Honoka Kosaka

Honoka Kosaka is the primary protagonist of Love Live!. She is a second year in Otonokizaka High School. Her image color is orange, though she is often represented with pink. She is also the leader of Printemps, a sub-unit under µ's and the leader of the group itself. Her solo album is called Honnori Honokairo! (ほんのり穂乃果色! lit. Faint Honoka Color!).

Background
Honoka's family owns a Japanese sweets shop named Homura. She lives at the back of the shop with her mother, father, and her younger sister.

Since she was young, she has been friends with Kotori Minami, and she befriended Umi Sonoda after inviting her to a game of hide-and-seek. She is also friends with Fumiko, Hideko and Mika at school. Her grandmother and her mother are both graduates from Otonokizaka.

Personality
Honoka is an optimist who is never afraid to take risks. She is always in a good mood and likes to look at the bright side of things. She is determined and once her mind is set on something, nothing can stop her. This is believed to be the driving force behind μ's formation and success. But because of her persistent personality, she often overexerts herself.

Her personality is similar to Rin Hoshizora's because they are both determined and hard-working. For example, in Season 1 Episode 7, Honoka, Rin and Nico Yazawa had to work hard to pass exams in order to enter Love Live!, and are known as the 'Three Idiots'.

She likes to eat bread, but she does not enjoy eating red bean or white bean paste despite working at her family's Japanese sweets shop.

Clubs and Hobbies
Honoka enjoys swimming and collecting stickers. Her special skill is often finding money on the streets, which she attributes to good luck. She is also the leader of the school idol group μ's. Starting from the second season, she succeeds Eli Ayase as Otonokizaka High School's student council president.

In the manga version, before starting an idol club, Honoka is in the Kendo club with Umi and is good enough to win a tournament.

Trivia

 * Honoka fulfills the smile attribute of the µ's second years.
 * Her practice shirt has the Japanese character "ほ" (ho), the first syllable of her name, which became her character icon. In My Wish, she wears a sweater with the romanization of her first syllable as "Ho".
 * Though her image color is orange, her outfits are usually pink.
 * She liked milk while she was in elementary school.
 * The only thing she is good at, other than cheering people up, is making rice cakes.
 * As she's seen eating bread in the Anime, the profile data of the strawberries being her favorite food may be considered as an informed attribute.
 * Honoka from the Dead or Alive series has a strong resemblance to her.
 * The various media in the project disagree on the relationships between the second-years. In the manga which was published earlier, Honoka is closer to Umi as the two of them are childhood friends and not Kotori, but in the anime and other newer media, the three of them are all childhood friends.
 * There has also been a Q&A answered in a magazine which stated that Honoka and Kotori are childhood friends because their mothers were also childhood friends, and they've always been living on the same street.
 * In the manga, which was published before the anime, both Umi and Honoka were portrayed to be members of the kendo club.
 * While in the anime, it was not revealed which area of Tokyo she lives in, she lives in the lower district of Chiyoda, near Akihabara in the manga.
 * According to Kotori's Q&A answer, Honoka's side ponytail was originally made by Kotori back when they were children.
 * While Honoka commonly refers to herself in 1st person in the Anime, she usually refers to herself in 3rd person in School Idol Festival.
 * In Love Live! Sunshine!! Season 1 Episode 12, a child who looked like Honoka appeared during their visit to Otonokizaka High School as a homage to her character, giving Chika Takami a push forward.

Gallery
Honoka Kosaka - Image Gallery