Yotsuba Koiwai
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yotsuba Koiwai (小岩井四葉 Koiwai Yotsuba?), or just Yotsuba (よつば?), is a fictional character from the ongoing manga series Yotsuba&!, as well as the one-shot comic "Try! Try! Try!," both by Kiyohiko Azuma.
[edit] Appearance and Personality
Yotsuba is a small girl with four pigtails in her green hair, giving her somewhat the appearance of her namesake, a four-leaf clover (yotsuba no kurōbā). She has a carefree personality, taking delight from simple matters as she learns about all manners of things through out the course of the manga. Nothing can get her down.
She has very little knowledge of the world around her, even for a young child. Things such as swings, shrines, cicadas, and air conditioners all fascinate and confuse her, although she is not the least bit perturbed. She also occasionally has mispronunciations, or creates neologisms such as "Yotsubox" (as a portmanteau of "Yotsuba's Box"), though this is regarded as a product of her exuberance by those who surround her.
She is an adopted child, with her birthplace unknown to the reader, although she claims it is "to the left". Yotsuba's adopted father claims that he met her as an orphan in a foreign country and before he knew it he was raising her as his own. Few details of her past are known at this point.
In "Yotsuba&!", Yotsuba initially claims to be six years old. This claim is later denied by her father, revealing that she is in fact five years of age.
In volume 1, 1st chapter Yotsuba has not gone to school yet, and does not know what a grade is.
[edit] Miscellany
In the Japanese manga, Yotsuba's dialogue does not employ the use of Kanji, making her speech seem simpler and more child-like. It is also written in a different typeface, which gives her dialogue the impression of being spoken with a high degree of energy.
