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- "My boy, once you piss off Haruka, nothin’ is gonna save you."
- —Noriyasu Seta, talking to Keitaro Urashima
Worldly and wise, Haruka Urashima (浦島 はるか, Urashima Haruka) is a character from the series Love Hina by Ken Akamatsu and a primary protagonist in Kuro Arashi: The Black Storm. While she is Keitaro Urashima's elder cousin, he typically referring to her as "aunt,” possibly due to her seniority and how she was adopted and raised by their grandmother; effectively making her both his cousin and his aunt by technicality.
Biography[]
Early Life[]
Early in life, Haruka’s mother, Yoko Urashima, and her father were killed in an accident. As a child Haruka was adopted by her grandmother, Hina Urashima, and lived with her at the Hinata Inn. It was as a teenager that, while working at the inn, she was first called "Aunty Haruka" by her baby cousin Keitaro – the same time that Keitaro first met both Mutsumi and Naru.
College Life[]
Eventually Haruka was accepted into Tokyo University where she met Noriyasu Seta who was also attending the university. Working as his excavation assistant, Haruka fell in love with Seta as the pair travelled across the globe, becoming embroiled in various adventures; however she soon became part of a love triangle with the inclusion of Sarah McDougal’s mother.
Seta makes a promise that, by the time he was thirty, he would make up his mind and choose one of them however Sarah’s mother passed away soon after that promise. Their relationship deteriorated soon after and Haruka returned to work at the Hinata Inn and running the Wafū Chabō Hinata ("Traditional Japanese Tea-Room Hinata" ) café, while Seta continued his excavations and adventures.
Life at the Hinata[]
In the time between when Hina left to start her world-wide tour and the day Keitaro Urashima arrived at the apartments, Haruka acted as the dormitory’s landlord and house mother though still operating from the Hinata Café. Passing the title of landlord on to Keitaro upon Hina’s wish, Haruka still acted as house mother, offering advice and an adult prospective when required and handling the office work of the dormitory. Although she normally just stays and watches from the sidelines, unless the girls get too energetic at which time she steps in to calm things down.
Not So Typical Summer Vacation[]
During the summer vacation she enlisted the help of Keitaro and the Hinata residents to help run the Beach Café Hinata and enact a play based on the Journey to the West.
Priority Shift[]
At the Hinata Apartments following Keitaro's runaway to Pararakelse, the rest of the Hinata residents set to work interrogating Shirai and Haitani as to Keitaro's whereabouts. Haruka even broken out her cat o'nine tails, clearly displeased that her nephew vanished. After learning where he was headed and that Keitaro had made it into Tokyo University, Mutsumi, Mitsune and Haruka all discuss what to do, surveying a map of the Pacific ocean in search of Pararakelse on the chart. Haruka is not amoung the groups that go look for Keitaro, instead remaining behind at the Hinata to hold down the fort.
Powers and Abilities[]
- Gun Mage: Haruka's heroic talent manifests itself in the form of status-debuffing enhancements on the bullets she fires. This is a willful effect; she can choose to enhance normal bullets on the fly before she fires them or leave them as standard ammunition. Typically, however, she prefers to pre-enchant specific magazines with a pre-determined order of debuff spells and switch as necessary in a battle. She reserves the at-will enchanting for when a battle has gone completely sideways and she has neither the time or ability to switch between magazines.
- Deprotect: Removes the Protect status from a target. If the target is not under the effects of Protect, this reduces the target's physical defense.
- Deshell: Removes the Shell status from a target. If the target is not under the effects of Shell, this reduces the target's defense from magic.
- Poison: Constantly drains the target's health.
- Imperil: Increases the target's weakness to element-based attacks.
- Slow: Reduces the target's speed in both movement and attack actions. Physically slows the target's attack motions and somatic casting.
- Fog: Rather than affect a target, Fog rounds generate an anti-magic mist that reduces the effectiveness of magic and can cause many spells that pass through the affected area to fail.
- Pain: Inflicts a target with wracking pain, causing them to be unable to take physical actions.
- Curse: Afflicted targets have their actions and spells interrupted easier, and have a harder time interrupting others' actions and spells.
- Daze: Stuns the target and makes them more vulnerable to damage.
- Dispel: Removes the most recently-cast enhancement effect from the target.
Haruka in Other Media[]
Like many other characters from Project: Arashi, Haruka appears in the fusion fan fiction, New Mobile Report: Shooting Stars which sees the entire cast of Gundam Wing replaced with characters from Love Hina. In this, Haruka serves as the stand-in manager of the Hinata-Sou, without apparently having replaced an existing Gundam character thus far. It is not yet revealed whether she will replace an existing character.
Appearances[]
- Kuro Arashi: The Black Storm (First appearance)
- Kuro Arashi: The Prequel Story
- PokéFiends (Non-canonical)