Bakuon!!/Characters

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Sakura Hane

Voiced by Reina Ueda

The main character of Bakuon!!, Hane is an apparently ordinary girl, but becomes enamored of motorcycles when she spies Onsa riding her cycle to school on the first day of high school. She immediately seeks out and joins the biking club at her school, then throws her heart into getting both a license and a motorcycle. Along the way she ends up making new friends and going on previously unexpected adventures -- including receiving the Holy Grail from Jesus on the road to Aomori.

No, really.

For all that she's sixteen, Hane is a complete innocent, with even the broadest and most obvious dirty jokes and sexual references passing entirely over her head.

Tropes exhibited by Hane include:

• Big Ol' Eyebrows
• Blue Eyes
• The Chosen One: Suggested by events in Episode 4.
• The Cutie
• Expressive Hair: It's not frequent but it occasionally happens that Hane's "idiot curl" changes to reflect her thoughts.
• Genki Girl: Hane definitely has aspects of this in her personality.
• Hair Decorations: Hane has pink wing decs over her ears.
• Idiot Hair: Although she's anything but an idiot.
• Innocent Fanservice Girl: Not as a matter of course, but when she washes her bike... whew.
• Oddly-Visible Eyebrows
• Ordinary High School Student
• Parental Abandonment: For some reason, Hane's parents are in the United States, and apparently have been for quite a while and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future, leaving Hane and her younger sister Yume to live alone.
• Santa Claus: Perhaps as an indication of just how innocent she is, Hane admits to her friends in episode 8 that she believed in Santa until her third year in middle school -- equivalent to 9th grade in the US. She would have kept on believing had her younger sister Yume not broken the bad news to her that year.
• Weirdness Magnet: So far most of the Magic Realism elements of the show seem to happen to or around her. They aren't her imagination, though, as other people encounter them as well.

Amano Onsa

Voiced by Yumi Uchiyama

The closest this series gets to a nasty, badass biker. Like most of the other girls, Onsa is sixteen, and she thinks she's a lot tougher and meaner than she really is. In fact, she's almost as innocent as Hane, but she grew up around motorcycles and has a certain amount of biker in her blood as a result, making her a bit on the rough and crude side. It makes for an odd combination. She's an enthusiastic, if not always terribly eloquent, advocate of motorcycles and biking in general; it's her encouragement (as casual as it was) that pushed Hane over the edge from "curious about bikes" into "must have, must ride".

Her family owns a motorcycle shop, but it specializes in junker bikes with their odometers turned back, and isn't an authorized dealership for any manufacturer as a result. She seems permanently poised between accepting and embarrassed by this.

Tropes exhibited by Onsa include:

• Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Onsa reacts this way when Hane's choice of motorcycle shop turns out to be the Amano family store when it comes time for her to buy her bike.
• Badass Biker: Onsa clearly thinks she's one.
• Fille Fatale: Averted. Onsa tries to give the impression she is more sexually knowledgeable and/or experienced than she actually is, but the pretense is obvious to anyone who is less innocent or ignorant than her.
• Hair Decorations: Onsa ties up her shock of curly hair with a white bandanna.
• Jerkass: Has a thread of this running through her personality, but not so much as to annoy most people.
• Malaproper/Little-Known Facts: Onsa seems to hover between these two tropes, always willing to make a confident-sounding guess when she reaches the boundaries of her ignorance or innocence. Unlike many examples of the latter trope, though, she occasionally makes it clear when she's not sure but trying to figure things out (like guessing that "proletariat" has some something to do with art because it has a syllable that sounds like "art" in it). Other times, though, she's just confidently wrong.
• Messy Hair: Prompting Rin's nickname for her, "Moja" (literally "frizzy", but rendered as "Mophead" on the DVD).
• Tomboy
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Seems to be developing into this with Rin, with a touch of Les Yay as well.
• Wrench Wench: It's her family business. When Hane chose to buy her bike from the Amano family store, Onsa took it upon herself to ensure that it was in full working order and proper condition (unlike all the other bikes in the store).

Suzunoki Rin

Voiced by Nao Tōyama

Blonde, busty and a complete Suzuki snob -- this is Rin. Like Onsa, she grew up around motorcycles -- in her case her father's Suzuki Katana.

And all the accidents he got into while riding it.

Despite a history that seems just a little worse with every Flash Back we see, Rin is an almost obsessively dedicated motorcyclist, but has clearly lost all respect for her father, from whom she gained her love of biking. She doesn't have much respect for anyone else, either, taking several episodes just to officially join the biking club despite hanging with its members and even going on a trip with them; she sometimes seems to want to be both a solitary biker making her own way through the world and The Leader of the Pack. That she's not the Leader seems to grate on her -- as does the fact that nobody respects how obviously superior Suzuki motorcycles are compared to anything else on the market.

However, despite her abrasive ways, she's actually a nicer, kinder girl than she pretends to be.

Tropes exhibited by Rin include:

• Chest Insignia: Her pink racing suit has a prominent Suzuki "S" emblem on it, as seen in her picture.
• Embarrassing Tattoo: Thanks to yet another brilliant move by her father when she was much younger, Rin has the Suzuki "S" emblem literally branded onto her butt. But she didn't know it until she was sixteen and the rest of the Bike Club noticed it at the hot springs in episode 4.
• Gag Boobs: Just look at the image. She is substantially bustier than every other girl or woman in the series, including all the adults.
• Gainaxing: Rin can't move without gainaxing.
• Girlish Pigtails: Of the "twin tails" type.
• Hair Decorations: She has bells and bows tying off her ponytails.
• Hilariously Abusive Childhood: Rin's Jerkass father frequently put her in peril with stunts he pulled while she was a pre-teen riding on his motorcycle with him. She was never seriously injured (although as noted above she once had a Suzuki logo seared into her butt because of him), but he inevitably ended up a Bandage Mummy in the hospital.
• Ms. Fanservice: What with being the bustiest girl in the series and her skin-tight pink suit.
• Punny Name: With a slight variation in spacing, Rin's full name apparently is also a term for "giraffe" ("suzu no kirin") -- a bit of trivia first mentioned by her father in a Flashback in episode 2, and which is echoed in illustrations for bumpers and other interstitial moments that depict a preteen Rin with a giraffe. Given that she's the tallest girl in the show (although not big enough to be a Huge Schoolgirl) this seems somehow appropriate.
• Scars Are Forever: The Suzuki "S" branded into her butt. Either her father never told her about it, or she forgot about until the other girls saw it in the hot springs.
• Tsundere
• Tsurime Eyes: Arrogance and pride are Rin, which makes this trait only fitting.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Seems to be developing into this with Onsa, with a touch of Les Yay as well.

Minowa Hijiri

Voiced by Rikako Yamaguchi

Hijiri is the sweetest girl in the show, and even more innocent in her own way than Hane. Heiress to the Minowa Group -- a powerful conglomerate of unspecified (but apparently large) size and power -- she appears to have been a Lonely Rich Kid until she discovered the biking club. She's not old enough to get a license yet, but she gets around that by having her butler, Hayakawa, drive the motorcycle while she sits in its sidecar.

Hijiri's major quirk is that she is a very proper and polite young lady who wants to be a delinquent, and thinks that by joining the biking club (and beating everyone at a game of "chicken") that she is finally a "bad girl". She takes such an innocent delight in thinking that she's now a delinquent that no one else in the club seems inclined to disabuse her of the notion. Despite this, she does seem to be a bit of an (unintentional) snob, sometimes almost reflexively looking down on the other club members.

Tropes exhibited by Hijiri include:

• Beware the Nice Ones: Hijiri's terribly sweet and always smiling -- but if she gets too frustrated or upset, she can get unexpectedly violent.
• The Cutie: Though not quite to the extent that Hane is.
• The Ditz: Hijiri isn't exactly stupid, but she does seem woefully ignorant of real life at times.
• Hair Decorations: She wears a single slender bow above her forehead.
• Hime Cut
• Lonely Rich Kid: Hijiri seems very much this, somehow only finding friends to bond with when she joins the Biking club.
• Meganekko
• Ojou
• Scary Shiny Glasses: The first time she gets pushed over the edge of frustration and anger in episode 8.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Money: Hijiri does this on occasion, with a surprising matter-of-factness and lack of arrogance or pretense about it. She even sees it as a kind of imperative, or even a virtue.

Hijiri: All problems that can be solved with money shall be solved with money. That is the Minowa family motto.

• Spoiled Sweet: Oddly, though, she's still a bit of a snob (calling the other girls in the club "proletarians", for instance), although such a pleasant, endearing one that you almost can't fault her for it.
• Tareme Eyes
• Universal Driver's License: Inverted. Thanks to a loophole in Japanese motor vehicle laws, Hijiri literally possesses every possible driver's license one can get in Japan, but she doesn't actually know how to drive or pilot any of those vehicles.

Kawasaki Lime

A faceless, voiceless figure of mystery, Lime was the only member of the biking club until Onsa and Hane together went looking for it. They and the other girls all assume Lime is an upperclassman, but the truth is she's a bike racer who's at least in her thirties (and maybe older), and has been asked by the principal of the school to watch over the biking club. She never speaks, and she never takes off her helmet, and her history is Shrouded in Myth. Every few episodes we find someone older who calls her "sempai" and knows of her from past association, and who reveals more about her almost legendary past. Oddly, though, she never seems out of place or uncomfortable spending all her time with schoolgirls who are so much younger than she is.

Tropes exhibited by Lime include:

• Badass Biker: The real thing, as opposed to the girls' "wannabe" status.
• Drives Like Crazy: She hit nearly 200 mph when taking Hane on her first ride in episode 1. Unlike most examples of this trope, though, she always seems to be in perfect control of her vehicle.
• The Faceless/One-Way Visor
• Fan Nickname: "Stig-sempai" started appearing on the Net within a week of the first episode being broadcast.
• Girlish Pigtails
• Hair Decorations: Subverted by Lime's big red bow -- which is affixed to the outside of her helmet. (Although her Girlish Pigtails have little red bows at their ends, too.)
• Meaningful Name: In episode 7 the tote board for the bike race reveals that the spelling of her name in roman letters is "Lime" — the color of her motorcycle and the tie on her school uniform.
  • Her last name is unknown -- "Kawasaki" is a pseudonym given to her by the principal for her bogus student ID, inspired by her Kawasaki Ninja motorcycle.
• Older Than They Look: Lime is actually in her middle to late thirties, if not older (in a flashback to the principal's high school years she's shown able to place bets at a race without a problem, and later two forty-something pro racers refer to her as "sempai") but is masquerading as a schoolgirl to watch over the bike club as a favor to the school's principal. It helps that she seems to naturally have very school-girlish body language.
• Shout-Out: Lime is a very obvious shout-out to the Stig, right down to wearing the same brand of helmet.
• Shrouded in Myth: The more we learn about Lime, the more she seems to be this.
• Spell My Name with an "S": Despite the fact that Lime Kawasaki is obviously named after her lime Kawasaki (as described under "Meaningful Name"), some fansubbers (as well as official subtitling) insist on calling her "Raimu" instead. All The Tropes assumes that Lime's creators showed how they intended her name to be spelled.
• Talking with Signs: When simple nods and gestures are insufficient to communicate her message, Lime will resort to notes jotted down on paper.
• Vague Age: She's in her mid- to late-thirties... at least. It's entirely possible that she was already older than high school age when she was part of the Motorcycle Club twenty years ago, given she was able to place bets at a bike race. And as mentioned above, there are forty-something racers who call her "sempai".
• The Voiceless: She's not mute, even though she never speaks on screen and resorts to written notes when she has to -- there's at least one moment where she steps away from the action to take a cell phone call.
• Wrench Wench: Although we never actually see it, in episode 9 we learn that Lime does all the maintenance for Hane's bike, and washes all the girls' bikes as well.

Nakano Chisame

Voiced by Ibuki Kido

A freshman student who enters the school at the start of the next school year, she is the daughter of a famous motorcycle racer and is herself a champion minibike racer. She is 144cm (4'8.5") tall, and very sensitive about her height; she initially refuses to have anything to do with regular motorcycles because she's too short to reach the ground from standard seat heights. She does not want to admit this, though, and regularly avoids anything having to do with regular motorcycles, sometimes even resorting to a stream of lies and justifications. Oddly, she is absolutely convinced that the height of a motorcycle seat is absolutely critical to its performance, being carefully calculated by the manufacturer for optimal position, and initially resists the idea of customizing a bike in any way to make it easier for her to ride.

She is recruited by the bike club not for her racing skills, though, but simply because she already rides -- even though she lacks a street license.

Tropes exhibited by Chisame include:

• Bratty Half-Pint: Initially comes across like this, but is quite a bit more complex.
• Come to Gawk: Is desperately afraid of this.
• Girlish Pigtails
• Hair Decorations: Yellow ribbons tying off her Girlish Pigtails. Despite the picture, they don't normally have text on them -- that was a special "good luck" set for taking her entrance exams.
• Older Than They Look: Is sixteen years old and looks about 12.
• Pride: So very much of her behavior is driven by an intense need not to look foolish or stupid. This is so strong that it keeps from her asking for help in cycle license school once the instructor recognizes her from her publicity.
• The Stoic: She's not quite the Emotionless Girl; she can be boggled, she cries, and she does have the occasional Freak-Out. But her default demeanor is pretty much to not react to most things.
• Tareme Eyes

Hayakawa

Voiced by Unshō Ishizuka

Hijiri's butler and driver. Little is known about him, although the picture that is slowly forming seems to depict a Retired Badass. Among other things, he makes asides that indicate he was part of the Siberian Internment, in which the Soviets held surrendered Japanese soldiers after World War II in the Siberian gulags. Which would make him at the very least ninety years old. And one serious survivor.

Tropes exhibited by Hayakawa include:

• Badass Grandpa
• Cool Old Guy
• Covered with Scars: As we see in episode 4 at the hot springs.
• Old Retainer: He's been a butler to the Minowa family for several generations.
• Older Than They Look: As noted above, Hayakawa makes off-handed comments that indicate he is a World War II veteran. He doesn't look like he's closing in on his 100th birthday...
• Vague Age: We can only guess how old he is from the comments he makes.

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