Tsubasa Hanekawa

Overview

Summary

Gallery

"I don't know everything. I just know what I know."

— Tsubasa Hanekawa

Tsubasa Hanekawa
Kanji Name	羽川 翼
Kana Name	はねかわ つばさ
Romaji Name	Hanekawa Tsubasa
Character Information
Alias	The Girl with Mismatched Wings Japanese Joan of Arc
Age	18
Gender	Female
Personal Status
Classification	Human
Status	Alive
Relatives	Hanekawa Couple (Adoptive Parents) Black Hanekawa (Alter Ego) Hysteria Tiger (Alter Ego)
Professional Status
Occupation	Student War Mediator
Affiliation	Naoetsu Private Academy
Media
Work of Origin	Monogatari Series
Novel Debut	Bakemonogatari (Part One)
Anime Debut	Bakemonogatari Episode 1
Manga Debut	Bakemonogatari Vol. 1, Chapter 1
Voice Actor	Yui Horie

Appearances
Novel Appearances
Series	Monogatari Series
Volumes	Bakemonogatari (Part One) Bakemonogatari (Part Two) Kizumonogatari Nisemonogatari (Part One) Nisemonogatari (Part Two) Nekomonogatari (Black) Nekomonogatari (White) Koimonogatari Koyomimonogatari Owarimonogatari (Part One) Owarimonogatari (Part Three) Zoku Owarimonogatari Wazamonogatari Musubimonogatari Shinobumonogatari Amarimonogatari
Anime Appearances
Series	Bakemonogatari Nisemonogatari (anime) Nekomonogatari Black (anime) Monogatari Series Second Season Owarimonogatari Koyomimonogatari Kizumonogatari I: Iron-Blooded Chapter Kizumonogatari II: Hot-Blooded Chapter Kizumonogatari III: Cold-Blooded Chapter Owarimonogatari Season Two Zoku Owarimonogatari
Manga Appearances
Series	Bakemonogatari Seishun Kijinden! 240 Gakuen
Other Appearances
Miscellaneous	Hyakumonogatari Okitegami Kyouko no Bibouroku x Monogatari Commercial

Tsubasa Hanekawa (羽川(はねかわ) 翼(つばさ), Hanekawa Tsubasa) is a main character of the Monogatari Series. She is a student of Naoetsu Private Academy and a friend of Koyomi Araragi and Hitagi Senjougahara. Due to her compulsive desire to remain perfect, she ends up cutting off her negative emotions and turning them into the aberrations Black Hanekawa and the Hysteria Tiger.

She later comes to be known as the "Japanese Joan of Arc" for her work with various NGOs.

Personality

At face value, Hanekawa appears to be the "perfect person"; she is a genius at the top of her school in terms of grades, so much so that it's said that, if she doesn't have a perfect score, the test itself has some kind of mistake. Even so, never flaunts her knowledge, always dismissing others' words of admiration with her usual catchphrase, as she dislikes being thought of as anything but a normal girl. Called the "perfect class president" by Koyomi, she is always kind to those around her and willing to help them out with any issues they may have, and is yet also capable of telling them plainly where they went wrong, showing them how to improve. She has a calm, agreeable personality that lets her get along with almost anyone, which, when paired with her intellect, draws the admiration of those around her, such as Karen Araragi. She has a lot of respect for Meme Oshino, being inspired by his nomadic way of life to set out on a journey of her own after graduation, in order to gain actual life experience in addition to just knowledge. Hanekawa is also very patient, able to deal easily with Mayoi Hachikuji's childish behavior during their first meeting. All around, one's first impression of Hanekawa would be that of someone not only exceptional, but also highly balanced.

However, this impression is nearly the opposite of the truth. Hanekawa is a very unstable individual due to the unique circumstances of her upbringing. After a chain of deaths and remarriages in her family, neither of the legal guardians she ended up with are her real parents, and there isn't any kind of familial relationship between them either, the two mostly ignoring her. As a child, she concluded that, in order to be accepted, she should strive to be a good, normal girl, upholding all of her moral obligations. This dedication, coupled with her natural talents, led to the ironically all-but-normal genius she would later become. Yet, as she became a "pure white" human always in the right, her relationship with her parents only worsened; living with someone like Hanekawa forced them to acknowledge their own imperfections in the face of her righteousness, which only led to them resenting her and eventually growing into instances of violent abuse from them (which she only rationalized and internalized). Due to the repeated name changes she suffered, she lost any sense of identity in the name "Tsubasa Hanekawa". Similarly, her ego, her true self, was buried beneath the facade of a perfect human. She internalizes all of her true feelings, her selfishness as a human, taking all of the suffering she goes through for granted and not trying to oppose it in any way as she lies to herself, convincing herself that there isn't any problem. This behavior becomes so natural to her that she becomes unable to ask for help with anything, even deciding to sleep in an abandoned building instead of asking for one of her friends to help her out.

When she is possessed by the Meddlecat, her twisted personality leads to the birth of a new aberration, Black Hanekawa, which takes over her body in order to relieve her of all the stress piled up throughout her life through violent outbursts of aggression. The momentary relief this brings her psyche, however, is quickly made null as she suffers from a huge amount of stress once more, this time from a new source: her love for Koyomi Araragi. Koyomi is the first person in Hanekawa's life whom she forms strong positive feelings for. However, because of her suppression of her true self, Hanekawa is unable to pursue those feelings and develop their relationship, and misses her chance, as Koyomi falls in love with Hitagi Senjougahara. Forcing herself to watch the person she loves most be taken from her in front of her eyes, all while putting on a smile, brings Hanekawa so much stress that it's equivalent to her entire life of abuse and neglect at the hands of her parents.

After becoming entangled with her aberrations once, her twisted mind becomes proficient at Aberration Creation, leading her to construct yet another alter ego from feelings she cut off from herself: the Hysteria Tiger, a manifestation of her envy, born from the moment she realizes that her guardians, her supposed family, were attempting to reconnect with each other and reform their relationship without her. This creature of envious rage threatens to burn down every house Hanekawa sleeps in, punishing others for having places they can call home while Hanekawa herself has none. Faced with this dangerous creation, with the guidance of the people around her, Hanekawa finally confronts her true feelings, her alter egos, and accepts them, forsaking the mask of a "perfect person" once and for all. As she finally accepts herself, she is able to properly confess to and be rejected by Koyomi, and she is able to acknowledge her pain. After coming to terms with herself, while she may superficially appear to be the same kind, ingenious class president she was before, she learns to value herself and her own emotions, confidently confronting what she finds wrong and believing in her own justice, such as when she confronted Ougi Oshino or the vampire twins Highwaist and Lowrise.

Appearance

Hanekawa is a well endowed young woman with black hair and purple eyes. In the beginning, she wears her long black hair in a single braid, tied with a white cat hair clip, alongside her big, round glasses. Later, she switches to two braids instead, and then afterwards cuts her hair into a bob haircut and forgoes her glasses, opting for contact lenses instead. After accepting her aberration alter egos back inside herself, her black hair becomes streaked with white stripes. As an adult, her hair is back to its length She is mostly shown wearing her purple Naoetsu school uniform, but she is also shown wearing other outfits, such as baggy, light orange pajamas with an orange hat, a pair of blue jeans and a white tank top with a blue short-sleeved shirt over it and a green coat over a pink sweater with blue jeans and knee-high boots.

Background

Hanekawa currently lives with her stepfather and stepmother. Her biological mother was 17 years old when she got pregnant, while little is known from her biological father as she apparently had many lovers. Before she gave birth to Tsubasa, she married another man who was a "workaholic". Right after giving birth, Tsubasa's biological mother committed suicide. The workaholic stepfather, unable to raise a child, remarried again to a woman who is Tsubasa's current mother. The workaholic father soon died from overwork and the current mother married another man who is now Tsubasa's current father.

In her last year of high school, she leaves to search Meme Oshino in order to help Koyomi and Hitagi, while also scouting out locations for her own trip after graduation. During that time, she meets Dramaturgy and handles a vampire hunting case with him. After graduation, she fully sets out on her trip, travelling to every country around the globe. She also does a lot of dangerous humanitarian volunteer work for various NGOs, helping war refugees, removing mines, digging wells and such. This leads to an explosion of popularity in the media, with the public calling her the "Japanese Joan of Arc". However, just before she turns twenty, her life takes a sudden turn as she turns away from providing relief efforts to refugees and towards stopping wars themselves, as she becomes a war mediator. As she takes any means necessary to end conflicts between nations, taking an eraser to national borders, the world at large begins to consider her a threat and she becomes internationally wanted.

Abilities and Equipment

• Aberration Creation: Unlike in Koyomi's case, Hanekawa's Aberration Creation is natural and entirely automatic, creating a new aberration every time she wants to cut off feelings she deems impure. After accepting herself, she never manifests this ability again.
• Vampire Blood: Due to the time she was healed with Koyomi's vampire blood, Hanekawa's body is partly made of Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade's blood, passed down to her thrall. When it reacts with Dramaturgy's briar thorn, she temporarily manifests the powers of a vampire, her hair and eyes turning gold. Additionally, the vampiric blood may have also been what attracted the Meddlecat to her during Golden Week.

Quotes

• (Hanekawa's catchphrase) "I don't know everything. I just know what I know"
• (Hanekawa to the Hysteria Tiger) "I decided to end things like this. I'm sure that I will end up hating someone. I won't be kind to everyone like before and won't be able to love everyone. People are sure to dislike and hate me. I'll probably end up a bit angrier and unable to forgive. I might become stupid. I might not be able to laugh. I might sob and cry. But that's okay. That's alright. I don't want to be "real". I want to be "human". I don't have to be beautiful. I don't have to be white. I want to be impure with you guys."

Trivia

• Hanekawa's last name is written with the characters for "wings" and "river".
• Hanekawa's first name, Tsubasa, means "wings", but typically refers to insect wings. Because both her surname and first name contain different characters for "wings", she is called "the girl with mismatched wings".
• There is a popular theory among fans of Nisio Isin that Kyouko Okitegami from the Boukyaku Tantei Series is an older Hanekawa due to similarities in their appearances and personalities.
  • Taking into account Hanekawa's later occupation as a war mediator, another character one can draw parallels to is Sharyuu from Juuni Taisen.
• In the Kizumonogatari film adaptation, her email address when put into Koyomi's phone is shown as being "2ba3-nyannyan@XXXX.ne.jp" which to a Japanese speaker could be interpreted as "Tsubasan", a cutesy, informal modification of her first name. The "nyannyan" being a Japanese equivalent to "meow" is likely a direct reference to her relation to cats later in the series. She also notably makes a lot of cutesy cat-like faces in the adaptation.