Tanta Aiko

Tanta's profile card.

***"Kouhai WILL be mine... She doesn't have a choice."***

Tanta is the player character in *Heartbreaker: The Visual Novel.*

She had suffered from a lifelong depression she calls "The Dark", which left her every attempt at feeling... "muted", and her world bleak & grey. She would get a taste of any sort of emotion, only for it to be snuffed out in an instant by the Dark, causing an intense hunger to build up inside her as she looked for the "Special One" whom her father promised her she'd meet someday.

On her final year of college, Tanta's world was filled with colour & light when she met Yūki Sakura, her new kouhai, and the dam broke - her hunger was finally allowed to feed, and every desire for emotion that had built up over so many years came flooding out at once. Hope, joy, love, desire, lust... envy... rage.

Now... she'll do anything to keep Kouhai safe, until the time is right to confess her feelings on Valentine's Day.

One way or another, Kouhai WILL notice her.

## Appearance

Tanta is a Japanese woman of below-average height, with large, messy bangs and a ponytail tied with a large black ribbon. She has raven-coloured hair & eyes, and her finger & toe nails are painted grey. When walking, she appears to hunch forward slightly, but stands up straight when still.

At Kareji, Tanta wears her sleeves at t-shirt length, her skirt just below halfway down her thighs, and her shorts just above halfway down her thighs. Her socks are thigh-high and black. Tanta wears the standard Kareji gloves & shoes. As a third-year, she has golden stars on her tie, belt and gloves.

In her casual summer outfit, Tanta wears a white shirt with beige trims and a wide open collar, and a beige belt around the waist with a copper buckle. She also wears black trousers, and simple white & grey trainers.

In her casual winter outfit, Tanta wears a black jumper with a beige belt, black leather gloves, grey trousers, simple white shoes, and a grey striped scarf.

## Personality

Tanta's personality can change at the drop of a hat.

Alone and going about her daily business, she is cold, almost mindless, mumbling to herself about her current objective as she tries to make sense of the world.

When thinking about Kouhai, she becomes wistful, romantic and even giddy & childlike at times, like a young girl with her first crush, fawning over Kouhai even if she isn't present.

As soon as a rival or any other potential threat to her future with Kouhai enters the picture, Tanta becomes jealous, possessive and deadly serious, seething about the idea of anyone else getting anywhere near Kouhai before the time is right to make her perfect Valentine's confession.

She views Kouhai with an almost religious fervour, seeing her as a literal "angel", a paragon of virtue & perfection, an idol to worship & adore, an answer to her lifelong prayers for a way out of the Dark, and won't let anyone share in her idea of a future paradise with Kouhai.

Tanta appears to be capable of understanding the world around her to a certain degree, though how much of it is coloured by spending years shut away in her room with only video games, TV and magazines, is uncertain, but ever since meeting Kouhai, she has been almost single-minded in her goals & desires, everything else existing as nothing more than either a tool or a hindrance to that end.

## Gallery

Tanta's casual outfits - Winter [left] and summer [right].
## Trivia

* Tanta is based on the yandere archetype.
* The kanji of the Aiko family's surname, 愛子, roughly translates to "love child", a term referring to a child born out of wedlock.
* "The Dark" is based on AbyzouDev's struggles with depression & mental illness.
* Tanta appears to smoke occasionally, though whether this is because of her father is unknown.
	+ She appears to only do this for stress relief, though she drops this habit on Thursday evening of Episode 1.
	+ It is unknown whether she stops smoking entirely.

## Notes

* As with many parts of *Heartbreaker*, several "Japanese" names in this project were chosen using not only literal or phonetic puns, but also a variety & mixture of *-on,* *-yomi,* *nanori* etc. readings for kanji that would not be typically used for names in reality, a common technique in Japanese fiction; It is important to remember that *Heartbreaker* takes place in an alternate timeline that - while closely mirroring our own - contains several differences in its fictional history. Good-faith attempts have been made to create semi-believable names (with some artistic licence for fiction & entertainment's sake), but any suggestions for better names and / or kana & kanji should be sent to: AbyzouDev@gmail.com