Michiru Satomi

Michiru Satomi (サトミ・ミチル) is manager of Team Satomi.

Bio
Michiru Satomi is the granddaughter of the former chairman of Satomi Heavy Industries. Devoted to her late grandfather, and fiercely loyal to his legacy, her family lets her manage Team Satomi in the small hope that she can turn this failing franchise into a success.

She may be young, but she works hard and knows she has a extraordinary team, including a once-in-a-lifetime pilot like Takeshi.

Despite the team's success in reaching the IG-1, her ambitions and hopes are almost stifled in Episode 3. The Board of Directors of the conglomerate that includes Satomi Heavy Industries and Team Satomi votes to stop funding the team. Desperate to not lose the last vestige of her grandfather's legacy, Michiru convinces the board to give her 24 hours to find outside funding to keep the team afloat.

After several dead ends, Michiru becomes more and more depressed, causing Andrei to eject her from the team's strategy room when she is late signaling for a pit stop. Mark notices her dismay and she confides in him, informing him of her dilemma. The team wins their first race in the IG-1, but things look bleak for them and Michiru until a last minute lifeline in the form of outside investment from the Hiratake Conglomerate arrives after she and Mark have closed up shop.

A few weeks later, Michiru faces difficulties of a different kind, from within Team Satomi itself. In Episode 5, after a heavy defeat at the hands of Team Velshtein, Michiru must secure replacement parts for the mechs after they sustained heavy damage. She then suggests that River Marque, the team's reserve pilot replace Liz as the team's defender in the next race. River is insulted by the offer and instead demands to be allowed to race as forward, which Michiru emphatically declines.

Upset, River takes Michiru to task over what he perceives is her lack of effort in helping the team behind the scenes while he works hard to show everyone how good of a pilot he is. This inspires Michiru to reach out to Ichi, a retired engineer from Satomi Heavy Industries and old friend of her grandfather's.

Michiru is hesitant to ask for help, believing it makes her look weak, but Ichi pushes aside her concern and agrees to fabricate long-lasting replacement parts for the team upgraded mech frames that to support them. However, this episode proves to be the last straw for River's relationship with Team Satomi, as he leaves for Team Sledge Mamma shortly after.

At the mid-season festival, Michiru wines and dines an executive from the team's new investor, showcasing the surprising rookie team's personnel and equipment. However, during dinner, the executive reveals that he was not the one who decided to invest in Team Satomi. He says that there was no incentive for his company to invest in the team, and that the decision came from someone higher up in the Hiratake Conglomerate, which raises Michiru's suspicions.

In the lead-up to Team Satomi's critical match against Team Skylark, Michiru researches the Hiratake Conglomerate to try and find out the real reason they invested in the team. She comes across a photograph of someone who looks like Mark, but Michiru dismisses it, as the person in the photo graduated university whereas Mark told her he'd taken a job straight out of high school. But when Jesse unwittingly mentions that she met Mark's father during the mid-season festival (Mark had told Michiru that his father wasn't involved in his life) that Michiru realizes that the person she thought was just the team's mechanic has a secret past.

Michiru commissions a secret report on Mark's background, where she discovers that he is in fact the heir to the entire Hiratake Conglomerate. He had provided her with a false personnel report during his hiring process and his entire past had essentially been rewritten to everyone without intimate knowledge. Hurt by Mark's duplicity and realizing that he would've been in a position to steer Hiratake's investment dollars into the team, regardless of any effort on her part, Michiru confronts him after the team's victory over Skylark.

Mark admits that he lied to her and tries to apologize, but Michiru gets angry with him, alleging that after she confided the team's financial situation to him, he went behind her back and pulled all the strings to get the new funding. Still resenting how she feels people don't take her seriously as an individual, Michiru lashes out at Mark and says she resents taking handouts from someone like him.

Mark reassures her that he didn't pull strings. Because of his previously cold relationship with his parents, he didn't have enough pull with Hiratake to chart policy decisions. He explains that all he did was call an old friend who works for Satomi Heavy Industries and asked him to push a research paper. This generated interest in the company. It also turned out that the head of the Hiratake subsidiary that invested in the team was an IGPX fan and was glad to help out the team.

Still a bit resentful of his interference, Michiru is mollified when Mark tells her that he wouldn't have been able to do anything if she hadn't gotten the 24 hour reprieve from the Board. He adds that a win for the team is a win for her as well.

When Team Satomi upsets Team Velshtein to win the season championship, the team's existing sponsors all line up to get on board for next season. Afterward, Michiru goes down to the shop to thank Mark for his help.

Appearance
Michiru is tall and slender. Her height of around 180 centimeters means she's taller than each of her team's pilots and comparable to Mark and Andrei, although her favored high heeled shoes likely make her appear taller than she actually is.

She has hazel colored eyes and long black hair, which contrast with her somewhat pale complexion. She typically wears her hair tied up in a long pony-tail, but she sometimes wears it down well past her shoulders for important functions, such as the season opening banquet. She has long hair pieces which frame the sides of her face and often cover her ears.

Michiru's usual attire consists of a stark white suit jacket, matching white pencil skirt, and blue blouse. She wears aforementioned high heels and her jewelry consists of slender earrings and a teal pendant necklace. On raceday, she wears a Team Satomi jacket over her suit. For formal occasions, Michiru has worn a shoulder-less navy blue dress with a powder blue shawl over it.