Ikuno

 is a character in DARLING in the FRANXX.

Ikuno (イクノ) is one of the main characters in DARLING in the FRANXX series. She's a Parasite with 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.

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.

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
There's evidence that Ikuno has a stronger relationship with Ichigo, possibly harboring 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. There is a further, more tenous suggestion of a later event in the intro to the second half of the series that might be showing a scene where Ikuno attempts to kiss Ichigo, however this scene is yet to feature within an episode.

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.