Characters / Urusei Yatsura - Tomobiki

Urusei Yatsura character index
Main | Tomobiki | Citizens | Weirdoes

Characters of Urusei Yatsura, focusing on the staff and students of Tomobiki High School.

Tomobiki High Staff

The Principal

The Principal

Voiced by: Tomomichi Nishimura (JP, original series), Hōchū Ōtsuka (JP, All-Stars), Draidyl Roberts (Movie 2), Jeremy Griffin (Movie 4)

The principal of Tomobiki High School. A soft-spoken, bald, nearsighted middle-aged man, he treats all of the weird goings-on at the school as harmless student shenanigans.

---

• Cloudcuckoolander: The principal has a very slow and proper way of talking and he has a tendency to spew out boring speeches about school spirit that never seem to go anywhere. He's also shown to have a taste for bad puns, and frequently organizes truly bizarre school events. In an early manga story, when he learns Ataru has been caught holding a secret vote on who is the most beautiful girl at Tomobiki in class, he decides to hold a schoolwide beauty contest... which promptly turns farcical by including an Eating Contest and an unarmed brawl against wild animals donated by the local zoo. In a later story, he decides to hold an obstacle course swim meet hybrid... where he will kiss the winner — Onsen-Mark actually apologizes to the students for this scheme. In a New Year's story, he has the students play a tournament of mixed doubles hanetsuki... with oversized paddles and balls all made of solid iron, and with a "spectacular prize" that turns out to be watching an iron ball drop. Even Onsen-Mark seemed to think he deserved the beatdown the students gave him for that one. Another story has him challenging the students to divide into teams to see who could sculpt the biggest bust of him from mochi.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The 1981 anime initially has a completely different principal, with a different appearance and a far more emotional reaction to all the chaos and calamity going on at Tomobiki High. Eventually, he morphs into the manga version of the principal, who was far more stoic but also quite weird in his own right. If they are two separate characters, there is a possibility the first principal was fired by the district superintendent for failing to handle the situation and was replaced by the more patient principal.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": He is just "The Principal".
• Odd Friendship: He is frequently accompanied by the ghost cat Kotatsu-neko, and has even been seen hanging out sociably with Cherry, who few other people can stand.
• Skewed Priorities: You'd think he should become irate over the constant alien invasions, destruction, parties, chases and such, but it doesn't really faze him at all. But be seen running in the halls and you'll be holding buckets of water.
• The Stoic: He's a very calm old man who rarely acts in anger and always keeps a straight face.
• Unfazed Everyman: All of the truly insane things that happen in the school every day don't seem to have any effect on him.

Onsen-Mark

Onsen-Mark

Voiced by: Michihiro Ikemizu (JP, original series), Kenta Miyake (JP, All-Stars), Bradley Evans (EN, Movies 3-6), Sean Barret (EN, BBC dub), T. Roy Barnes (EN, Movie 2), David Wald (EN, All-Stars).

^{Click here to see him in the 1981 anime}

The English teacher of the Class 2-4, "Classroom of Failure". Originally contracted by the Principal of Tomobiki via the "Trump-Card Teachers" Organization. A sad middle-aged man whose only interest is to teach at Tomobiki High, but he fails due to the constant interruptions during class, when the classroom itself is not destroyed by Lum, Ten, or Shinobu.

---

• Authority in Name Only: No one respects him, and he is often abused or beaten up by Ataru or other students.
• Big Ol' Eyebrows: Has some of the largest in a series full of 'em.
• Butt-Monkey: No one at Tomobiki High has any respect for him. His students regularly ignore him, and then hogtie him if he tries to enforce the rules.
• The Chew Toy: Bad things tend to happen to him. More often than not, those bad things tend to involve Amusing Injuries.
• Demoted to Extra: Whilst he debuts in the 4th chapter of the manga, the anime doesn't let him appear until episode 36, instead using a parade of unnamed teachers, original character Sanjuro Kuribayashi, and even Hanama, a junior teacher who didn't show up until the 5th volume of the original manga release (Viz volume 3). He then proceeds to simply show up out of the blue with no fanfare, when both Sanjuro and Hanama got introductory episodes.
• Gratuitous English: Since he's the English teacher, he has scenes where he speaks broken English in the original Japanese dub. Special mention to the 2022 anime, where his lessons have him describing the premises of Ranma ½ and Inuyasha in English.
• Hidden Depths: In the second movie, it's him that figures out the "Groundhog Day" Loop well before the rest of the cast, even Sakura.
• Hopeless Suitor: To Sakura in the anime, unfortunately for him she is already in a relationship with Tsubame. His dream wife in Beautiful Dreamer even resembles her.
• Hot for Student: In a few episodes, the students think Onsen is attracted to one of his students, though Onsen always turns out to be innocent.
  • When Ryuunosuke was taking lessons from Onsen to be a proper lady in the 1981 anime, her father spread the slanderous rumor that Onsen was forcing her to date him to sabotage it.
  • One night, Shinobu watched a drama where a teacher was abusing his position to harass his student, unfortunately that happened to be the night Onsen was visiting the homes of all his students causing Shinobu to think he was pursuing her, Hilarity Ensues.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Despite being a very angry man whose students seem to actively enjoy fighting him, Mark really does have his students' best interests at heart, and is even one of the few adults to inquire about Fujinami's questionable parenting.
• Not So Above It All: Onsen once admitted that he does enjoy the chaos Lum brings.
• Odd Friendship: In the 1981 anime, he strikes up an instant friendship with Lum's grade school teacher, the robot CAO-2.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: His real name is never revealed, with everyone (including the principal) calling him Onsen-Mark after his clothes, decorated with a hot spring mark. Maybe it really is his name? The English translated 2-in-1 manga even refers to him as "Hot Spring Emblem", because that's the literal translation of his nickname!
• Only Sane Man: He's often the most rational and logical of the people getting involved in the chaos at Tomobiki High, and certainly more down to earth than his boss.
• Only Six Faces: He bears a resemblance to an older Kakugari, as well as Lum's father without the fangs.
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: To Ataru, one of the biggest slackers in his class.
• Stern Teacher: Especially to Ataru, since they see each other as archenemies.

Sakura

Sakura

Voiced by: Machiko Washio (JP, original series), Miyuki Sawashiro (JP, All-Stars), Karen McIntyre (EN, movies 3-6), Brianna Roberts (EN, All-Stars)

^{Click here to see her in the 1981 anime}

Cherry's niece. She was once a very sickly girl who suffered from a variety of ailments due to being infested with a plague of malevolent spirits. After meeting Ataru for the first time, she tried to exorcise him, during which process, the demons who inhabited her transferred themselves to the unlucky young man, rendering her perfectly healthy. Soon afterward, she took a job as the Tomobiki High school nurse, where she again encountered Ataru and half-accidentally exorcised the disease spirit still haunting him from that encounter. Like her uncle she loves eating and sometimes gets into a fight with him over it.

---

• Adaptation Dye-Job: She has dark hair in the manga and 1981 anime. In the 2022 anime she still has dark hair, but now it has a purple highlight.
• Adaptational Skimpiness: The 1981 anime has her wearing a purple form-fitting dress with a Navel-Deep Neckline that shows off her cleavage, in contrast to the manga and 2022 anime where her casual clothes are much more modest.
• Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: She's very tall and beautiful, has long black hair and pale skin and possess a graceful and aloof attitude.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Played for Laughs. Despite her gluttonous appetite, Sakura remains incredibly beautiful, and never even succumbs to so much as a Balloon Belly, even when winning a Mega Meal Challenge.
• Berserk Button:
  • Lecherous boys feigning sickness or even deliberately hurting themselves in order to have an excuse to check her out. She reacts by violently pummeling the fools who she catches out doing this.
  • Dismissing her spiritual powers and refusing her offers to exorcise people also affront her.
  • Whilst she is the one person who truly respects Cherry, even she doesn't like him very much, and she gets particularly angry when she sees him mooching.
• Big Eater: Sakura's primary comical trait is her absolutely ridiculous appetite. She is repeatedly shown devouring enormous portions, and even when she tries to eat "modestly" she still ends up eating enormous amounts without thinking about it. In one of her earliest stories, she partakes in a Mega Meal Challenge, in which she consumes, in order: a plate of spaghetti, a 300g steak with buttered rice, rare bonito with fresh-cooked rice, a whole roast chicken, five-treasures fried noodles, a wild duck stuffed with vegetables, a cake, a roast leg of lamb, a whole roast turkey, a whole pig, and finally a whole roast COW! And not only are these just the dishes shown on-page, of a meal that contains over 15 courses, but she ate all of this after consuming two "Mannon Rise" diet pills, just one of which magnifies the stomach's perception of its fullness by 300 percent. And she was still peckish afterwards! A short essay on Sakura at the end of the first 2-in-1 English manga even notes that Sakura must have an exorbitant food bill to pay for such a monstrous appetite.
• Buxom Beauty Standard: Part of the reason why she's such a Dude Magnet is that she's very well-endowed.
• Call-Back: In her first appearance in All-Stars, Miyuki Sawashiro gives the still very ill Sakura a deep, sickly voice in reference to how husky it was in the original series.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: Like Shinobu, she is capable of feats of Super-Strength when she gets angry.
• Cherry Blossom Girl: Her name is Sakura and is related to healing due to being a Miko and a nurse.
• Cool Big Sis: She acts as a mature older sister figure to Lum and Shinobu.
• Delicate and Sickly: In her introduction, Sakura is constantly in agony because of her sickly constitution. Thanks to the spirits of her diseases latching onto Ataru, she's in perfect health for the rest of the series.
• Determinator: When Sakura is doing an exorcism, she won't stop at anything until she gets the job done. When trying to exorcise Ataru's cursed luck, she keeps going even when suffering from cavities, a migraine and a heart attack.
• Dude Magnet: Besides her fiance Tsubame, she is the object of affection for pretty much every male at Tomobiki High. Ten also developed romantic feelings for her, but she treats him in a motherly manner.
• Family Theme Naming: Her name is Sakura (cherry blossom) and her uncle is named Sakurambou (cherry).
• Friendless Background: Due to being Delicate and Sickly as a child, she didn't have the opportunity to play or have friends (outside of some benevolent Yōkai in the 1981 anime), giving her a lonely childhood.
• Head-Turning Beauty: Regular reaction of every male to her, especially Ataru (once he gets over his fear of her). Most notable during her first day at the School Nurse. When she arrives at Tomobiki High practically every male student gathers outside the gates to gawk at her (not helped by the fact she's wearing a Navel-Deep Neckline and is doing a Supermodel Strut). Soon after her office becomes filled with male students vying for her attention.
• Hospital Hottie: She's the resident nurse at Tomobiki, and she's also incredibly gorgeous, to the extent that many boys will actually willingly get sick or hurt as an excuse to see her. Unfortunately for them, that's one of her Berserk Buttons.
• Hypocrite: She repeatedly chides Cherry as a glutton and a mooch, but she herself is shown mooching food on more than one occasion. Downplayed because she won't outright break into houses and steal food from others, which Cherry has been shown doing.
• Lust Object: For much of the male contingent of Tomobiki High School with Ataru being the first of all.
• Meaningful Name: Sakura means "cherry blossoms" and is regarded as one of the most traditionally feminine names in Japan due to their association with beauty. Sakura is widely regarded as one of the most beautiful women in the series, to the point there's a scene in the manga where some of the girls at Tomobiki High come to her begging her to tell them how to grow breasts as large as hers so they can attract boyfriends.
• The Medic: As both a nurse and a shrine maiden, characters tend to seek her out when they have some health problem, especially if it's supernatural.
• Mega Meal Challenge: She absolutely loves these, as each time she does 'em it's a Curb-Stomp Battle in her favour. In the Hell Course challenge at a beach hotel banquet, she continues long past Cherry and Ataru's losses and ends up eating the hotel out of everything except some dessert (a feat that no one has done before, and this after she had an appetite suppressant pill). For her these events are just an opportunity for free food.
• Miko: She's actually a full-on priestess with strong spiritual power. She and Cherry are seen many times throughout the series trying to exorcise evil spirits.
• Ms. Fanservice: She is gorgeous and the most buxom character in the series. No surprise that she is subject to Male Gaze many times.
• Navel-Deep Neckline: Her purple outfit that she wears in the early seasons of the first anime series has a v-neckline that stretches to her stomach.
• Never Gets Fat: She's actually the biggest eater in the cast (except maybe Rei), but her figure never changes no matter how much she eats. The closest that she comes to subverting this trope is when she tries to rest on a floating recliner after a Mega Meal Challenge, only for it to sink under her newly increased yet invisible weight, in a scene that was cut from the 1981 anime adaptation.
• No Full Name Given: Her full name is unknown, as she is only ever referred to as "Sakura".
• One of the Kids: Subverted. As a full-fledged adult, she'd much rather do her job(s), take care of her family, and hang out with her boyfriend, but she's often dragged into the misadventures of the teenaged protagonists for their relatively more mundane escapades centered around the school or city.
• Only Sane Woman: Compared to the other characters, she's actually very calm (especially when Ataru is not around), wise, and mature.
• Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: Sakura has black hair and pale skin, and is considered one of the most beautiful women in-universe.
• School Nurse: She joins the Tomobiki High School staff as the school nurse.
• So Beautiful, It's a Curse: When she starts working as the School Nurse, Sakura is extremely annoyed to have practically every male student coming to the infirmary just to ogle at her or propose marriage to her.
• Statuesque Stunner: Her height is never stated, but she is one of the tallest (human) characters in the series. And once she's cured of her diseases, it becomes obvious just how beautiful she is.
• Supermodel Strut: The first anime shows her walking with a seductive strut, most notably during her first day as a School Nurse where both the students and the camera focus on her swaying hips.
• The Ugly Guy's Hot Daughter: Her mother and uncle are Gonky Miniature Senior Citizens, while Sakura is a bombshell. We don't know what her dad looked like.
• Vocal Dissonance: In the original anime, Sakura has a low and gruff voice that makes her sound like a middle-aged woman. The All-Stars anime gives her a voice that matches her age and beauty.
• Weirdness Magnet: Due to her spiritual powers, she's a natural beacon for Yōkai and yurei. In one story, it's established she always keeps her exorcism wand at hand because otherwise yokai will swarm to her presence. Some scenes added in the 1981 anime establish that when she was a kid, the yokai she'd attract were her only friends, because she was too sickly to interact with human kids on the regular. The downside is that, prior to meeting Ataru Moroboshi, she was also a magnet for various disease-causing yokai, which caused her to be plagued by chronic illness until Ataru, an even better Weirdness Magnet, was able to draw them away long enough for her to exorcise them.
• What Does She See in Him?: Whilst it's mostly motivated by sour grapes, the guys who know about her engagement to Tsubame often wonder why she's engaged to him, given he's rather milquetoast and bumbling.
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child: After Ataru writes her a vulgar love letter on Ten's behalf, Sakura goes to meet the sender to kill him, but she can't do it because the little Ten asks her date out on a date. Even though Ten's date plan is filled with indecent activities (due to Ataru's influence), Sakura can't bring herself to do anything that would hurt Ten physically or emotionally.

Sanjuro Kuribayashi

Sanjuro Kuribayashi

Voiced by: Tesshō Genda (JP, original series)

A teacher for Class 2-4 who debuts in the 16th episode. He only appears for a brief span, vanishing after his final appearance in the 23rd episode. He is a tough, brutal, no-nonsense teacher who is hired by the anime's initial version of the principal to try and bring order to Class 2-4, "the cancer of Tomobiki High". He takes an immediate dislike to Ataru, and subjects him to what is blatantly bullying. He's also a pervert with a thing for beautiful women, falling in love with Lum, Mrs. Mendo and Lum's mother during his brief stay in the class.

---

• Big Ol' Eyebrows: He has very big eyebrows.
• Canon Foreigner: He's an 1981 anime-exclusive character.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Simply vanishes between episode 23 and episode 24, and is never mentioned again. Possibly, he was fired for his brutal teaching methods and inappropriate attraction to an underage teenager (along with the first Class 2-4 teacher from the second episode for the latter's failure to control his class which led to Kuribayashi being hired in the first place) and subsequently replaced by the more upstanding in comparison though incompetent and comically frustrated Onsen-Mark.
• Comedic Lolicon: He develops a raging crush on Lum at first sight, to the point the anime even explains what a lolicon is. This causes him to become insanely jealous of Ataru, which in turn leads to Ataru to humiliate him by setting him up on a phony date with Lum to expose his unseemly feelings. Weirdly, in the very next mini-episode, he is shown swooning over the mature beauty and elegance of Shutaro and Lum's mothers.
• Obviously Evil: He has a brutish, hard-featured face, which meshes with his characterization as a stern, ruthless, even cruel and bullying man.
• Sadist Teacher: He calls Ataru ugly to his face and says that gives him all the justification he needs to bully Ataru, and repeatedly subjects him to physical abuse. Whilst Ataru can be a terrible student, in this case, the violence against him was completely unprovoked.

Hanawa

Hanawa

Voiced by: Rokurō Naya (JP, original series)

A young, optimistic, slightly naive teacher who is eager to make friends with his students and desperately wants them to think of him as "the cool teacher they can trust". In the manga, he doesn't debut until chapter 48, but appears in episode 33 of the anime.

---

• Ascended Extra: Zigzagged in the anime; he debuts in episode 33, three episodes before Onsen-Mark debuts, but he appears in fewer anime episodes than he does in comparable manga chapters, and only has three speaking appearances.
• Fantastically Indifferent: He is remarkably oblivious to the weird things around him, even when they are staring him in the face. In his debut, he seems to just fail to get that Lum is an alien; when she zaps Ataru, he scolds her that using violence is wrong, and when Lum flies in front of him, he simply demands she weaer proper girl's gym shorts for modesty instead of her usual bikini bottom. He also fails to realize that Ryuunosuke is a girl and not a boy.
• No Full Name Given: Only his surname is known.

Tomobiki High Students

Ryuunosuke Fujinami

Ryuunosuke Fujinami

Voiced by: Mayumi Tanaka (JP, original series), Ayahi Takagaki (JP, All-Stars), Morgan Jarrett (EN, movies 3-5), Kimberli Wayman (EN, movie 2), Rachael Messer (EN, All-Stars)

^{Click here to see her in the 1981 anime}

A student in Class 2-4 with Ataru et al. She was born a girl and sees herself as a girl, but her eccentric father raised her as a boy and calls her his "son", leading to her extremely masculine speech (and name). Her greatest desire is to behave appropriately for her gender.

---

• Action Girl: Due to daily fights with her father, she is an excellent fighter.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: In the original anime, Ryuunosuke's hair was black, but the All-Stars anime makes it blue. Her eye color also got changed from black to red.
• All Amazons Want Hercules: When Sakura asks Ryuunosuke what she'd want in a boyfriend, after a few minutes thought, Ryuunosuke she wants somebody who is "tough and wild like the sea, and stronger than me". Ironically, her Arranged Marriage pairs her with Nagisa Shiowatari, who might be more girlish than her in his mannerisms, but who is strong enough and fast enough that he can easily beat her in a fight.
• Ambiguously Gay: Due to Ryuunosuke's character concept being built around her gender issues, it can be interpreted that she might be a lesbian. In general, Ryuunosuke is more polite, demure and chivalrous around other girls, and acts more aggressive and intolerant around guys. She even is perfectly willing to kiss another girl if she can wear female underwear as a reward, causing Shinobu to question Ryuunosuke's sexual orientation. However, all that can be explained by a combination of her admiration of other girls for being more feminine than she is, as she wishes to be more like that, and her reacting negatively to the various perverts, lechers and weirdos she encounters throughout the series. When dealing with guys who aren't trying to molest her, she is just as polite to them as she is to the girls. Also, outside of that one time with Shinobu, she normally reacts negatively to girls hitting on her; she complains about all the love letters and Valentine's chocolate she gets from Tomobiki's girls, she rejects Kurama definitively, is deeply distressed by being kissed by Ran, and refuses to kiss Nagisa precisely because she believes Nagisa is a girl.
• Arranged Marriage: She's engaged to Nagisa because their dads betrothed them before they were even born, but Ryuunosuke despises Nagisa.
• Ascended Extra: Ryuunosuke debutes pretty late in the series — chapter 147 of the manga, episode 63 of the original 1981 anime, and episode 16 of the 2022 anime. Despite this, she becomes a pretty major character, hanging out with the core quartet of Ataru, Lum, Shinobu and Shutaro so much it arguably becomes a quintet after her debut. And whilst some of those appearances are effectively cameo or secondary roles, in many of her appearances she's a central part of the plot, even getting several multi-chapter stories that revolve around her to some extent.
• Berserk Button: She does not like when people mistake her for a boy or treat her like a boy.
• Bifauxnen: She looks so much like a pretty boy that even girls who are aware of her gender swoon.
• Bifauxnen and Lad-ette: The bifauxnen to Benten's lad-ette. Ryuunosuke dresses modestly and has a sense of chivalry in how she treats women with care. In contrast, Benten is a macho biker in skimpy clothing.
• Boyfriend Bluff: She's asked to go on a date with Shinobu in order to convince Shinobu's unwanted Stalker with a Crush Soban, the delinquent boss of Butsumetsu High, to leave her alone. She agrees, but only because the Butsumetsu High delinquents bribed her with a bra.
• Boyish Short Hair: Her short hair is one of the traits that make her look masculine. The hairstyle is certainly mandated by her insane sexist father.
• Calling the Old Man Out: She's constantly calling her Abusive Dad out on his bullshit, several times a day.
• Character Catchphrase: One of the few characters where this isn't exaggerated by fanon. She is constantly spouting "Ore wa onna da zo!" ("I'm a (woman/chick), dammit!" in the most masculine words in Japanese) when her idiot father calls her a boy or "his/my son".
• Chick Magnet: Girls just swoon over Ryuunosuke's rough-but-benevolent mannerisms, macho courage, strength and honorable nature, paired with her beautiful features. Ryuunosuke herself notes that she gets much larger hauls of Valentine's Day chocolates and love letters than Shutaro Mendo, who was the most popular guy in school before she arrived.
• Commonality Connection: At the end of the "One Night's Battle" arc, after Nagisa explains he subdued her gently because he couldn't bring himself to hurt a girl that he likes, Ryuunosuke visibly softens towards him, as this is an aspect of masculine pride that she closely understands. She even permits him to continue living with her, excusing it as refusing to let him leave until she can defeat him.
• Does Not Like Men: Zigzagged. When guys are treating her with respect, she can get along with them just fine, and she's normally got no problem with them. When they start getting pervy, then she hits the roof — in no small part because of her father's gender conditioning. This mainly expresses itself in a deep aversion to being touched by guys, as well as knee-jerk expressions of disgust at the idea of being with one. Unfortunately for her, she's engaged to a guy with No Sense of Personal Space.
• Even the Girls Want Her: The female population of the school is aware that she's female and forced into Bifauxnen status by her father. They don't care — as far as they're concerned, she's still hot.
• Family of Choice: When the Moroboshis see how terrible her father is, they invite her to stay with them whenever she needs to, and from then on she can be found at their home as often as not.
• Fire-Forged Friends: Initially, Ryuunosuke and Benten don't get along. Ryuunosuke takes offense to Benten's macho behavior, and tries to push her to act more ladylike, which ultimately leads to a farcical "womanhood competition". After this forces them to team up to fend off the horny male students of Tomobiki, however, they become friends out of respect for each other's combat skills.
• Foil: Ryuunosuke and Benten make a very interesting contrast to each other. Both are super-macho girls with Super-Strength, pronounced fighting skills, and an aggressive temperament. However, Ryuunosuke is highly conflicted about her masculine traits, which were forced upon her by her father, and has a lot of self-esteem issues about how unfeminine she is, especially her inability to dress like a woman. In contrast, Benten has no such insecurities or issues, and has never been mistaken for a boy.
• Hates Their Parent: Ryuunosuke feels nothing but animosity and resentment towards her father because of his extremely abusive treatment of her, especially forcibly raising her as a boy and foiling all her attempts to be more feminine.
• Hidden Buxom: Her father forces her to conceal her bust under a tight chest-wrapping bandage because he doesn't want to accept that Ryuunosuke is a girl. On the rare occasions her sarashi comes off, she's shown to be surprisingly stacked.
• Hilariously Abusive Childhood: Her father raising her as a boy by literally beating masculine behavior into her is Played for Laughs mostly.
• Hot-Blooded: Has a brutish temper and is prone to fighting.
• Hypocritical Humor: Part of the comedy of her engagement to Nagisa is that she despises Nagisa for being not only as screwed up in terms of proper gender roles as she is, but actively enjoying his femininity, despite Ryuunosuke's own desire to become more feminine herself.
• Iconic Sequel Character: She doesn't appear until the 15th volume (Viz volume 8), but since her introduction she quickly becomes a fairly prominent character, usually hanging out with the core cast and getting a lot of focus and A Day in the Limelight stories.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Once you get past her rough behavior, Ryuunosuke is actually one of the nicest characters in the series. She is genuinely nice to people who want to be her friends and doesn't even know what "cunningness" means.
• Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: She's the Masculine Girl to Nagisa's Feminine Boy; whereas Nagisa is quiet, demure, polite, prone to tears and averse to conflict, Ryuunosuke is tough, aggressive, take charge and assertive. Ironically, she uses this trope as an excuse to dislike Nagisa all the more, since she wants to be normal, but Nagisa happily embraces his gender-blender nature. That said, Ryuunosuke does have a few inherent feminine qualities, most notably in that she has an instinctive sense of feminine modesty — she gets very defensive about being seen partially or wholly unclothed, and flies into Pervert Revenge Mode when her breasts get touched. She also notes that she wants a boyfriend who is tough and stronger than her, which are actually traits that Nagisa has.
• Naïve Newcomer: She tends to be a bit clueless about things, but it's justified due to her warped upbringing.
• Pervert Revenge Mode: Whenever Ataru and Mendou try to hug or kiss her, she immediately strikes them for it.
• Raised as the Opposite Gender: Ryuunosuke's dad wanted a boy to carry on his family sea-side shop and decided to raise his only daughter as one. Ryuunosuke knows she's really a girl and wants to be more girly, but fails due to her father's meddling.
• Sacred First Kiss: In the "Miss Tomobiki" arc, when Ran kisses her to suck out her youth, Ryuunosuke is left devastated and crying over having her first kiss stolen by a girl. For the rest of the arc, she tries to avoid being kissed by Ran again, despite this being the fastest way to restore her youth.
• Sarashi: She wears bandages around her chest not only to demonstrate her tough combative nature, but also as a substitute for the bra her father won't let her wear.
• School Sport Uniform: Oddly enough, she gets to wear the girls' gym uniform despite her father explicitly registering her at Tomobiki as a boy.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: In an episode where she wears the same dress as seen in My Fair Lady.
• Ship Tease:
  • With Ran. On first meeting Ran, Ryuunosuke seems to be smitten with the alien succubus and even asks her out on what her father and friends all think to be a date, leading to her classmates openly speculating if Ryuunosuke is attracted to girls. However, Ryuunosuke's own thought bubbles reveal that this is actually a ploy for her to study Ran's behavior so she can be more girlish herself, and she is shown to be repulsed when Ran kisses her in the Miss Tomobiki Contest.
  • With Shinobu. Ryuunosuke agrees to go on a date to try and scare off Soban, once she is properly compensated with the bribe of a bra. Ataru uses a transformation spray stolen from Ten to cuddle up to Ryuunosuke by assuming Shinobu's form, and Ryuunosuke's dad is all for the relationship. In a story about Tomobiki having a costume contest, her dad takes both girls hostage and dresses them up as bride and groom before praying to his wife's shrine about Ryuunosuke finally finding a bride, something that Ryuunosuke finds embarrassing, but weirdly doesn't get violent about.
  • Subverted(?) with Kurama. Ryuunosuke immediately makes it known that she has no attraction to Kurama, and immediately tries to dissuade her from courting her by revealing her true gender, despite the crow goblins meddling.
  • Zigzagged with Benten; in the original manga, whilst Benten seems amused and even flattered when she's told that Ryuunosuke has a crush on her, that information comes from Ryuunosuke's delusional father and Ryuunosuke never evidences any sign of attraction to the alien tomboy — in fact, their first encounters revolve around Ryuunosuke's dislike of Benten for clashing with Ryuunosuke's idealized image of what girls are like. Also, Benten initially thinks Ryuunosuke is a boy, and when she learns the truth, she becomes very angry that a crossdressing girl would call her out as "too boyish". The 1981 Animated Adaptation does slip in some Ship Tease between the two in the filler episode it presents as their first meeting, with Benten noting at the ending that she knew Ryuunosuke was a girl all along but still being quite flirty in her interactions. (The Animated Adaptation of the story where they first met in the manga implies that [[ this episode wasn't canon, though.) Urusei Yatsura The Final Chapter also has Benten angrily talking about how fond she's grown of the earthlings when Lum threatens to erase Earth's memories, with many fans believing she must be referring to Ryuunosuke, the one earthling that Benten has been shown interacting with prior.
  • Whilst Nagisa's feelings for Ryuunosuke are undeniable from the start, the idea that Ryuunosuke might come to return them does get teased in Nagisa's second appearance. In the second chapter, after a bedstricken Nagisa complains that he feels like he's going to disappear after being touched by Sakura's exorcism ofuda, she gets genuinely worried for a moment, and is legitimately upset when he seems to have vanished. After he beats her and then explains he took it easy because he doesn't want to hurt her due to liking her, she seems legitimately touched. Finally, when the heartbroken Nagisa is leaving, commenting on how Ryuunosuke hates him, she stops him and orders him to stay with her until she gets good enough to beat him in a fight.
• Super Gullible: When her father convinces the naive Ryuunosuke that eating Valentine's Day chocolate she got from one of her female admirers will physically turn her into a boy, she immediately leaps onto Ataru's plan to instead present some chocolate to a boy and tell him that she loves him when he claims that this is the "cure".
• Tomboy Angst: She's tough and aggressive due to her upbringing, but really wants to wear dresses, put on makeup and date just like normal girls do. Sadly, her overbearing father keeps foiling her every effort to be more feminine.
• Tomboyish Name: She has one of the most stereotypically masculine names that can exist in Japanese. To explain: As a rule, -suke is masculine, it's almost like -son (Jacobson, etc.) in English. Further, the character "Ryu" used in her name means dragon and is never a part of a girl's name (the homophone character "Ryu" used for girl's names means "willow"). This is due to the fact her father is one of the most extreme examples of 'wanted a boy' in fiction - he forces her to act, talk, dress, and pretend to be a boy when she wants to be feminine… which she can't pull off because of her upbringing.
• Tomboyish Voice: She has a voice so deep it can easily pass as a teenage boy's that hasn't broken yet.
• Troubled Abuser: Invoked and played for laughs during the manga version of her "womanhood duel" against Benten. When Sakura tries to hypnotize them to bring out their maternal instincts, Ryuunosuke succumbs and begins attacking Ten (standing in for her son) with baseballs whilst screaming abuse, in an unflattering homage to Kyojin No Hoshi. Onlookers simply note that her father's parenting style has clearly rubbed off on her.
• The Ugly Guy's Hot Daughter: Her father is a middle-aged man with unflattering looks, but Ryuunosuke is very attractive in a Bifauxnen way. Apparently, she takes after her mother, but it's impossible to know for sure because not even her father remembers what her mother looked like.
• Unsettling Gender-Reveal: Kagura, Ran and Benten mistake her for a boy and are attracted to varying degrees, only to lose interest once the truth comes out.
• Weaponized Ball: When having her "womanhood duel" with Benten, under the influence of hypnosis that makes her think she is Ten's mother, she forces him to try and catch 1000 baseballs that she hits at him with great ferocity, all the while screaming at him for his ineptitute in catching them.
• Whole Costume Reference: The same dress in My Fair Lady, seen here◊.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: Ryuunosuke wears the standard male school uniform, at her father's insistence (the latter being in denial about not having a son). Unusually for this trope, she desperately wants to stop crossdressing, but fails because her father sabotages all her efforts to wear girl's clothing.
• Women Are Wiser: Compared to her father, she's clearly the brains of the family. And given how unearthly Ryuunosuke can be, that's saying something.
• Wouldn't Hit a Girl: She reveres girls so much that she'd never hit a girl.

Kousuke Shirai

Kousuke Shirai

Voiced by: Kappei Yamaguchi (JP, 2008 OVA), Shinya Takahashi (JP, All-Stars), Ronson Hawkins (EN, All-Stars)

^{Click here to see him in the 1981 anime}

Ataru's classmate and friend.

---

• Adapted Out: Subverted. His role in the 1981 anime was apparently split amongst Lum's Stormtroopers, but "Perm" is actually supposed to be Kousuke.
• Cock Fight: Despite being good friends with Ataru, they'll still occasionally fight over girls.
• The Generic Guy: He only stands out because of his interactions with Ataru. There's nothing setting him apart from the other boys at class otherwise.
• Hidden Depths: Discussed in the manga's special chapter, where it's revealed that he's actually quite popular with the girls.
• Satellite Character: Little is shown about his characterization and he mainly appears to give Ataru someone to talk to at school.
• Those Two Guys: Kosuke often appears with Ataru's chubby friend Hokuto.
• Youthful Freckles: He's a teenage boy with freckles.

Hokuto

Hokuto

Voiced by: Akira Kamiya (JP, original series), Jun Inoue (JP, All-Stars), Camryn Nunley (EN, All-Stars)

Another of Ataru's classmates that hangs around him.

---

• Adaptational Badass: In the 1981 anime he's literally Kenshiro for the sake of a pun.
• Composite Character:
  • In the 1981 anime, most of Hokuto's traits were given to the character of Kakugari.
  • Conversely in the 2022 anime, most of Kakugari's traits were given to Hokuto including being a member of "Megane" Satoshi's quartet.
• No Full Name Given: He's only known as Hokuto and his full name is unknown.
• Those Two Guys: In the manga and 2022 anime, Hokuto is mostly seen with Kousuke in the background.
• Satellite Character: Even less is known about him than Kousuke, all thats really known is that's friends with Kousuke and Ataru.

Class 2- 4

The background classmates of the main cast who usually participate in the chaos.

---

• Cast Full of Crazy: All of them are completely off their rocker most of the time.
• Hormone-Addled Teenager: Whether it's the girls pining after Mendou and Ryuunosuke or the guys with Lum and Sakura, pretty much every student in the class has some sort of lustful desire. The boys even lust after Ryuunosuke in some stories, trying to grope her in their first P.E. class together and entering a fighting contest to prove themselves worthy of being her boyfriend.
• Sucky School: Class 2-4 is implied to be the worst class at Tomobiki High, but the rest of the school is no great shake either. The other classes can be just as rebellious and rule-breaking as Class 2-4 when given the chance, and the teachers and Principal frequently run extremely dangerous competitions, as well as resorting to ruthless tactics to keep their rowdy students in line.

Lum's Stormtroopers

In General

Megane, Perm, Chibi, and Kakugari. Four schoolboys from the same class as Ataru who are in love with Lum and have sworn to protect her from Ataru. Ignoring that she doesn't want to be protected from him.

---

• Adaptation Dye-Job: Megane and Chibi have darker hair colors in the All-Stars anime than they did in the 1981 anime.
• Adapted Out: In the All-Stars anime, Satoshi (Megane) and Akira (Chibi) are the only ones from the group who appear since other characters like Mendou, Kousuke Shirai and Hokuto (an equivalent to Kakugari) fill in the roles of the other two members left out of the adaptation.
• Ascended Extra: In the manga, they only show up for the first few chapters then leave once Mendou appears, outside of a very brief cameos such as in the Blue bird storyline. In the anime, however, the four are regulars, especially Megane.
• Back for the Finale: In the manga, they reappear for the cast spread in the final volume.
• Canon Foreigner: While the group does exist in the manga, Perm and Kakugari are technically characters original to the '80s anime since their counterparts weren't named in the manga and their existence replaces those of other classmates like Kousuke Shirai and Hokuto from the manga.
• Childhood Friends: In the anime, its shown the four were inseparable even ten years ago. They also had a casual friendship with Ataru and Shinobu since they were kids.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: They mostly vanish from the manga shortly after Mendou shows up save for occasional cameos such as chapter 281 of the manga and the cover of the finale.
• Fanboys: Lum's Fan Club, as they are all obsessed with her.
• Hopeless Suitor: They're all hopelessly infatuated with Lum who only loves Ataru.
• Named by the Adaptation: They're never given names in the manga. Their only known names come from the anime adaptations and its supplementary materials.
• No Full Name Given: While we do know their actual given names, their surnames are never revealed.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: The names they are known with refers to some physical characteristic of them, and means glasses (Megane), permanent (Perm), tiny (Chibi) and crew cut (Kakugari). However, Megane's name, Satoshi, is said twice in the anime, whilst supplementary materials say Perm, Chibi's and Kakugari's real names are Kousuke, Akira and Hiroyuki respectively).
• Pervert Alliance: They're a band of four losers united by their mutual lust for the beautiful oni Lum and their mutual envy of their "friend", Ataru. Each of them would happily stab the others in the back if they thought they could get Lum all to himself, but since she's loyal to Ataru, they're able to work together to try and break her relationship to him. They're even able to work with Ataru on the rare occasion when it seems like Mendo may be supplanting Ataru in Lum's affections.
• Putting on the Reich: Played for Laughs in Beautiful Dreamer. Megane wants to theme their portion of the school festival after Nazi Germany and wears the uniform. The others lampshade this and question whether it's really going to help them sell anything.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: At times, Megane rivals the screen time of Mendo, one of the four main characters.
• Take That, Audience!: Their obsession with Lum parodies fans of the show.
• Too Kinky to Torture: In volume 4 of the manga, they get zapped for the first time after annoying Lum, and instead wax rhapsodic about how happy it makes them to be zapped by Lum—they're that desperate for her attention.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: They are Childhood Friends with Ataru, but frequently fight with him. In the first episode, Megane asks Ataru to pay him back if he dies, which is given a callback in a later episode where Ataru asks Megane the same question.
• With Friends Like These...: While technically Ataru's "friends", their interest in Lum leads them to plot against him often. Despite their antagonism towards Ataru, they often hang out with him. They're also a major cause of trouble, and in fact one could blame Lum's entire presence at Ataru's house on them.

Megane

Satoshi "Megane"

Voiced by: Shigeru Chiba (JP, original series), Setsuji Sato (JP, All-Stars), Marc Garber (EN, test dub), Colin Hackman (EN, movies 1, 3-6), Craig Wollman (EN, Movie 2)

The bespectacled leader of the group, a manic Otaku who worships Lum and the only one to take the club seriously. The most focused of the group.

---

• Ascended Extra: Even compared to the other three members, Megane is prominent in the 1981 anime. He gets so much screentime and character focus he is essentially a main character alongside Mendou.
• Hot-Blooded: In one memorable scene from episode 64, he runs up the wall, breaks through the ceiling, and stands on the roof shouting into a megaphone.
• Karmic Butt-Monkey: Like Mendou, Megane is liable to get slapstick punishment depending on how much of a jerkass he's being in the episode.
• Large Ham: Megane is often very loud and hammy.
• The Leader: Megane is the leader of the Lum Stormtroopers.
• Nerdy Bully: Despite being an Otaku, Megane often bullies his friends, Ataru and Chibi. This is justified as Ataru and Chibi are even lower on the totem pole than Megane is; the former due to his perversion and bad luck, the latter due to being geekier and gawkier then Megane.
• Otaku: Megane is a caricature of a crazed, obsessed otaku taken to an extreme. The best hits are the battle armor he built for himself and the ability to identify on sight the exact variant of a tank—and operate it. The group are also fanboys of Star Wars in particular; the group are named after the villainous Mooks from that series and they collectively have a Star Wars-themed mental breakdown when Lum proclaims her body belongs to her Darling.
• Putting on the Reich: In the 1981 anime, he's been seen dressing up in a Nazi uniform and performing Nazi salutes.
• Scary Shiny Glasses: Megane's glasses often shine when he gets an obsession.

Perm

Kousuke "Perm" Shirai

Voiced by: Akira Murayama (JP, original series), Jonathon Guggenheim (EN, test dub/movies 3-6), Adrian Monte (EN, movie 1), Michael Walters (EN, movie 2)

A tall and thin teenager with a perm hairdo. More athletic then the other stormtroopers, Perm takes the club most casually of the Stormtroopers. Perm receives the second most focus of the Stormtroopers.

---

• Adaptational Hairstyle Change: Unlike his manga counterpart, whom had spikey hair, Perm has a perm with a mullet for his hairstyle.
• '80s Hair: He has a mullet since the original anime aired in the '80s.
• Canon Character All Along: Perm has alot of similarities with Kousuke including taking his role in almost all anime adaptations of stories where Kousuke plays the role and being the friendliest to Ataru among the Stormtroopers, but was thought to be a different character. However, anime materials and model sheets confirm Perm is in-fact meant to be the same character and his real name is the same as Kousuke.
• Composite Character: Perm is a composite of Kousuke and one of the nameless members of the Stormtroopers in the manga. Like the former, he is a semi athletic friend of Ataru and takes Kousuke place in most stories, and like the latter is a curly haired member of the Stormtroopers. Perm resembles Kousuke more than the curly haired Stormtrooper and his real name is confirmed to be Kousuke in supplementary materials.

Chibi

Akira "Chibi"

Voiced by: Issei Futamata (JP, original series), Daisuke Sakaguchi (JP, All-Stars), Steven Paul (EN, movies 1, 3-6), Matthew Ross (EN, movie 2)

A short teenager with buck teeth. A rather wimpy boy who collects models.

---

• Asian Buck Teeth: He has buck teeth like that of a beaver's.
• Bully and Wimp Pairing: Chibi is bullied by everyone, but he most often hangs around the largest member of the group, Kakugari whom sometimes beats him up. Despite this, the two are good friends and Chibi once introduced his special skill as "being beaten up by Kakugari".
• Butt-Monkey: Chibi is a short, timid crybaby who is often beaten up by the rest of the Gang.

Kakugari

Hiroyuki "Kakugari"

Voiced by: Shinji Nomura (JP, original series), Langley McArol (EN, movies 1, 3-6), Edward Morrisson Garland (EN, movie 2)

A large, shy teenager with a crewcut. Kakugari is a close friend of Chibi and likes wrestling.

---

• Bully and Wimp Pairing: Kakugari tends to roughhouse with Chibi, who oddly doesn't seem to mind.
• Composite Character:
  • In the 1981 anime, Kakugari can be considered a composite of one of the nameless members of Lum's fanclub in the manga and Hokuto. Whilst Kakugari's hairstyle resembles the nameless member of Lum's fanclub, his status as a large friend of Kousuke/Perm is similar to Hokuto and he takes his place in a few stories.
  • Reversed in the 2022 anime, where Hokuto takes Kakugari's place among Ataru's quartet of friends where Kakugari's manga equivalent appeared. Interestingly, Kakugari still exists in this adaptation as a background character.
• Out of Focus: He is the least focused on of the Stormtroopers group.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Kakugari has alot of traits in common with Hokuto, a chubby friend of Ataru in the manga and 2022 anime, but unlike Perm and Kousuke, they are not confirmed to be the same character.