Iwami Aki

Aki was a cadet from a samurai family who attended an eishi training school in Kyoto, and was a classmate of Takamura Yui. While spirited and outgoing, her initial performance as a pilot was sub-par. Despite that, she presevered, and was eventually placed in the same trainee unit as Yui, Noto Izumi, Yamashiro Kazusa and Kai Shimako. After the BETA invaded Japan in 1998, Iwami was deployed alongside Yui and her friends at the Arashiyama Supply Base, in an effort to defend Kyoto from the BETA onslaught. She fought against the Destroyers and were able to overcome them using boost maneuvers. Later, during the ensuing chaos of close combat with Grappler-class, she switched to her Type-74 blade and engaged in melee combat. After a while, she had gravitated out of formation and noticed a Grappler-class getting close to Yui and Izumi, so she switched back to her Assault Cannon and fired on the BETA. She was unable to kill it, however, as the 36mm rounds were blocked by its large pincers, and Aki soon ran out of ammo. The Grappler-class switched its attention to her and swung its arm out, which she was barely able to dodge, but she couldn't move out of the way a second time and her Zuikaku toppled over. During the fall, Aki hit her head on the seat and bit much of her tongue off, leading to severe internal and external bleeding. The Grappler-class was quickly dispatched and her team-mates begged her to get up, but Aki was too happy to see anything but her mission clock that read she had survived over nine minutes. She began coughing up blood as she wondered why her team-mates weren't congratulating her, either unaware of the extent of her injuries or uncaring. Her last words were Aki congratulating herself over and over that she "made it" past the eight minutes of death, all the while Yui screaming for her to respond. In the anime version, during the initial skirmish with the BETA, she managed to survive the Eight Minutes of Death, with the last minute or so spent in close-quarters combat. However, upon declaring it to her fellow pilots, her TSF was rammed by a Destroyer-class BETA, and the subsequent explosion claimed her life.