Kyouko Shirafuji

Kyouko Shirafuji
Kanji	白藤(しらふじ) 杏子(きょうこ)
Japanese Name	Kyōko Shirafuji
Characteristics
Nationality	Japanese
Species	Human
Gender	Female
Age	28
Height	1,66 m (5'6")
Weight	45 kg
Birthday	October 22nd (Libra)
Hair Color	Black
Eye Color	Black
Blood Type	B
Professional Status
Occupation	Manager
Partner(s)	Hyougo Otoo
Debuts
Manga Debut	Volume 1
Anime Debut	Episode 1
Portrayal
Japanese Voice	Kumiko Watanabe,Junko Minagawa (drama CD)
Image Gallery

Kyouko Shirafuji (白藤 杏子 Shirafuji Kyōko) is one of the main female characters in the story, Working!!. She is a 28 year-old woman, who works at Wagnaria Resturant as a manager.

Appearance

Kyouko is a tall woman with neck-length hair (she once had waist-length hair when she was a teenager in highschool and first starting out as a manager), gray eyes and her slim figure doesn’t change, even though she always has a big appetite for food.

Because she is the manager, Kyouko's uniform is different from everyone else's. Instead of the normal white shirt, apron, black skirt, she wears a black skirt, a white shirt, and a deep blue vest.

Personality

Kyouko gets hungry very easily and often eats a lot throughout the day. Thankfully, she has Yachiyo Todoroki (Kyouko's loyal servant) ready to make parfaits for her whenever she asks. On average, Kyouko eats about five parfaits a day, and yet she still manages to maintain a healthy figure and never has stomach aches. She also awaits Otoo-san's visits because he normally brings food and sweets back with him. However, when he doesn't bring any food back, Kyouko becomes agitated for the rest of the day and acts mean towards Otoo-san because he didn't bring her sweets. Kyouko has actually been gotten on to by Jun Satou because she was eating up their restaurant's food supply. This happened after Kyouko ordered Jun to make her something to eat, and he told her that he would knock off a bit of the price because she's an employee. Kyouko, surprised, asked why he would charge her at all since she's the manager, Satou then went on to tell her that he had to charge her because she had already eaten a large amount of the restaurant's food for free. Yachiyo quickly came to Kyouko's rescue and begged Satou to make something for Kyouko because she was "starving to death" (even though she was only slightly hungry). Satou finally gave in due to his feelings for Yachiyo and made Kyouko something to eat. Kyouko is also very greedy about food. When Yachiyo was sick, Satou made her some porridge to eat in order to get better. However, after seeing that Kyouko was hungry, Yachiyo willingly gave up her porridge for her. Kyouko then ate all of it after Yachiyo had only taken a bite.

Kyouko is revealed to be very sensitive about her age. Since she is about to hit thirty, she is touchy about her getting old, so she takes out her wrath on anyone who calls her old. When Souta Takanashi first met Kyouko, he asked her how old she was, she replied with twenty-nine. Takanashi then said, "Wow, so you're pretty old then." However, he only said this because he thinks anyone over the age of twelve is too old, but Kyouko didn't care and doubled Takanashi's shifts out of anger. Later, Takanashi apologized and said that she wasn't old, but she was in fact childish. After this comment, Kyouko cut his shifts in half, which made his pay get cut in half as well. Later, when two rude customers were in the restaurant, they called Kyouko a "rotting bitch." After this comment, Kyouko set her yakuza gang after them in anger.

Kyouko is very strong and is highly skilled in fighting, probably because of her past as a sukeban. When the two rude customers were bullying Popura Taneshima, Kyouko kicked them hard and told them that there was no violence in her store. Also, in the opening she was seen kicking Takanashi hard after he ran past her. However, she does not use this skill often because she does not normally deal with rude customers.

Background

Kyouko was put as first-in-command at Wagnaria after Otoo-san left to go look for Haruna Otoo, but it is unknown why he chose her to be in charge since Kyouko does the least amount of work and is always eating the restaurant's food supply. However, since Kyouko is the oldest, she would be the most fitting to be the manager, which is probably why Otoo-san put her in that position.

When Kyouko was young, she was a sukeban (female gangster boss) where she was the leader of a group of yakuza (Japanese gangster) boys and was very fierce. She wore an outdated sukeban outfit, which consisted of a middle school uniform with an extremely long skirt (it reached her ankles), a mask, a loose tie, and a chain (this look was extremely popular in the 1970's). One day she happened to run into Yachiyo Todoroki when she was being bullied by two boys. Kyouko appeared and yelled at them for bullying her. The boys then made fun of her because she had an outdated look, but she showed no emotion and quickly scared them off with something that had to be censored. Yachiyo then thanks Kyouko and gave her a piece of bread as punishment. Kyouko was later seen talking to Yachiyo and telling her to not worry about the bullies anymore because she would deal with them. From that day forward, Yachiyo looked up to Kyouko and admired her.

Kyouko is seen to still have connections with her yakuza gang even now. When two customers ran out of the restaurant without paying, and after bullying Popura Taneshima, Kyouko took her cellphone from Takanashi and called an unknown phone number and said, "Yeah, the two customers that just left, take all the money they have." This reveals that her yakuza gang actually sits outside of the restaurant and keeps watch on Kyouko since she is still their beloved leader.

Equipment

Kyouko has a nail bat, as seen in the season two and three openings, as well as when she scared off the two boys bullying Yachiyo Todoroki.

Relationships

Co-workers

Yachiyo Todoroki

Ever since their fateful encounter when they were younger, Yachiyo has admired Kyouko with all her heart. Yachiyo has even shown signs of having a crush on Kyouko since she is always talking about how cool Kyouko is, and she even passed out whenever Kyouko got her face close to hers when she was checking her temperature. However, Kyouko does not acknowledge this crush, nor does she even know about it. 

While it may seem as though Kyouko only treats Yachiyo as a loyal servant, Kyouko actually pays special attention to her and still looks after her, even after all these years. An example of this is shown when Kyouko figured out that Satou was in love with Yachiyo and became protective of her, initially disapproving of the pair. Another example is when Yachiyo had a very light fever during one of her shifts (unbeknownst to the other members), which Kyouko immediately noticed. The most notable example being the time when Kyouko made two attempts to tell Yachiyo to make the most of her life and do something for herself.

Her genuine care for Yachiyo is further displayed when Yachiyo herself revealed that Kyouko would never do anything to hurt her or make her sad.

Mahiru Inami

At the beginning of the series, Kyouko tried to keep Takanashi and Inami in seperate shifts because of Inami's androphobia, but one day she accidently messed up and put them together. However, after Inami had the sudden urge to overcome her fear, she told Kyouko to continue to put her on the same shift as Takanashi. Kyouko agreed and now they work together. This shows that Kyouko has some work ethic, and actual managerial tasks, but still Kyouko on screen appears to do very little.

Popura Taneshima

Kyouko, like many of the employees, teases Popura about her height, and therefore, Taneshima never goes to her for comfort.

Souta Takanashi

When Takanashi first started working at Wagnaria, Kyouko hated him because he called her old and childish, and did anything she could to make his life worse, such as doubling his shifts, or cutting his hours in half. However, over time, Kyouko slowly forgave Takanashi and now she doesn't have a problem with him at all. Kyouko, like many of the employees, still thinks of Takanashi as a pedophile since he's obsessed with kids under the age of twelve, but she is too lazy to do anything about it.

Hiroomi Souma

Unlike all the other employees, Kyouko is the only person that Souma doesn't know a secret about. Perhaps because she is so scary and violent, Souma doesn't come near her.

Jun Satou

Satou hates Kyouko because she is the object of Yachiyo's affections. To get out his anger for Kyouko and his frustration for Yachiyo not noticing him, he teases Taneshima and messes with her hair. Kyouko is oblivious to this loathing.

Aoi Yamada

Although Yamada breaks glasses and plates and steals from the restaurant, Kyouko is too lazy to care that she often lets Yamada do what she wants.

Others

Youhei Mashiba

Another one of Kyoto's top Lieutenants. He fell in love with Kyouko after he was beat up on the pavement. He also is the twin of Mitsuki. Mitsuki complains that he's a Neet. He's very ditsy and doesn't write down menus, but notably he's also stated to be better then Yamada as a server. "So that's two salads right?"

His loyalty is shown when he immediately crashes into the restaurant when Kyokou calls for him.

Additional info

They would fight and Souma surprisingly had grit on both of them with their photos where they later began to fight.

Mitsuki Mashiba

One of Kyouko's top Lieutenants and shows up in season 2 episode 6. She started follow Kyokou after witnessing her brother getting beat up by her. She is also the twin brother of Mashiba Yohei. She collects insurance. Often states immature jokes to her brother, and is a chef. She is the polar opposite of Yohei often picking fights with him. Stating he's a NEET, or not Employed or in Training.

Like her brother, she is very loyal to Kyokou whom she always addressing her as "Ane - san".

Quotes

• "I like anyone who gives me food."

• "I don't really know what's going on but Yachiyo's mine."

• "Yachiyo, parfait please."

Etymology

• The name Kyouko means "apricot" (杏) (kyou) and "child" (子) (ko).
• Kyouko's surname Shirafuji means "white" (白) (shira) and "wisteria" (藤) (fuji).

Trivia

• Just a few years before the series started, while Kyouko still worked at Wagnaria, she wore her hair long where she might have cut her hair during her mid-twenties, but the reason of why she cuts her long hair is unknown.
• It is said that Kyouko doesn't really watch TV and that she spends her day offs lounging around or ravaging restaurants that have eating contest, her shoe size is 25.0; favorite food is everything and she hates everything except eating.

• Kyouko has a special, red cellphone that she only uses for exclusive calls to her yakuza gang.
• Kyouko's favorite parfait flavor is chocolate-strawberry.
• Kyouko second favorite treat, being parfaits, is icing that comes from the icing liners. She is sometimes seen sucking on these to get the icing out.
• Kyouko banned romantic relationships from Wagnaria because she said that it's possible a one-sided love or a love-triangle could form, and that would slow down production. However, she says that relationships would never form anyway because no one likes another person in the restaurant. She only said this because she is oblivious to Mahiru Inami's crush on Souta Takanashi, Jun Satou's crush on Yachiyo Todoroki and even Yachiyo's crush on her!
• Kyouko was the first worker to ever start working at Wagnaria.