Tohru Honda

* Current
* Future

## Voices

**Tohru Honda** (本田 透, *Honda Tōru*) is one of the main characters of the series. She is the only daughter of Kyoko and Katsuya Honda.

Tohru is a student at Kaibara Municipal High School. She loves to cook, describes herself as an excellent housekeeper, and has an after-school job as an office janitor to pay her tuition fees to avoid being a burden to her relatives. She is depicted as a polite, optimistic, independent, extremely kind, and selfless person with a nurturing personality.

Following her mother's death, which has left her orphaned, Tohru began living with Shigure, Yuki, and Kyo Sohma after accidentally setting up a tent on their property, and later being hired as their landlady. She later learns that thirteen members of the Sohma family are cursed, as they turn into animals of the Chinese Zodiac if they are embraced by anyone of the opposite sex or when their bodies come under a great deal of stress. As the series progresses, Tohru meets and befriends the rest of the zodiac and the family's mysterious head, Akito Sohma, and resolves to break the curse that burdens them. Only later does she admit that she wants to free Kyo most of all.

## Appearance

Tohru is a very cute fair-skinned, slim girl of average height with waist-length, straight, brown hair and an eyebrow-length fringe that frames her round, brown eyes (teal in the 2001 anime). She has an approachable, kind and loveable aura and appearance, which draws people to her, making them feel understood and accepted. She has two long strands of hair that lay over her shoulders. She usually wears bows in her hair which are often pink or yellow in color, although sometimes they're blue or purple. She either wears a large one in the center of the back of her head or two smaller ones that pull her front strands of hair to the sides. Outside of school, she either has her hair untied, in pigtails, in a ponytail, or in braids.

Her school uniform is a classic naval-styled Japanese school uniform. The uniform has a blue mini-skirt with pleats and ruffles at the hem, and a white and blue top with a blue jacket. She wears navy blue socks that go up to mid-shin, and brown slip-on shoes. This is the outfit she is most commonly seen in, although she is known for wearing other short dresses.

Tohru wears simple and practical clothes when she is not in her uniform, typically dresses or skirts. Her work uniform as a janitor is a light blue shirt and pants. She wears whites gloves and styles her hair in pigtails, which she covers with a white bandana. Her swimsuit is a baby pink one-piece with daisies. The only time she dresses up is when other characters like Ayame Sohma or Mine Kuramae dress her. She wears a large ballgown as a costume when she plays the "not-so-evil stepsister" in the school play Cinderella-ish.

## Personality

Tohru is an extremely kind-hearted, gentle, optimistic, compassionate, and cheerful girl who sees the good in everyone she meets and is willing to help them no matter what. She doesn't hold any grudges toward those who have wronged her, especially in regards to Akito, who has physically and emotionally scarred most of the Zodiacs. Despite losing her father at a very young age, her mother in her teens, and even living in a tent for a while, she always has a smile on her face, remaining sweet, hardworking, independent, and positive.

Tohru is also incredibly patient, emotionally intelligent and insightful when it comes to people's feelings, and shows glimpses of wisdom from time to time. She is a very nurturing girl with unconditional love and immense empathy who is willing to help the Sohmas work through their traumas and emotional problems without expecting anything in return. Because of this, Yuki Sohma and Isuzu Sohma can’t help but view Tohru as the loving mother they never had. She is also very protective of her friends; helping them and standing up for them without a second thought, despite her own fears and insecurities. On the other hand, she also is considered to be very spacey, innocent, and naïve, and her overly-trusting nature can make her extremely gullible.

However, Tohru’s self-sacrificing kindness and tendency to put other's needs before her own has caused her to neglect herself to the point of misery, and she obsessively sidelines her own needs and problems; ostensibly because she wants to take care of her friends, but really because she can’t face her own trauma. Behind her cheerful personality, she has serious self-esteem issues and a tendency to hide her true feelings of worry, fear, and hurt, and instead projects her usual cheerful exterior to give emotional support to the people around her and to not make them think lesser of her. She has great difficulty with standing up for herself and never says a word of complaint, even if others treat her badly, because she believes that she doesn’t deserve any kindness for herself.

Tohru is also incredibly fragile, has a deep-rooted fear of being abandoned, and constantly lives in fear of her loved ones disappearing and leaving her alone. After her father’s, Katsuya, death, Tohru became terrified that he was taking Kyoko away and that she didn’t love her because “she didn't resemble her father”, especially since her relatives on her father’s side of the family had commented on how Tohru might be the daughter of another man. Because of this, Tohru started to mimic Katsuya’s overly-polite speech and adapted *Keigo* into her speech—which she uses incorrectly and in situations where it is unnecessary—to keep her mother all to herself. And after Kyoko passes away, Tohru is overcome with fear that all their moments together and her very existence will fade away, so she promises herself to always put her mother first in her heart, never talks about her in the past tense, and develops an over-attachment to photos of her. This shows that Tohru's inability to move on from Kyoko’s death is weighing her down and keeping her from moving on in several aspects of her life.

However, as time goes on, Tohru learns to speak up, make self-serving requests once in a while, and allow other people to help her and feel worthy of that help. She even lowers her guard enough to let her admit all of her insecurities and fears to Kyo, including how she had secretly resented her father for almost “taking” her mother away from her. After gaining the knowledge that Kyo is going to be locked up after graduation and that the Zodiacs will stay by Akito’s side until death, Tohru makes it her goal to break the Zodiacs' curse to free all of them. In the process, she grows more assertive, bold, and embittered towards the circumstances of the curse; she stubbornly argues with Rin that she won’t stop before she succeeds, she doesn’t feel the need to apologize when she gets into a “fight” with Kagura Sohma, and she decides to directly oppose Akito by doing the exact thing she was told to not do. Tohru herself mentions that she will never go along with something she doesn’t agree with.

Tohru later admits that her wish to break the curse isn’t as much of a selfless wish as she would have liked it to be. In reality, she only wants to break the curse for Kyo’s sake, because she refuses to let anyone or anything to take him away from her and because she wants to be together with him, since he had become the most important person to her. Although she feels guilty about it because she fears she’s demeaning her mother's memory by placing a new person in her heart, Tohru learns to live her life while still having a special place for her mother in her heart. And although she can be selfish in wanting to pursue Kyo, she is selfless in wishing him happiness, even if it’s without her. Upon breaking the curse, Tohru remains the self-assured, stubborn, and honest girl she had become, yet the similarly air-headed, kind-hearted, and wise girl she always has been.