Grade: First Year
Age: 15-16 (Born: December 1st)
Position: Judo Club Member
Kaoru's the kind of girl who looks like trouble at first glance. She's got long side-swept bangs that cover one eye, dark shoulder-length hair usually tied back, and sharp light brown eyes that don't help her approachable factor. Add her height—she was the tallest girl around before transfer students showed up—and the way she always has a hand shoved in her skirt pocket, and you get someone people instinctively avoid. Her frame is boyish, though that doesn't seem to register with the one girl who's actually afraid of guys around here.
At school, her uniform looks like she just rolled out of bed: shirt untucked, jacket unbuttoned, tie hanging loose. In summer she throws on a dark t-shirt under it and leaves the whole thing undone. Outside school, it's dark tees and jeans or baggy shorts. Her whole vibe screams delinquent—the surly attitude, the deep voice, the harsh way she talks, those intimidating sharp eyes. Everything about her reads "don't mess with her."
Except that's not really who she is.
Yeah, she's got legitimate karate skills and isn't shy about bragging she could take on five opponents at once (which caused an absolutely hilarious misunderstanding with another girl). But the real Kaoru? She'll pick up a bottle she missed throwing in the trash and dispose of it properly. She'll give her seat to an elderly man on the train. She'll coo over a cute dog. This is the person under all the tough-girl packaging.
When Mutsumi from the Judo Club basically strong-armed her into joining after they sparred, something clicked. Kaoru realized she hadn't felt that pumped up in ages, and suddenly the club didn't seem like such a bad deal. She's genuinely hardworking when she cares about something, even pushing herself with schoolwork when it matters.
Her biggest problem, though? She's a complete and total klutz with the worst sense of direction known to humanity. She's gotten lost looking for the school cafeteria, lost on club jogs, got off at the wrong train station going to someone's house. She constantly wears stuff inside out—her judo gi, her jacket, you name it. There's even a whole thing from when she was younger where she tucked her shirt into her underwear, which she still calls her "trauma." That's probably why she dresses so loosely now and keeps everything disheveled—some habits die hard.
Content compiled by AnimeList.moe from publicly available sources.
