Hikari Horaki

Light freckles dot her face. Hikari gathers her brown hair into a pair of pigtails, fastening them with pale purple ties. Her signature look layers a blue dress over a white shirt with a red bow at the collar, finished by white stockings that reach the knee and black Mary Jane shoes. The manga renders her hair in a slightly altered shade.

Her duties as class representative come first, and she polices classroom protocol with an intensity that reads as rigid, bossy, even hot-tempered on first meeting. The tomboyish sternness masks softer layers: she cooks with real skill, runs her household, and suspects that this domestic streak would surprise anyone who only knows the rule-enforcer, a thought she voices to Toji himself. Toji is also the boy she loves; the two squabble constantly, and while she admits her feelings when Asuka presses her about them, confessing to him directly stays beyond her reach. Asuka, in turn, counts Hikari as her best and effectively only friend.

Hikari debuts in the series' third episode and, on the manga side, in its second volume. Like Shinji's other classmates she has presumably lost her mother, and nothing establishes whether her father lives. She looks after her siblings, the older Kodama and the younger Nozomi; all three sisters carry names taken from Tokaido Shinkansen train services, with Nozomi the fastest of the trains and Kodama the slowest. Episode 9 shows her charmed by the penguin Pen Pen, and after Tokyo-3 evacuates in the wake of the Armisael battle she drops out of the story. Misato later entrusts Pen Pen to the Horaki family for his safety, implying they have settled in the suburbs. A live action scene cut from The End of Evangelion also features her.

The manga gives her less screen time at Asuka's side, though the friendship holds, and deepens her attachment to Toji, setting up tragedy when Unit-01 kills him during the Bardiel incident. Once Instrumentality is refused, she is never seen or mentioned again. A piece of Gainax promotional art additionally depicts her clad in an orange plugsuit, identified as Unit-05's designated pilot. Junko Iwao voices her in Japanese; English casts include Carol Amerson for the television series, Kimberly Yates for Death and Rebirth, where she re-recorded Amerson's lines, and Abby Trott for the Netflix release.