Tanpopo Yamazaki
Koki Kugyo
Yoju Kugyo
Tsukiko Saionji
Aoi Kyogoku
Arisa Uchimura
Erika Yanahara
Name: Tanpopo Yamazaki
Importance: Being the heroine of the story, Tanpopo's role in Imadoki is quite important. The story revolves around her and is read mostly from her perspective, but not entirely. She starts the planting committee in order to make Koki happy and with her happy spirit and welcoming nature, manages to make friends against the odds. Further into the story however, she falls in love with Koki, but when it is revealed that he has a fiancé, she backs off a bit, later falling into the arms of Koki's older brother, Yoji. In the story, she is the one that helps Koki to realize that always following his family's orders isn't always the best path in life.
Background: When Tanpopo was young, she was with her parents in the car, on a dark narrow road. The only thing she remembers about the accident was that her mother shielded her. Because of the accident, she lost both of her parents and has lived with her grandparents ever since. Her father died on contact of the accident but her mother lived to be able to see Tanpopo one last time in the hospital. Upon the edge of death, she said "You have to live.. smile." Ever since that day, Tanpopo has always hidden her pain beneath her smiling face.
Appearance: She has short, strawberry blond hair and brown eyes. She is a normal height for her age and is almost always wearing a smile on her face.
Personality Tanpopo can easily be seen as the epitome of optimistic. She hardly ever looks at the bad in a situation and is always trying to see the good sides of people. She is always happy and upbeat and becomes ashamed of herself when she is not.
Motives: She moves to Tokyo for high school in order to make new friends. When first taking a look at her new school, she meets Koki and vows to herself that everything will be okay. Her true motive was to make friends, but as time progressed and she succeeded, she also started to yearn for more than friendship from Koki.
Development: When Tanpopo first moves to Tokyo, she is quite naïve in the matters of making friends and love. In Hokkaido, everyone in school was always super close so she'd never had to really make friends before. When she arrives in Tokyo, people look down on her because of status, and throughout the story she learns more about the ugliness of humanity and about how things really are. She also must learn what it is like to truly love. As it is established in the short story 'Forever, okay?' it is quiet apparent that she does not know how to distinguish between 'friendship love' and 'romantic love.' She becomes quite attune to these things throughout the series.
Name: Koki Kugyo
Importance: He is the first person that Tanpopo meets upon moving to Tokyo. Because of this, she labels him as her first friend. He is secretly a lover of plants, and because of this, Tanpopo decides to start a planting club. The whole school looks up to him, simply because of his name. As the lead male role in this manga, Koki
Background: As the younger son of the Kugyo family, Koki did not have to worry so much about obligation and responsibility. This all changed however, when his older brother, Yoji left the family in order to lead a more free life. In doing so, he left Koki with all of his duties and commitments, including taking over the family business and also Yoji's old fiancé, Erika. Because of this tarnished past, Koki houses an extreme dislike for his older counterpart.
Appearance: As the main guy in a shojo manga, Koki is naturally tall and handsome. He has shiny black hair with bangs that fall into his eyes. He has un-normally large hands.
Personality Deep inside, Koki is really a sweet flower loving guy, however his obligations to the Kugyo family were able to tweak his personality profusely. Perhaps the way he began to act near the end of the series was his true personality. He is a gentleman and did not ever want to hurt anyone, namely Erika.
Motives: In the beginning of the manga, Koki's only motives are to be able to represent his family perfectly. He wants to keep the Kugyo name untarnished and respected. When Tanpopo arrives and begins to cause a stir, he speaks to her harshly in order to preserve his image. By the last volumes however, he wants to be able to break free from his family's controlling hand and live his own life. He also wants to be able to return his feelings for Tanpopo genuinely with no strings attached.
Development: Throughout the series, Koki is one of the characters that turns a total 180. As previously mentioned, he is a rather cold person whose only hopes are too live up to his family name. He has no true friends and only uses people in order to get what he wants. One of the things that change most about him is his outlook on what a friend really is. He goes from seeing them as being disposable to seeing them as being irreplaceable. By the last volume, he is able to change completely as a person, become strong enough to deal with his family problems maturely and declare his feelings to the girl he loves.
Name: Yoji Kugyo
Importance: Yoji is the main reason that Koki has as much responsibility put onto him as he does. He also, at one point is able to cheer up Tanpopo. He met Tanpopo in Hokkado, and since their first meeting felt the need to take care of her. When she began to fret over her relationship with Koki as a result of Erika, he took her in and they dated shortly. By dating her and breaking up with her in order to preserve her happiness, Yoji was able to help Tanpopo in her realization of how deep her love Koki was.
Background: He was the first born to the Kugyo family so there forth should have had all of the rights that Koki did. However, he did not because when the Kugyo family began to push power and responsibility onto him, he left home. While away, he worked odd jobs and. He would have done anything save have his family control him.
Appearance: Being related, Yoji looks very similar to Koki. He is tall and handsome. He appears to have dyed his hair a much lighter color than Koki's making them easily distinguishable.
Personality He is an easy going guy whom doesn't care about status or being better than anyone else. He is a nice guys altogether, and cares deeply for the happiness of those whom he loves. Although in love with Tanpopo, he was able to let her declare her love for Koki while keeping his dignity.
Motives: He wanted desperately to be independent and able to live his own life.
Development: he does not change much through the serious, so in some ways he was a somewhat of a static character. Meaning, he was relevant in the plot, but was not overtly involved or affected. He was able to love, but let it walk away, which he might not have been able to do before. He also was able to come to a small understanding with his brother and was able to work out some of his family problems before going back into his life.
Name: Tsukiko Saionji
Importance: She is the first person at Meio, besides Koki to show Tanpopo a chance at a friendship. Tsuki's ploy however, was simply to make it easier to become closer to Koki. She hnug around with Tanpopo and sabotaged her plans, though in secret. She tended to dislike Tanpopo because of her social ineptitude and her growing closeness to Koki. As time progresses though, she begian to learn what true friendship was, and was able to remind Tanpopo of it when she truly needed it.
Background: She comes from a higher end family, the Saionji's. Alike to Koki's family, hers was well respected and well known. Because of life in the upper class, her ideals were tweaked and like many other women from her family she was labeled as a 'shrew': One whom marries simply for money.
Appearance: Tsukiko wears half moon glasses, rather uncommonly for a manga/anime characters. She has brown eyes and long, wavy black hair that she often styles in cute ways.
Personality She is quite an ambitious person and will do nearly anything to get what she wants. She is intelligent and in turn, quite a schemer. She is also quite a good actress, considering she was able to falsely befriend Tanpopo for such a long amount of time.
Motives: As part of upper class society, Tsukiko's only motives were to marry into a more wealthy and illustrious family than her own, namely the Kugyos. She did not wish to marry for love, but for assets and power.
Development: Tsukiko at first, is the type of person who will cheat and cause destruction in order to get what she wants. She purposefully squashed the flowers that Tanpopo planted and such. When her plan to get closer to Koki was seemingly failing, she let her true colors show through. As the story progressed, she found herself spending more time with Tanpopo and the planting club, along the lines of something close to a friendship. Tanpopo taught her what friends were about and how hard much more enjoyable life was with them. Tsukiko in turn, is able to help Tanpopo make the right decision in her own time of need.
Name: Aoi Kyogoku
Importance: He is a lot of the comedic relief found in Imadoki. He is a computer hacker extraordinaire and uses his skills for wrong. He is one of the series most 'unbalanced' characters and is prone to random outbursts and has on occasion brought fake guns to school and has been involved in a 'knife fight' in which blood was shed. By using his computer hacking skills, he managed to get Tanpopo and Koki stuck together in an elevator. This event may have been a part of what caused Tanpopo to become aware of her increasing feelings for Koki.
Background: Since he attends Meio, he belongs to a well respected family. His mother was the architect that designed the Meio campus and because of this, he was sent there for his education. In reality, he doesn't want to attend the judgmental school and wreaks havoc in order to 'make things interesting.'
Appearance: he is tall, as all guys in manga are and spikes his blond hair so that it stands up a few inches from his head. It is unusual to see him without his laptop and earphones.
Personality He dislikes the snobby rich types. He doesn't care what people think of him and he isn't afraid to bend the rules in order to make like more interesting. He is extremely spastic and can be extremely contradictory to the point of ridicule. Because of his paroxysmal personality, he was given the nickname 'flippy.'
Motives: He wants to keep life fun and doesn't want the world to be taken over by conceited rich people.
Development: Similarly to the other characters of the series, Aoi is given the chance to learn first hand what true friendship is about. Before, he was quite anti-social and would often sit silent, listening to his music and typing away swiftly on his laptop. Alike to the other characters, he never had real friends and by the end of the series, he knows the price of friendship but also the rewards.
Name: Arisa Uchimura
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Name: Erika Yanahara
Importance: Being Koki's fiancé, she is quite obviously a large obstacle that stands in the way of Tanpopo and Koki's true feelings. She uses the notion of suicide in order to keep Koki at her side. Although she acts sweet, she is always plotting.
Background: Because of an agreement made by her parents and the Kugyo's she was promised that she would marry the scion of the Kugyo house. When the decision was first made, she the arrangement worked out so that she would marry Yoji. However, when he left the Kugyo house, he left her a note telling her he refused to marry her. She became distraught, and suicidal until the only remaining possibility was to pose her to marry Koki, whom had also been given all fo Yoji's old responsibilities. She had grown up on the notion that she would marry into the Kugyo family.
Appearance: She is quite pretty, with brown eyes, glossy shoulder length hair and a pretty smile. Her confidence, also adds to her outer beauty.
Personality She is the pampered daughter of an wealthy upper-class family. In terms of want, she had always been satisfied. Because of this, she fights back hard when it ever seems that she won't get what she wants. She is a passive aggressive person, one whom does not resort to yelling to face up. She would rather play those snide 'mind games' that many girls often elect instead of outright confrontation.
Motives: She wants to be able to live an easy life of luxury by marrying into the Kugyo family.
Development: Erika is one that we don't get to see the character development in as distinctly as other characters. Throughout her presence in the manga, she always seemed like the type of person who was well aware of her influence on her peers and was able to use that for her advantage. She hides behind her family name and believes that by birthright, she has been granted an easy life. She finds herself mistaken though, when one after another, two young men refuse to marry her. It is not appropriately shown, but it is implied that after the events of the manga, she started to take control of her life and even went as far as to go to school in England.
