Characters / ReLIFE

Characters appearing in ReLIFE. Under construction.

Arata Kaizaki

Voiced by: Kensho Ono (Japanese), Micah Solusod (English)

At 27 years old, Kaizaki is working part-time at a convenience store while looking for steady work. He maintains the appearance to friends that he still holds a regular, salaried position at a company, unwilling to admit the truth. Cut off by his parents, Kaizaki embraces the opportunity to join the ReLIFE program, hoping to be hooked up with a job when it's over. Though he is comparatively Book Dumb, he's quick to approach his high-school peers with words of wisdom and guidance, acting like a surrogate parent. Though he jokes about being able to hook up with "legal high-school girls", Kaizaki is very considerate of others, sometimes at the cost of his own happiness.

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• Affectionate Gesture to the Head: Usually does this to comfort somebody in pain. It's a bit of a plot point when he stops doing it regularly to Hishiro, as it's a sign that he no longer sees her as a child but as a romantic interest.
• Bad Liar: He's not the best at hiding at the fact that he's secretly an adult and arguably gets away with it only because normal people would never think that an adult would be posing as a teenager. This allows Hishiro, who does know about ReLIFE, to figure him out pretty easily.
• Blithe Spirit: Kaizaki is emotionally in-tune with people, recognizing other people's problems and worries. His advice often propels them to resolve their issues.
• Book Dumb: If there is a test, chances are Kaizaki fails it at least once. Though subverted in that he’s not actually dumb, but he’s long forgotten the things he’s learned back in high school.
• Butt-Monkey: Often gets called an idiot by Hishiro, has zero flexibility, often gets terrible grades, gets mocked for those grades, and the list goes on and on.
• The Casanova: Subverted. Ohga thinks Kaizaki's incredibly experienced with women, due to how comfortable he is over interacting with them, but it has nothing to do with being a womanizer and more to do with Kaizaki being a decade older than the girls he's talking to. Unfortunately for Kaizaki, this leaves him to frantically dispel this image whenever Ohga brings it up.
• Character Tics: Kaizaki tends to fidget with or scratch his neck when he's uneasy.
• Chivalrous Pervert: Downplayed. While appreciative of being able to legally hang around high school girls now, he's unnerved and a complete gentleman any time one actually tries to come onto him.
• The Confidant: Kariu ends up venting her insecurities to Kaizaki in the first arc, although he spills some of them to Hishiro later. Kariu chides him for this... before thanking him, since it allowed her and Hishiro to become friends.
• Dark and Troubled Past: His senior at his first job was bullied heavily due to the competitive nature of their company. He tried to stand up for her, but it ended up making the bullying worse to the point that she committed suicide. In his rage he quit the company and has been jobless ever since.
• Death Glare: Kaizaki gives a magnificent one to a couple of jerks who is harassing Hishiro during the festival in Chapter 147.
• Feeling Their Age: While Kaizaki's not that old at 27-28, he's still past his fresh youth and tends to suffer over high school athletics on account of not being as flexible anymore, e.g. being surprised to find that he actually needs to stretch before sports, which he ignored as a teenager.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: Between the truth of who he is (an adult NEET deceiving everyone) and his Dark and Troubled Past, he struggles to realize how much value he's brought to everyone's lives and often believes that it wouldn't matter if he wasn't around.
• In-Series Nickname: Hishiro has trouble with names initially, so Kaizaki is the "Cigarette Guy" for a while, after he brought cigarettes to his first day of class. The nicknames get less flattering from there.
• Insistent Terminology: A Running Gag is Yoake calling him a NEET, before Kaizaki tells him that excuse you, he wasn't one! He had a part-time job and was job-hunting!
• It's All My Fault: Blames himself for what happened to his senior at his first job.
• Karmic Jackpot: The Time Skip epilogue, set several years after the ending to the series shows that Ohga would go on to work for ReLIFE, being inspired to after Arata was able to successfully rehabilitate his older brother. Ohga ends up re-befriending Arata and invites him to his wedding with Kairu. It's also implied that Ohga, and by extension the others, will be regaining their old memories of Arata and Chizuru thanks to reconnecting with them in the present.
• Living Emotional Crutch: He ultimately ends up being one to Yoake.
• Love Confession: Kaizaki finally confesses to Hishiro in 197.
• Love Epiphany: Kaizaki's advice helps Ohga realize his feelings for Rena Kariu, and that very same advice helps Kaizaki realize his own feelings towards Hishiro
• Magnetic Hero: In contrast to Kaizaki being Book Dumb, he's actually quite the people person and finds it relatively easily to fit in with his classmates despite the age gap.
• My Greatest Failure: He's plagued by guilt over what happened at his job, and it's left him hesitant to interfere too much in others' lives lest history repeat itself.
• Nice Guy: His biggest strength. Despite being a down on his luck NEET, he's a fundamentally decent and compassionate person who offers excellent advice to those in need.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: When he stood up for his senior at work, it only made the bullying towards her worse, and he's haunted by the idea that it may have directly contributed to her eventual suicide.
• Official Couple: With Chizuru.
• Older and Wiser: It may not seem like it, but his decade of experience above his peers allows him to give great advice when they're down.
• Oblivious to Love: Kaizaki is aware of everybody else being in love with each other except for when it comes to someone being in love with him. It helps that he's too considerate to want to fall in love with someone only to be erased from their memory at the end of the experiment. A dose of denial makes it easier that way.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The loud, sociable Red Oni to Hishiro's stoic, nigh robotic Blue Oni.
• Shipper on Deck: For Ohga and Kariu, for Yoake and Onoya.
• The Social Expert: It's noted many times that, in contrast to the academically gifted but socially clueless Hishiro, Kaizaki's people skills are excellent and he's a natural leader when he tries. It's the main reason Hishiro isn't completely convinced he's with the ReLIFE experiment, as she can't see why he'd need it.
• Supporting Protagonist: For much of the first half of the series, Kaizaki spends more time being supportive of his classmates rather than actually being the main focus. In fact, it takes a good 80+ chapters for his backstory to get fully elaborated on.
• Team Dad: Kaizaki, being Older and Wiser than the others despite looking their same age, tends to act like a dad to the rest of the students.
• Tears of Joy: Chapter 145, from Kaizaki after Kariu reminds him of all the good he's done for the people in the school, to serve as living proof he made a difference.
• Trauma Button: Due to his old senior's suicide, Kaizaki reacts negatively to anyone reaching for his neck, even if done innocently.

Chizuru Hishiro

Voiced by: Ai Kayano (Japanese), Jeannie Tirado (English)

A third-year student at Aoba Academy, Chizuru Hishiro is the epitome of a socially isolated Book Worm. She gets top marks in her studies, but is blunt to the point of bludgeoning situations that require tact and a soft touch, and so disinterested in people that she can't remember their names. When she resolves to learn how to better interact with people, Kaizaki is one of the first to reach out to her. For all her directness, Hishiro is earnest, and unwaveringly loyal, and the last thing she wants is to upset people or push them away. Her curiosity is insatiable, especially when she begins to develop strong feelings for someone—feelings she isn't equipped to understand.

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• The Ace: Top of her class, much to Kariu's consternation. Only uneasiness about her feelings after the fireworks festival can shake her.
• Affectionate Gesture to the Head: Hishiro does this to Ohga in Chapter 170.
• Affectionate Nickname: Hishiron, from Tamarai. Hishiro loves it.
• Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: The only main female character with black hair, and the most stoic among them. Especially as an adult, where she has the "elegant beauty"-esque look to go with it.
• Book Smart: She's at the top of the grade in an academically focused school, which is no small feat.
• Brutal Honesty: Hishiro has a very poor filter for what she says.
• Cannot Keep a Secret: Hishiro tends to accidentally mention things she shouldn't and is terrible at backpedaling. Though there is one secret she's very good at keeping, and it's that she's an adult woman doing the ReLIFE experiment.
• Class Representative: The female rep of the class.
• Eating Lunch Alone: It's a point of concern for Kaizaki at first. She actually enjoys it, though—but when Kariu reminds her that she's trying to become more social, she gladly accepts Kariu and Tamarai joining her.
• Emotionless Girl: She can come off as this, between her robotic-like approach to life and muted expressions.
• Endearingly Dorky: In spades. Hishiro's social cluelessness has her resort to search engines to find out what to do with people, and her efforts usually come off as unusual but adorably earnest, including to Kaizaki in-universe. Folding a 1000 yen bill to make a portrait is just one of these weird and endearing things.
• First-Name Basis: She has no awkwardness over shifting to people's first names, and calls Yoake and Ohga by such. It leads to some dismay on Kaizaki's part when he realizes that he's the only guy she calls by his last name, simply because he never found the opportunity to tell her to call him Arata. In Yoake's case, it's Foreshadowing for who she really is—after all, he also told Kaizaki at the beginning of his experiment to call him Ryo if he so wished.
• Friendless Background: Hishiro moved around a lot as a child and never made a lot of friends. Later on, that would affect her ability to work with people in her job, resulting in her firing and eventual turn at ReLIFE.
• Girlish Pigtails: She invokes this, having changed from a plain ponytail to pigtails for her second chance at ReLIFE, as looking more like a "proper" high school girl was her first step to changing herself.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Though she is too good-hearted to lash out about it, Hishiro nevertheless acts quite cold toward Onoya, believing her to be a romantic rival. She refers to Onoya as the braid-and-glasses girl rather than use Onoya's name, even after she's become much better at remembering names, and she responds coolly when Onoya takes Kaizaki by the arm one morning. She asks if Kaizaki ever hugged Onoya the way he hugged her, and his denial makes her feel entirely too satisfied.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: Her goal is to get better at making friends, albeit less out of genuine loneliness at this point and more because she realizes that spending her life in her own bubble is holding her back.
• Innocently Insensitive: She has zero malice but will almost certainly fail to notice when she's bothering someone with her bluntness and robotic attitude towards work.
• Never My Fault: Hishiro tends to have this as a mantra in regards to her doing the work for others and them complaining. It's not her fault they were lazy and she did the work for them. However, it's deconstructed in that by doing their work and isolating herself from them, she was fired from all of her companies because the other employees wouldn't work with her and complained.
• Nice Girl: Her social skills may be poor, but at heart she's a very kind and exceptionally honest girl, and also reasonably polite despite her Innocently Insensitive moments.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Her poorly handled attempt to intervene in a bullying situation made it worse, which caused her to withdraw even further.
• The Nicknamer: She's not good at remembering names, so she's not above just calling people by identifiers at first.
• No Social Skills: And how, but she's trying to change. The school festival arc puts this in focus, as her usual method of not bothering to cooperate with people starts to drive a wedge between her and the rest of the class. She knows she needs to change; she just doesn't know how.
• Official Couple: With Arata.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The Blue Oni to Kaizaki's Red Oni.
• Secret Secret-Keeper: Kaizaki's completely unaware that Hishiro knows he's a ReLIFE subject for the latter half of the series.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Hishiro is a blunt girl who is at times rude and, by her own admission, uninterested in other people, but when she warms to someone, she can be quite sweet and affectionate in her own way.
• Tsundere: A mild case towards Kaizaki, as she openly asks to be friends with him but doesn't hesitate to call him stupid, especially when she's embarrassed. She's generally less insulting towards everyone else aside from Onoya.
• The Un-Smile: While Hishiro can smile normally subconsciously, her trying to smile voluntarily results in this. Unlike most other examples of this trope, this gives rise to some tension between her and Kariu early on.
• What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: Despite falling increasingly hard in love, Hishiro is still disconnected enough from her own feelings not to understand them, or to understand them only haltingly. She's probably been in love for over a hundred chapters by the time she actually comes to the conclusion herself! Hishiro's approach to understanding her feelings is direct, as usual: if people in love enjoy being touched by they person they're in love with, just ask to be touched and see what happens!
• When She Smiles: When Hishiro smiles genuinely, it's enough to leave Kaizaki stunned. When she tries however...

Ryou Yoake

Voiced by: Ryōhei Kimura (Japanese), Jessie James Grelle (English)

Yoake is Kaizaki's handler in the ReLIFE program, joining Kaizaki in this second chance at high school life to observe him. Cool and collected, Yoake feels no compunction about needling Kaizaki about his relationships with the other students, or anything else that comes to mind. Beneath this gadfly exterior, Yoake is deeply committed and invested in seeing Kaizaki complete a successful ReLIFE. Unbeknownst to Kaizaki, Yoake has worked as a support before, and that subject failed miserably. Yoake will work himself to the bone to make sure that doesn't happen again.

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• Broken Ace: Onoya admits that she looks up to Yoake and sees him as someone who's good at everything he does, which belies the fact that he doesn't have things nearly as together as he acts.
• Character Tics: Yoake tends to tap his finger when he's troubled.
• The Cobbler's Children Have No Shoes: His job, or at least his intention, is effectively to counsel others over their problems and help them find happiness, while he himself is one of the most emotionally damaged characters in the series.
• The Confidant: As Kaizaki's handler, he's the person whom Kaizaki spills his thoughts and secrets to. He's also one for Hishiro until Onoya takes over this role.
• Creepy Good: His Dissonant Serenity and Gadfly tendencies can make him come off as weird, but he's ultimately a compassionate man who wants to see Arata and Chizuru make the most of ReLIFE.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Yoake's experiences with Subject No. 001 really shook him up. He's determined not to let Kaizaki fail.
• Dissonant Serenity: The more irritated he is, the more pleasant of a front he puts up.
• Eating Lunch Alone: To Kaizaki's surprise, Yoake does this, despite appearing well-liked by their classmates. As Yoake explains, he'd rather be alone so that he can focus on observing Kaizaki. When Kaizaki invites him, citing that it feels uncomfortable to see someone he knows by himself, Yoake makes it clear that he can't accept due to professional boundaries.
• The Gadfly: Yoake delights in teasing and attempting to manipulate Kaizaki (even if it's for good ends). When Kaizaki and Hishiro have a misunderstanding, Yoake tries to needle him with the biggest bomb imaginable:
  Yoake: At the rate things are going, I might have to take Hishiro-san for myself.
• Hidden Heart of Gold: He's an extremely caring person, but prefers to hide it under an indifferent front. It's exemplified in a scene where outwardly, he callously tells Kaizaki that he doesn't really care about him, as he's only an experimental subject to to Yoake, while at the same time his internal thoughts make it clear that he wants nothing more than for Kaizaki to be happy.
• Hypocrite: While Yoake often criticizes Onoya for interfering too much with the subjects, he tends to be just as guilty of this, if even more egregiously so (albeit in a different fashion). Unlike usual cases of this, however, it's seen as a positive thing.
• It's All My Fault: He blames himself for Subject No. 001's failure, feeling that it was due to his inadequate support — though arguably, he was doomed from the start. It doesn't help that his superiors at work also placed all the blame at his feet.
• Married to the Job: Downplayed, but as the epilogue reveals, he ignored Onoya's feelings because he wanted to put supporting Kaizaki as his first and foremost priority, and he feared that dating Onoya—when he already got to see her all the time—would distract him.
• My Greatest Failure: His experience with his first subject, with him almost giving up afterwards. With that said...
• My Greatest Second Chance: What his experience with Kaizaki turns out to be. Yoake notes more than once that he's among the people whose life has improved by Kaizaki's presence. Hishiro's second year in the experiment also serves as this, and he's finally able to find closure when she declares that she's grateful for her experience, first year of failure and all.
• Never Gets Drunk: He holds his liquor very well and can walk off a night of heavy drinking like it's nothing, when even Kaizaki — who's no slouch in this department either — is sick the next morning.
• Not a Morning Person: According to him, he sleeps through his alarms. Kaizaki suspects that was a lie to deliberately delay their grave trip, though while it's likely Yoake did play it up, he does mention again later to Onoya that he's not good with mornings.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The aloof, logical Blue Oni to Onoya's excitable, emotional Red Oni.
• Ridiculously Average Guy: Invoked by him; he is perfectly average at athletics and academics, likely to avoid standing out.
• Romantic False Lead: In the manga in particular, several chapters try to suggest Yoake is a love interest for Chizuru Hishiro, only for it all to be revealed as clever misdirection. Even so, multiple characters believe it possible, and Yoake uses the perception and potential for jealousy to his advantage.
• The Social Expert: People skills come with the job, as Yoake's purpose is to understand his subject's psychology and help them and, to an extent, his work junior Onoya navigate their circumstances.
• Stalker without a Crush: As Yoake is in charge of looking after Kaizaki for the experiment, his job basically dictates being a stalker. Their relationship eventually becomes closer to Vitriolic Best Buds (albeit with the vitriol being on Arata's side).
• Stepford Smiler: You're far more likely to catch any inner turmoil through his Character Tics than his expression. Onoya calls him out on it, telling him that people can't tell when they've actually hurt him if he just smiles it off, and Yoake privately admits that he's not good at being honest with others.
• Triple Shifter: Kaizaki's baffled over when Yoake has time to rest, considering that Yoake has to juggle being a student and his full-time job as Kaizaki's handler and, unbeknownst to Kaizaki, Hishiro's for the first term.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Yoake drives Kaizaki nuts, but once in a while Kaizaki will put that aside and show genuine concern for him, such as inviting Yoake to eat lunch with him. More often than not, the two of them consider it unusual when they're being sincere with the other.

An Onoya

Voiced by: Reina Ueda (Japanese), Kristen McGuire (English)

A transfer student in Kaizaki's class, Onoya joins Kaizaki and Ohga's study group, having bombed the preliminary exams harder than even Kaizaki had. She joins Kaizaki in gossiping about and teasing Ohga for his obliviousness regarding Kariu. Onoya's innocuous facade hides a merciless gadfly, tease, and matchmaker. When she's not teasing or matchmaking, Onoya is a compassionate person who only wants the best for people. Her goals are sincere, even if her methods make some peoples' lives more eventful than they'd like.

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• Bespectacled Cutie: Invoked by Onoya, who doesn't need to wear glasses but does to look more innocent. Her previous high school look was unsuitable for a more academics-focused school like Aoba.
• Birds of a Feather: Onoya and Yoake are both perpetually smiling individuals who like to tease others, with Kaizaki even commenting that they're perfect for each other.
• Book Dumb: Subverted. She gets even worse grades at Kaizaki, but only because she's deliberately trying to fail. Once she stops with the act, she's perfectly fine with academics.
• Commonality Connection: She bonds with Kaizaki over being transfer students who also bombed their tests.
• The Confidant:
  • As Onoya's the only other person aware of Hishiro and Kaizaki's situation, as well as having witnessed Yoake's burnout the previous year, she's the one person whom Yoake can express any of his personal thoughts to — albeit with Yoake's usual restraint, considering his attitude and role as her work senior.
  • She also becomes this to Hishiro, as her handler as of the second term.
• Conflicting Loyalty: In Chapter 181, Onoya has a case of this when Hishiro admits that she's shutting down her feelings for Kaizaki due to the ReLIFE program. That and she mistakenly believes she's been burdening Kaizaki. Onoya can only struggle to maintain her composure, feeling guilty.
• The Gadfly: Teases Kaizaki and Hishiro more than Yoake does (after all, Yoake never came onto either of them).
• Genki Girl: She's always running at full energy. When Kaizaki jokes that Yoake should get her to wake him up, he replies that having to deal with her every morning would be a nightmare.
• Girlish Pigtails: Sports two small braided pigtails. Like with her glasses, she chose this look to invoke a more innocent appearance; normally, she wears her hair loose.
• Hypocritical Humour: In one of the chapter bonus images, she scolds Kaizaki for lecturing Hishiro when she just woke up after collapsing, with Yoake commenting that he knows someone else who did the same... i.e. Onoya, who also yelled at Yoake right after he collapsed at work.
• Imaginary Love Triangle: Both Hishiro and Kariu are worried that she likes Kaizaki and Ohga, respectively. While she's deliberately playing it up in the former case, the latter is just sheer coincidence, though she does joke that it's kind of fun being an obstacle to others' love life as an adult poking some fun at kids.
• Implied Love Interest: To Yoake. Other characters bring up the possibility of them being an item and they're not without Ship Tease, but unlike the Official Couple(s) of the series, they're never seen hooking up and deny any relationship to the very end.
  • Print Bonus materials make it more explicit, as she admits in a volume omake to liking Yoake, though Yoake's feelings are much more ambiguous at least until the epilogue chapter, where they finally do get together.
• In-Series Nickname: Due to Hishiro's dislike of her, Hishiro just calls her the "braids and glasses girl" at first. Amusingly, one chapter-end image shows Hishiro a little confused when Onoya shows up without her iconic glasses and braids, since the nickname no longer fits.
• No Sense of Personal Space: Rather fond of invading Kaizaki's.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: She fails her tests to give her an excuse to stay near Kaizaki.
• Purely Aesthetic Glasses: Her glasses aren't prescription.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The Red Oni to Yoake's Blue Oni, with them also on the opposite ends of the Emotions vs. Stoicism spectrum on how to handle their jobs as members of the Support Division.
• Rescue Romance: Downplayed, but she's been in love with Yoake ever since she was matched with him through ReLIFE's anonymous help line and he pulled her out of her funk.
• Romantic False Lead: Onoya leans into this, playing up her relationship with Kaizaki to tweak Hishiro. She latches on to him while walking to school, she stays close to him during the fireworks festival, and she continues to eat lunch with him. All of this is not just a game to her, either: it's a deliberate plan to set up her handling of Hishiro in the second term.
• Secret Test of Character: Onoya's attempt to seduce Kaizaki was to see how he would react to such advances from a high school girl. Or so she says.
• Shipper on Deck: Even moreso than Yoake, Onoya continuously encourages Hishiro to pursue a romance with Kaizaki.
• Tender Tears: As Onoya's deeply invested in Hishiro and Kaizaki's happiness, she often ends up bursting into tears over the reminder that their relationship is doomed to disappear at the end of their experiment.
• Vitriolic Best Buds:
  • Onoya eventually forms this dynamic with Hishiro with the vitriol on Hishiro's side, not unlike Yoake's friendship with Kaizaki. With that said, she invokes a lot of exasperation from Kaizaki as well, though he's more willing to freely acknowledge her as a friend despite this.
  • Her dynamic with Yoake consists of Onoya sniping at him at every opportunity, and in turn she's one of the few people whom Yoake is comfortable enough around to openly show annoyance; Kaizaki even comments on how he can't tell if they hate each other or like each other. On the flip side, Onoya views Yoake as her saviour of sorts, respects him deeply, and wishes him happiness, and Yoake likewise serves as Onoya's rock when things get rough.
• Walking Spoiler: To a degree, it's difficult to talk about Onoya's character without hinting that she's an adult and part of ReLIFE's support division, as it's her primary role in the story and the series' earliest twist — the fact that she's presented as Yoake's Love Interest already gives it away.

Kazuomi Ohga

Voiced by: Yūma Uchida (Japanese), Blake Shepard (English)

The male class representative in Kaizaki's class at Aoba, Ohga befriends Kaizaki in part to make sure Kaizaki won't be stuck in an endless cycle of makeup tests. Ohga is considerate and easy to get along with. His one flaw is that he is Oblivious to Love—Rena Kariu has been crushing on him for two years, yet he hasn't picked up the hint, and he unwittingly aggravates her at times because of that, much to Kaizaki and Onoya's consternation.

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• Big Brother Worship: Though he's painfully aware that society looks down on his brother for being a NEET, Ohga is nothing but proud of all that his brother did and sacrificed for the family while growing up, and sees this period as a time to let his brother take it easy.
• Book Smart: Like Hishiro, Ohga ranks at the top of his grade.
• Class Representative: The male rep for Kaizaki's class.
• Dark and Troubled Past: His family situation is not pleasant. His mother's gone, and his brother is a shut-in, causing Ohga great anxiety about possibly following in his brother's footsteps. Even without that, he's on the hook for trying to help make ends meet.
• Ditzy Genius: He's an academic genius, but cannot read social cues to save his life.
• Eating Lunch Alone: Due to spending most of his final year eating lunch with Kaizaki & Onoya (both of them being in the ReLIFE program), his memory will be altered to become this.
• Happily Married: With Kariu in the epilogue.
• Innocently Insensitive: Ohga's a genuinely nice guy, but his completely obliviousness to interpersonal dynamics (particularly Kariu's attraction to him) places him in this category.
• Locked Out of the Loop: In the epilogue, he joins the support division of ReLIFE, while Yoake and Kaizaki awkwardly dance around the secret matter of Kaizaki's experience and their past friendship with Ohga. With that said, it's suggested that he might one day realize the truth.
• Love Epiphany: Kaizaki's speech, along with seeing another man touch Kariu (even if just to keep her from falling), seals the deal.
• Oblivious to Love: He and Kariu have been wearing matching earrings for two years and he didn't get the hint. Moreover, he's completely blind to everyone else's interpersonal dynamics.
• Pretty Boy: Kaizaki freely admits that Ohga's a very attractive man. Combined with his personality, the series tends to joke that he's a "disappointment of an ikemen".
• Shared Family Quirks: Played for Drama. His life is playing out very similarly to his brother's—silver pin for three years straight, probably going to go to Aoba University—and he's terrified that the similarities will be complete and he'll end up breaking like his brother did.
• Smarter Than You Look: More than one character has mentioned that Ohga does not look as smart as he is.
• Stronger Than They Look: Inverted. Ohga looks like the sportsy type but isn't at all.
• Supreme Chef: He's a good enough cook that Kaizaki is impressed by the bento he mistakenly believes Ohga's mom to have made, and is doubly impressed when Ohga reveals that he made it himself.
• Unknowingly in Love: Just as how he can't pick up on others' feelings, he's equally clueless to his own, especially since he thinks he just likes everyone.

Rena Kariu

Voiced by: Haruka Tomatsu (Japanese), Alexis Tipton (English)

Kariu was the female class representative in her class before third year, when she's pitted against Hishiro. Losing the honor of being class rep—and being at Ohga's side—prompts great jealousy from Kariu, and Hishiro's clueless attempts to befriend her only exacerbate the situation. Still, Kaizaki is able to influence both of them, and the two defuse the situation. Indeed, Kariu becomes Hishiro's first female friend. Prone to bouts of great insecurity, Kariu will nevertheless defend her friends to the end. She can be very intense and competitive, on top of being 100% Tsundere.

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• Academic Athlete: One of the top students and vice-captain of the volleyball team.
• Always Second Best: Kariu gets top grades and is an excellent athlete, but she remains second to Hishiro in academics and Honoka in sports.
• Brutal Honesty: Very blunt. It's actually one of the things she has in common with Hishiro. Ohga jokes that it's why she shouldn't mediate when Hishiro is rubbing shoulders with the rest of the class, as Kariu would inevitably take her side and declare the class incompetent and lazy.
• Class Representative: The female rep of her class last year, and she reclaims the position for one term in the current year.
• Competition Freak: Kariu is noted for being very competitive about everything.
• Fiery Redhead: Kariu is hot-headed and highly competitive, fitting this trope nicely.
• First Friend: She's the first friend Hishiro makes outside of Kaizaki, cementing Hishiro's social progress.
• Happily Married: With Ohga in the epilogue.
• Innocently Insensitive: During an argument with Ohga, she accuses him of being a Momma's Boy before he bluntly tells her that he doesn't have a mother. Suffice to say she feels awful about it afterwards. When patching things up with him later, she admits that because her family situation is normal, it never really occurred to her that others might be different.
• Insecure Love Interest: Kariu ropes Hishiro and Tamarai into watching Ohga—and his attractive female coworker—on the job. Kariu at least has the maturity to admit she thinks she's being unreasonable.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Although Kariu is straightforward and somewhat rude by nature, and her insecurities often get the better of her, she's a loyal friend who goes out of her way to defend and/or support those she cares about.
• No Challenge Equals No Satisfaction: When she gets the silver pin, she's shocked rather than pleased because she knows that she hasn't surpassed Hishiro yet and immediately assumes (correctly) that something was up with Hishiro during the tests.
• The Perfectionist: Ohga straight-up describes her as this, and he fears it's why she'll look at him differently if she knows he comes from an "imperfect" household (though, of course, his fears are unfounded).
• The Resenter: Thanks to being Always Second Best. She's aware that it's a flaw and hates herself for it, but she has difficulty putting her jealousy towards Honoka and Hishiro aside.
• Second Place Is for Losers: Kariu's problem in the first arc. No matter how much she tries, she can't catch up to Hishiro in grades, or Honoka in sports, making her feel like all her effort is pointless.
• Tsundere: She uses her bag as a weapon against Ohga's denseness.
• Unknown Rival: It's a low blow to her to know that even though she views Honoka and Hishiro as her rivals, they don't really feel the same way, to the point that Hishiro doesn't even remember her name at first.

Honoka Tamarai

Voiced by: Himika Akaneya (Japanese), Bryn Apprill (English)

Kariu's best friend and captain of Aoba's girls' volleyball team, Tamarai eats lunch with Kariu and Hishiro regularly, and the three form a close circle of friends. She's a sensitive person who chose Aoba Volleyball to escape the pressure of a competitive environment, even though she has the talent to attend top-tier schools. As Kariu and Hishiro deal with romance in their lives, Tamarai offers a steadying perspective and insight what's going on around them.

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• The Ace: Has been the best volleyball player on her teams going back to middle school, to the point that it irritated her seniors. It also forms the basis for her friendship with Kariu, who wanted to be The Rival to her.
• Affectionate Nickname: Tama to her childhood friends.
• All Love Is Unrequited: It gets implied near the end of the series that Honoka has a crush on either Nobunaga or Akira but never made a move herself because she didn't want to ruin the dynamic of their friendship. One of the later volume omakes later confirms that she indeed had feelings for Nobunaga, with Akira having unrequited feelings for her.
• Beware the Nice Ones: She's one of the sweetest characters in the series, but is violently defensive of her friends (Inukai in particular, who has a history of being picked on).
• Book Dumb: She also has to take makeup tests occasionally, which interfere with her volleyball practice.
• Broken Ace: Eventually revealed to be this, as she became disillusioned with being the top of every sport to the degree that she deliberately tried to be Willfully Weak upon entering Aoba, before Kariu called her out and encouraged her to embrace a rivalry between them.
• Childhood Friends: With fellow Aoba students Asaji and Inukai. They're close enough that she refers to them as Nobu-chan and Aki-chan, respectively, even to people who might be unfamiliar with the names.
• Famed In-Story: She's well-known in the school athletic circuit and entered Aoba specifically in hopes that no one would recognize her. For better or for worse, Kariu still did.
• Genius Ditz: Extremely athletic, but Book Dumb and rather airheaded in general, to the extent that Asaji and Inukai have to walk her home everyday or else she'd get lost.
• I Don't Want to Ruin Our Friendship: She's decided never to reveal her feelings for Asaji, since she knows they're unrequited and she doesn't want to destroy the dynamic they and Inukai have now.
• Lonely at the Top: Being leagues above everyone else meant that she never really fit in with her team, as it was a given she'd succeed and therefore nothing she did was ever worth cheering for.
• Nice Girl: She's an overall very sweet person.
• No Sense of Direction: The reason Asaji and Inukai have to walk her home every day is because she'll get lost if they don't. This continues even to after their graduation, as they have to help show her how to get to their university.
  Asaji: How many days have we been doing this now...?
  Inukai: Ten.
• Pseudo-Romantic Friendship: She really adores Kariu, complete with constant physical affection and, during a conversation about romantic love, her bringing up her relationship with Kariu as an example (even if in a platonic sense; she admits later to being in love with one of her Childhood Friends).

Nobunaga Asaji

Voiced by: Daisuke Namikawa (Japanese), Stephen Sanders (English)

One of Tamarai's friends since kindergarten. Kind and a member of the health committee, Asaji tends to act as a mother hen to his friends.

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• Affectionate Nickname: Nobu to his childhood friends.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Very warm and friendly, but if the flashback chapter to his, Inukai, and Tamarai's childhood is anything to go by, he's rather scary when in Tranquil Fury mode.
• Born Unlucky: It's a joke that he's cursed, as for eleven years straight, whichever relay team he's on for the school festival has lost. He's never won.
• Childhood Friends: With Tamarai and Inukai.
• Gentle Giant: He stands at 185 cm and strong enough to throw a ball over practically double the national average distance, but also one of the nicest people you'll meet.
• Likes Older Women: Has a crush on Sumire, Inukai's older sister.
• Oblivious to Love: Unlike Inukai, who's aware of the hidden interpersonal dynamics of their trio, Asaji doesn't seem to realize that Tamarai likes him.
• Team Mom: Kaizaki even thinks of him as an okan^note a Japanese slang for "mother" during the fireworks festival.
• Those Two Guys: With Inukai.

Akira Inukai

Voiced by: Noriaki Sugiyama (Japanese), Alejandro Saab (English)

One of Tamarai's friends since kindergarten. Unlike Tamarai and Asaji, Inukai tends not to get along with his peers and has a reputation for violence—especially if you look at Tamarai the wrong way.

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• Affectionate Nickname: Aki to his childhood friends.
• All Love Is Unrequited: See Tamarai's section.
• All of the Other Reindeer: He wasn't well-liked as a child due to his gloomy demeanour, which he decided to embrace.
• Childhood Friends: With Tamarai and Asaji.
• Establishing Character Moment: When it's his turn for the ball toss, as people badmouth him in the background, he suddenly throws it straight at a student who hadn't been paying attention.^{In the anime...}Alternatively, at Kaizaki's feet. This quite succinctly tells you how Inukai tends to handle things.
• Hey, You!: Expect Inukai to address everyone outside of Tamarai and Asaji this way.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: He likes Tamarai but would rather support her and Asaji together (though things are complicated by the fact that Asaji doesn't return her feelings).
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He's a violent and rude Perpetual Frowner, but also fiercely devoted to his friends.
• Match Maker Crush: Attempts to play one between Nobunaga and Honoka, despite his own blatant feelings for Honoka. Further complicating the issue, Nobunaga has a crush on Akira's older sister.
• Those Two Guys: With Asaji.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: In elementary school, he was a Misunderstood Loner with a Heart of Gold, before he deliberately became the "bad guy" so that people would have a real reason to dislike him, meaning Tamarai and Asaji wouldn't have to defend him anymore.