Rin Tezuka

Information

Image Gallery

Plot

"Since Rin’s arms are tiny stumps due to a severe birth defect and subsequent surgery, she uses her feet and occasionally her mouth to do everything, which includes painting. Because of her disability, using skirts is tough, so Rin is wearing a boy's uniform at school. Her creativity is matched by her philosophical streak: Rin is fond of occasionally getting lost in thought and giving voice to abstract ideas about man, the universe, and other things that thoroughly confuse people"

— Official Description

Rin Tezuka (手塚 琳, Tezuka Rin) is one of the five main characters in Katawa Shoujo. She is a highly talented artist in class 3-4 of Yamaku Academy. She has a close friendship with Emi Ibarazaki. Lacking arms due to a birth defect (RAITA's original sketch labeled her as a "Thalidomide Baby"), Rin uses her feet, and occasionally her mouth, for all daily tasks. This makes her ill-suited to wear the skirt and blouse of most female students at Yamaku, so she is permitted to wear the boy's uniform instead.

Appearance

• 
  Rin's casual clothing

Rin is a slim girl of average height, standing taller than both Shizune Hakamichi and Emi Ibarazaki. She has close-cropped auburn hair, dark green eyes and is usually seen wearing a school uniform. Unlike most girls, she wears the boys' uniform with her sleeves tied up in knots and a pair of black sandals. During her time in Sae's Gallery, she's still seen wearing her usual school shirt underneath a pair of blue overalls.

Personality

Rin has a deadpan and confusing personality. She often speaks in simile riddles and can be hard to understand due to the fact she often speaks in a childish manner, despite this she can be serious when she needs to be.

Rin crying

When Hisao Nakai befriends her, Rin is very open with him. She acknowledges Hisao as her friend and quickly develops romantic feelings for him. When these feelings develop Rin is unable to express them through her speech, so she uses her art as an emotional conduit for Hisao. Throughout this process she eventually becomes much more distanced from everyone in her life including Emi Ibarazaki, one of her closest friends at Yamaku Academy.

Due to Rin's inability to properly communicate her emotions, she is prone to bouts of depression. For Rin, art is the way she expresses her feelings and emotions, when she sees others simply comment on the demonstration of skill and talent rather than the emotions expressed through the work, it makes her feel even more isolated.

For most of Rin's life her emotions were simply an imitation of those around her. Much of the emotion she expresses towards Hisao is genuine.

Plot

See Rin's route for the full plot-line.

Relationships

Family

Not much is stated about Rin's parents. However, her art teacher mentions how supportive they are when providing opportunities for their daughter.

Students

Emi Ibarazaki - Despite apparent personality clash, Rin and Emi are best friends. Even if they do not partake in the other's activities; they support each other. Rin is happy to watch Emi's track meets and Emi helps with Rin's art. Because she lacks arms, Rin relies on Emi for various tasks (Emi theorizes this is why the housing department placed them across the hall from each other). Rin is also acquainted with Emi's mother (Meiko Ibarazaki) as the two talk casually with one another.

Being a member of the art club, Rin presumably has acquaintances there (including a blind boy she mentions in passing), though she is not socially active.

Staff

Shinichi Nomiya - Yamaku's art teacher and Rin's mentor. Rin interacts regularly with him, but acts apathetic towards him and his friends (e.g., Sae Saionji), despite them being supportive of her artwork.

Etymology

• The name Rin means "jewel/tinkling of jewelry, beautiful jade" (琳).
• Rin's surname Tezuka means "hand" (手) (te) and "mound" (塚) (tsuka/zuka).
  • Tezuka is a reference to the Japanese animator and manga artist Osamu Tezuka.

Trivia

• Rin is the only pursuable girl with noticeable tears on her sprite near the end of her route (aside from Hanako Ikezawa).
• Rin's birthday is the same day Aura wrote his first text about her.
• The second unlockable main menu picture shows Rin in the pose of the "Venus de Milo".
• Rin is from Osaka.
• According to Aura, Rin uses a sort of flip-flop sandals normally. Easy and fast to take off and put on. She also can (and does) put on a normal bra by herself but tends to wear camisoles more often.
• Some assume Rin suffers from some degree of alexithymia -- a personality construct characterized by the sub-clinical inability to identify and describe emotions in the self. This is evident in her inability to identify her own emotions and the emotions of others. Others feel she may have some degree of Asperger syndrome. Aura (who wrote Rin's path), said that there is no definitive answer that he will give on this issue.
• A note within the source code ("A Wider Field of Vision", the beginning of Act 2 - Disconnect) reveals some insight on how Rin's dialogue was written:

"I've been playing around with different styles for her to somehow communicate her state of mind through dialogue style. Currently (and this seems to be the final solution), there are two distinct "modes". Whenever she's in free-form stream-of-consciousness blabbering mode, she uses awkward grammar badly and has extreme trouble with idioms, sayings and figurative speech. And she talks in short sentences. Many of them in sequence. otoh when she pulls herself together and becomes overtly lucid, she starts talking without contractions and uses way more words per sentence than necessary to communicate whatever might currently be swirling inside of her mind. these are not hard and fast rules, more like general guidelines thus legibility and smooth flow of text always overrides them. Edit as you see fit really."

es:Rin Tezuka