Megumi Tadokoro

Megumi Tadokoro is one of the main characters from the Shokugeki no Soma anime and manga.

Megumi is a 92nd Tōtsuki Generation student, a Polar Star Dormitory resident. She is also the 10th seat of the Elite Ten Council.

Appearance
Megumi has long dark blue hair with two braided pigtails and wears a flower hairpin on the right side of her hair. She has yellow colored eyes and a petite body figure.

She wears a standard Tōtsuki uniform depending on the season. Her chef's uniform is a plain white chef's uniform, though she has also worn a long sleeved version from her first assignment until the end of the Friendship and Rapport Training Camp. During the Autumn Election, Megumi wore a short sleeved version. Most of her casual wear are simple blouses.

Four months after the Régiment de Cuisine, she has tied her hair into a single braided ponytail which she wears in front of her shoulder at chest level.

Her measurements are: bust 79cm, waist 55cm and hip 81cm (31-22-32).

Personality
Megumi is a clumsy, timid, thoughtful, kind, and honest girl who always speaks in a polite tone. She is a nurturing sort of person, always looking out for others and willing to assist them in any way that she can. According to Gin Dōjima, Megumi's greatest gift is her warm hospitality as she cooks for the eater to make them feel good. Her kindness, through her cooking, moved even the initially cold Kojirō Shinomiya into nostalgic childhood-fueled tears. Her main aspiration in life is to return to, and eventually run, her mother's ryokan. Because she highly idolized her mother and the work setting she was in, this eventually created her "hospitality" mentality. Megumi's mother taught her to think of someone special to her whenever she cooks and Megumi firmly believes that by doing so, she can create delicious dishes.

Although Megumi is a capable chef, she does not fare well under pressure because she has stage fright. Because she is intimidated very easily, she makes simple mistakes when she cooks, causing many of her classmates to see her as a weak student. She is quick to panic when something goes awry and tends to over think situations when under pressure or stress, such as repeatedly packing and unpacking a suitcase to make sure she packed something, even though she did not need to pack a suitcase in the first place. She was also rather cautious, preferring to choose her words and actions carefully to avoid unwanted consequences and attention. She has a habit of tracing the kanji for "person" on her hand then motioning, as if to eat it, whenever she is stressed. When feeling overwhelmed or frustrated, she often reverts back to speaking in a Hokkaido accent.

Initially, she heavily relied on Sōma's creativity to pull them both through tough assignments both in the academy and at the Training Camp. After her first Shokugeki, Megumi's confidence grew tenfold. Although she still retains her tendencies to panic and overreact, she has more confidence and thus, her cooking skills have been put on full display in front of her previously skeptical classmates who were used to her failures. Unbeknownst to her, she managed to even impress Senzaemon Nakiri who was the only person to truly understand the true untapped potential that Megumi possesses after eating her ramen. Overall, Megumi still feels that she has more room to grow and finally knows what its like to have fun while cooking, eager to face new challenges in the future.

Even before Sōma showed up, Megumi had a serious side, but this generally only appeared whenever she played ping pong. She displays an unusual level of seriousness and concentration whenever she is in her "Hopping Hare" mode, though any sort of surprising news can easily snap her out of this persona. Even when not playing ping pong, her "Hopping Hare" state has appeared on occasion, though usually for brief moments.

After the training and encouragement from Kojirō, she got this new persona called "Sports Shōjo Manga Mode". After earning the 10th seat of the Elite Ten Council, Megumi's confidence has grown having used her power of her seat to travel across the world and hone her skills. With this confidence Megumi now displays some of the same traits as Sōma. She now accepts the consequences of potentially losing a cooking challenge without missing a beat and nonchalantly goes about cooking her dishes with little thought of said consequences. She's also now more observant of quirks of her eater, able to utilize subtle ticks in their appearance and accents to assist her in her hospitality cooking.

Abilities

 * Hospitality - Megumi has no particular style of cooking, but according to Gin, her cooking is founded in hospitality, which may originate from her background helping in her mother's Ryōkan. Megumi always cooks thinking of the eater in mind, looking for ways to make them feel better or to ease their stress. While most of her classmates rely on powerful impressions that overwhelm the eater's senses, Megumi's dishes give a soothing effect, calming and easing the consumer's mind. Megumi also believes that if you cook with someone in mind, the end product will be more delicious. After acquiring the 10th seat of the Elite Ten Council, Megumi's hospitality cooking has improved tremendously. Using her power of the Council, she has gone on numerous trips around the world and has picked up cooking styles from various countries. This helped her customers invoke memories of their home by using their local cuisine to her advantage.
 * Vegetables - Megumi's strongest ingredient affinity are vegetables due to the notoriety of her Tōhoku hometown's vegetables from all year round mainly to show others the beauty of her hometown.
 * Seafood - Her hometown was also near a port and through her time spent at a fishery, she also developed a strong affinity for using various seafood. Her skill was notable enough to impress Ryō, the seafood specialist of her generation.

Skills

 * Hanging Goosefish Preparation — Preparing a hanging goosefish requires great skill and precision. Any slight mistake will ruin the fish as a whole, wasting it in the process. Megumi learned the skill at a young age and mastered the skill while she was still in primary school. Megumi used this ability in the Preliminaries of the Tōtsuki Autumn Election, which even the most skeptical of her classmates found impressive.


 * Vegetable Carving — Vegetable carving is an artistic skill of carving vegetables into things such as flowers and animals. Megumi used this skill to make numerous different types of vegetables resemble animals.


 * Dried Vegetables — Megumi has shown having great knowledge of drying vegetables to be used in her cooking. She can quickly dry them in a matter of minutes in a kitchen or prepare them by sun-drying them in a special drying device.

Miscellaneous Skills

 * Professional-level Ping Pong — Megumi is an extremely talented ping pong player. During her primary school years, Megumi became the best ping pong player of her age in Tōhoku and was once herald as the "Tōhoku Bunny Hopping Hare" due to her frontal assault play style. According to Ryōko, if Megumi was not in Tōtsuki, she could have easily became a professional ping pong player. She displays an unusual serious demeanor whenever she plays.

Trivia

 * Megumi ranked 3rd in the first popularity poll with 753 votes. She ranked 4th in the second popularity poll with 2817 votes.
 * Megumi literally means "grace" or "kindness", reflecting her personality. Tadokoro literally means "farmland", a reference to the Tōhoku region's reputation as the granary of Japan.
 * Megumi received a few nicknames from the Tōtsuki Academy Alumni during her unofficial Shokugeki with Kojirō Shinomiya. All three are based around Japanese yokai:
 * Légumes Koro-pok-guru by Donato Gotōda
 * Légumes Zashiki-warashi by Hinako Inui
 * Légumes Yuki-ko by Hitoshi Sekimori
 * Megumi has a running gag with many adults becoming enthralled with Megumi based solely on her cute appearance or her hospitality in her cooking. One individual, Kyūsaku, personally asked her to marry his grandson after eating her Breakfast Oden.
 * Megumi is a fan of shoujo manga since her elementary school days. During this time, she picked up table-tennis as a hobby due to getting hooked on a certain plucky, guts-oriented table-tennis manga.