Yuki Sohma (草摩 由希, Sōma Yuki) is the rat of the Chinese Zodiac. Known to his classmates as 'Prince Yuki', 'Prince Yuki Sohma', or 'Prince Charming', Yuki is seen by others as a beautiful being. Yuki, however, is incredibly insecure. He hates his girly looks, does not know how to interact with other people, and constantly feels insignificant. In spite of this, Yuki maintains a calm, collected attitude most of the time, rarely becoming mad or upset. He is very formal and kind in how he speaks to those around him.
Appearance
Yuki stands 5' 7" and weighs 119 pounds. He has dark grey (purple in the anime) eyes. Yuki's hair style has front fringe with the left side of his hair longer than his fringe. He dresses mainly in Chinese-style clothes just for the reason that Takaya-sensei (the mangaka) likes them. She added that she believes they suit his androgynous nature, and that she deliberately gave Yuki and Kyo different styles to distinguish them farther.
While Kyo prefers loose clothes, Yuki often wears collared or tight fitting clothes. Later on in the manga, it is seen clearly that Yuki slowly changes his style by wearing looser clothing more or less like Kyo. When Yuki transforms, he is a rat with silver fur. According to Tohru, Yuki shares the same eyes as Ayame, only to be different colors and Ayame looks like the grown-up version of Yuki.
Personality
Yuki is depicted as an attractive, reserved, and accomplished young man with many admirers, but who finds being friendly difficult.Yuki is talented at anything he tries (except cooking and cleaning). However, when Yuki was young, Akito Sohma kept him isolated from the rest of the family and convinced him no one liked or needed him. Because of this emotional abuse, Yuki has low self-esteem and feels isolated. He is known as "Prince Yuki", "Prince Yuki Sohma", and "Prince Charming" at school, where despite his popularity he must avoid intimacy with girls lest they trigger his transformation into a rat. However, as the story progresses, Yuki begins to open up more and expresses his feelings frequently. It is shown that once he cares about someone, he will make an effort to ensure that they are happy and satisfied. It is also shown that Yuki is a hard worker once he has a passion into it.
He has a fan club headed by Motoko Minagawa that tries to "protect" him from other admirers, with the result that Yuki is further isolated. Yuki, however, wishes that he could be with people as friends, rather than be admired from afar, and envies both Kyo Sohma's and Kakeru Manabe's easy ways with others. He is touched when, faced with the prospect of having her memory of the Sohma family secret erased, Tohru Honda asks that he will remain her friend, which no one had asked him before.
Story Overview
History
For his early education, Yuki went to a private school. He was playing tag with the other kids when a girl accidentally bumped into him and he transformed then he then witnessed the erasing of his first friends' memories."Akito... am I that strange.Am I so strange that we have to keep it a secret" Yuki asked Akito and he said" hmm...yes..you are that strange what do you think they would do if they knew. They'd wouldn't come near you they'd hate you"
Staying at the Main House
For the first 10-14 years of his life, Yuki was given to Akito as a playmate, and the two of them were constantly together. After Akito's mind was twisted, Yuki was locked in an isolated room, similar to Kyo's, and suffered severe mental abuse from Akito (in the anime, Akito is shown whipping Yuki, but that isn't included in the manga).
Eventually, Hatsuharu begged Shigure to release Yuki from the Main House by getting Yuki to stay with Shigure.
Before Summer Vacation
First Meeting Tohru Honda
When he coincidentally meets Tohru Honda at his doorstep, he is polite and they become good friends. On this same night, Shigure and him find Tohru exhausted, coming home from work and climbing into her tent. They offer her to stay and live with them which she accepts. The next day, Tohru finds out about the Sohma Curse. She then becomes the only person outside of the Sohma to know of their secret.
Later on he develops a crush on Tohru and kisses her on the forehead in the end of Volume 10. He later on develops feeling for Machi Kuragi and they then become a couple.
During Summer Vacation
After Summer Vacation
When Tohru falls from a cliff and is hospitalised, after some encouragement, Yuki finds Kyo at home and consequently beats him up about not going to see Tohru in hospital ,how Yuki wanted to be Kyo and about how much he really made Tohru happy.
Yuki moves on to college. He gives Machi the key to his dorm room. When she rejected it, he jokingly attempted to throw it out of the window. This got Machi to be flustered and accepted the key, embarrassingly.
He visited the house he stayed in with Shugure, Kyo and Tohru. He met Tohru and recalls the memories they share together. Afterwards, he thanked Tohru for what she done for the Sohma family. He narrates the epilogue and farewell speech:
"I won't be able to hear it, right? But, I am happy. To struggle on alone until now, I am happy. I was weak, although I could not relate well with others, I wanted to be loeved. I wanted to be needed. I only wished. And you appeared, before me. And granted my wish, my desire, graciously. You taught it. You reward me. Therefore, in this way, now "here", I can stand. You made me "a human". You raised me as "a human". You to me, existed as a mother. ... I hear that all the others think the same: your existence was kindness. ... Thank you, thank you, thank you, Tohru"[1]
'Sorta Cinderella' Play
He played the Fairy Godmother in the "Sorta Cinderella".
Relationships
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Tohru Honda and Yuki Sohma.
Tohru Honda
When Tohru was a child (in the manga), she got lost trying to run away from a group of boys that were picking on her, unable to find her way home. A boy found her but ran away from her. she pursued him and called out to him to wait and said she wanted to go home. He turned back to her and led her home. He gave her the cap he was wearing and ran off before he could show his face. It turns out that this boy was actually in fact a young Yuki.Yuki always love Tohru and when she said prince Yuki, he blushed and turned into a rat. That is proof he likes her more than anything.
Years later in the present time, Yuki still remembers that incident, but thinks that Tohru has forgotten about it, until he discovers the red cap in her room when they were studying. He asks her why she keeps it to which she responds "Because it's a precious memory of mine! To be able to receive his help...it was really...the happiest moment in my life!" (Chapter 53).
At the beach house in chapter 59 after being confronted by Akito, Yuki wanders off, thinking. Tohru gets concerned when he does not return and goes out to search for him. When she does find him, Yuki comes to realize that her help and kindness have helped him "open the lid" to his feelings. He kisses her forehead and sheds tears as he realizes he loves her. However, he later realizes that he loved her as a mother as he grows to love Machi.
Yuki and Kyo both share mutual hatred towards one another in the beginning of the story. Yuki is envious of how Kyo has the ability to fit into normal people and he is annoyed when Kyo wants to be part of the zodiac meanwhile Yuki wants to escape from the curse. Kyo also envious of Yuki, how he is accepted into the zodiac family, Kyo made a deal with Akito that if Kyo ever beats Yuki, the cat sign will be accepted into the zodiac. Because of this deal, this leads to Kyo's determination to win against Yuki, which causes Yuki to be very annoyed. However, both of their relationship begins to improve after they meet Tohru. Because of her kindness and the two both share mutual feelings for Tohru, they begin to softened their attitudes toward each other and they both cooperate together when Tohru is in trouble. In the later story, the two begin to understand and respect each other and form a friendship at last. It is hinted that they still remain friendly and frequently contact each other in their adult lives.
Akito Sohma
Yuki has a twisted relationship of love and hatred towards Akito. Being the Rat of the Zodiac, it placed Yuki at the top of the Zodiac, making him the closest to 'God' or Akito. As such, the two 'love' each other more than the other Zodiacs. However, the twisted mind of Akito that led her to torturing Yuki, made Yuki to hate Akito as a person. But due to the overwhelming feelings from the spirit of Rat that possesses him, Yuki cannot truly hate Akito.
Hatsuharu Sohma
In the Zodiac legend, the Rat rides on the Ox's head to win the Zodiac race. This made the Ox to be labelled as 'stupid' by the rest of the Zodiac animals because it wasn't aware of the rat riding on it. The fooled Ox continued discriminated even after it possessed a human. The current possessed Sohma is none other than Hatsuharu. Tired of being teased, scolded, discriminated because he is the Ox, Hatsuharu went on to hunt down Yuki, who was currently possessed by the Rat, and takes out his (and the Ox's) anger on Yuki (or the Rat), blaming Yuki that he was labelled as a 'stupid' person.
However, Yuki calmly replies that does Haru really think he himself is stupid. When Haru realizes that he should not keep on believing the people around him that he's stupid, he starts to look up to Yuki. Ever since that day of confrontation, Haru has always admired Yuki, even professing a 'love' towards Yuki.
Ayame Sohma
Ayame is Yuki's brother. Yuki seems to hate him but that was because Ayame pushed Yuki aside when Yuki wanted his comfort. Ayame was never really acknowledging his existence and therefore a rift began between the two brothers. Tohru tried to help them but it didn't work and the rift grew bigger. Though as the story goes on, they seem to grow closer.
Kakeru Manabe
Kakeru is Yuki's friend when he met him when Yuki began his presidential work at his high school. Yuki thinks of him as annoying fellow student. Both of them have been labelled as a 'odd couple', Kakeru being the 'clown' of the couple while Yuki, the 'serious' one. Mostly because Yuki thinks Kakeru is a person from a "different world" than him, that he was able to open up to Kakeru. In some way, he changed Yuki and that he was able to smile from the bottom of his heart.
Machi Kuragi
Machi and Yuki met while working in the student council, she being the treasurer and he the president. She piques his interest by characterizing him as a typical, perhaps even lonely, boy while other girls thought of him as a prince. When Yuki and Kakeru Manabe visit Machi's apartment, Yuki learns that because of the pressure put on by her mother to be perfect, Machi finds perfection so disturbing, she has a compulsion to mar anything too orderly, such as trashing neat rooms, walking through newly-fallen snow, and breaking pieces of a new box of chalk. She was the only one who understood Yuki's imperfection.
Machi develops feelings for Yuki, and when Tohru is in the hospital and he needs to reach out to someone, Machi is able to confess to Yuki. Machi later becomes Yuki's girlfriend.
Gallery
Trivia
- Yuki is known for his bad cooking; Shigure once begged him not to cook.
- Despite not being a morning person, Yuki is a far better fighter when he's half asleep.
- He has a secret vegetable garden near Shigure's house (Tohru and Kyo being the only other people who know about it).
- Saki points out that Kyo and Yuki's great dislike for each other is similar to a cat and mouse (especially since they are the cat and the rat).
- ↑ Chapter 136