Kimi no Iru Machi

Name:     Kimi No Iru Machi
Alternate Name:    A Town Where You Live
Year of Release:    2008
Status:     Ongoing
Author:     Seo, Kouji
Artist:     Seo, Kouji
Reading Direction:     Right to Left
Genre:     Drama Ecchi Romance School Life Shounen

A Town Where You Live (君のいる町 Kimi no Iru Machi?) is an ongoing Japanese manga written and illustrated by Kouji Seo. The series takes place in Seo's hometown and is a character-driven romance set in the same universe and takes place few years after the events of the manga and anime series Suzuka. It follows Haruto Kirishima, a self-conscious teenager, and Yuzuki Eba, an extroverted teenage girl who moves from Tokyo into the Kirishima family's home in Hiroshima Prefecture.

A Town Where You Live is serialized in the Japanese magazine Weekly Shōnen Magazine published by Kodansha since June 2008. As of October 2011, Kodansha has compiled its chapters into 15 bound volumes.

Plot

The plot follows the two characters Haruto Kirishima and Yuzuki Eba. Yuzuki moved from Tokyo to her father's rural hometown in Hiroshima Prefecture to attend high school. Given that Haruto's father is an acquaintance of Yuzuki's father, the Kirishima's take her into their home. Haruto is not keen of the situation because he believes that Yuzuki is a complete stranger and that a girl his same age, who is not a relative, living in the same home will cause complications for him. The misunderstanding he wants to avoid the most is that they are a couple because he already likes his classmate, Nanami Kanzaki. The problem is that Yuzuki has romantic feelings for Haruto and is not timid in pursuing a relationship. After many complications Haruto confesses his love at a festival before Yuzuki is to return to Tokyo and they both start a long distance relationship.

Characters

Main characters

Haruto Kirishima (桐島青大 Kirishima Haruto?)

The male protagonist of the series. He has a reserved personality, which causes him to become perturbed by Yuzuki and his sister's actions. He has a very strong sense of responsibility and consideration for others. He became a member of the school cooking club because he thought that Nanami would also join.

Before the series, he always lived in his hometown. He met a lost Yuzuki during the festival while they were children; he took care of her and told her that if she ever had problems she could come see him again. Entering in middle school he secretly had a crush on Nanami.

At the beginning of the series when Yuzuki had come to his house, he was irritated with her and did not remember meeting her before. But he becomes protective of her and they become good friends. Thanks to Yuzuki he gets closer to Nanami and finally confesses his love to her, but Nanami replies that she wants them to stay friends and tells him that she wants more time to think. Yuzuki also confesses her love to him, saying that he'll fall for her eventually, but she believes that first he'll end up with Nanami.

When Yuzuki has a personal problem and needs to travel to Tokyo, he gets on a train with her and helps her with family problems. But weeks later, Nanami discovers that he hid the fact that he travelled with Yuzuki instead of going on the date they planned together. She first seems to be able to forgive him for that, but after he chooses to retrieve a missing Yuzuki instead of staying with her, she decides to reject him. Rejected by Nanami, Haruto is consoled by Yuzuki and also realises that Nanami probably rejected him due to Yuzuki's close presence in his life. Later, Nanami confirms this, but when Haruto asks her to hide that from Yuzuki (to not hurt her), she slaps him, saying no to playing with her feelings, because the person he really loves is Yuzuki. At the same time Yuzuki announces that she'll be back to Tokyo in April, her family issues being partly solved. He eventually invites her to the Kouyasai Festival but she explains that they can't date now, because she can stay for only a few months.

When the day of Yuzuki's return to Tokyo arrives and Haruto finally sums up the courage to confess his love and requests that she stays by his side forever instead of returning to Tokyo. As she boards the train to Tokyo, she agrees to have a long distance relationship. Planning to meet her and buy her a gift during a school field trip to Tokyo, he finds a job at a restaurant in Hiroshima, where he meets Shiho Amagi, who shares with him the dream of becoming a chef. During the school trip Nanami asks him to temporarily pose as her boyfriend to impress a boastful friend, after which they are eventually discovered holding hands on a train station by Yuzuki. Haruto then decides to meet up with her in person to clear the misunderstanding. Yuzuki explains she understands and forgives him for what happened, then he gives her a kiss for the first time. But for several weeks after the trip Yuzuki doesn't contact him, while his phone number seems blocked. Haruto believes that Yuzuki has broken up with him which results in him becoming deeply depressed. Nanami, who still loves him, and is pained by how he became, decides to make a move, by joining the cooking club with him and meeting him regularly. After she was informed by Rin that Yuzuki got a new boyfriend before the school trip, Nanami decides to confess her love to Haruto. However, Haruto later rejects her confession after he discovers a letter he has been long ignorant of in the bag that had the shirt Eba gave to him, believing that something had happened to Eba rather than Eba finding a new boyfriend and cutting off all contact with him. Due to this, he decided to transfer to a school in Tokyo after the school term.

While living in Tokyo he boards at the Ayano dormitory (currently the residence for the family of Yamato Akitsuki his wife Suzuka Asahina and their daughter Fūka, from Seo Kouji's previous manga Suzuka, who are also his next door neighbors) for girls with his sister. This is also when he first meets Asuka and Kazama. After many attempts to see Eba he finally does at her school festival only to discover that the letter was real and that she truly has a new boyfriend. After discovering the truth, Haruto questions as to what he should do. Shortly after, Kazama sees how Haruto is feeling and decides to try and cheer him up but collapses and is then taken to the hospital by Haruto. At the hospital Haruto finally admits to Asuka and Kazama why he came to Tokyo. Upon hearing this both Asuka and Kazama vow to help him win back back the girl he loves. Just then Kazama's girlfriend walks in only to be revealed to be Eba herself. Both Haruto and Eba play it out as if they have just barely met for the sake of Kazama. Afterwards, Haruto learns from Eba that the reason why she sent that letter was because Kazama has a terminal medical condition and less than a year to live. Haruto then tells Asuka the truth and questions what he should do.

Thanks to Asuka, Haruto decides he does not want to end up secretly hating Kazama because he has Eba so he announces a declaration of war. Haruto tells Kazama that Eba is the girl he came to take back to Hiroshima. Kazama accepts his challenge but says that he will win. Shortly after Haruto meets Kiyomi, a childhood friend of Kazama, who has a crush on him since childhood. Kazama finally decides to take a risky surgical procedure which, if successful, will allow him to fight Haruto on equal terms so he can prove that he will win. The procedure is successful but Kazama dies due to stress put on his body.

After Kazama's funeral, Eba meets up with Haruto and tells him that it is best if they never see each other again, to which Haruto agrees. After 2 months and a half, things go back to normal with winter break around the corner. One night Asuka admits to Haruto that she likes him and expresses her desire to attend college together. She gives him an ultimatum of either dating or not being friends anymore. Haruto decides to accept her confession.

After being together with Asuka for 1 1/2 years, Haruto then meets Yuzuki again. This is the start of many chance encounters where Haruto start to re-examine and question his relationship with Asuka. Most recently, Haruto and Yuzuki reconfirm their feelings for each other. despite the objections of the majority of his friends.

The character surname is derived from the Imperial Japanese Navy battleship Kirishima.

Yuzuki Eba (枝葉柚希 Eba Yuzuki?)

The female protagonist of the series. She moved from Tokyo to her father's hometown. She is staying with the Kirishimas, who are her father's acquaintances. She has a sociable personality and gets along with others easily. She confesses that she likes Haruto, but it does not prevent her from helping Haruto get closer to Nanami. It is later on revealed in the manga that she had met Haruto once when they were children at the summer festival, and he found her when he was lost and in tears. She consoled Haruto when he was dumped by Nanami. Yuzuki ends up moving back to Tokyo in order to work things out with her troubled family. Prior to her departure, she accepted Haruto's confession and agreed to have a long distance relationship with him.

A short time later, Yuzuki cuts off all contact with Haruto and avoids Haruto's request to meet up. Nanami hears from Rin that Eba apparently has a new boyfriend. Yuzuki apparently "explains" this to Haruto in a letter that came with the shirt she bought for him (that Haruto was ignorant of for around a month before it accidentally fell out of the bag). She explains how she must date a boy from her old middle school and therefore must break up with Haruto. However, after reading the letter Haruto decides that the letter's content was not something Yuzuki would write, and that something has happened to her once again.

It turns out that she really does have a boyfriend, who turns out to be Haruto's new friend, Kazama. She coldly rejected Haruto and any attempt to see her until one day Kazama collapsed because of his illness, and they meet again at the hospital, in the room where Kazama was staying. After learning the truth, Haruto questions her motives and why she dumped him back then, and she tells him that she knew Kazama since middle school, but after Kazama confessed his love to her, she rejected him multiple times and moved to Hiroshima. After she moved back to Tokyo, Kazama confessed his love to Yuzuki to her again, only this time he revealed that he doesn't have much left to live, and wants to spend the little time he has with Eba. After Kazama's funeral, Eba, perhaps feeling guilty about inadvertently contributing to his death, tells Haruto that it is best that they never see each other. Two years later she once again crosses path with Haruto. With every chance encounter, it becomes more apparent that Eba still has lingering feelings for him. Recently Yuzuki confessed to Haruto again, and now they are forging ahead with a new relationship despite everyone's objections.

Supporting characters

Nanami Kanzaki (神咲七海 Kanzaki Nanami?)

She is Haruto's classmate and love interest since middle school. She has a modest personality and is somewhat insecure as she once stated that she felt like an outsider with Haruto, Yuzuki, Takashi, and Akari. Haruto confesses his love to her, but she rejects him although afterwards they become better friends and she then tells him she wants time to reconsider her rejection. At the summer festival, when Rin and Itsuki come to visit Yuzuki, Rin speaks with Nanami about Nanami's true feelings for Haruto and how Haruto served as a "safety net" for Nanami. Later, during the festival, Nanami made her decision to reject Haruto, after hearing that Haruto looked for Yuzuki when she was missing and because of jealousy over Yuzuki; one of the many reasons was because he seemed to care more about Yuzuki than her, making her insecure about dating him. Since then she has been avoiding Haruto because their situation and acting extremely cold towards him.

Nanami later visits Tokyo with Haruto on a school trip. She follows him as he went to give a present to Yuzuki and asks Haruto if he can pretend to be her boyfriend for a moment and holds his hand. This leads to a misunderstanding between Haruto and Yuzuki, that appears to ultimately result in Yuzuki breaking up with Haruto. When Haruto returns to their home town, Nanami feels bad seeing how depressed Haruto is. As a result, Nanami appears to have finally recognized her true feelings for him and is now actively pursuing Haruto so she can become his girlfriend. She recently quit her manager position with the baseball club not only to join Haruto in the cooking club but also so she can walk home with him. Kanzaki then hears from Rin that Yuzuki has a new boyfriend, but doesn't tell Haruto since he seems much happier lately. However, after discovering that Haruto is still secretly hoping Yuzuki will come back to him, she reveals the truth about Yuzuki's new boyfriend and confesses her desire to be his girlfriend. He then proceeds to put her confession on hold because he believes that Yuzuki is in trouble and does not believe that the letter she wrote is the full truth. After Haruto returns from Tokyo in the winter, she claimed having moved on, but she blushed when Haruto said that the reason why he remembers her birthday (the same day they saw each other since he transferred) is because he likes her.

Nanami later attends Seijo University with Haruto, Asuka, Takashi, Akari and Kiyomi.

Takashi Yura (由良尊 Yura Takashi?)

He is Haruto's childhood friend. He has a crush on Yuzuki which makes him jealous of Haruto because he lives with her. His first love was Aoi even though she did not take him seriously. After finding about Yuzuki's sister Rin, he decided to give up on Yuzuki, but instead pursued her sister. Later, near the end of the summer, it was revealed that he confessed to and was rejected by Rin. Takashi goes to Seijo University along with Haruto, Asuka, Akari, Nanami and Kiyomi. It has recently showed that Takashi is seriously in love, or so he says, with Kiyomi Asakura and possibly Kiyomi feels the same way.

The character surname is derived from the Imperial Japanese Navy light cruiser Yura.

Akari Kaga (加賀月 Kaga Akari?)

She is Haruto's friend since childhood. She has a cheerful personality, but according to Haruto, she often hides her feelings from others. As a child she was a tomboy, often getting into fights because her father was Russian and she inherited his blue eyes and light hair. Haruto and Takashi take her side in childhood and the three become inseperable friends. She is part of the tennis club along with Yuzuki. She was upset that Haruto decided to go to Tokyo for Yuzuki at first, but got over it later. She may also have romantic feelings for him since she kissed him as a going away present and told him to think of it if he was lonely. Akari goes to Seijo University with Haruto, Asuka, Nanami, Takashi and Kiyomi.

The character surname is derived from the Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft carrier Kaga.

Kiyomi Asakura (朝倉清美 Asakura Kiyomi?)

She is the childhood friend of Kazama. Secretly, she has a one-sided love for him. She is aware that Kazama has a terminal illness and wants him to take the life-threatening surgery that would save his life. Kiyomi goes to Seijo University with Haruto, Asuka, Nanami, Takashi and Akari.

Narumi Kanzaki (神咲成海 Kanzaki Narumi?)

He is Nanami's elder brother. He was introduced as Akari's crush, but he likes Yuzuki. He is the captain of the baseball club and forced his younger sister to became its manager. He has recently been spending time with Yuzuki and even asks her to go to the festival with him although Yuzuki responds to this as a joke. After he overhears Haruto asking Yuzuki to go with him to the festival, he gives up on her and even encourages their relationship as he is seen forcing Haruto to accompany Yuzuki to the train station on the day of her departure back to Tokyo.

Kotone Kikukawa (菊川　琴音 Kikukawa Kotone?)

A high school classmate of Haruto and Yuzuki, she is a demure and timid girl with braided hair and donning a pair of glasses to hide her actually beautiful appearance (similar to Honoka Sakurai of Suzuka in mannerism and appearance). She is very adept in sewing and admires Yuzuki. Kotone develops a crush on Haruto. During a class outing to gather apples for the festival, Kotone arrived with her hair unbraided (because of a comment made by Haruto) and Haruto thought it looked nice on her. She replied that if he likes it, she'll leave her hair unbraided. When Haruto is rebuffed by Eba again at the end of the outing, there is a slight misunderstanding that leads her to hold Haruto's hand where she indirectly confesses her love to him. However, after witnessing Haruto drag Yuzuki away from the festival to talk, she seems to realize that he truly does like Yuzuki. Kotone later started dating Himuro.

Aoi Kirishima (桐島葵 Kirishima Aoi?)

She is Haruto's elder sister. She came back home from college in Tokyo to student teach in order to get her teaching license. Out of the two siblings she acts the least mature. In Tokyo, she lives in Ayano Fujikawa's dormitory and is next door to Yamato Akitsuki. She is the one who shows Haruto a picture of when he first met Eba whenthey were children. She thinks that Haruto and Yuzuki make a better couple than with him and Nanami. She is a heavy smoker, extremely lazy, and leaves her room trashed, which usually results in Haruto doing most of her chores. Haruto lived in the dormitory with Aoi,until he got his own apartment.

Asuka Mishima (御島明日香 Mishima Asuka?)

Asuka Mishima is Haruto's ex-girlfriend and classmate. She is also a friend and neighbour of Haruto's older sister, Aoi. She enters Haruto's life after mistaking him for a burglar and subduing him with a baseball bat. Originally from Fukushima and possessed of a loud and fiery personality, Asuka eventually develops a crush on Haruto; her feelings eventually get through and they begin dating. Asuka is a compassionate girl and is forgiving of Haruto's mistakes, such as when Haruto and Shiori Amaya were discovered walking out of a love hotel. Haruto is forced to explain what was he doing there, but he could not because Shiori has reasons to keep it a secret. Haruto then explains himself to Asuka and she forgives him, not asking about the details. Recently Asuka and Haruto have tried to make time to go on a trip together to move their relationship to the next stage but they have not been able to since Asuka had to return home to Fukushima to help with some family issues. Surprisingly, Asuka comes to Hiroshima to surprise Haruto, but discovers that he had gone to the summer festival with Yuzuki, where she had confessed to Haruto. After returning to Tokyo, the two break up. : The character surname is likely derived from the Imperial Japanese Navy battleship Mishima.

Kyousuke Kazama (風間恭輔 Kazama Kyousuke?)

Haruto's high school classmate in Tokyo who cherishes the exhilaration brought by riding his motorcycle. He was afflicted by an unspecified terminal illness that has prevented him from fulfilling his future aspiration to race professionally. It is later revealed that he is Eba's boyfriend, despite wanting to help Haruto win his girl back. He chose to take a risky surgical procedure, thinking that if he can live longer he can still spend more time with Eba and prove to Haruto that Eba will still choose him.

Mina Nagoshi (夏越美奈 Nagoshi Mina?)

Another Tokyo high school classmate of Haruto Kirishima. She mistakenly believes Haruto likes her, leading to confusion. She later gives up, choosing to date someone from another class.

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