Arisa
Arisa is a former member of a street gang called The Ladies. She broke free from that life after Tohru's mother, Kyoko, helped her escape—and she's been one of Tohru's closest friends ever since. These days she's known for being tough, loud, and quick to throw a punch, though she'll cry in a heartbeat if something happens to her friends. She dresses in long skirts, carries a lead pipe, and speaks with masculine mannerisms in a way that marks her as deliberately rejecting softer femininity.
Her interests are simple: cards, swimming, and keeping the swarms of Yuki fangirls away from Tohru. Fans often note that despite her rough exterior, she and Hana-chan operate as protective parental figures in Tohru's life, with Arisa playing the blunt, direct "father" of the pair.
A lot of her harshness comes from a rough childhood. Her mother abandoned her and her father for another man, and her father spiraled into alcoholism after the rejection. That kind of betrayal hardened her early on—until Tohru and Kyoko showed her what genuine kindness actually looked like. It rewired how she saw the world. What comes across as a "convoluted" personality is really just someone learning to be soft again.
Content compiled by AnimeList.moe from publicly available sources.
