Tomomi "Pets" Hetada

Tomomi Hetada (辺田・友美?, Hetada Tomomi), or Pets (ぺッツ, Pettsu) to her friends, was one of Kana's best friends up until episode 5 of FLCL Alternative.
==Profile==
==Personality==
On the outside, Pets appears to be a caring person with an obsession for taking photos. However, this is all a hoax to hide how she truly feels inside. Despite being Kana's best friend, it is later revealed that she secretly hates Kana, viewing her as selfish and inconsiderate of other people's feelings. Pets is an invariable liar, making up things about her family just to cover up her misery, and even going as far as to lie about her own picture taking habit. She actually hates taking and appearing in pictures, so much so that her mother is incredibly attached to one she let Kana take when they were younger to keep up this lie. She once had a crush on Sasaki, but pushed away her own feelings just to make Kana happy. She never allows people to visit her family home. Her bedroom is almost entirely bare, something Pets' mother claims is the way her father likes it. However, she allows one decoration in the form of the same photo Kana took and gifted her in grade school, suggesting she either is actually attached to the photo or kept it just to be safe. In short, Pets lives a double life of falsehoods.
She left it all behind when she ran away from home, but there are things that contradict what she says and what is shown in her home that suggest hatred. In previous episodes, Pets requests from Mossan and Hijiri to "trade" two seemingly random items. Mossan herself describes it in her situation as Pets being "so random," suggesting this is a character quirk to be expected. What she does with the two items she receives is unclear and not emphasized, but it becomes possible when she runs away to where they built the rocket that she has may have been collecting items as keepsakes from each of her friends. After lashing out at Kana, she is seen with tears in her eyes and reaching out to her when she falls from the Core. If the Terminal Core hadn't been there, she may have taken a piece of the rocket as her Kana keepsake. Instead, while Kana is passed out, Pets makes one last trade - taking Kana's hair clip and tucking her own into Kana's shirt pocket in return - before she leaves. These are all strong indications that at the very least, she does cherish some of the time spent living in her lies, and at most, she was bloating her true feelings into hatred of Kana as the problems in her life climaxed.
==Appearance==
Pets has a brown bob-cut and holds her bangs loosely out of her face with an orange, X-shaped clip on her right temple. She has thin brown eyebrows and dark blue eyes that have a half-closed shape. Her roundish face is dotted with freckles under her eyes. She usually wears a light-blue track suit jacket with white stripes and a decal over her heart, seafoam green armbands on her biceps, black tights, and the dark blue skirt and white shoes from her school uniform. Her backpack is a white messenger bag worn over her right shoulder.
In childhood flashbacks of her meeting Kana, her face is almost entirely circular and her hair has yet to grow past her ears. This gives her consistent bob cut an undercut at the back and has the slack of her bangs covering less of her face. Her features are also less pronounced and she is in casual clothing carrying a pink backpack. She wears a green shirt with blue accents and a large "H.", striped sleeves of the same colors covering the rest of her arms, black short shorts, and green thigh-high stockings paired with tan sneakers. She looks largely the same in the photo of her and Kana from their early school days.
In her brief cameo as a 27 year old the final episode of FLCL: Shoegaze, she is shown wearing a long, one piece dress and high heels. Her hair is noticeably longer. 
==Relations==
===Kana Koumoto===
Pets became Kana's first friend as a child, giving her the nickname "Kana-bun". Growing up together, Kana viewed her as her best friend, often greeting her with a hug or using her as a shoulder to cry on. Yet, despite their apparent closeness, Pets harbored resentment towards her and even lied about her family and lifestyle to Kana. In the fifth episode, "Shake It Off", as Kana tried to help Pets after being caught in some wiring by the terminal core, she eventually snaps at Kana, telling her just how much she actually hates her. Pets goes on to tell Kana that she views her as someone who just butts into people's lives to solve their problems without asking and how she put aside her own feelings for Mon Sasaki in order to let Kana be with him, only to then watch Kana reject him.
10 years later, in Shoegaze, despite being hurt by Pets leaving for Mars, Kana still missed her and thought about her constantly. At the age of 20, Kana had briefly imagined Pets, Hijiri and Mossan dressed in kimono and were able to join her for the "Coming of Age" ceremony, though the trio were no longer living in Tsuganei at that point. It was also revealed that Kana had been writing letters to Pets, but kept them in her car since there was no way to send them to her on Mars. In the final episode, Kana briefly sees the now 27 year old Pets when Masaki's N.O. power activated the accelerator within Tsuganei tower, which began a merging process between the two worlds. At the end of the episode, she had Masaki deliver her letter to Pets after he was able to travel to Mars with the help of Atomsk in order to see Harumi once again.
===Hijiri Yajima===
===Man "Mossan" Motoyama===
==Gallery==
Tomomi "Pets" Hetada/Gallery
==Trivia==
*During the ending credits for FLCL Progressive an image of Hijiri, Pets, Kana and Mossan, along with Tsukata Kanda can be briefly seen, despite these characters starring in Alternative. 
*In the second episode of FLCL: Shoegaze, during a brief hallucination, Kana imagines Pets, along with Mossan and Hijiri, dressed up in kimono and accompanying her to the "Coming of Age" ceremony.
**Throughout the episode, Kana mentions Pets several times. Additionally, while at the candy store, Kana imagines herself with Pets when they were kids and eating ice cream together.
**Near the end of the episode, a letter slips out from Kana's car door, with "ぺッツへ" (pettsu e, "To Pets") written on the front of it.
**An older version of Pets appears in a non-speaking role in Episode 3 of Shoegaze. 
*The etymology for her last name can be translated as "Side/Surrounding Area" (辺, heta) and "Rice Field" (田, da)
**Her first name can be translated as "Friend" (友, tomo) and "Beauty" (美, mi)
Category:Characters
Category:Females
Category:Alternative