Maruyama Aya

Maruyama Aya is a first-year student at Yotsuba Women's University, as well as the leader and vocalist of Pastel*Palettes. She also works part-time at the fast-food store with Kanon.

Aya has always admired idols ever since she was young, and the reason she wanted to become an idol was because of the idol group Marmalade's lead, Ayumi. Aya then spent three years being a trainee idol before she was chosen to become the lead singer for Pastel*Palettes.

Appearance
Aya has large pink eyes and shoulder-length, pastel pink hair with wavy ends. Her bangs are straight cut with a small slant to the corner and a split off-center. Her forelocks are thin and curled. Usually, she wears her hair loose, but when performing or training, she ties it up in pigtails.

Her casual attire is flirty and feminine, with soft colors, floral accents, and jewelry. In her initial outfit, Aya wears a short, frilly white dress with a pink floral pattern, and bangle, a pink jeweled necklace, and carries a pink shoulder bag.

During winter, she wears an off-shoulder knitted white sweater, a gray-purple miniskirt, and pink thigh-high boots with fluffy edges. The outfit is completed by a heart necklace. During summer, she wears a white-and-pink striped dress with lace and flowers on the top, and a headband as a decoration.

Personality
On the outside, Aya is very cheerful, high-spirited, and bubbly. She is also very nice and has always been in love with idols. She is unselfish in her pursuits, helping others for the sake of being kind.

On the inside, however, she is a sensitive girl who suffers from a complex stemming from her desire to be noticed. Adding to this, she does not wear her disguise outside because she wants to get noticed and even looks up constantly what people think of her on the internet. She is sentimental and idealistic, and tends to cry a lot. She gets flustered easily, thus her improvisation skills are poor and she tends to mess up during her MC duties. She also has a senpai-kouhai relationship with Kasumi and often frets over it, trying her best to look and act like an "admirable, reliable senpai".

Aya works hard in order to become an idol she can be proud of and is very determined about her goal and passion despite her shortcomings. She is also very knowledgeable about certain things, such as taking the perfect selfie, and is shown to constantly practice this. She also likes coming up with different "idol poses" which she's usually proud of, despite the fact that people tease her for them, or misunderstand them, in Eve's case.

Game Interactions
A list of characters Aya interacts with in the game (during Lives and in the dialogues at the end of every game).

Etymology
Maruyama (丸山): Maru (丸) means "round" and Yama (山) means "mountain".

Aya (彩) means "colorful".

Trivia

 * She has a younger sister whom she gets along with well.
 * She has the same height as Kasumi, Kanon, Tsugumi, and Hina, which means she and Hina are the only band members of Pastel*Palettes to match their height.
 * Her favorite season is spring.
 * She has a personal blog which she updates quite frequently.
 * Aya always carries a selfie stick around.
 * Despite her hardworking nature, Aya is bad at studying and has even admitted that sometimes the Japanese language they study at school sounds like a foreign language to her.
 * Her weakest school subject is maths.
 * Aya is skilled at making guidebooks, and even made a "job manual" for Kanon when she first started at their fast food restaurant part-time job.
 * She dislikes horror.
 * After the event We're All Here! New Year's Party!!, Aya started taking magic trick classes in secret after seeing that everyone enjoyed her and Kasumi's magic show.
 * In collaboration with Girls Band Party!, her 2nd stage outfit was used as the design for  card.
 * In the Zombieland Saga Revenge collaboration, her character design was based on, and her title was "Legendary Fluffy Pink Cutie". Upon completing a limited-time event mission, players could also unlock Sakura's default outfit for Aya.