The anime adaptation of "Soredemo Ayumu wa Yosetekuru" will begin airing in July 2022. The series began serialization in Weekly Shonen Magazine in 2019 and is now in its fourth year. However, due to the focus on the protagonist and main heroine, the cast is surprisingly small. So, this time, we'll introduce all the characters that appeared in the original work!
Ayumu Tanaka
The protagonist of this work. He joins the Shogi Club (tentative name), but is a complete beginner at the game. During his middle school days, he was so devoted to kendo that he was known by the nicknames "Mountain of Wind, Forest, Fire, and Mountains" and "Immovable Tanaka," but when he entered school he fell in love at first sight with Urushi, who was recruiting club members, and joined the shogi club. (Although this behavior would later cause him trouble...) He always has a sharp look in his eyes and is basically expressionless. His facial expression makes it difficult to read what he is thinking. He makes it clear that he likes Urushi, and Urushi sees through his feelings from the very beginning of the story, but he is determined to confess his feelings after winning at shogi, so he refuses to admit that he likes her no matter what.
Urushi Yaotome
The heroine of this work. She is a senior student, one year older than Ayumu, but she is always on the receiving end while Ayumu takes the lead, which makes her blush with embarrassment. Her catchphrase is the impulsive "Nnaaah!" that comes out when she feels embarrassed. She has a complex about her height of 149 cm, which has not grown at all since her second year of junior high school, and sometimes suddenly starts drinking milk. By the way, her physical examination showed that she was 149cm tall, but when Ayumu measured her, the shocking truth was that she was 147cm tall... (she decided to tell him she was 150cm tall). It was also discovered that she was abnormally stiff. She has been playing shogi since childhood, and her skills are so great that Ayumu has never been able to beat her (I think the last time he did was in the final episode), and she even overwhelms her junior Rin, who joins the club later. She is convinced that Ayumu likes her, and when Ayumu is writing a reply to a love letter at his friend's request, she looks hopeless when she hears the words "OK reply." When it comes to love, she is the weakest character in both the seme and uke roles.
Takeru the Ceratopsian
A childhood friend of Ayumu, he was a member of the same kendo club until middle school. He was sometimes nicknamed "Fire" (Fire) in contrast to Ayumu's "Mountain" nickname. He is often seen with Sakurako, who is also his longtime friend, and the two of them usually appear together in the original manga. He has a manly personality and will not refuse a request, so at Ayumu's request, he joined the shogi club as a ghost member. At first, he intended to attend the shogi club seriously, but gave up because he would no longer be able to walk home with Sakurako after school. He likes Sakurako, but when he asks her if she has a crush on anyone, she immediately replies, "No one," making it difficult for him to express his feelings. While he's basically an amateur when it comes to shogi, he seems to have some knowledge of it.
Mikage Sakurako
A girl who's always with Takeru, she tends to keep to herself. She's skilled in classic hypnosis using 5-yen coins, and always gets Takeru to do what she wants. (It is unknown whether she has a talent for hypnosis or if Takeru is just susceptible to it.) When Takeru was unsure about joining the shogi club, she encouraged him (by forcing him with hypnosis) by saying, "You should join," but when Takeru asked her to join with him, she refused, saying, "I don't believe in joining things like that." Also, despite forcing him to join the shogi club, she told him not to join because "you won't be able to go home with him," and although it is unclear whether she is aware of it herself, she often speaks and acts in ways that suggest she has feelings for Takeru.
Maki
A friend of Urushi's, her last name is never revealed; we only know her first name, "Maki." She's a much more mature woman than Urushi, and even Urushi acknowledges her beauty as a genuine beauty. She loves to talk about love and romantic relationships, and is deeply interested in Urushi and Ayumu's relationship. She's naturally aware of their feelings, and often teases them about their relationship or helps bring them together. As an aside, the author's works generally feature childish characters with no breasts, and the heroines in this work are also noticeably flat-chested, as usual. However, Maki is unusually large-breasted.
Kagawa Rin
A junior of Ayumu in middle school who practices kendo. She admired Ayumu's overwhelming kendo prowess and assumed he would join the kendo club in high school, but was furious when she found out he joined the shogi club instead. He challenges Ayumu to a kendo duel, with his future at stake, on the condition that if he wins, he will return to the kendo club. He ends up losing, and due to Rin's rules, he ends up joining the shogi club himself. Having learned shogi as a child, his shogi skills are superior to Ayumu's. He is very strict about hierarchical relationships, and his motto is absolute obedience to superiors. In middle school, he would run errands for Ayumu and the others. However, on the other hand, he tends to look down on opponents weaker than him, and demotes Tanaka-senpai and Kakuryu-senpai, who he beats, to "Tanaka-san" and "Kakuryu-san." Conversely, he respects Urushi, who he lost to in shogi, and promotes her from "Yaotome-senpai" to "club president."
Manager
The manager of the okonomiyaki restaurant that Urushi has been frequenting for a long time. He has no particular name. He seems to have had a long-standing friendship with Urushi's grandfather. According to Urushi, he's a good person, except for his "bad looks and bad mouth." When he sees Urushi about to play shogi, he complains, "I can't stand it when people turn my restaurant into a shogi hangout," and tells her to "go home as soon as you've finished eating." However, she displays her tsundere side by leaving a gigantic okonomiyaki behind, saying, "You can play shogi while you eat." Incidentally, Rin has also visited the restaurant, and when she did, she was told, "You're in the way, so finish eating and leave immediately." However, when Rin immediately finished the gigantic okonomiyaki and left, saying, "It's really getting in the way," she looked troubled and said, "No, it's nothing..."
Summary of "Soredemo Ayumu wa Yosetekuru" Characters
So far, we've introduced the characters that appear in this work. What do you think? Urushi is cute, but my personal favorite is Sakurako's episode. Which character and episode was your favorite?
