OH GOD I TALK SO MUCH
. . . What the hell, I'll essay randomly about Tomo and her personality and canon info and some of her relationships--both canon ones and how they transfer into camp, because in a way Tomo puts everyone in camp into a category based on who they remind her of from home. Also, randomness about how she relates to people in general, because I likes to ramble, and some random sexuality stuff because IT ALWAYS COMES BACK TO THAT WITH ME! 8D
Anyway.
First off: regarding the versions of my canon, their translations, and what I know of them. I've seen exactly half of the anime, and read the entire manga many times over. So while I feel extremely comfortable with Tomo as a character, there are probably sliiiiight differences in how she's presented in the latter half of the series, and in these cases I'm drawing from the manga, not the anime. When I look for canon precedence (which I can pull from memory for almost everything Tomo does, sadly) it's the manga I look to. HOWEVER, Azumanga Daioh is probably the series with the most similar anime and manga canons EVER. The anime just takes manga events out of order and reassembles them, adds a few random things here and there (which usually end up being yuri subtext, what the FUCK anime canon), and--does very little else to fuck with the original series, which is nice. Characterization doesn't change much, so far as I've seen. If anything, Tomo's a little kinder and gentler in the anime, but not by much. ALSO, everything I know of AzuDai I know from official releases. ADV does an excellent job in volumes 3-4 and the entire anime of explaining NEARLY EVERY REFERENCE AND EVERY TINY CHANGE, IN GREAT DETAIL, but in the first two manga volumes there are no notes, and so if I get something slightly off, that'd be why. (Also, they don't explain absolutely EVERYTHING. I didn't know until last night that Tomo makes canonical penis jokes, because ADV doesn't explain them, even though they leave the dialogue intact--which leads to the occasional complete missing of a joke, hah.) For the most part though? I endorse ADV's release of both the manga and the anime wholeheartedly. They did a decently awesome job, especially for the second half of the manga when they started adding the notes.
In case you don't know what Azumanga Daioh is, it's basically--you know how people say Seinfeld was a show about nothing? They LIE. AzuDai is a show about nothing. XD It's a four-panel comic, four volumes long, about the lives of 7 high school girls (really 6, and initially 5) and 3 of their teachers over a period of three years, from the first day of high school to the last. There's NO romance. (There's only one male character in the series, and he's a teacher.) No drama to speak of. No overlying plot arc. No fanservice. Nothing. It's just a hilarious, slow-paced, episodic comedy about high school girls having conversations and trying to make it through high school in typical modern-day Japan.
The other thing AzuDai doesn't have is character development. Which sounds like a gyp, but it works somehow, I swear. The only character that changes at all noticeably in the series is Sakaki, and not by much. The others . . . I'd argue that they all mature a LITTLE (although no one changes in appearance at all), but no one goes through anything major. I took Tomo from the very end of the manga simply because the idea I had for the app required that she be out of school. Also, she makes a hilarious 18-year-old. XD
That said, by the end of the series, there are some SLIGHT changes in her character. . . . Very slight. For one thing, she's actually shown concern for another human being and remorse for her own actions, all of three times. Yes, it takes four volumes for this LANDMARK EVENT to occur. XD So I do consider that to be a sooooort of development, and I probably exploit it too much. Tomo is not really a terribly nice or good person. She's not MALICIOUS--exactly--okay, she can be malicious. She's not EVIL, let's say! But she's thoughtless and selfish and carefree and doesn't worry too much about who she hurts by being that way. FINALLY, as the series begins to draw to a close, we see her have a few moments of "Oh my god WHAT," so I don't feel lol completely OOC by having her occasionally worry about her camp friends. She worries when Ash gets hurt, and she was freaked when Ed drowned, she doesn't want to see anyone SUFFER. Usually. She just doesn't worry about it when it happens as much as a normal person should, unless the effects are permanent and/or she likes the person a whole lot.
Also, she has to see them as vulnerable somehow, which means that if Itachi was ever seriously injured she wouldn't be happy about it or anything, but she wouldn't exactly fret, even though she loves Itachi. (Platonically!) Itachi's untouchable. He's badass. He'll be FINE. Ed, on the other hand, is also badass, but was also nearly dead and choking and wasn't breathing for awhile and so he got a little bit of the Kagura-style "omg omg omg what's wrong with you!" freakout. And Ed's on her level in her mind, unlike Itachi.
But like I said, she's not evil, and generally isn't going out of her way to hurt anyone or watch them suffer. She might pick on people, or deliberately do things to annoy/frighten them, and she does hit people, but she's not a "bad guy." She's just . . . retarded that way. |D
. . . Speaking of which. The hardest thing to judge about playing Tomo is how smart she is. Sometimes I play her too dumb, and sometimes I play her a little too bright, but--that's sort of canon for her. XD She's not hopeless; she can get into good schools if she tries. She just doesn't try. And while she does horribly on tests, she can also be a relatively quick wit in conversation, and her vocabulary's not completely stunted. She picks up random foreign phrases and uses them, she likes wordplay riddles. On the other hand, she doesn't know that a reindeer is a real animal, she thinks Jean-Claude Van Damme's first name is "Damn," and she does absolutely retarded things spur of the moment such as touching wet paint, throwing housekeys into the forest and locking everyone out of the house, and so on. |D So--sometimes it's a tough call. "Would she know this? Would she spell it right? Would she do this?" (The answer to that last one is almost invariably "yes.") If she seems a little bit inconsistent that way, that's why, and it's canon. I should and do work on it, but in almost any situation I can say to myself "Who should respond to this post, crazy!Tomo or sane!Tomo?" and I can take my pick and still have it be IC, heh. She's usually the catalyst in AzuDai, but she also plays the straight man more than once--even to characters like Yomi, whose purpose in the series is to be the Eternal Straight Man.
Because she has this unstable, hyperactive, sometimes mean-spirited personality, her friendships reflect that. Just about every friendship Tomo has in canon is mutually antagonistic to some degree, some MUCH moreso than others. So WHAT THE HELL, I'll go through them! 8D Because, again, I like to type whut, and also Tomo associates a LOT of her camp friends with her Japanese friends. Also, you can all consider this WHORING FOR CHARACTERS, if you like!
Tomo and Yomi. This is the big one for most people. Tomo/Yomi is a rather large yuri 'ship in the fandom, although it doesn't happen to be mine. Yomi and Tomo have been BFF since elementary school, but as far as I can remember, they never actually exchange the word "friend" in the series--at least not in manga canon. Instead, their general attitude is "Geez, you're in my class AGAIN?" They've known each other for ages and are completely comfortable with each other, which makes it amusing that Yomi is the person in the series that Tomo is by far the unkindest to. She mocks her, belittles her, pranks her, and even attacks her at every turn, and Yomi does the same to her, and they go back and forth like this. Both of them are absolutely merciless when it comes to the other. But--as I said, they're comfortable with each other. And we do see them hanging out outside of school, and having normal conversations, and they're also both each other's bitches in their own quiet ways. |D (Okay, so I DO see why people 'ship them, and I don't dislike it, yes.)
Tomo doesn't exactly have a Yomi in camp yet--someone who's above her level but will sink down to it and bicker with her and scream at her like a mommy when she's being an ass and she'll scream back. Ed comes the closest by far, though, and Kimimaro and Fllay are also in that category.
Tomo and Kagura. Ahahah, okay, so yeah Tomo/Kagura is my big AzuDai yuri 'ship along with Yukari/Nyamo. It's also my favorite friendship in the series, and one of the few that we see develop over time. They start out not interacting too much besides random insults, but then it becomes clear that the two of them actually can relate to each other. They're "cut from the same cloth," Kagura says--Kagura is a lot like Tomo only less so, and with actual physical prowess to back it up. But while she's not as hyper or useless, she has the same general frame of mind and mental capacity. We know that Kagura is soon comfortable enough with Tomo to come to her first for advice, even KNOWING that Tomo's the only person in the series that's likely to belittle her for it (and the least likely to know the answer). She and Tomo are at each other's throats a lot in the manga because they're both very competitive, and Tomo picks on her and makes fun of her breasts a lot (okay yeah, I 'ship them, SO WHAT), but there's none of the actual venom that's there with Yomi, and you also get great moments where the two of them are on exactly the same wavelength and spaz out together as friends like a couple of spazzy things. One of my favorite scenes in the entire series is when they're sitting next to each other on the airplane, screaming random dramatic phrases as it takes off. "The power! THE POWER!" "IT CAN FLY!" And everyone else just looks at them all "Will you two shut the fuck UP?" XD So . . . yeah. Same mental wavelength. They compete and they fight and bitch each other out, but it's all in good fun and they both KNOW it, and IMO by the end of the series they're the friendship that has the most basis in actual personality and chemistry as opposed to time and circumstance.
Kagura's also the first person Tomo shows real, slightly spazzy concern for--she has a little freakout when Kagura starts crying one day and tries desperately to cheer her up by offering to take all the blame for the incident. Which is pretty much unprecedented for her. So it's obvious she actually cares about the girl and doesn't want to see her upset.
Tomo's Kagura in camp is Ash. NO THIS DOES NOT MEAN I 'SHIP ASH/TOMO, DIE. 8D It just means that Ash is that person who is her RIVAL, and they compete randomly and bitch each other out and fight all the time, but they still connect and think in the same ways.
Tomo and Chiyo. Tomo is sort of in awe of Chiyo. She's both jealous of her and rather eager to look cool in front of her, so she wants to WIN against Chiyo, impossible as it usually is. Chiyo's an enigma, this little genius kid who's rich and adorable and doesn't really have to try for anything (in Tomo's mind), and yeah, that makes Tomo a little bitter. Chiyo's got it GOOD and Tomo wants to impress her and also to one-up her in any way possible. So Tomo can be pretty mean to Chiyo, although in relatively harmless ways. It's just more competition, but of a less direct sort. And she likes Chiyo too--she likes all of them, really. But that doesn't prevent the uglier side from rearing its head. |D
Tomo doesn't have a Chiyo-chan in camp yet. If she knew Al a little better, it'd be a likely position for him to move into.
Tomo and Osaka. Osaka's the one character that Tomo often plays straight man to. She's just . . . on a completely different level with her airheadedness. XD She doesn't compete with Osaka the way she does everyone else, at least not seriously. Osaka's almost like a pet, something cute and dumb and weird that she can hang out with and chat to sometimes and not try that hard with. For both being bonkuras, they actually don't interact as much as you might think. They're in the same boat when it comes to grades and body type, but mentally they're not in the same place at all.
Tomo doesn't have an Osaka in camp yet either. Unless you count, like . . . Tiny Kimimaro. XD
Tomo and Sakaki. Tomo and Sakaki also can't really relate to each other. They probably interact just about the least of any characters in the series (except Yomi and Sakaki--do those two EVER do anything together?). Still, Sakaki is a sort of symbol for Tomo. She's the cool, well-built, athletic, awesome girl. She's quiet and stoic and " . . . " a lot and is mysterious and really good at a whole lot of things. Tomo tries to compete with her too, but eventually pretty much gives up on it and moves on to Kagura, who will actually give her the time of day. They still chat and are still friends in their way, and Tomo just thinks she's really cool, but it's a very quiet relationship that doesn't get much play.
Tomo thinks of Itachi as being very much like Sakaki. XD
Tomo likes people. 8D All people. Which is sort of funny for a character who has so much fun tormenting them, and butts heads with like EVERYONE IN HER CANON. She's always fighting, always teasing, always poking and annoying, but she's also always keen to be around them and interacting. So . . . if she declares you her ETERNAL ENEMY in camp or THE MOST EVIL PERSON EVAR! or calls you a name, she most likely still considers you a friend and will continue to speak to you. XD Case in point--Tomo kinda likes Fllay. She and Fllay have never had a civil conversation or agreed on ANYTHING, and they constantly put each other down, but Tomo doesn't consider any of that to be mutually exclusive with friendship! 8D She continues to talk to Kimimaro for the same reason. She loves talking to Kimimaro and Fllay, even if all they do is snipe at one other. Because it's human interaction, and Tomo needs that like she needs AIR, man.
So . . . is Tomo asexual, AS EVERYONE IN IRC WOULD HAVE YOU BELIEVE? XD Actually, she's not. In fact, she's the only character in AzuDai who has any sort of sexual identity at all. She has a vulgar sense of humor at times (aforementioned penis jokes!) and takes an active interest in "adult relationships," and exclusively buys bikinis to look sexy in. She's interested in sex and she knows how it works (especially after that incident with Nyamo getting drunk, ahahah), that much is clear.
At the same time, she never PURSUES anything sexual or romantic. Other than a general desire to be attractive--which she expresses more than any character besides Yomi--Tomo doesn't fret about guys, or relationships, or experience, or having a date to whatever-the-fuck. It just doesn't really interest her beyond the shallow level of "This is a symbol of social status, and hey sex sounds kinda cool hurr hurr hurr." I remember talking with Impulse in IRC once about whether Tomo's actually interested in sex because it's SEX or just because it's "forbidden," and actually, I think it's some of both. She has the most normal sexual drive in the series. It's still far below what you might EXPECT from a girl that age, but it's there and it's genuine. Some of it is definitely "Hahah awesome this stuff is naughty and I'll be cool for knowing it" but some of it is also "Haaaay, sex!" At least that's how I play it. XD
But she doesn't want a relationship, and the main reason is that relationships, you know, take work and giving and understanding. And so she's not ready for one, and I can't imagine it anyway. XD I don't think I could ever play one out. I would just be baffled at every turn. . . . I also have this thing where I don't really play her as a lesbian or even EXACTLY bi, but I also can't see her with a man. XD Whereas to a SLIGHTLY greater extent, I can stretch my imagination and see her with a woman. Azumanga Daioh is such an asexual series that there's as much canon support for Tomo being attracted to women as there is for her being attracted to men, and perhaps more. The way I play her, she's not terribly attracted to ANYONE. She thinks people are attractive in a very off-handed and disinterested way--she doesn't even find Lupin physically attractive, really. It's there, she realizes that people like Ed and Sano and Mustang are good-looking, it just doesn't leave an impact on her, and she forgets to think about it. Partially because I can't imagine her ever approaching someone for ANYTHING romantic without having had a hell of a friendship with them first. |D (*coughKaguracough*)
( . . . srsly though, if we ever get a Kagura, don't worry about/expect me to pursue anything, as hard as I 'ship that pairing. Because as much as I love it, and as much as Kagura's essentially the only person I can see Tomo with even casually, I--would have no idea how to play that out. 8D And wouldn't dream of forcing it on anyone. JUST IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING.)
UH, AND I'M SPENT. WTF, me. I can't believe I did it again . . . XD;
Anyway.
First off: regarding the versions of my canon, their translations, and what I know of them. I've seen exactly half of the anime, and read the entire manga many times over. So while I feel extremely comfortable with Tomo as a character, there are probably sliiiiight differences in how she's presented in the latter half of the series, and in these cases I'm drawing from the manga, not the anime. When I look for canon precedence (which I can pull from memory for almost everything Tomo does, sadly) it's the manga I look to. HOWEVER, Azumanga Daioh is probably the series with the most similar anime and manga canons EVER. The anime just takes manga events out of order and reassembles them, adds a few random things here and there (which usually end up being yuri subtext, what the FUCK anime canon), and--does very little else to fuck with the original series, which is nice. Characterization doesn't change much, so far as I've seen. If anything, Tomo's a little kinder and gentler in the anime, but not by much. ALSO, everything I know of AzuDai I know from official releases. ADV does an excellent job in volumes 3-4 and the entire anime of explaining NEARLY EVERY REFERENCE AND EVERY TINY CHANGE, IN GREAT DETAIL, but in the first two manga volumes there are no notes, and so if I get something slightly off, that'd be why. (Also, they don't explain absolutely EVERYTHING. I didn't know until last night that Tomo makes canonical penis jokes, because ADV doesn't explain them, even though they leave the dialogue intact--which leads to the occasional complete missing of a joke, hah.) For the most part though? I endorse ADV's release of both the manga and the anime wholeheartedly. They did a decently awesome job, especially for the second half of the manga when they started adding the notes.
In case you don't know what Azumanga Daioh is, it's basically--you know how people say Seinfeld was a show about nothing? They LIE. AzuDai is a show about nothing. XD It's a four-panel comic, four volumes long, about the lives of 7 high school girls (really 6, and initially 5) and 3 of their teachers over a period of three years, from the first day of high school to the last. There's NO romance. (There's only one male character in the series, and he's a teacher.) No drama to speak of. No overlying plot arc. No fanservice. Nothing. It's just a hilarious, slow-paced, episodic comedy about high school girls having conversations and trying to make it through high school in typical modern-day Japan.
The other thing AzuDai doesn't have is character development. Which sounds like a gyp, but it works somehow, I swear. The only character that changes at all noticeably in the series is Sakaki, and not by much. The others . . . I'd argue that they all mature a LITTLE (although no one changes in appearance at all), but no one goes through anything major. I took Tomo from the very end of the manga simply because the idea I had for the app required that she be out of school. Also, she makes a hilarious 18-year-old. XD
That said, by the end of the series, there are some SLIGHT changes in her character. . . . Very slight. For one thing, she's actually shown concern for another human being and remorse for her own actions, all of three times. Yes, it takes four volumes for this LANDMARK EVENT to occur. XD So I do consider that to be a sooooort of development, and I probably exploit it too much. Tomo is not really a terribly nice or good person. She's not MALICIOUS--exactly--okay, she can be malicious. She's not EVIL, let's say! But she's thoughtless and selfish and carefree and doesn't worry too much about who she hurts by being that way. FINALLY, as the series begins to draw to a close, we see her have a few moments of "Oh my god WHAT," so I don't feel lol completely OOC by having her occasionally worry about her camp friends. She worries when Ash gets hurt, and she was freaked when Ed drowned, she doesn't want to see anyone SUFFER. Usually. She just doesn't worry about it when it happens as much as a normal person should, unless the effects are permanent and/or she likes the person a whole lot.
Also, she has to see them as vulnerable somehow, which means that if Itachi was ever seriously injured she wouldn't be happy about it or anything, but she wouldn't exactly fret, even though she loves Itachi. (Platonically!) Itachi's untouchable. He's badass. He'll be FINE. Ed, on the other hand, is also badass, but was also nearly dead and choking and wasn't breathing for awhile and so he got a little bit of the Kagura-style "omg omg omg what's wrong with you!" freakout. And Ed's on her level in her mind, unlike Itachi.
But like I said, she's not evil, and generally isn't going out of her way to hurt anyone or watch them suffer. She might pick on people, or deliberately do things to annoy/frighten them, and she does hit people, but she's not a "bad guy." She's just . . . retarded that way. |D
. . . Speaking of which. The hardest thing to judge about playing Tomo is how smart she is. Sometimes I play her too dumb, and sometimes I play her a little too bright, but--that's sort of canon for her. XD She's not hopeless; she can get into good schools if she tries. She just doesn't try. And while she does horribly on tests, she can also be a relatively quick wit in conversation, and her vocabulary's not completely stunted. She picks up random foreign phrases and uses them, she likes wordplay riddles. On the other hand, she doesn't know that a reindeer is a real animal, she thinks Jean-Claude Van Damme's first name is "Damn," and she does absolutely retarded things spur of the moment such as touching wet paint, throwing housekeys into the forest and locking everyone out of the house, and so on. |D So--sometimes it's a tough call. "Would she know this? Would she spell it right? Would she do this?" (The answer to that last one is almost invariably "yes.") If she seems a little bit inconsistent that way, that's why, and it's canon. I should and do work on it, but in almost any situation I can say to myself "Who should respond to this post, crazy!Tomo or sane!Tomo?" and I can take my pick and still have it be IC, heh. She's usually the catalyst in AzuDai, but she also plays the straight man more than once--even to characters like Yomi, whose purpose in the series is to be the Eternal Straight Man.
Because she has this unstable, hyperactive, sometimes mean-spirited personality, her friendships reflect that. Just about every friendship Tomo has in canon is mutually antagonistic to some degree, some MUCH moreso than others. So WHAT THE HELL, I'll go through them! 8D Because, again, I like to type whut, and also Tomo associates a LOT of her camp friends with her Japanese friends. Also, you can all consider this WHORING FOR CHARACTERS, if you like!
Tomo and Yomi. This is the big one for most people. Tomo/Yomi is a rather large yuri 'ship in the fandom, although it doesn't happen to be mine. Yomi and Tomo have been BFF since elementary school, but as far as I can remember, they never actually exchange the word "friend" in the series--at least not in manga canon. Instead, their general attitude is "Geez, you're in my class AGAIN?" They've known each other for ages and are completely comfortable with each other, which makes it amusing that Yomi is the person in the series that Tomo is by far the unkindest to. She mocks her, belittles her, pranks her, and even attacks her at every turn, and Yomi does the same to her, and they go back and forth like this. Both of them are absolutely merciless when it comes to the other. But--as I said, they're comfortable with each other. And we do see them hanging out outside of school, and having normal conversations, and they're also both each other's bitches in their own quiet ways. |D (Okay, so I DO see why people 'ship them, and I don't dislike it, yes.)
Tomo doesn't exactly have a Yomi in camp yet--someone who's above her level but will sink down to it and bicker with her and scream at her like a mommy when she's being an ass and she'll scream back. Ed comes the closest by far, though, and Kimimaro and Fllay are also in that category.
Tomo and Kagura. Ahahah, okay, so yeah Tomo/Kagura is my big AzuDai yuri 'ship along with Yukari/Nyamo. It's also my favorite friendship in the series, and one of the few that we see develop over time. They start out not interacting too much besides random insults, but then it becomes clear that the two of them actually can relate to each other. They're "cut from the same cloth," Kagura says--Kagura is a lot like Tomo only less so, and with actual physical prowess to back it up. But while she's not as hyper or useless, she has the same general frame of mind and mental capacity. We know that Kagura is soon comfortable enough with Tomo to come to her first for advice, even KNOWING that Tomo's the only person in the series that's likely to belittle her for it (and the least likely to know the answer). She and Tomo are at each other's throats a lot in the manga because they're both very competitive, and Tomo picks on her and makes fun of her breasts a lot (okay yeah, I 'ship them, SO WHAT), but there's none of the actual venom that's there with Yomi, and you also get great moments where the two of them are on exactly the same wavelength and spaz out together as friends like a couple of spazzy things. One of my favorite scenes in the entire series is when they're sitting next to each other on the airplane, screaming random dramatic phrases as it takes off. "The power! THE POWER!" "IT CAN FLY!" And everyone else just looks at them all "Will you two shut the fuck UP?" XD So . . . yeah. Same mental wavelength. They compete and they fight and bitch each other out, but it's all in good fun and they both KNOW it, and IMO by the end of the series they're the friendship that has the most basis in actual personality and chemistry as opposed to time and circumstance.
Kagura's also the first person Tomo shows real, slightly spazzy concern for--she has a little freakout when Kagura starts crying one day and tries desperately to cheer her up by offering to take all the blame for the incident. Which is pretty much unprecedented for her. So it's obvious she actually cares about the girl and doesn't want to see her upset.
Tomo's Kagura in camp is Ash. NO THIS DOES NOT MEAN I 'SHIP ASH/TOMO, DIE. 8D It just means that Ash is that person who is her RIVAL, and they compete randomly and bitch each other out and fight all the time, but they still connect and think in the same ways.
Tomo and Chiyo. Tomo is sort of in awe of Chiyo. She's both jealous of her and rather eager to look cool in front of her, so she wants to WIN against Chiyo, impossible as it usually is. Chiyo's an enigma, this little genius kid who's rich and adorable and doesn't really have to try for anything (in Tomo's mind), and yeah, that makes Tomo a little bitter. Chiyo's got it GOOD and Tomo wants to impress her and also to one-up her in any way possible. So Tomo can be pretty mean to Chiyo, although in relatively harmless ways. It's just more competition, but of a less direct sort. And she likes Chiyo too--she likes all of them, really. But that doesn't prevent the uglier side from rearing its head. |D
Tomo doesn't have a Chiyo-chan in camp yet. If she knew Al a little better, it'd be a likely position for him to move into.
Tomo and Osaka. Osaka's the one character that Tomo often plays straight man to. She's just . . . on a completely different level with her airheadedness. XD She doesn't compete with Osaka the way she does everyone else, at least not seriously. Osaka's almost like a pet, something cute and dumb and weird that she can hang out with and chat to sometimes and not try that hard with. For both being bonkuras, they actually don't interact as much as you might think. They're in the same boat when it comes to grades and body type, but mentally they're not in the same place at all.
Tomo doesn't have an Osaka in camp yet either. Unless you count, like . . . Tiny Kimimaro. XD
Tomo and Sakaki. Tomo and Sakaki also can't really relate to each other. They probably interact just about the least of any characters in the series (except Yomi and Sakaki--do those two EVER do anything together?). Still, Sakaki is a sort of symbol for Tomo. She's the cool, well-built, athletic, awesome girl. She's quiet and stoic and " . . . " a lot and is mysterious and really good at a whole lot of things. Tomo tries to compete with her too, but eventually pretty much gives up on it and moves on to Kagura, who will actually give her the time of day. They still chat and are still friends in their way, and Tomo just thinks she's really cool, but it's a very quiet relationship that doesn't get much play.
Tomo thinks of Itachi as being very much like Sakaki. XD
Tomo likes people. 8D All people. Which is sort of funny for a character who has so much fun tormenting them, and butts heads with like EVERYONE IN HER CANON. She's always fighting, always teasing, always poking and annoying, but she's also always keen to be around them and interacting. So . . . if she declares you her ETERNAL ENEMY in camp or THE MOST EVIL PERSON EVAR! or calls you a name, she most likely still considers you a friend and will continue to speak to you. XD Case in point--Tomo kinda likes Fllay. She and Fllay have never had a civil conversation or agreed on ANYTHING, and they constantly put each other down, but Tomo doesn't consider any of that to be mutually exclusive with friendship! 8D She continues to talk to Kimimaro for the same reason. She loves talking to Kimimaro and Fllay, even if all they do is snipe at one other. Because it's human interaction, and Tomo needs that like she needs AIR, man.
So . . . is Tomo asexual, AS EVERYONE IN IRC WOULD HAVE YOU BELIEVE? XD Actually, she's not. In fact, she's the only character in AzuDai who has any sort of sexual identity at all. She has a vulgar sense of humor at times (aforementioned penis jokes!) and takes an active interest in "adult relationships," and exclusively buys bikinis to look sexy in. She's interested in sex and she knows how it works (especially after that incident with Nyamo getting drunk, ahahah), that much is clear.
At the same time, she never PURSUES anything sexual or romantic. Other than a general desire to be attractive--which she expresses more than any character besides Yomi--Tomo doesn't fret about guys, or relationships, or experience, or having a date to whatever-the-fuck. It just doesn't really interest her beyond the shallow level of "This is a symbol of social status, and hey sex sounds kinda cool hurr hurr hurr." I remember talking with Impulse in IRC once about whether Tomo's actually interested in sex because it's SEX or just because it's "forbidden," and actually, I think it's some of both. She has the most normal sexual drive in the series. It's still far below what you might EXPECT from a girl that age, but it's there and it's genuine. Some of it is definitely "Hahah awesome this stuff is naughty and I'll be cool for knowing it" but some of it is also "Haaaay, sex!" At least that's how I play it. XD
But she doesn't want a relationship, and the main reason is that relationships, you know, take work and giving and understanding. And so she's not ready for one, and I can't imagine it anyway. XD I don't think I could ever play one out. I would just be baffled at every turn. . . . I also have this thing where I don't really play her as a lesbian or even EXACTLY bi, but I also can't see her with a man. XD Whereas to a SLIGHTLY greater extent, I can stretch my imagination and see her with a woman. Azumanga Daioh is such an asexual series that there's as much canon support for Tomo being attracted to women as there is for her being attracted to men, and perhaps more. The way I play her, she's not terribly attracted to ANYONE. She thinks people are attractive in a very off-handed and disinterested way--she doesn't even find Lupin physically attractive, really. It's there, she realizes that people like Ed and Sano and Mustang are good-looking, it just doesn't leave an impact on her, and she forgets to think about it. Partially because I can't imagine her ever approaching someone for ANYTHING romantic without having had a hell of a friendship with them first. |D (*coughKaguracough*)
( . . . srsly though, if we ever get a Kagura, don't worry about/expect me to pursue anything, as hard as I 'ship that pairing. Because as much as I love it, and as much as Kagura's essentially the only person I can see Tomo with even casually, I--would have no idea how to play that out. 8D And wouldn't dream of forcing it on anyone. JUST IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING.)
UH, AND I'M SPENT. WTF, me. I can't believe I did it again . . . XD;