HINASAKI MIKU
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The heroine! She has a pretty tough job, if you think about it. Her brother runs off into a haunted mansion alone, and she has to run and rescue him from all the crazy dead chicks who want his ass. Her character designers made her small and slender to indicate that she wasn't a very aggressive person, and gave her big dark shining eyes to hint at her strong psychic ability. She's very delicate; her strength is spiritual, not physical. She has long hair, another indication of her psychic abilities, but since she's hated herself and hidden her abilities, her hair is always worn tied up. The hairpin was not only a keepsake from her mother, but a family heirloom passed down through the generations of neurotic Hinasaki women. It was a symbolic item that bound psychic powers.
Overall, she looks younger than she actually is (16? 17? 18? I'm guessing about five years younger than Mafuyu). This is partly due to her strong psychic ability and partly due to the trauma she suffered as a child with her father's death and mother's suicide.
The black choker she wears is supposed to match her brother's choker, but both of them wear the chokers, leaving a black line around their necks...the visual significance of that is pretty clear from the game, don't you think? The designers toyed with giving her more old-fashioned clothes, in the gothic Taisho style (kimono and hakama, I presume), but they settled on a more modern skirt-and-blouse combo, ignoring the fashions of the time (1986). Her clothing is very simple, in bold colors that stand out from the grey surroundings. Apparently her school uniform in the Japanese version made her look a little too young, so in the American release, she's wearing a red shirt under her white blouse instead of a red scarf knotted in the front.
ABOUT HER NAME: The heroine has been struck with a curse that will tear her limb from limb, so they decided on the name "Hinasaki" to give the image of how her tender body will be torn if the curse is completed. "Hina" is a young bird or a doll, something delicate and easy to break, and "saki" is "to bloom," like a flower. Her image color was a heroic red, so they named her "Miku" - "crimson." Her costume is accented with touches of red, which looks almost like blood among the muted colors of the mansion.
ABOUT HER POWERS: She's at least the fourth generation of psychics in the Hinasaki family, along with her brother Mafuyu. She can hear and see ghosts, as well as watch the scenes from the past that ghosts show her. These abilities didn't make her many friends, and her mother discouraged her from talking about it. Only Mafuyu understood what it was like to have these powers, and the siblings were extremely close. When their father died and their mother committed suicide, Miku's powers increased, and now with the aid of her mother's antique camera and her hairpin, she can trap ghosts in photographs.
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