NiCO

NiCO
NiCO in "Dead or Alive 6"
Playable Character
Full name	Unknown
Also known as	The Lightning Technomancer/Azure Flash Cybertechnician
First appearance	Dead or Alive 6 (2019)
General information
Martial art	Pencak Silat
Place of birth	Finland
Nationality	Finnish
Date of birth	November 9
Age	18
Status	Alive
Blood type	Type A
Personal alignment	Neutral
Physical description
Species	Human
Gender	Female ()
Height	149cm
Weight	41kg (90 lbs.)
Measurements	B83 W57 H83 cm (B32" W22" H32")
Eye color	Green
Hair color	Teal
Career information
Current occupation(s)	MIST Scientist
Personal information
Hobbies	Experiments
Favorite foods and drinks	Joulutorttu
Known relatives	Unnamed father † Unnamed mother
Portrayed by
Japanese voice actor	Sumire Uesaka
English voice actor	Faye Mata

"With science... nothing is impossible!"

—NiCO in "Dead or Alive 6"

NiCO is the code name for a MIST scientist and Pencak Silat fighter debuting in Dead or Alive 6.

A master of tech and weaponry, NiCO is an intelligent and somewhat immodest scientist who fights with electro-shock gloves. She was recruited by Victor Donovan to helm the latest project for M.I.S.T., and had enough fighting prowess to be a threat to the ninjas, although she had her own personal reasons for undergoing the project.

History

Early life

In her youth, NiCO wanted to follow in her father's footsteps to become a scientist. She wrote an essay on him for school, detailing how his profession as a researcher inspired her.

Unfortunately, her father died when NiCO was still young, and her mother unexpectedly abandoned her, leaving her an orphan.

NiCO would still follow in her father's footsteps and enrolls at MIT to become a scientist. During that time, she visited Brunei as part of an intercollegiate research program, where she had the opportunity to watch a Pencak Silat match. Finding herself attracted by its unique history and the fundamental philosophy of "ilmu padi," NiCO devoted herself to learning Silat while continuing her studies. Her genius caught the attention of Victor Donovan, who hired her to replace Lisa Hamilton as the head researcher for Project MIST. She was tasked with overseeing the resurrection of the fallen shinobi Raidou and given the codename "NiCO".

The Sixth Tournament and Raidou's Resurrection 

In order to resurrect Raidou, NiCO researched Honoka, who displayed similar powers. She realized that Honoka was likely Raidou's daughter, and devised a plan to have her kidnapped in order to further the project.

Having developed a robotic version of Raidou, NiCO, accompanied by Christie, tested the prototype's battle program at the Lost Paradise. NiCO defeated it easily enough that she insisted they strengthen it to truly make it worthy of being called a prototype, also informing Christie when the latter questioned her motives of reviving Raidou.

At some point, NiCO discovered an alternate dimension via a quantum computer she had developed and decided to try to open a portal to it. As a result of the experiment, she dragged over a shocked Kula Diamond from her home dimension. NiCO, evidently glad at the success of her project, then approached her and made clear she had been expecting her. Kula accused her of working for NESTS, although NiCO neither confirmed nor denied the accusation, saying it was irrelevant before deciding to fight her. Kula agreed to the fight, although not before warning NiCO that she shouldn't blame her for what would happen next. After the fight, NiCO supplied her with a lollipop as gratitude for granting her "interesting data", although she made it very clear that Kula was not to tell anyone about what had transpired.

Character

Appearance

See also: NiCO's costumes

Her primary attire possesses a white and blue color scheme and consists of a white top with blue trim, as well as an ID card on her left breast. She also wears blue shorts and has a blue shirt underneath her white top, as well as white socks, arm braces and thigh high boots with blue trim on the heels. She also wears blue fingerless gloves and wears three rings on both hands, which seem to be the source of her electric-based powers. She also has blue hair, and wears blue-framed glasses.

Like most of the other fighters, her hairstyle will change if she is the victim of a break blow. In her case, her glasses are removed and she loses her hair pin, making her bangs fully cover her left eye.

Personality

Despite her young age, NiCO is a scientific genius, but is also shown to be asocial and somewhat arrogant, as evidenced by her stating to Christie that she has no reason to explain herself to the latter when she attempted to question her motives for doing MIST's experiment. She seems to show very little emotion, remaining composed and very calm in various situations seen thus far. The only instance where she demonstrated any emotion was when Helena called her out on trying to revive Maria, where she ends up stammering in shock, anger, and sadness and even attacked Helena with her lightning gloves when the latter tried to restrain her. She is also somewhat snarky, as she can be heard saying "Too bad." when she successfully holds an opponent's attack.

Although working for MIST, she has absolutely no loyalty to the organization, and only saw them as a means to an end regarding her experiments. Her motive for working for them in reviving Raidou was because of her family history: she never knew her mother due to the latter abruptly abandoning her, and her father died while she was still young, which ultimately crushed her enough that she desired to find a way to revive the latter. She seemed to show a level of empathy for those who had suffered the same, pitying Kokoro for her sadness over her mother's abrupt departure.

Etymology and Concept

NiCO's codename is likely an allusion to NiCO₃, or Nickel Carbonate, which is used in electronics and electrochemical processes such as electroplating. Her teal hair color is also the same color as certain NiCO3 reactions such as precipitation in a solution.

Dead or Alive 6 producer and director Yohei Shimbori stated in an interview that NiCO was supposed to have Russian nationality instead of a Finnish one, but they changed it halfway through the development of Dead or Alive 6. NiCO's Japanese voice actor Sumire Uesaka was originally chosen for her language skills in Russian, who sadly didn't end up being used according to Shimbori. NiCO was also cited to have been created primarily for the Japanese and Asian market (while Diego, the only other new character in the game, was created primarily for the Western market), and similar to Honoka and Marie Rose had largely been inspired by anime/light novel tropes (in NiCO's case, her cool "chuuni" atmosphere).

Relationships

NiCO's Father

NiCO's father had died while she was still young, with the only thing known about him was that he was a top scientist who was presumed deceased from suspicious circumstances before his research was completed. This ultimately influenced her for the worst, as she attempted to revive her dad and worked with MIST for this reason.

NiCO's Mother

NiCO wasn't close to her mother, as the latter had abandoned her without even saying goodbye in order to get away from the stressful environment of her husband's research. Nonetheless, she did still feel some sadness over it, and sympathized with those who had similar abandonment issues for this reasons.

Kokoro

She encountered Kokoro at some point before, and was responsible for providing her with a photo depicting Kokoro and Helena as children near Fame Douglas. She also sympathized to a certain extent with Kokoro's sadness over Miyako's abrupt departure, as her own mom also left without saying goodbye, although this resulted in Kokoro fighting her in anger over NiCO "pretending to know how [Kokoro] felt."

Raidou

NiCO was the one responsible for restoring Raidou back to life as a cyborg henchman of Donovan by requiring the energy from his two daughters, Ayane and Honoka. She also implied that his restoration merely acted as a prototype.

Christie

She and Christie are co-workers at MIST, however, their relationship is not particularly friendly. NiCO gives Christie some information about her work, explaining that Raidou's revival is the prototype stage for a new experiment in reviving people. However, she was also somewhat cold to her, refusing initially to divulge what her personal motives for conducting this experiment were, and only doing so after fighting with Christie. Nevertheless, the two do have something of a working relationship. She and Christie are involved with manipulating Rig through mind control and Christie is implied to have at times invited her out to lunch in an attempt to get her to be more open, although NiCO was largely disinterested in socialization. Despite this, however, she did freely admit to Christie that she felt their employer Donovan was creepy.

Lisa Hamilton

NiCO and Lisa encountered each other, with Lisa being shocked to learn that NiCO was a member of MIST when the latter implied that she was her replacement. After NiCO was defeated by her predecessor, Lisa then advised her to leave Donovan as soon as she can, as he is not a trustworthy individual, although NiCO refused and appears to be already aware who he is.

Victor Donovan

Although Donovan is her boss at MIST and the one who brought Raidou’s corpse to her for resurrection, NiCO appears not to have much respect for him and is seen showing disgust at his questionable attitude towards his creations. Indeed, her opinion of him was low enough that she freely admitted to Christie that she thought he was "extremely creepy". Donovan also implied that her father was part of the reason he got her into the job.

Miyako

Miyako was the one directly responsible for providing NiCO with a job as head researcher at MIST. As such she had some respect for her, and implied when encountering Kokoro that meeting her in person as well as supplying her with the photo of Fame with Kokoro and Helena was her way of repaying her debt to Miyako.

Helena Douglas

With Helena being the leader of DOATEC and NiCO serving as MIST's top scientist, the two unsurprisingly have an uneasy relationship. Helena first learned of NiCO from Kokoro when the latter revealed a photo depicting the two as children with Fame Douglas. Helena was angered that she supplied it to Kokoro as it "wasn't [NiCO's] to give", before reluctantly admitting that Kokoro was indeed her half-sister, and that Fame Douglas was their father.

Shortly after Raidou's revival, while trying to find Miyako at the MIST base, Helena meets and confronts NiCO at her lab. The two clash over the concept of resurrecting the dead; even though NiCO has plans to revive Helena's mother, Maria, Helena disapproves, believing that they should not be revived even if such were possible, that tragedy builds character and that one needs to be able to move on from loss. Nonetheless, she did pity NiCO and hoped that she too would eventually learn to move on from her own losses. However, NiCO was left distraught by the lecture, to the extent of losing control of her emotions and fleeing.

Kula Diamond

NiCO was responsible for sending Kula Diamond over to MIST Labs as part of an experiment on accessing alternate dimensions. She then confronted the girl, who fearfully asked the scientist if she had been affiliated with her former employers, NESTS, with NiCO neither confirming nor denying it. After briefly sparring with her, NiCO gave Kula a lollipop as thanks for supplying her with interesting data, although she told her not to divulge what had happened to anyone else.

Gameplay

See also: NiCO's command lists

Nico is an easy character to pick up and play, specializing in alot of important areas of play. Being amongst the fastest characters, shes a good character applying pressure and poking at her opponents, having alot of good mix ups and ways to apply pressure on opponents playing defensively thanks to her electrical abilities. She's also very adept at high crushes, having a multitude of tools she can use to avoid high strikes while starting her own set ups. She's also mostly safe, having more than enough strikes that are safe on block, and she can easily gain frame advantage via charging specific attacks. Her holds do decent damage and her throws as well, even having a grapple throw that can put her behind her opponent for guaranteed set ups to make the most out of her good damage. Her damage output and wall carry are also good, having very easy combo set ups and juggles with high reward for their simplicity.

While she's a solid character, she does struggle in range as she's a character who mostly is more suited to mid close to close range and she doesn't have many safe ways to move in bar certain moves that carry risks. She also lacks tracking attacks and the ones she does have tend to be easy to avoid. She also suffers from lacking a large moveset so she can become predictable and linear if she's not played carefully. Besides these shortcomings she's regarded as being a fairly solid character and can easily hold her own in fights.

Appearances

Dead or Alive series

• Dead or Alive 6 (playable, 2019)

Fighting quotes

• Dead or Alive 6

Music themes

The following are the music themes used for NiCO throughout the series.

Theme	Game appearances
"Cold Punishment"	Dead Or Alive 6

Gallery

See: NiCO gallery

Trivia

• NiCO is the first Finnish fighter in the series.
  • Her outfit's colors also resemble that of the Finnish flag.
• NiCO's hair clip is the skeletal formula for Benzene, a colorless, flammable, and sweet smelling carcinogen.
• NiCO's name is likely an allusion to NiCO₃, or Nickel Carbonate, which is used in electronics and electro-chemical processes such as electroplating. Her teal hair color is also the same color as certain NiCO₃ reactions such as precipitation in a solution.
• NiCO often poses her index, middle finger, and thumb perpendicular to one another in her intros or victories. This orthogonal finger arrangement, known as the Right-Hand Rule, is used throughout physics, especially when dealing with electrical currents, electromagnetic fields, and cross-products.
• NiCO is the second fighter to employ electricity into her attacks, after Raidou. Unlike Raidou, however, her electric abilities are the result using gadgets.
• NiCO is currently the only character to break the fourth wall, as one of her taunts explicitly references her opponent's health gauge.
• Although NiCO herself does not appear in Dead or Alive Xtreme Venus Vacation, her likeness is used as a promotional life-sized pop furniture for the Owner Room.
• She is the youngest female fighter and fourth-youngest character in the series.
• In Mega Man X DiVE, there is a character inspired by NiCO's design, her name is RiCO. They have differing personalities, the latter being very bubbly in demeanor.