Sandbox / Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid: 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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Tropes

• 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.
• 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, 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.
• Character Title: "Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid".
• 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.
• 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).
• 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.
• 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.