Yuka Ayase

Yuka Ayase is a character in Megami Ibunroku Persona.

Appearances

 * Megami Ibunroku Persona / Persona: Playable Character
 * Megami Ibunroku Persona (Manga): Major Character
 * Megami Ibunroku Persona Digital Collection: Minigame Host

Design
Yuka has dyed-blonde hair which she wears in twin tails and amber-colored eyes. She has freckles on her face as well as a bandage on her neck. Yuka wears her school uniform with a popped collar and a jacket over it. Like most, her skirt is shorter than average and she wears loose socks.

Personality
A somewhat shallow girl who doesn't think about the future and prefers to live in the moment. She is extremely blunt about her feelings, especially when something displeases her. Yuka is indifferent to other people's suffering, but will lash out and complain childishly when something affects her. She is a bad student, but despite her bad grades, Yuka has a natural ability for observation. She also makes use of kogalgo (kogal slang), which was translated to valley girl slang in the first localized version.

Throughout both story routes, a recurring theme with Yuka is learning that living only in the moment and fearing or neglecting the future can only do harm, such as when she's tempted with eternal youth by Yuriko in the Snow Queen route. Despite her looks and demeanor, Yuka's goals are to actually have a happy, regular and typical family life as a mother with two children. Partially due to her believing that kind of life would be "living on easy street." She also appears to be rather book-smart on occasion, though she can be very vulgar when angered. It's implied that she's rather skilled at cooking.

Megami Ibunroku Persona
Having played the Persona game with Brown prior to the beginning of the game, Yuka isn't hit by lightning after Mai's appearance and stays at the school. She can be later found with Yuko Himeno trying to block the hole in the wall to the gym in order to prevent that demons enter the school.

In the SEBEC route, Yuka is an optional party member. Sometime after the protagonist enters the Police Station to rescue Mark, the school disappears due to the influence of the DEVA System. Yuka managed to escape from the school before it disappears and hid in the Abandoned Factory, where she is found by the party. If the player doesn't have a fifth party member or didn't follow the steps to recruit Reiji, Yuka will forcibly join the party. After finding the secret entrance in the factory, the party runs into two Secret Police officers, who try to attack Yuka with guns, thus awakening her Persona. If she isn't recruited, Yuka is the only playable character whose Persona awakening is never shown.

In the Snow Queen Quest, Yuka is a mandatory party member alongside Yukino. After obtaining the Snow Queen Mask, the protagonist runs into Yuka and Yukino warning Mark and Maki against going out alone. She is present at the time Ms. Saeko dons the Snow Queen Mask and is taken over by it, and decides to follow Yukino and the protagonist as she feels safer with them. Prior to the beginning of the game, Yuka rejected Toro, which was one of the triggers to his Persona going berserk and consequently awakening her own powers.

After the events of the game, Yuka got a job as a secretary in a company and married a salaryman she met during work. She is now living as a carefree housewife whose only complaint is the size of her husband's paycheck.

Manga
After awakening to her powers during the fight against Toro in chapter 7, Yuka stays behind in the school with Yukino as Naoya, Maki, Elly, and Brown go rescue Mark and Kei. She reappears in chapter 32 alongside Yukino as the others accidentally return to the school instead of the Deva Yuga.

Revelations: Persona

 * "Persona~!" (when summoning Persona)
 * "Oh Baby!" (when summoning Persona)
 * "Die." (when when using whip)
 * "Ha-!" (when using gun) 
 * "Ah.." (when hit)

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona

 * "Hurry up and come out now!" (when summoning Persona)
 * "Here, Personee!" (when summoning Persona)
 * "Like, Persona." (when summoning Persona)
 * "Yah!" (when using whip)
 * "Bam bam!" (when using gun)
 * "Whaaaat!?" (Dying)

Etymology

 * The name Yuka means "excellence, superiority, gentleness" (優) (yu) and "fragrance, fragrant" (香) (ka).
 * Yuka's surname Ayase means "design" (綾) (aya) and "swift current, rapids" (瀬) (se).

Trivia

 * Yuka is the only female character who falls under the Magician Arcana in the entire Persona series. She is also the only Magician whose romance doesn't end in a tragedy.
 * Yuka is one of the two playable characters from Persona who don't appear in the Persona 2 duology, the other being Masao Inaba.
 * When awakening to her powers in the SEBEC Route, Yuka attacks the Secret Police with Maragi, a skill that her Persona only learns at rank 5. In the Snow Queen Quest, if Brown is not present during the fight against Toro, she will summon her Persona twice in a row to defeat him.
 * In the manga, Yuka is one of the few characters who never used her ultimate Persona, the others being the protagonist and Maki. She is also the only one whose Persona was shown only once.
 * It is implied that Yuka developed a crush on the protagonist over the course of the game. At the entrance of the Avidya World, Chisato remarks that "it's easy to tell who Maki likes... and she's not the only one," which is also said if Elly, who has feelings for him, is the fifth party member. The Persona World guide also remarks that, "Ayase shows her kind side in front of the man she likes. You can see it in her interactions with the protagonist in the SEBEC chapter." She adds the protagonist to her list of "potential future husband's" before revisiting the Lost Forest and she also comments on the protagonist's looks after the fight with Kandori.
 * There is leftover data in the game on a set of apple pie items, which according to their description were baked by Ayase. Some of them are key items, indicating that at some point in the game's development there would be an event where Ayase baked pies. It would most likely take place during the Snow Queen Quest, since Ayase is a mandatory party member in that storyline. This is supported by dialogue at the beginning of the Snow Queen Quest where Ayase wonders where the home economics room is, since she made some snacks earlier that day and there were leftover ingredients. An interview with Satomi Tadashi, Kazuma Kaneko and Cozy Okada reveal that there was going to be a plot point with Yuka cooking ambrosia (items necessary to fuse the ultimate Personas in Snow Queen Quest) but it was ultimately scrapped.
 * In an interview with character designer, Kazuma Kaneko, it's revealed that Yuka's design was based off of model and fashion designer, Uno Kanda. Emphasis was put on her lips to resemble the model and give a more wild look.