Minako Hirano (平野 美奈子 Hirano Minako) is a part-time employee at the Tomato Convenience Store in Dobuita, Yokosuka in the game Shenmue. She is the daughter of Suguru Hirano and the sister of Yuji Hirano.
Biography[]
Minako is a college student who thinks of nothing but overseas trips and shopping for brand-name goods. Her number-one past time is clubbing. She is well informed and always goes along with anything that’s fun and entertaining. She believes that life should be easy for a pretty girl, and follows this concept whenever possible.
She devotes a lot of time to her part-time job, skipping classes all the time. She doesn't worry about her grades at all, because she hedges her bets by pouring drinks for her professor at parties and keeps a string of at least 10 hardworking boys who are always ready to do her homework or take her tests.
Despite all these boyfriends, she is always on the lookout for new men. She seems to have her eye on Ryo Hazuki and considers him strong and good-looking, even though he is still a high school student and younger than her. She dislikes men such as her part-time co worker, Yohei Kondo, who is gloomy and has no money.
Shenmue[]
Minako works part-time as a cashier at the Tomato Convenience Store in Dobuita, so she can be found working there on the days that she works. On her days off, Yohei works there instead and she can be found walking around Dobuita.
As revealed in a free quest conversation with Minako when Ryo is looking for Charlie Grant, she seems to be interested in Charlie due to his "cool" name and the fact that he wears a black leather jacket, sunglasses, and has a tattoo on his arm.
Etymology[]
- The name Minako means "beautiful" (美) (mi), "apple tree" (奈) (na) and "child" (子) (ko).
- Minako's surname Hirano means "flat, broad, level, even, peaceful" (平) (hira) and "field, wilderness" (野) (no).
Trivia[]
- Minako's zodiac sign is Aries and she has a B blood type.
- Minako's "Especially since you bought merchandise" line when Ryo draws a losing ticket at the raffle is much different in the original Japanese version compared to the English version. Initially, she was much more empathic and the line translates to "Sorry about that. Even though you sekkaku made a purchase from us... ". "Sekkaku" means "going to all the trouble of doing something (with an unfortunate result)", but it's very difficult to translate to English. They ended up using "Especially since you bought merchandise" which lead to confusion among players outside of Japan as to what it means. [1]
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