Kotomi Ichinose

Kotomi Ichinose
一ノ瀬ことみ Ichinose Kotomi
Birthday	13 May 1985 (Taurus)
Height	160 cm (5' 3")
Weight	48 kg (106 lbs)7 st, 8 lbs
Blood type	A
Occupation	Researcher
Anime debut	The First Step
Relatives	Koutarou Ichinose (father, deceased) Mizue Ichinose (mother, deceased) Gentleman (godfather)
Japanese voice actor	Mamiko Noto
English voice actor	Emily Neves
References:

Kotomi Ichinose (一ノ瀬ことみ, Ichinose Kotomi) is a childhood friend of Tomoya Okazaki, but, like Kyou Fujibayashi, she is in the same year and in a separate class from Tomoya. Kotomi is a genius girl who is almost always seen in the library reading books, or cutting up pages of printed media. Kotomi's theme is Étude Pour les Petites Supercordes.

Appearance

Kotomi may just be of average height, but she has a large bust size, which is why Kyou Fujibayashi enjoys teasing her, hugging and groping her and complimenting her build. She is considered a beautiful young girl.

She also has straight indigo hair that has an odd length of short and long, with strands of hair that completely cover her ears, and bangs parted in the middle. The short part of Kotomi's hair framing is divided into two sections and tied into two small horsetails with two large pink beads.

Kotomi is flat-chested in the visual novel with her huge breasts (and the largest bust size out of the female cast) being an aspect of hers in the anime.

Personality

Kotomi is a silent, taciturn girl who has trouble speaking with others. She relies on Tomoya to help her with her social skills. Kotomi also knows how to play the violin, but she usually ends up sounding horrible. This is a gag used for comedic relief. Kotomi prefers to be called "Kotomi-chan".

She is always one of the top ten people in all of the subjects at school. Kotomi is very intelligent, and she likes to read books, even books in foreign languages.

Clannad

Kotomi's first appearance.

Tomoya meets her but does not remember that they were once good friends when he enters the library and finds Kotomi sitting on the floor barefoot, reading books with scissors in her hand, and acts oddly with Tomoya. After several meetings with Kotomi, Tomoya starts skipping the fourth period to spend time with Kotomi in the library. Kotomi soon decides to join the drama club.

Just when Kotomi starts to open up to everyone, a bus accident causes her to breakdown in front of everyone and returns home. Tomoya visits her in her house and learns that he and Kotomi were childhood friends, but lost contact with each other after Kotomi's parents died in a plane crash. Not wanting to feel the pain of losing someone important anymore, she asks Tomoya to leave her alone.

The teddy bear meant to be a present for Kotomi on her birthday.

Wanting to bring Kotomi away from her past, Tomoya decides to renovate her garden, while the drama club members decide to gift her a violin, but was unfortunately destroyed. After renovating Kotomi's garden, Kotomi appears to Tomoya, and after some poignant conversation, Tomoya brings Kotomi out of her house. The next day, her guardian presents Kotomi her parents' briefcase that has traveled all the way to Japan, and inside is a teddy bear and a testimony, asking Kotomi to live the way she wants and grow up to be an adult. Kotomi realizes she is still being loved by her parents even after their death and cries. After this, Kotomi becomes more mature, and the Drama Club members finally give Kotomi a violin.

~After Story~

Kotomi as seen in the ~After Story~ episode Small Palms, five years after Ushio's birth.

In the anime adaptation of Clannad ~After Story~, Kotomi moves to America to further her studies. She, however, occasionally visits Tomoya and the others. She attended the reunion party with Tomoya and the other girls. She is very interested in what her parents were studying before they died, which is the theory of parallel worlds. She tells Tomoya, Nagisa, Ryou, Kyou and Youhei about this theory while they visit a pregnant Nagisa. This theory may explain the existence of the Illusionary World.

She is last seen driving around in her car, presumably in the USA, judging by the side of the road she was driving on.

Quotes

"Day before yesterday I saw a rabbit, and yesterday a deer, and today, you."

- Kotomi to Tomoya

“I must study lots of things or I won’t become a great person.”

"Those who seek out the truth must not be arrogant. You must not laugh at miracles just because they cannot be explained scientifically. You must not turn away from the beauty of this world."

- Kotomi Ichinose (according to her father)

“I was a crybaby from the start, but it was my first time crying like that. I cried and cried until I got tired of crying and slept; When I woke up, I cried again.”

- Kotomi Ichinose (according to Clannad Visual Novel)

"I've been alone for as long as I could remember. But just when I thought I had nothing else in the world. When I thought that all I could do was cry. Tomoya came to rescue me. So, you don't have to worry about me anymore. I'm finally happy now. Very, very, very happy."

- Kotomi Ichinose to her parents

Gallery

Kotomi hiding behind Tomoya.

Kotomi about to play a violin in The Girl Genius' Challenge.

Kotomi reciting an incantation in The After School Rhapsody.

Kotomi during her breakdown in Hidden World.

A young Kotomi as seen in Garden of Memories.

Kotomi and Tomoya as seen in Theory of Everything.

Kotomi as seen in Counter Measures.

Kotomi holding a baseball bat as seen in The Goodbye at the End of Summer.

Kotomi after coming back from America in White Darkness.

Kotomi as seen in the Clannad visual novel.

Trivia

• The name Kotomi is a portmanteau (a word blending the sounds and combining the meanings of two others; motel (from ‘motor’ and ‘hotel’) or brunch (from ‘breakfast’ and ‘lunch’) of her parents:
  • Koutarou
  • Mizue
    • Combine Ko and mi = Ko to mi = Kotomi.
      • That's why Kotomi's first name use 3 hiragana, not kanji ("to" in hiragana means "and").
  • Part of the Koto is derived from the Japanese musical stringed instrument of the same name.
• Kotomi's surname Ichinose means "one" (一) (ichi) and "swift current, rapids" (瀬) (se), which literally means first from the rapids.

Trivia

• Kotomi's measurements are 88 (bust), 58 (waist) and 85 (hip).
• Out of all the female Clannad characters, Kotomi has the largest bust size.
  • Her bust measures 88 cm, making her cup size is at an E.
    • Due to Kotomi's large bust size, her breasts go in front of her arms when she puts her arms together, but her breasts do not go in front of her arms when she puts them together at times, much like the other characters.
• In the anime, Kotomi is the only one of Tomoya's female friends who actually viewed him as a close friend and not a significant other.
• Kotomi's violin gags would seem to contradict her practice with the violin as a child. This is because she stopped playing for ten years. When she picked up a violin again in high school, she still had the muscle memory of how to play it, but was so out of practice that the actual playing sounded horrible. However, in her mind she believed it sounded good because she was listening to what she believed she was playing rather than the actual sounds that everyone else heard.
• Nagisa is the only person other than Tomoya whom Kotomi felt comfortable speaking to immediately.
• Kotomi is 17 years old at the start of the series.
• Kotomi has an extremely large bust in the anime, however, in the visual novel, she is nearly flat-chested.
• The car that Kotomi drives in the epilogue of After Story seems to be modeled after a modern Volkswagen Beetle.
• Kotomi repeats the line "Day before yesterday I saw a rabbit, and yesterday a deer, and today, you.", which is a line from The Dandelion Girl, a science fiction novel written by Robert F. Young.
• Kotomi tends to end her sentences either with "nano" or "no".