Airi & Sister Centipede

Airi & Sister Centipede
Name
Name	Airi Yukifune
Kanji	行舟 愛理
Romaji	Yukifune Airi
Characteristics
Gender	Female
Personal Status
Debut	Episode 1
Voice Actors
Japanese	Rie Kugimiya
English	Apphia Yu

'"Airi"' is a communication interface A.I. existing within the IRUO. servers created by Kimijima Kou. Her dual personality "Geji-nee", a fully-automated data collection engine, is used by him to collect information. Kimijima Kou first started her up on Christmas Eve 2008/12/24.

(SPOILER ALERT)

Appearance

Airi is a petite girl with light skin, long, grey hair tied with a black bow, blue eyes, and wearing a dress with a white, pleated under, a black, ruffled overlayer, and an open collar, and no shoes.

Personality

Airi is a very cheerful, playful and innocent young girl. She is shown to greatly enjoy dancing, always doing so barefoot, as well as forecasting the weather. She is also very kind and friendly; she quickly becomes fond of Kaito and asks if she can call him "Onii-chan" (Big Brother), to which he agrees.

As Geji-nee (Gezi), her personality is significantly altered. She speaks in a monotone and appears to be emotionless, though she is frequently shown to have a very dry, sarcastic sense of humour, not too dissimilar to that of Kaito's. Unlike Airi, Gezi refers to Kaito on a last-name basis.

Eventually, Airi is revealed to be a very sad and lonely girl; back when she was human, she suffered from an illness that, while not life-threatening, confined her to bed and would cause her to suffer greatly for the rest of her life. Overtime, she found that the only thing she ever looked forward to was the weather forecast- she would watch it about a dozen times a day, believing that if it snowed on Christmas Eve, she would miraculously be cured of her illness. As time went on, however, her hopes slowly but surely diminished, since no matter how many times she wished, it never snowed. Eventually, she gave up on the hope that it would snow, and as a result, stopped believing in miracles altogether.

Real Body Airi

Airi Yukifune

A girl originally similar in age to Kaito Yashio back in 2008. She suffers from a non-life-threatening but permanent illness that cannot be helped with current modern medicine. After meeting Kimijima Kou, he gives her the alpha version of the IRUO. system so that she can explore the world despite having to mainly rest in bed. However, when her sickness worsens he convinces her to let him freeze her in a cryonic sleep till the time comes that her illness can be cured. He tells her that because she might be lonely while sleeping he will let an A.I. he has made to look like her wander the island in her stead. In fact, this is part of his experiments in converting personality and memories into data in order to truly digitalize one's consciousness.

Airi (Communication interface A.I.)

Before the S.S. Anemone Incident she was very friendly with Senomiya Misaki, who would come and chat with her often about her own daily life. She also met Irei Mizuka. After Kimijima Kou's death, she picks Yashio Kaito as a priority for contact, because he often goes to the park near the Minami Tanegashima Folk Museum where she is primarily stationed and because he is close to Yukifune Airi's age.

On Christmas Eve 2019/12/24, the IRUO. support team purportedly conducts a major maintenance of the network application's databases. "Airi" is deleted leaving only "Geji-nee" behind, though Airi's memories remain.

Geji-nee

By tapping "Airi"'s forehead one can access "Geji-nee" (a.k.a. "Sister Centipede"). She can scan the IRUO. servers' databases for information. She, in conjunction with Airi, monitors the Verification Experiments using the EGI system in the basement of the Minami Tanegashima Folk Museum.

Kimijima Kou uses her to lead Yashio Kaito into disseminating the "Kimijima Reports " throughout the world, and to keep track of Yashio Kaito and others without Airi being aware of it.

Contact with Yashio Kaito

Garbled email from Geji-nee

Airi was long known as an urban legend of a girl who would mysteriously appear around the island. On the evening of 2019/07/07 in the park, Yashio Kaito's PhoneDroid goes buggy; he hears Airi's voice full of static saying, "Can you hear me?"; and receives a garbled email from Geji-nee. After learning of the urban legend from Daitoku Junna, he chooses to try to respond after being contacted again two days later. It turns out that Airi had been trying to make contact with him for several years and that it was finally a success on this the 29th attempt.

White Christmas

"Airi" the A.I. loves to forcast the weather. Prior to her deletion she confides to Yashio Kaito about the sickness of her real self that left her with not much to do but note the weather. She tells him that she used to believe if something so wonderful as a White Christmas could occur on their warm island once then perhaps she could be cured of her illness as well. Because of that "Airi" has always wished for a White Christmas and faithfully kept telling the weather forecast. Thanks to some special programming by Furugohri Kona, she received her wish prior to her deletion from the IRUO. servers.

It is, however, uncertain how much is true from "Airi"'s story. Part of it could be a programmed setting or fabricated memory implanted by Kimijima Kou. When Yashio Kaito talks about the weather with Yukifune Airi after she is awoken from her frozen state, she shows no particular response or interest at all.

Trivia

• "Airi" can only "see" areas that have been inputted into the IRUO. database. She will follow a user to other areas, but she will not be able to react or respond to her surroundings if IRUO. has no information on it.  
• Yashio Kaito feels he has heard the name "Geji-nee" before after he receives the first email from her during the 28th contact attempt.
• In Chaos;Head in 2009, Detective Ban once mistakenly calls "Gero Frogs" as "Geji Frogs".
• In Steins;Gate (Alpha Attractor Field World Line Divergence 0.571024%) in 2010, "Geji-nee" is the username of a friend on FrePara -a (fictional) social network service- of Hashida Itaru. When rumors concerning the IBN5100 in Akihabara spread, she organizes a group of volunteers to comb the shops looking for it.
• 'Yuki' (Japanese for snow) in Yukifune is a reference to Airi's desire to see snow; despite the fact that the kanji for 'Yuki' in Airi's last name isn't the same as the one for snow.