Akari Kaga (加賀 月, Kaga Akari) is one of the trio of childhood friends, along with Haruto Kirishima and Takashi Yura in A Town Where You Live.
Appearance[]
Because Akari is of Russian-Japanese descent, she has uncharacteristic blue eyes and short, messy blonde hair, held above her forehead with a hairpin. Her breast size is often envied and joked about by friends throughout the manga. After two years her breasts had doubled in size.
Personality[]
Before coming to Hiroshima, Akari was a short-tempered tomboy, but secretly desired to make friends in the country. She now has a cheerful, outgoing personality, but according to Haruto Kirishima, she often hides her feelings from others. Although her sunny disposition causes her to constantly joke around and tease her friends, she is fiercely loyal to her companions. She is also rather messy and disorganized, complimenting her carefree nature.
Her relationship with her two best friends defines a great part of her personality. Because she is always with Haruto and Takashi Yura, she can usually tell what they are thinking or if they are lying in her presence. She is even comfortable enough to change clothes in their presence (although Takashi's perverted nature often causes her to lash out).
Summary[]
Akari came to Hiroshima eight years before the beginning of the manga where she constantly defeated Haruto Kirishima and Takashi Yura when they challenged her in various events such as sprinting and sumo wrestling, but showed her softer side when they came to rescue her from bullies. Since then, she has been Haruto's and Takashi's closest friend since childhood.
She and Nanami Kanzaki quickly befriend Yuzuki Eba upon her introduction to the school, and is part of the tennis club along with her. She has a crush on Nanami's older brother Narumi Kanzaki, and is caught daydreaming about him and staring at him during his baseball practice. She convinces Yuzuki and Haruto to go on a double-date camping trip with him, but becomes upset when she later discovers that Narumi likes Yuzuki. However, she recovers quickly, and is soon good-naturedly teasing her friends about their own relationship problems.
She accompanies Haruto and Takashi on their trips to the summer festival and to the train station to send Yuzuki back to Tokyo. After her departure, the trio finds work at a restaurant (Haruto as a sous chef, Akari and Takashi as waiters) to raise some money before the school trip to Tokyo. On the trip, she and Takashi help to cover up for Haruto as he searches for Yuzuki in the city.
Akari becomes extremely upset when Haruto decides to go to Tokyo to find Yuzuki, and gets into a fierce argument with him about his relentless but futile pursuit of his former girlfriend. She remains angry at him until he and Takashi come to her house to sleep over, talk about the past and share memories before he moves to Tokyo. On the veranda of her house, she and Haruto spend some time alone before she gets up and kisses him farewell on the lips, implying for the first time that she may have romantic feelings for him.
Upon Haruto's return visit to Hiroshima with Kiyomi Asakura and Asuka Mishima, she is the first to greet Haruto and his new friends. She very quickly becomes close with Kiyomi, but Asuka becomes envious of her because of her close relationship with Haruto and her breast size. Due to their friendship, she and Takashi sense that Haruto is going out with Asuka.
Akari goes to Seijo University with Haruto, Asuka, Nanami, Takashi and Kiyomi. When Nanami sees Haruto walk out of a love hotel with Shiori Amaya , she contacts Akari and Kiyomi to confront him about it. When he refuses to reveal details about what he did, Akari later confronts him alone in a cafe about his insensitivity to his girlfriend.
She invites Kiyomi back to Hiroshima on their winter visit, but spends much of the trip home caring for a carsick Takashi. When things get complicated in the Haruto/Asuka/Yuzuki love triangle at the Kirishima household, she lets Asuka sleep over at her place before returning. She and the rest of the gang refuse to support Haruto's decision to reject Asuka and accept Yuzuki as his girlfriend, going so far as to declare that they are no longer friends. Much later, she runs into Haruto and invites him to her (extremely messy) apartment; later, the trio once again shares memories and stories. She and Takami later meet Yuzuki when she enters Haruto's apartment and state that they have forgiven her for taking Hauto away from Asuka, and are comfortable with her when she comes back to visit Hiroshima while they are home.
Akari returns to Hiroshima alone when she hears of her father's collapse at work. Haruto follows her home soon after to attend a relative's marriage, and they converse on the front porch of her house again. She reveals to him that she intends to drop out of school in Tokyo and find work, before she French kisses Haruto as a promise to marry him if he gets dumped by Yuzuki in the future. She bids farewell to her friends in Tokyo (leaving Kiyomi in tears) and heads back to Hiroshima, leaving everybody at the station wondering about their own futures.
Soon, it is revealed that she is marrying Narumi (which would make her Akari Kanzaki), although she still has affections for Haruto.
Etymology[]
- The name Akari means "moon" (月).
- Akari's surname Kaga means "add, increase" (加) (ka) and "congratulations, joy" (賀) (ga).
- Her married name Kanzaki means "god" (神) (kan) and "blossom" (咲) (saki/zaki).