Ranko Hata

Ranko Hata is a Second Year (later Third Year) student at Ousai Academy and the Head of the Ousai Academy Newspaper Club. She is notable for several reasons, among them the fact she is drawn slightly differently from other characters (most obviously her lack of a nose) and the fact she makes the most appearances outside of the Student Council members. In contrast to the energetic and lively girls that make up the majority of characters in the series, Ranko has a quiet, deadpan personality. Her expression is generally neutral, though she occasionally smirks when something interesting happens she can use in her newspaper. When challenged by the Student Council members to demonstrate a smile for a photo session, she was forced to resort to using tape to pull the corners of her mouth up. Despite her default deadpan expression and her typically quiet impression, she acts to the contrary and is very animated, wacky, and comical. She takes her position as Head of the Newspaper Club seriously and is almost never seen without her camera. A true professional journalist, she claims her camera is as vital as part of her body. One of Hata's defining character traits is her complete lack of morals when it comes to getting scoops. While she will not outright make things up, she has no problems tweaking information or pictures to make a story more 'interesting'. There is also a suggestion she won't hesitate to sell pictures of people to interested parties (for example, she once joked that she could sell pictures of the sweaty judo club members. Takatoshi wasn't sure she was actually joking.) Ranko also occasionally causes trouble for no other reason than she thinks it would be funny (or lead to a scoop). For example, she told Uomi that Kaede Igarashi was afraid of boys, leading Uomi to pretend to be a crossdressing boy as a joke. During the Squid and Takatoshi segment of the second anime series, she is aware Takatoshi is innocent of making a mess of the sex toy Aria Shichijō left in the Student Council room, but intends to use the pictures she took anyway. More commonly, she'll deliberately mishear what someone tells her to make it sound perverted. Her most common target is Takatoshi, though Shino and Kaede are also common targets.