Mari Kurihara (
Appearance
Mari is tall and slim with a medium bust. She has long dark hair and blue eyes due to her Japanese heritage. She is frequently described as one of the most beautiful students in the school. Mari wears the standard female school uniform with dark pantyhose. During her incarceration, she wears an undersized female prison uniform consisting of a striped short tank top and matching short striped trousers.
Personality
Mari is a proud and dignified student who exerts a sense of authority about her that lends to her popularity. Mari prefers the company of crows to people outside of her subordinates and closest friends that are senior members in the Underground Student Council, and she can control them. Mari is well known for her intelligence, athletic ability, leadership abilities and all-round talent both in her middle and high school years. She is a calm and controlled character who displays intelligence and cunning throughout the series, as shown by her plan to exclude the boys through DTO and her later secret engineering to prevent the official Aboveground Student Council from destroying the USC with their subterfuge. Though Mari's strained relationship with her perverted father results in her misandric treatment of the boys,[3] she adapts to be able to socialise with the boys and empathise with them.[4][5] However, Mari is a genuinely kind person deep down, as shown when she helped a younger Meiko Shiraki to become more confident and prevented her to-be arch-rival Kate Takenomiya for bullying her in middle school. Mari is also very close to her sister Chiyo, whom she shared her childhood with even as she grew estranged from her father. She is also a graceful loser, as shown when takes punishment from the official Student Council and responsibility for physically abusing the 5 boys during their prison term, even praising Kate for her strengths though she is her arch-rival.
Plot
Mari Kurihara is introduced as the 40th president of the Underground Student Council. Her vigilante organisation, the USC, polices the traditional school rules of the private school above its own policies of not speaking or entering into illicit relations with the boys. Thus, she clashes with her father, the Chairman, who supports male enrollment at the school and engages in an ass-fetish. When the boys intrude into a female-only bathing area, she rounds them up and incarcerates them in the Prison Block. There she co-ordinates the guard system, the security and their punishment (hard labour for one month). When the boys prove to be too lecherous for USC Vice-President Meiko Shiraki's 'stimulating' punishment, Mari replaces her with USC Secretary and third-grade Dan Hana Midorikawa. Then, she continually increases the harshness of her punishments when she sees her father's pornography stash and online videos in his office. Mari also begins to take care of a baby crow's nest in the third-floor window of the school.
When an escaped prisoner (a cross-dressing Kiyoshi) is reported by Chiyo to her father after she becomes angry with him on a date, Mari loses all restraint with the boys. The USC begin to plot Operation Boys Expulsion (男子退学オペレーション Danshi Taigaku Operēshon), codenamed DTO, to permanently get rid of the boys by inducing two more breakouts so that they can be expelled. The USC sucessfully manipulates Andre's latent masochism through withdrawal of punishment and then dressing the Vice-President Meiko in tight clothes. When the clothes burst, Andre forces himself through the weakened wall to reach the Vice President, resulting in the second breakout. In the Prison Block, Meiko gives Shingo prison leave after he betrays the boys to the USC. The last and third breakout occurred when a planted Anzu Yokoyama changed his watch so that he arrives after his curfew.
The boys enlist the aid of the Chairman to get a one-day extension to their imminent expulsions to Mari's anger. Despite the USC's efforts to patrol the Prison Block, Gakuto is able to enlist Chiyo in a triple-switch with Jouji Nezu to obtain email evidence of DTO. When the boys successfully prove to the Chairman that they were framed by the USC to breakout from the Prison Block, they are freed and their imminent expulsions are overturned. As a result, Mari promptly accepts responsibility for the USC's actions and prevents Hana from beating Kiyoshi up. This evidence results in the school's official Aboveground Student Council placing the senior active USC members in prison, including Mari, due to their abuse and mistreatment of the prisoners and attempts to frame them all violating the School Code. Chiyo takes up responsibility for the crow's nest in the absence of her sister.
The Aboveground Student Council running the Prison Block led by Kate Takenomiya, her arch-rival from middle school, allows Mari to deduce that Kate is working to eradicate the USC and take everything away from Mari as part of her revenge and power-grabbing attempts. Though Mari pretends to submit to the ASC, she secretly installed Hana as a mole in the ASC and received Kiyoshi's aid who was imprisoned again. During her imprisonment, Mari's reputation takes a severe dive when Kate constantly put up a smear campaign against her and the USC. Chiyo became aware of the rumors regarding her sister Mari and Kiyoshi, and sought to clarify those rumors, in which Mari reassured her that the rumors were false. Kate framed the USC for starting a massive fire so as to extend their prison sentence, arranged for Mari and Kiyoshi to be in compromising positions (Sucking what they thought was 'snake venom' from each other) thus she can obtain blackmail footage. Mari countered with her own "escape plan" which turned out to be a bluff so that she too would manipulate events such that she would end up seducing Kate and obtain blackmail footage of her own (Courtesy of Hana) to nullify the earlier blackmail footage. Mari wants to ensure a fair fight between the ASC and USC during the Sports Festival, since the stakes are high - the loser will have to disband their Student Council permanently.
The day of the Sports Festival is when Mari alongside the USC cavalry teams encourage Hana, throughout her individual competition against Risa in the preliminary obstacle race. Within the race, she agrees to Kate's bet that the president of the losing team, Kate or herself, will dance in public in casual clothes. Hana realized that Kate probably knew about Mari's bad taste in fashion. The race between Hana and Risa ended up a draw. The strategy meetings Mari hosts with the boys inadvertently reveals the temporary restoration of Meiko's Vice-President persona with root beer. This allows Mari to deduct that the carbonation in the root beer is responsible for her return.
When the cavalry match begins between the ASC and USC, the extent of USC's fall from popularity was revealed, with a total of 11 students (3 teams) supporting the USC's side while the rest of the student body supported the ASC's side (More than 200 teams). Making it worse was that the USC's teams realized that the carbonation never actually revived Meiko's personality but only her looks. In light of this, Mari was forced to resort to desperate measures such as requesting Kiyoshi to show his erection so that he would keep the entire cohort of schoolgirls at bay while her team marches towards Kate's team. Throughout the dragged out match, Mari repeatedly bent the rules in order to undermine Kate's team, which Kate gloated that even if the USC won, it would be a hollow victory since Mari's reputation would be ruined. At the last minute, Meiko had a near-death experience which resulted in restoring her strong but cruel personality. Meiko challenged Risa over control of Andre almost effortlessly, causing Andre to shut down for the remainder of the match. This gave Mari the upperhand over Kate for once, but Kate's last resort was revealed to be Mitsuko's clumsiness, causing the destruction of the prison and forcing the cavalry match to a tie. While neither Student Council was forced to disband, the ASC were forced to move back to their old office while the USC took back control of their more prestigious office.
Trivia
- The two kanji for Mari's name mean "ten thousand miles".[6][7]
- According to the manga, her height is approximately around 176 cm or 5'9".[8]
- Mari has some knowledge of the French language at least.[9][10]
- She has a terrible taste in fashion according to Andre[11] and Hana.[12]
- Her left eye is wider than her right eye, in both the manga and the anime.[13]
- In later chapters, Mari's bust size has more visual emphasis, although they are still significantly smaller than Meiko.[14]
Gallery
External links
- 『監獄学園』平本アキラ先生作画動画!! - YouTube - Akira Hiramoto drawing Mari
References
- ↑ Prison School Volume 19 Chapter 187, Page 12
- ↑ Prison School Volume 1 Chapter 3, Page 15
- ↑ Prison School Volume 20 Chapter 193, Page 11-14
- ↑ Prison School Volume 20 Chapter 193, Page 7
- ↑ Prison School Volume 21 Chapter 202, Page 10-11
- ↑ 万 (バン) | Kotobank Dictionary JP. (Japanese) Retrieved 10-08-2015.
- ↑ 里 (さと) | Kotobank Dictionary JP. (Japanese) Retrieved 10-08-2015.
- ↑ Prison School Volume 17 Chapter 167, Page 7
- ↑ Prison School Volume 15 Chapter 145, Page 14-18
- ↑ Prison School Volume 15 Chapter 146, Page 2
- ↑ Prison School Chapter 93, Page 19
- ↑ Prison School Chapter 188, Page 10
- ↑ Prison School Volume 8 Chapter 78, Page 4
- ↑ Prison School Chapter 198, Page 3-4
