Chie Harada

Chie Harada (原田千絵^?) is a secondary character in the anime and manga series My-HiME. In the alternate universe My-Otome, her name was changed to Chie Hallard (チエ・ハラード Chie Harādo). She is voiced by Mitsuki Saiga in Japanese and Hazel Forman in English.

My-HiME anime

Chie Harada is a classmate of Mai Tokiha, whom she sits directly behind, and Yuuichi Tate. She offers her friendship on Mai's first day, introducing herself by poking Mai's sides playfully. She uses her cell phone's camera frequently to give interviews and is always searching for new gossip around the school, which develops into a running gag about her character. She and Aoi Senou appear in an omake as super deformed versions of themselves to give a rundown of their class, classifying Mai as being in the "Biggest Breast Ranking".

After the events of the HiME festival progress become dangerous enough for the Fuuka students to be dismissed, Chie and Aoi reluctantly leave Mai behind, though the other girl insists she can handle herself. In the end they return and are last seen at a picnic with the resurrected HiME.

My-HiME manga

Chie's role in the manga was more or less non-existent as Tate Yuuichi is the protaginist and Mai's relationships with her classmates are unexplored. She only shows up for a cameo role as one of the announcers during the battle between the Anti Orphan Squad and Ori-HiME unit to determine who are the strongest HiME in the school, and a few later cameo appearances.

My-Otome anime

Chie, now with the surname Hallard and having a larger role, is a Pearl at Garderobe and is 2nd member of the Trias, a group of three Pearls that deal with student discipline. When Akane left, she became the leading member of the Trias. It is interesting to note that in My-HiME, both she and Aoi made up much of the comedy in the series; while in My-Otome, they have more serious and dramatic roles.

She is very boyish and often carries a blue rose around. She is from the Aries Republic and seems to have some relationship with Aoi, paralleling their relationship from the first series. Chie remains calm and tries to help out whenever she can and balances out Shiho's aggressive behavior when dealing with student discipline. In episode 15 she tells Nao that she met Aoi when she started attending Garderobe. When Nao's gang was about to torture Miya's gang for attempting to rape Arika, Chie and Aoi showed up on the scene in which both Nao and Chie later took in Miya to interrogate. Later on, she said she was out on a date. When Mashiro was feeling depressed due to Takumi's words, Chie suggested to Aoi to bring in Arika to cheer her up which works and pulls both out of their depression. Chie was also aware that Tomoe Marguerite was involved in numerous plots to take out Arika Yumemiya but rather than report Tomoe she orders her to stop it. Despite knowing of the fact that Erstin Ho was injured during another plot, Chie kept silent about it for unknown reasons. At the end, it is revealed that she is Major Chie Hallard, a leader of Aries forces.

She has taken it upon herself to infiltrate the ranks of the Schwarz-controlled Valkyrie Otome. She visits the unconscious, seriously injured Aoi in a hospital bed before leaving for her mission as a Valkyrie. In the end, she is reunited with Aoi and arrests Nagi.

GEM

In order to investigate Nagi's plans, Chie answered Sergay Wáng's call to become a member of the Artai Otome Squad, the Valkyries. Ever since Schwarz launched their invasion of Windbloom and Artai's taking control of Garderobe, Chie seemed to be driven by the motive to get inside Nagi's plot. This is evident when she questioned whether Sergay was unhappy that she was joining his crew, but he expresses that he can feel calm now that he had her on the team. Chie served as Sergay's second-in-command during the operation to capture Mashiro, and received a shock when she stopped for a bit and contradicted the orders given through the Cursed Obsidian (呪詛の黒曜石 Juso no Kokuyōseki) GEM. In the final battle she takes a blow for Arika from Tomoe but survives despite the destruction of her robe. It was revealed that she was able to do this thanks to the 'Spiraling' done by Shiho Huit, Lilie Andean, and Yayoi Alter that removed the robe's inbuilt restriction on disobeying orders.

My-Otome Zwei

In My-Otome Zwei, Chie is now a Major in the Aries military and serves also as the commander for the Delta Otome Squad, a group of former students at Garderobe who now work as a team in carefully coordinated battle formations to fight Slaves and monsters.

Chie's Meister Robe is black with pink decorations, and has a Magician theme (a likely reference to Zatanna); she has a top hat that can be used to open small portals into other places (allowing her to stick her fist in while delivering a punch to a person through a wall several feet away) and an ornate cane that acts as a wand, creating forcefields and energy blasts for her to attack with. She also has several maneuvers with the members of the Delta Otome Squad, one of which has them cage in an enemy into a prism shaped energy field with their power and then shrink them, which then allows Chie to capture the miniaturized foe into her magical top hat and make them 'disappear'.

My-Otome manga

In the manga version of My-Otome, Chie's role is far smaller. Without the antagonism of Tomoe or the existence of the Valkyries, both of which were major plot points in which her anime counterpart had a part to play, she becomes mainly a background character. Her importance is further downplayed by the fact that she still uses the standard Pearl Robe whereas her fellow members of the Trias use Meister-level Robes.

She is still seen in the "group shot" of the Materialised Otome ready to do battle, though, and is seen briefly "dealing with" Shiho Munakata, offering a "taste of a real oneesama"^[1] as the Otome fight with the resurrected HiMEs, to the embarrassment of both Shiho Munakata and Shiho Huit.

References

1. ^ My-Otome manga; Chapter 39, page 11