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'Kagami Ochiai' (Japanese: 落合カガミ, Hepburn: 'Ochiai Kagami') is a fictional character in The Drillimation Series and the female protagonist of Drillimation's Chuhou Joutai series. In the games and anime, she is depicted as a cute rainbow-haired girl with a cat-like smile whose main hobby is singing for the band The Drillers of the Kaleidoscope.
Kagami shares the same name as her creator and is voiced by Kagami Ochiai herself. Jen Taylor voices Kagami in her English dub appearances. Ochiai made her debut in the 1994 Driller Engine 1-styled game Chuhou Joutai. She later made her appearances in the fighting game world in Super Smash Keyboards 3 in 1997 and Killer Minecraft 3: Hisoutensoku in 1999. Ochiai joined the Driller Engine Grand Prix in Driller Engine Grand Prix 3 in 2001.
Concept and creation
During the creation of the Chuhou Joutai series, the developers wanted a second player character. They felt that having a girl for the second player would make the game stand out. They wanted to make her cute and memorable, much like Driller. Kagami having just pink hair didn't fit well, and her creator, Kagami Ochiai (the real one), asked them to give her multi-colored hair, which eventually became the hair style that everyone knows today. Choosing names took a bit of time. One developer suggested naming her Kyouko Ochiai (Japanese: 落合 鏡子, Hepburn: Ochiai Kyōko), but Hiroshi Takajima felt that didn't sound right. An alternate reading from her first kanji character in her given name eventually led to the name "Kagami" being chosen.
Her surname, Ochiai (Japanese: 落合, Hepburn: {{{3}}}), translates as "falling synthesis," while her given name, Kagami (Japanese: 鏡, Hepburn: {{{3}}}), translates as "mirror." Susumu Takajima based Kagami who loved looking at herself in the mirror every day when she woke up, which was a pastime of Susumu Takajima in his childhood.