Eru Chitanda

Eru Chitanda is the main female protagonist from the Hyouka anime and light novels.

Eru is a student of Kamiyama High School and president of school's Classic Literature Club. Usually she is the one who gets the club involved with solving the various mysteries.

Appearance
Eru Chitanda is a shapely young girl of average height that stands at 160 cm (5'3") and weighs at 54 kg (119 lbs). She has mid-back length straight black hair that she sometimes wears in a rough high ponytail. Her bangs are cut straight across her forehead, just above her eyes. Chitanda's eyes are indigo-purple and are considered rather large; they tend to sparkle when intrigued. She is principally seen in the school uniform. When not in her school uniform, Eru wears somewhat loose fitting, "dainty" clothing. Satoshi Fukube says that Eru is considered a stunning beauty.

Personality
Eru Chitanda is very ladylike, polite, and cheerful. She is described as being sensible, emotive, friendly, and innocent, coming across as "childlike" in many aspects. Eru has a very positive demeanor and rarely seems to harbor negative emotions. Contrary to her well-behaved mannerisms, she can become compulsively nosy when intrigued; becoming hyperactive and having a tendency to glare and ignore personal space.

Although easily distracted, Eru can become very focused on a particular subject, to a point of forgetting anything else not associated with it. She can be very persistent and stubborn, especially concerning mysteries, as she will not be able to stop thinking about it until she finally solves it.

While being very skillful in cooking, she is vulnerable to alcohol and caffeine. Matcha milk is her favorite drink.

Trivia

 * Surprisingly, by her first year's mid-term test, Chitanda is ranked sixth in her year. She is often called "top student".
 * She apparently has a good sense of hearing and smell, as she is able to hear and smell things that other characters are unable to.
 * She is very meticulous, seeing details other people might fail to see.
 * She has excellent night vision, as she claims in episode 20.
 * She has not read a mystery novel for years, as claimed by herself.
 * She is good at cooking.
 * Her seiyuu, Satomi Sato, together with Satoshi Fukube's seiyuu, Daisuke Sakaguchi, sung "Update Go Issho ni" and "Itsuka Bokura no Epilogue" in Hyouka Net Radio "Kotenbu no Kuttaku" Theme song CD.
 * Houtarou specified her as The Fool of the tarot cards.


 * During the Kanya Festival, she was shown on the photo that Chitanda was wearing a penguin costume while she's on a pictorial session on the Photography Club. Her Costume might be a reference to J.C.Staff's anime Azumanga Daioh, in which Chiyo, a high school girl who has pigtails, shown also in a Penguin Costume as a mascot during the festival.
 * Besides Sekitani Jun, two more relatives of Eru were mentioned in the light novel series; Shounosuke Chitanda (grandfather) in volume 3 and Tetsugo Chitanda (father) in volume 4. However, only Tetsugo was mentioned in the anime series.
 * Eru is very sensitive to both caffeine and alcohol. She got drunk after eating almost a whole box of whisky chocolates, and she stated that she is unable to sleep after drinking coffee.