Synopsis
Aiko Maebara is the mother of Keiichi Maebara and the wife of Ichirou Maebara, first appearing alongside her husband in the story arc Onikakushi-hen. For most of the original two anime seasons she stays in the background: her face is never fully shown on screen, and viewers only glimpse her brown, shoulder-length hair. She appears more substantially in the various manga adaptations, and the newer third-season anime finally gives her a regular, fully depicted presence.
Beneath the quiet homemaker exterior, Aiko is an enthusiastic reader of detective and crime fiction, with a particular fondness for Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None and Murder on the Orient Express. She has even tried her hand at writing crime fiction herself, penning a novel and entering a writing contest. In the Tatarigoroshi-hen arc, this hobby becomes plot-relevant: she lays out for Keiichi what a "perfect crime" requires, knowledge he later puts to grim use against Teppei Houjou. Kuraudo Ooishi notes that she is a graduate of a modest women's university.
In the manga adaptation of the Nekodamashi-hen arc, Aiko is shown afflicted with Hinamizawa Syndrome. She is voiced by Naoko Matsui in Japanese and Barbara Goodson in the English dub, and portrayed by Yoko Hoshi in live-action adaptations.
