"What's up, weebs? It's your waifu for laifu, Tonkatsu Sinclair!"
Tonkatsu Sinclair
is a character created by AbsoluteUnit (formerly known as DWK, the creator of My Little Pony: Totally Legit Recap). Tonkatsu is a slow-witted, violent, and very foul-mouthed affectionate parody of Virtual YouTubers. In character, Tonkatsu is a reviewer, livestreamer, and content creator who largely specializes in Anime, Cartoons, and VTubing.
According to her lore, she is actually an anime girl trapped in the Internet and not actually a VTuber. In spite of this, she has done extensive research on the subject and often shares insights on the VTuber community while also giving her own insights based on her experience as a real-life anime girl.
She also hosts a (usually) weekly livestream with Dashie Li called “The iLadies Show”.
What's up, weebs. It's your tropes.
- Affectionate Parody: Of Virtual YouTubers, and of anime review channels as a whole. While Katsu is more than willing to indulge in the seedier side of the anime fandom, there's occassionally serious reviews and commentary on some series, such as No Matter How I Look at It, It's You Guys' Fault I'm Not Popular! and Komi Can't Communicate. In any case, the channel is interspersed with fake reviews and real ones, and even the latter play up the comedy.
- The Alcoholic: Sometimes seen with a flash of alcohol in her hand, and drinking it in videos. She also once mentioned that she thought that gin was an acceptable substitute for a meal, but getting high and watching Symphogear while drinking the gin convinced her that she has a problem.
- Author Appeal: Tonkatsu says that Mori Calliope checks all of her boxes — Calliope is The Grim Reaper, but as a hot chick with huge boobs that writes Hip-Hop and rap songs. Tonkatsu laments she "can't even begin to say 'no' to that".
- Butt-Monkey: MC is consistently humiliated by Tonkatsu, including losing a bet where he had to dress as a Meido and talk about how much he loves gay sex, all while Tonkatsu laughed at him off-screen.
- Caustic Critic: Averted.
- In the review of Sword Art Online, Tonkatsu really praises the first arc of the show, and highlights the relationship between The Hero Kirito and the Love Interest Asuna as a high point, since Tonkatsu saw Asuna as subverting a lot of "helpless waifu" tropes which annoyed her. When the second arc made Asuna into a Damsel in Distress, Tonkatsu tore the arc to shreds, but said she hoped the show was potentially salvageable.
- In a review of High Guardian Spice, Tonkatsu takes a moment to say that she won't "ascribe malicious motivations to the creators of the show", noting that they were working under strict time and budget constraints to produce it. She also notes that some flaws in the show's animation — inconsistent backgrounds, bad lip-syncing, and janky character movement — are found all across anime, even shows that are highly-rated, so it's not fair to judge High Guardian Spice solely on that. Tonkatsu still didn't like the show, but she goes out of her way to soften the blow.
- Comically Missing the Point: Tonkatsu dislikes High Guardian Spice not for any perceived flaws in its writing, characters, or story. Tonkatsu dislikes the show because she considers it racist against anime girls for suggesting that High Guardian Spice is an anime, calling it "waifu blackface".
- Determinator: In "The John Wick of Weeaboos", Tonkatsu shows that someone requested that she review Symphogear over and over again, including on videos that had nothing to do with anime or on livestream chats. The review aspect of the video was double subverted — Tonkatsu looks like she's not going to watch it, then does watch it after all, but was too high to remember any part of it except some Narm-y Engrish lines that made her nearly shit her pants in laughter.
- Driven to Suicide: The suggestion that she looks like a juggalo caused Tonkatsu to shoot herself. She was fine moments later, as she apparently can't die as long as there are waifus.
- The Generic Guy: MC, so named because he looks like a stereotypical anime main character. MC is nondescript and unremarkable in appearance, largely serves as a comedic straight man to Tonkatsu, and rarely expresses any opinions of his own.
- Hard Truth Aesop: Her "Listen Up Dumbasses" series has Tonkatsu give out a few of these. However, she does it with a bunch of sex jokes thrown in, so it's treated like Wisdom from the Gutter.
- The first iteration has Tonkatsu say that there is no such thing as the "friend zone", and any woman who rejects offers for a date is trying to not hurt your feelings. Katsu also says that "a relationship is not the cure for what ails you", and that you should work on yourself instead of relying on a significant other and/or a sexual partner in order to be happy. Instead, setting goals and going for them, or otherwise working on self-improvement, will probably have you meet someone anyway since you won't be pursuing a relationship because you think you have to be in one.Tonkatsu: Bottom line: before you can be with someone, you gotta learn to be happy by yourself.
- The third iteration has Katsu giving advice to a viewer who had a girl promise to date him if she broke up with her then-current boyfriend. When they indeed broke up, the girl ended up coming out as a lesbian. Katsu says that the best thing for the viewer to do is to just give up in trying to pursue this woman any further. Katsu argues that the girl is most likely aware of how the viewer feels about her, but coming out as gay is a very personal and difficult choice. In the end, as painful as it is to just let her go, the alternative of trying to pursue her anyway has a very high chance of destroying the friendship and becoming a lifelong regret. Katsu closes by saying that this girl would already be with the viewer if she wanted to be; regardless of why she's not, it's never going to happen, and the viewer shouldn't waste his time pining for her any more.
- The first iteration
- Hope Spot: She reviewed the first season of Sword Art Online, and thought it was pretty good, highlighting the relationship between Kirito and Asuna as a selling point. When Tonkatsu watches the second season, she calls MC in tears about how bad it was before tearing the season to shreds.
- Hypocritical Humor: In "Most VTubers are DOING IT WRONG", Tonkatsu spends half the video disparaging hololive while also saying that you should emulate hololive as much as possible if you want to get popular.
- Insane Troll Logic: In "Making Waifus Real by Scalping Chicken Tendies". Her plan is to convince her audience to buy as many chicken tenders/tendies as possible, so they can ration them out as a currency. Also, Tonkatsu argues that the Queen of England must be sitting on a motherload of tendies because she's the ultimate "Mom" on the planet, and the currency of the UK is GBP, which must stand for Good Boy Points.
- Kayfabe: Zigzagged. Tonkatsu is clearly meant to be her own character, but only as long as it suits the purposes of the joke or the video. One review will have Tonkatsu talk about anime tropes as if they happen to her, and another will have her talk about the anime industry as a business.
- Only Sane Man: In "Most VTubers are DOING IT WRONG", MC fills this role. Tonkatsu says that the only way to get any clout as a Virtual YouTuber is to imitate hololive. MC points out that hololive only works the way it does because it has a built-in audience, and attempting to Follow the Leader in regards to their business model is just going to ensure that no one watches you. MC also argues that it would be far better to find a way to separate yourself from the pack instead of trend-chasing, doing content that you like doing and not worrying about what's popular. Tonkatsu ignores him on every point.
- Our Lawyers Advised This Trope: In "The John Wick of Weeaboos", she mentions that discussing certain topics on drugs would violate the YouTube Terms of Service. As such, Tonkatsu refers to smoking weed as "playing Minecraft" so she doesn't get in trouble.
- Resurrective Immortality: Tonkatsu shot herself in the face over the suggestion that she looks like a juggalo. MC starts crying, but she comes back moments later.
- Rule 34: She's willing to indulge in it, as seen by showing porn in the background of her videos quite often (albeit censored in some way). At one point, she wondered why there wasn't more porn of her, and has shown porn of herself in the background. If not that, then her background will be a wall of "ahegao" faces instead.
- Shown Their Work: "Listen Up Dumbasses #3" has Tonkatsu list a theory as to why people have foot fetishes. A researcher came up with the theory after it was found that somatosensory cortex part of the brain — the part that detects sensations in body parts — had the sensors for feet and genitals close to each other. However, Tonkatsu says that the theory is bogus, because a research study found no link between the proximity of these parts of the brain. Tonkatsu then calls out media sources who keep reporting the original hypothesis as fact despite that it's been disproven.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: In "Protesting Lolis and Policing Degeneracy on Twitter", Tonkatsu looks at a very heavily censored fanart of her as a futanari with a Gag Penis reaching her boobs, and goes into the physical and psychological struggles of containing such a massive unit.
- Unresolved Sexual Tension: Discussed in the second part of her review of My Dress-Up Darling. Tonkatsu refers to this as "airquotes romance", and the constant Will They or Won't They? is done for the sake of making a product appealing to as many people as possible. Even so, it's a Pet-Peeve Trope for Tonkatsu, since the two protagonists of that show are clearly in love with each other, but never act on it, which Tonkatsu argues makes the show drag.
- Vocal Dissonance: Despite being an anime waifu, Tonkatsu has the same deep raspy masculine voice that AbsoluteUnit once had. When called out on it, Tonkatsu insisted that she was a delicate female flower, and was offended by the "accusation" of sounding like she's a guy. In her High Guardian Spice review, Tonkatsu claims that the voice her audience hears is her "English dub" voice and briefly drops it for a much more feminine-sounding Japanese voice.
- What's a Henway?: Tonkatsu has been on both the receiving and giving end of this.
- In one video, Katsu mentions "ligma" on her Twitter. When someone asks what "ligma is", Katsu replies "ligma nuts". From the way she laughs, she'd been wanting to do that for a while.
- During a livestream in which she was accepting call-ins, a caller told Tonkatsu that there was a push to change the talent of hololive to "iLadies". It turned out to be a setup, as when Katsu wondered if she was being pranked, the caller said "iLadies nuts on your face". Tonkatsu immediately let out a Rapid-Fire "No!", followed by her model freezing up.
- Wisdom from the Gutter: "Why Do I Keep Getting Friendzoned?" starts with Tonkatsu giving a Hard Truth Aesop that approaching women for the sake of getting a girlfriend is never going to work. The term "friendzoned" happens when women either feel sorry for men who ask them on a date or don't really think they're bad people, and are trying to let them down easy. Tonkatsu then says that the best way to get a girlfriend, paradoxically, is to not actively look for one. Tonkatsu argues that being in a relationship isn't a magic cure-all for your problems. Instead, self-improvement, setting goals and pursuing them, and generally trying to make your life better is going to make you happier than having a girlfriend. And more than likely, you'll find someone who likes you when you do that instead of single-mindedly pursing a relationship. The rest of the video is Tonkatsu doing her usual schtick of dick and sex jokes, so this advice comes out of nowhere with her usual personality type.
