Ran Kotobuki

She is the titular character of the series and its main protagonist. She is a very strong-willed, athletic, and attractive gal who rules the streets of Shibuya. Although she comes from a long line of police officers, she is ditzy and absent-minded when it comes to school and the only subject she gets good grades on is physical education and her poorest subjects are mathematics and literature and has trouble even solving problems from lower grade levels. When she was in elementary school, she was actually enthusiastic to become a police officer, but quit the ambition after learning that if she becomes one, she won’t be able to wear her favorite accessories or dye her hair. She is usually obsessed with anything that is trendy or catches her eye, usually brown-nosing guys who find her cute to buy them, and is also quite gluttonous. But inside her heart, she has a strong sense of justice that runs in her blood and is extremely intimidating and tough when she’s in combat mode. She is a role model to the junior students at Hounan High for her social status as a magnificent gal for justice and her very understanding nature for teens who are learning to cope, but there were some who looked upon her with jealousy and anger. Despite being an underachiever (barely being able to graduate in the manga), Ran is actually pretty smart and has a good memory on what she is interested in (like shopping). There is a running gag in the manga that some of her friends say, “If only she used that (memory, concentration, etc.) on studying…”. Her boyfriend is Tatsuki Kuroi, who is as ditzy and dumb as she is. Their love life is complicated (but strangely comedic at times), since Ran doesn’t really care about boys, but she does like her boyfriend, and kissed his cheek (only in the manga). Also, she has a foreign friend, Vivian Lin, a Taiwanese celebrity who looks amazingly like her, whom she met during a school trip to Taiwan (only shown in two stories of the manga). After the series was over, Ran eventually did become a police officer (As was shown in Mihona Fujii’s page in the KochiKame Anniversary Book).