character info

[touchsensors]

Name: Hagoromo Lala
Canon: Star Twinkle Precure
Age: 13-14 (series), 29 (epilogue)
Species: Samanian

History: (warning: translations are unofficial and as a result subject to change)

• Lala and her twin brother Lolo were born on the planet Saman, one of several in the Starscape Union, ruled over by the twelve zodiac-themed Star Princesses. Their father was a computer programmer specializing in artificial intelligence, and their mother was a rocket scientist.
• Samanians have advanced technology, getting around on hoverscooters and commonly owning personal spacecraft with sapient AI. As a society they're very dependent dependent on this technology, and don't bother learning many of what we consider basic life skills, relying on AI to handle such things for them, as well as to decide things like their careers. As such, they have no formal education system, and despite maturing at apparently the same rate as humans, they consider themselves adults at age 13.
• While Lolo largely took after his parents, Lala turned out to be not so great with technology, in particular never quite mastering hover tech and having to walk everywhere instead. Lala came to think of herself as lesser than the rest of her family and unreliable, not helped by none of them really knowing what kind of support she needed. At 13, Lolo and Lala were assigned their jobs by the central Mother AI, Both were to be Starscape Union investigators. Lolo was top-ranked, working on matters of galaxy-wide importance. Lala, conversely, was assigned to investigate space debris.
• While Lala was in the beginnings of her career, the Star Palace was attacked by an inexplicably youkai-themed evil organization called the Notraiders. The Star Princesses used their power to ensure the escape of Prunce, a sort of squid-Chao dude whose name has been transliterated about a billion different ways, and Spegasus Pulalan Mofpit Princewink, sort of a space teddy bear baby fairy with mysterious powers who thankfully would eventually come to be better known by the name Fuwa. The princesses were left scattered through the galaxy in the form of "Star Color Pens." I did not make up any part of this bullet point.
• Through unknown circumstances that at this point will probably never be revealed, Lala picked Fuwa and Prunce up in her rocket, and they started on a mission was to find the legendary warriors known as Precure, who would recover the Princess Star Color Pens and thereby restore the Star Princesses.
• We're finally to the first episode! During their travels, Fuwa disappeared, having been accidentally called to Mihoshi Town on Earth by a girl named Hoshina Hikaru. Shortly afterward, Lala and Prunce came under attack by the Notraiders, but were saved by being warped to Earth as well by Fuwa, where they immediately broke Starscape law by interacting with Hikaru.
• Hikaru soon turned out to be one of the Precure, Cure Star, and protected them from Notraider general Kappard. Although glad to have made progress and to be assured of Fuwa's safety, Lala couldn't help but feel disappointed in herself for not being able to become a Precure herself. Fortunately, when the Notraiders attacked again the next day, she found that she could after all, Fuwa producing a Star Color Pen (not a Star Princess, a different kind) and Pendant so that Lala could become Cure Milky.
• Almost immediately, a Star Color Pen appeared somewhere in Mihoshi, and Hikaru and Lala got into a fight over how to go about finding it, Lala favoring methodical analysis while Hikaru went with asking around and following hunches. They ended up combining both methods, finding the pen, and revived the Taurus Princess after dealing with another Notraider attack led by another general, Tenjou.
• Over the next few weeks, Hikaru, Lala, Fuwa, and Prunce found two more Precures, Amamiya Elena/Cure Soleil and Kaguya Madoka/Cure Selene. Madoka’s father happened to be the head of a government agency investigating alien sightings, but for the moment this wasn’t an issue.
• This whole time, Lala had been working on repairing her rocket, a process that sped up significantly after she asked the other Cures to help. Around the same time, they had their first fight with Notraider scientist Ayewan and her butler Bakenyan, Ayewan having discovered a way to corrupt Princess Star Color Pens and use them to create giant monsters called Notriggers. Fortunately, Precures could purify the pens on contact.
• With the rocket repaired, the Cures could now travel to other planets to search for the Star Color Pens, with Fuwa warping them so they didn’t have to travel the entire distance themselves. After a stretch of episodes focusing mostly on other characters, the Cures suffered a major defeat on one of these planets, losing not only the newly discovered pen but one of the ones they’d already collected, and escaped with their lives only because Lala covertly contacted her AI on the rocket, allowing a last-minute rescue.
• The Cures retreated to Earth, their arrival witnessed by Madoka’s father, and were soon attacked by the Notraiders again, but managed to win and get a new group finishing attack called Southern Cross Shot out of the deal. Of course, that left them Madoka’s father to deal with. Fortunately, movie director J.J. Abrams P.P. Abraham abruptly arrived with an excuse about special effects.
• Unfortunately, the real reason for Abraham’s involvement was that he was actually a disguised agent of the Starscape Union, here to retrieve Lala and company since they’ve revealed themselves to humans. As part of the cover story, he actually did attempt to make a movie starring the girls, with a plot about a maiden from the sky named Hagoromo who has to leave at the end. This gave Hikaru a chance to improvise her own ending, though, and thereby successfully make a case that Lala should be allowed to stay.
• Now able to stay on Earth indefinitely, Lala decided to start attending school with the other girls under the name Hagoromo Lala. Her first day was awkward, as she really didn’t know what she was doing on multiple levels, and for her second day she brought her AI glove along and consulted it frequently so she’d know the right thing to do. This was actually even worse, because Lala was focusing hard on fitting in rather than being herself. Hikaru managed to convince her to act more naturally, and their classmates affectionately nicknamed her “Lun-chan” after her verbal tic.
• This is way too long. Stupid main characters.
• Not much later, of Elena’s younger brothers, Touma, turned out to be feeling bad about his family being seen as weird because their father was Mexican they broke into singing and dancing all the time. Lala, having taken her lesson from school to heart, advised him that she’d encountered many different cultures and none of them were really weird, just different.
• The Precures’ next journey into space took them to Zeni, the hellplanet of the rich people, where a Star Color Pen was being auctioned off. Here the girls encountered interstellar idol Mao and phantom thief Blue Cat--who, they quickly discovered, were actually the same person. Blue Cat was evidently out to steal treasures originating from Planet Rainbow, the site of a disaster that had petrified all of the planet’s inhabitants. She also inexplicably recognized the girls as Precure, and handed over the pen to them despite having stolen it for her own purposes.
• Some time later, the girls encountered Blue Cat again. This time they were allies, working together to rob the mansion of a wealthy alien who owned both a Star Color Pen and a number of treasures from Planet Rainbow.
• The Cures soon found themselves searching for a Star Color Pen on Planet Rainbow itself, where Lala found that seeing the results of the disaster in person was much different than just knowing the numbers. This was perhaps less important in the long run than the revelation that Ayewan (remember her? she’d actually been appearing a lot but I’m summarizing too damn much of this show as it is) was responsible for the disaster (and completely unrepentant), followed by Bakenyan (remember him?) turning out to actually be Blue Cat in disguise. Blue Cat, it seemed, was actually Yuni, a girl from Rainbow who’d escaped the disaster and set out to get the Princess Star Color Pens for herself in hopes of restoring her people. There was a series of betrayals, the Notraiders’ leader Darknest made an appearance, people from Rainbow are shapeshifting cats, Ayewan got turned into a monster herself, there were a lot of twists. When the dust settled Yuni had become a Precure herself, Cure Cosmo, and reluctantly joined up with the others mostly because Ayewan had stolen her spaceship and left her stranded.
• Closely following that ordeal was Tanabata, which happened to also be Lala’s fourteenth birthday--and the day Hikaru’s world-traveling father came home to visit. Lala again found herself in the position of offering people advice based on her own experiences--this time Hikaru’s grandfather, who was concerned about the effects that his son/Hikaru’s dad’s traveling was having on his wife and daughter. Lala, having been away from her own family for a long time at this point, basically assured him that it was fine.
• Lala played advisor again a little later, this time for Yuni, who was having trouble feeling comfortable on an alien world where she had to hide her real nature. Having been through the same thing herself, Lala told her that she’d eventually come to enjoy living on Earth, and that she was sure Yuni would have a similar experience.
• Maybe an hour after that, Lala’s rocket received a transmission from Lolo, urging her to come home because he’d found a Star Color Pen. Lala wanted to make the trip alone, but the others insisted on coming along, and Abraham provided them with excuses to leave for a while so they could go on a longer interplanetary trip.
• After being waylaid for a few episodes, the girls arrived on Saman, where Lala's abrasive boss Kuku immediately chewed her out for not reporting in on schedule. Lala went on to introduce the other Precures to her family, as well as Lolo's boss, Starscape Union military commander Admiral Topper. She wasn't really able to hide her feelings of inadequacy during all this, leading to a heart-to-heart with Madoka about living up to others' expectations.
• Before any of this could be properly resolved, Tenjou attacked, having followed them to Saman to steal the Star Color Pen. The Precures won the ensuing battle fairly easily, but there were no other witnesses, and when Kuku saw Lala afterward with the recovered Pen he assumed Lala was stealing it herself, leading to a planetwide alert identifying the girls as criminals.
• Lala and company managed to evade capture, thanks in part to Lala's still-loyal AI interfering with the search. Lala's family, meanwhile, insisted that stealing was out of character for her, and took over the transmission to plead for her to come back so this could all be straightened out.
• Unfortunately, it now turned out that Ayewan was on Saman as well, having followed them on her ongoing quest for revenge against Yuni. With her technical skills she was able to corrupt the Mother AI and send all the planet's technology against them. This plot nearly succeeded, but Lala's AI saved the day again, first using herself/the rocket to stop an attack, then resisting the Mother AI's attempt to infect her with the power of love. The girls transformed, revealing to all of Saman that Lala had become a Precure. Ayewan was soon defeated, the misunderstanding resolved, and Lala left secure in the knowledge that her family really did appreciate her even if they weren't so good at expressing that.
• Upon reaching Earth, the girls found that they'd been followed by a massive starship, Admiral Topper's personal craft. Though he was quick to point out again that Lala and Prunce weren't supposed to reveal themselves to humans, his intent was to have the Precures join the Starscape Union, eventually settling for an alliance instead. During this, they were attacked by the overwhelmingly powerful fourth Notraider general, Galogre, and they recovered the Star Color Pen necessary to revive the twelfth and final Star Princess.
• This wasn't "mission accomplished" just yet, however. The revival of all the Star Princesses merely enabled Fuwa to evolve into a new form, this one more akin to a unicorn. Now the Precures would need to acquire something called "Twinkle Imagination," the nature of which was unclear. At the very least, it wasn't the same as "Star Twinkle Imagination," which was a new combined attack they got in the same episode... in which they also learned that Galogre had joined the Notraiders as a refugee after his planet was destroyed, the first in a series of tragic backstories that would reveal the villains weren't quite as they seemed.
• After some mostly inconsequential adventures, the girls started to find their Twinkle Imagination, which in practice was a powerup that seemed vaguely connected to personal growth and self-acceptance. In Lala's case, she was exposed to her classmates as an alien thanks to Madoka's dad's ongoing investigation, but insisted that despite their initial suspicious reactions, she still knew they accepted her and still wanted to be with them.
• Around the same time, more villain backstories were revealed. Kappard's planet was exploited and robbed of its resources; Tenjou was ostracized because her appearance wasn't in line with her planet's beauty standards; Ayewan is a homeless orphan, the Notraiders the only place she'd ever belonged.
• With all five Cures now holding the power of Twinkle Imagination, it was finally time to restore the Star Princesses' full strength, for which purpose the girls traveled to the Star Palace. While they were there, however, it was attacked by the Notraiders. Cure Star convinced them and the defending Starscape Union fleet both to stand down, but by controlling the formerly-willing Nottraider soldiers, Darknest--now revealed as Ophiuchus, the lost thirteenth Star Princess--was able to capture the other Princesses and Fuwa.
• Teaming up with both the Union and the Notraiders, the Cures pursued Ophiuchus, and learned her deal: the Star Princesses created the universe (and thus, it's actually the zodiac that's Star Princess-themed), and, having seen that it ended up being full of jerks, Ophiuchus wanted to destroy it and start over.
• The Star Princesses concocted a plan to combine all their power (now in Fuwa) with the Cures' and then hit Ophichus with all of it in one shot, sacrificing everyone's powers and Fuwa's life. The Cures' reluctance to sacrifice Fuwa, however, led to this attack failing, and Ophiuchus was free to destroy the universe.
• Through the power of love, singing the transformation theme, and a not inconsiderable amount of fuck you, we're Precure, the girls survived this, transformed again, and fought and defeated Ophiuchus, restoring the universe. Ophiuchus survived and, acknowledging her defeat, left with an air of but I'll be watching.
• The final task at hand was to restore Fuwa to life (and existence), which required not only giving up the Star Princesses' powers, but the Precures' powers as well, and she still wouldn't be able to warp people around like before. Lala, now left once again unable to communicate except in the little Japanese she'd learned on Earth, shared a tearful goodbye with Hikaru before the humans, with the last of the available power, were sent back to Earth.
• Lala returned home to Saman, where she discovered she and her friends had not only started a few trends, but inspired a reevaluation and subsequent abandonment of the ranking system. This left her pretty busy, though it also meant she got to frequently check in on Yuni and the repentant Ayewan, now living on the restored Rainbow. Earth, though, was too far away...
• ...until one day, fifteen years later, the two former Cures received a message from Prunce, telling them Fuwa had regained her powers.
• Back on, or rather, above Earth, Hikaru, now an astronaut on her first mission, saw a bright lightWHOOPS THE SHOW IS OVER
• At some point during all this the movie happened. Hikaru and Lala found and basically adopted a Star Drop, essentially a "baby planet," named Uma. Lala got very attached.

What is a Samanian?
A Guide To What Your Character Might Notice

Lala's height, build, and overall appearance are close enough to human that she's able to pass as one in daily life, but people looking for unusual features will find them:

• Pointed ears, not unlike a Vulcan in Star Trek.
• Yellow star shapes in her pupils.
• The little yellow balls on strings hanging from her hair accessories are actually antennae. They're prehensile and capable of generating and sensing electricity.

When Lala is threading with sci-fi characters, I'm up for assuming they belong to the same universe and have some familiarity with each other's species. Samanians are a technologically advanced species whose "hat" is artificial intelligence (and overreliance thereupon). They don't tend to get out much or to get much exercise unless they have jobs that require it (which Lala does). Most of them eat nothing but gummy candy specially formulated to their nutritional needs. Samanian tech can be hard to use for other species, as interfaces assume the use of their antennae. Lala's heart-in-circle motif is actually the Samanian insignia. The Samanian language sounds like "lulululu" to people who don't understand it.