List of characters

Yukino Miyazawa

Yukino Miyazawa

Yukino Miyazawa (宮沢 雪野 Miyazawa Yukino^?), the female protagonist of the series,15 years old, is a seemingly smart, attractive, athletic and talented person, who appears to be a model student. Both her male and female peers express their admiration for her, often asking her for help and commenting about her model features and characteristics. However, Her "perfect" exterior is merely a façade to hide the fact that everything she does is done solely to receive praise from others, and that she acts slovenly at home. She is a self-professed "queen of vanity", having been that way ever since childhood when her parents would praise her for the slightest actions. Yukino once practiced playing her recorder all night, and ended up almost vomiting blood due to the effort. She is described as the "anti-Girl Next Door" in an article by Newtype USA^[1] because of her perfection and deceitfulness. With so much praise, however, she never realized that she never had any real friends aside from her family, and was considered by her peers as a semi-approachable "guest". All this changes when Yukino meets Soichiro Arima, another model student, who beats her high school entrance exam score, and is even more popular and athletic than Yukino. Yukino is envious of her rival Soichiro, and works hard to top his grades. When Soichiro confesses that he has a crush on her, she rejects him and laughs about it afterwards. But her observant sister Kano points out that Yukino's rivalry with him is born out of admiration. This revelation is useless, however, as Yukino accidentally lets her guard down and Soichiro discovers her real self. After discovering that Soichiro is also maintaining a model-student facade for his own reasons, they become very good friends. Yukino resolves to abandon her fake ways and become true to herself, though she initially has some trouble letting go of her lifelong habit of pretend-perfection. Eventually, she is able to open her true self to others and earns real friends besides Soichiro. She also believes that Reiji Arima is quite handsome, and wishes that Soichiro will become that handsome. She even accepts an expensive gift from her future father in law. She is also depressed when she discovers that Soichiro had been lying to her about his mother and Asaba informs her of that fact. During her senior year in high school, Yukino becomes pregnant. She marries Soichiro after graduation, marrying at a young age as her parents did. Although her apparent goal in high school was to become a politician or a lawyer, it is later revealed that she wanted to be a doctor. She put the dream aside because it was financially out of her family's reach, and because Soichiro and Maho both wanted to be doctors too. She eventually becomes a doctor at a hospital run by the Arima family, specializing in reconstructive surgery. Sixteen years later, she is the mother of three children, a daughter named Sakura and a pair of male fraternal twins named Suoh and Ai.

Soichiro Arima

Soichiro Arima in the anime

Soichiro Arima (有馬 総一郎 Arima Sōichirō^?), the male protagonist of the series, starts out as Yukino's rival at school, and ends up as her boyfriend and eventual husband . A handsome and popular boy, Soichiro excels at kendo and becomes a national champion. He is at first smitten with Yukino, unaware that she secretly hates him and constantly tries to compete with him. After unwittingly discovering that Yukino is not the model student everyone thinks she is, Soichiro blackmails her into doing his school work so that he can spend more time with her. After resolving the issue and becoming each other's first true friend, they eventually fall in love. Yukino learns that Soichiro, like her, is making an effort to "be perfect" for a reason. While Yukino is motivated by praise and vanity, Soichiro is trying to cover his "real" self, a self damaged by childhood traumathat he fears may be destructive. Yukino and Soichiro were able to find emotional sanctuary in each other. While Soichiro comes from a distinguished family of doctors, he was abandoned by his parents, who were the family's disgrace, and raised by his uncle and aunt. Fearing that he may turn "bad" like his parents, he is always trying to hide behind a mask and is constantly fighting his own demons. As with Yukino, he becomes more in touch with his true self as he falls in love with her. However, he is apprehensive of the other feelings what emerge along with his love, such as his increasing jealousy of Yukino's other friendships, her activities and her life without him. When Yukino unknowingly damages Soichiro's bond to her, he finds himself becoming jealous and afraid. So he begins to wear another facade that he hopes will fool her and protect her from his "ugly" self. After a lifetime of striving to be "perfect", Soichiro's dark side begins to manifest itself through vengeful feelings against those that hurt him in his family, and he realizes that he has the ability to be cold and cruel. One aspect is his possessiveness of Yukino, hating for any one but himself to be close with her. Hideaki told Takefumi that the only reason Hideaki was allowed to be friends with Yukino was because Soichiro knew that Hideaki would never fall in love with Yukino and she would never fall in love with him. When the charade reaches such a critical point that it threatens his relationship with Yukino, she steps up to save him by opening him to a true and complete love. After a number of violent outbursts (one of which has him making love to her in the school library rather suddenly, which later has him thinking she wasn't willing, and almost drives him mad) Soichiro finally understands that to love, he must be willing to trust and be trusted, even enduring the suffering that comes out of love. Yukino is able to convince Soichiro that she truly loves him for who he is, and that she is willing to support and suffer for him. From that point on, Soichiro truly and completely opens up to Yukino, his friends, and his beloved adopted parents.

Soichiro's union with Yukino has come full circle, as both are finally free from the oppression of the conflict within themselves. Even though Soichiro cannot forget the past, he no longer allows it to control and hurt himself or anyone else.

After high school, Soichiro marries Yukino and they have three children. Their oldest child is a daughter named Sakura, a beautiful girl who resembles him in looks and talent. Although his original ambition was to follow his family's profession and become a doctor, he follows his childhood dream and becomes a policeman. He eventually becomes a highly decorated police inspector, and is preparing to sit for the exams of a Commissioner's promotion (at the insistence of his superiors) at the age of 30.

Soichiro was also reunited with his father, Reiji Arima, a famous jazz pianist who lives in New York but returned to Japan for a concert. Reiji threatens to harm Yukino, upsetting Soichiro, and he holds a false pistol to his forehead in the center of a park. After spending 10 days together, both father and son grew fond of each other and reestablished their bond. Soichiro spends most of his time assisting his father, and Reiji rewards him by taking him to a nice dinner with Yukino. Unfortunately, he tells Soichiro to go home because he does not feel like a father and would be better off without him. When Soichiro and Yukino are ambushed by Ryoko, wanting to meet with Reiji, he comes to their aid. He leaves for New York once the event is over, but promises to return to Soichiro the following summer. Reconnecting with his father helps Soichiro deal with his problems and heal the wounds of his childhood.

Hideaki Asaba

Hideaki Asaba (浅葉 秀明 Asaba Hideaki^?) is Yukino and Soichiro's lazy and girl-crazy friend, very handsome and popular. Although bright enough to be accepted to the selective Hokuei High School, Hideaki is a terrible student, and spends most of his time surfing or chasing girls. Hideaki and Soichiro are considered the two most handsome boys in school, but while Soichiro is largely indifferent to the attention, Hideaki makes the most of it. During their school's annual culture-fest, Hideaki's class mounts a "Hideaki Asaba Dinner Show" which is a big hit with all the girls, but gives Yukino and Soichiro the creeps. Despite his easygoing nature, Hideaki had a tumultuous homelife before moving into his own apartment. He frquently argued with his father and was shunned by him, due in part that Hideaki's nature was too similar to his abusive grandfather. His father never hesitated to exclude him from family outings, even taking joy in it. Due to this dark past, Hideaki is one of the few people who truly understands Soichiro's dark side. In fact he frequently states that he would love to marry Sochiro, if only Sochiro was a girl. During Yukino and Soichiro's relationship crisis during their senior year, Asaba tells her that only she could reconcile Soichiro's heart. At the end of the series, Hideaki has become a famous painter, specializing in drawing female portraits in which the subject appears five times prettier. Maho realizes that this is because Hideaki truly sees women to be five times prettier than they actually are — which explains why he is so in love with all of them. Despite loving women in general, Hideaki has never settled down or married, waiting for someone. When he learns Yukino is pregnant, he declares the baby will be the girl he has been waiting for. Sixteen years later, Hideaki is the surrogate father of the three Arima children, and the child was indeed a girl, their oldest daughter Sakura. In volume 21, the first chapter is narrated by an unnamed character, who loves him. His father is often sneering at him, and his first kiss is the unnamed character. Hideaki is torn about his father-like relationship to her as well as her young age, however Sakura takes the initiative and confesses her love for him and her intention to be his.

Tsubasa Shibahime

Tsubasa Shibahime (芝姫 つばさ Shibahime Tsubasa^?) is a petite, beautiful girl, who has loved Soichiro since they attended middle school together. Although she studied hard so she could attend Hokuei High School with Soichiro, a bad skateboarding accident prevents her from starting school with everyone else. In the past, Tsubasa tried to confess her love to Soichiro several times, but Soichiro was comically oblivious. So she settled for being treated as Soichiro's younger sister as long as his affections were not occupied by another girl. But upon learning that Soichiro has a girlfriend, she becomes insanely jealous and increasingly resentful of Yukino. After fighting it out with Yukino, they become good friends. Among their group of friends, she is the baby of the group and Yukino cannot resist her cuteness, often wanting to dress her up like a doll. Tsubasa's mother died while she was giving birth to her, so she was raised by her indulgent father, and it was herloneliness that she had in common with Soichiro. In an episode Tsubasa is very possessive of her father and throws a fit when she learns that her father plans to remarry a woman named Izumi, her nurse at the hospital where she was treated for her skateboarding accident. She feels especially abandoned and hurt because she feels that she has just lost Soichiro to Yukino. Tsubasa changes her mind about the marriage after she meets Kazuma, her step brother-to-be, and realizes that Kazuma understands the longing for a family, as he is also the only child of a single parent, and knows the pain of coming home to an empty home every day. Later on in the manga, Kazuma would fall in love with Tsubasa and they end up getting married.

Tsubaki Sakura

Tsubaki Sakura (佐倉 椿 Sakura Tsubaki^?) is one of Yukino's friends. A talented athlete, her tomboyish prankster attitude eventually catches up to her in the person of a person from her past, Tonami Takefumi. Initially, she could not recognise Takefumi, who underwent a complete transformation during the three years he was away. Takefumi uses this as leverage in his quest to get revenge on Tsubaki. As time goes by, Tsubaki's never-say-die attitude and Takefumi's realisation that he is in love with Tsubaki resolves the conflict between them. After graduating from high school, the two leave Japan to travel the world together. Tsubaki studies at an Egyptian university and eventually becomes a professor of archaeology at an American university. She uses her instincts and capabilities to discover many archaeological sites.

Maho Izawa

Maho Izawa (井沢 真秀 Izawa Maho^?) is the star of her middle school, but she falls out of the limelight when she arrives at Hokuei High School because of Yukino. Maho becomes jealous of Yukino, which mirrors Yukino's jealousy of Soichiro. Maho also mentions that she had feelings of love for Yukino when she first saw her. That feeling changed when she found out that Yukino was not as perfect as she made everyone believe. Her jealousy becomes hatred and she turns the entire class against Yukino. However, it eventually fails and the class turns on Maho. Yukino takes the high road and makes the first efforts to make Maho her friend. Maho soon becomes part of Yukino's circle of friends, and although she maintains her aloof attitude, she also eventually learns to cherish the friendships. During her last year as a middle school student, she falls in love with a 28-year-old dentist named Yusuke Takashi, and becomes his girlfriend during high school. She was aware of the "headaches" he had when he rejected her was because Takashi was worrying about Maho and her well-being. She never gave up on him, and when he brought up these "headaches" again, Maho repeated her intended profession—neurosurgery. From that point on, they were together. Takashi is a bit teasing of Maho, but she is aware that the things he does as her boyfriend are to her benefit and of his love. She later marries him, and becomes a doctor at the same hospital as Yukino, as a neurosurgeon.

Aya Sawada

Aya Sawada (沢田 亜弥 Sawada Aya^?) is a published writer at a very young age, Aya is obsessive compulsive when it comes to her writing. She writes a play for the newly formed school drama club, and chases down Maho and Yukino to play lead parts. Although both Maho and Yukino run away at first, Yukino changes her mind after reading the play. Yukino's sister Kano is a big fan of Aya's books. Aya occasionally smokes despite her young age, which Rika and Yukino disapprove of. Later, Aya continues her career as a writer. But like in her younger days, she rushes like mad to meet publishing deadlines due to her forgetfulness. Her capable editor is Kano Miyazawa, Yukino's younger sister.

Rika Sena

Rika Sena (瀬奈 りか Sena Rika^?) is a gifted seamstress and craftswoman. A self-effacing person, Rika considers her life as average, and the least distinguished among her friends, but she is happy to be behind the scenes. She works on costumes for school plays and events. She has been best friends with Aya since childhood, and she and Aya have a strange dynamic where Aya will do something selfish towards Rika, but Rika's sheer goodness will shame Aya ... and the cycle continues. At some point before the cultural festival, Yukino asked Rika if she had a special someone in mind, and Rika responded to with a denial and blush. Yukino eventually realizes that Rika has a crush on Aya's older brother Kyo when she again blushed while talking to him. However, Aya has been aware of her friend's and brother's mutual infatuation for some time, and after the cultural festival was over, she supposedly stayed behind to do some work so that Rika and her brother would have dinner without her. Though Rika sees herself as the most average and unimpressive member of the group, Tsubaki points out that Rika is actually the most popular with the "regular guys," i.e. the kind that would never tell a girl how they feel. The men in the classroom tense up, confirming Tsubaki's theory. As such, the only one who sees Rika as unimpressive is Rika herself. With her sewing skills, Rika eventually becomes the designated seamstress of Tsubasa's father, a famous fashion designer, who she is a big fan of.

Kano Miyazawa

Kano Miyazawa (宮沢 花野 Miyazawa Kano^?) is the youngest of the three Miyazawa daughters, Kano is known for her shōjo manga and novel obsessions. She uses the knowledge from her love stories to help out Yukino when she is in a psychological pinch. Later, she becomes an editor of her favorite author, Aya Sawada, one of Yukino's high school friends.

Tsukino Miyazawa

Tsukino Miyazawa (宮沢 月野 Miyazawa Tsukino^?) is the middle daughter of the Miyazawa family who tends to tease Kano, the youngest daughter. Neither Tsukino nor Kano understands Yukino's quest for perfection. But they love her very much and are constantly begging her to play with them. At the end of the series, Tsukino is shown to have became a talented tennis player. However, she had to retire from professional tennis due to injury, after which she became a reputable coach. She does not have a large role in the story

Hiroyuki and Miyako Miyazawa

Miyazawa Hiroyuki (宮沢 洋之^?) and Miyako Miyazawa (宮沢 都香(みやこ) Miyazawa Miyako^?) are Yukino, Tsukino and Kano's parents. They met as children and married right after high school, a continuous source of consternation for Miyako's father. When Hiroyuki asked to marry Miyako, her father beat him black-and-blue. Hiroyuki still bickers with his father-in-law, grumbling that the old fool could not let go of his daughter. His father-in-law was a policeman, and Hiroyuki encountered him under unfavorable conditions; he was caught while he and his friends were forcibly riding Miyako's new bike. Hiroyuki was an orphan who was raised by his grandfather, and values family very highly, a feeling that Miyako shares with him. Miyako understands his pain as she had lost her mother as a child. He loves his three daughters very much, and is frequently wearing a t-shirt that says "Daughter Love". His daughters, on the other hand, frequently tease him or treat him a little rudely, e.g., "Shut up, Dad!" after which he sulks comically. One of these infamous T-shirts ends up being worn by Soichiro to go back home in, when he is caught in a storm to walk Yukino home. Hiroyuki and Miyako are easygoing parents who believe in allowing their children to make their own decisions about their lives. The two were childhood friends, and eventually fell in love, and their relationship was strengthened when Hiroyuki's grandfather died. In the anime television series, Hiroyuki Miyazawa is voiced by Takeshi Kusao in Japanese and Pete Zarustica in English.

Yusuke Takeshi

Maho's dentist boyfriend. He first meets her when he watches her lecture her friends about shoplifting, and informs her that her leg is bleeding. She then remembers him from when she explored a new street that she had never been on, mistaking him for a doorman. He claims that the vision of a pretty schoolgirl in a uniform holding flowers was an incredible sight. The two quickly become friends, and she brings him treats from her family's sweet shop. When the two are in his apartment, she confesses her feelings of love to him, disturbing him. The rest of the chapter is like a wild goose chase for the two, Maho following him around. He then tells her that she mistook friendship for love, saddening her, and time passes. She meets him again after she enrolls into high school, and he says that his headaches are coming back, and Maho vows to fix them because she wants to be a doctor. Takeshi visits the cultural festival in the manga, causing Maho to shout, knowing that he will mock her. They are also seen shopping together, and Takeshi eventually goes to New York for training. This begins the Reiji arc, because Maho visits him and they attend his concert with Kazuma and Yin and Yang. Kazuma begins to sing, and they go backstage to meet Reiji, and Takeshi exclaims that Reiji resembles somebody that they know. He is not seen again for the remaining story, his cameo in the last volume is simply Maho's profile that reads MAHO TAKESHI, proving that they got married.

Kazuma Ikeda

Kazuma Ikeda (池田 一馬 Ikeda Kazuma^?) is the son of the woman who Tsubasa's father is dating. He's a member, along with the minor characters Martin, Joker, Ushio and Atsuya, of an indie-rock band (called "Yin & Yang") Because of his bleached hair and skull jewelry, he is initially looked upon with suspicion by Tsubasa. Because he wants his mother to be happy and eager to have a little sister, he has no objections to their marriage. However, he makes the mistake of assuming that Tsubasa is an elementary school student due to her short stature, when in fact she is a month older than he is, causing Tsubasa to have a spectacular meltdown. Although their first meeting goes badly, Kazuma runs into Tsubasa a few days later. He saves her from a "dirty old man with money", but when the police arrive, they assume that he is the bad guy due to his appearance, so Tsubasa has to save him. After spending some time together they realize that they are similar in their loneliness, and immediately bond like a real brother and sister. After their parents marry and move in together, Tsubasa and Kazuma become inseparable. Seeing their close bond during their move-in day, Tsubasa's father presciently wonders whether step-siblings can marry. His big-brother-like qualities are what naturally brings him and Arima together as friends, with the latter very much impressed with Kazuma's musical talent. Arima and Kazuma easily relate to each other without any trace of friction, which elicits a bit of jealousy from Hideaki and Takefumi. Kazuma falls in love with Tsubasa but she feels he chose music over her. He leaves home, but writes many love songs about Tsubasa, which become huge hits for his band in their first label album, which they all agree to call 'Tsubasa'. After working through whether he loves Tsubasa as a sister or as a woman, he eventually returns home, and immediately asks Tsubasa to marry him. They marry soon after Tsubasa's high school graduation.

Takefumi Tonami

Takefumi Tonami (十波 健史 Tōnami Takefumi^?) was a fat, sickly, and spoiled child who was constantly picked on in elementary school. He was somewhat protected by the tomboy Tsubaki, who, while protecting him from other bullies, would bully Takefumi herself. When he asked Tsubaki why she paid attention to him, she told him that a teacher had asked her to look after him. After hearing this, Takefumi is humiliated as he had never been in his life; he is humiliated because he had believed that he was somehow special to Tsubaki, but he realized that she did not care about him at all, and was just obeying a teacher's request. He transferred to a school in another city, but returns years later to attend Hokuei High School with the other characters. When he returns to Tokyo, he had lost weight, become healthy, tall, handsome, and completely unrecognizable. He intends to take advantage of the fact that no one recognizes him to get revenge on Tsubaki. Although he butts heads with Yukino at first, she recognizes that his efforts to transform himself are similar to her own obsession with her image, and they share a mutual, albeit begrudging, admiration. He later realizes that his feelings for Tsubaki are actually love, and that the source of his seeming hatred for her was because he felt rejected by her. After he realizes this, he finds out that Tsubaki likes him, too, and they become a couple. However, he is conflicted by the fact that he loves her free nature but it is this that keeps her from being tied down in a relationship. In the end, the two are able to resolve the problem and stay together. Immediately after their high school graduation ceremony, they fly together to Egypt from Narita Airport. Later, he travels around the world with Tsubaki, investigating archaeological remains. Along the way, he learns eight languages. With his linguistic talent, he becomes an expert in deciphering ancient characters.

Reiji Arima

Reiji Arima (有馬 怜司 Arima Reiji^?) is Soichiro Arima's estranged father. Reiji was the illegitimate but favored son of the Arima patriarch, whose mother tried to drown herself and take Reiji with her. Reiji kicked her in the face to save himself, a horrific memory that haunts him for the rest of his life. He was an intelligent but twisted child and teenager, and grew close to Souji over time. His relationship with Soji's wife is cold, calling her drab and old. He also manages to befriend Yukino, who mistakes him for Soichiro. Although a talented musician, he grows to lead a life of a delinquent and is seduced by a beautiful gold-digger named Ryoko, who gets pregnant. Reiji names the baby Sōichirō after his brother Shōji, but has nothing else to do with the child. Years later, Reiji learns Ryoko was abusing his son and had abandoned him. Unable to care for him, Reiji gives the child to Shouji and moves to New York City. There he becomes a famous jazz pianist. He returns to Japan when Soichiro is in high school and "kidnaps" him to force him to spend ten days with him and later helps protect him from Ryoko. He threatens to kill her to keep her from hurting Soichiro again, eventually allowing her to live when Soichiro stops him from shooting.