Mariko Hyodo is a character from Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers.
Appearances
- Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers: Major Character (Antagonist)
Design
Mariko has brown bouffant hair and hard angled eyebrows. She wears red lipstick, eyeliner, blue to pink eyeshadow and a pair of earrings. She wears a light royal blue scarf tied around her neck and a black business suit with darker colored rose motifs around her shoulders and left side of her skirt.
As the King of Sapporo's Jail, she appears as obese and grotesque unlike her real person. Her entire color palette is cold pale, her skin included, aside from her her makeup and her Shadow eyes. She has a pair of fangs on her upper teeth. She wears a large amount of jewelry around her neck in place of her scarf, has piercing around her left side of her face, and wears a tiara. This tiara acts as her crown, if it's taken off, all desires trapped within are freed.
During the boss battle, she takes on a giant size, with a large mouth and eyes appearing on her stomach and her lower body appearing bloblike. Her arms become several tentacles holding utensils and her head is seen tilted back past her body's apex.
Personality
Hyodo is a noble politican with a genuine intent to maintain a clean public image of her city and genuinely cares for her people's well being. As she was a trade partner of Kunikazu Okumura, she came to know Haru Okumura quite closely when she was a child and is genuinely disheartened by Okumura's death. Even when being affected by the EMMA application, she still manages to calm down when Haru convinces her to stop berating her civil wards.
In reality, Hyodo is very bitter after having been forced to step down from mayor due being blackmailed and made into a scapegoat for scandal involving a faulty ice sculpture that collapsed and killed 7 year old girl (due to being involved in the incident, albeit by signing the document that allowed her suboridinates to hire the faulty contractors to cut costs). The politician that blackmails her goes on to take her place as mayor, and she was forced to keep quiet due to fear of further reprecussions. In retaliation for the damage done to her name and the city she genuinely loves, she begins using EMMA to brainwash the get her back the position that she wished to return to. She becomes much colder against any incompetent civil wards and works them to exhaustion for petty issues in order to make sure that there are no more scandals that occur within the city, ironically ignorant to the fact that using EMMA's salvation to artificially inflate her power and rig the ballot boxes is a scandal as well.
Profile
Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers
Mariko is a charismatic politician from Sapporo and the city's former mayor, who was always warm and kind towards people in the past. She says she wishes to make Sapporo a beautiful city without stagnation, "like fresh snow falling in the middle of winter."
Despite being generally one of the few political figures who still had good-willed intent in Japan, an incident last year caused Hyodo much disdain and resentment against her fellow politicians. During the Sapporo Ice Festival of last year, an ice statue collapsed when Mariko was still a mayor, killing a 7 year old girl in the process. A Senator took advantage of the scandal in an attempt to tarnish Mariko's reputation so he can become mayor himself and discussed it with an assistant. In reality, a sponsor used faulty materials for the sculpture. When Mariko attempted to call the police, he threatened that the police would discredit her instead and the other man would become mayor. Mariko eavesdropped the coup attempt and was discredited. In order to take her righteous power back, she used the EMMA application to make the current mayor step down, in which she would absolutely get elected back as mayor using a Jail. This is followed by Hyodo obtaining an 88% approval rating in two months, three politicians getting a Change of Heart and confessing to corruption, and a party opposing Hyodo supporting her. There are also rumors of Hyodo going to the national level. She would also force her civil servants to work to their bone for the people and to get her public image back.
She meets the Phantom Thieves of Hearts during their travel at Sapporo and is acquainted with Haru Okumura's father, Kunikazu Okumura. According to her, she is a trade partner and when she would go play golf alongside Haru and her father when Haru was still a child and Okumura was talking a break, she would play with Haru. In there, she can be seen ordering a civil ward to watch the flowerbed near the mayor's office for 24 hours straight to prevent any flowers from withering.
Later on, it's revealed she's the King of Sapporo's Jail after an election campaign where she requests her supporters to use EMMA so they can "befriend" her. Her keyword is "Snow City." After exploring her Jail once, she then can be seen berating another civil ward because he was getting forced to work despite having a flu. According to her, she's organizing a mass cleaning campaign for a month. When Haru berated Hyodo in return for overworking the sick ward as she recognized that Hyodo is obviously distorted, she was successfully convinced to leave the ward alone for the time being.
When the party sends the calling card, they stick Mariko's election poster with them. Once confronted, the lower body of Shadow Mariko transforms into a large bullfrog like creature towering over most of her upper body, with a massive face consisting of a pair of eyes and a massive mouth. Once she was defeated, on the next day she had a press conference, where she would admit for the oversight that resulted in the snow statue accident and thus disqualifying herself from the elections. Once the confession is over, Zenkichi Hasegawa will ask the party out to meet Mariko, and she admits to making an illusion that even the kid that died on the ice festival would not like to see. Haru then steps in and gives Mariko a hug. Before she tries to leave, the mother of the deceased child appeared in front of Mariko and told her that even when she would vanish, her child would not come back, and she should deal with the grief and re-elect as mayor once again, which she accepts.
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Etymology
Mariko (鞠子) means "ball, child." Her last name, Hyodo (氷堂) means "ice institute," referencing her ice-cold and merciless attitude towards her civil wards for their incompetence and corruption.
Trivia
- Her nickname “Snow White Mariko” is a reference of the main character from the fairy tale Snow White.
- Hyodo's behavior acts as a parallel to Kunikazu Okumura, as both of them work their employees to extreme degrees and happen to be related to Haru Okumura. However, while Okumura couldn't care less regardless of how many scandals he gets, Hyodo becomes extremely disheartened even by a single case of fabricated scandal directed against her. Additionally, Okumura only overworks his for his very own political gain, while Mariko is overworking her employees for the benefits of many. Furthermore, even if Okumura only thought about selling her to an abusive fiance for the sole reason of political gain, Mariko still cares about Haru after using the EMMA app.