Age: 19 (S2)
Birthday: July 7th
Height: 157cm
Blood Type: O

Born in Tokyo, Hotaru Hoshikawa is the high school friend of Aoba Suzukaze and Nene Sakura. Aoba and Nene met Hotaru in the art club room when she was not feeling well. She suffers from anemia, resulting in her getting fatigued and fainting relatively often. The two helped her and became friends soon after. As their final year of high school came to a conclusion, the three graduated together and Hotaru studied at a fine arts college in order to become a professional illustrator. She also studied in France before returning to Japan.

Hotaru has short, gray-blonde hair, with purple eyes and usually wears two small flower pins on the left side of her hair. In the anime, she wears a yellow colored shirt and a blue cardigan along with navy jeans, whereas in the manga she is seen in different outfits. Hotaru is a very nice, caring, polite girl and not easily angered. She loves puns and often laughs at her own jokes. She is a hard worker and tends to overexert herself. Hotaru is also not good at handling peer pressure and is easily influenced. Due to her condition, she is prone to collapsing easily. Additionally, she enjoys sports, despite not being very good at them.

Other information:

- Hotaru resembles Colette Ehle from “Komorebi no Kuni,” one of Shotaro Tokuno's earlier works
- The name Hotaru is written in hiragana (ほたる), which has no special meaning. However, when written in kanji (蛍), it could possibly mean "firefly". Hotaru's surname Hoshikawa means "star" (星) (hoshi) and "river, stream" (川) (kawa)

(Sources: New Game! Manga, New Game! Fandom, Wikipedia)