Characters/Otoha Okakura
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| Personal Information | |
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| 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) |
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| Dislike(s) |
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| Family |
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| First Appearance |
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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. As time went one, she slowly got more comfortable with her feelings and showed more signs of affection, like getting jealous and being comfortable with certain physical interactions.
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.
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 that Rin had romantic feelings for her, but didn't want to reciprocate them at first as she wanted to keep their friendship as it was and was aware of her crush on Chika, which gave her the impression that she only saw her as a replacement due to her affectionate and impulsive personality. She still accepted her confession on the condition that it will only be her and they started dating.
While both are happy together and slowly develop their relationship, due to their opposing backgrounds, personalities and values, they already hat two big falling-outs. 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.
The first dispute was successfully resolved, whereas the outcome of the second one has yet to be seen, though given what occurred at the Christmas beach trip, it might end favorably as well.
Nodoka
Otoha’s roommate and friend. Both of them know each other from their time in Kumon-mi Academy and have a close friendship, despite her not liking her perverted nature and weird obsession with her love life, especially after she started dating Rin. They also respect each others abilities as a writer and musician respectively.
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.
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.
Memorable Quotes
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.
