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"Your presence itself is like shouting." - Yomi, to Tomo, from Azumanga Daioh
"Genki" is Japanese for energetic or enthusiastic. The Genki Girl is a character - usually a schoolgirl, but not always - who acts like she's been mainlining caffeine and speed. She is possessed of an incredible surfeit of energy, such that she runs everywhere (often with arms waving wildly, sometimes in a Bird Run), speaks quickly (sometimes unintelligibly so), and always does everything fast, fast, fast! She's filled with confidence and determination, regardless of whether she's competent or not. Although usually played exclusively for comedy, sometimes the Genki Girl slows down for a serious or introspective moment. But not for long - she lives her life full-throttle. To sum it up, a good way of telling whether a female character is genki or not is to see if her family and peers are exhausted, astonished or even creeped out by her chronic outbursts of vitality.
Despite what you'd think, the Genki Girl is usually not The Ditz. However, there have been a few blends. She is, however, very often a Motor Mouth. If she focuses her powers on getting a boring guy to relish life, she's a Manic Pixie Dream Girl.
Whatever you do, don't give them too much coffee, cola or sugar.
Voice actors sometimes become famous for just being able to keep up the role.
For the male equivalent, see Keet.
Examples:
Anime
- Excel from Excel Saga is the trope incarnate - Jessica Calvello, her first English voice actress, got just a little too much into the role and wound up straining her vocal cords, which forced her replacement by Larissa Woolcott. After Excel, most Genki Girls will seem quite tame...
- Excel Saga's director also gave us Poemi from Puni Puni Poemi. Impossible as it may sound, at times she surpasses even Excel in genki-ness.
- Kurata Sana from Kodomo No Omocha is the archetypical Genki Girl. The Fan Vid Caffeine Ecomium
 gives an idea of just how energetic she is; note that none of the sequences in this video have been sped up.
- The title character of Suzumiya Haruhi is a very avalanche of Genki Girlness, who drags everyone nearby along with her. Tsuruya-san, a minor character, is somewhat of a Motor Mouth and a cheerful Genki Girl,with emphasis on the 'cheerful'. A natural co-conspirator with Haruhi.
- Mink from Dragon Half.
- Wakaba Shinohara from Revolutionary Girl Utena.
- Self-described "wildcat high school girl" Tomo from Azumanga Daioh, pretty much a girl not only on a sugar rush, but also under the influence of 5 cans of Red Bull, 4 pills of speed, and 20 g of cocaine. We know she's a Genki Girl because "Genki!" is the first thing she says. Yes, that. Hard to tell otherwise. Really. A veritable incarnation of the trope with a gift for self rationalization, she's also a Jerkass and a Ted Baxter.
- Kaolla Suu from Love Hina.
- Hwang Bu-ling from Tokyo Mew Mew, whose sprinting and flailing is often accompanied by circus tricks like running on top of a ball or breathing fire. As Mew Pudding, most of her fight scenes consist of jumping around and climbing things.
- To a lesser degree, Hikaru Shidou from Magic Knight Rayearth and Mamoru from Sister Princess are also Genki Girls.
- Mikoto from Mai-HiME subverts this trope nicely by simultaneously being a Dark Magical Girl. (Push this type of subversion even further, and you wind up with the Perky Goth.)
- Radical Edward from Cowboy Bebop.
- Miki from Marmalade Boy.
- Miaka from Fushigi Yuugi.
- Manabi from Manabi Straight.
- Nozomi from Yes! Precure 5. With each "Kettei~!", you know she's going to drag the team into some good-hearted but implausible plan, and somehow, her pure energy makes it work.
- Tamayo from Kidou Tenshi Angelic Layer.
- Dita from Vandread fills this role, right down to frequently falling over while running.
- Nano-Nano Pudding of Galaxy Angel II, who may or may not be an Expy of Bu-ling.
- In The Ditz variation, Kana in Minami-ke steals the show from her The Ruri and Onee Sama sisters.
- The Tachikomas from Ghost In The Shell Stand Alone Complex are Genki tanks. Yeah.
- Nakuru Akizuki from CardCaptor Sakura. Somewhat subverted by also being a Manipulative Bastard.
- Hana-chan from Ojamajo Doremi.
- Yotsuba from Yotsuba&! is a Genki Girl with training wheels.
- Lulu from Blood Plus is usually upbeat and enthusiastic - even after she becomes the last survivor of the Schiff.
- Several characters in Mahou Sensei Negima count; Makie is the most notable example.
- To clarify, the entirely of Mahora Academy is described as such, even the boys, by the teachers themselves. It was stated that during a previous School Festival, they arranged an academy-wide game of tag, and afterwards decided not to do that again because there were too many injuries. That year, they were going for a (slightly) more sedate game of Hide-N-Seek, until the Big Bad of that arc provided an army of robots, and they decided to unleash the students on them instead.
- Pixy Misa and Washu in the Pretty Sammy series.
- Tomoka, Kurumi, and to some extent An (if you don't piss her off) in The Prince Of Tennis.
- Reinforce Zwei of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, in contrast to the original, angst-filled Reinforce.
- Haruna from Koukou Debut (also titled High School Debut) is so genki she's almost Badass Normal. One of her recurring sentences is "let's work hard!" —cue to high-fiving everyone, running around doing more physical work than the guys and tiring everyone out. Oh yeah, and she can put up a physical fight with guys including potential assaulters. Her over-the-top genki-ness is arguably part of what makes her such an endearing character.
- In the Neon Genesis Evangelion Lighterand Softer Gaiden Game Girlfriend of Steel, Rei gets this treatment. Dead. Fucking. Serious.
- Torako from Hyakko. She's of the Genki-Ditz blend, considering she makes her debut by leaping out of a window. It was a second story window, but she definitely chose the quickest way to get from point A to point B.
- Chrono Crusade's Rosette is what happens when you give a Genki Girl a loaded weapon. It's probably a good idea to run.
- Misa from Death Note.
Western Animation
Webcomics
- Kiki from the Web Comic Sluggy Freelance. The one time they fed her Pixie Stix, she made a ferret-shaped hole in the wall, and had circled the Earth three times before the others had even reacted.
- Robin DeSanto from It's Walky! and Shortpacked! is so genki it qualifies as a superpower. She moves like a bolt of lightning, smells like Skittles, and has less impulse control than your average three-year-old. She once ate a bowl of Cadbury cream eggs; next thing she knew, she'd been elected to Congress.
- Grace from El Goonish Shive fits this trope sometimes, though she also enjoys sleeping a lot. Sometimes, she combines the two, resulting in the invention of her legendary "Sleepy Little Ninja Stealth Hug"...
- The hyperactive, lovably eccentric Millie Mudd from Ozy And Millie is a Genki Girl in training.
- Larxene in the comic Ansem Retort. She's a homicidal version of this, once nuking Disney World because she couldn't get free Funnel Cake.
- Missi from Misfile definitely qualifies. While not exactly hyper, she's drastically energetic and upbeat when compared to the rest of the cast. So far nothing, not even being dumped, has been able to make her sad for more than a single panel.
Live Action TV
- Rachel Ray from her eponymous talk show. She purposely avoids "sob stories" and almost always has a smile on her face. She also works 100-hour weeks and is a rather shrewd businesswoman, and her energy and determination are usually quoted as the source of her success.
- Similarly, Ellen DeGeneres is very energetic.
- Taylor Townsend of The OC.
- Elliot Reid in Scrubs was for the most part of the first few seasons highly enthusiastic and quick-talking, tempered with bouts of self doubt (audience: AWWWW!).
Film
Video Games
Comic Books
- X-Men villain Mojo has a Deadpan Snarker assistant, Majordomo, who in turn has a Genki Girl assistant, Minordomo. Minor can be expected to say "Ohmygosh, OHmygolly..." at least twice per appearance, and will get worked up over something (complete with arm-waving and rapidfire talking - her version of it goes from sentences to short phrases strung together in the end) more and more until finally fainting. Somehow, her behavior never seems to annoy Major.
- Early appearances of Kitty Pryde in the same comic also started her out as a Genki Girl, though she actually matured during her run with the team.
- Harley Quinn, both in the comics and the DCAU.
- Misfit from Birds Of Prey not only embodies this trope, she hangs a huge pink candy-striped lampshade on it.
- Cyclone from Justice Society Of America.
Literature
- The titular character of Anne Of Green Gables, who has a tendency to spout monologues lasting for more than a page. She stops this in the later books, though.
RealLife
- They exist...
- Genki Boys exist too. This Troper once met a High School Senior that seemed about one shot of Dr. Pepper away from ascending into Caffeine Bullet Time. When told (by several of the new kids) to switch to decaf, he slowed down enough to look like he had been slapped, and slowly replied, "I don't drink coffee."
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