Characters / Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid – Kobayashi Household

Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid Main Character Index
Kobayashi Household (Tohru) | Dragons | Humans

The central characters of the series, all of whom take residence at Kobayashi's apartment.

General Tropes

• Family of Choice: The household being this is a major theme of the series, especially the anime adaptation, with Kobayashi serving as the parent figure, Kanna (and later Ilulu) being the kids, and Tohru (who is the wife/mother of the family, or Kanna viewing her as an older sister) having elements of both. None of them are related to one another, driving home the point that they were very fortunate to have met each other.
• Four-Philosophy Ensemble:
  • Kobayashi/Realist: Kobayashi isn't overly sunshine and rainbows, but isn't staunchly opposed to anything. She sees the world and the people around her without any personal bias in the way, and breaks down whatever she confronts with simple logic.
  • Tohru/Cynic: She's confrontational (especially when it involves Kobayashi), skeptical and more likely to object to a topic than accept it (such as Elma's orderly nature and Ilulu's Heel–Face Turn), thinks lowly of other beings that aren't Kobayashi, her friends, or people who are nice to her. It is thanks to Kobayashi that her first instinct isn't to destroy whatever irks her.
  • Kanna/Optimist: Cheerful and playful in spite of her stoic expression. She lacks true personal vices, looks upon the world with (appropriately) child-like wonder, and loves spending time with her friends and parental figure.
  • Ilulu/Apathetic: Spends most of her time sleeping, eating or playing. She's more concerned with settling in her new home and finding a purpose in her life than anything else.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Kobayashi and the three main dragons.
  • Melancholic: Kobayashi. Hard-working, introverted, and compassionate.
  • Sanguine: Tohru. Hyperactive, cheerful, and reckless.
  • Phlegmatic: Kanna. Stoic, sarcastic, and completely lacking in social skills.
  • Choleric: Ilulu. Spiteful, narrow-minded, and very confrontational... at first.
• Masculine–Feminine Gay Couple: Kobayashi is sufficiently androgynous that she is often mistaken for a man, Tohru has a large bust and wears conventionally feminine clothes. Kobayashi goes to work, Tohru stays home and keeps house.
• Nice, Mean, and In-Between: Kobayashi (nice) is a straight-up Nice Girl who's the most down to earth of the cast. Tohru (mean) can be rude and condescending, but is undyingly loyal to Kobayashi. And Kanna (in-between), is usually friendly but can be selfish.
• Town Girls:
  • Tohru as Femme: Head over heels in love and works as a cheerful and affectionate maid.
  • Kanna as Neither: Unconcerned with femininity and isn't particularly tomboyish either.
  • Kobayashi as Butch: Androgynous enough to be confused for a male, and a chronic drinker who hangs out with/shares the same interests as her male coworker.

Kobayashi

Kobayashi

Voiced by: Mutsumi Tamura (Japanese), Leah Clark (English), Lourdes Arruti (Latin American Spanish)

A tomboyish otaku computer programmer for Jigokumeguri.^note Her office is located in either Kitasenju or Takinokuchi, depending on whether you're following the manga or the anime. Due to a hilarious chance meeting, she ends up getting herself a dragon for a maid, opening up for more dragons to begin to move into her life.

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• A-Cup Angst:
  • Kobayashi is flat-chested to the point where a Running Gag is her being mistaken for a man, and she is intensely jealous over the dragon girls' enormous bust sizes. This reaches its zenith in Chapter 104, where all the discussions and comparisons involving the massive chests on Ilulu and Lucoa put her in a majorly foul mood, and she exhibits a Death Glare towards Taketo and Shouta when they're able to easily maintain eye-contact towards her without getting "distracted".
  • In the anime version, after finding out that Ilulu's bust size is the smallest it can be, she makes a face and verbally expresses her desire to have a portion of that.
• Adoptive Peer Parent: She's 25 while Kanna and Ilulu are (physically and mentally) 9 and 16 respectively.
• Alcohol-Induced Idiocy:
  • A Flashback in episode 12/chapter 32, shows a drunk Kobayashi ignoring a watch out for bears sign, then running into an extremely deadly dragon, then climbing on the dragon's back, and finally pulling an extremely dangerous sword out of the dragon's back.
  • A flashback in chapter 122 reveals that in a drunken stupor, she proposed to her company's CEO, Haru, who just so happened to be at the bar she was in, to hire some maids and pestered her all night long in view of her husband, Tsurezure. She was, unsurprisingly, made to write a formal letter of apology.
• The Alcoholic: Frequently drinking beer or sake, or suffering from a hangover as a result. She even met Tohru after a night of hard drinking.
• Alcoholic Parent: She's a Parental Substitute to Kanna and likes to get drunk after work, but her drinking doesn't negatively impact her parenting because of how high-functioning she is.
• Ambiguously Bi: Although she hasn't shown any obvious interest in any male character, she does seem to have a basic interest in men, as she remarks in an annoyed way that she didn't expect her own ding-dong to be the next penis she saw,^note The first being her father's. implying that she wanted to see a penis in more proper conditions at some point in the future. She also envies any dragon with huge "flame-sacs" and the attention they receive from men. However, she has an obvious maid fetish and her relationship with Tohru is full of both subtext and intimacy, and it eventually progresses towards romantic reciprocation, with Kobayashi confessing to Tohru in chapter 97 that she does like her romantically.
• Badass on Paper: Over the course of the series she has safely handled a weapon that Mind Rapes anyone that touches it, made a violent dragon her personal servant who works for no pay, talked down beings infinitely more powerful than her, and aced a high ranking mage exam. Despite this, she is a completely ordinary computer programmer with no special abilities or magical power to speak of.
• Badass Pacifist: In the anime, she manages to drive Tohru's father away by giving him a "The Reason You Suck" Speech for not respecting his daughter's wishes; this was all after he nearly blasted her head off with magic and scared her straight. She does this again in chapter 69 with Kanna’s father for treating his daughter as nothing but a potential weapon.
• Batman Gambit: She organizes the downfall of the Dragon Slayer subgroup just by having Tohru falsely claim to be one of the weaker members of the Chaos Faction, all while rescuing Elma from her Arranged Marriage. Since most dragons wouldn't be caught dead downplaying their own strength and are very gullible by nature, the fact that they're unable to subdue her would make them look worthless as an ally in the eyes of the other subgroups and they'd be subsumed in order to survive.
• Beady-Eyed Loser: She's an alcoholic loner with a Friendless Background and a (relatively speaking) frumpy appearance. Her beady eyes show just how apathetic she is about the above.
• Benevolent Boss:
  • As much as she gets annoyed with Tohru, Kobayashi treats her very nicely and views her as one of her greatest companions.
  • She's very patient with Elma who's still learning to handle office and programming tasks when they meet. Elma develops a deep respect for Kobayashi because of this.
• Beware the Nice Ones:
  • She got her boss fired for abuse of power by secretly recording him foisting his work on everyone and sending it to the company president.
  • She's musters the courage to talk down Tohru's father, an ancient dragon that could evaporate her on sight, and breaks through to him to call off his seizing of Tohru.
• Boss's Unfavorite Employee: Kobayashi's superior would often hoist all his work on her and yell at her for the slightest mistake despite her being the most competent person in their department due to his sexist views on women in the workplace. She got him fired by recording his rants and sending them to the company president.
• Brought Down to Normal: She used her own magic potential to channel all of Kanna's stored power into a new dragon ball to defeat Azad in battle, something that he notes would forever remove her ability to perform magic. Given that she had only ever used one spell beforehand and didn't have any use for it in her daily life, she didn't consider it to be much of a loss. Ends up being subverted when Chapter 112 reveals that losing her magic potential allowed her to absorb the superior power of the Holy Sword.
• Butch Lesbian: (Or butch bi?) Her personality, attitude and interests resemble that of stereotypical male otaku, and her appearance is rather masculine relative to the cute and feminine dragons. The kicker comes in chapter 97 when she confesses to Tohru that she likes her romantically.
• Can't Hold Her Liquor: She gets drunk very easily, which often results in maid-related rants. Her tolerance for alcohol is so low that any magical potion containing alcohol will have its effects nullified since Kobayashi will be too drunk for it to work. In Elma's Office Lady Diary, Tohru mentions that it's taking a toll on her health... girl's just not built for liquor.
• Cat Girl: Due to some special medicine that Tohru got for her when she had a fever, she ends up sprouting cat ears and whiskers. They go away after about half a day.
• Celibate Hero: She isn't really interested in romance, at least towards any of the characters shown. Nor is she sexually attracted to anyone. Though this slowly changes, culminating in her revealing that she's developing romantic feelings towards Tohru in chapter 97.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: In spite of her stoic behavior, she cannot bear to see someone in need if she can do anything about it and she'll put in every effort she can possibly muster to help. Her inability to reject the promise she made to Tohru after seeing her misery ultimately kicks off the plot. In general, she seems to always go out of her way to help those around her when they need it, even at her own inconvenience.
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe: Inverted - when she finds Tohru for the first time, she's been pierced by a holy sword which will destroy the mind of a mortal who touches it. However, Kobayashi's lack of faith (and maybe helped by her drunk mindset) allows her to draw the huge sword with no harm.
• Closet Geek: She hides her otaku-level love of maids from most of her coworkers, aside from her friend and fellow otaku Takiya.
• Contrasting Sequel Main Character: Kobayashi is a contrast to her predecessor Kaoru from I Can't Understand What My Husband Is Saying. Both are Office Ladies who work at a company. Appearance, Kaoru has a long blonde hair (once purple) and is noticeably bustier, while Kobayashi has a short orange hair tied in a small ponytail and is flat-chested. Kaoru is a stereotypical Office Lady, while Kobayashi is a stereotypical Salaryman who dresses as a male office worker and is a computer programmer. Likewise, Kaoru likes her duties and has a Benevolent Boss, while Kobayashi's approach as one is a mixed bag at the very least (initially), due to her boss's Bad Boss abusive attiude. Kaoru is Happily Married to Hajime, who is virtually her opposite in many ways, while Kobayashi is unmarried and a bachelorette.
• Cosplay: She very much likes cosplay, but never did so herself as she felt she wasn't attractive enough to make the costumes work. Which like with feminine clothing is why she wears only men's clothing.
• Covert Pervert: When drunk, Kobayashi will often make Tohru strip (or forcefully strip her). In their first meeting, she even asked if she could fondle Tohru's breast.
• *Crack!* "Oh, My Back!": Due to her Workaholic mentality and frequent experiences with being swamped in excess work, she's developed chronic back pain from sitting in a crappy office chair without getting up for hours on end, with Elma eventually noticing that she has bad sitting posture that makes it even worse. Plenty of gags and scenarios revolve around said pain, such as learning that riding a dragon-form Tohru without any support is a bad idea, trying to stretch and doubling over, or looking for various cures for relieving said problem.
• Cursed with Awesome: Losing all of her magic abilities is revealed to be this in Chapter 112. While she may never be able to use traditional magic again, Telne surmises that when she dried her magic abilities the Sword's essence took its place and even changed its divine essence to that of Kobayashi's own essence. So not only does she has access to all the power of a God's weapon that grants her superhuman abilities, but it even bypaces the resistances of divine beings like Telne since it's no longer divine power. Losing her magic potential is a pretty minor trade-off to have over ownership over god-level power.
• Curtains Match the Window: Kobayashi has matching reddish-pink hair and eyes.
• Deadpan Snarker: The deadpan part is prominent all the time, though she will snark from time to time (usually in regards to Tohru).
• Death Glare: On occasion whenever she wants a point to be made, and it's made very effective by her dead-fish eyes. Even Tohru, who finds Kobayashi's eyes to be one of her many attractive traits, admits that her glare is unsettling.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: She taunts Tohru's father with the fact that he can't kill her when she tries to stop him from taking Tohru home. It nearly turns into a case of Do Not Taunt Cthulhu, but Tohru intervenes when her father tries to attack. She would later repeat this with Kanna's father, cursing him out for how horrible of a parent he was.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: She ends up knocking out Kanna's father with a massive energy ball attack in chapter 77.
• Distracted by the Sexy: She'll normally Ignore the Fanservice, but getting her sex swapped suddenly makes Kobayashi ultra-sensitive to the overt displays of freedom her roommates take for granted. Returns with a vengeance when Tohru takes the maid uniform off when trying to take advantage of Kobayashi's thingy.
• Do Not Taunt Cthulhu: Kobayashi has a bad habit of antagonizing powerful dragons like Tohru's father and Clemene, assuming that they won't retaliate because there's a law forbidding them from interfering with humans on Earth. She's been proven wrong both times, and would have been killed both times had Tohru not intervened.
• Dope Slap: She flicks Elma on the forehead for becoming competitive with her at work, as a misguided attempt to save her due to misinterpreting the meaning of "pillar of the office" (Elma thought pillar as in hitobashira ("human-pillar"), rather than support as Takiya meant).^note This mistake in definition was lost a little in the Seven Seas release as Takiya called Kobayashi a "martyr" in that one, which can mean "constant sufferer", but that isn't the first definition most people think of for the word.
• Dragon Rider: She rides Tohru on several occasions (and has ridden on Kanna in the anime when she confronts Tohru's father), though she refuses to use her to commute to work (because it's uncomfortable and would destroy her back).
• Establishing Character Moment: The first scene of the series lays out several fundamentals of Kobayashi's character; she lives in a modest, not-very-cared-for apartment by herself, is reeling from a nasty hangover and has to rush out to get to her office job. And upon seeing the living-breathing dragon staring down her front entrance, she experiences a brief moment of shock before taking the whole situation in stride.
• Fantastically Indifferent: She doesn't even blink when Elma comes bursting through the wall of her apartment since she's fully adapted to the whole "dragons from another world" thing by that point.
• Fiery Redhead: Zigzagged. When she's sober, Kobayashi is a sane, emotionally reserved, but friendly person. Once she's drunk, she shows her true personality, where she becomes very passionate about maids, talks very loudly and about nerd things, and has a tendency to strip Tohru naked.
• Forced Transformation:
  • Her first interaction with Ilulu ends with the latter using magic to give Kobayashi a penis.
  • Some medicine that Tohru gives Kobayashi causes cat ears and a tail to sprout from the latter, due to the medicine being designed for beast-folk. Kobayashi is not thrilled having to miss work because of this.
• Friend to All Children: Her first interactions with Kanna establish a gentler and maternal side to Kobayashi that shows around other kids. It also lets her bond with Ilulu even after their hectic first meeting.
• Friendless Background: She grew up staying at home playing video games, while her parents were always busy working. As an adult, she used to live alone with only one friend she spent evenings getting drunk with. While she never resents her life, it took Tohru's arrival for her to realize how empty it was before.
• Frozen Dinner of Loneliness: She lived alone, usually prepared frozen food and had a bored life until Tohru appeared. This trait repeats when Tohru leaves her and Kanna, so Kobayashi has to prepare frozen food since she can't prepare food like Tohru until the latter returns.
• Functional Addict: She might drink a lot, but she still manages to be a highly competent programmer and a caring guardian for Kanna.
• Gamer Chick: She owns several game consoles (though she's never shown playing any of them). She also mentioned that she spent most of her childhood playing games.
• Gender Bender: Ilulu gives her a male body in chapter 36 of the manga, although she's already so androgynous that nobody (save Tohru) could tell the difference. She changes back at the end of the next chapter. Humorously, nobody ever actually calls her new genitals as they are; Kobayashi just refers to it as 'that' and Tohru just says 'one of those'.
• Gender Is No Object: The fact that Kobayashi is female has little incidence on the plot other than for gags or preference. When Ilulu switches her sex, the only thing that accompanies the genital change is that her hip measurements get smaller. Literally nothing else changes physically, and no one else, aside from Tohru eventually, notices anything is off. Her mind is a different matter, but Kobayashi has enough self control to outlast the spell.
• Good Parents: They may not be related by blood, but Kobayashi is certainly a loving caregiver to Kanna, providing her with the guidance and affection that's been missing her entire life. Just being present in Kanna's life makes her better than Kanna's birth parents.
• Grin of Audacity: Gives one right before she verbally flips off Tohru's father. Doubles as O.O.C. Is Serious Business since she's normally The Stoic.
• Guile Heroine: A combination of this and Indy Ploy but she has had a few times of mediating a dangerous situation such as during the Dragon Ball arc where she is able to stop the two dragon armies from fighting long enough for Kanna to get Azad to admit his plans, or later during the Arranged Marriage arc where she convinces Telne to let her, or more specifically Tohru, do a Death Or Glory attack that led to Telne's defeat.
• Horrifying the Horror: A Downplayed but humorous example; Tohru seeing how Kobayashi acts while drunk prompted her to call humans "terrifying".
• I Just Want to Have Friends: When she first met Tohru, in a drunken stupor, she wonders to Tohru why she lives alone.
• Incompatible Orientation: Tohru and Ilulu are in love with Kobayashi, while Elma admits she wouldn't be opposed to a relationship. That said, Kobayashi herself has indicated she doesn't swing that way. That said, in the dub, she explicitly says she's not into girls, but only tells Tohru that she's a girl in the subs, so the jury's still out on how accurate this one is. Turns out the orientation isn't so incompatible after all, as Kobayashi tells Tohru in chapter 97 that she does or at least has come to like her romantically.
• Ineffectual Loner: While she isn't any ineffectual (in fact, it's quite the opposite as it's her workforce that's reliant on her as she's the most capable one), meeting Tohru made her realize how empty her life was before they met. Played straight in the household when Tohru was taken back to the other world, forcing her to take care of the household by herself on top of working full time, leading to the house becoming messier, making her realize that she does need Tohru.
• Intergenerational Friendship: She's 26 and Georgie is in her teens, yet the two of them are "comrades" due to their shared love of maids.
• Interspecies Adoption: She acts as a mother figure for the young dragon Kanna, and (to a lesser extent) Ilulu.
• Ink-Suit Actor: Mutsumi Tamura on her own already resembles Kobayashi to an uncanny degree, right down to that department, and can basically pass for a live-action version when she's in costume.
• In Vino Veritas: Reveals her true, rambunctious personality when drunk (which happens rather easily). Her maid otaku nature comes out, she becomes very loud, gets really horny around Tohru, and argues about nerd things.
• It Began with a Twist of Fate: Her life changed forever, when she drunkenly came across a dragon impaled with a sword that was still sticking out of her back, and pulled the sword out of the dragon's back.
• Kirk Summation: After Azad says that there's nothing wrong with forcing a brainwashed Kimun to attack Kanna since dragons don't understand affection, she points out the obvious: that he's in denial since his plan hinged on Kanna's desire for affection from her father.
• The Lad-ette: She not only looks that way physically, but her personality and interests are much more stereotypical of Japanese men.
• Lady Looks Like a Dude: Both Tohru and Ilulu mistook her for a man when they first meet. Her lack of noticeable breasts and androgynous style of dress, not to mention her attitude and (in the anime) a rather deep-sounding voice, are the reasons for this.
• Last-Name Basis: She is only ever referred to by her surname. Although, if the text on her business card from Chapter 8 is accurate, her given name is written with characters that can be read "Meiko".
• Like a Daughter to Me: She develops this kind of relationship with Kanna in spite of being decades (if not centuries) younger than the diminutive girl dragon. In formal terms, she's Kanna's legal guardian, and to simplify things, she's Kanna's mom to their friends and acquaintances.
• Ma'am Shock: She doesn't like being referred to as Kanna's mother since it makes her feel old, especially given that her age and that of Kanna's human form (A 16-year difference) don't quite add up to it.
• Magitek: Jigokumeguri's programming runs on a magical syntax, meaning she regularly works with and is adapt with a magic coding language.
• Mama Bear: Having come to view Kanna as her own child, she's furious when she finds out that Kimun merely views her as a war asset instead of a daughter.
• Mistaken for Badass: All the mages at Shouta's exam end up mistaking her for being some kind of archmage due to the fact that she got first place in both the written and practical parts of the test (the former part because the coding language she uses at work is based off of the series' magic system, and the latter because she had Tohru pretending to be her familiar). And when they tried to sense her magical powers, they ended up sensing Tohru instead, furthering the misconception.
• Morality Pet: For Tohru. While not much is seen of what Tohru was like prior to them meeting, it's clear that she was nowhere near as nice as she is in the present.
• Muggle Foster Parents: She fills this role for Kanna and (to a lesser extent) Ilulu, filling the void of a stable parental figure that they lost (for Ilulu) or never had (for Kanna).
• Muggle with a Degree in Magic: While she never personally studied magic, Kobayashi demonstrated herself to be a master of magical theory in chapter 65 when she got first place on a high ranking magic exam. This is due to the fact that the magic system is almost identical to the programming languages she uses at her job (the former having been used as the basis for the latter In-Universe).
• Nice Girl: She's a freakin' treasure, one of the nicest, even-minded and friendliest people you'll find in an anime... when she's sober; when she's not, her voice goes a couple of decibels up and she gets aggressively talkative and pushy about maids in particular.
• "No. Just… No" Reaction: Tohru does things that Kobayashi has to shut down immediately. These include trying to feed Kobayashi meat from her own tail and asking to be branded as Kobayashi's slave.
• Non-Standard Character Design: She has much smaller irises than the rest of the cast.
• Noodle Incident: She and Kanna get into some kind of fight offscreen, and the details of how and why are never clarified other than it causing Kanna to run away in anger. The two of them do show regret over how they acted though; Kanna in particular feels bad for running away to another country instead of properly resolving the issue with Kobayashi.
• Oblivious to Love: Invoked. She argues that she doesn't quite know how to respond to being loved or wanted, as she'd never experienced such a thing before Tohru came into her life; still, she reassures Tohru that she's both willing and receptive to the maid dragon's affections.
• Oh, Crap!: This happens a few times with Kobayashi:
  • Upon realizing that the chocolate that Kanna offered her a piece of is the Valentine's chocolate that Tohru laced with a Love Potion. Though it turns out to have actually been some liquor chocolates that made her drunk.
  • After discovering that the big guy that shared a drink with her is actually Kanna's father.
  • Her reaction◊ to seeing Tohru in dragon form staring back at her◊, while baring her teeth◊ in the first episode, before Tohru transforms into a human form.
• One of the Boys: According to Takiya, she's just one of the guys around the office.
• Only Has Same-Sex Admirers: Tohru is obviously in love with her, but Elma is completely open to a relationship with her, and even Ilulu begins to fall for her as well. Her male friend, Takiya, is just her platonic best friend, nothing more.
• Only Sane Man: By virtue of being a human living with two and later three dragons in her house. She often has to reign in the dragon characters' destructive tendencies and obliviousness to human customs.
• Otaku:
  • While she has an especially deep interest in maids, she has elements of the typical manga and video game otaku as well. She's got firm ideas on the Tsundere archetype, a good amount of manga on her bookshelf, and a ton of video games to play.
  • In the manga Tohru offers to play outside with Kanna since she's a kid. Kobayashi notes to herself in response to this that when she was a kid she just sat around and played Harvest Moon all the time. The anime repeats the same line in spirit, albeit without the Harvest Moon reference.
• Otaku Surrogate: She's the female lead of a male-oriented manga who's obsessed with maids (though she prefers real maids over the kind typically seen in anime, as she drunkenly derides the latter as "just cosplay"). Kobayashi also has many traits you'd expect from a male protagonist (masculine looks, stoic but hard-drinking personality, high career status in a male-dominated work environment, female admirers), likely to make her more relatable to male readers in general.
• Parental Substitute: She acts as Kanna's legal guardian despite Kanna being far older than her. Chapter 34/Episode 9 goes into this relationship in depth, explaining that Kanna fully views her as a mother. Later on, she also takes in Ilulu.
• Parents as People: Opting into the role of Kanna's guardian puts her in a number of situations that she's not fully equipped for. Part of this stems from her and Kanna both having vastly different upbringings, both personality-wise and as a human and dragon respectively.
  • When shopping for Kanna's school supplies, it takes a bit for Kobayashi to realize that Kanna wants something cute and personable compared to the very textbook-style supplies Kobayashi used as a kid. She even notes with Tohru that she's more used to conforming to school customs than the kids Kanna's age.
  • In the weeks leading up Kanna's Sports Festival, Kobayashi tells Kanna that work wouldn't allow her to make it, something she has experience in with her own parents. However, when she remembers the reason Kanna is in her world in the first place —which was acting out in a bid for attention from her own neglectful family—, she pulls off consecutive all-nighters in order to be ahead of her work so that she can make it to the festival.
• Platonic Life-Partners: Her relationship with Takiya is that of a co-worker, drinking buddy, way to vent her Closet Geek tendencies, and, for a long time, Only Friend. Their relationship ends there, no fraternization.
• Protectorate: Kobayashi is probably the single safest person on Earth, given that she has high ranking dragons from both factions that value her safety (primarily Tohru and Elma). This even gets played for laughs in Elma's Office Lady Diary when Elma "protects" her during a mixer she didn't want to be at by preventing any of the guys from interacting with her directly.
• Refusal of the Call: She eventually finds herself meeting with the holy sword that pierced Tohru, which took residence in her soul and gained sentience, with said entity offering the chance for her to become an incredibly powerful dragon-slaying hero. Her response to the offer was instant refusal, each time it was offered, as becoming powerful or special isn't something she cares for.
• The Reliable One: Pretty much her entire department at work relies on her, whether it be helping them with their projects or covering for the work they're unable to do. She even bears the weight of covering for and training the newcomer Elma all on her own.
• Rose-Haired Sweetie: A Nice Girl with reddish pink hair.
• Salaryman: She works as a computer programmer, and dresses more like a male officer worker rather than a typical Office Lady.
• Seen It All: Living with dragons completely numbs her to the more outlandish incidents of her daily life. Elma bursting through her wall for example elicits nothing more than Dull Surprise and an exasperated look.
• Serious Business:
  • Maids. It comes out in full when she's drunk, and she gets very forceful on the topic with Tohru. It's originally what brought her and Takiya together. In fact, it's so serious that Tohru discarding her uniform completely kills Kobayashi's hard on when the former slips her an aphrodisiac.
  • She also feels this way about the food service industry, having previously worked in a restaurant before becoming a programmer.
• Single-Target Sexuality: Maids. She has a thing for maids and only maids. For Kobayashi, it isn't a matter of being interested in men or women. It's about whether or not you're a maid. Trying to seduce her if you're not dressed like a maid will not work no matter how large your boobs are, and Tohru's attempt to sleep with Kobayashi during the time when the latter had a male body would've worked if she hadn't taken off her maid uniform beforehand to do it.
• She Cleans Up Nicely:
  • She tries on Tohru's maid outfit at one point, and their friends all agree she actually looks pretty good in it.
  • Chapter 21 of Elma's Office Lady Diary has her look pretty after Wakita fixes her makeup and changes her into more feminine clothes. Of course, Kobayashi prefers her regular look over Wakita's makeover.
  • Tohru tries to trick Kobayashi into marrying her, even having a full bridal dress prepared for the latter. Kobayashi looks pretty good in it too.
• Ship Tease: She has romantic moments with Tohru in the anime, though it's much less so in the manga.
• Shipper on Deck:
  • Chapter 63 implies that she supports Ilulu's feelings for Taketo.
  • Its shown a few times that she wants to see Tohru and Elma become close friends again.
• Standing Between the Enemies: Kobayashi does this in both the anime and the manga, though they are under vastly different circumstances. In the season one finale, she gets between Tohru and her father when they come to blows over whether the latter can stay on Earth. In the manga, she and Tohru arrive in between the Chaos and Harmony factions to reveal the fact that Azad was manipulating them into killing each other.
• The Stoic: Downplayed. She tends to keep her emotions to herself (as long as she's not drunk), but she's far from unflappable. Though she smiles more often as the series progresses.
• Straight Man and Wise Guy: Is the straight man to Tohru's wise guy. Hard not to be given Tohru is a dragon getting used to how things work in the human world.
• Struggling Single Mother: She was shown to be emotionally drained after Tohru being taken back to the other world forced her to have to take care of Kanna by herself on top of working full time. The apartment also gets progressively messier during the accompanying montage.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Downplayed. Kobayashi isn't cold, just emotionally stoic. She's actually an incredibly sweet and reliable person.
• Super-Empowering: The holy sword that she saved Tohru from ended up taking residence in her soul, granting her access to its power as well as the ability to perform magic (though she burned through all her magic at once to take down a brainwashed Kimun).
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: As stated in Elma's Office Lady Diary, Kobayashi has some levels of hepatic compromise apparently due to her drinking, so Tohru tells Elma that she'll not cook anything that goes with sake for Kobayashi. That means that on top of being bad at drinking, it's actually damaging her health.
• Talking the Monster to Death: She delivers two really good speeches to Damocles in the season 1 finale, with her finally getting through to him with the second speech.
• Team Dad: Despite being a woman, she's this to her household because she is the androgynous bread-winner and the one reining in the dragon-culture-related shenanigans. Kanna even gives her a present on Father's Day instead of Mother's Day in the anime.
• That Was Not a Dream: Chapter 2/episode 1 has Kobayashi recounting a dream, where she climbs a mountain, only to meet and start talking to a dragon, while Tohru reveals that the events really did happen, as she was the dragon.
• This Is Wrong on So Many Levels!: When Elma begins trying to get competitive with her at work, Kobayashi quickly kicks her off her high-horse by arguing that first, by doing so, Elma's being disrespectful towards Kobayashi, who is her senior at work and is miles more experienced at their job; second, that Kobayashi has been covering Elma's share of work while she catches up, and by trying to stir competition, Elma is being ungrateful towards Kobayashi's efforts to help her; third, Elma is supposed to do her job and not try to show off at the expense of Kobayashi, who has been nothing but kind towards her. Plus the whole thing only began when Elma wrongfully assumed Kobayashi was going to end up as a Human Sacrifice if she kept working, despite being in a modern environment where none of that is practiced, as explained by Kobayashi. After being told, Elma profusely apologizes to Kobayashi and begins treating her with her due respect.
• Token Human: She's the only bog-standard human in a household of dragons and a sentient weapon.
• Tomboy: According to her, she was always boyish, even when she was a child. She bought a maid costume when she was younger, but thought she looked stupid when she wore it herself.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: The tomboy to Tohru's girly girl, as she looks and sounds androgynous, has much more "guy" interests than girl interests, behaves more like a guy than a girl, likes drinking beer, and is rarely, if at all, seen in feminine clothing.
• Tomboyish Ponytail: Usually wears a quick-to-do ponytail, which reflects her pragmatic nature.
• Tomboyish Voice: In the anime, she has a rather low voice, fitting for someone with a boyish, mature and stoic personality with no time for childish-nonsense.
• Took a Level in Cheerfulness: She became more open with her emotions and started smiling more often once she became accustomed to having Tohru around. It's also shown that she used to be more frustrated at her job; to boot, she argues that she can barely remember how she used to be before Tohru.
• True Sight: Chapter 127 reveals that she's seen Tohru use perception blocking so many times that it no longer works on her, much to Ori's surprise.
• Try to Fit That on a Business Card: Discussed. After getting a promotion at work, Mr. Magatsuchi tries to convince her to take on the role as the area's guardian. Part of the reason she doesn't want the job (aside from the increased work load) is because then her title would be Jigokumeguri Company Chief and Oborozuka Area Guardian • Kobayashi.
• Unfazed Everyman: She takes the mystical dragons wandering around in her life with stride and doesn't really change up her demeanor in response.
• Wax On, Wax Off: Her company's use of magical programming turns out to be training in actual magic. She gets tricked into joining a testing to advance to the fourth highest rank of magicians under the pretense of escorting Shouta to the test and ends up easily placing first in both written and practical portions (though the latter was mostly Tohru's doing).
• Weight Woe: Tohru cooking foods that are high in fat for the cold weather in chapter 51 of Kanna's Daily Life cause her to put on a bit of weight and leave her unable to fit into her pants. Fortunately, a single day of playing with Kanna in the park proves to be a strenuous enough workout to help her lose all the weight.
• What Beautiful Eyes!: Both an Inversion and Played for Laughs. Tohru is enamored with her "dead-fish eyes". And if Takiya's comment in the preview for episode 8 is to be believed, so is a good chunk of the internet.
• What Did I Do Last Night?: How the series starts, with her encountering a mortally-wounded Tohru while drunkenly walking around a mountainside.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: In Chapter 42, it's mentioned that she has no interest in living beyond a normal human lifespan, even though Tohru has offered her (on multiple occasions) the opportunity.
• Words Do Not Make The Magic: Magic requires mana, so Kobayashi is unable to cast spells even though she has a deep understanding of magical theory from her programming background. Of course, this changes when she goes to the other world, which has a Background Magic Field.
• Workaholic: She gets restless if she hasn't done eight hours of work each day.
• Workplace-Acquired Abilities: She is able to ace the written portion of a high ranking mage exam thanks to her experiences as a systems engineer (the programming language her company uses is modeled off of the magic system in question).
• Worthless Foreign Degree: She passes a mage ranking exam with flying colors in chapter 66, but she points out that it isn't something she can put on a resume in the human world.

Tohru

Tohru (Tohru Kobayashi)

Voiced by: Yuki Kuwahara (Japanese), Sarah Wiedenheft (English), Monserrat Aguilar (Latin American Spanish)

"Good morning, Miss Kobayashi!"

The titular dragon maid. After Kobayashi pulled a holy sword out of her and invited her to come stay at her place, she shows up at Kobayashi's apartment the next day and declares that she'll be Kobayashi's maid from now on. She's very much in love with Kobayashi and is somewhat ditzy, but she's a lot more dangerous and destructive than her ditzy demeanor indicates. Back on her home world, Tohru was aligned with the Chaos Faction, being one of their champions.

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See her page for tropes on her.

Kanna Kamui

Kanna Kamui (Kanna Kobayashi)

Voiced by: Maria Naganawa (Japanese), Jad Saxton (English), Susana Moreno (Latin American Spanish)

A young unaligned dragon who was banished to Earth for pulling pranks on her parents. Kobayashi takes her in as a surrogate daughter of sorts. She's generally very soft-spoken, only occasionally having bigger bursts of emotion, and she's fueled by an endless, childlike curiosity for the human world.

She is also the main character of the Spin-Off Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid: Kanna's Daily Life.

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• Abandoned Catch Phrase: She takes to saying "maji yabakune"^note loosely translated as "that's wicked" in the first season of the anime after Tohru tells her that they are magic words to get through most conversations. It's almost completely absent in the second season, with the only time she says it being as part of the On the Next segment for Episode 10 (and even then, she says it in English instead of Japanese) and the OVA.
• The Ace: Regarded as this in school by her peers, excelling in both academics and sports. Being a powerful dragon in disguise probably helps.
• Adaptational Curves: The anime adaptation gave her thicker thighs (although how much thicker varies from scene to scene), possibly to differentiate her further from the Academic Athlete Saikawa. The manga adopted the change as the time went on.
• Affectionate Gesture to the Head: Gets this treatment from Kobayashi quite a fair bit, moreso than Tohru.
• Alliterative Name: Kanna Kamui, later Kanna Kobayashi.
• Animals Hate Her: Her class' pet rabbit is terrified of her due to being able to sense her draconic nature.
• Baby Talk:
  • The official English version of the manga has her pronouncing the letter "R" as a "W" when she appears in Tohru's flashback in Chapter 58.
  • The Latin American Spanish dub, on the other hand, makes her speak with a lower tone compared with the rest of the cast
• Badass Adorable: Kanna holds back more and she's still a child, but she is still a powerful dragon (as demonstrated during her roughhousing with Tohru). It even extends to her dragon form, which despite being huge is quite fluffy.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: When they first are properly introduced to one another, Kanna disliked Kobayashi because she thought Kobayashi "stole" Tohru away. After Kobayashi was able to see that Kanna couldn't go home because she was exiled and needed Tohru, Kobayashi offers Kanna a place in her home to stay. This gesture of kindness had Kanna view Kobayashi as a mother figure.
• Big Damn Heroes: When some gangsters kidnap Chloe and are about to hurt her, Kanna comes to the hideout, in full dragon form. None of the gangsters are willing to pick a fight with her.
• Big Eater: For such a young girl (in dragon years), Kanna does have a huge appetite.
  • When asked to collect bugs as part of a school assignment, she eats all of the bugs she finds.
  • She spends the entire Beach Episode eating progressively larger sea creatures, starting with a crab and working up to a fish that's half as big as her.
  • In the anime, she eats a whole apple in one episode and an enormous pile of rice in another, both in one bite.
  • In a chapter of Kanna's Daily Life where she and Saikawa visit the maid café that Tohru works at, Kanna is able to finish off half of an extra-large parfait that the café challenges customers to eat in 30 minutes in just a matter of seconds, and that's after she just ate a plate of omurice.
• Blood Knight: Kanna's idea of playing with Tohru is a no-holds-barred brawl, and she happily throws herself into a super-powered dodgeball game.
• Breakout Character: By far the most popular character on the show to the point of being the Series Mascot. She managed to get a spin-off manga all to herself, and volume 8 of the main series pretty much revolves around her relationship with her father.
• But Now I Must Go: Chapter 74 of the main manga has her tell Saikawa that she won't be on Earth anymore, but of course it doesn't stick as she returns after Azad is defeated in Chapter 78.
• Calling Parents by Their Name: Downplayed. Kanna always addresses Kobayashi by her last name without any honorifics. Saikawa (who is under the impression that Kobayashi is her biological mother), notes how bizarre this is.
• Centipede's Dilemma: Despite being a dragon who can control electricity, she knows nothing about electrodynamics, since to her she just turns electricity into mana and vice-versa. When she tries using her powers after Kobayashi teaches her the basics, the results are quite... disastrous. And she accidentally puts a static charge on everything in Kobayashi's apartment.
• Characterization Marches On: Her first appearance in the anime shows a Kanna surprisingly expressive, volatile and emotional, even Played for Laughs at one point, exactly the opposite to how she behaves the rest of the series. Even when a flashback in the second season goes even earlier and shows her very toddler years, her personality back then is again portrayed as more similar to her usual self.
• Children Are Innocent: Downplayed; she's much older than most humans and seems to have some knowledge of adult matters, since she angrily calls Kobayashi a "cuckold" and a "slut-in-glasses" when first confronting her. However, regardless of how old she actually is, she is still in every other regard a child, with everyone else being protective towards her.
• Clingy Child: She develops this habit towards Kobayashi and Tohru, though particularly the former. Her clinginess comes from being neglected by her own parents for years, and thus she's always looking for her caretakers to be more affectionate to her, like napping on their laps or wanting to tag along with them to work.
• Compulsory School Age: Played with. Kanna is a dragon, but besides taking the form of an elementary school-age girl, it's also said that she's a child by dragon standards. So she goes to school both to get a better grasp of the human world and because she wants friends.
• Cosmetic Catastrophe: Her first attempt at using makeup doesn't go very well, and she applies so much that she ends up looking like a kabuki actor.
• Creepy Monotone: Her default manner of speaking. She speaks in a constant low tone, except when she's angered.
• Crocodile Tears:
  • She pretended to cry when Saikawa challenged her, saying that she just wanted to be friends. She dropped the act when Saikawa offered her candy.
  • In chapter 89, she does this to rescue Taketo and Ilulu from a group of thugs when Ilulu is too lost in her feelings for Taketo to fight them.
• Cuteness Proximity: Saikawa, and even Kobayashi herself, are often overcome with how cute Kanna is.
• The Cutie: Although she's much more stoic than most examples, she is one of the most absolutely adorable girls ever to exist in anime. Several character In-Universe can't help but comment on it as well.
• Daddy's Girl: Played with, given that the father in question is an androgynous woman instead of a man, but her relationship with Kobayashi definitely fits the trope in spirit. Averted with her actual father, with whom she has an all but nonexistent relationship though he improves significantly after he's defeated by Kobayashi.
• Dad's Off Fighting in the War: Both of Kanna's parents are chaos aligned dragons that take part in the war against the harmony faction. As a result, they usually left her to her own devices and are incredibly neglectful. Her father Kimun doesn't even seem to be able to grasp the concept of a father-daughter bond, instead referring to her as a comrade (note that Kanna isn't even aligned with the chaos faction, or any faction for that matter).
• Does Not Know Her Own Strength: When playing with an infant version of Elma in Elma's Office Lady Diary, Kanna's attempt to softly through her up in the air results in the baby hitting her head on the ceiling. Thankfully, not only was baby Elma not hurt, but also enjoyed it.
• Dragons Are Dinosaurs:
  • Played with. Her dragon form appears to be partially based on modern information on dinosaurs, namely being covered in fuzz and having feathers. That form is also shown to have some sort of beak, similar to those of certain dinosaurs like Stegosaurus and their distant relatives, the modern birds.
  • In one chapter of Kanna's Daily Life, Kanna, while on a field trip to a museum, sees some Compsognathus models at a dinosaur exhibit and assumes that due to their size, they were a weak species of dragons.
• Dub Personality Change: The Latin American Spanish dub makes her express significantly more emotion while talking, although still not too much.
• Dull Surprise: Kanna rarely changes her facial expressions and almost always uses a flat and monotone voice, and she never smiles not matter how happy she is. To put it this way, Kobayashi, who is generally The Stoic, has more facial expressions and inflections in her voice than her, and that's even when she's not drunk. The Latin American Spanish dub downplays this a bit and she is somewhat more aggressive and emotional at times, albeit she still speaks with a flat voice in general.
• Early-Bird Cameo: She shows up near the end of episode 1 when Tohru fires off her Wave-Motion Gun to clear away the clouds. Doubles as Adaptation Expansion, since she mentioned having seen it during her first appearance.
• Early Installment Character-Design Difference: Her horns were a lot longer in her first appearance.
• Elegant Gothic Lolita: Her main outfit is Gothic Lolita with Ainu influences.
• Emotionless Girl: She's the most stoic female character by a wide margin, although not because she lacks emotions, but rather because she's normally very subdued at expressing them.
• Erotic Eating: Sucking on Saikawa's fingers to eat chocolate in the OVA. Cue Saikawa suffering a Cuteness Overload.
• The Exile: Kanna was banished for breaking a "dragon ball" and absorbing its energy and, up until the Chaos faction felt that they might possibly need to use the ball's energy in a battle against the Harmony faction, she wasn't supposed to return until she'd reflected on her actions. Given that this led to her meeting Kobayashi, it's probably the best thing her parents ever did for her.
• Extreme Omnivore: In the anime, when she decides to collect bugs for her summer homework, she noms the bugs and writes down what they taste like. On the whole, her first thoughts upon meeting new creatures seems to be to eat them, as she also does with a butterfly and a crab. This even gets carried over into the manga, with her requesting bee brood and grasshoppers in tsukidani as a possible inclusion to the dinner menu in the main manga, while a good number of jokes in the chapter of Kanna's Daily Life where she attends a firefly viewing event being based around this.
• Family Theme Naming: Both she and her father are named after Ainu deities.
• Farts on Fire: The result of her passing gas in order to cheer up an embarrassed Saikawa after she farted in Kanna's Daily Life.
• Feather Fingers: In her human form, her dragon wings can be used as an extra pair of hands, as seen when she takes a selfie while holding a book and making a peace sign in Kanna's Daily Life.
• Feathered Dragons: Her dragon form is covered in white feathers that are noted to be rather comfortable. At one point in her spin-off, she uses her partially transformed wings as a makeshift down blanket when Saikawa comes down with a fever.
• Finger Poke of Doom: During her adventure in New York City, she takes out a number of thugs just with a simple finger poke.
• Flash Step: When she sees a dodgeball about to hit Saikawa in the head, she moves so quickly to intercept it that it looks like she's teleporting.
• Gamer Chick: She's incredibly knowledgeable of 80's and 90's arcade games due to spending time with Takiya and Fafnir, and she pulled off a 19 chain in Puyo Puyo.
• Gender Flip: Subverted. The original Kanna Kamui was male, but it's stated later on that Kanna is merely named after him.
• Gigantic Adults, Tiny Babies: She's the daughter of Kimun Kamui, who earned the title "Bear-Mountain God" for a good reason. But as a human she just looks like an elementary schooler, and as a dragon she's about half Tohru's size. There is presently no canonical answer as to whether she will grow as large as her father, however.
• Girlish Pigtails: Like Tohru, she also has two very long ones. However Kanna's pigtails have three beads on them, and are actually the ends of her wings, when she is in dragon form.
• Goofy Print Underwear: A Panty Shot in chapter 62 reveals that she has underwear with a silhouette of Cool-Kyou Shinsha's Author Avatar on them.
• Guile Heroine: She has been known to use her wits when dealing with some conflicts, in particular how she befriended Saikawa and how she managed to thwart Azad's plans to instigate her father into fighting a group of Harmony dragons as part of getting his hands on the Dragon Stone.
• Hair-Contrast Duo: White hair to contrast Saikawa's brown hair.
• Happily Adopted: She comes to gladly accept Kobayashi as her caretaker, and the two develop a very strong mother-daughter relationship throughout the series.
• Happy Rain: She loves when it rains. She's named after a storm god after all, and lightning would also be the only way she could recharge her powers in the other world.
• Hates Being Alone:
  • This is the main reason Kanna used to pull the pranks on her parents, as they purportedly have a hands-off approach to parenting and believed in leaving Kanna to her own devices. Thing is, she went too far and they banished her from their presence. When her only means of companionship in their world, Tohru, supposedly died, she was elated when she found out that she had indeed survived and followed her to the human world to try to bring her back. Unsuccessful in this endeavor, powerless and effectively homeless, Kobayashi invites her into her home to live together. This earns Kobayashi a place in her heart.
  • One chapter in Kanna's Daily Life focuses on her fears of being home alone when she wakes up from a nap to discover that Kobayashi and Tohru have not yet returned home.
• Hidden Depths: She's a surprisingly good hairdresser, being able to shape Kobayashi's hair into several cutesy styles.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Kanna is already the shortest character in the series, and her father is positively massive (being twice as tall as Kobayashi).
• I Choose to Stay: Even after making amends with her father, she ultimately decides to stay with Kobayashi since she and Saikawa, as humans, won't last as long as her dragon parents (with her father encouraging her to do so).
• I Just Want to Have Friends: Her entire motivation for wanting to go to school. Her classmates come to love her almost immediately (especially Saikawa) due to a combination of being The Ace and absolutely adorable. This, coupled with Crocodile Tears, is how she breaks Saikawa out of her Tsundere attitude and earns her friendship.
• Image Song: "Maigo no Kaiju" and "Ouchi Kaero" (the latter being shared with Tohru).
• In-Series Nickname: She's called "Tribal Goth-Loli" more than once.
• Informed Attribute: When she first showed up, Kanna was said to love pulling pranks but, outside of her discussing her plans to do one in a Flashback in Chapter 58 and the makeup job she and Saikawa gives Fafnir in Chapter 11 of Kanna's Daily Life, she's never shown doing so. A justification for this is later given when it's revealed that she did so to get attention from her parents. She doesn't have any reason to prank people any more because Kobayashi pays attention to her (while the makeup prank was basically the result of her and Saikawa playing with it).
• Innocent Blue Eyes: Downplayed. She isn't exactly innocent (as her play date with Saikawa showed), but she's far more innocent than the rest of the dragons.
• Interclass Friendship: With Chloe, who's the daughter of a wealthy CEO.
• Kamehame Hadoken: While "playing" with Tohru, she charges a sphere of lightning between her hands and fires it as a beam of energy.
• The Kirk: To Kobayashi's Spock and Tohru's McCoy. While Kanna can have bouts of immaturity that are fitting for her age, she's also often the most composed person in the room, and will comment on Tohru and Kobayashi's quirks more often than not.
• Lecherous Licking: She licks Saikawa's cheek following her team's victory, startling and embarrassing her, though the gesture has different connotations among dragons than it does humans.
• Like a Daughter to Me: Kanna comes to see Kobayashi as her mother figure in spite of Kanna's considerably longer lifetime. Kobayashi is legally Kana's guardian, and she becomes a much needed parental figure for the young dragon girl.
• Like Father, Unlike Son: Kanna is pretty much the exact opposite of her father. She's a tiny, white haired, unaligned dragon who is quiet. He's a large, black haired, chaos aligned dragon who often acts rather affable. Even their names have a Sky/Earth contrast, being named after a storm and mountain deity respectively.
• Living Emotional Crutch: Witnessing Saikawa coming apart from the distress of her leaving, makes Kanna realize that the feeling is mutual. Kanna can never abandon her friends, and she especially cannot ever abandon Saikawa, stating to Azad that she has no intention of leaving the human world behind for her dad's petty war or Azad's manipulations.
• Lost in Translation: During Kanna's initial animosity towards Kobayashi in the Japanese version, she says, "netorare," when claiming Kobayshi seduced Tohru away from her. The English version has Kanna call Kobayashi a cuckold, which doesn't make much sense even if "cuckold" is the closest thing to "netorare" in the English language; while the netorare fetish is about someone whose significant other is taken, a cuckold refers to the one who is "taken from" not the "taker".
• Love Confession: Kanna mentions that she wants to have the same kind of relationship that Kobayashi and Tohru have with Saikawa, who interprets the statement as this.
• Meaningful Name: She's named after an Ainu god, Kanna Kamui.
• Metal Scream: While at Yana's recording studio and trying out death metal for the first time, she gives a scream so epic that it blasts Yana and Saikawa off their feet.
  Yana: She has such a soul shaking scream. It's just like a dragon's roar!
• The Mirror Shows Your True Self: The cover page for the first chapter of Kanna's Daily Life shows her dragon form reflected in a puddle.
• Missing Mom: Her mother is (presumably) alive, but she never shows up on screen and is only referred to in tandem with her father.
• Morality Pet: To Saikawa, as Kanna always brings out the best from her. Before she met Kanna, Saikawa was unapproachable and confrontational towards others, and had no friends whatsoever.
• Mundane Utility: She used her electric powers to charge Saikawa's cellphone and used her horns as poles for a clothes line in Kanna's Daily Life.
• Murder the Hypotenuse: In her introduction, Kanna attempts to force Kobayashi to break up with Tohru, and when that doesn't work she tries to kill her... with hilarious results.
• Mystical White Hair: In her humanoid forms. In the anime, it shades to purple at the tips.
• Mysterious Past: Her past is not really elaborated on, apart from being exiled from her world, and her only friend being dead, or so Kanna thought.
• New Transfer Student: Kanna starts attending elementary school in Chapter 13/Episode 4. The fact that she's a dragon from another world with no legal identity gets solved by Tohru using magic to create the necessary paperwork. While the school setting rarely shows up afterwards in the main series, her new (girl?)friend Saikawa ends up becoming a recurring character.
• No Mouth: Her mouth is often drawn invisible in the manga, especially in her spin-off, and sometimes in the anime.
• Noodle Incident:
  • Outside of one incident that led to her becoming The Exile, and another incident involving bugs, Kanna's pranks towards her parents have not been explicitly revealed.
  • She and Kobayashi get into some kind of fight offscreen, and the details of how and why are never clarified other than it causing Kanna to run away in anger. The two of them do show regret over how they acted though; when Kanna returns home, Kobayashi is asleep at the dining table, implicitly being exhausted from trying to find and reconcile with Kanna.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: Kanna is easily the weakest of the dragons seen in the series, but by human standards she's a Person of Mass Destruction who has probably been alive for centuries. Her classmates all consider her to be The Ace.
• The Noseless: While characters in general have noses that are hard to see, Kanna goes the whole way and doesn't have a visible nose at all.
• Not So Stoic: While she usually carries the same default blank expression, in her debut episode she showed visible shock when Kobayashi guessed she was stuck in the human world, and afterwards she occasionally shows some emotion in special cases.
• Oblivious to Love: She doesn't appear to have a clue of the enormous crush Saikawa harbors for her, seeing her only as a friend.
• Only Friend:
  • According to the dodgeball chapter, Saikawa doesn't have any friends other than her, hence why she values having Kanna around so much.
  • Before she met Kobayashi, Kanna's only friend was Tohru, who was rumored to have died in battle until she revealed that she was still alive, by using her powers to change the weather.
• Parental Neglect: Kanna's parents took a very hands off approach to raising her, under the logic of "dragons grow stronger by themselves". As a result, she started pulling pranks to get attention (which got her exiled). This is why she clings to Kobayashi as a Parental Substitute.
• Partial Transformation: Like Tohru, she assumes a Little Bit Beastly form (though she hides her horns in public), and can manifest her wings to fly without fully transforming. Also, in the first chapter of Kanna's Daily Life, her hand accidentally turns into a dragon claw after hearing that the students were going to be playing dodgeball in PE class.
• Perpetual Frowner: Her default expression, as even when she's happy she never smiles.
• Pintsized Powerhouse: She's the dragon equivalent of an 8-year old girl, yet is powerful enough to tussle with older, stronger dragons like Tohru.
• Platonic Declaration of Love: After finding out that Kobayashi would be attending the sports festival (Parents' Day in the manga), she gives her a hug and tells her she loves her while clearly on the verge of Tears of Joy.
• Post-Stress Overeating: An angry Kanna is seen scarfing down on cream bread following her father's visit.
• Power Cord Tail:
  • Her tail can transform into a wall socket plug for recharging.
  • In the anime, she uses her tail to power a hair dryer after she accidentally spills tea all over her kanji homework.
• The Prankster: Others state that she pulled a lot of pranks, and it ultimately got her banished from the other world. It was mostly to get attention from her parents, as they felt that a dragon needed to learn for herself to grow strong, and thus had a pretty hands-off approach to parenting. Since Kobayashi doesn't share the same strict standard, not much is seen during her stay on Earth. We do get to see her and Saikawa pull a makeup prank on Fafnir in Chapter 11 of Kanna's Daily Life.
• Protectorate: Saikawa is very protective of her. Of course, being a dragon, there isn't really anything on Earth that could threaten her anyways (and even if there was, Saikawa wouldn't be much help).
• Really 700 Years Old: She was already alive before Tohru and Elma (who traveled together for several decades) first met, meaning she's been around for at least a century. However, in dragon time she's really just a child.
• Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: Unlike the other dragons, she is explicitly named after a character from mythology rather than being said character.
• Sealed Inside a Person-Shaped Can: For a good chunk of the series, she has a large amount of mana from a 'dragon ball' that she broke as a prank sealed inside her. She can't actually use it though, due to it being compressed (Kobayashi compares it to an unopened zip file).
• Shock and Awe: Draws power from electricity, which she can also generate and shoot out. Her tail can transform into a wall socket plug for recharging. This is a reference to the Ainu god she's named after, who rules over thunder and lightning.
• Signature Headgear: Wears a hairband with a bow, and has part of her hair threaded through two sets of three big beads, with her using one to remake the Dragon Ball that she destroyed.
• Sir Swearsalot:
  • When upset, she can have a rather dirty mouth, as seen when introduced to her.
    "I know you've seduced her with your body... you cuckold! You slut-in-glasses!"
  • In the Latin American Spanish dub, this was edited to Kanna calling Kobayashi "a pervert" instead. To be fair, there's no valid Spanish translation for "cuckold" anyway.
• Sleepyhead: Since she's a young child (by dragon standards anyways), she can often be seen taking naps in the background.
• Something Only They Would Say: After rescuing Chloe in dragon form, she reveals her identity by saying "Chloe, let's go home", the exact same thing she had said right before Chloe was kidnapped.
• Sore Loser: In Chapter 12 of Kanna's Daily Life, she does not take losing Game of Life to Elma well, when she moves from second place, to first place (via last place), Kanna responds by first accusing Elma of cheating. Then punching her in the stomach, followed by calling her a brat and finally accusing Elma of starting fights with Tohru.
• Start My Own: Kanna has very little interest in joining any of the established dragon factions due to the war being responsible for her parents' neglect. Instead, she started the "Kanna Faction".
• The Stoic: Subverted; she is actually very emotive, but this can be hard to notice at first since she rarely changes her facial expression and almost always uses a flat and monotone voice.
• Token Mini-Moe: She's the only child among the dragon characters.
• Tongue-Tied: Telne teaches her how to perform Perspective Magic in Chapter 114 in exchange for some instant ramen (though she she notes that Kanna lacks both the strength and means to use it), but casts a spell to prevent her from actually revealing that knowledge to anyone else.
• Troubling Unchild Like Behavior: When shopping for school supplies, Kanna picks a classic red backpack, something seemingly mundane as Kobayashi notes. But then Tohru assesses that she got it because it resembles human blood, which Kanna affirms.
• The Ugly Guy's Hot Daughter: You probably would never be able to guess that an adorable little girl like her was the daughter of someone like Kimun from looks alone. Even their dragon forms have absolutely nothing in common (he resembles a bear while she's more avian), though he seems to think that they have identical fur.
• Unishment: Her parents banished her for pulling pranks, which led to her meeting Kobayashi. Given the fact that the only reason she was pulling pranks was so they'd actually pay attention to her, it's probably the nicest thing they ever did.
• Verbal Tic: She's prone to using "Oh!" in almost any situation.
• Vocal Dissonance: Like Tohru, her voice stays the same regardless of what form she's in, meaning she still sounds like a child even while in the form of a two-story tall dragon.
• Vocal Evolution: Present in the English dub. Her first appearance has her sound a lot more expressive than how she's usually potrayed, only for the performance to settle into her normal, stoic disposition as the show progresses. Season 2 adds a subtle change to her enunciation to make her sound more like a young child.
• Weather Manipulation: Chapter 41 of Kanna's Daily Life shows her combining her Breath Weapon (which she can only use in dragon form) with Tohru's Breath Weapon to create a storm.
• "Well Done, Daughter!" Girl:
  • Tohru mentions to Kobayashi that Kanna would often pull pranks to get her parents' attention, going so far as to angrily agree to help the Chaos faction (of which her father is part of) make a "dragon ball" as part of their battle against the Harmony faction in hopes that her father will finally give her some sort of praise.
  • She exhibits this attitude with Kobayashi as well, wanting the latter to praise and spoil her whenever possible. She's particularly upset when Kobayashi can't make it to her sports festival because of work, prompting Kobayashi to surprise her by doing double shifts to attend.
• When She Smiles: The rare times she genuinely smiles, such as when tasting Tohru's maid cafe curry, are a true sight to behold.
• Willfully Weak: Kanna could have easily won several of the events during the sports festival by herself (most notably in tug of war), but held herself back to the abilities of a normal 8 year old girl since she was more interested in competing alongside her classmates than actually winning. The only time she went even a fraction above that was in the relay race because she didn't want Saikawa to feel like she cost their class victory.
• Wimp Fight: Kanna's attempt to kill Kobayashi amounts to ineffectually pounding on her chest due to being low on power. She does this again to Kobayashi in Chapter 25 of Kanna's Daily Life for telling her that she has white skin when she failed in getting a tan (the human way; she forgot that, as a dragon, she could just change her skin color willingly).
• Worf Had the Flu:
  • Her attempt at killing Kobayashi failed miserably, and hilariously, thanks to her lack of power. When she regained it, she shows that she could have killed her easily if she were fresh.
  • Chapter 16 in Kanna's Daily Life has her in this situation, with her taking part in a PE class despite not getting any sleep/oversleeping the previous night^note depending on the translation, not having any breakfast, and not being able to recharge her mana due to her not wanting to be late for school.
• Yellow Lightning, Blue Lightning: Her lightning is colored yellow in the anime.
• You Are Too Late: The season 1 finale has her noticing Damocles appearing to take Tohru back home and tries to rush to Tohru's aide. However, by the time she gets to his location, they have already left for the dragon world.

Ilulu (UNMARKED SPOILERS)

Warning! Ilulu's whole character is a very strong case of both a Walking Spoiler and Late-Arrival Spoiler, as not only is her backstory integral to talking about her character, the anime doesn't even bother trying to hide she gets a Heel–Face Turn due to said backstory and Kobayashi's kindness, so any spoilers from her introduction arc will be unmarked.

Ilulu

Voiced by: Tomomi Mineuchi (Japanese), Kristi Rothrock (English), Azul Valadez (Latin American Spanish)

An extremist Chaos-aligned dragon who loves destruction. She has poor control over her shapeshifting, resulting in a petite body with disproportionate measurements and draconic features. Eventually moves into Kobayashi's household after having a Heel–Face Turn.

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• Adaptational Badass: In the manga, she was shown having difficutly learning the recognition inhibition spell from Tohru, while in the anime she's mentioned to have learned it by herself offscreen before she even got her job at the candy store.
• Adaptational Late Appearance: She never shows up in the first season of the anime despite it covering several chapters that featured her. This gets lampshaded in the afterword for volume 8, where she's shown badgering the author about whether or not she'll get to show up in the second season (for the record, the answer is yes).
• Adaptational Modesty: In the anime Ilulu is drawn to look somewhat older than she appears in the manga, to alleviate some of the controversy that comes from sexualizing such a young-looking character.
• Affectionate Gesture to the Head: Kobayashi pets her head to comfort her when she gets worried about starting her part-time job. Taketo also does twice, once when he hears why she's so adamant about finding the owner of an abandoned doll, and again when she comes into work after having been out sick (read: in heat).
• Always Someone Better: Tohru is basically this to her. The best example is when she fights Tohru but despite inflicting what should be lethal damage, can't actually get more than an "Ouch" from her, before getting stomped in one hit once Tohru starts fighting back. Then when she moves in with Kobayashi, it becomes clear Tohru also has the advantage in fitting in with humans.
• Arc Villain: For volume 4 of the manga.
• Ax-Crazy: Elma describes her as an extremist chaos dragon who loves to destroy things. She's actually a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds.
• Body Horror: Played for Laughs. The cartoony spherical hands she makes for herself turn out to have hundreds of tinier hands across the surface for grabbing things. Tohru is grossed out learning this.
• Boob-Based Gag: A decent portion of comedy with her character involves drawing attention to her utterly massive breasts, with them making up seemingly almost half of her body mass. From the fact they literally act as flame sacs, to how they've got a near-hypnotic and nosebleed-inducing effect on men, especially when it comes to Taketo, and how they're capable of causing A-Cup Angst even in moderately endowed women, let alone flat ladies like Kobayashi.
• Buxom Beauty Standard: Her utterly enormous breasts act as a major point of attractiveness to her character design, getting plenty of Male Gaze focused on them whether from Taketo's POV or just random camera focus, with Taketo's Covert Pervert interests showing most strongly when he sees them jiggle or get exposed more due to Ilulu's lack of shame towards nudity.
• Can't Act Perverted Toward a Love Interest: Zig-zagged, but while she does tease Taketo, soon after going into heat she meets up with Taketo and finds herself both going to into a similar feeling but able to control herself. This shows her growing affection for Taketo blooming into full-blown love. This gets lampshaded in Chapter 89, where she mentions she's becoming too embarrassed to undress in front of him.
• Character Development: Ilulu probably goes through the most change out of any character in the entire series, starting as a chaotic and spiteful destroyer who then becomes far friendlier, calmer, and more openly loving. Combined with her improved transformation skills and change in wardrobe, it makes her current self almost unrecognizable in comparison to her first appearance.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: She really doesn't like it when Taketo looks at other girls, though this usually only comes up in the various spin-offs.
• Closet Sublet: While the manga makes no mention of where she sleeps beyond Kobayashi mentioning her having a futon, in the anime she co-opts a closet as her room in true Japanese fashion after moving into the apartment.
• Commonality Connection: When hearing from Ilulu about how insecure the latter feels about being a "violent person", Saikawa admits that she herself isn't much different, being prone to lashing out when things don't work out for her, and even having trouble getting along with Kanna at first. This helps the two strike up a friendship with each other.
• Compressed Adaptation: Season 2 skips a few events between Ilulu first facing Tohru to eventually warming up to Kobayashi and joining the family, some of said events were covered in Season 1 but as Kanna-only events, excluding Ilulu's participation from them. Said compression also affects the situation with her hand-forming skills, where in the manga she gradually progresses from ball-like Fingerless Hands through increasingly less horrifically malformed hand-like things before finally making proper hands by chapter 45, in the anime, following the Fingerless Hands skit, the next scenario with her has her already possess normal human-like hands.
• Compulsory School Age: Subverted. Saikawa briefly wonders why she doesn't go to school, and she shows a passing interest in going to elementary school with Kanna (not understanding the concept of grade levels), but she never actually enrolls. When she gets her job, Ilulu claims she's sixteen "apparently", which sidesteps the issue as high school is not required in Japan.
• Cool Big Sis: She and Kanna develop something of a sisterly dynamic with each other. The two end up spending a lot of time together playing games, napping, or hanging out with Kanna's friends. Ilulu being a Friend to All Children certainly strengthens the dynamic between the two.
• Curtains Match the Windows: Reddish-pink hair and eyes.
• Cut Himself Shaving: After nearly getting killed by Azad, she tells Kobayashi that the source of her wounds and ripped clothing were from playing with a stray cat.
• Cute Little Fangs: Mostly after her Heel–Face Turn.
• Dark Is Not Evil: She starts off with a more monstrous appearance than the other dragons and seems to prefer black clothing, but she's a sweet girl (post-Heel–Face Turn anyways).
• Deceased Parents Are the Best: Ilulu was very close to her parents and was devastated by their deaths. They also showed a surprising level of tolerance towards humans, enough to consider the possibility of peaceful coexistence.
• Delightful Dragon: Ilulu, both before her Start of Darkness and after her Heel–Face Turn, has an established love of humanity, particularly when it comes to young children.
• Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: Starts brainstorming for one once she begins accepting humans, to Tohru's reluctant approval, since her staying with Kobayashi hinges on making herself useful. She eventually decides that she wants to work as Kobayashi's wife. This, Tohru does not approve.
• Does Not Know Her Own Strength: Accidentally broke Makoto's wrist during an arm wrestling competition.
• Evil Me Scares Me: Combined with I Hate Past Me. She was genuinely disturbed when Tohru reminded her how she used to act pre-Heel–Face Turn.
• Evil Redhead: She has reddish pink hair, and originally was an antagonist.
• Fingerless Hands: Ilulu wasn't very good at turning into human form when she first came over, and her attempts at forming hands appeared as stubby balls on the end of her arms. However, she could still hold things with them because they were made up of thousands of smaller hands. She manages to form proper hands by chapter 45.
• Fingore: Gets her claws chopped off during a fight against Azad in chapter 71. Fortunately, it's not permanent.
• Foil: To Kanna. Kanna is stoic child, wears white, was banished by her neglectful parents, and has a female Implied Love Interest. Ilulu is an emotional teenager (that looks like a child), wears black, lost her Good Parents to humans, and has a male Implied Love Interest.
• Forgiving the Accidental Pervert: When Taketo falls face first into her chest, she simply asks if he's okay, not seeming all that worked up and even patting his head while he's stuck there, with him rather surprised at how casual her response is. Justifed, as she's an Innocent Fanservice Girl who is such a Womanchild she frequently forgets that modesty and dislike of perversity is a thing with humans, and even then doesn't see anything wrong with a male seeing her naked or feeling her body, especially if it's a genuine accident.
• Freudian Excuse: Ilulu was originally friends with humans as a child, but she came to hate them due to the fact that humans killed her parents.
• Friend to All Children: She gets along very well with children, both prior to her Start of Darkness and after her Heel–Face Turn. This was the main reason why she got a job at a candy store, since it would allow her to be useful to Kobayashi and see children having fun at the same time.
• Funbag Airbag: Taketo ends up face first in her flame bags when he tries to correct her on an inappropriate comment. While she does call him a pervert afterwards, it takes her a few seconds to react, and it's in a half-hearted "this is what I'm supposed to do to not stand out" sort of way.
• Gender Bender: She knows a spell to give women male bodies and ends up using it on Kobayashi twice (once on purpose and once by accident). Since she doesn't know the male to female spell, Kobayashi has to wait for it to wear off naturally both times.
• Girlish Pigtails: Two long spiral ones that resemble giant corkscrews.
• Girls Love Stuffed Animals: Ilulu used to have a doll made in her likeness that was made by one of her human friends which she deeply treasured. She ended up getting rid of it after her Start of Darkness and clearly regretted it ever since her Heel–Face Turn, to the point that she spent an entire chapter trying to find the owner of another doll that had been abandoned at the candy store she worked at just so the owner wouldn't have to go through the same regret.
• Glamour Failure: She's not as good as shapeshifting as the other dragons, forcing her to wear regular human clothes as she can't change her scales properly.
• Good Costume Switch: She starts wearing loose t-shirts and dresses after her Heel–Face Turn since they're the only things that fit and she isn't skilled enough to morph her scales. Justified, since she wants to fit in better with humans, and Tohru's notes said wearing similar clothing helps.
• Graceful Loser: She acknowledges that despite Kobayashi being the "person she wants to breed with", Kobayashi is more interested in Tohru. She then mentions she should find a new person and shifts her focus to Taketo immediately after.
• Heel–Face Turn: Becomes part of the group eventually once she starts accepting humans again.
• Horned Humanoid: All the dragons in human form qualify (except for Fafnir), but Ilulu is the only who doesn't have a hornless character design used at some point of the anime.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Downplayed with Taketo. With two notable exceptions, she's incredibly petite compared to the humans around her, which gives this impression when with him.
• Immortality Begins at Twenty: Ilulu is physically around 16 years old, though a ridiculously buxom one at that. She's thousands of years old, though mentally around "16", as she has more sexual awareness and interests than someone like Kanna, a child by dragon standards.
• Innocent Fanservice Girl: Ilulu has a poor understanding of human social taboos or the concept of nudity in general. When given her uniform on her first day of work, Ilulu started getting changed right there in the store. It was only after Taketo freaked out that she remembered that "this is supposed to be embarrassing, right?". She's also very prone to going topless at the flip of a coin.
• Intergenerational Friendship: With Saikawa (who -discounting the lifespan difference- is around half her age).
• Interspecies Romance: She develops a crush on Taketo, though her lack of familiarity with human emotions mean that she doesn't realize it.
• Irony: She's the only dragon who has openly admitted to love humans, yet she's the only one that never fully mastered the ability to look like one.
• It's All Junk: Subverted. She regretted throwing away her doll as a child pretty much immediately, and she tries to return the one that was left that the candy store to its owner because she (properly) guessed that they'd feel the same way.
• Kind Hearted Cat Lover: Before getting a part-time job, she spent her free time playing with stray cats. Even afterwards stray cats have a tendency to get close to her. Kobayashi believes it is because her body is naturally warm and soft.
• Love Redeems: Highly implied to be part of the reason for her Heel–Face Turn, towards Kobayashi.
• Loving a Shadow: Discussed. When she first talks to Taketo, she mentions how she thought that she was in love with Kobayashi due to her desire to breed with her, but now realizes that she views her as more of a friend and mother figure. Given that she was emotionally stunted from the loss of her parents and raised as a Tyke Bomb afterwards (plus the fact that dragons in general have a loose grasp of interpersonal relationships due to being a solitary species), it's understandable that she'd get her feelings mixed up.
• Mating Season Mayhem: Chapter 81 deals with Ilulu going into heat and trying to force herself onto Kobayashi. Tohru's attempts to tire her out with a sparring match fail, as Ilulu simply goes after her instead.
• Meaningful Name: Subtlely done. Ilulu is the name of an ancient king of Mesopotamia, a culture whose mythology is rich in dragon-like creatures.
• My Greatest Second Chance: After her parents died and the other dragons started to mold her into the Ax-Crazy monster she would be at the time of her introduction, Ilulu was forced to abandon a doll that her human friends made for her. She has clearly regretted it ever since, so when she finds a doll abandoned at the candy store she spends the next several days trying to track down the owner and return it just so they won't have to live with the same regret.
• Neutral No Longer: Inverted. She's expressed interest in leaving the Chaos Faction.
• Older Than They Look: Dragons are all Time Abysses, but in the manga, the only indications Ilulu is any older than Kanna in their respective human form are her boobs. This is due to Ilulu having poorer shapeshifting abilities than the other dragons, resulting in her unbalanced appearance, as she's actually around the same age as Tohru. This is slightly alleviated in the anime, where she is visibly older than Kanna but not as old as Tohru.
• One of the Kids: Ilulu is stated to be the same age as Tohru, roughly the dragon equivalent of a sixteen year old. However, due to past childhood traumas, she's emotionally stunted and she's shown to vastly prefer the company of younger children such as Kanna and her elementary school friends. She can be mature, but even then her preference for the company of kids comes through. Her choice of job, part-timing at a candy store, allows her to contribute to the household, as Tohru insisted she do, but also means she can work in a place children often visit.
  Ilulu: Kids... you know... I like them... I like playing with kids... but when you have a job you can't play... so at least I want to be in a place where kids look like they're having fun... is what I thought.
• Only One Name: Unlike Tohru and Kanna, she didn't adopt Kobayashi's surname as part of her legal identity.
• Orphan's Ordeal: Both of her parents were killed by humans. Quite a few of her issues can be traced back to this.
• Pintsized Powerhouse: She's one of the shortest of the dragons, being dwarfed by the likes of Tohru and Elma who are of average height. This doesn't stop her from being monstrously powerful though.
• Pointed Ears: Probably due to her lack of skill in transforming since all of the other dragons have regular human ears.
• Poison Is Evil: Naturally, the Ax-Crazy dragon is the one with poison breath. Subverted after her Heel–Face Turn.
• Poisonous Person: Her Breath Weapon consists of corrosive poison, in contrast to Tohru's flames and Kanna's lightning.
• Precocious Crush: She develops some level of attraction towards Kobayashi, who physically and mentally is almost decade older than Ilulu. These feelings gradually go away over time though.
• Pretty Freeloaders: For 12 chapters, she lives at Kobayashi's apartment without doing anything productive. Then she gets a part-time job at a candy store. Subverted later, as she's willing to go to school, but Kobayashi decides against it because Ilulu doesn't fit in any high school uniform.
• Psycho Pink: She has dark pink hair, pink eyes, pink magic, and even her true form appears to be coated in pink flames. She is also an Ax-Crazy Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds, though she mellows out significantly as the series progresses.
• Really Fond of Sleeping: When Tohru asks her what her hobbies are in the anime, she says that she enjoys sleeping (as opposed to her manga answer of teasing Taketo, who hadn't been introduced yet).
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: With slitted pupils, fitting her pseudo-demonic appearance and her antagonistic role.
• Right Behind Me: A variation happens in Chapter 12 of Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid: Kanna's Daily Life, when she lands on the newborn child square in Game of Life, she begins talking about how she will have children with Kobayashi (despite both of them being female), not realizing that Tohru is right there. Since she doesn't like anybody thinking about, looking at or even talking about dating Kobayashi, Tohru responds by destroying the spinner on the game board with her Breath Weapon.
• Rose-Haired Sweetie: She has reddish pink hair and is probably one of the nicest characters in the series post-Heel–Face Turn.
• Second Love: She is initially in love with Kobayashi after she saves her, but later on she falls in love with Taketo.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Defied. Lucoa offers her the chance to go back in time and undo her original attack on the city to make a better first impression, but she turns her down due to not wanting to erase the kind words that Kobayashi said to trigger her Heel–Face Turn.
• Shapeshifter Mode Lock: Downplayed. Ilulu is fully capable of assuming her true form as well as changing her human guise, but she isn't very good at finer control of her shapeshifting, so she ends up looking like a petite girl with ridiculous breasts and either dragon claws or fingerless spheres for hands (although she improves enough to have normal hands at least from chapter 45 onward). Tohru states that if she relaxes her control her boobs would get bigger, but would presumably end up with more inhuman features in turn. Thus, Ilulu basically has to stay the way she is now to fit in until she can get better control of her shape.
• Shapeshifting Excludes Clothing: Dragons are normally Technically Naked Shapeshifters, but Ilulu has very poor transformation skills and has to rely on regular clothing if she wants to wear anything other than her cloak (not that she really wants to wear anything). Of course, since her transformation skills are so poor, she has trouble finding anything that fits her properly given that her human form is really short and has giant boobs.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: While she has a hard time understanding her feelings for Take, she slowly falls in love with him for his kind and noble qualities.
• Spell My Name With An S: The fan translation of the manga spells her name as "Iruru".
• Stalker without a Crush: In the manga, she spends five chapters after her debut by watching the Kobayashi Household from afar before her eventual confrontation with Kobayashi herself.
• Stripperiffic: Her initial clothes consist of a tattered robe that barely covers her chest and low-riding panties.
• Sweet Tooth: She likes to eat a lot of candy, often having some stashed next to her bed. She also gets fussy with Kanna over some donuts.
• The Tease: During the events of Chapter 60, she admits that she sometimes bounces her breasts just to see Taketo's reaction, calling him cute in the process.
• Technically Naked Shapeshifter: Averted. Unlike all the other dragons, she isn't skilled enough to morph her scales into multiple outfits. If she wants to change her appearance to anything other than her cloak, she has to actually wear it.
• Technicolor Fire: In the anime, her dragon form appears to be covered in pink flames.
• Took a Level in Kindness: After moving into the Kobayashi household, she loses her Ax-Crazy tendencies — to the extent that she's disturbed by how much of a Blood Knight she once was — and becomes calmer. That said, the afterword of Chapter 39 notes that if Kobayashi was a man Ilulu would have happily forced herself on her.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Ilulu is a big fan of anything with meat in it. Tohru has managed to bribe her by giving her a larger portion of steak with dinner on at least one occasion.
• Tragic Bigot: She never wanted to hate humans (in fact, a flashback shows that she was friends with several human children when she was younger), but the death of her parents at the hands of humans and being raised on an anti-human rhetoric afterwards turned her into a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds. She gets better thanks to Kobayashi.
• Tyke Bomb: The Chaos faction raised her as a weapon against humans following the death of her parents, resulting in her being far more violent than the average dragon.
• Unseen No More: Her full dragon form is finally shown on screen in Chapter 140... as a cat-sized chibi version. Quite a bit of Lampshade Hainging ensues, with both Kanna and Kobayashi admitting that they've never seen it before.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Before she was bent on destruction, she wanted to befriend humans.
• Vague Age: Her human form looks like a young girl with breasts in the manga, but the anime makes it clearly older, if still ambiguous in age range. She can pass as both a well-developed early teenager and a youthful-faced young woman, and tellingly, her "official" human age is 16, which makes a bit of a middle step between those.
• Vapor Wear: She wears band-aids over her nipples in lieu of a bra. Then again, her massive breasts would make it impossible for her to find a bra that fits.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: Her work outfit is actually for adult men since her boobs would make wearing anything meant for a girl of her height impossible. She also runs into the same problem when she goes with Kanna and Saikawa to try on school uniforms, and the only thing she finds comfortable are the ones meant for boys.
• Womanchild: She's around the same age as Tohru, but the death of her parents left her emotionally stunted. She also prefers hanging out with children instead of adults, which tied into her decision to get a job at a candy store.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: A flashback shows that she Used to Be a Sweet Kid who (in something of a rarity among dragons) actually wanted to be friends with humans. But then the death of her parents (combined with being raised on anti-human rhetoric afterwards) turned her into an Ax-Crazy maniac who loves destruction. She gets better after Kobayashi protected her from a Knight Templar harmony dragon.
• Worf Had the Flu: She notes that the main reason she lost against Azad (aside from being caught off guard by him having a holy sword) was because she still hadn't recovered from the wounds she got from her fight with Tohru.
• Workaholic: In contrast to her usual childish demeanor, she takes her part-time job very seriously and hates having to call out sick, even when it would be better to do so (like when she went into heat or was injured in a battle with Azad). This is at least partially motivated by the fact that it gives her an excuse to hang out with Taketo.
• Wreathed in Flames: While her full dragon form is never seen in the manga or anime, the cover for the deluxe version of Dragon Maid S Volume 5 depicts her as a fire drake coated in pink flames.

Shin (MAJOR UNMARKED SPOILERS)

Shin (The Holy Sword)

A divine weapon that was crafted by the gods to kill dragons. It ended up taking residence in Kobayashi's soul after she removed it from Tohru's back, where it eventually gained sentience and took on the form of an androgynous child.

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• BFS: Kobayashi's first attempt to materialize them results in blade that's easily longer than Tohru's dragon form, leaving a massive hole in her bedroom wall.
• Dragon Slayer: The reason that they were created in the first place was to be a weapon powerful enough to kill dragons, and they state to Kobayashi that she could have this dragon-slaying power if she ever wants to be strong.
• Fallen Angel: In a matter of speaking. Kobayashi draining all of her magic at once caused their essence to change from "divine" to "Kobayashi". While they're just as powerful as they were before, they no longer qualify as a weapon of the gods and thus can bypass Telne's protection from divine power.
• Guilt Complex: Despite having just been a weapon at the time, the Holy Sword, holds a lot on internal guilt about being used to hurt Tohru, to the point that when they first meet Tohru face to face, they expect her to hate them, and is genuinly surprised when Tohru instead, using some Insane Troll Logic, only sees them as her and Kobayashi's child.
• Living Weapon: Not initially, but residing within Kobayashi's soul gave them life.
• Morph Weapon: While they are at their most powerful as a sword, they are fully capable of changing into other weapons. Unfortunately, they also take on the properties of whatever they copy, so their attempt to imitate an Aztec macuahuitl results in a form that is just as fragile as a chunk of wood.
• Not-So-Imaginary Friend: As a resident of Kobayashi's brainspace, they have a tendency to butt into Kobayashi's internal monologues, and Kobayashi would occasionally talk to them without realizing no one else can see them. Tohru just assumed Kobayashi was so stressed from work/drunk that she started talking to herself, until they gained the power to manifest.
• Otherworldly and Sexually Ambiguous: Chapter 116 reveals they themselves do not know what sex they are. They and Tohru decide to check, and find their genitals are different everytime they look.
• Our Phlebotinum Child: They refer to Kobayashi and Tohru as their mothers, due to Kobayashi being the one that granted them awareness and Tohru giving them a physical form, while calling the god that crafted them dad.
• Weapon of Mass Destruction: Having been Forged by the Gods for the purpose of killing dragons, they are immensely powerful. Kobayashi's first attempt to summon them ends up stabbing a massive hole in her bedroom wall by accident.

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