Tsukamoto Tenma

Tenma Tsukamoto (塚本 天満, Tsukamoto Tenma^?) is a fictional character in the manga and anime series School Rumble and is its female protagonist. Tenma's name is derived from two train stations: Tsukamoto Station located on the JR West Tokaido Main Line (JR Kobe Line), and Temma Station located on the JR West Osaka Loop Line.

Fictional character biography

Short, undeveloped and childish for her age, Tenma often is mistaken as being younger than her classmates and her younger sister Yakumo. One of her distinctive physical features are the little ponytails in her hair, which often wiggle if she is happy or excited. She is also dense, slow and unreliable and often misunderstands obvious situations. Despite her negative qualities, Tenma is good-natured and friendly. She enjoys professional wrestling and is a fan of the jidaigeki TV show called "The Three that were Slashed", which Kenji Harima is also a fan of. Tenma is also a relatively poor student.

According to the last Japanese poll performed by the publishers of the manga, Tenma is currently the fourth most popular character in the series.

Abilities

Tenma is very bad at cooking, being the only person who can cook worse than her friend Eri Sawachika. Although she readily admits that she is bad at sports, somehow it appears that she is good at skiing.

Tenma has some sort of psychokinetic power, and can bend spoons with her mind, as is shown in the first OVA. This ability is also mentioned early in the series, when she talks to Yakumo about wanting to be in the same class as Karasuma.

Tenma is also able to easily beat Yakumo at janken. This is because Yakumo is able to read her mind, and therefore deliberately loses to her in the process. Though it must also be noted that Tenma is so dense that she once failed to properly distinguish between her own left and right hand, resulting in Yakumo reading her mind for a proper ingredient to add to the curry, but ended up picking the wrong one instead (because Tenma put the wrong ingredient list in the wrong hand).

Relationships

Tenma's love interest is Oji Karasuma and although her classmate Kenji Harima is hopelessly in love with her, she is completely unaware of his feelings. Her classmate Kentaro Nara is also interested in her, but has been repeatedly warded off by Harima, and she is also unaware of his feelings.

Tenma is very protective of her sister, and despite the fact that she has no objection of Yakumo having a boyfriend, she is determined to protect her from anyone who tries to go further with her. For quite some time she assumed that Harima and Yakumo were dating based on the time they spent together until Harima finally revealed that they were just working together on his manga.