Name: Takako Chigusa Number: GIRLS # 13 Weapon: Flick-knife Friends: Hiroki Sugimura Enemies: Kazushi Niida, Mitsuko Souma Kills: (1) Kazushi Niida

For a character that has as little screen-time as Chigusa, its amazing to see how much of an impact she has in the story. We first meet Chigusa around 10 minutes into the movie, with her only line "Can I use the bathroom, teacher?". Kitano refuses and she sits back down, with a moderately disgusted look on her face. Perhaps, Chigusa would have used the bathroom break as a way of escaping. Afterall, she could run faster than anyone else... But thats just speculation.

After Chigusa's plea for a toilet break, we won't see her for another 50 or so minutes. Amazingly, we recognise her straight away from earlier. At first glance, its hard for me to write a "Character Study" on someone who appears for such a short time, yet if we look close at the character of Chigusa Takako we see that she plays a pivotal part.


Chigusa is caught in a "love triangle" with Sugimura and Kotohiki (unknown to her of course). She has a close relationship with Sugimura and it is clear from her flashback, that the two have a special bond. Sugimura tells her that he'll always protect her, to which she replies "Promise?". Her flashback ends her and its interesting to see that the final line "Promise?" is a setup for the following scenes.


Of course, Sugimura couldn't always be there to protect her. Its not that he didn't care for her, its just that its physically impossible to protect someone 24/7. Chigusa's encounter with Niida shows that shes not a girl to be taken lightly. As Niida slowly pushes her, we see her become more and more irritated to the point of murder! "I've already killed once" Niida proclaims, "I could force you to do it right now". "Just try it!" she shouts him down.

"Every inch of me will resist you!"

Chigusa is quite scary in this scene I have to admit. But, its strange in the way we reacted to her ultra-violent actions. Think about it this way... upon first watching BR, didn't you feel really bad for her when she died? Wasn't it heartbreaking as her life slipped away in Hirokis arms? Ok, now think back about 5 minutes before that scene, Chigusa was stabbing a guy to death by repeatedly sticking a knife in his crotch! Her overzealous act of violence is completely ignored once her death arrives.

Some might argue that Chigusa was defending herself. I would tend to disagree on that. Niida was clearly running AWAY from her, but her pent up emotions and pure hatred for this boy exploded in a rage, with the stabbing being the dot on the final exclamation mark of that emotion. Why are we shocked at her actions and minutes later saddened by her death? Therein, lies the magic that is BR - its ability to move from emotion to emotion effortlessly. Chigusas scenes are a prime example of this.

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