Hotaru Hoshikawa grew up in Tokyo alongside Aoba Suzukaze and Nene Sakura. The three became friends in high school when Aoba and Nene found her unwell in the art club room and helped her out. After graduating together, Hotaru pursued formal illustration training at a fine arts college, even studying abroad in France before coming back to Japan.
She's got short, gray-blonde hair and purple eyes, usually pinned with two small flower clips on one side. In the anime she's typically shown in a yellow shirt and blue cardigan, though the manga varies her wardrobe more.
Personality-wise, Hotaru's the caring, easygoing type—rarely gets angry and loves making puns, even if they're mostly at her own expense. She's genuinely hardworking but has a habit of pushing herself too hard. The downside is she doesn't handle peer pressure well and caves to influence easily. On a lighter note, she actually enjoys sports despite being pretty bad at them.
The catch is her anemia. She gets fatigued and faints fairly often, which means she collapses more easily than most people.
Her name written in kanji could mean "firefly," while her surname Hoshikawa combines the characters for "star" and "river." Fans have noted she resembles Colette Ehle, a character from Shotaro Tokuno's earlier work "Komorebi no Kuni."
Content compiled by AnimeList.moe from publicly available sources.
