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She is the manager of Ikkoku-kan
and the widow of the late Souichiro Otonashi.
Since she was not married for very long,
she has idealized her memories of Souichiro,
which makes her feel that she must be virtuous to her late husband.
When she first moved into Ikkoku-kan,
she instinctively repelled the approaches
of Godai and Mitaka.
But gradually she became attached to Godai,
who was such a sad case that she felt a motherly affection towards him.
Even though Ichinose and the others insisted
that she admit that she loves Godai,
it has taken her a long time to do so.
Kyoko's high school home room teacher once told Yagami
that Kyoko is too straight
and can't see that there may be more than one truth.
Thus if Kyoko were to admit that she loves Godai,
then she would think that her feelings towards Souichiro
had been a lie.
When Kozue kisses Godai,
Kyoko finally accepts her true feelings towards Godai
and counters Kozue's kiss.
[Does she kiss Godai herself? --JSO]
Afterwards, she admits that she's relieved
that she has finally made up her mind.
Though Souichiro's ghost hangs around her,
she finally bids farewell to her late husband
when she overhears what Godai says at Souichiro's grave,
which he visited a few days before their wedding:
To be honest, I'm jealous of you.
Even if she does return your belongings [to Souichiro's father],
Kyoko-san would never forget about you ...
It's not exactly forgetting or something like that.
You'll always be a part of Kyoko-san's heart.
But I'll do my best.
Ever since I've met her, you've been a part of her,
and I fell in love with her knowing that.
So, I'm marrying Kyoko-san, and you ...
Kyoko is the happy mother of a girl,
Haruka (the scent of spring).
Author's note: The author, Rumiko Takahashi,
didn't wait for other artists to parody her work;
she did it herself.
In an episode of Urusei Yatsura,
there was a widow whose only comfort
was her dog after her husband passed away.
The dog dies tragically (while surfing) ...
Just then, she happens to meet Ryunosuke's father,
who has the same eyes that her lost dog did.
She starts chasing him,
giving him the merchandise that her store handles (dog food)
which he happily consumes).
A heavy-drinking middle-aged lady, she lives in room one with
her husband and son.
Whenever a party starts (nearly every night at Ikkoku-kan)
she starts dancing and nothing stops her.
Other than being a party animal,
she is typical of women her age: in a word, nosy.
Before she knew that Kyoko was a widow,
she tried to arrange an omiai (
A meeting between two people intended to introduce them
with the possibility of marriage) for her.
Once she realized that Kyoko was serious about Godai,
she tried to be their counselor.
Her husband, a timid man, accidentally married her
when he was trying to get a relationship going
with a somewhat more attractive lady.
Despite that, he and Hanae are a well-matched couple,
easily winning a three-legged race
during a PE meeting at her son's school.
Her son, Kentaro, is tired of the lunacy his mother creates,
and believes that Kyoko is the only sane person in the apartment.
Though he is attracted to Ikuko,
he still can't say that he likes her (after six years).
A rather tactless man who lives in room two,
he is a college student who came from Ibaraki.
He is insatiably curious.
When he realized that nobody knew a thing about Yotsuya
(everyone else had already given up on finding out anything
about the Peeping Tom of room four),
he set out to learn everything about Yotsuya.
One day he tailed the mystery man to a restaurant
but wound up stuck with Yotsuya's bill (he ate steak).
Later that day,
he tried to chase Yotsuya into room four from the crack in room five
but got trapped there.
Yotsuya locked his closet and blocked the crack from room five.
Nikaido managed to get out of there easily,
using Yotsuya's technique (Bashing through it
with a ram).
That night Nikaido tried the same thing and trapped Kyoko instead.
(??? Not in manga. In the movie, perhaps?)
On another occasion, Nikaido had to borrow a nail puller from Kyoko
since Yotsuya nailed shut the door of room two.
To take revenge,
Nikaido glued shut a door that he thought was room four
without knowing that Yotsuya had put a sign 4
on the door of room six.
The next morning, when Kyoko came to wake up Godai,
she found Akemi and Godai sleeping together.
(Probably Akemi crawled into Godai's room after
she found that she couldn't get into her room.)
After graduating,
Nikaido moves back to his home town and gets a job there.
Because he was almost completely ignored in the manga after several stories,
he does not appear in the TV series,
though he does appear in the movie.
A tennis coach with shining teeth,
he is notorious as a lady killer.
He had some bad experiences with dogs when he was little,
so he is very afraid of dogs.
He met Kyoko when she joined the tennis club that he worked at.
He and Godai quickly recognized each other as rivals for
Kyoko's affection.
He boldly wooed her,
but ironically that approach strengthened her feelings
towards Godai.
His uncle arranged an omiai between him and Asuna,
but he reacted badly when Asuna introduced her dogs,
whom she considered as brothers and sisters.
Although he wanted to turn down the match,
his uncle proceeded with the arrangements anyway.
Desperate, he tried one final option:
introducing Kyoko to his parents.
That night, when Shun took Kyoko to a drive-in,
she finally turned down his advances.
Mitaka finally realized that Kyoko liked Godai more than him.
A few days later when Godai challenged him to a duel
to settle their scores,
he displayed his jealousy and drank heavily.
Asuna found him near the door of his apartment.
When she tried to carry him inside, he kissed her and fell asleep,
not remembering a thing the next morning.
He thought he had done unspeakable things with her.
Conversation with her at the Kujou family cottage
reinforced the misunderstanding because both of them spoke
in vague expressions.
When Asuna started to spread the news of a pregnancy,
Mitaka gave up and decided to marry her.
It was actually her dog Salad who was pregnant ---
but Mitaka was partially responsible anyway,
because his dog McKenroe was the father.
By the time Godai and Kyoko have their first child,
Shun and Asuna Mitaka are the proud parents of twin girls,
one of whom looks like Shun and the other like Asuna.
The third one is doing well inside Asuna.
McKenroe is the dog Mitaka got to conquer his fear of dogs.
The name is taken from the famous (infamous?)
American tennis player John.
To overcome his phobia,
Mitaka tried self-hypnosis techniques:
Dogs are cute ...
Dogs are cute ...
Come here, McKenroe ... !
The first time he did this,
he passed out when McKenroe jumped into his lap.
After a while, McKenroe started to look acquire the shiny teeth of his master.
Asuna's dog also acquired Mitaka's shiny teeth.
Salad's puppies are named Salt, Pepper and Ginger.
Yostsuya is the mysterious resident of room four.
The other tenants gave up on finding out anything
about this strange man whose personal information is completely
unknown, even his job or age.
Yet he seems to have something to call a job,
and somewhere to call home,
since he leaves Ikkoku-kan during the New Year's holiday.
His hobby is peeping and eavesdropping.
The closet of his room is connected to Godai's room
by a huge crack that Yotsuya always re-opens
whenever anybody tries to seal it shut.
The only time anybody has seen Yotsuya working
was when he was tutoring Yagami,
although he didn't really teach her anything.
All he has done in both the TV series and the manga
has been to create unspeakable messes.
One day he disappeared, leaving an egg in Godai's hand.
Confusion prevailed for at least a week in Ikkoku-kan
with everyone trying to establish a connection
between the egg and Yotsuya's disappearance.
It turned out that there wasn't any ---
and all that was left was the food poisoning that Sakamoto
(Godai's best friend)
got when he ate the egg.
In the TV series,
Kentaro came across an old album of Ikkoku-kan,
and saw Yotsuya everywhere.
He was running beside the torch relay runner
at the time of the Tokyo Olympics,
waving a flag of the rising sun to the soldiers
marching to the battleground during WWII,
and looking at the half-completed Ikkoku-kan,
although it turned out that the album
was Yotsuya's family's last album.
The resident of room five,
he is a timid, weak-willed, clumsy, indecisive man who day-dreams a lot.
He's the constant target
of harassment and practical jokes by the other tenants.
His room, by tradition,
is the party site since his is the only room
spacious enough to contain more than five people,
and clean enough to hold such lunacy nearly every night.
When Kyoko first moved in, the other tenants called him a ronin,
because he had failed his college entrance exam.
He immediately fell in love with her.
His feelings towards her were strengthened
when he discovered that Kyoko was a widow.
This motivated him to work harder,
to try to surpass her memory of Souichiro.
His extra studying paid off
and he managed to get accepted into Sanryu Daigaku.
(third class college)
Because of his indecisiveness,
he ended up having several women hanging around him,
specifically Kozue Nanao and Ibuki Yagami.
He wanted to get rid of them,
but he didn't have the heart to hurt them.
Though Kyoko didn't want to admit that she was jealous,
she did burn her blouse while ironing it,
broke a broom with her bare hands,
and peeled an apple all the way to the core.
During his fourth year in college,
he got a part-time job at a day-care center,
and liked the work there
(having just finished a nightmarish student teacher program
due to Ibuki Yagami).
He was fired but got a part-time job
at the Cabaret Bunny, where he became the
chief in charge of advertisement and welfare:
calling in customers and baby sitting.
Meanwhile, his relationship with Kyoko was having its ups and downs.
At one point, he ran away from Ikkoku-kan because he thought
Kyoko was going to marry Mitaka.
Actually it was Mitaka's sister who was getting married.
Kyoko and Godai accidentally kissed when Godai
tried to catch Kyoko when she fell from a step ladder.
They paired up to run in the three-legged race
in Kentaro's PE meeting
even though they couldn't even take more than five steps.
Godai gave up on Kyoko for a while
when he saw Kyoko and Mitaka embracing
(Mitaka had fainted because of a dog).
In the manga,
Godai was unemployed for a year after he graduated.
During that year, his relationship with Kyoko became solid,
and he bid farewell to Kozue.
(In the TV series this happened right after Godai's graduation exam)
Though they had planned to move out after Kyoko had her baby,
the couple is still living in Ikkoku-kan.
The waitress of the snack bar Cha-Cha-Maru,
the resident of room six
is a red-haired bombshell who wears a negligee
whenever she's in Ikkoku-kan.
Though her actions may not suggest it,
she is actually a sensitive lady who understands
not only Kyoko's feelings but Godai's as well.
When their relationship was reaching a critical point,
she sharply nagged Kyoko to force her to be
more honest with herself.
She even threatened to have a relationship with Godai.
When the master of Cha-Cha-Maru visited Ikkoku-kan
to propose
(two days before Godai and Kyoko's wedding),
she played dumb and had fun.
Later, she marries Master (who recently divorced his wife),
and moves to the second floor of Cha-Cha-Maru.
A former co-worker of Godai's
(while he was working part-time at a liquor shop),
Godai became acquainted with her when he was having trouble getting
rid of a movie ticket he bought for Kyoko
(she had gone to a concert with Mitaka).
Through some minor misunderstandings,
she thought that Godai was serious about her ---
and so did her parents.
Since Godai didn't want to hurt her,
he tried to maintain a parallel relationship.
Kozue became a bank teller two months before graduation.
After a while, a colleague proposed to her
(a classmate in the TV series)
and she had a hard time deciding between him and Godai.
She made up her mind when she happened to see Godai and Akemi
coming out of a love hotel (A place where couples can go to have sex)
(Godai had gone there to pick up Akemi, who was penniless).
Nevertheless she said good-bye to Godai
in a happier tone after Yotsuya told her the truth.
She is now living in Nagoya with her husband, happily married.
She seems to be living in building seven of a housing complex.
Her brother is named Yousuke.
The class representative of Room 2-4 of the high school
where Kyoko met Souichiro
(the home-room teacher of 2-4
also happens to be Kyoko's home room teacher).
She met Godai when he was in the teacher training program in his
fourth year of college.
She fell madly in love with him and was determined to get his attention.
She gave him a notebook in which she wrote I love you
on every page and she tried to make a move on Godai
after her classmates trapped him in the PE prep room.
She stormed Ikkoku-kan and, when she found out about Kyoko,
declared war against her.
After the stormy two weeks of the program was over,
Godai's class wrote him a card.
Yagami wrote Long Goodbye
The next day, she dropped by and changed the message
to So Long, Goodbye.
Sure enough, she showed up again a week later
and saw a flyer that Godai put up for a tutoring job.
She managed to make him tutor her for a month
(she paid in advance and the tenants used most of it for partying).
When Yagami tagged along with Godai to a summer festival
(In the manga,
they went to visit a shrine on the New Year's Day),
Godai found out that Yagami's father
was the chief of the personnel office of Mitsutomo Corporation.
Godai thought the Mr.\ Yagami liked him,
but it turned out that Mr.\ Yagami usually forgot the things
he said when he was drunk.
Godai didn't get a job because he missed the job interview
(being mistaken as the husband of a pregnant lady
who just went into labor).
When Yagami found out that her father didn't hire Godai,
she entrenched herself in Ikkoku-kan.
When Mr.\ Yagami visited there,
he found out the truth and decided that he liked Godai,
and gave him a reference to Kasumi Firm.
Godai bought a TV to celebrate the occasion,
but the first thing he saw on the TV was the news that
the Sekiguchi Firm went bankrupt and because of that
the Kasumi Firm had also been bankrupted.
(Ever since then, Godai has never turned on the TV)
Yagami did not hound Godai for a while.
She visited Ikkoku-kan to celebrate her 20th birthday.
Unfortunately, that was just
two days before Godai and Kyoko's wedding.
When she found out,
she tried to settle her score with Kyoko,
but realized that the bond between the two
was too strong to break.
Though she is in college now, she still cannot give up Godai
and has not yet made any boy friends.
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