Mutsumi Otohime is a very sweet, gentle, frail, anemic, clumsy and softly-spoken 20 year old girl in
Love Hina.
Naru Narusegawa and
Keitaro Urashima first encounter her while while taking some time off for a brief vacation after Keitaro fails his Todai entrance exam for a third successive time, just like
Mutsumi Otohime.
Despite Mutsumi Otohime outwardly poor physical health, she is actually extremely resilient and is seemingly able to recover quickly from any injury, much like Keitaro Urashima. Indeed, in both the
love hina manga and the
love hina anime, the similarities between Mutsumi Otohime and Keitaro Urashima are noticed by Naru Narusegawa on a number of occasions, most notably when they first meet on Naru and Keitaro's trip to Kyoto. Mutsumi Otohime has a very sweet and generous personality, often sacrificing her own happiness for others. She lives on or near the island of Okinawa and has an affinity for watermelons and turtles.
Due to frequent near-death experiences, her outlook on life is somewhat disconnected with reality, a point reinforced by her almost surreal optimism. Mutsumi Otohime has a number of unusual abilities, such as being able to speak "turtlese", which Mutsumi Otohime uses to communicate with her turtles, a guessing method she uses for exams which involves the sides of a pencil and a propensity sleepwalking. This latter 'talent' leads her into trouble (once she sleepwalked out her window and was hit by a car). Despite her many eccentricities she is extremely intelligent, scoring full marks in the practice exams. Yet Mutsumi Otohime still fails to get into Tokyo University because, amongst other things, she forgets to write her name on the test paper, causing her to obtain a grade Z on at least one test paper.
As the story develops it transpires that, as a young child, Mutsumi Otohime spent living at the Hinata inn. In volume 10, Mutsumi claims to have played matchmaker for Naru and Keitaro after it became clear that she made a promise to go to Tokyo University with him. Although she loved Keitaro (and admits she still does to Naru), Mutsumi Otohime let him go for Naru's sake by deliberately losing a
game of rock-paper-scissors to decide which of them would become Keitaro's wife.
Mutsumi Otohime
then made a subsequent promise with Naru that both of them would later go to Tokyo University, so that Naru would remember the promise made to Keitaro. Before leaving Hinata, Mutsumi Otohime gave Naru her Liddo-kun doll in memory of their friendship. Like Keitaro Urashima and Naru Narusegawa, Mutsumi Otohime finally passes the Todai entrance exam, discovering her result just before setting off to rescue Keitaro Urashima from the island of Parakalese.
She studies at Todai, later entering graduate school. At the end of the manga she helps out in organizing Keitaro and Naru's wedding by bringing a plethora of watermelons.
Tokyopop sometimes misspells her name as "Mitsumi" or "Matsumi".
In the love hina anime television series, Mutsumi is voiced by Satsuki Yukino in Japanese and Julie Ann Taylor in English.
Mutsumi Otohime is probably the easiest girl in
The Love Hina RPG to get to lover state with!
