Kotori Minami

Kotori Minami is a main character in Love Live!. She was a second year student at Otonokizaka High School until she graduated at the end of Love Live! The School Idol Movie. She is also known as "Legendary Maid Minalinsky" while working in Akihabara. She is a member of Printemps, a sub-unit under µ's. Her image color is gray, though she is also represented with green or white. Her solo album is called Kotori, Lovin' You.

Background
Since she was young, Kotori has been friends with Honoka Kosaka and Umi Sonoda. Her mother is the director of the school.

Personality
Kotori appears to be a feminine, caring, shy, and cheerful girl. She is known for having her head in the clouds. Despite this, she is μ's designer alongside Nico Yazawa, and is also clever and good at studying, being a honor student. Kotori has a very huge aptitude for fashion and is very good at drawing costumes for the group. Kotori is shown to be very kind and supportive to her friends and genuinely cares about them, especially their feelings: she's easily the most altruistic character in her group, and cares more how others feel than how she does herself. However, this can go too far as Kotori usually backs Honoka up when she (Honoka) is scolded by Umi.

Kotori is also shown as the most indecisive person among all nine members and tends to have Umi Sonoda and Honoka Kosaka, her childhood friends, make decisions for her. She also has a hard time expressing her feelings, since she always takes other people's feelings into consideration. Kotori is a kind person, but she can also be gullible, as shown in Season 1 Episode 10, wherein Nico claimed that she has a personal chef like Maki Nishikino, and Kotori fell for Nico's lie unknowingly.

In Kotori's Holiday (July 2012), it is revealed that while naive, Kotori is hard-working, and the type of person who can't relax unless all the work is done as soon as possible.

Clubs and Hobbies
She is μ's' wardrobe supervisor and their choreographer before Eli Ayase took over the role. It is discovered in Season 1 Episode 9 that Kotori worked in a maid café in Akihabara and is a famous maid named "Minalinsky". She was known as a "Legendary Maid" in Akihabara due to her kindness, cuteness, and soft voice. She also likes making candy. Her special skill is her flexibility; her legs can reach her shoulders. She later becomes a member of the student council and assists Honoka and Umi in doing their student council duties.

Appearance
Kotori has a slim build. She has long grayish-brown hair that she wears in a side ponytail with a small hair loop on the top of her head and hazel eyes.

Audio

 * Does not work on iPad, or any medium that does not support the .ogg audio format.

Songs
The songs featuring Kotori are:

Solo

 * Spicaterrible
 * Blueberry♥Train
 * Yume☆ONCE AGAIN

μ's (Group)

 * Bokura no LIVE Kimi to no LIFE
 * Yuujou No Change
 * Snow halation
 * Baby maybe Koi no Button
 * Natsuiro Egao de 1,2,Jump!
 * Mermaid festa vol.1
 * Mogyutto "love" de Sekkin Chuu!
 * Aishiteru Banzai!
 * Wonderful Rush
 * Oh,Love&Peace!
 * Bokura wa Ima no Naka de
 * WILD STARS
 * Kitto Seishun ga Kikoeru
 * Kaguya no Shiro de Odoritai
 * START:DASH!!
 * Korekara no Someday
 * Wonder zone
 * No brand girls
 * LONELIEST BABY
 * Music S.T.A.R.T!!
 * LOVELESS WORLD
 * Takaramonozu
 * Paradise Live
 * ENDLESS PARADE
 * Koremade no Love Live!
 * Sore wa Bokutachi no Kiseki
 * Datte Datte Aa Mujou
 * Donna Toki mo Zutto
 * COLORFUL VOICE
 * Yume no Tobira
 * SENTIMENTAL StepS
 * Dancing stars on me!
 * KiRa-KiRa Sensation!
 * Happy maker!
 * Soshite Saigo no Page ni wa
 * Shangri-La Shower
 * Ruteshi Kisuki Shiteru
 * Dreamin' Go! Go!!
 * Mi wa µ'sic no Mi
 * Super LOVE=Super LIVE!
 * Angelic Angel
 * SUNNY DAY SONG
 * Bokutachi wa Hitotsu no Hikari
 * HEART to HEART!
 * Arashi no Naka no Koi dakara
 * Korekara
 * MOMENT RING
 * Sayounara e Sayonara!
 * A song for You! You? You!!
 * Natte Shimatta!

Printemps (Sub-unit)

 * Love marginal
 * Sweet&sweet holiday
 * Pure girls project
 * UNBALANCED LOVE
 * Puwa Puwa-O!
 * Eien Friends
 * Nightingale Love Song
 * CheerDay CheerGirl!
 * MUSEUM de Dou Shitai?
 * Future style
 * WAO-WAO Powerful day!
 * NO EXIT ORION

Duo & Trio

 * Kokuhaku Biyori, desu!
 * Susume→Tomorrow
 * Anemone heart
 * Suki desu ga Suki desu ka?
 * Future style

Chronology
Season I = Season II = Manga =

Etymology

 * The name Kotori is written in hiragana (ことり), which has no special meaning. However, when written in kanji (小鳥, 琴梨, 琴莉 or 琴里), it could possibly mean:
 * 小鳥 - "small" (小) (ko) and "bird, poultry, fowl" (鳥) (tori).
 * 琴梨 - "Japanese harp" (琴) (koto) and "pear" (梨) (ri).
 * 琴莉 - "Japanese harp" (琴) (koto) and "white jasmine" (莉) (ri).
 * 琴里 - "Japanese harp" (琴) (koto) and "village" (里) (ri).
 * Kotori's surname Minami means "south" (南).

Trivia

 * Kotori fulfills the pure attribute of the μ's second years.
 * While Kotori usually speaks in third person, she still occasionally speaks in first person, using the pronoun "watashi".
 * Kotori owns a yellow pillow which she treasures enough to go all the way back home to retrieve it, as seen in the fifth PV, and is never seen sleeping without it. She is also seen with her yellow pillow in her Yume no Tobira Rare card in Love Live! School idol festival.
 * Kotori is known for a photo-bomb at one of the bottom corners of the screens, sometimes referred to by fans as a "Koto-bomb".
 * This is a recurring joke from as early as the first PV, to the first season's opening theme, to the "Happy maker!" animated sequence, and eventually "Bokutachi wa Hitotsu no Hikari".
 * Another recurring theme is the bird emoticon: (・８・), which is also used by her voice actress Uchida Aya in blog posts and Twitter whenever she mentions Kotori.
 * It even makes its appearance in the anime, such as within S1 Episode 9.
 * The various media in the project disagree on the relationships between the second years.
 * In the manga which was published earlier, Honoka is closer to Umi as the two of them are childhood friends and not Kotori.
 * In the anime and other newer media, the three of them are all childhood friends.
 * There has also been a Q&A answered in a magazine which stated that Honoka and Kotori are childhood friends because their mothers were also childhood friends, and they've always been living on the same street.
 * As Tsubasa Kira refers to Kotori as the "ex-Akiba Charisma Maid" in S2 Episode 3, she has either stopped working as a maid or lost the title to someone else.
 * It is possible for the kanji of her last name to reference the Minami-za (南座), the last remaining Kabuki theater in Kyoto.
 * Kabuki itself is an expressive form of Japanese theater that includes—but is not limited to—dance, song, and an emphasis on elaborate costume. This may explain her heavy role as a seamstress of exaggerated and elaborate costumes and ties with the musical and dancing theme of the series.
 * In Love Live! School idol diary, Kotori is shown to have yandere traits as she is shown talking about wanting to see Umi break down in defeat because she thinks it's cute, and she even made her own doll of the latter's likeness, which she pats every day before going to school.

Gallery

 * Please refer to this character's Image Gallery.