Eriko Kirishima

Eriko "Elly" Kirishima is a character from the Persona series.

Appearances

 * Megami Ibunroku Persona / Persona: Playable Character
 * Megami Ibunroku Persona (Manga): Major Character
 * Megami Ibunroku Persona Digital Collection: Host
 * Persona 2: Innocent Sin: Minor Character
 * Persona 2: Eternal Punishment: Playable Character
 * Persona 3: "Who's Who" guest
 * DemiKids Light / Dark Version

Design
Eriko wears the female uniform of St. Hermelin. She has long black hair which she wears in a ponytail, and wears a yellow-orange scarf around her neck.

In Revelations: Persona, Eriko's hair color, eye color and skin tone has been altered to make her look more Caucasian.

In Persona 2, Eriko's appearance is modeled after the late, who also worked as a model and actress. They share single-edged eyelids and similar hairstyles. Yamaguchi gained her status as a model in Paris while Eriko is endeavoring to achieve that goal.

Personality
Aside from her outwardly feminine hobbies, Eriko was also interested in the occult. Because of this, she was excited to once again do the demon-summoning game "Persona" that her classmates were pulled into because of Masao Inaba and Hidehiko Uesugi's silly bet. Eriko played along despite having done the game prior to see how her classmates would react to the result. She was nonetheless shocked to see her classmates forcibly sent to the realm bordering consciousness and unconsciousness after being hit by lightning.

She expresses overly-ecstatic enthusiasm over the fact that her Persona is the "Goddess of Victory." Sometimes her love for the supernatural and experiencing new things related to it clouds her judgment of what is dangerous or not. After the initial surprise, she's not startled by meeting a ghost ("We only heard sounds the last time, how intriguing"), the fact that lightning is raining down indoors ("Fantastic! This is becoming more and more interesting") or (in the manga) being turned into stone ("It's over already? What a shame, I wanted to experience the feel of being a statue for a while longer").

In Persona 2: Eternal Punishment, she immediately establishes rapport with Ulala Serizawa, who shares her love of fortune telling and ghost stories. Though not explicitly revealed in the first Persona game, but in the Persona manga and Persona game, Eriko was in love with the protagonist, but hid her true feelings. In Eternal Punishment, it was seen through the Spring of Mirrors at Mt. Iwato that Eriko only musters up the courage to make an intimate promise to him at graduation, saying that in a few years, she would be "a woman that he wouldn't recognize."

Megami Ibunroku Persona
As Eriko played the Persona game prior to the beginning of the game, she wasn't as affected by the lightning strikes and thus didn't have to come along to the hospital for a checkup. She somehow senses that her friends are in grave danger after demons begin to appear in Mikage-cho. Eriko arrives just in time to help the group escape the hospital, awakening to Nike in the process.

Having done some investigating of her own, Eriko tells the group to head for the Alaya Shrine where they meet Maki Sonomura's mother, a former employee of SEBEC. The latter reveals that the advent of demons was brought about by Takahisa Kandori, who tricked her into perfecting the DEVA System, a device that wrought havoc with the dimensional divide between the real world and the demon world.

After getting Maki's mother to be treated in the school infirmary, Eriko will leave the group to find a way out of the town, which is now wrapped in an ominous barrier. She can be later recruited as one of the optional fifth characters in the game upon finding her in the subway tunnel. In the Snow Queen Quest, Eriko returns to the school while the protagonist searches for the Snow Queen Mask and can be found in the library after the school transforms into the Ice Castle where she can be recruited as an optional party member.

Personas used in the manga
A list of Personas used by Eriko in the manga.


 * Nike: Eriko's Initial Persona, awakened off-screen while Eriko was on her way to Mikage Hospital.
 * Armaiti: Awakened during the fight against Saurva and many other demons. Armaiti is very powerful, being able to kill all the demons with a single Makouha spell, despite the entire party having trouble in fighting them prior to its awakening.
 * Michael: Eriko's Ultimate Persona, awakened during the fight against Pandora.
 * Azrael: Awakened during the fight against Pandora. Eriko used Azrael's Recarmdra spell to sacrifice herself to fully heal her allies before being healed by a Samarecarm cast by Maki.

Innocent Sin
In Innocent Sin, Eriko is a supporting character. She is now living her dream of being a model, slowly gaining popularity in her chosen career. Her assistance is sought by the party at the recommendation of Yukino Mayuzumi, who knows that she can interpret the meaning behind the cryptic verses of the Oracle of Maia. Unless certain conditions are met, Eriko will later fight alongside her former classmates from St. Hermelin once more to repel the invasion of Sumaru City by Fuhrer's Last Battalion, assisting Tatsuya's party so they can go to Xibalba.

Eternal Punishment
In Eternal Punishment, Eriko becomes a playable character. During the clandestine meeting at Aoba Park, an informant named Sneak mentions that there are two people (a man and a woman) investigating the New World Order. If a rumor is spread that the person with information on the NWO is a woman, Eriko will join the party. She still uses fencing swords, which are considered different weapons than the swords used by Tatsuya and Nanjo.

Eriko will then bring the party to the Sumaru TV station to investigate if Chizuru Ishigami (also known as "Wang Long Chizuru") is really connected to the New World Order. Their suspicions were confirmed as Chizuru's Shikigami (who was disguised as a cat) casts a "Kimon Tonkou" spell on the party, trapping them in a reverse dimension. With her knowledge of the occult, Eriko soon concludes that they would have to find and enter the "Ba Gua" gates located on each of the studio entrances in order to escape. To this end, she enlists the help of popular talk show host and former classmate Hidehiko Uesugi to find the right order of the Ba Gua gates by communicating through a mirror in his dressing room and scouting them out back in the real world. Inside the reverse dimension, the party finds Eriko's ex-stalker and the protagonist from Persona, but both are revealed to be Chizuru's Shikigami in disguise.

Eriko will rejoin the rest of her former St. Hermelin classmates later in the game (with Tatsuya taking her place in the party), fighting off the New World Order soldiers that are trying to take over the city.

In the fan disc "Sumaru TV Special Preview Disc," Eriko appears in the variety show "SUMAsumaSUMARU" hosted by Hidehiko Uesugi and Junko Kurosu. She interviews popular high school students based on the public vote. All 4 elected students are in fact the 4 playable kids from Innocent Sin. Tatsuya Suou is missing due to the beginning of events of Eternal Punishment and Eikichi Mishina is elected through voting bloc of his schoolmates which Eriko does not hesitate to expose the truth in front of the camera.

Persona 3
Eriko appears on the TV program "Who's Who" hosted by Trish. She is introduced as a girl in her 20's with an original short-haired style who has studied overseas for a while. Trish compliments her fluency in English, concluding that she is both intelligent and beautiful.

DemiKids: Light & Dark
Ellie is an A-Rank BattleNet opponent. She is an ex-model who gained power over demons and tends to use Holy demons in battle. Defeating her once earns a unique Dominion named Himinion, and defeating her 20 times earns a Ironhoof.

Revelations: Persona

 * "Come here!" (when summoning a Persona)
 * "Persona!" (when summoning a Persona)
 * "Come Forth!" (when summoning a Persona)
 * "Ah!" (attacking without Sword equipped)
 * "Ha-!" (when using a sword)
 * "Die!" (when using a gun)
 * "Ouch!" (when hit)
 * "Ughhh..." (Dying)

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona

 * "Come to me!" (when summoning a Persona)
 * "Persona!" (when summoning a Persona)
 * "Come to me!" (when summoning a Persona)
 * "Come!" (when summoning a Persona)
 * "No!" (Dying)

Persona 2: Eternal Punishment

 * "Come on, I'll take you on!" (when entering battle)
 * "Are you ready?" (when entering battle)
 * "Coup de pointe!" (when attacking)
 * "Touché!" (when attacking)
 * "Persona!" (when summoning a Persona)
 * "Come here!" (when summoning a Persona)
 * "Hi, Gabriel." (when using Release Jail with Gabriel)
 * "Here we go!" (when using Fusion spells)
 * "Everyone together!" (when using Fusion spells)
 * "My skills haven't dulled yet..." (after winning a battle)
 * "Sorry, I still have things to do!" (after winning a battle)
 * "I beg your pardon!" (after winning a battle)
 * "How's that?" (rare victory quote)
 * "Stupid." (rare victory quote)
 * "Good luck!" (when retreating)
 * "Bon voyage!" (when retreating)
 * "Oh, no!" (when KO'ed)
 * "It's my fault... I'm sorry..." (game over)

Etymology

 * The name Eriko means "excellent, fine" (英) (e), "reason, logic" (理) (ri) and "child" (子) (ko).
 * Eriko's surname Kirishima means "paulownia" (桐) (kiri) and "island" (島) (shima).

Trivia

 * Eriko immediately seems to recognize Takahisa Kandori's Persona as being Nyarlathotep. Following the battle with Takeda, her statement is: "Kandori's Persona... The faceless god... the Crawling Chaos... A bizarre and evil entity known by countless names... It embodies malice."
 * Eriko's ultimate Persona in the original game is Michael, however he is replaced by Gabriel in Persona 2: Eternal Punishment. Incidentally, Michael is exclusively equippable by Eriko in Eternal Punishment.
 * There was some controversy among fans regarding Ellen's seemingly racist overtones in the password used to access the school in the Revelations version: "Roses are red, Zombies are blue, but my face is white, so you know I'm true." The "white face" line has been changed into "but I don't want brains" in the PSP remake. It may refer to a face white from being frightened, as people can turn pale at the sight of something horrific. It may also be referring to zombies in the game having green skin, as opposed to human flesh tones.
 * As someone who is fluent in English and has studied overseas, Eriko inserts English words and sentences in her dialogue. However, instead of the usual, both the game and the manga render it in roman letters (a trait shared with fellow English-speaker Doctor Nicholai). This probably means that Eriko is pronouncing the words in the correct way rather than using the Japanese pronunciation. Eriko also says people's names using roman letters in what appears to be the as she spells つ as tu instead of tsu.
 * In the manga (and mentioned in Eternal Punishment), Eriko reveals that she has younger twin sisters. However, other than the fact that they exist, nothing else is known about them.
 * There are three official romanizations of Eriko's nickname . In the Japanese versions of Megami Ibunroku Persona (both PS and PSP) it's Erie, as she calls herself "Erie in DreamLand" at the entrance of the Dream World in Hypnos Tower. In the Japanese versions of both Persona 2 games (both PS and PSP) it's Ellie, as she says when introducing herself. In the English releases of the PSP ports of Persona and Innocent Sin, it's Elly.
 * It's revealed in an interview with Satomi Tadashi that Eriko sometimes summons her Persona for the sole reason of having someone to vent to and that sometimes she visits Igor in the Velvet Room. The same interview also mentions that her career in modeling won't advance because she doesn't meet the height requirements.
 * The manual to Persona reveals that Eriko is one-quarter American.
 * In Persona 2: Innocent Sin, Yukino offhandedly mentions that Eriko is a fan of aromatherapy.