri wouldn't have to be sad. In the end she didn't feel like fighting anymore, but knew she had to (Digimon Tamers Wiki).
RIKA'S CHARACTER DESIGN:
[...] we came up with the idea of making "the girl" a character stronger than anyone else, and paired her with a powerful digimon.
I focussed my efforts on making my dialogue show Rika's mature side as well as her incredibly childish side (excerpt from Chiaki Konaka's character notes).
The third "digimon tamer". A young girl that belongs to a different school district than Takato. A cool, emotionally distant beauty who is most aggressive. At first, she appears as an enemy who attacks Takato and Guilmon, also Lee and Terriermon. Her background will not be apparent at first. Her inner self will be gradually shown through interactions with Takato's straight-forward attitude, Lee's words, and the "feminine side" brought out by Kululumon, and within the first story arc, she will become a member of the Digimon Tamers team.
Although Ruki is a masculine, aggressive digimon tamer, she does not use rough language, and she does not behave in an unruly or ill-mannered fashion. She is a young girl with a mystical side. When she first appears, she has a mysterious beauty to her, but as she opens up to Takato and Lee, her true nature as a ten year old girl becomes apparent. I would like to illustrate the drastic difference between the two images (excerpt from Chiaki Konaka's early planning notes).
VOICE ACTRESSES' COMMENTS:
Did you ever face something difficult while acting as [Ruki]?
Fumiko Orikasa: I think I acted her role without as much difficulty as I expected. At any rate, I went with Ruki being cool, without having it seem like she had much friends. (laughs)
Mayumi Yamaguchi (Jian): Ruki is a tsundere*, isn't she?
FO: Oh, maybe! She wasn't described in that way back then, though.
MY: She was tsundere of the season. Must've been nice.
FO: Ruki was the first character for me that had common phrases. That's why when it came time to saying things like "Card Slash," I'd look at how the two of you did it first while thinking about how I should speak.
*tsundere - one of the character types often used to describe female characters in video games and anime. Although they have romantic interest in the main character ((let's not go there xD)), they cannot express that feeling well and so take on a "tsun" [prickly] attitude in front of other people. But when the two of them are alone ((see!)), they change into a "dere" [sweet] attitude, which describes the tsundere ([interview] memories of our digimon tamers pt. 1).
