Noriko

"Noriko"

- as Rance tries to seduce her

About
Noriko is a youkai that lives near Genbu Castle. Like all youkai, she was created from the strong emotions of a human being and only manages to exist on the Continent instead of Nippon due to her proximity to the castle. In her case, the strong desire for love and acceptance of a lonesome depressed girl that was always being tricked by the people surrounding her eventually manifested into Noriko and as such her youkai shares much of the appearance and ambitions as her.

Noriko manages a shop near the Castle where she sells different adventuring items, though she has the odd policy to only ever sell a single item at a time, due to an odd rule of "Business 101". She is one of the many people that consider that Rance and Sill make a "cute couple" much to the former's frustration and was shocked to discover that Sill was his slave.

Personality and Appearance
Noriko most of the time looks much like a normal human girl with purple hair and eyes, that wears a traditional red and white dress combined with a shop apron and like most women on the Continent that are prone to misfortune, she wears large glasses. She has a fairly slim build and is actually slightly self-conscious of her smallish breasts. However, as she is a Rokurokubi, her neck can easily extend and twist around like a snake, giving her a much more disturbing appearance, and her head can even completely separate itself from its body. She is very friendly and trusting, happily greeting humans in her shop while explaining that while she is a youkai she means them no harm. Her kind smile and demeanor make her well appreciated by the local youkai such as Faceless. However, like the human she comes from, she is a romantic that loves seeing cute couples and secretly hopes to fall in love as well. She is also fairly shy and doesn't know much about sexuality, being utterly confused by Rance asking "if she has a hole".

Abilities
As previously mentioned, as a Rokurokubi her head can separate itself from the body. In this state, the head can freely float around, but unlike creatures like a Dullahan the body is left completely immobile.

Even beyond its terrifying appearance, this floating head is actually very dangerous, being able to fight off the powerful Genji monsters guarding the castle using powerful fire blasts and can easily keep up with adventurers literally fleeing for their lives. However her head must eventually return to her body, as too much time spent separated can lead to her death if she is not careful.

Personal History
Rance, Sill and Athena 2.0 meet her during their adventure near the castle, as they are trying to find a way to head back home. Thanks to her shop, they obtain many items that prove invaluable to their quest, but Rance instantly grows infatuated with the shy glasses girl and starts seducing her. At first, she rebukes him as she considers that love between humans and Youkai is impossible, but as Rance keeps coming back with lavish gifts, she slowly starts having feelings for him. Eventually, Rance manages to seduce her, though she is convinced that Rance loves her romantically just as strongly as she does and that they should soon get married, though Rance is just after a quick H session before returning home. They meet together back at her place and Rance deflowers the cute Youkai, but after a few hours of fun, Rance notices that her neck starts twisting in an odd way. In the excitement, her head goes so far as to pop off as Rance stares completely horrified and starts calling her a monster. As she starts apologizing for it, Rance showers her with more insults and goes so far as to admit that he never cared about her and was just trying to get her in bed.

Enraged, Noriko's head starts flying after Rance and chases him throughout the Castle's surroundings. Rance eventually distracts her by leading her near the Genji guards and finds out from Faceless that she needs to eventually return to her body to survive. Rance then goes back to her place, grabs her body, dumps it down the well and locks it up. When Noriko eventually calms down enough to start looking for her body, she finds out what happened but is unable to open up the well, and eventually dies.

Trivia

 * She is very similar to the Nozomi characters who have appeared in a variety of Alicesoft games (Sengoku Rance, Mamatoto... ), and shares with all of them many characteristics: they all have the same basic physionomy, they all wear glasses, and they all are extremely misfortunate. This is because of TADA's infatuation with "moe" girls with glasses that keep heading into disaster. Noriko however is the only one to have  been an antagonist before dying.
 * Noriko is one of the few women Rance expressed any regret about his behavior towards.