Baku
Baku is one of the antagonists in the original Onegai My Melody and it's sequel. He's a purple tapir (often mistaken by humans for an eggplant) who serves as sidekick to Kuromi. He tends to end his sentences with ``~zona´´. His name, while meaning ``tapir´´, is also a reference to the folclorical creature of the same name that fed on dreams and nightmares.
Personality
Despite his looks, Baku is overall a friendly man. He gets along with people easily and even acts nicely towards My Melody and her friends when not helping Kuromi, to the point he sometimes apologizes to My Melo. Apart from Kuromi, he gets along particularly well with Chika-chan, and the owner of the oden stand, who he feels bad about when Kuromi uses the Melody Key on them.
He seems to dislike and envy those who are succesful only for their looks, and wishes to be in ``the winning team of life´´ like them. He dislikes being compared to an eggplant and being a doggone loser, and this reflects in a more negative aspect of his personality: he sometimes takes pleasure in seeing members of the winning team of life become losers, and even mocks them in the case of Kakeru and Keichi. He can also rarely cause some mischief himself to these people, as seen when he interrupts Kakeru's song by hitting him with a fan in episode 38 of the first show.
He is a hard working man, always waking up at four o'clock in the morning to deliver newspapers in the human world. That way he can earn money to pay for his and Kuromi's rent at Keichi Hiiragi's mansion, this is despite Hiiragi not asking any money from her (only Baku). At seven o'clock he always wakes up Kuromi despite the trouble she gives her. He also likes spending time at the kindergarten playing with the children, whom he talent taking care of and a soft spot for due to his role as the eldest brother in his home.
One of Baku's most defining traits is his crush on Kuromi. He cares deeply for her well being, even to the point of trying to stop the heroes from preventing the end of the world when Dar takes her life hostage. This love is due to her fiery personality, and her hidden kind side. In the end, while Baku desires to be in the winning team of life and be considered good-looking, his biggest desire is simply to be loved.
Backstory
Baku was born in a February 29 as the first child of his family. His mother raised him in her hometown, where he developed the local accent and thus would go on to become the only one in his entire family to end sentences with ``~zona´´ rather than ``~ppe´´. He doesn't have any memory of this detail untile episode 32 of Onegai My Melody: Kuru Kuru Shuffle! .
His parents would conceive later on 12 more kids, and since the two of them spent a long part of the day working, Baku had to do a big part of their job raising the kids. This taught him how to deal with children and take care of himself.
Despite his love for his family, he at one point ran away from home after being scolded by his father. He went to the beach to cry alone, when by coincidence he saw Kuromi screaming at the horizon after getting angry with My Melody as usual. Despite Kuromi initially getting irritated at him, she helped him cheer up by teaching him how she dealt with her frustrations and taking him on ride on her tricycle. This was the first time someone was nice to him, and from that day on he swore to himself he would follow Kuromi everywhere.
A long time later, when Kuromi was captured and sent to trial for stealing bread for Baku's family among other crimes, he tried to defend her by telling the truth of why she stole the bread but it was in vain since she denied it. When she got declared guilty and jailed, Baku stole bread himself to be in the same cell together with Kuromi.
Eventually they managed to break out of the prison and steal the Melody Key, starting the events of the series.
Role and Abilities
Baku's main role is helping Kuromi in her goals, helping her find notes with his sense of smell and keep them safe inside his tummy by eating them, while also serving as her main way of transport thanks to his capacity to fly. While she is prone to mistreating him, he remains loyal and at her side in almost every situation. With the only exceptions being once when Kuromi's mistreatment goes too far for him and a brief time near the end of the first show, when he thinks helping her will only hurt her.
He shows talent taking care of the home, being the one who cleans Kuromi's room. And he also shows the ability to protect others by wraping his extended ears around them. He can also read human, something he learned while delivering newspapers everyday.
In Kuru Kuru Shuffle, while he keeps transporting Kuromi and sniffing out the notes, the task of keeping them is passed on to Kuromi's box. In exchange, he gains a bigger role as the paragon of Doggone Losers and has the duty to finish off Dar by eating him. After learning from the Eggplant God about his status of paragon, he develops the capacity to detect people's doggone loser auras, absorb them and gather energy produced from them to use. He studies it and learns to use it optimally, and he even creates his own hero persona: Eggplant Mask/Nasubi Kamen.
He has his own version of Usamimi Kamen's signature attack. His is called ``Doggone Loser Beam´´, which can cause on humans the side effet of slowly turning them into tapirs.
Notes
- Like Kuromi, Baku has a journal where he writes down his moments with her. Hiiragi burns it in the middle of the first season, but he somehow retrieves it in the second season when they break out of jail.
- His first Doggone Loser beam is shot in episode 26 of the second season.
- Although Kuromi comes first for him, he also has a crush on the Tennis player Charapova-chan and on the kindergarten teacher Chika-chan, and just seeing them is enough to keep him refresh and help him go forward when things go bad for him.