Character · K-On!
Ritsu Tainaka
Revived a dead club by filing the paperwork first and finding the members afterwards.
In Otakana the clue reads: Headband-wearing drummer who founded the club
- Type
- Character
- Series
- K-On!
- Letters
- 5 · Normal
The light music club needs four people or the school shuts it down. Ritsu, who has appointed herself president, has one: Mio, her childhood friend, who is dragged in by the wrist and objects the whole way. Tsumugi turns up by mistake. Yui joins believing that castanets count as a light instrument. That is the band, and Ritsu built it out of nothing but volume.
She drums, and she is better at it than the show lets on, since the joke requires her to be careless. Her real function is social. She teases Mio, who frightens easily, until the room loosens up, and she keeps the club moving on days when four girls would happily do nothing at all. The headband is permanent and the forehead underneath it is a running gag.
Naoko Yamada directed the Kyoto Animation series in 2009 from kakifly's comic strips. The band's songs were recorded by the voice cast and released as singles, and several of them landed near the top of the Oricon chart, which is a strange fate for a group that spends most of its screen time eating cake.
Spelling RITSU
RITSU is five letters for two beats, ri-tsu, because that TSU is a single kana that English needs three letters to write. The R is the Japanese tap, closer to a fast D than to an English R, which is why the name sounds like Dee-tsu at speed and why people reach for the wrong first letter. Given name only. Tainaka never reaches the board.