Hiroko's portrayal in the remake of Shin Megami Tensei II.
Hiroko (ヒロコ, Hiroko) is the default name of the main heroine of Shin Megami Tensei II.
She is introduced as a citzen of the Center, and a member of the infamous Temple Knights; with a mysterious past that, unbeknownst to even her, irrevocably tied her own destiny with that of Aleph.
As the usual female partners of the male heroes in the Shin Megami Tensei franchise, Hiroko lacks the ability to recruit and summon demons, but compensate for that with the power to use magic-based techniques for both offense and defense.
Appearances
- Shin Megami Tensei II: Main heroine.
Profile
Shin Megami Tensei II
"Hawk"
Hiroko initially meets Aleph, the protagonist (who, at the time, answered by the name of "Hawk"), upon requesting his aid as the newest Champion of Valhalla's Colosseum. Hiroko is a citzen of the Center, a privilegied district of the city, and also a member of the acclaimed Temple Knights, the most sacred and powerful order of warriors under the service of the government. It's her aim to find a "missing little boy" who had disappeared from the Center's headquarters after an explosion that took place six months before the events of the game, and which she believes was orchestrated by two renegaded scientists named Mekata and Hanada. According to Hiroko, Hanada is hiding in the property of Valhalla's ruler, a woman who attends only by the title of "Madam", so she plans to accompany Hawk, in order to gain entrance to the heavily guarded mansion, due to the fact that the Madam is well known for requesting meetings with the winners of the Colosseum's tournaments, in order to congratulate them for their victory.
Once there however, they discover that not only the Madam isn't aware of Hanada's whereabouts, but that she is also under his pursuit: she asks for Hawk's help in the matter, so both he and Hiroko, along with the Madam's "pet demon," a powerful Cerberus, venture themselves into the dangerous slums of Valhalla, where they think Hanada is taking refuge. According to the Madam, the mad scientist plan is to open a gate to the Abyss, which is confirmed as truth by the two when they finally manage to track him down, fighting a Mercurius that he foolishly summons after successfully creating his aforementioned portal (being betrayed and murdered by it in the process, after the latter ignored his commands).
Back to the Madam's mansion, they find Zayin, also a member of the Temple Knights, waiting for them. He escorts Hawk, who is revealed to be named "Aleph", and Hiroko, back to the Center's headquarters, where Hiroko is harshly reprimanded by The Center's Bishop for acting without the Center's consent. She thanks Aleph for his help, and leaves, guided by two other Temple Knights.
Rescue
Later in the game, it is revealed by Mekata that Hiroko was taken prisoner by the Center for leaving her duties as a Temple Knight on her search for the lost boy that she mentioned earlier. After traversing through the Underworld's dungeons, Aleph finds her inside a cell in the labor camp located under the Factory district, but he has troubles in getting her out due to a psychotic trance in which she was, under mysterious circumstances, induced. It is only when Nadja, a demon girl that guided Aleph through the camp's mazes, fuses herself with Hiroko, in order to restore her senses, that she finally comes back to her usual self, joining Aleph for good in each other's quest for answers.
Since Mekata would only be willing to respond to Aleph's questions if he were alongside Hiroko, the two of them decide to arrange a new meeting with the scientist, who was hiding in Valhalla's slums. But, once there, they once again meet with Zayin, and are shocked to learn that the Center has dispatched a gargantuan demon named Abaddon to swallow up all of Valhalla. Utterly disgusted by the Center's actions, Zayin, labeled as a traitor, stages a revolt, taking over the local broadcasting of Millennium's News Network and informing the people about the true purposes of the Center: according to him, the world of the Millennium Kingdom that the Center wants to create is a reality only for a limited number of selected people. The ones who are not chosen are cruelly cast aside, just like the citizens of Valhalla (who chose the pleasures of a free life over servitude under the Center's commandments). Once the "wheat has been separated from the chaff", Millennium will be destroyed, exactly like Valhalla was. Finally, Zayin reveals that the Factory is nothing more than a concentration camp, where people are forced to work against their wills. By exposing the true agenda of the Center to the people, Zayin hopes to incite them into action, so that they can together stop the machinations of the Center, and fix the corrupted system that is governing Tokyo Millennium.
At the Underworld
Divided by doubt on which side to align themselves with, Aleph and Hiroko befriends a mysterious blonde man on Holytown's bar, who introduce himself as Louis Cypher. According to him, Abaddon's body can be found hiding somewhere on the Underworld, far below the most depths of Tokyo Millennium, and the reach of the Center's influence. Hearing this, they decide to travel once again there, traversing through the multiple different layers of the underground ruins of what once was the original metropolis of Tokyo, encountering it's various residents and gradually discovering how truly grim is the way that the Center treats those who are not considered worthy before their eyes.
First, they have to fight Daleth once again, now in the dungeons of the sunken city of Shinjuku. Unbeknownst to them, Daleth has come up with a new plan to use a love potion on Aleph (manufactured by a prankster fairy named Puck) in order to make him fall in love with Anoon (a timid fairy girl who is the owner of a drug shop in the area), which Daleth hopes it will put his enemy out of commission once and for al. The plan backfires however, and the love potion ends up hiting Hiroko instead, who then starts to comically chase Daleth around.
After Aleph forces Puck to give him the "Infidelilly Sap", and is helped by Oberon (the king of the faeries, and the benevolent ruler of Shinjuku) to break the spell on Hiroko, Daleth is the next one to suffer from the effects of the sap, falling deeply in love with Anoon (who, since the beggining, also loved him). After these events, Daleth finally abandons his grudge on Aleph, deciding to live in Shinjuku, alongside Anoon, in order to help the fairies there make their lives easier. He also explains that the "Mars Pillar" Aleph picked up in one of their previous battles is, in fact, one of the seven ancient artifacts needed to open a passage to the Abyss. He gives them a hint of where they can find the next Pillar, and then they leave, resuming their exploration of the Underworld.
Next stop is Akasaka, a city under the dominion of the Chirei, hardworking demons (and even some humans) who earn a living by excavating precious weapons and other items from ages past in a nearby site, and selling them to clients of the surface. And lastly, Aleph and Hiroko reach the town of Roppongi, an area which has become the last refuge of the "mutant community," a group of humans who were grotesquely disfigured by the toxic radiations that affected the Earth after the nuclear war, and were cast out by the Center for this; forced to forever live out of the reach of the sunlight.
After meeting with the Mutant Elder, and hearing his story, Aleph and Hiroko are then introduced to Hiruko, who serves as an attendant of the powerful guardian of Tokyo, Taira no Masakado. Desperate to amend his past mistakes, where he foolishly betrayed the Amatsukami clan of japanese gods (and Masakado himself) when he allowed the Kunitsukami, allied with the Hebrew pantheon of gods, to defeat and imprison them, Hiruko begs Aleph to retrieve his master's body parts, which were torn asunder when he tried to mediate the conflict between the two opposing groups, and were taken away by the Kunitsukami not long after they were equally sealed away by the same gods they had aligned themselves with before.
With the help of Hiruko, the doors of different shrines scattered through the Underworld are opened: there, Aleph and Hiroko meet some of the Kunitsukami, who after fighting or being helped by him, grants the duo the parts of Masakado's body they were holding. Then, after discovering the location of Masakado's missing decapitated head (who was in possession of a digger in Holytown who wasn't aware of it's true value), and fusing it all together with Masakado's soul (that Hiruko had with him all along), Aleph and Hiroko finally revives Masakado, who, after thanking them, proceeds to teleport himself, and Hiroko, to a sealed grotto in the Underworld, where the Amatsukami are being held.
Not wielding the great strength he once had, a temporary consequence of the rebirth process, Masakado's current power is unable to let him do anything more than just removing the giant boulder that was put in the way of the cave's entrance; as such, Aleph and Hiroko are the only ones who can free the gods of the Amatsukami now. Once they manage to do it, they are deeply thanked by both Hiruko and the sun goddess Amaterasu herself. Leaving for the Kongokai, a celestial plane where the Amatsukami intend to heal from their wounds, Aleph and Hiroko are left once again from where they started. But this time, they made up their minds: they shall go back to Holytown, join Zayin in his quest for true justice, and storm the Center's headquarters once and for all.
Rebellion
Once reunited with Zayin, he explains to them that his first priority is the rescue of the innocent workers who, according to him, are being forced to labor in the Factory area against their wills. They all rush to the camps, but are perplexed to find out that none of the workers, some of which are even children, want to leave their cells (much like Hiroko once did), indifferent to the inhuman conditions they have been toiling under all this time. Knowing that something is clearly wrong, Zayin suggests that they invade the Factory's watchtower, whose last floor was being guarded by the demon Belphegor, who almost succeed in mortally wounding Zayin.
After Aleph and Hiroko finish off Belphegor, they proceed to uncover the Factory's disturbingly dark secret: in the top of the tower, a demon woman named Siren is singing a sorrowful melody which is hypnotizing the laborers into mindlessly working till utter exhaustion and death on the fields. Discovering however, that she wasn't to be blamed for her actions, and that the music was only her way of mourning the lost of her lover, from who she was taken away from by the Center's men, Aleph and Hiroko decide to finish what Hanada once started: with the dolls he once utilized in their hands, along with another one that wasn't originally in his possession (and was the main reason for the failure of the ritual at the slums of Valhalla), they successfully manage to open a gate that leads directly into the Abyss, where they start looking for Siren's long lost lover, hoping that by reuniting the couple, she would stop her singing.
However, in the the middle of their search in the plains of the Abyss, Aleph and Hiroko experience a bizarre phenomenon: a "spacial distortion" of sorts teleports them into the inwards of a mysterious building where, on separated chambers, they find people tied to metallic chairs, their brains plugged into computers. Further investigating the upper floors, they are shocked to discover that the responsible for the disgusting state of those people was none other than Gimmel, the real Gimmel, as he reveals to them that the Arcadia that Aleph witnessed before was nothing more than the fabrication of virtual reality, and thus, not real, simply an illusion under his control. Aware that Gimmel would not let them leave that place alive, not now that they knew the truth about his fake utopia, the two engage him in battle, where Gimmel is killed, and his false world of delusions and lies, destroyed.
In the end, Aleph and Hiroko tracks down the location of Petersen, Siren's lover. Bringing him to Tokyo Millennium through the same portal they once came from, they finally reunite him with the singing Siren. The couple thanks both Aleph and Hiroko for their help and kindness before traveling back to the Abyss, which makes the spell that once brainwashed the laborers to dissolve itself; now, they were truly free. Nevertheless, the group isn't awarded with much time for celebrations, hearing through the television broadcastings on Holytown that the Center's bishop decided to adopt more drastic measures to deal with Zayin's coup: he states that if Zayin doesn't submit himself to the Center immediately, they will cut out Holytown's air supply, merciless killing everyone who lives in that area.
Zayin doesn't intend to give himself in so easily though, heading to the Center's headquarters not to surrender, but to fight them head-on. Making their ways through the Center's corridors, Aleph, Hiroko and Zayin finally found themselves before the gates of the Center's secret chambers, which sheltered their true mysterious leaders: an enigmatic group only known as "The Four Elders". Still, appearances can be deceiving, with the assembly of senators quickly showing a glimpse of their inhuman nature by turning the rebellious Zayin into a stone slab with their ferocious supernatural powers. Seeing this, it is uncovered to Aleph and Hiroko, who rushed to his rescue, the true identities of the Elders as, in fact, archangels of God all along; three of them, Michael, Raphael and Uriel, facing the heroes in furious battles, all being scathingly defeated and killed by them.
Notwithstanding, the danger has not yet passed: "God" himself appears this time, in order to exact retribution on Aleph and Hiroko for killing his servants. After an arduous and difficult combat however, they still manage to emerge triumphant, albeit with great effort. Exiting the chambers, the last Elder then appears in front of Aleph and Hiroko, revealing herself as the last seraphim, Gabriel. According to her, the archangels were all commanded in the past by the real God to look after the building of Tokyo Millennium, being instructed by him to wait for the savior that he would one day send to them. However, the government of the city, under their control, became so irreversibly corrupted, turning into nothing more than a tool to control and enslave humanity, that it simply could not shelter a Messiah of the One God as to lead the people. Unable to wait any longer, the three fallen seraphim tried to fabricate their own Messiah, an heretic pursuit that led them astray from the true will of God, who abandoned them in return.
Now Gabriel, who separated herself from them by the orders of God, is the only archangel remaining. She uses her magical powers to restore Zayin back to normal, and tells Aleph and Hiroko that he is awaiting for them in the Center's control room, before disappearing to destinations unknown.
At the Abyss
Temporary appointed as the responsible for directing the Center's activities, Zayin once again requests Aleph and Hiroko's help, stating that they must investigate an strange anomaly that their computers have detected near the area of Holytown. Once there, they are surprised to find out that a strange "drill-like" tower has risen from the surface, and that it's appearance seems to be affecting the civilians in even more bizarre ways: their natural energies, their Magnetite, is seemingly being absorbed by the enigmatic spinning obelisk, fainting and disorientation being only the primordial symptoms of what could become lethal occurrences. Reporting their findings back to Zayin, he deduces that the object is actually the tail of an even larger demon, whose body, he concludes, must be dwelling in the Abyss for such a thing to be possible. Thus, Aleph and Hiroko decide to once again travel to the demon world, as to find out exactly what is going on.
However, it seems that the use of the gate created by the right positioning of the four dolls in a specific place and order is only capable of sending it's invokers into one of the various different segments of the Abyss, the Tiphereth district, and that Aleph and Hiroko will need to find an alternative way to get to the Abyss if they want to fully explore it. To do so, they start collecting the remaining pillars that Daleth once mentioned in their trip to Shinjuku: by gathering the remaining six artifacts, and putting them in their respective altars (which are spread among the Underworld), Aleph and Hiroko succeed in summoning a true portal which finally sends them both into the plains of Yesod, in the demon world, where they soon discover that a demon called Moloch, following direct orders from the ruler of the Abyss, Lucifer, is the one responsible for the predicament the citizens of Holytown are currently facing. The reasons as to why Lucifer would want to assimilate the magnetite energies from the residents of the surface remain yet unknown.
After investigating the near town and gathering more information, Aleph and Hiroko discover that the way to Tiphereth is sealed, and that the passage to the next area is being guarded by a demon called Hecate which, apparently, as the moon goddess, becomes invincible when the moon is in any phase but lightless. By defeating her, they make their way into two new areas: Netzach and Hod. Since they were told that the doors to the Tiphereth area were locked by two keys in possession of the rulers of Netzach and Hod, those are consequently their new destinations.
At this point, it's up to the player to decide which zone he wishes to visit first: if Hod is chosen, Aleph and Hiroko must face Tiamat, a demoness of great power, told by Lucifer himself not to underestimate them. If Netzach is chosen however, Aleph and Hiroko must defeat Crowley, a human wizard who is obsessed with the practice of Sabbaths (orgies whose goal is the gathering of sexual energy for the purpose of summoning demons). When both of them are taken care of, Aleph and Hiroko finally open the gates which were blocking the entrance to Tiphereth, connecting the four areas once again through the Yetzirah Corridor.
Once in Tiphereth, Aleph and Hiroko are suddenly approached by a demon messenger called Gemori, who works for Lucifer, and is there under his command in order to bring Aleph before her master, in Kether (the final zone in which the Abyss is divided). In Kether Castle, the personal palace where Lucifer and his minions dwell, Aleph and Hiroko finds out that Louis Cypher was Lucifer taking a human disguise all along, who then reveals to them that the God they defeated at the Elder's chambers in the Center was nothing more than a false "God", the product of the raw faith of the fallen seraphim that was so monstrously strong, and of minds so hopelessly twisted, that it actually managed give life to a fake YHVH.
Confused about the mysterious source of Aleph's unnatural power, Lucifer is considering the possibility that Aleph may be, in fact, the reincarnation of Satan, God's supreme instrument of judgement, punishment and retribution; and that is why he has summoned Aleph into his presence, so that he could ascertain his suspicions by directly seeing him. Now face to face with him, Lucifer is relieved when he reach the conclusion that Aleph is not Satan. But, according to him, several signs are still indicating that Satan's revival is only a matter of time, particularly the fact that Seth is starting to awaken. He tells them that Seth is one of the "two halves" of Satan, imprisoned on a temple located in the realm of Tiphereth, and under the effects of a deep slumber inflicted by God himself, so that he could awaken only when it came the day that Satan would be once again needed.
Satan, Lucifer states, is a tool of God's wrath: if he is revived, he will wipe out all the human race from the face of the Earth, not even sparing the residents of the Underworld, or from the Abyss, from complete extermination, and that is why Lucifer wishs to fight against Satan in one last battle to the death, so that he can protect his people. Nevertheless, Lucifer isn't confident that he can win against Satan alone, and that is why he desires the aid of Aleph. He says that if he and Hiroko truly wish to form an alliance with him, and the demon-kind, they must reach Kether Castle once again, but without the escort of Gemori this time; and, of course, by their own volition and desire to whole heartedly join him and his cause.
Gemori then takes Aleph and Hiroko back to Tiphereth, where they are almost immediately faced with another unexpected meeting: Gabriel herself is in the Abyss, and she says that Zayin wishes to see them. She transports them to a place called "Eden", a garden located at the very top of the Center's headquarters and that, according to her, was made in the same way as the paradise of old. There, the group is reunited with Zayin, who is aware about their recent audience with Lucifer in Kether Castle. He states that Lucifer's aim is nothing but to prevent the humans from attaining peace, and that is by destroying Tokyo Millennium that he intents to achieve this goal. Zayin indeed acknowledges the undeniable fact that the previous government that administrated the Center was truly rotten to the core, but he still vehemently insists that, in the end, it was thanks to Millennium that humanity managed to survive this long in this demon infested world, and as such, he makes to the two a proposition of his own: Zayin wants Aleph and Hiroko on his side once again, so that the three of them could kill Lucifer, rebuild Millennium, and work together towards the building of a true Millennium Kingdom.
From here, Aleph (and, of course, the player) must make a decisive choice that will lead him and Hiroko on a path with no possible return: he can either join Lucifer in his quest to free humanity of the tyranny and submission of a world of suffocating order... or he can join Zayin and Gabriel in their pursuit of ridding the world of the prince of darkness and his minions, in order to leave it's fate once again under the jurisdiction of God's commands.
Gallery
Trivia
- Hiroko's outfit is accessible to players using a female avatar in Shin Megami Tensei: IMAGINE.
| Playable Characters | Aleph/Hawk - Hiroko - Beth - Cerberus - Lucifer - Satan |
| Non-Playable Characters | Okamoto - Gimmel - Zayin - Stephen - Haneda - Daleth - Red Bear - Madam - Hanada - The Center's Bishop - The Four Elders - Mekata - Puck - Hanoun - Mutant Elder - Hiruko - Taira no Masakado - Siren - Petersen - Michael - Raphael - Uriel - Gabriel - Fake YHVH - Seth - Virocana - Ozawa - Gotou - Gemori - Astaroth (Ishtar / Ashtar) - Kuzuryu - YHVH |
| Locations | Tokyo Millennium - Underworld - Expanse - Eden - Diamond Realm - River Styx |
| Terminology | Millennium Kingdom - Great Cataclysm - Order of Messiah - Ring of Gaea - Terminal - Sword fusion - Identification Program - Summon Doll - Seven Pillars of Solomon - Sabbath - Abaddon's Innards - Megiddo Arc |
| Content | Demons - Bosses - Skills - Items |