Teletha Tessa Testarossa

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Tessa

Teletha "Tessa" Testarossa is a fictional character from the light novel, manga, and anime series Full Metal Panic!. She is portrayed by Yukana Nogami in the original anime, and by Hilary Haag in the English dub by ADV Films.

1 Overview
2 Character History
3 Real Italian Name
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Overview

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

[edit] Background

Teletha "Tessa" Testarossa is the charming and clumsy Captain of the revered TDD-1 Tuatha de Danaan submarine of the anti-terrorist organization Mithril. She is American by birth but has lived on submarines and military bases for the majority of her life. She is a child prodigy who rose to such a high rank at the age of only sixteen and has platinum/silver hair and gray eyes. Later revealed as being a Whispered, her high level of mathematical and scientific adeptness is dwarfed only by her brother's, which seems to have given her a sense of inferiority. She is also fairly clumsy and not very athletically inclined, but has shown to be a very good swimmer (as shown in a later Episode of Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu!). She has an interest in Sousuke that extends beyond a professional one, generating a love triangle she shares with Sousuke Sagara and Kaname Chidori. Even though Chidori and Tessa seem to compete against each other for Sousuke, they are good friends in reality, as during several episodes they talk about Sousuke and his unique military charm. Teletha is also one of the chief designers of the TDD-1 Tuatha de Danaan offensive submarine, and the creator of Dana, the submarine's Artificial Intelligence.

[edit] Links to Sousuke

Tessa is very open in her feelings to Sousuke, something that causes arguments between her and Kaname often. This is seen several times during the anime, such as in Episode 13, where Sousuke helps her to train and get ready for a duel with Melissa Mao, Tessa accidentally falls off the boarding ladder of the M9 she attempts to pilot and lands on Sousuke. When she realizes that she is on top of him, she apologizes, but also says that she feels lucky. When Sousuke tries to slip out from under her hold, she refuses to let go and holds on tightly. Tessa shows her affection for Sousuke in Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu! when she sneaks into Sousuke's bed during her vacation. Unfortunately she is just a little too open which causes Sousuke some mental stress (shown in Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu!), when Sousuke faints as he is worried that he will be alone with Tessa (as she came to visit his school during that time on vacation) and that something may happen between them (mainly as Commander Mardukas threatened him if anything were to happen between Sousuke and Tessa while she stayed at Souske's residence).

[edit] Characteristics

Tessa has some interesting qualities also. Being Captain of the Tuatha de Danaan, she is very smart when it comes to battlefield tactics and conflicts. She displays some very impressive military prowess and strategy at several points, such as the first two episodes of Full Metal Panic! The Second Raid, where she helps Sergeant Sagara escape death and also help their team get out of a tight situation in an underground operation. Also, during the last two episodes of Full Metal Panic! (first season), she helps prevent the Tuatha de Danaan from sinking, and performs some very skillful actions to save them from destruction, not once, but twice from torpedo attacks.

Sometimes however, as stated by Kurz Weber, "whenever Tessa was told by someone she couldn't do something, she made it a point to prove them wrong" (this leads to an Arm Slaves match involving paint ball bullets between Tessa and Melissa Mao). Tessa seems to have some trouble tolerating her job at times due to the position she has. Some scenes have shown her irritated by what she does while other scenes show her slightly depressed by it. Nevertheless, she seems to have a large amount of stamina, and is able to cope with the stress of her job, and does a wonderful job doing so.

[edit] Character History

Teletha Testarossa is an American by birth, as she was born on the American East Coast, to a family of strong European ancestry (it can be inferred that she is of Italian descent judging by her last name Testarossa), and she traveled the world extensively as a child. However, she has spent a great part of her life living on submarines and military bases.

When she was younger, she lived in Okinawa for a while, while her father suggested she attend a Japanese school there, but as she did not mix very well with the other Japanese students, she was transferred to another school, this time on her father's military base.

Tessa is a Whispered, and thus is very intelligent in the fields of mathematics and science. When she was six years old, she had derived the answer to one of Albert Einstein's non-linear differential equations. On a side note, her brother, Leonard Testarossa, did this at age four, making her feel an inferiority complex towards him, as she states in Episode 10.

She worked her way up very quickly in Mithril, and became Captain of the Tuatha de Danaan. It is also speculated the knowledge found within her may have led to the construction of TDD-1, due to the fact Gauron refers to the a Whispered knowledge being in the field of 'construction of submarines.' She also mentions having had a hand in the construction of its AI, Dana.

[edit] Real Italian Name

Since Teletha Testarossa is of Italian origins, "Teletha" is a wrong spelling of the Italian "Teresa" (also really shortable in "Tessa"), that is written in the same way in Japanese. However, Italian official translators (ShinVision group) didn't correct this, although some fansubbers did it and continued when new series (Fumoffu, 2nd Raid) were released, even if Full Metal Panic! was already distributed in Italy.