Mizuno Yūko

Mizuno Yūko (水野 裕子) is a celebrity athlete, reporter and basketball player who has completed in KUNOICHI and SASUKE several times, and has also been called the "Queen of KUNOICHI" on several occasions, until Miyake Ayako took the title. Mizuno is from Ichinomiya City in Aichi Prefecture.

KUNOICHI
Her first competition was KUNOICHI 2, where she was the first to clear the First Stage, and the first to reach the Final Stage in that tournament, where she failed the Tenkudou.

In KUNOICHI 3, Mizuno cleared the first 3 stages with ease, and became one of three competitors in the Final Stage. There, she timed up after reaching the top of the tower 0.12 seconds late (mainly due to her trying to climb up as far as she could instead of reaching for the buzzer in time), with the reporter noting afterwards that if she had one more second on the clock, she would have made it.

Despite failing the final stage in KUNOICHI 3, many people thought that she would become the most likely competitor to complete the final stage. In KUNOICHI 4 however, she shocked everybody when she failed the first obstacle on the First Stage, the Buyoishi, which paved the way for Miyake Ayako to become the first ever KUNOICHI champion.

Returning in KUNOICHI 5, Mizuno made up for her First Stage failure in the previous tournament by clearing the stage with ease. She then went on to clear the Second Stage as well, but ended up failing the Tourenban on the Third Stage, an obstacle she had cleared easily in KUNOICHI 3.

Afterwards, she then failed the first stage two more times, falling at the Fuandou in KUNOICHI 6, and the Hop Rocket in KUNOICHI 7. She did not compete in KUNOICHI 8, ending her streak of consecutive KUNOICHI appearances in 6 tournaments.

But she did return for the now rebooted KUNOICHI 9 as one of the only two competitors who competed in past tournaments, along with Watanabe Mika, wearing the number 50, which would eventually be the last competitor to attempt the RED Stage (First Stage) due to the insufficient amount of applicants. From there, she failed at the new Fish Bone. Then, in KUNOICHI 10, she got revenge on the Fish Bone, but failed at the very next obstacle, the Double Pendulum. In KUNOICHI 11, she made it to the Dragon Glider, but failed to even reach the bar.

SASUKE
Mizuno has also competed 6 times in SASUKE. In her first appearance in SASUKE 8, she failed the Godantobi on the First Stage. She cleared this obstacle in SASUKE 9, but then failed the Rolling Maruta. She then cleared this obstacle in SASUKE 10 before failing the Jump Hang, after mistiming her jump on the trampoline. She then failed the Rolling Maruta again in SASUKE 11. After missing SASUKE 12, she returned for SASUKE 13, as the third top female competitor, although during her run, she failed the first obstacle on the first stage, the Prism See-Saw. Returning for SASUKE 14, she once again reached the Jump Hang, where she was able to reach the net, but couldn't hold on and ending up failing there. she hasn't completed since.

Trivia

 * Mizuno completed in the most KUNOICHI tournaments, competing in 9 tournaments.
 * Mizuno and Watanabe Mika are the only two competitors in KUNOICHI 9 who competed in previous tournaments.
 * Mizuno and Akiyama Kazuhiko are the only two competitors who failed the first obstacle wearing #100.