Tsubaki Iwanome

Tsubaki Iwanome (岩野目 ツバキ Iwanome Tsubaki) is the manager of Materials Compiling Group No.3 and currently in charge of the Phantom Solitaire investigation's jurisdictional side.

Appearance
Iwanome has medium-length blond hair—dyed as such from the original black—and multiple facial piercings: at least one standard piercing in each earlobe; at least one helix piercing in his left ear; at least two conch piercings through his right ear; and one stud piercing above and one below his right eyebrow. He is seen using glasses at home but otherwise either goes without them or wears contact lenses when out and about town.

For work, Iwanome typically wears colorful clothes rather than the standard suit-and-tie; these include a bright blue shirt with red trousers and sometimes camouflage trousers, leading some to say he looks more like a host than he does a police officer. However, just as he once wore the standard suit-and-tie attire, he dons a business suit once more when he is asked to take a leadership role in the reorganized special Phantom Solitaire investigation.

Personality
Iwanome often acts as flamboyantly as his clothes look: loud, attention-grabbing, and full of vim and vigor. Where Arase acts the aloof, intimidating-on-demand 'bad cop,' Iwanome contrasts himself as affable, gregarious, and 'non-threatening' by comparison; when gathering information at Youtoukorou bar, he occasionally further acts as a playful drunk who laughs loudly, complains loudly, and is loudly intoxicated even when surreptitiously sober.

This affable congeniality and energy is felt more naturally in the Comps-3 workplace, where Iwanome is liable to greet colleagues with a smile and conduct meetings with confident poise. To more charitable police outsiders, Iwanome is eccentric but spirited; to many hostile members of the Tokyo Metropolitan police force, Iwanome at worst is a cocky upstart failure; to a barfly at Youtoukorou, Iwanome might be a rowdy, devil-may-care extrovert.

To the members of Comps-3, Iwanome is a capable, hardworking leader yet to be corrupted like so many others in the police force have been. His flashy clothes, jaunty cheer, and breeziness mask competency, ambition, and dedicated diligence to the job, and all of the above mask Iwanome's intense, impassioned drive to carry out Hosorogi's will in Hosorogi's stead.

For the sake of his and Hosorogi's goals, Iwanome must navigate and work within the same corrupt police system that rejected Hosorogi in the first place; his claim that meshing his gears with others is "what [he does] best" is therefore, in practice, more than mere congeniality. He responds to Takanosu's leadership appointment by readily donning a business suit and conforming as much as is necessary even when other 'gears' oppose him, though he does cast what aspersions he can 'get away' with. His behavior as a 'congenial drunk' can also be re-examined in this light; he easily matches the moods of others and skillfully fits in despite his flamboyant appearance making him stand out.

Iwanome's success at meshing with others and as a leader, however, require Iwanome to be even-tempered. He cannot carry out Hosorogi's will if he loses his composure at others' hostile provocation, nor can he lead an investigative team if he easily 'loses his head.' For the most part he does succeed at keeping himself, his strong emotions and frustrations linked to Hosorogi's death & the symbol, and his personal feelings regarding police corruption in check even around his Comps-3 comrades. When a hostile non-Comps-3 member of the Solitaire investigation team slams him against a wall, he endures the vitriol; when Takanosu provokes him, his barbed response is carefully barbed. His surging to his feet and seizing the Corpse God's lapel during the fortunetelling session is thus shocking even to Arase—who is aware of this side of him—and hints at uglier emotions within.

Chronology
To be added.

Etymology

 * The name Tsubaki is written in katakana (ツバキ), which has no special meaning. However, when written in kanji (椿), it could possibly mean "camellia flower".
 * Tsubaki's surname Iwanome means "rock" (岩) (iwa), "field, wilderness" (野) (no) and "eye, ogle" (目) (me).

Trivia

 * Iwanome has been subject to many arranged marriage proposals, much to his apparent chagrin.
 * Marlboro is Iwanome's favorite cigarette brand.
 * Iwanome is responsible for many if not all of Shinjuku's troublemaker's monikers, something over which he becomes self-conscious and defensive when the monikers are deemed 'weird'. He reacts with similar discomfiture when Arase later parrots a phrase Iwanome coined, though the reason for his discomfiture may not be the same.