Yoshitake Tanaka

Yoshitake Tanaka (田中 ヨシタケ, Tanaka Yoshitake) is a student in Class 2-A of Sanada North High and the blond member of the main trio. He is known for taking part in most of the trio’s outlandish activities, along with Hidenori. He works part-time (at an undisclosed place) and has an older sister who studies in Central High. In the past, he was a primary member of the group that adopted the Rubber Shooter persona.

History
In elementary school, Yoshitake was one of the kids behind the Rubber Shooter mask, and is heavily hinted to have been the one that saved Hidenori from bullies around 8 years ago. He attended East Yada Elementary, and became the subject of a fair number of embarrassing incidents while there (like soiling his pants while playing), although most people seem to misattribute them to Mitsuo and others. He met Tadakuni in junior school and Hidenori in middle school.

Appearance
Yoshitake is tall, fair and slim, with olive-brown eyes. His most distinctive feature is his blond hair, which is spiked backwards. He usually wears the North High uniform with the shirt untucked. Unlike the others, he almost never wears the school tie, giving him a rebellious look. In his childhood appearances, he is sometimes shown having dark brown hair, with Rubber Shooter retaining his signature hairstyle.

Personality
Yoshitake is fun-loving and friendly, taking part whole-heartedly in most of the trio’s activities. Despite his bad-boy looks, he can be level-headed and a quick thinker. He is also shown to have a competitive streak, going out of his way to fake an injury so as to get the scariest story to share. According to Hidenori, Yoshitake is overly dramatic at times and easily becomes emotional. Despite this, he is capable of lying very convincingly with a straight face.

He is known to hold strong feelings about friendship and love. He becomes quickly irked when someone tries to toy with his feelings, and deliberates at length on what courses of action he should choose so as to ‘stay true’ to his friends.

Even as a child, Yoshitake is shown to have a sense of righteousness, having adopted the Rubber Shooter persona with his friends in order to protect weaker kids from bullies.

Role-playing Avatars

 * More details: Chapter 6, Chapter 15, Chapter 37, Chapter 38

The Captain
The Captain is the leader of the white knight’s crew and oversees the white knight’s training. With a notably deep voice and a genial attitude, the Captain also enjoys relaxing, being the first to suggest unwinding with a hot bath after training. The white knight expresses shock on discovering that the Captain is a woman.

Markovich
Markovich is an overly enthusiastic member of the white knight’s crew, with a very high-pitched voice. He always ends his sentences the same way (“-ssu!”), such as his introduction “I’m Markovich-ssu!” and generally speaks in pairs with Hopper.

Yoshī C. Tenryūji
Yoshī is a singer-songwriter who appears as a guest on “Hidenori Tabata’s Talking FS”. For some reason, Yoshitake persistently messes up as Yoshī, not paying attention to questions and sometimes missing basic cues. He seems to be antagonistic towards mothers, holding the view that any fault of a high school boy could be traced back in some way to his mother. Hidenori ends up winding down the show due to Yoshī being uncooperative, at which Yoshī apologizes to the listeners.

Other avatars
Yoshitake plays many roles in the adventure of the ‘swordsman Tadakuni’, serving as the narrator, the alert that a player is taking damage, an insignificant monster and a mid-boss (who turns out to be a demon lord).

Abilities
Yoshitake is very athletic, even more so than Hidenori Tabata. During their Kick the Can game, he was able to move swiftly and conceal himself at ease without Hidenori being able to track him.

Trivia

 * Yoshitake’s eyes are depicted as olive-brown in the anime. In the manga’s colour spreads, they have been shown as black and brown
 * Yoshitake is a Virgo, which roughly places his birthday between Aug 23 and Sep 22. His best friend Hidenori shares his star sign.
 * Yoshitake placed 7th in the character popularity poll with 5,916 votes, coming in last among the members of the main trio. His various avatars also feature in the list:
 * Markovich: 56 (11 votes)
 * The Captain: 64 (5 votes)
 * Yoshī C. Tenryūji: 73 (3 votes)
 * He makes an appearance in 56 of 139 chapters (extras included), making him the most featured character behind Hidenori.
 * Name etymology: The name Yoshitake is written in katakana (ヨシタケ), which has no special meaning. However, when part of the names Yoshi (ヨシ) and Take (タケ) are written in kanji (吉, 義, 良, Yoshi) - (威, 岳, 巌, 毅, 丈, 竹, 武, Take), it could possibly mean:
 * Yoshi (吉, 義, 良)
 * 吉 - "lucky, good".
 * 義 - "righteous".
 * 良 - "good, virtuous, respectable".
 * Take (威, 岳, 毅, etc.)
 * 威 - "prestige, authority, power, dignity
 * 岳 - "mountain, peak".
 * 毅 - "strong".
 * ...etc.
 * Yoshitake's surname Tanaka means "field, rice paddy" (田) (ta) and "middle" (中) (naka), which literally means "dweller in the rice fields" altogether.