Hiyoko Saionji

**Hiyoko Saionji** is a contestant on Total Drama Japan The Roleplay.

She is the heiress of the Saionji Clan, which is famous for its traditional Japanese dancing. As a promising young member of the world of traditional Japanese dance, she performs often, and even abroad despite being so young. She is popular among young and old male audiences, which is rare in the Japanese dance industry. Crowds of audience members are drawn to her un-high school student-like appearance and cute voice. However, she admits that most people who aren't used to watching traditional dance performances often fall asleep easily.

## Appearance

Hiyoko is a short girl with an extremely petite and young appearance. At first sight, her voice and her appearance doesn't give off the air of a high schooler at all. She has long blonde hair that is generally seen tied into thick and curved twin tails with two yellow-green ribbons and a white cat face accessory pinned in the centre. Her bangs are curled and swept to the right, with two locks of chin length hair curling outwards and framing her face. She has pink cheeks, light skin and large, round and pale orange eyes.

Her clothes consist of a traditional orange furisode kimono with a floral print pattern that consists of white and yellow blossoms, a yellow-green obi sash printed with tiny, darker yellow-green cat head silhouettes tied around her waist, and secured with a bow at the back. Her footwear consists of white zori with orange straps.

## Personality

Hiyoko's cute appearance, voice and (initially) her way of talking give off the impression that she is innocent and childlike. However, in her introduction alone, it is revealed that she is very direct and cruel with a side of malice. She loves squishing ants since they make a satisfying popping noise if done correctly. While not violent towards people (presumably due to her diminutive stature), Hiyoko often shows similar mean behavior towards them. She constantly judges others and patronizes them with rude insults, and sometimes with swearing. She focuses on victims who get the most upset by her behavior and can be expected to not fight back. However, she is quite a level headed person.

Hiyoko feels a sense of superiority, claiming that other people exist to serve her and she doesn't need friends. Because of this, Hiyoko tends to manipulate others to do her bidding. If she doesn't get what she wants or if other people actually talk back to her, she tends to cry crocodile tears loudly like a child. Although her tears are sometimes genuine, her dishonesty makes it difficult to discern when she is experiencing sincere distress and when she is being emotionally manipulative, in a "boy who cried wolf" effect. It seems that she is somewhat spoiled due to being an heiress of her Clan, and as a result, she cannot do some things by herself, like tying her own kimono.

Due to coming from a traditionalist family, Hiyoko loves Japanese traditions and culture very much, and tends to act condescending or even openly insulting towards other cultures. She considers many Japanese things "delicate, refined and high quality". She is especially fond of Japanese cuisine and candies, claiming that foreign ones are too sugary and gross and that the people eating them are gross as well. She has described some other countries as worthless and compared their people to stupid animals, thinking that Japan doesn't need to import from them. As a rarer good trait, however, Hiyoko is willing to protect old traditions in danger of disappearing and she thinks people should take good care of the things close to them. She has also stated that she knows her thinking is old-fashioned, but she doesn't intend to disagree with new directions, just to protect old ones that need to be protected. Despite her traditionalist upbringing, she has a lot of unconventional interests, such as heavy metal and horror movies.

Hiyoko has been through a lot in her childhood due to her status as an heiress, explaining some of her mean personality. With her overbearing grandmother, and jealous people playing lots of cruel and even potentially life-threatening tricks and threats on her, she became very distrustful of other people and seemingly developed her mean personality to defend herself. The only person she trusted and felt safe with was her father, who was different due to being related to the family only through marriage. Due to her past, Hiyoko absolutely hates being deceived.

## Background

Hiyoko was born as the heiress to the Saionji Clan, the head of the school of traditional Japanese dance. Her traditionalist family was very overbearing due to this important role. Making things worse, her chosen bloodline was constantly targeted by conspiracies and assassinations due to jealous people. As a child, she constantly suffered cruel and even life-threatening pranks and threats, like having pins in her shoes, dead mice scattered all over her bed, and poisoned food.

She originally lived with her parents and she loved her father, who was different from her other family due to only being related to the family through marriage. He was very protective of Hiyoko, always staying by her side and happily watching her dancing. However, he had a very low rank in the family, and he wished he could protect her from becoming the head of the family.

Soon, Hiyoko was taken from her parents by her grandmother, who wanted to raise her strictly according to the family traditions for the sake of the Clan's pride. She didn't even let Hiyoko see her parents, supposedly considering her father to be a bad influence on her. While considering her a hag, Hiyoko was grateful to her grandmother for raising her and taking good care of her.

Because of Hiyoko's past, she considers herself part of the noble class and everybody else meager slaves. Hiyoko is said to be a rookie dancer, but it is said that her family has high expectations as she has done many shows overseas. She is also popular with younger audiences, though most of her fans are older males. It's heavily implied that she never had any friends due to growing a mean and distrustful personality in order to defend herself in the past. She attends Golden Light Girl's Institute.

Her grandmother signed Hiyoko up for Total Drama so that the Saionji Clan can be known across millions of viewers. Hiyoko doesn't mind, since it gives her a chance to prove that she's better than all the other contestants.

## Trivia

* Hiyoko has a bit of a sweet tooth; she mostly eats gummies. However, she never eats yellow gummies, due to her dislike of sour food. She also likes eating flower candies and Japanese sweets.