Yuko Yoshida

"'Don't think this means you've won!'"Yuko Yoshida (吉田 優子 Yoshida Yūko)/Shamiko (シャミ子) is the protagonist of Machikado Mazoku. She is a 15 year old high school student of Sakuragaoka High School who, one day, wakes up with horns and a tail. Upon learning from Seiko Yoshida that she is a descendant of the cursed Dark Clan, she is tasked to defeat a magical girl and obtain her blood to break the curse, especially her family's curse of having to live under 40,000 yen per month.

Despite her famous ancestry, Yuko always has trouble confronting her nemesis magical girl Momo Chiyoda not only due to her own kind personality and weak physical strength, but also due to the fact that she is constantly helped by Momo. Although she is tasked to eliminate Momo, the two become closer as they learn more about each other.

Appearance
Yuko has apricot skin, wavy back-length reddish-brown hair (which the anime made a red that ombres to a purple hue on the top and the bottom of her hair) and hazel eyes.

Due to her being a demon, she has two champagne-coloured horns on her head and a blackish-purple/purplish-black arrowhead tail protruding from her tailbone.

Yuko is usually seen wearing Sakuragaoka High School's uniform, which consists of a blue t-shirt with a white line in the centre and dark blue trim, dark blue cuffs, a white collar with dark blue trim and a red ribbon on the front, a dark blue plaid skirt, black tights and brown loafers.

She is a very cute, short and petite girl, standing only 145 cm tall or 4'9".

Because she was very sick and had to go to a hospital daily during her childhood, Yuko was often fragile and weak. After awakening her powers, her friend Anri describes that she looks healthier.

Personality
Yuko is very polite and well-mannered, as seen in both the manga and anime adaptation. She always speaks formally, and is generally a kind person. Despite her awakening as a demon, Yuko is still friendly and compassionate. This is shown very often, such as when Momo gets sick and Yuko tends to her despite claiming Momo as her enemy. She is also rather emotional, getting overly excited or easily upset about simple things.

Yuko is a firm optimist, always trying to see the best in people and the world. Despite the hardships she's faced, such as her sickly childhood and difficult living situation due to the curse on her family, she continues to push on and holds no malice towards anyone, always striving to achieve the best outcome for everyone no matter the situation. Due to her sheltered childhood, Yuko is rather naive to the world, although she is actually quite wise when it comes to familiar subjects.

While physically weak, Yuko has an incredibly strong will, showing an unshakable resolve in the face of crisis and a refusal to give up. When her family or friends are in trouble she'll rush to their aid and do all in her power to help. However, as a result of her constant childhood sickness Yuko has developed a fear of being a burden to others, driving her to work hard even to a self-sacrificial degree.

Volume 1 to Volume 2
After meeting her ancestor Lilith in a strange dream, Yuko is shocked when she wakes up in next morning to find out that she has grown horns and a tail. When Yuko tells her mother Seiko Yoshida in panic, her mother calmly explains that she and her family are actually the descendants of Dark Clan from Mesopotamia who were continuously defeated and cursed by the magical girls of Light Clan from generation to generation. According to her mother, one of the curses was having to live under 40,000 yen per month, which led Yuko's family to become poor. Her mother then convinces Yuko to defeat a magical girl and obtain her blood to break the family's curse.

While worrying about how to defeat a magical girl during her commute to the school, she was saved by a mysterious peach-colored magical girl who stops the truck that was coming towards her with a single hand. Yuko later finds out that the magical girl was Momo Chiyoda who attends the same school. Despite being terrified that her nemesis is a magical girl of monstrous physical strength who even saved the world before, Yuko constantly challenges Momo to fight every time she meets her.

However, Momo diverts Yuko's attention each time Yuko challenges her to fight, and Yuko always ends up reluctantly training or hanging out with her friend Anri and Momo before she even realizes. Momo also often helps Yuko by paying for her whenever Yuko gets in trouble due to not having enough money, which leads Yuko to feel even more uneasy about confronting Momo as she believes that she must pay off her debt first before challenging her again.

Yuko briefly gets possessed by Lilith when Momo accidentally releases Lilith from the sealed statue. Despite Lilith's confidence, she was defeated and sealed away easily by Momo as Yuko's body was too weak to fight. Later, Lilith teaches and helps Yuko to transform into her demonic form which Yuko calls crisis management form. Although Yuko is embarrassed by her demon costume and begs Lilith to change her transformation form, Lilith tells her that the costume is the optimal embodiment of her image.

One day, while talking to Lilith in her dream, Yuko learns that she and her ancestors are dream demons who can enter other's dream and manipulate their thoughts to certain extent. After getting persuaded by Lilith, Yuko enters Momo's dream to manipulate her thoughts. Inside the dream, she rescues younger Momo who was depressed and slowly sinking into a dark fluid.

Possibly due to the effects of the dream she had, Momo gets fever and collapses when she was walking to the school with Yuko next day. While nursing Momo, Yuko tells Momo that she can come over to her house next time as she gets worried about Momo living alone and not eating properly. While watching her sleeping, Yuko finds that Momo got cut on her hand when she tripped over, wiping off the blood with her handkerchief while treating the wound.

When she returns home with the handkerchief stained with the magical girl's blood, Yuko accidentally breaks some of her family curse, including the curse of having to live under 40,000 yen. With the curse broken, it also becomes possible for Lilith to speak freely in the form of her statue. Momo later tells Yuko that the great amount of her magical power was lost when Yuko took her blood away and broke the curse. To make up for it, Yuko reluctantly agrees to train hard, so she can temporarily protect the town until Momo recovers her power. Also, it is revealed that Yuko's house was protected from magical girls by a strong seal, but the seal no longer affected Momo as Yuko willingly invited Momo to her house.

Yuko later meets Momo's friend Mikan Hinatsuki, another magical girl who is asked by Momo to move into the town to protect and help Yuko, because there are few radical magical girls who are willing to actually kill demons like Yuko. Although Yuko was initially annoyed that she now had to help Momo protecting the town, she later changes her mind when she learns from Mikan that Momo may disappear if her magical power is too weakened.

Wishing to learn more about Momo, Yuko enters Momo's dream again to find more clues about her. However, Momo's dream turns into the state of lucid dream when Momo becomes aware that she is inside a dream with Yuko. When confronted by Momo, Yuko tells that she really wants to break the remaining curse, so her family can become wealthier and her father no longer has to work abroad in a nuclear fishing boat. Momo realizes and tells Yuko that the story of her father is obviously a fabricated story, suspecting that Yuko's mother told her the fake story to cover up the family's secret.

Despite Yuko's strong protest, Momo immediately visits and confronts Yuko's mother after waking up from the dream. Momo reveals that the reason she was interested in Yuko's family was due to the fact that they were known to be involved in the disappearance of Momo's older sister Sakura Chiyoda who was also a magical girl and her mentor. It was finally revealed by Yuko's mother that Sakura used up all the remaining powers and lucks in Yuko's family to save sick Yuko when she was young. This did not only caused Yuko's family to become poor, but also Sakura to be greatly weakened. Weakened Sakura asked Yuko's demon father Joshua to help her in protecting the town. Then, Sakura and Joshua failed their unknown attempt to protect the town 10 years ago. In the process, Joshua was sealed in a tangerine box and Sakura mysteriously disappeared after leaving a letter to Yuko's mother that vaguely explained what happened.

Shocked that Yuko lost her father and became poor because of her sister, Momo immediately leaves. After chasing her, Yuko asks Momo to fall into darkness and become her dependent, so they can combine their strengths and help each other to find Sakura and return Joshua. Despite almost being convinced, Momo refuses after hearing from Lilith that she would be even more weakened as weak Yuko would become the host of her energy. Momo instead offers to help Yuko to get stronger and assist her in returning Joshua. Seeing that Yuko is still unsatisfied, Momo finally promises that she will become Yuko's dependent on the day Yuko can beat her in a fight.

Volume 3
Yuko greets Momo and Mikan who move into her apartment. While hanging out at Yuko's house, Mikan realizes the tangerine box that sealed Yuko's father came from her family's factory. Yuko and the two magical girls visit the site of the factory's old storage house, which was mysteriously blown away on the day Sakura and Joshua disappeared. While investigating, Yuko finds a magic stick, which is revealed to be her father's weapon that can amplify her power and transform into any object she imagines.

Yuko hears about the cafe ran by demons from Anri. Believing that finding more demons in the town and combining their strengths may be helpful in finding Sakura and returning Joshua, Yuko visits the cafe. She meets the fox demon Lico and the tapir demon Shirosawa who beg Yuko to work at the cafe for a day. Soon, Yuko strangely becomes obsessed with and forgets everything except for working at the cafe. After Momo and Mikan infiltrate the cafe to rescue Yuko, Lico and Shirosawa apologize, revealing that Lico's magical cooking has the power of luring people and making them forget about stressful memories. Shirosawa tells Momo that Yuko may have forgotten too much of memories from eating too much food at the cafe, and assures that she would regain her memories once she rests enough.

After learning that Yuko and others are searching for missing Sakura, Shirosawa says he saw a strange white cat with a red collar few days before Sakura's disappearance. He told Yuko and others that the cat approached Shirosawa and phased into the shopping center's wall. Surprised, Yuko's mother tell them about how Yuko also saw a mysteriously disappeared white cat at the hospital 10 years ago on the day of Sakura's disappearance.

Suspecting that Sakura may have turned into the core in form of a cat after exhausting all her magical powers, Momo urges Yuko to recall the memory, but Yuko doesn't seem to remember it. To find the memory, Yuko decides to enter her own dream with the help of Lilith. Despite Lilith's guidance, Yuko loses contact with Lilith when she is ambushed by the monsters made of hospital equipment that represent her bad childhood memories of being sick in the hospital. While being chased by the monsters, Yuko surprisingly meets Sakura who reveals that she turned herself into a core before her final moment and placed herself inside Yuko to support Yuko's life. After hearing that Sakura can't exit Yuko's body until Yuko becomes healthy enough to support her own life without the help of Sakura's core, Yuko promises Sakura that she will find the way to get her back. Yuko is worried about how to tell the truth to Momo, but Sakura assures that Momo would soon smile again since she now has something more valuable by her side than Sakura herself or the town. Sakura also requests Yuko to protect the town and look after Momo in her place.

Once Sakura is gone, Yuko is chased by the monsters again before meeting Momo who is now in a dark colored costume. When Yuko asks her, Momo explains that she became Yuko's dark dependent, so she can enter Yuko's dream and rescue her. Once Yuko and Momo wake up from their dream, Yuko's friend Shion Ogura, who is very knowledgeable in magic and occult, theorizes that hitting Momo with the power of light may return her to back the light side. Once shot by Mikan's arrow, Momo successfully turns back to a magical girl.

After it is all over, Yuko reluctantly tells Momo about what happened to Sakura. Although her quest of finding her sister may be over, Momo tells that she now has the new goal of protecting the street that can bring Yuko's smile. She also anticipates that Sakura may return once Yuko becomes strong enough to live without the Sakura's core. Seeing Momo smile despite her worry, Yuko tears up and assures herself that she'll keep the promises with Sakura.

Volume 4
Seeing that Mikan is having trouble with living an ordinary life due to the summoned demon inside her heart, Yuko and Momo decide to enter Mikan's dream and confront the demon. The demon brought small misfortunes to whoever approached Mikan while she was having a strong emotion. With the help of Ogura's drug and Lilith's guidance, Yuko temporarily turns Momo into her dark dependent and explore Mikan's dream realm together.

Within Mikan's dream, Yuko and Momo discover Ugallu, a familiar based on the Mesopotamian demon that was summoned by Mikan's family to protect Mikan. Apparently, Ugallu interpreted that Mikan was under attack whenever she felt a strong emotion, which caused Ugallu to bring misfortunes upon anyone near Mikan while she was emotional. Saddened by the fact what she did was harming Mikan instead of protecting her, the summoned demon becomes unstable and nearly disappears since her purpose of existence to protect Mikan has failed. But Ugallu becomes stable again when Mikan, who has entered the lucid dream state after becoming aware of her dream, forgives Ugallu and urges her not to disappear. Yuko wants to pull Ugallu out of Mikan's dream realm, but it is revealed that Ugallu's existence outside the dream would be very unstable as she was not summoned with a proper ritual. Once waken up from the dream, Yuko and others properly perform a ritual with the help of Oguro's knowledge and successfully summon Ugallu to the real world.

Volume 5
While camping at a mountain with everyone, Yuko's soul is taken away into a different realm by Mizuchi, a mythical serpent demon who was sealed by Light Clan in a form of the mountain. Mizuchi remarks that Yuko holds the interesting power to interfere with people's heart, which he also used to kidnap her soul. While talking with Mizuchi, Yuko learns that the ancestors of Light Clan were omnipotent beings who were responsible for designating certain creatures as a Dark Clan and punishing them. When Yuko asks whether it is still possible to meet them, Mizuchi answers that only their legends now survive as their divine powers collapsed a long time ago. Feeling lonely after being sealed for 150 years, Mizuchi refuses to let Yuko go and tells her to stay forever by his side. Lilith offers herself to stay forever with Mizuchi in exchange of releasing Yuko. Mizuchi, saying Lilith is too annoying for him anyways, releases Yuko and instead embeds his orb in Lilith's vessel body. In return for the orb protecting Lilith's vessel body and allowing Lilith to permanently live in the real world, Mizuchi tasks Lilith with cleaning the trashes at Tama River everyday, because the pollution of the river is weakening his strength.

One day, after dealing enough times with Lico frequently destroying the cafe by accidents, the building's landlord kick Shirosawa and Lico out. With nowhere to go, they beg Yuko's family and move their cafe into Yuko's apartment. Because they forgot to carry a magical seal while moving their cafe, the locations of Shirosawa and Lico get exposed to a magical girl from the continent named Honyu Shu who seems to hold grudge against Lico. Although she was subdued by Momo and Mikan after failing to infiltrate the cafe as a customer, Hon shoots the beam of magic at Lico. Shirosawa sacrifices himself and takes the shot instead, being sealed as the statue of a tapir. Overridden by grief and shock, Lico prepares to unleash her power against Hon while Momo and Mikan also prepare to interfere in the fight.

Meanwhile, Ogura stops Yuko from rushing to the scene, mysteriously warning Yuko that the protective seal on her house is weakening and would disappear soon. Ogura also tells Yuko that the disappearance of the seal would be also troubling for herself as well. With the help of Ogura's potion, Yuko manages to knock everyone at the scene unconscious. Ogura advises Yuko to enter Honyu's and Lico's dreams while they're unconscious and convince them to calm down.

Inside Honyu's dream, Yuko witnesses Honyu's childhood. When Lico was taken in by Honyu's grandfather, her magical cooking made the grandfather's restaurant to prosper. Angered by the fact that her grandfather was overworking himself and seemed to adore Lico more, Honyu became a magical girl to defeat Lico. Seeing that Honyu hated her, Lico left Honyu's family. The restaurant soon lost customers and Honyu's grandfather was greatly depressed. When Honyu sheds the tear out of rage, Yuko appears, hugs, and comforts her, telling that her grandfather overpushed himself because he wanted to do his best to support Honyu. After calming down, Honyu promises to Yuko that she's willing talk with Lico once she wakes up from the dream.

Crisis Management Form
Yuko can transform into her Crisis Management Form to slightly increase all of her abilties, such as speed, strength and thinking process. It may only be activated in times of crisis. The costume worn is designed and identical to the one worn by Lilith. Yuko avoids using it in public because it is too revealing. In later chapters, Yuko is able to change her Crisis Management Form, the most utilized alternative is a defensive form wherein she hides within a giant clam.

Dream Demon
Yuko is able to enter the dreams of other people and leave impressions on them, which can affect their actions and decision after they wake up. The extent of this ability is unknown as Yuko tends to use it clumsily, however Momo mentions that it has a great capacity for evil.

Yuko may also enter her own dreams to explore her deep conscience and relive forgotten memories. The dangers of this ability depend on the users past experience. Worst case scenario is that the user becomes stuck and lives within a nightmare for a couple of days.

Vassal Contract
Like Joshua and Seiko, Shamiko can make contracts with other individuals to become their dark vassal, which make them kin under the Dark Clan, and become linked. Little more is known about the details, however, the magic of the vassal would be linked to the contractor.

Whatever Staff
Shamiko obtains a Magic Staff formerly owned by her father, the name of which Seiko and Lilith cannot recall. It defaults to the first weapon the wielder imagines, in Shamiko's case, a fork. It has the magical ability to "transform into anything resembling a stick", but the requirements to what a "stick" refers to is entirely up to the wielder. Because Shamiko tends to consider anything with a handle as a stick, it is able to transform it to a variety of everyday objects in the real world. In dreams, the stick may turn to fantastic "cheat weapons", however it can use up a lot of mana depending on the task.

Etymology

 * The name Yuko means "excellence, superiority, gentleness" (優) (yu) and "child" (子) (ko).
 * Yuko's surname Yoshida means "lucky, good" (吉) (yoshi) and "field, rice paddy" (田) (ta/da).

Trivia

 * Yuko calls Momo Chiyoda different according to her emotions.
 * Usually she calls her Momo, but if she's angry, she will call her "Kisama", which literally means "Damn you" and it is a rude way to address someone.
 * When Anri Sata first met Yuko, she was sick and had collapsed. From then, they became friends.
 * Yuko used to have a fragile and weak body, and often had to go to the hospital. After she received horns and a tail, she became more healthier.
 * Yuko is easily deceived by Momo.
 * Yuko often got headpats from her father Joshua when she was little.
 * Although Yuko is poor, she has a game console and CRT TV.
 * Later on Yuko's birthday, Lico gives her a PS2 and some games. This made her very happy.
 * Also on her birthday, Momo gives her a fancy purse. But, because she barely has pocket money, she rarely uses the purse.
 * Yuko hated being called "Shamiko", but as the manga progressed, many people began to call her Shamiko and she got used to it to the point she barely even recognizes her original name.
 * The character bios on Volume 4 refers to her as "Shamiko (Yuko Yoshida)" thanks to her being called Shamiko more often than Yuko.
 * Although Yuko demands Momo and her other friends to call her by her full demonic alias Shadow Mistress Yuko, everyone calls her Shamiko, the abbreviation of her alias given to her as a nickname by Momo.
 * Yuko initially refused to transform into her Crisis Management form in public, but by volume 5, she uses it whenever she thinks it would be helpful and doesn't really care anymore whether or not people sees her in it.
 * Yuko loves gaming. This is mentioned in the first volume's character bios, although it's not mentioned much in the manga, and completely omitted in the anime adaptation.
 * Her idea of a proper vacation starts off with playing video games.
 * Yuko has poor eyesight.
 * Yuko isn't afraid of ghosts because she considers Lilith one.