Aila Jyrkiäinen

Aila Jyrkiäinen (アイラ・ユルキアイネン) is a character from the Gundam Build Fighters anime series.

Personality & Character
Aila is a seemingly quiet individual, often speaking with a lack of emotion and responding with the bare minimum amount of words. However, this seems to be a front, as she has been shown to be able to express emotions, as shown in her encounter with Reiji. Like Reiji, she seems to have a enormous appetite, buying all the foods that Reiji was planning to buy.

Background
Aila is the top fighter of the Gunpla team Nemesis based in Finland. She is from the Flana Institute.

She had no experience in Gunpla creation nor did she have any knowledge about Gundam prior to entering the tournament, however, her piloting skills more than makes up for it.

She does not enjoy Gunpla Battle or taking part in the tournament, and apparently only does it because of the investment from her sponsors, which allow her to visit abroad and enjoy the foods of Japan. However, she did enjoy the experience of building one with Reiji and battling in cooperation with him after meeting Takeshi Iori.

History
Aila was a street orphan discovered by Flana Institute, mostly due to her ability to predict the outcome of Gunpla Battle - specifically, her ability to see and predict the flow of Plavsky particles. However, due to the numerous experiments and regime the institute imposed on her, she came to dislike Gunpla battles.

Aila was made into Team Nemesis' top Gunpla Fighter (defeating Gawain Oakley, their previous champion), and quickly rose to the world tournament, defeating previous world champion Carlos Kaiser.

At the tournament, Aila decided to take what money she was given and snuck away from her handlers, wandering the local shopping malls and sampling various foods. This ultimately led to a confrontation with Reiji when the local Nikuman stall only had one bun left. Both of them would run into each other multiple times each night of the tournament, forming an odd friendship that began to grow complicated when she discovered that Reiji was also a participant in the tournament.

Eventually, Aila has progressed into the top 4 divison. She faces off against Ricardo Fellini in episode 20, to decide who will go on to face Sei and Reiji in the following round. Aila is partially distracted throughout the beginning of the match, knowing if she wins, she will have to fight Reiji in the next round. Fellini uses this to his advantage, managing to destroy all of her clear funnels, and even damage the Qubeley, slashing off part of its shoulder binders. After the embodys system is switched to full output, Aila loses her state of consciousness and focuses only on destroying the Wing Gundam Fenice. The Qubeley Papillon manages to easily cut off the Fenice's right arm and wings, and subsequently it disabled the Fenice completely. After Ricardo Fellini's plan to self-destruct is aborted, he concedes the match; leaving Aila the winner. However, as her suit's embody system is in full output, Aila continues to attack the Fenice mercilessly. She repeatedly stabs the Fenice with the Qubeley's lance, until Reiji rushes in with his Beginning Gundam. Although Reiji tries to attack the Qubeley, the Beginning is instantly crippled, when the Qubeley retaliates in defense. In rage of his sudden defeat, Reiji rushes up to the other side, in order to confront Team Nemesis. However, upon his arrival, Reiji is shocked to discover Aila's true identity. Reiji asked Aila for an answer about her actions but Aila can only remain silent. He then expressed his anger to her and vowed to defeat her in honor and pride of the royal house of Arian, which left Aila in shock and under emotional trauma.

The night later, Aila was plagued with nightmares concerning her distressful situation. When she woke up, Barthes came in and told her to throw away her emotion during the next battle and just defeat Reiji, as this is business and that result is always everything. During the day of battle, while she and Barthes are on the way to the battleground, China meets up with them and expresses herself as a fan of Aila and that she will cheer for her while giving Aila the Arista that Reiji once gave Sei. China said that this is a lucky charm for her. Aila accepts the Arista and continues onto the battle wearing it on her neck.

During the battle, Qubeley's clear funnels were destroyed when Reiji fires the Star Build Strike's vulcan guns, which at that time was equipped by Sei with a special paint ammunition, revealing their position and allowing Reiji to fire on them. Qubeley manages to sneak to Star Build Strike's rear and prepares for a lethal blow, but Aila's emotions made her miss the attack. This made Barthes upset, causing him to maximize embody system's power, bringing severe pain to Aila but making Qubeley a lot stronger. Qubeley starts overwhelming the Star Build Strike, easily destroying its rifle, left arm and star beam cannons. Once again, Qubeley prepares for a final blow, surrounding Star Build Strike with its funnels. Before the beams were launched from the funnels, the Arista on Aila's neck glows in response to her pain and wish to stop fighting, causing the Arista on Reiji's right hand to respond as well. This phenomenon transported their consciousness into a space where they can communicate alone.

In there, Reiji saw Aila, suffering in pain and shouting that she doesn't want to fight anymore. This made Reiji realize that Aila is not fighting willingly, and told Aila to just quit if she doesn't want to. Aila however revealed to him that she doesn't have any family or relatives and that she has nowhere to live so she has to fight for survival. Reiji then asks Aila to stay in Sei's home instead since he is also a "drifter" in this place and is staying there. Aila felt happy, realizing that she can be with Reiji now and also have a place to stay. Their consciousness went back to the real world as the funnels that were suppose to fire at Star Build Strike deactivated as Aila's embody system went offline. Reiji and Aila had a little chat in the midst of battle which turned into another quarrel between the two, only this time, everyone in the stadium is watching and they fight off with their gunpla in a comedic manner. Barthes and the chairman of Team Nemesis went on to ask Aila to stop but Aila shoves them off by saying that she won't listen to them anymore. Aila and Reiji then proceeds to continue the battle as Aila now is determined to go all out against Reiji, this time, on her own pure will.

Qubeley and Star Build Strike fought with their fist as the climax comes. Sei activated the RG system to deliver the final blow on Qubeley. Aila boasted that an attack like that won't work against someone like her who can sense the particle's movement. However, she was surprised to see that the activation of RG system released a huge amount of plavsky particles scattered in a widespread manner, causing her senses to be overwhelmed. This left her open for the last blow. Unable to evade, the Build Knuckle pierced the Qubeley's lower torso and cut it in half, resulting in Reiji and Sei's victory. Aila, with a smile on her face, concluded that she wasn't anything special after all.

After the battle, She, Reiji and Sei, together with China and Mao are seen all drinking soda together. Although Aila accepts her defeat against Reiji, she then said that Reiji should keep his promise of letting her stay at Sei's place, much to everyone's surprise.

The next day she is staying in Sei and Reji's hotel room this annoyed Sei's mother when she emerged from the shower in a towel and she was told that boys and girls shouldn't share a room. Later at an inn where Rinko was staying she explained to Rinko and China that she has no home and Reiji offered to take care of her this moved Rinko and she was allowed to stay at Sei's house. She is seen eating popcorn while watching the battle between Julian Mackenzie and Meijin Kawaguchi.

During the week-long break before the finals, Aila decided to put her ignited interest in Gunpla to use and build her own model, the Miss Sazabi. She got China and even Yuki to help her with this.

In the final battle, she recognized that Meijin was being controlled by the Embody system, and was even able to hear the thoughts of Chairman Mashita through the Arista. Using her own Arista, she contacted Reiji and Sei and passed this information onto them. When the giant Arista went haywire, she quickly joined the others in assaulting A Baoa Qu with the Miss Sazabi. Aila's gunpla was destroyed when she realized that she, Reiji, Sei and China were in a particle beam cannon and she and China pushed Sei and Reiji out of the way resulting in the Miss Sazabi and China's Mr Bearguy III being destroyed.

With the destruction of the giant Arista, the smaller gems carried both Reiji and Chairman Mashita(with Baker in tow) back to Arian. Making a wish, Aila ends up on Arian as well, carried by her still-functioning Arista.

Relationships

 * Reiji
 * She first encountered Reiji while shopping for food. They quarreled over the last meat bun in a shop and seemed to have a bad relationship. However, later on they show a kinder side to each other, as Reiji steals one of Aila's meat buns, but ends up giving her enough money to buy four more of them in return. Aila similarly waits for him to come out of a restaurant and give him those four buns, which Reiji rejects, but she still wants him to take them, causing their bag to slip and nearly fall and create an awkward atmosphere between the two. Reiji then goes to her defense after three thugs make fun of them. Later, she worriedly looks at his apparently wounded hand.


 * Aila identified Reiji as a fighter in the tournament after running into him while in her body armor (preventing Reiji from recognising her), she took an interest on his affection to Gunpla. After the preliminaries she tailed Reiji into a gunpla shop where Takeshi Iori had them build their own Gunplas. Aila assisted Reiji in battle against C, but did not admit to him that she was a fighter in the tournament despite her skill with the Command Gundam.


 * After Reiji's victory against Nils Nielsen, Aila fell into a melancholic mood as she realized that she was going to have to fight him after her battle with Ricardo Fellini. When her distraction forced an activation of the Embody system, her brutal defeat of Fellini and subsequent destruction of the Beginning Gundam Reiji had built alongside her left Reiji furious, compounded by Aila's identity being revealed in front of him.


 * The day of the match between them left Aila in an even worse mood. As she moved to the arena, China Kousaka, claiming to be a fan of hers, gave her a necklace with a small gem (The Arista Reiji had given him) on it at the behest of Sei Iori. During the match, Aila's melancholy again led to the activation of the Embody system. Aila's pain and sorrow resonated with the Arista Sei had slipped her, which reacted with the Arista carried by Reiji (and Chairman Mashita), and allowed the two to reach each other on an emotional level and work out their problems.


 * After the destroyed giant Arista sent the bearers of the Arista gems home, Aila makes a wish and ends up transported to Arian as well, appearing by Reiji's side holding the Beginning Gundam model he built. For his part, still seems to be clueless as to exactly why.

Trivia

 * Aila fits some of the "cyber-newtype" archetype of Gundam series, sharing similarities in history and personality to characters like Allenby Beardsley, Soma Peries or Four Murasame, who are usually orphans and artificially conditioned to be superior pilots and soldiers. However, similar to Allenby (and unlike the typical archetype), she also showed far more emotions. Her similarities with Allenby extended not just to their history, race, training, and affected forced to fight by a boosting system (Berserker and Embody system respectively), but also their love of food.
 * When Aila meets Sei and China during episode 18, she unknowingly borrows Aina Sahalin's first name from the 08th MS Team as a means to avoid being found out by Reiji and Sei in the tournament. Coincidentally, both are Finnish.
 * Her Gunpla, the Qubeley Papillon, bears an almost similar appearance to a knight though when fighting, which would be carried over to her new Gunpla, Miss Sazabi.
 * She seems to rely more on her suit's funnels then using her close-quarters weaponry (in fact never gotten to use other weapons on screen as of ep 19) while fighting in her Qubeley Papillion. The fighting style is similar to Cyber-Newtype pilots such as Elpeo Ple and Marida Cruz.