Mayor Ninamori's Secretary (秘書の市長ニナモリ?, Hisho no shichō Ninamori) is the mistress to the mayor of Mabase, Eri Ninamori's father.
Profile[]
She acts friendly with Ninamori, driving her to school and chatting casually about the upcoming class play. Ninamori, however, despises the secretary for coming in between her parents and acts more coldly than usual when forced to interact with her. Although the secretary promises Ninamori she won't do anything to damage the mayor's reputation, word of their affair gets out thanks to Kamon and his magazine, Come On, Mabase. Due to the media uproar that results, the secretary is quick to run away.
Personality[]
Mayor Ninamori's Secretary appears very vain and disingenuous in her conversations. Her only two scenes consist of her putting on makeup whilst driving Ninamori to school and escaping the press in an unnecessarily complicated fashion. During both, she and Ninamori have back-and-forth exchanges that appear civil on the surface, but contain many double entendres that are spiteful or passive-aggressive as well. In particular, the secretary compliments Ninamori's boots as being perfect for a "nouveau riche princess," suggesting her fashion choices as the daughter of the mayor are unrefined. The secretary does appear to have thought ahead in terms of being a mistress, having brought a change of clothes to Ninamori's house and considered an escape plan enough to buy a scuba suit. She does take notice of Ninamori bringing extra clothes to school, subsequently learning about the play, but this was a result of deflecting a comment about her own extra clothes and she doesn't take any interest in it beyond that. Overall, her decisions seem very self-interested and her conversations and portrayal only add to that aspect.
Appearance[]
The secretary has reddish-brown, shoulder-length hair and moss green eyes with well-defined eyelashes. Her eyebrows are thin maroon lines with slight upward arches. Being a lover of makeup, her lips are always a deep red and her nails are perfectly manicured. She has a very small head with a v-shaped jawline, light skin, and her eyes are partially closed in a seductive manner at all times.
In the novel, she is further described as a woman "with gaudy makeup... who put on too much perfume and clearly had a bad sense of smell".
In the car scene, she is wearing a blue suit jacket over a white button-up and a deep blue orb on a silver necklace chain. Her blue scuba gear is skin-tight and she fails to remove the goggles entirely when shedding it. The outfit beneath is a dark red trench coat over a pinkish-red scarf, black sunglasses, and a black bucket hat with her scuba goggles resting on the rim.
Story[]
The mayor's secretary appears only briefly in episode 3, jump-starting Ninamori's character arc. She drives Ninamori to school because she slept over at her house, discussing the situation between her father and herself. In the novel, Ninamori had tried to avoid being driven to school by her, but the secretary was already waiting outside when she exited the front door. It also mentioned that the car that she was driving was originally meant for the family, but the secretary had essentially treated it like it was her own by leaving her CDs and toys in it, as well as the lingering scent of her perfume.
She compliments Ninamori's emotional maturity towards her and promises not to let the scandal get out. Later that day, Kamon is trying to convince a local store owner to let him sell copies of his magazine there. After Ninamori had heard about the magazine being passed around her classroom, she decided to visit the store, where an enthusiastic Kamon hands her a copy.
In the novel, she eventually reads the magazine and becomes disgusted, feeling like it was written by someone with a vendetta against the mayor. It is then revealed that the mayor was involved in financial scandals, where he made shady deals to sell land that allowed him to buy his way into becoming the mayor, as well as featuring several photos of him and the secretary exiting the residence and walking arm-in-arm. Sometime later, the press are suddenly swarming Ninamori's home as she returns from school, suggesting that he leaked the information.
Stuck out on the street because of the dense crowd, she notices the secretary poking her head out of the sewer wearing scuba gear. The press takes notice and she retreats, but somehow manages to get behind Ninamori, crouching and looking at the crowd from between her legs. She drops the scuba gear and puts on a trench coat in one quick motion, responds to a remark about being smart with sneaking by calling her boots "perfect for a nouveau riche princess," then runs off before she can react. This is the last that she is seen or heard of in the series.
Later that night, while taking a bath at the Nandaba residence, Kamon stops by the bathroom as Ninamori was taking a bath and asked if she hated him for writing the exposé about her family and the secretary. Despite viewing him as a creepy man for knowing so much about her family (as well as looking at her nude body as she bathed), she does express her gratitude to him, as it was his exposé that got the secretary to finally leave.
Relations[]
Eri Ninamori[]
The dynamic between Ninamori and her father's secretary is civil yet tense. Ninamori wants her parents to stay together desperately, to the point of rigging a play's election so she'll be the lead in an attempt to force them to see it together for her sake. The rift between her parents affects her to a great degree inside, but she does not blame the secretary for it. The car is full of tension, Ninamori's posture is rigid, and she clearly isn't in a talking mood around the secretary. She understands that her parents can break up if they need to, and the secretary compliments her maturity in that respect. The secretary knows that most kids her age would not be as civil with her given the circumstances.
Ninamori does make slightly passive-aggressive comments to the secretary, such as calling her "smart" for bringing a suit to change into after sleeping at her house and for being able to sneak past the press surrounding the house. The secretary refers to Ninamori as a "nouveau riche princess" in response to the latter, something which she seems to suspect will get a reaction from the young girl since she leaves before she can even turn around. The secretary is not shown to have a lasting affect on Ninamori in the rest of the episode.
In the novelization, she seems to be more resentful at the secretary compared to the anime, fully blaming the woman for her parent's relationship falling apart. She noted how close her parents once were during her father's time as a struggling politician before the secretary came into their lives. She was noticeably upset as the secretary stood next to the mayor while he explained to Ninamori about how he and her mother have to live in separate houses now because of the fuss it would cause if they had a public divorce and that it was "an adult thing". Later, Ninamori is described as having hatred in her heart as she watched the secretary quickly flee after the scandal had been made public. It also noted that she wanted to be the one to get the secretary kicked out as her way of revenge rather than seeing her flee in an act of cowardice, before finally calling her a "perfumed hag".
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- Jessica Straus, who voices the secretary in the English dub, was also the voice actress for Junko Miyaji, as well as Female Operator B in "Full Swing" and a hairstylist in "Brittle Bullet".