Characters / Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid – Tohru

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

Tohru (Tohru Kobayashi)

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

"Good morning, Miss Kobayashi!"

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

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A-H

• Absurd Phobia: She's afraid of the local shopping mall due to it resembling a castle to her. The white color in particular reminds her of the fortresses of the crusaders who'd try to kill her on a regular basis.
• The Ace: Tohru is considered one of the most powerful dragons in existence, whose presence tips the balance of the conflict in her world. This is one of the reasons her father, Elma, and Ilulu come to the human world to seek quarrel with her.
• Achievements in Ignorance: She ended up getting hired at a maid cafe just by showing up in her usual outfit, and she wasn't even trying to get a job at the time.
• Adaptation Distillation: While being one of the benign Chaos Faction dragons, Tohru still is a being aligned with darkness, with that she had a little quirk where she is slightly irritated by mentions of holy beliefs and deities in the manga. The anime mostly glosses over this: although she does express to be irritated by Christmas, a noticeable change is during her retaliation on Clemene, where in manga Tohru was furious for him praising the gods for his luck AND threatening Kobayashi, while in the anime Tohru was pissed at him solely for daring to hurt Kobayashi.
• Aesop Enforcer: She takes this role for Elma, in the Flashback in Chapter 44, by destroying a palace that was meant to be a symbol of peace, the Aesop here being not letting yourself be used by people, which Elma later forgets, and Tohru forgets this aesop as well.
• Affectionate Gesture to the Head: Begs for this treatment from Kobayashi in Chapter 26/Episode 8.
• Always a Bigger Fish: Although Tohru is extremely high up in the dragon power scale, it is established early on that she's not the most powerful being in her world... if only because the Gods are even mightier than she is.
• Ambiguously Bi: She's madly in love with the female Kobayashi, but she's also ecstatic to discover Kobayashi's being briefly cursed with a "thingy", implying that she is attracted to Kobayashi regardless of sex.
• Angry Cheek Puff: Tohru tends to puff one of her cheeks when she's angry or pouting. In episode 5, when she spies on Kobayashi working while invisible, she gets so jealous of seeing Kobayashi and Takiya interacting that she puffs up her face so hard that smoke starts to come out.
• Antiquated Linguistics: Lampshaded by Kobayashi, who compares Tohru's former archaic manner of speaking to that of an old man's.
• Armor-Piercing Question:
  • In the manga, her father asks a series of these when trying to convince her to return to the Other World: What would happen if the humans she's befriended were to find out she was a dragon? What if her bloodlust were to overpower her? What happens when Kobayashi — whose human lifespan is infinitesimally small compared to Tohru's — dies, leaving her alone? After some reassurance from Kobayashi, Tohru admits that while she knows Kobayashi won't be around forever, she wants to enjoy the time that she has with her and their friends.
  • In the anime a hallucination of her dragon form, the embodiment of her doubts and fears, questions her relationship to Kobayashi after she sees a documentary about the lifespan of a mouse compared to a human's. Her father reiterates them, but as in the manga Tohru decides she wants to enjoy the time she does have with Kobayashi to the fullest.
• Attention Whore: She really wants Kobayashi to notice her and give her praise, though it usually ends up with Kobayashi being annoyed or humoring her.
• Autocannibalism: Played for Laughs. The first time she severs and cooks her tail for Kobayashi, she eats it herself when the latter refuses. When Kobayashi asks what it tastes like, Tohru declares it's "sweet and creamy".
• Badass Adorable: A powerful dragon that can turn into a cute human girl (albeit still with horns and a tail) in a maid outfit.
• Batman Can Breathe in Space: She can go into orbit (or at the very least into the upper layers of the atmosphere) on her own and doesn't need any protective gear to survive there.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: Tohru's intense love for Kobayashi stems from not only the Rescue Romance (see below), but also from Kobayashi selflessly offering a home after Tohru sullenly commented on how lonely she is.
• Berserk Button:
  • Chaos Dragons hate the divine on principle alone, so don't say the "G" word if there's even the slightest chance that Tohru might hear.
  • Kobayashi "cheating" on her is another one. She nearly went medieval on both Kobayashi and Kanna (although to be fair, she didn't know it was Kanna at the time) when she returns from shopping.
• Bigot with a Crush: Tohru thinks of all human as "inferior" and "weak" but is madly and deeply in love with the human, Kobayashi.
• Black Sheep: She mentions during the Beach Episode that her falling in love with a human makes her abnormal by dragon standards (let alone within her own family).
• Blood Knight: As a Chaos Dragon, Tohru greatly enjoys combat and often sings cheerful songs about raining death and destruction upon her enemies while cleaning.
• Breath Weapon: Her flame breath is extremely powerful and something of a Signature Move for her.
• Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: Before the series started, she lead a solo assault on the gods in order to end the war between humans and dragons. It only ended with her getting mortally wounded, and in the position Kobayashi found her in.
• Buxom Beauty Standard: While not as big as Lucoa's or Elma's, her chest is still large, and the hot spring chapter reveals her "D for Dragon" bust size estimate was in dragon standards, making her even more buxom in human standards. and her chest size often causes A-Cup Angst on Kobayashi. Ironically, the introduction of Ilulu makes Tohru further the female dragon with the smallest chest.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Exhibits this towards Kobayashi, especially when it comes to rival dragons.
  • When she meets Takiya for the first time, she assumes he must be trying to seduce Kobayashi, and starts plotting to get rid of him behind his back, though it doesn't go anywhere because he and Kobayashi are just friends. Though that doesn't stop her from being generally paranoid around him every now and then.
  • She's not happy with Kobayashi mentoring her rival, Elma. When she sees the two of them together, she gets anxious and starts overcompensating with her maid duties, afraid that Kobayashi won't want to spend as much time with her. Having an honest talk with Kobayashi helps her reconcile these feelings (though only after she blasts Elma miles away with a breath attack).
  • She is very unhappy about Ilulu moving in, especially after the destructive fight they had not too long ago. Seeing Ilulu being physically affectionate with Kobayashi shocks her into silence, albeit in a humorous way.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Comes with being a dragon living in a modern human world. In some instances, she thought fictional works actually happened in reality, and once fell for a conspiracy theory which she read from the internet.
• Combat Pragmatist: She doesn't like fair fights and will use sneak attacks when needed to win. She defeats Lucoa in an arm wrestling match, despite the latter being way stronger than Tohru, by bribing Shouta to root for her, distracting Lucoa long enough to have her hand pinned to the ground.
• Combo Platter Powers: She has several powers that she can use in and out of battle including; Breath Weapon, Energy Donation, Flight, Invisibility, Sizeshifter, Super-Speed, Super-Strength, Thinking Up Portals, X-Ray Vision, Weather Manipulation and probably other powers beyond those.
• Cool Big Sis: Partially Tohru's role for Kanna, but it's complicated, as she somewhat shares a role with Kobayashi as Kanna's guardian.
• Culture Clash: One of her biggest struggles living in the human world is how different her dragon standards are from human standards. It's hard for her to relate to human feelings of anger, selfishness, and coexisting alongside a species with massively different lifespans. This ironically is what helps her bond with Kobayashi, who also feels like an outlier among other people and can't relate to many of the mundanities other humans experience.
• Curtains Match the Window: Only in the anime, where she has blonde hair with red tips to go with her red-gold eyes.
• Cute Little Fangs: She is a dragon after all.
• Cute Monster Girl: Her human form retains her horns, fangs, dragon tail, and supernatural red eyes. She's nonetheless very adorable.
• Cute and Psycho: She has the rare Ax-Crazy moments when seriously angry.
• Dating What Daddy Hates: Her father wasn't pleased to find out that she had fallen in love with a human.
• Death Glare: She gives off glares in general whenever threatening someone.
  • She and Elma will frequently locks eyes like they're about to kill each other whenever they meet, even under the most mundane circumstances.
  • Gives one to her father when he tries to hurt Kobayashi.
• Defeat Means Respect: She earns the respect of the Dragon Busters after delivering a Curb-Stomp Battle to the entire gang (though this doesn't stop several of them from trying to bribe Kanna to find out her weaknesses).
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Before she became Kobayashi's maid, she was harsh towards anyone she encountered. Even after defrosting she still retains her harsh attitude towards virtually everyone who isn't in her close circle.
• Devoted to You: Towards Kobayashi. Episode 13 of the anime even assigns her the Flower Motif of a Shepherd's Purse, which means "I offer you my all".
• The Ditz: At times.
  • She burns Kobayashi's whole kitchen trying to heat up some food with her flame breath.
  • She's very quick to be bribed by Kobayashi's affections, dropping any prior attitude, be it positive or negative, to shift into Genki Girl mode.
  • Self-confessed when she tries sneaking her tail meat into a sandwich:
    Kobayashi: Are you an idiot?!
    Tohru: (Sadly) Yes...
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: In a flashback showing her rivalry with Elma, the two prepare Breath Weapons and aim them right down each other's throats. Though them locking mouths does look a lot like kissing, doesn't it?
• Do Not Taunt Cthulhu: She has been on both the Giving and Receiving end of this trope.
  • Whenever anyone underestimates her, especially humans who just see her human-form and think she is small and weak, she invariably crushes them with her enormous power level.
  • In her backstory, she mistakenly believed that her status as one of the most powerful dragons meant she had the power to defeat the gods of her world, and tried to take them on single-handedly. She was proven very wrong, as she was beaten to the brink of death by a single god and barely managed to escape with her life — and even then, she was slowly dying from the divine sword her opponent had skewered her with. If Kobayashi hadn't pulled the sword from her body, she admits she would have died, which is why she fell so hard for her human savior.
• Dragons Prefer Princesses: Averted, because Kobayashi is not a princess (Tohru thinks of her as more like an angel). Tohru is actually rather annoyed by the stereotype.
• The Dreaded: She apparently has something of a reputation among harmony dragons since Clemene tries to call for reinforcements the second she shows up.
• The Drifter: As a dragon, Tohru would rarely stay in one place for too long prior to moving into Kobayashi's apartment. Otherwise, humans would try to hunt her down.
• Dumb Blonde: Her hair is yellow-orange in tone, and she can be quite ditzy.
• Eaten Alive: When they first meet she threatens to do this to Kobayashi, for trying to hug her while she's in dragon form. She doesn't follow through with her threat though.
• Elemental Eye Colors: She's a fire-breathing dragon and her eyes are red with yellow highlights, which give the illusion of flames.
• Enemy Within: The anime alters the scene in the manga where she jumps into orbit, wherein instead Tohru is confronted by a hallucination of her dragon form, manifesting her doubts and fears.
• Enmity with an Object: She spends most of Chapter 115 jealous of the family's new roomba.
• Even the Girls Want Her: Elma is heavily hinted to be in love with Tohru and Ilulu while not in love is outright shown to find Tohru physically attractive enough to desire to mate with her while in heat.
• Evil Laugh: She gives a rather impressive one in the OVA when she's spiking the Valentines chocolate she's making for Kobayashi with a love potion.
• Exact Words: When Kobayashi tells her to make good omurice, she takes the statement literally and is adamant about it being an exceptional restaurant quality omurice. After making one she felt was only average she tries shopping for top ingredients, but since that passed the budget she instead goes back to the other world to fetch some more exotic ingredients from there to make them exceptional. Kobayashi isn't too happy at the result.
• Faking the Dead: She hid the fact that she survived the battle with the gods from most of the dragon community (with only Lucoa and Fafnir initially being aware that she wasn't dead) out of a desire to drop off the radar and be free of her responsibilities. This is part of the reason why there's so much friction between her and Elma for a good chunk of the series.
• Fantastic Racism: Her experiences with humans in her world weren't the best, and she tends to think they'll all be alike no matter the dimension (with the exception of Kobayashi, though the irony there was that Kobayashi had saved her in a drunken state). She does start easing up a bit when she realizes the modern-day dimension is nothing like the world she comes from and that nobody's perfect, including her own kind.
• Feigning Intelligence: While she's a bit more familiar with the human world than Kanna is, there are still many things she doesn't know and when asked tends to make up explanations. She tells Kanna that cars are operated by magic and that a see-saw was a catapult used to train children in warfare.
• Female Monster Surprise: Happens when she transforms from dragon form to human form in Kobayashi's flashback in chapter 32/episode 12. She even says "Yes, I am female" to Kobayashi in the FUNimation translation of the anime.
• Finger Poke of Doom: She knocked out a delinquent taller than her (in her human form) by poking him in the gut with her pinkie.
• Fire/Water Juxtaposition: The fire dragon to Elma's water dragon. Elma's dragon form for example has no limbs and is covered in piscine fins, whereas Tohru resembles a more classic European dragon with flame breath and glowing red eyes.
• Fleeting Passionate Hobbies: Chapter 60 has her trying to pick up a new hobby and asking everyone around her for advice (her previous hobby was traveling, but she can't exactly indulge her wanderlust as a live in maid). It ends with her fueling her Kobayashi obsession into creating various works of art, much to Kanna and Ilulu's annoyance.
• Formal Characters Use Keigo: Her speech patterns in Japanese are typically very polite, even when she's excited, angry or smug. This is likely to add to her overall image as a maid, since maids are expected to speak formally.
• Four-Fingered Hands: She is four-clawed in dragon form. Her human form has the regular five fingers and toes.
• Game Face: When pissed off her teeth will turn into huge fangs, her eyes will change to be more bestial, her fingers will turn into claws, and she will become surrounded by a Battle Aura.
• Gender-Blender Name: "Tohru" is usually a male name in Japan. Aside from that, her father apparently named her after an author from Earth, and it's likely that this author was J. R. R. Tolkien (his last name being pronounced as "Toorukin" or "Tohrukin" in Japanese).
• Genki Girl: She can be incredibly high energy at times (usually in regards to her affection for Kobayashi), especially in contrast to the more stoic Kobayashi and Kanna.
• Giant Foot of Stomping: Tohru in dragon form, delivers one to the Bandit, missing her by separating her claws at the last second.
• Girlish Pigtails: She typically wears her hair in two very long pigtails while in human form, highlighting her Cute Monster Girl image.
• Good Parents: To Kanna after her Promotion to Parent, though Kanna sees her as more of an elder sister (it seems that this was the case even before Tohru came to the human world because her own parents didn't give a shit about her).
• Hair-Contrast Duo: With Elma, having long blonde hair in contrast to Elma's short black hair.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Very deep down, she is a nice being.
• Happiness in Slavery: While she insists she's Kobayashi's maid, she's more like a slave in function (since she's not married to Kobayashi, and does it all for free in exchange for room and board). She's willing though, and happy to serve the woman she loves.
• Healing Factor: Cuts off her own tail repeatedly to cook and feed to Kobayashi and Kanna. (Kobayashi always refuses.) It grows back rather quickly. She also can heal from a near-mortal wound at the beginning of the series in a night and heals from other battle wounds in seconds to minutes.
• Healing Hands: She uses healing magic on Ilulu after she got roughed up in a fight against Azad. She also claims that her saliva is a coagulant, but Ilulu suggests that she was just looking for an excuse to lick Kobayashi.
• Hero of Another Story: Also overlaps with Villain of Another Story due to her being part of the Chaos Faction. Thanks to her long life span, Tohru had her own share of adventures back in her world for many years before Kobayashi's birth and their eventual meeting at the beginning of the manga.
• Hidden Depths:
  • Despite her childish personality, Tohru can be surprisingly mature at times, best seen during her discussion with Fafnir about her relationship with Kobayashi.
  • Though somber in the time before she met Kobayashi, Tohru was shown to have been loved and cherished by her friends, who followed her to the human world eventually; this shows that she was kind and charismatic even when she wasn't as sociable.
• High-Pressure Emotion: Of a sorts. Implied as a side effect of her increasing strength her green scales turn red whenever she is angry and trying to defend one she loves.
• Hollywood Tone-Deaf: Her attempts to compose an idol pop song about how much she loves Kobayashi have hilarious results in the anime, with a lot of screaming and cackling. This is pretty justified, as her Japanese voice actress, Kuwahara, is a trained singer who has performed several anime openings and character songs, so she is forced to exaggerate in order to get intentionally bad results. Averted in the episode's ending, where Kuwahara performs the song again flawlessly.
• Hypocrite:
  • On some occasions she thinks that humans will never learn from their mistakes (at one point even nearly killing three neighbors for having an argument over noise), yet she seems to keep overlooking her own faults. Can sometimes lead to Hypocritical Humor.
  • She gets angry at a candy box featuring dragons dressed in human garments, as she believes this shows they don't respect themselves as dragons. Naturally, as Kobayashi points out, coming from Tohru of all people...

I-Z

• I Choose to Stay: Downplayed. She has stated several times that she has no interest in ever returning to her world, but since she can easily create inter-dimensional portals, it's more of a change of address than anything.
• I Just Want to Be Free: Flashbacks show that Tohru felt constricted as a member of the chaos faction, only really fighting on their behalf out of filial piety. The battle that led to her meeting Kobayashi was out of a desire to be free of her responsibilities.
• Image Song: "Omurice to Love no Teigi", "Ouchi Kaero", and "Shiro Kuro Tsukema Show?!". She shares the second one with Kanna and the third with Elma.
• Implied Love Interest: For Kobayashi — While it's obvious that Tohru is in love with Kobayashi, the latter has been rather mysterious about the exact nature of her feelings for the former. Kobayashi admits to having fallen for Tohru, blushes when she sees Tohru wearing something cute, and Kobayashi has shown zero interest in any of the other people who romantically like her. It's no longer implied as of chapter 97 as Kobayashi flat out admits to having feelings for her.
• In a Single Bound: Her leg strength is such that in the manga, it's implied that she can jump from the ground to Earth's orbit. She and Kanna can reach the outer atmosphere by jumping on a seesaw.
• I Never Told You My Name: In Chapter 80 of the main manga, after knocking out a trio of thugs in a grocery store, Tohru meets up with a teenage girl who calls her by her name. The girl is actually Georgie, but Tohru doesn't recognize her until she imitates Girlish Pigtails with her hands.
• Innocent Fanservice Girl:
  • The first time she shows her human form to Kobayashi, she covers her body with nothing but a cloak.
  • She doesn't hesitate to take off her clothes when a drunk Kobayashi and Makoto demand her to strip, and gets confused when Kobayashi berates her for not trying to cover up.
  • When she confuses a stamp as a branding iron, she slips off her dress to expose her bare back and asks Kobayashi to brand her.
• Insistent Terminology: She's commonly mistaken for a cosplayer, although she insists that she is a real maid.
• Instant Expert: Chapter 58 of the main manga shows her mastering the spell to turn from dragon form into human form on the first try, surprising Dragonewt in the process.
• Instant Runes: Whenever Tohru uses one of her powers in the anime it is accompanied by a magic circle appearing in front of her (appearing either in front of her face or hand depending on whether or not the spell was self-targeting). They occasionally show up in the manga, but not to the same degree.
• Interspecies Romance: She's a dragon who falls in love with a human.
• Invisibility: She has a spell that allows her to be invisible to people. She can also cast it on others, such as Kanna when they both spy on Kobayashi at work from outside in their dragon forms.
• I Owe You My Life: The original reason Tohru started serving Kobayashi as a maid. Tohru also developed her crush via this Rescue Romance.
• Irony:
  • She's a dragon whose nature is inclined towards destruction and chaos, yet her job is to keep things clean and orderly.
  • She hates divinity in any form, yet one of her closest friends is a former goddess.
  • In their first interaction shown in the main manga and in Elma's Office Lady Diary, Tohru, the Chaos Dragon, spends most of her time reining in Elma, the Harmony Dragon, from causing chaos when it should be the other way round.
• Irrational Hatred: Toward Makoto, one of Kobayashi's co-workers, despite the guy clearly having no romantic interest in Kobayashi and being very nice with her when they first met. Even after he befriends Fafnir and it's clear he and Kobayashi are Just Friends, the awkwardness is still there.
• Jagged Mouth: Tohru manifests one when she is using her Breath Weapon or showing off her feral side in human form. It's played more for cuteness in her dragon form, as it's reserved for comedic moments.
• Japanese Politeness: Before Kobayashi saved her life, Tohru addressed others condescendingly.^note In this case, she used the Japanese pronouns "omae" and "kisama" when referring to others in the second-person.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Her and Elma's falling out boiled down to her becoming disgusted with Elma having traded in her ideals for delicious food (not to mention turning the humans that she was trying to help into a violent cult) and burning the palace built in her honor to the ground in retaliation.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Tohru is pretty amicable towards her friends and especially Kobayashi. But if you're neither, she probably hates you.
• Kill All Humans: She occasionally threatens to do this for "flaws" she sees in humans, e.g., Kobayashi's neighbors arguing over who is making the most noise, and honestly believes that Kobayashi would be the only human worth not killing. If her father is to be believed, she was more gung-ho about this than most other Chaos faction dragons when she was younger.
• Kill the God: She led a solo assault against the gods, thinking that killing them would end the perpetual war between humans and dragons. She failed, and it only ended with her getting mortally wounded and in the shape that Kobayashi found her in.
• Lipstick Lesbian: She's the one who does the housework, and is clearly much more feminine in appearance and mannerisms than Kobayashi, whom she's madly in love with.
• Living Emotional Crutch: She's revealed to be this when she gets taken back to her world and Kobayashi is struggling to keep her place tidy while raising Kanna by herself. When Tohru finally makes it back home, the three are much happier and the place is clean again.
• Loophole Abuse: One of her attempts to feed Kobayashi her tail meat is to make a tofu substitute to ease her into the flavor. Kobayashi obviously doesn't take to this attempt either.
• Lyrical Dissonance: Whenever she's dusting, Tohru sings a song about annihilating all the dust and bringing death to the world.
  Kobayashi: What a dangerous song.
• The McCoy: To Kobayashi's Spock and Kanna's Kirk. Tohru is easily the most impulsive of the main trio, not really considering the immediate ramifications of her actions like Kobayashi would do. While Kanna can express the same habits, she's generally way more level-headed and perceptive.
• Magical Girlfriend: For Kobayashi in a rare female-female example, being a magical dragon in human form.
• Magnetic Hero: When accompanying her to the local shopping district, Kobayashi is amazed to see how popular Tohru is. The vendors know her by name and give her extra product, and the kids who play here greet her as "cosplay lady". Kobayashi concludes that Tohru is somehow better at socializing with humans than she herself (though this is actually because Kobayashi is not so good at it).
• Manic Pixie Dream Girl: On several occasions, Kobayashi lampshades how much her life has changed since Tohru came along.
• Meido: It's right there in the title, she is a maid for Kobayashi. In the anime, the uniform she most often wears was copied from a maid café she saw as she flew to Kobayashi's apartment for the first time.
• Minor Injury Overreaction: A variation. Kobayashi treats coming down with a fever as more of an annoyance than anything else. Tohru on the other hand has never been sick and her only frame of reference for such things is entire villages or kingdoms being decimated by plagues, so she panics and runs herself ragged trying to find medicine to cure her.
• Missing Mom: The only times her mother is ever mentioned is when she refers to her parents as a set. It's noted by Tohru after seeing how parents raise their children on Earth that she realizes just how abysmal dragon parenting really is.
• Mundane Utility: She uses her magic powers for pretty mundane purposes:
  • Her saliva contains an enzyme that can be used to remove stains.
  • She shoots massive beams of fire from her mouth to disperse rain clouds so the laundry could dry.
  • Casts clairvoyance spells before washing clothes to check the pockets for lost items and loose change.
  • Uses her Perception Filter power to sneak around and into Kobayashi's workplace and watch her work without anyone (Kobayashi included) noticing her presence.
  • Uses her invisibility to trip Kobayashi's jerkass boss for abusing his authority to harass Kobayashi, foisting his own workload on her, and viciously reprimanding her for the most trivial of mistakes.
  • Deconstructed when she attempts cooking with her fire breath and burns the food to cinders. She claims the stove "lacks firepower".
  • She can make a spectacular fireworks show from her dragon breath.
  • She invokes the name of evil gods in order to make food taste delicious while working at a maid cafe.
  • Her tail can vibrate, lending to an effective makeshift massage chair for Kobayashi.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • A minor moment for Tohru when she is thankful Kobayashi calls out to her during the fight with Ilulu. Before then, Tohru had become so annoyed with the other dragon's attacks, she was considering it fine to allow anyone to die so long as Ilulu was defeated and Kobayashi was not harmed. She knows she can never allow herself to think like that.
  • She's at a complete loss for how to react when it becomes clear just how badly her actions have hurt Elma. The anime version of the scene even makes it look like she's about to start crying.
• Named After Somebody Famous: Her father named her after an author from Earth. The identity of the author isn't specified, but it's implied to be J. R. R. Tolkien, since her name sounds like part of the Japanese pronunciation of "Tolkien" ("Toorukin").
• Nature Versus Nurture: She belongs or belonged to a faction of dragons dedicated to spreading chaos and destruction, but hasn't done anything really bad on-screen, being at least superficially nice and polite to everyone she comes across and proving to be more social than Kobayashi. Though she occasionally lapses into Fantastic Racism towards humans in private moments, and is prone to considering violence as an acceptable solution to life's problems.
• Nay-Theist: Dragons of the Chaos Faction hate the divine on general principle, and Tohru has a particular disdain for them for their part in the Forever War dragons have fought both against them and amongst themselves. This presents itself as the mere mention of God or gods being a Berserk Button for her. When an enemy dragon praises the heavens for his luck in finding Ilulu, Tohru hears and takes great pleasure in making him regret his choice of words (and hurting Kobayashi on top of that). When asking Kobayashi to pick a yukata pattern for her, Kobayashi picks one with an "Eeny, meeny, miny, moe" chant that invokes God's name, prompting Tohru to immediately pick the opposite of what Kobayashi chose rather than do what "that bastard" says.
• Ninja Maid: Tohru might be the strongest example ever. Most maids don't have the power to warp reality and blow up cities.
• No-Sell:
  • When Kanna fires a beam of lightning at her, Tohru effortlessly blocks it with one hand and returns fire with her Breath Weapon.
  • Much later on during her fight with Jii she is able to take a punch from him to the face without even flinching before punching him out in one hit.
• Oblivious to Love: She completely fails to pick up on the fact that Elma's feelings for her aren't exactly platonic, even after Elma says that she wants to eat her miso soup every day (a traditional Japanese marriage proposal).
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: While the events leading up to it and the immediate aftermath have been detailed, Tohru's failed one-man raid against the gods has never been shown apart from some stills during a Flashback Nightmare in the anime.
• One-Track-Minded Artist: Played for Laughs. After spending all of chapter 60 trying to figure out a new hobby, she decides to paint, sculpt, and write songs exclusively about Kobayashi.
• Original Generation: Word of God states that she doesn't have any mythological origin, in contrast to the rest of the dragons.
• Our Dragons Are Different: Her dragon form resembles a slightly cartoonish European dragon, though, in an odd detail, it also has horns similar to those of Eastern dragons.
• Partial Transformation: Tohru usually lets her horns and tail out when in human form, but can hide them to appear fully human. She can also manifest her wings to fly without fully transforming, and transform her arms to amplify her punches and claw swipes.
• Perpetual-Motion Monster: She can generate her own mana, unlike other dragons who have to convert it from other sources (like with Kanna plugging her tail into a power socket). Other dragons are capable of using the mana that she radiates, but Ilulu states that it tastes awful.
• Person of Mass Destruction: It's unknown how powerful she is, but she once caused a massive amount of damage to a field in a fight with Kanna, which Tohru states afterwards was just the two of them playing. Tohru also claims she could cause the end of the world.
• Perverted Sniffing: Tohru loves to sniff or lick Kobayashi's clothing, which understandably freaks Kobayashi out massively. She'd also like to lick Kobayashi herself, but she wouldn't allow that.
• Polyamory: Downplayed as she is still 100% devoted to Kobayashi, but after Elma fully confessed her feelings during the Arranged Marriage Arc, Tohru has more or less accepted them as long as Elma does not interfere with her relationship with Kobayashi, something Elma stated she had no desire to do anyway.
• Power Echoes: When in her powerful dragon form, her voice is slightly distorted.
• Power-Up Full Color Change: During the ongoing debacle and later fight to disrupt Elma's arranged marriage, Tohru, growing quite furious with the groom after the true evil intentions behind the arranged marriage comes to light, starts to show that her anger, and implied power increase, turns her normally green scales into red ones, temporarily.
• Pretty Princess Powerhouse: It's never specified if her father's title of "Emperor of Demise" is an actual royal title he holds or merely an epithet. If the former, it would mean that the cute and feminine girl that wears a maid outfit is a princess with a lot more than political power.
• Promotion to Parent: For a long time, Tohru has acted as Kanna's Cool Big Sis. However, as Kanna was exiled to Earth, Tohru joins Kobayashi as Kanna's Parental Substitute. It's complicated. Equally complicated but no less real is that Tohru considers herself, and Kobayashi, to be the parents of the Holy Sword after they gained sentience.
• Property of Love: She claims she's this, even going so far to refer to herself as Kobayashi's sex slave during Comiket, and for what we know of her, she would be happy to be it for real.
• Puny Earthlings: While she admits humans can accomplish many things, she still considers them weak and inferior to dragons. This attitude starts to lighten over time as she spends time in the human world.
  Tohru: Humans may gather together, help each other, and accomplish many things, but their civilization could be easily destroyed by dragons. So I think dragons are better.
• Really 700 Years Old: She's many millennia old.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: In her human form, she has red eyes, and is definitely one you should not mess with.
• Red/Green Contrast: She has green scales while her father's scales are red. The same applies to her and Ilulu.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The red to Elma's Blue. While Elma prefers to avoid fights, Tohru enjoys them, and she's also far more hyper and enthusiastic than Elma most of the time and much more willing to show her emotions. This can be downplayed, or even reversed if they're competing or food is involved, though. Also, her eyes are red while Elma's are blue.
• Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: Subverted. Her name is pronounced the same as Thor in Japanese, but she states that it comes from a different source In-Universe.
• Rescue Romance: She fell in love with Kobayashi after Kobayashi saved her life. When they first met, Tohru had lost a fight with some gods and been impaled by a giant holy sword, which Kobayashi — in a drunken stupor — easily removed.
• Reused Character Design: Her character design (minus the horns) is based off of Fuyu from Cool-Kyou Shinsha's previous one-shot, RaButa, right down to their choice of dress. This gets lampshaded in chapter 3 when she's shown using the exact same "Finish Quickly Pose" that Fuyu performed to speed up the washing machine.
• Running Gag: Tohru trying to serve pieces of meat from her tail to Kobayashi.
• Scars Are Forever: Chapter 116 reveals that she has a scar on her back from where the holy sword pierced her, though she normally keeps it hidden. It also dips into Wound That Will Not Heal territory, given how her Healing Factor is powerful enough to sleep off mortal wounds or instantly regrow her tail.
• Signature Move: Her fire breath is often her go-to offensive option. It's powerful enough to part clouds and destroy mountains.
• Single-Target Sexuality: Has eyes only for Kobayashi and no one else. In fact it's incredibly vague if she's actually lesbian or just extremely Kobayashi-sexual, as she wasn't perturbed and even seemed more eager to go to the next level when Kobayashi was temporarily given a male member. Indeed, being female never really factors into Tohru's interest one way or another.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: Single woman seeks good woman, in this case. Ultimately, Tohru's attraction to Kobayashi stems from how the latter is a good person who, despite her seemingly apathetic stance on life, will always do everything she can to help those in need around her.
• Sizeshifter: Tohru's dragon form ranges in size from "a small house" to "a single claw is bigger than a car", with her default form being 20 feet tall. Possibly justified by the fact that shapeshifting has been established as one of her powers from the very beginning.
• Smitten Teenage Girl: She's the dragon equivalent of a sixteen-year-old, which would explain her near-obsessive love for Kobayashi.
• Sore Loser: It takes a lot just to get her to admit she lost, and she rarely takes it well whenever she does. Like Elma she also tends to turn everything into a competition with some ridiculous stakes.
• Spock Speak: Well-spoken at all times.
• Strong Family Resemblance: Her dragon form is near identical in terms of build to her father, the only noticeable differences being wing shape, horns, and scale color. Averted with their human forms, which don't look alike at all.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: The only time she's nice and friendly all around is when she's with her friends and Kobayashi, and even then she's prone to throwing out snark where she pleases. Towards human citizens like Sasakibe, Yana, the maid café workers and the local children, she is usually polite and cheerful by default, but doesn't realizes whenever she ends up being Innocently Insensitive instead.
• Superior Successor: In the manga, she's powerful enough to frighten her own father — himself a powerful Chaos Dragon — when he shows up to bring her home and makes the mistake of attacking Kobayashi. In the anime, they're more evenly matched.
• Supreme Chef: Her food is constantly described as being delicious. She even ends up becoming the head chef when she gets a job at a maid cafe.
• Tae Kwon Door: She does a variation of this to Elma, in Chapter 29 of Kanna's Daily Life.
• Technicolor Eyes: Red-gold eyes with slitted pupils.
• Telepathy: Judging by how the mouth resp. snout of Tohru's dragon form sometimes doesn't move when she talks, it can be assumed that she can project her voice into the minds of others through telepathy.
• Thinking Up Portals: Tohru can make portals that lead anywhere, even between worlds, without any apparent limit. It doesn't seem to be a power that all dragons have, since Elma can't make them herself despite supposedly being equal in power to Tohru and had to follow her through the one she made (Elma gets stranded on Earth as a result).
• Through His Stomach: One of Tohru's reasons for putting so much effort into her cooking, so she can make something that thoroughly impresses Kobayashi and wins her heart over. One point it's taken literally when she laces a chocolate with Love Potion, before Kobayashi guilts her into refraining from it.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: The girly girl to Kobayashi's tomboy, because she is much bubblier in personality and dresses more femininely.
• Took a Level in Cheerfulness: According to Lucoa, Tohru didn't smile that often when she was younger. Now she's a borderline Genki Girl, thanks to Kobayashi.
• Translator Buddy: She translates for Kobayashi during a trip to England due to Kobayashi not being fluent in English.
• Tsundere: While not normally like this, especially toward Kobayashi or Kanna, toward certain people like Elma, Tohru can have a really hard time admitting she cares about them.
• Uptown Girl: Implied. Given that her father is called "The Emperor of Demise", it's possible that she's a princess, though it's never made clear if this is actually the case.
• Ventriloquist Animal: While in dragon form, Tohru appears to talk using telepathy and is not seen making any visible movements to her mouth.
• Vibrant Orange: She's identified by her bright orangish hair and bubbly, enthusiastic personality. As the main source of comfort and warmth for the protagonist, Kobayashi, the orange in Tohru's design particularly pops due to the backgrounds of the series being comprised of more muted whites and cool colors, allowing that orange to have a stronger presence.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: Do not ever insult or attack Kobayashi if you don't have a death wish.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Kobayashi interprets Tohru and Elma's constant bickering and rivalry as a sign that the two have a great comfort and understanding in each other, otherwise they wouldn't be squabbling as much they do. True enough, the two bonded years ago as they traveled human society together. After the Arranged Marriage Arc, Tohru has cut back a lot on the Vitriol, they still argue a bunch, but Tohru isn't as dismissive of Elma's feelings as she was before.
• Vocal Dissonance: Her voice stays the same regardless of what form she's in, meaning she still sounds like a young woman even while in the form of a two-story tall dragon. Though her dragon form adds an echo to her voice to emphasisze her size and lack of human vocal chords.
• Walking the Earth: She used to travel a lot when she was younger, though she doesn't do so anymore for obvious reasons.
• Weather Manipulation: She can use her Breath Weapon on its own to clear away clouds, and she can also combine it with Kanna's Breath Weapon (which she can only use in dragon form) to create storms.
• We Used to Be Friends: She and Elma were friends prior to the start of the series, but due to a difference in world-view, the two fought and went their separate ways. As of Chapter 64, they've seemed to have patched things up.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Elma berates her for dissing on humans and convincing her to do the same (when Elma was initially trying to befriend humans), only for Tohru to be at first presumed dead, and ending up lovey-dovey with a human and treating Elma with great hostility. This brings Elma to the point of tears as to how little consideration she gave her as a result.
• World's Best Warrior: Tohru has the reputation of being one of the strongest dragons, with only Elma being a match for her. When she cuts loose, she is capable of easily defeating any opponent, including ones as powerful as Ilulu and Clemene, and even her own father is intimidated by her. The anime tweaks it a little — she doesn't intimidate her father, but she can fight him on an equal footing. That said, she doesn't match up to former goddess Lucoa or the Gods of the other world, and it was the aftermath of such a fight that caused her to arrive on Earth in the first place.
• Written Sound Effect: A Phwoo/Pwoo sound effect occasionally appears when Tohru uses one of her powers in the manga.
• Yandere: Early in the manga and anime, Tohru was extremely possessive towards Kobayashi, reacting violently to anyone she perceived as a romantic rival: She swore to kill Makoto after seeing him talking to Kobayashi; furiously demanded to know if Kobayashi was cheating on her when Kanna first showed up; intimidated her own father when he attacked Kobayashi; fireballed Elma through a door and across the city — narrowly missing Kobayashi — when the Harmony Dragon tried to give Kobayashi a protective charm; and beat Clemene to the brink of death for striking Kobayashi, who was protecting Ilulu. She's mellowed slightly due to her Character Development, but is still fiercely protective of the one she's chosen as her mate.
• You Keep Telling Yourself That: If we go by her friendship with Elma from even before she escaped to the human world, it's more apparent that Tohru is not firmly aligned with the Chaos Faction in spite of both her own claims and the fact that she is considered extremely valuable and a standard-bearer for their cause. This, added to her experiences with The Bandit, hint that Tohru indeed used to be totally partial for the Chaos cause, but not anymore, now gravitating more towards a position of a conscientious objector.

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