Iruka

Iruka (name meaning dolphin) is an anime-only character who appears in Episode 19. She lives near the ocean.

Plot
The Mew Mews meet Iruka after they were invited by Ryou and Keiichiro to a vacation at the beach. They find her being bullied by 3 boys for not knowing how to swim despite Iruka's name meaning. Ichigo and the others come to her aid but the boys just make fun of Ichigo instead. After they run off, the Mew Mews ask if they can teach Iruka how to swim, since if she learned how, the boys would have no reason to make fun of her. Iruka says that it doesn't matter whether she learns or not. Retasu then goes to her and admits that she doesn't know how to swim either.

Iruka then accepts Retasu's offer of learning how to swim together. Retasu's first lesson is learning to properly hold her breath underwater. After some small antics involving small sea critters, they take a break and sit on a small cliff overlooking the ocean. Iruka then admits to Retasu that she does know how to swim but ever since an incident that almost caused her to drown some time back, she's now afraid to go in the water.

Retasu then decides to help Iruka get over her fears by going into the water herself but this ends up almost causing her to drown. Iruka blames herself for what happened and goes home. The next day, she apologizes to Retasu and tells her she has the potential to be a good swimmer someday and that she has given her the confidence to keep trying to get over her fears.

Pie and Tart suddenly cause a huge storm and send 4 sea monster Chimera Animas after the girls. Retasu and the others transform and attempt to fight but end up trying to evade the Chimeras' attacks. The storm then sweeps Komura (one of the boys who bullied her) out to sea. This causes Iruka to face her fears and jumps into the water to save him. Retasu follows despite still not knowing how to swim. While under the water Retasu comes into contact with a strange light and gains a porpoise tail, turning her into a mermaid. She saves Iruka and Komura and the light from her transformation weakens the Chimeras.

After the fight Iruka is seen swimming in the water with Retasu, showing that now Retasu knows how to swim and Iruka's fears of the water are finally gone.

Appearance
Iruka is a young girl (younger than Bu-Ling) with purple eyes and dark brown hair that is put up with a magenta hair clip. Her hair on the sides are put up in two small, yellow hairpins. She wears cream colored shorts, pink sandals and an orange shirt with a yellow mark in the middle with the letters PiPo written in red (the letters are taken out of the English dub).

Name Changes
Note: Any dubs that aren't on the list means that they kept her original name.


 * Mew Mew Power (All versions) - Cassandra
 * Dong Jing Mao Mao (Mandarin) - Hǎi-Tún (This is a direct translation of her Japanese name.)
 * Berry Berry Mew Mew (Korean) - Sora Han

Trivia

 * Iruka is one of the few side characters who knows the identity of the Mew Mews.
 * In the Mew Mew Power dubs, Cassandra mentions that she's 7 years old.

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