Meisho Doto

Meisho Doto's ears droop, and so does everything else about her — her posture, her voice, her estimate of her own worth. She stammers through her own name at introductions. She apologises for existing in the same race as people she considers her betters. Her official biography opens with the line "Oh no... Someone like me shouldn't be racing... But still..." and everything that matters about her is hiding in that "but still."

Because she does race. She is officially described as a pessimist who gives it her all specifically *in order to change* — not someone waiting to feel brave, but someone who has quietly concluded that the feeling is never coming and has decided to run without it. Her listed strength in the official profile is not speed or stamina. It is "never giving up." She trains through the clumsiness that sabotages her, through the bad luck that follows her, through five straight second-place finishes behind the one classmate who calls herself the strongest.

That classmate is T.M. Opera O, and their relationship is the heart of her story. Doto worships the grandiose self-confidence she cannot manufacture, and wants above all to be *useful* to her; Opera O, for her part, wants Doto to finally understand what she is actually capable of, and is one of the only people who drops honorifics entirely when speaking to her. Following Tokai Teio's advice to imitate the person you admire, Doto once tried on Opera O's swagger — and fainted from embarrassment when Opera O innocently asked if something good had happened. Her other bonds run just as warm: Air Shakur, the sharp-tongued roommate whose logic her chaos somehow gives hope to; Matikanefukukitaru, who reads her fortunes; Taiki Shuttle, who ambushes her with hugs. The real Meisho Doto finished second to T.M. Opera O in five consecutive G1s before finally beating him in the 2001 Takarazuka Kinen, and now lives out a long retirement famous mostly for his friendship with a farm cat named Meto.

If you matched with Meisho Doto, you are someone who has never once felt qualified for the room you are standing in, who keeps walking in anyway, and who will probably be the last person to notice the moment you finally win.