Aimoto Rinku

“

All together now! Happy Around!

”

Aimoto Rinku (愛本りんく, Aimoto Rinku^?) is the main protagonist of the D4DJ franchise. She is a second-year student at Yoba Academy. She is also the leader of Happy Around!.

Profile

Rinku lived abroad as a child due to her parents' work, but she came back to Japan alone for high school and now lives with her grandmother. She became interested in DJing after meeting Maho.^[3]

Appearance

Rinku has red eyes and medium length blonde hair, with a section put into an overhead braid. She wears a red bow on the right side of her head.

Background

Rinku's mother is an entomologist who mainly studies dung beetles, and her father is a zoologist. She originally lived near Yoba Academy, but moved to Tio Tio Island, a made-up island near Africa, during her childhood. As such, she lived in the wilderness and grew up with music from Africa, giving her a great sense of rhythm that she carries on in her DJ activities. However, the island had little to no humans or children her age, prompting Rinku to indulge with wild animals and stargazing in order to escape her loneliness, especially after Muni's letters stopped arriving.^[4] Her love for Japanese anime and manga came from her time spent consuming those mediums abroad.^[5][6]

Personality

Rinku is an always cheerful and optimistic individual who can sometimes be seen as an oddball, calling even nature her friend, and being able to understand and converse with monkeys.^[4] Due to her somewhat airheaded nature, she often gets into odd situations in her interactions with other people. This is often used as a running gag in the game or anime, such as when she loudly calls Maho's athletic body "dynamite" or thinks Michiru has "influenza" when she is called an influencer. Because of this, Rinku may appear to be an unserious person who does not notice the feelings of other people, but she will always take a topic seriously and sincerely if her friends draw her attention to it. Due to her being the poster girl of the franchise, she often displays the leadership skills to bring people together (usually by distributing seashells), a role also symbolized by the etymology of her name.

Etymology

Aimoto (愛本) can be split into two parts. Ai (愛), which translates to "love", and Moto (本), which can translate to "origin" or "source."

Rinku (りんく) has no meaning on its own, but if put into katakana (リンク), it translates to the word "link." According to Takaaki Kidani, this is based on the fact that the main theme of the D4DJ project is "to connect".

Trivia

• The name for "Happy Around!" came from Rinku's habit of yelling the phrase while joyfully spinning around. It also appears to be a catchphrase used by the whole Aimoto family.^[7]
• According to episode 1 of the anime's first season, although not knowing how to DJ, Rinku knows how to transition from song-to-song smoothly. This may be a reference to her voice actress, Nishio Yuka, who is able to perform as a DJ.
  • Because of this fact, and thanks to her voice actress, she is later seen performing as a DJ in #D4DJ_DJTIME series.
• Rinku loves lions.
• Rinku is not used to the cold weather, due to living most of her life in hot places.^[8]
• She is the same height as Eimi.
• In the past, a small icon of Rinku's head appeared after you used the Japanese Gurumiku hashtag. (#グルミク )
• Her favorite food being donuts may refer to the fact that D4DJ Groovy Mix was developed by the company named "Donuts".
• She owns a pet chameleon named Leon.
• According to her second birthday card's episode, her sister is studying to become an astronaut and named a star after her, calling it the "Linking Star".
• Rinku has been featured in the following collaboration events:

References

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