Ichigono Matsuyo

Ichigono Matsuyo Is a 16 year-old student at A Certain High School. Growing up on a family-owned berry farm, she clings to her farmgirl roots with a passion for roughhousing and an insatiable love for strawberries and strawberry-derived foods.

Appearance
A little taller and larger than most girls her age, due both to her appetite for all things strawberry and her vigorous training with staves. She keeps her light brown hair long and flowing freely, and wears a pair of thin spectacles that she regularly has to push back onto the bridge of her nose.

Personality
A true "genki" girl and Kansai native, she is boisterous, loud and a little more than unrefined. She has a passion for bad jokes and always laughs the loudest of the group she's with. Beneath all this, though, there is a serious side; she is an avid baker, a self-taught computer prodigy, and a student of stave fighting, and she holds to these disciplines with a near-religious zeal.

If there's one thing she fears, it's heights. An incident during her childhood has left her with a strong case of vertigo. Her apartment is on the first floor of her building, and she almost never visits any student, even her friends, who lives above the second floor.

Background
Matsuyo is the second child of Ryota and Kazumi. She grew up on a modestly successful, family owned strawberry farm in Hino, a town in the Shiga Prefecture, with her older brother Taro and younger brothers Jirou and Saburo. Surrounded by rustic countryside, the four of them spent the majority of the time that wasn't dedicated to schooling or helping out around the farm playing outside, roaming about the farmland and engaging in a lot of roughhousing and fighting; Taro taught her to wrestle and how to use a staff, and since she has become his equal at both.

Unfortunately, this idyllic and active childhood was not without its misfortunes. One day at eight 8, when climbing a tall tree on the farm, she lost her footing and fell crashing to the ground. Thankfully, the only physical damage she took away from that was a broken leg, but she has been wary of heights ever since.

During her recovery from this accident, Matsuyo found herself cooped up inside all summer with almost nothing to do. To pass the time, she began using her father's computer, which he normally employed for financial work and maintaining the farm's website. By age 14, she had become an adept, taking over the responsibility of webmaster from her father and hanging out on hacking and technology websites on days when it was too rainy or cold to go outside.

Her enthusiasm for technology led to her discovery of Academy City. Fascinated by the idea of a state of the art mecca of scientific achievement and gifted youngsters, she begged her parents to send her off there, saving up money and working double time at the farm to earn her way there. At last, she got her wish, and started her esper training with the same reckless enthusiasm that characterizes everything she does.