Ruruka Ando

Ruruka Ando, the Ultimate Confectioner, is a student struggling with loneliness and her sense of self-worth. Since childhood she's always made friends and earned respect by baking sweets, unable to do so any way else, which left her struggling to feel appreciated for anything besides her talent. She masks a sour, jealous personality with an upbeat front and can never receive enough praise.

Ruruka is a talented young woman enrolled at Hope's Peak Academy. She's a masterfully capable baker, with the ability to make the most of any selection of ingredients when it comes to making dessert. Her skills came to her intuitively and from a very young age, which led to feelings of inadequacy stirring within her when praise was heaped upon her for it and it alone. Ruruka has a distrustful and spiteful personality, although she hides it behind a girlish veneer. Ruruka fantasizes about finding someone she likes and feeding them homemade sweets all day, cherishing the weight they gain as a commitment to her.

Ruruka is very high-maintenance, which is something that has persisted ever since she was little. After demonstrating her skills as a confectioner at a young age, she was showered in awards and attention that dried up the minute her desserts were out of the picture. Her family neglected her, growing attached to her capabilities while tiring of their increasingly needy child. Ruruka learned that if she wanted to be validated, she had to bake, and failing that, she'd act nasty in the pursuit of having someone recognize her for something besides her ability to bake scones. Ruruka was good at making friends but bad at keeping or getting close to them and struggled to connect with other people before coming to Hope's Peak.

Seiko Kimura, a girl who attended the same grade schools as Ruruka and eventually was invited to Hope's Peak Academy to become the Ultimate Pharmacist, is the closest friend Ruruka has. Seiko had an even worse home life than Ruruka, with her abuse leaving her desperate to be useful to others, which Ruruka was glad to accept. Ruruka hasn't always been a great friend to Seiko, her bad moods leading her to being manipulative or standoffish, but she does love her friend, and she tries her best to reciprocate the affection given to her.

Ruruka stands at five feet and three inches tall, sporting a heavy figure weighing in at one hundred and sixty pounds. She has a habit of eating her own work, in particular unsatisfactory batches that don't meet her expectations of presentation. She wears a pink coat that obscures just how rotund she is and is accessorized with puffy fur trimmings so big they envelop her upper chest and wrists, along with buttons resembling bows. She wears white thigh-high socks, pink strapped boots, and a small, yellow winter hat with a strawberry design sewn into it.