Mihama, Chiyo

美浜ちよ

Chiyo Mihama, commonly known as Chiyo-chan, is a child prodigy who skipped five grades to enter 10th grade (the first year of Japanese high school) at the beginning of the series, yet she remains at the top of her class. Such grade-skipping would be unthinkable in Japan, and the series humorously explores its potential consequences. The other characters find Chiyo amazingly cute, but they sometimes take advantage of both her youthfulness and her scholastic abilities. Her diminutive stature leads to a lack of confidence, particularly in sports, where she fears being a burden to others. Chiyo is frequently viewed with jealousy by fellow students, initially because of her intelligence, but later also due to the discovery that her family is exceedingly wealthy (they own an enormous mansion and a summer house, which Chiyo invites her classmates to visit on several occasions). The stylistic rendering of Chiyo's pigtails allows for several visual gags in both the manga and anime: Osaka often imagines them as flapping wings or as entities independent of Chiyo herself. At home, she can almost always be found in the company of her enormous dog, Tadakichi-san. Of all the girls, she is the only one who does not sit through college "entrance exams" as she intends to study overseas, possibly in America.