Tohru Honda


Tohru Honda, aged 16–18, is an orphaned high school student who, at the start of the story, begins living with Shigure, Yuki, and Kyo Sohma in exchange for housekeeping. She loves to cook, describes herself as an excellent housekeeper, and has an after-school job as an office janitor to pay her tuition fees to avoid being a burden on her grandfather. She is depicted as polite, optimistic, extremely kind, and selfless; several other characters, including Kyo, Rin, and Hanajima, tell her she needs to look out for herself and not shoulder everyone else's burdens. In the original Japanese, Tohru habitually speaks formally, but not always correctly, a habit she picked up from her father, Katsuya, after he died when she was three, as a way of replacing him in her mother's eyes. Tohru's mother, Kyoko, raised her alone until she died in a car accident shortly after Tohru entered high school, a few months before the start of the story. Tohru repeatedly calls Kyoko the most important person in her life and treasures her photograph; when she falls in love with Kyo she feels guilty of being "unfaithful" to her mother's memory. In the first half of the series, as Tohru learns about the zodiac curse and its effects on those she loves, she becomes distressed, and when she learns that the dangerous Akito is the "god" of the zodiac, she resolves to break the curse. Only later does she admit that she wants to free Kyo most of all. Despite setbacks, both external and personal, Tohru stubbornly persists in her goal and eventually frees Kyo and her friends. In the last chapter, she is moving with Kyo to another city so he can continue his martial arts training, and in the final pages they are shown as a loving elderly couple with a granddaughter.

Voiced by: Yui Horie (Japanese), Laura Bailey (English)