Yano (矢野, Yano) is a minor character in Season 3 of Alice in Borderland. She is a student of Ryuji Matsuyama. She is portrayed by Kokoa Naka.
Appearance[]
Yano is a young woman with straight, long black hair parted in the middle. She wears a white button-up blouse layered with a textured cream vest and carries a matching bag over her shoulder.
Personality[]
Yano is a curious and passionate person interested in the afterlife. She insists on learning more and convinces Ryuji to let her participate in the studies and experiments.
History[]
Yano was a medical student at Shushikan University. She attended Ryuji's lectures and approached him about his paper, complimenting his work. She admitted that the part about stimulating the temporal lobe and reproducing near-death experiences fascinated her the most. Ryuji laughed and called her the only person at the university who had shown interest in the topic.
Yano asking Ryuji about his work
Yano trying to convince Ryuji to experiment
Yano was curious to get a glimpse of the afterlife through near-death experience herself and hoped that Ryuji would one day prove that the world of death was real, but Ryuji warned her that it would be dangerous.
They continued working together and researching various medicine in order to find a mix that could allow them to experiment. One drug was created successfully but was never tested on humans, so its side effects remained unknown.
A few months later, Yano suggested trying the drug on herself, but Ryuji remained hesitant. She kept pushing and insisting that it would allow them to see the world that nobody else had seen before. After a while, Ryuji gave in and agreed to an experiment.
Yano's last appearance, the one that haunted Ryuji's dreams later, was in the lab, where she was lying down with EEG electrodes attached to her head to monitor brain activity. Ryuji injected her with the drug, and she closed her eyes, smiling. Ryuji set an alarm and waited for the allocated time, but Yano never woke up. He tried shaking her by the shoulders, only to realize that she was gone.
News reports claimed that Ryuji was suspected of assisted suicide, but he was not charged due to a lack of evidence. Yano's death led to Ryuji's attempt to take his own life, which left him bound to a wheelchair.
Story[]
Yano does not make an appearance in the main storyline as she passed away before the events of Season 3. However, she is indirectly mentioned by Ryuji and his colleagues, and she also appears in Ryuji's flashbacks.
Trivia[]
- The surname Yano is a combination of the kanji "矢" (ya) (arrow) and "野" (no) (field).
- According to the conversation between Ryuji's colleagues in Episode 1, the events of Yano's death occurred five years before the events of Season 3, placing them around 2019 (since Season 3 takes place in October 2024). The Tokyo Meteorite Disaster happened two years later, on July 9, 2021. It means Yano passed away long before Arisu's Sojourn in the Borderland.