Mao

Mao (マオ) is one of the supporting characters of Hinamatsuri series. She is an esper just like Hina and Anzu.

Background
Mao is one of the child espers in the series. She was the first esper and was created through the cloning of the original Mao.

Appearance
Mao is a young girl with reddish-brown hair. As a child, she wears a makeshift outfit made with leaves found on the island she's stranded on.

As a teenager, Mao dons a kung-fu outfit, which she never changes due to it serving as advertising for the Superhuman Fitness group she belongs to.

Personality
Mao is shown to be kind, and good-natured. She is dependable enough that Ikaruga considered her useful enough to help retrieve Hina by transporting the orbs the ESPers use to travel. As such, she managed to survive on her own on a deserted island using her powers.

However, Mao is also shown to be insecure about herself, being unable to act on her own unless she feels someone is telling her what to do. After the events of the island, her loneliness complex increases, and makes her extremely interested in having and keeping friends.

Pre Timeskip
Ikaruga had been sent to retrieve Hina by the organization, but was unable to because Hina's orb that the ESPers use was discarded after Nitta got trapped in it. She is mistakenly sent to a deserted island instead of Japan, and the orbs she took along with her were washed out to sea.

Stranded on that island without anyone to call for help, Mao decides to wait until her organization contacts her, and tries to treat her time on the island as a vacation. As she misses Hina and Anzu, she creates two dolls representing them, using coconuts she found on the island.

Mao lives on the island for about a year, pretending the dolls are her friends, hunting, building a shack, creating makeshift clothes and playing by herself. Eventually, she realizes she is just in a survival situation, and, after a mental breakdown, she throws aways both dolls, deciding to finally leave for Japan in a raft.

After a dangerous journey along the wild sea, Mao arrives, not to Japan, but on the shore of China. She survives on her own via begging until the members of Superhuman Fitness meet her and, believing her ESPer powers to be martial arts, decide to give her food and refuge.

Post Timeskip
Having heard of her prowess and believing her to be the same as Hina, Atsushi Yamamoto travels to China in order to recruit Mao for his Rocksion band. He is kept away from her by the members of the Superhuman Fitness group, until they coincidentally meet in a bar and talk. Realizing Atsushi knows where Hina is and remembering her mission, Mao decides to escape from her benefactors and travel back to Japan with Atsushi. The other martial artists try to stop her from leaving, as her abilities bring great wealth to the group, but Mao defeats them all with her esper powers, disguising them as martial arts.

Seeing that they cannot stop her, the leader of the group challenges Mao to defeat a metal spinning doll if she wants to leave. Mao blasts the doll effortlessly with her powers, and so is sent to Japan along with Atsushi and Baldy, to establish another branch for Superhuman Fitness.

Once back to Japan, Mao reunites with her old acquaintances. She encounters Hina and Anzu, who then remember her, and meets Ikaruga again on a Live Show, feeling conflicted at what a plentiful life her previous boss was having while she was suffering on the deserted island and in China. Mao´s Superhuman Fitness lessons quickly gain followers and adepts and she starts becoming famous.

After an incident with her dolls, Mao reveals to Atsushi and Baldy that she has Esper powers, and they both accept her.

Mao also befriends Hitomi due to Hitomi working as an advertising agent for the group, and develops an obsessive relationship with her via text messages.

She joins the meeting along with Hina, Nitta, Hitomi, Anzu, and Haru on which Haru reveals to them the story of the future and their involvement in the Great Civil War that then transpired. It is then revealed that Mao is the original Esper Child, who was unwillingly cloned by Atsushi scientists from the original, adult Mao, causing strife between them both. Much like the rest, she decides to not help Atsushi with his Rocksion dream, believing that way that undesired future will not come to pass again.

Once Hitomi´s true background is revealed and she resigns from her position, Mao tries to defend her on Live TV to no avail.

After the Super Human Fitness center becomes successful, Mao, Atsushi, and Wang (also known as "Baldy" take a trip to the main office of the Super Human Fitness centers. They confront the old Baldy that ran the organization, because the money that they'd sent back to him he was using to live a lavish, decadent, lifestyle while they lived hand to mouth back in Japan. After a showdown that Mao utilizes Atsushi like a puppet, they defeat Baldy and the others and take over the organization. This explains how Atsushi was the founder of the organization that lead to the cloning experiments that lead to the creation of Mao, Anzu, Hina, and later, Haru.

Trivia
Mao was the first successful clone created. The lab that created her was not in Japan, but in the US.

It appears that Mao and Atsushi may have a love interest part of the story.

Mao teaches Hina how she created the dolls and had worked them so long and so well, that she didn't even realize she was manipulating them. Hina uses this information to create a life size "Nitta Golem" doll.