Tohru Honda

**Tohru Honda** (Japanese: 本田 透) is the main protagonist of the *Fruits Basket* series. She is the only daughter to the late Kyoko and Katsuya Honda.

Tohru is a 15-year-old 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.

## Appearance

Tohru is a fair-skinned, slim girl of average height who is considered to be quite cute. She has waist-length, straight, brown hair and an eyebrow-length fringe that frames her round, brown eyes. She has two long strands of hair, laid on her shoulders. She usually wears bows in her hair which are often pink or yellow in color, and sometimes they're blue or purple. She either wears a large one in the back or two smaller ones that pull her hair back 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 jacket. She wears 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. 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 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, honest, empathetic, and cheerful girl who sees 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 Cursed Sohmas. 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, remains hardworking, dedicated, independent, and positive. On the other hand, she is considered to be spacey, innocent, and very naïve, and Tohru herself tries to be so nice all the time that she never says a word of complaint even if others treat her badly. She has a bit of a problem with standing up for herself, but as the series goes on, Tohru learns to speak up and make self-serving requests once in a while. Tohru notes that despite how she seems, she can be quite stubborn about doing the right thing and never goes along with something she doesn't agree with. She is also very protective of her friends and family, and has no trouble standing up for them despite her fears.

Despite her clumsy and air-headed personality, Tohru is emotionally intelligent and insightful when it comes to people's feelings, and shows glimpses of wisdom from time to time. According to Yuki Sohma, Tohru is a nurturing girl who is willing to give everything she can without expecting anything in return. Because of this, Yuki, as well as Isuzu Sohma to a certain degree, sees a mother figure in her, while Kisa Sohma views her as an older sister figure. 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; partly 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 project her usual cheerful exterior to give emotional support to the people around her and to not make them think lesser of her. She is also incredibly fragile and constantly lives in fear of losing anyone since she has lost so many people close to her already. Most notably, Tohru has an unhealthy inability to move on from her mother's death; she almost never talks about Kyoko in the past tense, promises herself to always put her first in her heart, and her over-attachment to photos of her; such as treating it as though it really is her, shows that she's still unable to cope with her death.

Tohru's most notable quirk is how she always speaks very politely, which she proudly admits she inherited from her father. She uses polite language incorrectly, to people she's close to, or even in situations where it is unnecessary. However, it is later revealed that Tohru only mimicked her father's, Katsuya, speech patterns and personality traits to remind Kyoko of him after Kyoko's psychological breakdown in the hopes it would keep her mother from leaving her, and due to her father's family's statements that she was probably the daughter of a man her mother had an affair with. She also has a deep-rooted fear of being abandoned because it reminds her of the time Kyoko left her alone in the house to attempt suicide after Katsuya died.

As the series goes on, Tohru grows more confident to tell people what is on her mind, and at one point she even shows all of her "bad" traits to Kyo, such as confessing that she has secretly resented her father for almost "taking" her mother away from her. She becomes embittered towards the circumstances of the curse and even stubbornly argues with Rin that she won't stop before she succeeds. When she gets in a fight with Kagura Sohma, she refuses to apologize and doesn't expect an apology from her either. Tohru later reveals that she doesn't want to free just anyone from the Curse, but Kyo specifically, 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. 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 stubborn and confident girl she had become, yet the similarly kind-hearted, optimistic, and cheerful girl she always has been.

## Plot

Following her mother's death which left her orphaned, Tohru begins living with Shigure, Yuki, and Kyo Sohma due to accidentally setting up a tent on their property. 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.

## See also

* List of anime girls age 15
* Fruits Basket (2019)