Asako Natsume (夏目 あさ子, lit. Natsume Asako) is one of the protagonists, and a first year student at Syoyo High School. She is somewhat dim-witted, and often receives low grades. She had no friends outside the internet, until she met Haru Yoshida and Shizuku Mizutani[1].
Appearance
Asako's full appearance.
Natsume is a young girl of average height with light, auburn hair and big honey eyes. She keeps her hair loose, sometimes changing up her style, and lets her bangs fringe down to the top of her eyes. Throughout the series Natsume has often been identified as exceptionally attractive, both by herself and others[2][3].
Her main outfit consists of her regular school uniform; a redish brown jacket over a cream school ssweater and a white shirt with a light pink ribbon. She wears a dark green checkered miniskirt with grey lines, on her feet she wears black socks and a pair of sneakers.
Personality
Asako Natsume is in the same class as Sasayan, Shizuku and Haru.
Before meeting her friends, Natsume was asocial because her looks and personality attracted a lot of boys (which made the girls around her jealous and avoid her). Because of this, she treats her looks like a curse.
Natsume is unintelligent, has low grades, and spends a lot of her time on the Internet.
After having made friends of her own, Natsume is shown to be very understanding towards other lonely girls, such as Oshima and Iyo, recognizing her former self in them, and she usually tries to get them to join her group of friends.
Asako's facial expressions.
She is stubborn and sensitive, but is also very innocent and cute. She thinks well of her friends and only wants the best for them.
She hates boys because they are easily attracted to her, and views them as selfish people who only want to have fun. Because of this, she developed a crush on Mitsuyoshi who was much older and quiet.
History
Natsume had a lonely middle school life mainly due to her attractiveness. Girls would shun her because boys would confess their love to her, even though she didn't want them to. Bullied throughout middle school, she turned to the online community for friendship and became awkwardly asocial. Online, she is known as "a pretty girl with just hair problems." Natsume was always typing away on her laptop until she started regularly hanging out with Shizuku, Yoshida, and Sohei.
She was first introduced into the anime during episode one, when Yoshida asked her where Shizuku went while she was on her laptop during a classroom break.
She is a stubborn and blunt person, with sensitive and understanding traits. She often thinks things are her fault as seen during the Syoyo School Festival, where Mitty (Shizuku) gave her the cold shoulder and told Natsume to mind her own business. She cried her eyes out, but still refused to apologize first.
Plot
She is in the same class as Shizuku, Yoshida, and Sohei. Her first anime debut was during episode one when Yoshida asked her where Shizuku went while she was typing away on her laptop during a classroom break. She was one of the many people who were scared of Yoshida, but soon came to realise that he is not very scary despite his impulsive aggression and violence.
She isn't very bright in her studies and quickly befriended Mitty (Shizuku) and Yoshida after asking for their assistance for the upcoming make-up exams, as she was trying to avoid remedial classes. Yoshida agrees when he finds out that she needed to avoid remedial classes because she was meeting up with her online community, offline. While they helped her study, Yoshida accompanies Natsume to the offline event and scared off Natsume's friends. The community began to shun Natsume due to Yoshida's behaviour.
Natsume is very blunt and often seen trying to encourage both Yoshida and Shizuku so they can finally further their relationship. She also desperately wants Shizuku to confide her secrets to her, since Shizuku is her very first female friend.
She develops feelings for Mitsuyoshi Yoshida's cousin and confessed with the encouragement of Sasayan-kun. She rejected Sasayan on their first day back to school when she sensed that he was attracted to her over the summer. Sasayan became offended and their friendship spiralled downwards. When they sorted out their differences, he admitted that he does indeed like her. She rejects him a second time and acts awkward around Sasayan for the rest of their time together. However, by graduation, she seems more comfortable around him and even blushes when she mentions that their universities are close to each other.
In the credits of the end of the series, there is a quick glimpse of Natsume working at a desk with guys next to her sleeping on the job. On her desk, there is a picture of her smiling and hugging a guy who has the same hair-style as Sasayan (the picture is actually the same on the back cover of the volume 13, after removing the jacket). This suggests that they did develop a relationship outside of high school.
Relationships
Mitsuyoshi Misawa
Natsume being rejected by Mitsuyoshi.
In an attempt to confess her love for him on New Year's Eve, she is turned down by Mitsuyoshi. This causes her to rant about how she hates boys and how love changes people.
Mitsoyoshi often acts like an older brother around her. He gives her advice when she needs it the most and he helps her out in situations like in the cafe. Mitsuyoshi secretly likes Natsume, but rejected her because of the age difference.
Sōhei Sasahara
In the beginning and throughout most of the story, Natsume and Sasayan have a pretty good friendship. Natsume even admits that Sasayan is the only boy (next to Haru) that she could relax with. They both fight over some things, but gets better later. Natsume mistakens Sasayan's feelings towards her, and gets into a fight. In the end, they solve things out, and Sasayan confesses that he does like her, causing Natsume to reject him and react frighteningly.
Sasayan seemed to have liked Natsume for some time now, and after Sasayan's confession, Natsume starts showing signs that she likes him back, like letting Sasayan rest his head on her shoulder after giving him a short lecture on being lonely, in which she tells him that when you're lonely, you end up thinking of the worst things.
After graduation, Nastume is alone in her classroom. When Sasayan enters and asks why she's alone, she says that she's sad that everyone is moving on with their lives after this and they might not be able to meet again. Sasahara ensures her that they can still remain friends and he'll come to visit once in awhile. Before Natsume leaves the room, she blushes and says that the universities they're going to are relatively close.
On Natsume's work desk in the manga series credits, there is a picture (with heart framed) of her smiling and hugging a guy with a very similar hair-style to Sasahara's (the picture is actually the same on the back cover of the volume 13, which confirmed that the guy with her is really Sasayan). This suggests that they developed a further relationship after high school.
At their friends' wedding they are always seen with each other, though it is not confirmed if they are a couple.
Sasahara, finding comfort in Natsume's shoulders.
Mizutani Shizuku
They met when Natsume desperately needed help studying because she had plans to meet with "friends" on the day remedial classes were held for the ones who failed the retest. Although often cold towards Natsume, they are still quite good friends. Natsume has a strange loyalty to "Mitty" (ミッティ, lit. Mitti) and considers her as a close friend. She tries to help her develop Shizuku's relationship with Haru whenever she can.
Yoshida Haru
Despite meeting him along with Shizuku, Natsume has a bit of a difficult relationship with Haru. Natsume always gives him advice on how to improve his relationship with Shizuku and tells him what he's doing to upset Shizuku. Like Shizuku, she does put up with his more challenging characteristics. She used to say that even if Haru was not always fully devoted only to Shizuku, she would never fall in love with him, which is explained that Haru doesn't have a singer quality she look for in a human. Despite of that, they're still bestfriend.
Chizuru Ōshima
Natsume doesn't have much of a personal relationship with Oshima, but her opinion is based on what she's seen between her and Haru. Like Yamaguchi, Natsume considers Oshima a rival for Shizuku. Part of her reason behind trying to push Shizuku and Haru together is because she feels jealous for Shizuku. Yet, sometime later, she apologizes and tells her to try her best.
Yamaguchi Iyo
Yamaguchi and Asako met in the manga when Yamaguchi was greeted by Asako. Yamaguchi remarked how cute Asako was, perhaps even cuter than herself, with jealousy. They're on friendly terms.
Yamaguchi Kenji
Out of all the people she's met, Natsume gets along with Kenji the least. He oftens becomes angry whenever she says something about Shizuku and Haru's relationship. She even told him to leave Shizuku and Haru alone, which made him lash out at her.
Trivia
- Her given name, Asako (あさ子) means morning child.
- Upon entering the age of puberty, she had become quite popular and at the same time, it is the dark stage of her life.
- In high school, she wanted to avoid her classmates in junior high so she chose Syoyo, the farthest high school from her house.
- She likes cute things and also really likes dressing up.
- She's good at sports.
- It appears that each month, Natsume is being confessed to at least 3 times.
Quotes
- "If you're lonely, you'll just end up thinking of the worst things."
- "Who cares about school? The real me lives on the internet!"
- "Online, I'm just a girl with hair problems."
- "It's my highest score ever!" (Score of 32.)
- "If guys knew what small of an apetite I had, they would be attracted to me easily!"
- "I know, I'm cute! Except, don't fall in love with me. Okay?"
- "Sorry, Sasayan... I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. This is all my fault..." (When bullies from her middle school walked into the same restaurant she did.)
- "Could she be... a rival?!"
- "Evil!"
- "Did you see that? That guy was really hot." (About Yūzan, while seeing him for the first time.)
References
Sasayan natsume