Tom (called "Jasper" in his debut appearance) is a blue and white domestic shorthair cat. He is the main protagonist and also the main antagonist of the story, who usually lives a pampered life, although they usually live in several lifestyles, while Jerry is a small brown house mouse who always lives in close proximity to him and is the deuteragonist of the story. "Tom" is a generic name for a male cat (The
Warner Bros. cartoon character Sylvester was originally named Thomas). Tom was originally in the very first short,
Puss Gets the Boot, and Jerry was seen in the short also, although it was not billed as a Tom and Jerry cartoon. Jerry possesses surprising strength for his size, lifting items such as anvils with relative ease and withstanding considerable impacts with them. Despite the typical cat-eats-mouse scenario, it is surprisingly quite rare for Tom to actually try and consume Jerry. Despite being very energetic and determined, Tom is no match for Jerry's brains and wits. By the final "fade-out" of each cartoon, Jerry usually emerges triumphant, while Tom is shown as the loser. However, other results may be reached; on rare occasions, Tom triumphs, usually when Jerry becomes the aggressor or when he crosses some sort of line (the best example of which occurs in The Million Dollar Cat where, after finding out that Tom's newly acquired wealth will be taken away if he harms any animal, including a mouse, he torments Tom until Tom finally loses his temper and attacks him). Sometimes, usually ironically, they both lose, usually when Jerry's last trap potentially backfires on him after it affects Tom (An example is in Chuck Jones' Filet Meow short where Jerry orders a shark to scare Tom away from eating a goldfish. Afterwards, the shark scares Jerry away as well) or when Jerry overlooks something at the end of the course. Sometimes, they both end up being friends (only for something to happen so that Tom will chase Jerry again). Both characters display sadistic tendencies, in that they are equally likely to take pleasure in tormenting each other. However, depending on the cartoon, whenever one character appears to be in mortal danger (in a dangerous situation or by a third party), the other will develop a conscience and save him. Sometimes, they bond over a mutual sentiment towards an unpleasant experience and their attacking each other is more play than serious attacks. Multiple shorts show the two getting along with minimal difficulty, and they are more than capable of working together when the situation calls for it, usually against a third party who manages to torture and humiliate them both.
Tom changes his love interest many times. The first love interest is Toots who appears in
Puss n' Toots, and calls him "Tommy" in
The Mouse Comes to Dinner. He is also interested in a cat called Toots in
The Zoot Cat although she has a different appearance to the original Toots. The most frequent love interest of Tom's is Toodles Galore, who never has any dialogue in
Tom and Jerry cartoons.
Despite five shorts ending with a depiction of Tom's apparent death, his demise is never permanent; he even reads about his own death in a flashback in Jerry's Diary. He appears to die in explosions in Mouse Trouble (after which he is seen in heaven) and in Yankee Doodle Mouse, while in The Two Mouseketeers he is guillotined offscreen.
Despite five shorts ending with a depiction of Tom's apparent death, his demise is never permanent; he even reads about his own death in a flashback in Jerry's Diary. He appears to die in explosions in Mouse Trouble (after which he is seen in heaven) and in Yankee Doodle Mouse, while in The Two Mouseketeers he is guillotined offscree
Although many supporting and minor characters speak, Tom and Jerry rarely do so themselves. Tom, most famously, sings while wooing female cats; for example, Tom sings Louis Jordan's "Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby" in the 1946 short
Solid Serenade. In a couple of shorts, Tom, when romancing a female cat, woos her in a French-accented voice similar to that of screen actor Charles Boye. At the end of The Million Dollar Cat after beginning to antagonize Jerry he says "Gee I'm throwin away a million dollars... BUT I'M HAPPY‼", he was also seen speaking to a female cat, when he sits on a stove he asks "gee, what's cookin?" where the female replies "your butt." he then replies "Oh, that's silly" then realizes it himself and screams. Co-director William Hanna provided most of the squeaks, gasps, and other vocal effects for the pair, including the most famous sound effects from the series, Tom's leather-lunged scream (created by recording Hanna's scream and eliminating the beginning and ending of the recording, leaving only the strongest part of the scream on the soundtrack) and Jerry's nervous gulp. The only other reasonably common vocalization is made by Tom when some external reference claims a certain scenario or eventuality to be impossible, which inevitably, ironically happens to thwart Tom's plans - at which point, a bedraggled and battered Tom appears and says in a haunting, echoing voice "Don't you believe it!", a reference to some famous World War II propaganda shorts of the 1940s. In the 1946 short
Trap Happy, Tom hires a mouse exterminator who, after several failed attempts to dispatch Jerry, changes profession to
Cat exterminator by crossing out the "Mouse" on his title and writing "Cat", resulting in Tom spelling out the word out loud before reluctantly pointing at himself. One short, 1956's
Blue Cat Blues, is narrated by Jerry in voiceover (voiced by Paul Frees) as they try to win back. Both Tom and Jerry speak more than once in the 1943 short
The Lonesome Mouse.
Tom and Jerry: The Movie is the first (and so far only) installment of the series where the famous cat-and-mouse duo regularly speak.
As a young adult, Goku meets his older brother Raditz, who tells him that they come from a race of extraterrestrials called Saiyans. The Saiyans had sent Goku to Earth as an infant to conquer the planet for them, but he suffered a severe head injury soon after his arrival and lost all memory of his mission. Goku refuses to help Raditz continue the mission, after which he begins to encounter other enemies from space, most notably the Saiyan prince Vegeta, who becomes his rival and, eventually, his ally as well. He later encounters Frieza, the galactic tyrant responsible for the destruction of the Saiyan race, whose actions cause Goku to transform into a legendary Super Saiyan. After an epic battle on the planet Namek, Goku defeats Frieza, avenging the lives of billions across the universe.
Jimmy Kudo, a 17-year-old high school prodigy and detective who frequently worked with the police, was attacked by two members of a mysterious crime syndicate while investigating a case regarding blackmail. He was then forced to take a newly developed experimental poison that was supposed to kill him, but due to a rare side-effect unknown to the two men, the drug transformed his body back into that of his seven-year-old self instead, after they left him for dead. In order to hide his identity and investigate the whereabouts of the syndicate, which he later finds out is called the Black Organization , he adopts the pseudonym Conan Edogawa . To search for leads to the syndicate, he manages to move in with his childhood friend Rachel Moore, whose father, RichardMoore,works as a private investigator. He also enrolls at Teitan elementary school and forms the Junior Detective League with three other children in his class; Amy Yoshida , Mitch Tsuburaya , and George Kojima . Even as Conan, Jimmy continues solving criminal cases, usually posing as Richard Moore with the help of special gadgets, invented by his neighboor and friend, Dr. Agasa. Richard Moore, a rather ineptdetective, isbewildered at the sudden rise in his case-solving abilities, but does not question this as he is more than glad about his subsequent rise in fame.
Later in the series, another main character, Anita Hailey , appears. A former member of the Black Organization, codenamed "Sherry", she is actually Shiho Miyano, a gifted chemist who developed the poison APTX 4869 which turned Jimmy back into a child. After her sister was brutally murdered by members of the Black Organization, she tried to get out and was held captive. She then attempted to commit suicide by taking a dose of APTX 4869, but instead was transformed into a child as well, and managed to escape from them.She then enrolled in Conan's school under the pseudonym Anita Hailey. She knows Conan's true identity and helps him in his quest to bring down the Black Organization.
