Ruka Minazuki
 This page contains spoilers for Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse. |
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| "The things that nobody remembers will eventually become things that never existed, right?" | ||
| Japanese | 水無月 流歌 (みなづき るか) | |
| Alias | Ruka Yomotsuki (四方月流歌) | |
| Age | 17 | |
| Family | Sayaka Minazuki (mother) Soya Yomotsuki (father) | |
| Marital status | Single | |
| Occupation | Unknown | |
| Room | 308 | |
| Status | Alive | |
| Date of death | N/A | |
| Games | ||
| Notes | Ruka's Diary | |
| Japanese Voice Actor | Mamiko Noto | |
Ruka Minazuki is the main heroine of Fatal Frame IV. Ten years before the events of the game, Ruka and four other girls were rescued by a detective after being kidnapped. After that incident, Ruka lost all her memories of her childhood.
Ruka's Past
Ruka was born and raised on Rogetsu Isle. Her childhood seems to have been a happy one, and she was close to both her parents. Her mother, Sayaka, was a Tsukimori Maiden, and although the tradition had died out, she began to teach Ruka to play the Tsukimori Song on the piano.
However, Ruka's father Soya Yomotsuki, a mask-maker, became more and more obsessed with the craft of one of his ancestors, and started to neglect his family to work on masks. Soya and Sayaka began to argue a lot as she tried to convince him to stop what he was doing, and Ruka wrote in her diary that she was lonely and bored when he didn't hug her or stroke her head.[1] One day she went looking for her father in his workshop, where he was hammering a mask. When he turned around, he was wearing a mask too, and Ruka was frightened when she didn't recognise his face. Soya forced Ruka to wear one of the new masks he had made, and as a result, Ruka developed Getsuyuu Syndrome. Sayaka found her in the garden one night, gazing at the moon, and took her to Rougetsu Hall for treatment.
It was at here that she met Misaki Asou and Madoka Tsukimori, and became friends with them. One of the experimental treatments Ruka underwent was music therapy, and she reacted very strongly to it, saying it made her remember horrible things.[2] She was eager to see her father again, unaware that Sayaka, convinced that Soya's work on the masks was endangering Ruka, had decided to keep her away from him at all costs.
On the night of the lunar eclipse, all the patients at Haibara Infirmary and Rougetsu Hall gathered in the Lunar Eclipse Hall to watch the traditional Rougetsu Kagura. During the performance, Ruka, along with her new friends Misaki and Madoka, was taken away by Yo Haibara and brought to a vast cavern underground. She was dressed in the ritual garb and mask of a Kanade and made to participate in the even older Kiraigou ritual, providing musical accompaniment for a dancer, the Utsuwa, who wore the Mask of the Lunar Eclipse that Soya had been working on so diligently.
However, the ritual failed. The mask shattered and the Utsuwa, Sakuya Haibara, fell into a coma. Ruka and the other kidnapped girls collapsed too, and lost all their memories. For more than a week, they remained underground, in a special chamber in which the light of the moon filtered down through a well. It was thought that gazing at the moon would have a purifying effect.
It was here that Choshiro Kirishima, investigating at Sayaka's request, discovered the girls. They were taken to Amakore Bay Police Station and then returned to their families. However, Sayaka and Ruka did not go back to the Yomotsuki House where Ruka had grown up; instead, they left the island completely, leaving Soya behind, and Sayaka refused to tell her daughter anything about her childhood, preferring to focus on building happy memories.
Worn down by the stress of these events, Sayaka fell ill and eventually died. The islanders were all wiped out in an unexplained event two years after Ruka and her mother left the island. Ruka's only connections to her past were now the other four girls who had been kidnapped, and a faint recollection of a melody, which she tried to reconstruct on the piano. She had no memory of her childhood, and had even forgotten her father's face.
Fatal Frame IV
Ten years after their kidnapping, two of the five girls, Marie and Tomoe, die mysteriously. In search of answers, Misaki and Madoka depart for Rogetsu Isle, and do not return. Ruka follows, searching for her lost memories.
She arrives at the abandoned sanatorium, Rougetsu Hall, where the girls were photographed ten years earler. As she explores, she catches glimpses of Madoka disappearing out of sight. She finds an old camera on the floor in the Kunihiko Asou Museum, and discovers that this camera is able to capture strange images.
Ruka learns the truth when she catches up with Madoka in the library: Madoka has died and become a ghost. With a distorted face, Madoka attacks Ruka, begging for help.
Ruka makes her way around the building, gathering fragments of a black mask. She later discovers her own room, and begins to remember a song that her mother taught her when she was a child. When she plays the song on the piano, she has a vision of a different place, which seems familiar, and has a memory of a man hammering masks.
Later on, Ruka finds her way into the hospital and goes underground, finding the secret cave in which the ritual was performed. She also finds the house she used to live in while living on Rogetsu Isle, the same one she remembered when she played the song from the music box. In the house, it is revealed that the man that she saw hammering the mask was her father.
From books and diaries scattered around, Ruka learns more about the history of her family, both her mother's side and her father's side. Her father was descended from a long line of master craftsmen, dedicated to making special masks which can affect the wearer's very soul. Her mother was a Tsukimori Maiden, one of a group of shrine maidens who assisted with the Kiraigou in the past. Ruka's ancestor Soetsu Yomotsuki had attempted to create the true Mask of the Lunar Eclipse, but instead had brought about the Day Without Suffering, a disaster in which many islanders died. Her father, Soya, attempted the same thing, and suffered the same fate, when the Utsuwa from the failed ritual woke up and began to wander the island, causing everyone there to Bloom. However, Ruka learns that the song played by the Tsukimori Maidens is reputed to calm the moon and end the Blooming.
She discovers the passage that leads to the lighthouse, at the top of which is the Gesshou Shrine, a special shrine used by the Tsukimori Maidens. Ruka defeats Sakuya and plays the Tsukimori Song on the organ there. This calms Sakuya long enough for Choshiro to put the remade Mask of the Lunar Eclipse on her face, and the spirits are able to pass on to the Afterlife. After Sakuya crosses over, the mask falls onto the floor and Soya appears and takes it. He turns around, finally revealing his face to Ruka, before he too crosses over.
After the game's credits, Ruka is seen playing the same piano that is shown before she returned to Rogetsu Isle, although this time she is now playing the Tsukimori Song instead of the incomplete melody she played before. As she plays, she sees a vision of a quiet forest, with a pool reflecting the moon.
Gallery
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Concept art of Ruka from The Art of Grasshopper Manufacture
Misc. Info
- Ruka is a native of Rogetsu Isle.
- Ruka has been learning to play the piano since she was young.
- Ruka was the first of the five girls to be rescued.
- Ruka finds the same Camera Obscura that Madoka left behind after she was spirited away.
- Ruka's room is #308 - 観月 (Mizuki; "viewing moon")
- Ruka's clothes, in both her older and younger forms, match the image color of the game.
- Ruka's name means "Flow of the song" whereas her last name means "Six month of the lunar calendar (June)".
- Ruka is one of the ghosts that appears in Ghost Camera Mode in the 3Ds game Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir.
See Also
- For other members of the Minazuki Family, see Minazuki Family.
- For other members of the Yomotsuki Family, see Yomotsuki Family.
- For other player characters in the Fatal Frame Series, see Player Characters.
- For more information on the Getsuyuu Syndrome, see Getsuyuu Syndrome.
- For other shrine maidens, see Shrine Maiden.
- For other rituals in Fatal Frame IV, see Fatal Frame IV Rituals.
- For images related to Ruka, see Images of Ruka Minazuki.