List of Kare Kano characters

This is a list of the main characters from the manga series "Kare Kano" and its anime adaptation.

Miyazawa family

Yukino Miyazawa

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.

Kano gets her own episode in the anime the second-to-last episode, number 25. Kano believes she is being stalked, and discovers it's a girl in her grade called Megumi. Megumi asks Kano to meet her outside after school later on in the episode, and Kano freaks out, asking her sister Tsukino for help, but Tsukino tells her to deal with her own problems. Kano goes to meet Megumi, and they simultaneously ask if they like each other, both girls thought the other was following them. It ends in a lot of laughter and a good friendship.

Hiroyuki and Miyako Miyazawa

(Hiroyuki),

A petite, beautiful girl who loved Soichiro since they attended middle school together. (She inherited her light hair, jade eyes, and cute looks from her father.) 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 he did not have his affections occupied by another girlfriend. 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 her loneliness 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, 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.

Tsubasa is a sucker for Totoro in the anime. She loves giant cats in the manga.

Tsubasa can be violent and scratch people when they try to embrace her, especially during her bad moods. However, she has never scratched Rika.

The "hime" part of the family name means "princess". Although she appears to be overly pampered and seemingly talentless, she is actually a very good homemaker and does a good job taking care of her father. In the manga, she later marries Kazuma and becomes a homemaker. She also models for the album covers of Kazuma's band, Yin & Yang.

Tsubaki Sakura

Sweet and gentle 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 was 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.

During Rika's own special chapter, there are a few things revealed about her. Her family is much like Yukino's, as Rika has a kid brother and sister. They love their older sister very much, but in an attempt to repay her for always cooking for them, they accidentally spill the cake batter over Rika. Of course, both Yukino and Rika adore their cute little siblings. Also, she is very observant as a friend, noting that until Miyazawa came into Arima's life, he always seemed a little sad. Interestly, she is the only person that Tsubasa has never scratched during her moody times. Kyo, who is also infatuated with Rika, has been watching over Aya and Rika since they were very young. Although Rika is law-abiding, indecisive and seemingly boring, she was very confrontational when she found out Kyo was getting picked on. As a kindergartener, she wielded a bat to save Kyo from the high school bully. Aya realized after that incident, that Rika was in fact much scarier than herself, as she even had blood splashed on her face. However, both Kyo and Rika are very shy, and it is difficult for the two to outright articulate their feelings. By the end of the chapter, Rika and Kyo are shown holding hands bashfully.

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.

Also, interestingly enough, Rika is the only character who's hairstyle differs greatly between the manga and the anime versions. In the anime, she always has the double ponytail while in the manga she predominantly has straight hair, especially later in the manga (though she did have the double ponytail in the manga, it wasn't as prominent as it was in the anime).

Maho Izawa

As a fat, sickly, and spoiled child, Takefumi 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. (After learning of Takefumi's revenge plans, Yukino exclaims, "Edmond Dantès!")

When it comes to Soichiro, Takefumi, like Hideaki, is smitten with him. While in elementary school, like Tsubaki, Soichiro was someone who constantly defended Takefumi. (However, unlike Tsubaki, Soichiro does not bully him in return.) Because of this, Takefumi respected and admired Soichiro. His image makeover was partly because of his goal to be like Soichiro; he also initially disliked Yukino because he felt she was not good enough for Soichiro. In the manga, whenever Soichiro seemed to need help, Takefumi and Hideaki were always the first to volunteer.

Initially, he plans revenge against Tsubaki, but he later realizes that his feelings for her are of love, and that the source of his 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.

Kawashima Sensei

The strict but just Yearmaster for Soichiro's and Yukino's class. Kawashima sensei does not need to worry about Yukino and Soichiro, the two top students of the class. (Hideaki, however, is another matter altogether.) The only time Soichiro and Yukino got into trouble with him was when they started dating, causing their grades to slip. After unsuccessfully trying to dissuade the two from dating on the grounds that their school work is affected, Kawashima calls in their parents. But after seeing that the parents of both teens are supportive of the relationship, and consider their happiness as a blessing, Kawashima lets the matter rest, as it was a pleasant rarity to have students with true backbones.

He looks after the students' educational future but is also attentive towards their well-being while at school, as was evident when he offered his support to Yukino while her whole class shunned her. However, along with his admiration and respect for students who could truly think on their own, he is also a bit wistful when his offer for help is declined.

Kawashima was also the teacher Yukino sought out when the group needed a teacher-in-charge for their play during the school cultural festival. (Yukino reasoned that with the Yearmaster as their teacher-in charge, things would proceed more smoothly.) In fact, throughout their high school career, Kawashima has seemed to take a liking, even a bias, towards the two honor students. When Arima punched a guy who shoved and called Yukino ugly, Kawashima quickly changed face and talked to Arima afterwards, where otherwise he would've quickly scolded any other student. Overall, he is an understanding, respectable teacher who is willing to help out the deserving. Comically, in the manga, when Yukino and Soichiro tell him that neither one of them will be going to University because she is pregnant and he wants to become a policeman, he faints in quite a funny manner, since they are the best students of the best high school in all the country. This, apart from a comic relief, might also serve to show that not only is he important to Soichiro and Yukino (as he is the first person they announce it to), but that he cares intrinsically about his students' future.

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