Tomoko Kuroki

Character overview

Tomoko started off very excited about high school. Since she had had well over enough of datingexperience with over 100 boys in otome games, she could not have been more delighted with the expected coming years of popularity! After two months without speaking to anyone in her class, Tomoko is baffled by her continuing lack of notoriety and becomes more determined than ever to gain her peers' approval. In both the manga and anime, Tomoko debuts looking up the definition of "unpopular girl" (mojo・喪女・もじょ) on the internet only to discover she fits all of the criteria! In the anime opening titles, she is depicted as a prisoner having her pictures taken wearing a placard that identifies her as "mojyo" in English letters. One of the ways Tomoko plans to rehabilitate herself is through daily talks with her brother, Tomoki Kuroki, who begrudgingly agrees to this unusual request. She also frequently spends times with her grade school friend, Yū Naruse, whose favorable social status is often coveted by Tomoko. Though she has little to no success at first, she has slowly gained some of her peer's respect. In her second year she makes a new friend, Nemoto, in her class whom she talks to. She also befriends a member of the culture festival committee, though she has had very little interaction with the latter. It is also apparent that she has become slightly more confident in dealing with other people in social interaction. For example, she can hand over her home economics ingredients which she could not do previously. Unfortunately, her attempts to act "cool" often have disastrous results. Stuck under a covered bus stop with two boys, she attempts scatological humor only to realize how awkward and weird it is. In a way, her panic when confronted by social situations can lead her to speak without a filter. In the chapters covering her second year of high school, she has, perhaps unwittingly, collected a group of friends. Most, like Masaki Yoshida, Nemoto, and Yuri Tamura.

Appearance

Tomoko has fairly pale skin, large jade green eyes with visible purple dark shadows underneath them, and long unkempt black hair that she usually wears down on her shoulders, often covering her right eye. Tomoko has a fairly small, circular face compared to the rest of her peers, and her figure is very delicate and petite. When she fantasizes about what she can become, she generally imagines herself to be a tall, curvaceous woman in contrast to her real frame.

Personality

Tomoko has a grim outlook on life - so much that during a daydream she imagines herself on a motorcycle, only to crash and end up in the hospital. She utters a "censored" with a tone reference to the anime Gantz, hoping her world will be destroyed and replaced. As the initial series progresses, Tomoko tries to become popular by coming up with ideas on how to get attention. She usually either fails or receives negative attention. She often lacks a "filter" in that she will say what she thinks without considering the consequences. For example, realizing she has never seen male genitalia, she matter-of-factly asks her brother Tomoki to show his to her without any conception of how bizarre her request is. Similarly, when she feels that she has offended Nemoto during an argument about flashing panties in which she mentions that Nemoto's rode so far up she exposed "everything," she decides that she needs to compliment Nemoto's Mount Pleasant which earns a slap from the enraged Nemoto. Tomoko will refer to this periodically when Nemoto irritates her. Much of the story takes place "in her head" through her continuous thinking and ranting to herself on almost everyone and everything. Her awkward behavior seems odd to even perverted to others. She can be disrespectful and selfish at times, like when she tried to make Tomoki do housework when he was doing entrance exams when the year previously she ducked doing housework with the excuse she had entrance exams. She overreacts to small things, such as seeing her classmates at "WcDonalds" and trying to avoid them by disguising herself. Her imagination tends to fuel her overreactions. She can also appear rather perverted to others. Tomoko is a young teen curious but awkward and embarrassed by having no experience other than what she gains from playing games and surfing the internet. Aside from comic misunderstanding situations in the manga and anime where her parents walk in on her, Tomoko will also blurt out what she is thinking