Characters/Otoha Okakura

Otoha Okakura

Personal Information
Surname Name	Okakura Otoha
Birthday (Age)	September 19th (n/a)
Type of Character	Main
Additional Information
Hair Color	Grayish Red, Red Tips
Eye Color	Green
Height	5′ 7′′ (169cm)
Job(s)	unknown
Hobby(s)	Songwriting Singing
Like(s)	Music Playing Guitar
Dislike(s)	Perversion
Family	Unnamed Parents
Affiliation	Light Music Club (Chap. 3)
First Appearance	I Died With You (First Appearance) Birdcage (Introduction)
Notes	unknown

Otoha is a laid-back girl with that ineffable air of coolness, perhaps aided by her copious number of rings. She's an extremely talented musician who takes private lessons, but has to answer to parents who would really like her to focus more on her studies.

Otoha Okakura is part of the Main Cast of in Lessons In Love. Nodoka was the 18th girl to join Sensei's class, doing so in v0.15.0p2. She lives in Room 8 with Nodoka Nagasawa.

Background

Otoha was presumably born and raised in Kumon-mi. While her parents are unknown, it can be assumed that they have a more traditional world view as they want Otoha to follow a more traditional role for a woman instead of pursuing her music career, demand her presence during holidays and have a negative opinion on same sex relationships. They financially support her vocal lessons, but have an iron grip on everything she does, don’t hesitate to take all of her liberties away if she doesn’t follow their rules and control most of her life, giving her next to no freedom.

Assuming that he didn’t betray Rin, Sensei meets her for the first time during Rin’s post-heartbreak excursion in I Died With You and helps her to get Otoha’s attention. He later learned in Fuck Christmas that both have gotten closer and were texting each other constantly.

He himself had no contact with her until Nodoka wanted to transfer into his class on the condition that he convinces Otoha to enroll as well. Reason being that she was also a student at Kumon-mi Academy, but unlike everyone else she wasn’t transferred to Kumon-mi High, because her parents decided to home-school her instead. With her grades declining as a result of her suffocating home life, she’s forced to retire as a musician if nothing changes and Nodoka wants to use Sensei’s ‘teaching methods’ to prevent this. He managed to get through to her and, after her parents agreed, she joined a few days later.

Characteristics

Otoha is perceived as a cool and interesting girl, which makes her popular with almost everyone she meets. She’s easily approachable and friendly during her interactions. She also has a serious personality and is one of the more normal and levelheaded girls in class.

Unlike most of the other girls, she has no tolerance for perversions and gets quickly annoyed by it. When this happens, she makes her displeasure known, something that happens often during her interactions with Nodoka and Sensei. This, combined with her more traditional world view, is a major reason why she sees Sensei’s more personal interactions with his students and her peers open interest in him as kinda creepy and wrong on some level, but the few times she brought this up the others either shut her up or didn’t agree with her.

Otoha never had a romantic interest in anyone and is even more hesitant to start something with a girl, something that’s partly influenced by her parents. As a result, she has no real idea how to show romantic affection after entering a relationship with Rin and treated their relationship more as an advanced form of friendship during the early days. She similarly awkward with discussing her own insecurities or issues, typically talking around them or trying to ignore them entirely.

While Otoha enjoys more freedom due to Sensei giving her good grades, she is still aware of how fragile her freedom is and fears that one wrong step will result in her losing everything she has. This is why she reprimanded Sensei for his actions during one of his visits and still keeps her relationship with Rin a secret. She also has a bit of a temper when it comes to her music, snapping at Sensei for suggesting she change her habits, or getting passive-aggressive with Chika when she offered help with Sana.

Relationships

Sensei

Otoha has mixed feelings about Sensei. On the one hand, she thinks that a teacher who is close with his students, especially when he’s significantly older than them, is unorthodox and she hates his perverted attitude and comments. On the other hand, she doesn’t mind his presence overall, can hold a friendly conversation with him when he decides to behave himself and even confides in him with her problems, which mostly revolve around her relationship with Rin. In Breathing in Unison, she even admitted that he acted like a supportive older brother that day, but he’s still far away from being someone like this in general.

She had a suspicion that he has ulterior motives, but she apparently didn’t know how deep he is with the others, only learning a fraction of it when Rin accidentally told her about his relationship with Chika. While she promised Rin that she won’t tell anyone, it still left her with some resentment towards him, though not because she hated him, but because she was confused and couldn’t accept it.

Rin

Otoha and Rin became friends sometime after their first meeting in I Died With You. They spend a lot of time together, even more so after she joined Sensei’s class, and bond over their shared interest in music. She noticed instantly that Rin had romantic feelings for her, but didn't want to confront them at first, wanting to keep their friendship intact and, after learning about the incident with Chika, worried Rin was merely using her as a rebound. In the end, she still accepted her confession on the condition that Rin could promise her she'd only want her.

While both are happy to start dating, their differences in personalities, values, and privacy almost immediately cause some friction, eventually boiling over into two public fallouts. The first was during the second Christmas party when Rin learned that Otoha didn’t tell her parents that their dating, a conflict that was created due to Rin already being confident in her feelings and having grown up with a lesbian couple, giving her the impression that same-sex relationships are completely normal, while Otoha is still coming to terms with her feelings and comes from a more traditional family who aren’t as open to these kind of relationships. The second one was during the second Dorm War when Rin felt that Otoha’s jealousy made her controlling and disrespectful towards her feelings for her other friends, while Otoha felt that Rin is too impulsive to be trusted and too close to her other friends.

These conflicts, while both solved on the surface, show glimpses into the underlying insecurities both girls will need to work through if they want to keep their relationship.

Nodoka

Nodoka is Otoha's roommate. Both of them know each other from their time in Kumon-mi Academy and have a casual friendship, despite the glaring differences in personalities and Nodoka's blunt and perverted behavior. While Otoha admits they aren't super close, they both respect each others abilities as artists and try to assist however they can.

Noriko

Noriko and Otoha know each other form their time at Kumon-mi Academy and were band members at some point. While they don’t spend a lot of time together, they still have a friendly relationship together and joined the light music club at the beginning of Chapter 3 to revive the old band magic.

Niki

Otoha’s voice coach. Both have a very good student-teacher-relationship as Otoha respects and appreciates her while Niki is willing to give her all the support she can offer. Otoha also seems to be slightly attracted to her as she blushed noticeably during her hands-on lecture and kissed her after misunderstanding her intentions.

Futaba

Since she’s very close with her girlfriend and roommate, Otoha also spends a good amount of time with Futaba and both seem to have a friendly relationship.

Memorable Quotes

• "Worse comes to worst, I can just blame you for my life falling apart and use that momentum to write some cool midwest emo shit or something."
• "Pfft...Just give up on everything you’ve ever loved. My name is Sensei and I’m the coolest guy in Kumon-mi."
• "I’m kind of scared, you know?...Like...I don’t want my first experience in dating to be as some...rebound girl or something. I wanted to be like...totally sure it was more than that..."
  • "I need you to promise that it’ll be only me..."

Trivia

• She is confirmed to be lactose intolerant in Locked In.
• Otoha's mother was also a musician in her youth and even went on small tours through Japan with her band.