Ikuno

 is a character in DARLING in the FRANXX.

Ikuno (イクノ) is a Parasite with the codename "196" of Thirteenth Plantation, where she's partnered in boy-girl pair with Futoshi to pilot a FRANXX called Chlorophytum. She had Mitsuru as her original partner. She is in love with Ichigo.

Appearance
She has deep purple hair tied into a short ponytail using a blue butterfly clip and bangs on either side of her weary green eyes. She wears a pair of black-rimmed glasses and has freckles under her eyes. When piloting Chlorophytum, she wears a white bodysuit with light violet accents.

Personality
A calm girl who prefers to keep to herself and maintains an air of poise. An avid reader of books who can more often than not be seen with one in-hand. She is rather quiet and composed and appears to have little to no interest in boys, as she is a lesbian, which was revealed in Episode 18.

History
One of the children of the Garden, she has known the others since childhood and has trained to become a Pistil until the beginning of the series. She struggled to activate Cholorophytum during the start-up ritual, which resulted in her being unable to participate in Squad 13's first mission. In light of this failure, however, she was encouraged by Ichigo to try and work better with Mitsuru in order to fulfill their duty, leading to her successfully managing to do so against the worm-like klaxosaur in Episode 4.

Ichigo
Ikuno has known Ichigo since childhood, and harbors romantic feelings for her. She blushes when encouraged by her in Episode 4 and finds comfort in recalling it before successfully linking with Mitsuru and activating Chlorophytum. Ikuno is notably more talkative and happy when she is speaking with Ichigo, as in Episode 7, though she returns to her quiet facade when Ichigo leaves. In Episode 11, when Nana and Hachi ask if anyone would want to do a partner shuffle, Ikuno states that she wants to do a pistil-to-pistil connection with Ichigo in Delphinium. However, they fail to link and activate Delphinium. Because of this, Ikuno gets mad, saying that she was serious about doing this to Ichigo, who didn't take it as seriously as she did.

In the 5th ending theme, Escape, a scene is shown where Ikuno attempts to kiss Ichigo. In Episode 18, she tearfully confesses to Ichigo, crying about what a pain she finds herself to be, as well as the whole FRANXX piloting system. Ichigo hugs her, and comforts her by stating that she herself is also a pain, and that she believes it's just a natural part of life. When Ikuno was in the Garden, a few children called her 'Ikuro', from her numerical readings. Ikuno disliked the name, and Ichigo came up to her, and turned the 6 90-degrees counter-clockwise so her name sounded like 'Ikuno' instead of 'Ikuro'. Ikuno states that ever since then, she has had feelings for her.

Etymology
Ikuno's nickname may use some of the numeral's readings from her real name "Code:196": i from 1, ku from 9; meanwhile, no resembles hiragana "の" (no) when 6 turns 90-degree counter clockwise.

Quotes
"A pain? So what if it's a pain?" - Episode 17; Ikuno says this after slapping Nine Alpha.

Trivia

 * Ikuno's notebook is decorated with white lilies. In Japanese, the word for lily is 百合 (yuri), which is also the word used for homosexual relationships between women.