Characters of A Couple of Cuckoos.
open/close all folders
Main Characters
Nagi Umino
- Voiced by: Kaito Ishikawa (Japanese), Nicholas Andrew Louie (English) Foreign VAs
The male lead of the story. He's a studious and a top ranking high school student who was accidentally switched at birth with Erika Amano and ended up being raised by the Uminos.
- Badass Bookworm: Though he's largely a bookworm, his parents raised him to be able to stand up in a fight, which he does when rescuing Erika from some guys who kept trying to hit on her too aggressively.
- Book Smart: He's very studious, and despite being raised by a working-class family he was able to get into a prestigious prep school. His grades are second only to Hiro's.
- Characterization Marches On: He used to be more headstrong and confident in the early chapters, but as time went on he became more fickle, indecisive, and gets plenty of unflattering moments.
- Chick Magnet: Naturally as a harem lead, he has his fiancee Erika, his school crush Hiro, his adoptive sister Sachi, and his childhood friend Ai as prospective love interests.
- Crazy Jealous Guy: While he's reluctant to commit to any one girl in his harem, he'll be absolutely steaming when one of them reveals a potential love interest. His overprotectiveness of Sachi when she was on a "date" with her schoolmate Matsuda is partially born from jealousy, and he tries to get in the way of Rihito and Erika despite the fact that he's been dating Hiro for a while at that point.
- Home Nudist: He loves the feeling of freedom that comes with being naked, though he's not comfortable with being seen by others. Thus, a Running Gag is that he always strips naked when he thinks he has the house to himself (stating how he has always dreamed about doing mundane activities such as vacuuming or eating ramen while naked), and always ends up being discovered by either Erika, Sachi or Hiro.
- Perfectly Arranged Marriage: Erika was accidentally given to his biological parents. The parents had a discussion about this and concluded the best way to resolve this was to have him marry her. While they're both initially opposed to it, they end up developing feelings for each other.
- Rich Suitor, Poor Suitor: The poor to Rihito's Rich Suitor. While he may be engaged to Erika and is biologically related to a hotel tycoon and a big wig tv producer, he's still legally a part of the Umino house, a lower-middle class family.
Erika Amano
The female lead of the story. She's a sociable and popular Instagram celebrity who was accidentally switched at birth with our male lead and ended up being raised by the affluent Amanos.
- Big Brother Attraction: It is heavily implied she had a crush on her adoptive older brother Sousuke.
- Clingy Jealous Girl: She gets very jealous when she sees Nagi with Hiro.
- Cosplay Otaku Girl: She will take any excuse to dress up in a costume: from being a cupid to a detective. With how many different outfits she has it's more like she is just looking for an excuse to wear one.
- Genki Girl: Displays this quite frequently, especially when posing for pictures or interacting with Nagi's parents.
- Girlish Pigtails: She frequently wears her long hair in pigtails, highlighting her girly personality.
- Long Hair Is Feminine: Her hair goes down to her butt, and she is all-around girlier and bubblier than the somewhat stand-offish Sachi and the competitive Hiro.
- Love Epiphany: Realizes she's starting to fall for Nagi after seeing him having a fun time with Hiro in a kickboxing gym. After she forces him on a date, she accidentally says she's not in love with him... yet.
- New Transfer Student: Her all-girls school demanded she attend a disciplinary meeting but she skipped it due to caring for Nagi during his cold, so her father transferred her to Nagi's school and she ends up in the same class as him.
- Obsessed with Food: While she isn't a Big Eater, usually eating normal portion sizes, Erika is always very excited about food, constantly complains about being hungry whenever Nagi hasn't cooked dinner yet, and savors the taste of any new food she tries to the very last bit.
- Ojou: She was raised by very wealthy hotel moguls, and when she's first introduced she goes to a school for rich girls. Nagi even refers to her as one when he finds out just how rich she is.
- Perfectly Arranged Marriage: Her biological parents were given Nagi by mistake. The parents discussed this error and decided that it'd be best if she marries him. While they're both initially opposed to it, they end up developing feelings for each other.
- Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense: She was raised by obscenely rich parents. As a result, there are instances where she shows a lack of common sense due to being completely out of touch with how normal people live.
- Romantic Fake–Real Turn: In the first chapter/episode, Erika blackmails Nagi into pretending to be her boyfriend in an attempt to weasel her way out of an Arranged Marriage. Then it turns out Nagi is the guy her parents want her to marry. Neither of them is happy about it, but they slowly develop a true attraction to each other.
- Shipper on Deck: She's initially this when she first hears about Nagi's crush on Hiro. However, when she sees them in a kickboxing gym and sees how much fun they seem to be having, she starts to get a little jealous, and forces him to spend time with her on a date.
- Tsundere: Starts to exhibit this when forcing Nagi on a date with her after getting a little jealous while he was on a date with Hiro, and getting quite flustered with him when he asks her about their arranged marriage situation.
- Unlimited Wardrobe: Aside from her school uniform, she's never seen wearing the same outfit twice.
Sachi Umino
Nagi's adopted younger sister and Erika's biological younger sister. She acts like a normal sibling around her big brother and enjoys his presence but fears that one day he will leave her.
- Big Brother Worship: She might come off as aloof to Nagi, but she greatly cares for him. These feelings become weird to her after finding out they are Not Blood Siblings.
- Brilliant, but Lazy: Despite seeming to prefer to loaf around and sleep, Nagi informs Erika she can be quite intelligent when she actually applies herself.
- Clingy Jealous Girl: Starts to exhibit this behavior when Nagi gets engaged to Erika. However, she largely directs any jealousy either directly at him, or towards Hiro.
- Hypocritical Heartwarming: Only she is allowed to tease her brother.
- Little Sister Heroine: She starts having romantic feelings for Nagi after learning that they're Not Blood Siblings since Nagi is adopted, but Nagi himself has trouble not seeing her as a little sister. Ai surmises that Sachi subconsciously never treated him like a brother even when they were kids, and the same goes for Nagi. Eventually, the manga implies that her feelings were leaning towards seeing him as a brother after all, since when she meets Sousuke and notices how much alike they are physically, she cries because to her that meant she'd have to acknowledge Nagi isn't "truly" her brother anymore.
- Please, Don't Leave Me: Despite her aloof personality to her brother, she becomes absolutely terrified when she believes he is leaving or someone is going to take him away from her.
- Sacred First Kiss: She loses hers when Nagi accidentally falls on top of her, and she got really mad at him when he tells her to pretend it didn't happen.
- Sweet Tooth: She is often seen snacking on sweets, usually a popsicle.
Hiro Segawa
Nagi's academic rival who ranks higher than him and the girl of his affections. She works as a Miko as her family runs a local shrine.
- The Ace: Both physically and academically gifted.
- Armor-Piercing Question: After she finds out that Nagi and Erika have a largely fake Arranged Marriage, she bluntly asks if she could have him if Erika wasn't interested in him. However, she falls asleep before she can hear Erika's answer and reaction.
- Arranged Marriage: She reveals she cannot date Nagi because her parents have already picked out her fiancé. But it is made quite clear she would like to.
- Best Her to Bed Her: A variation of this, as she mentions to Nagi that she's interested in those smarter than her. This becomes a motivating point for him as he attempts to beat her in school exams. He does in one exam, but then she mentions that she's beaten him at least ten times before, forcing him to continue beating her in exams before she'd consider dating him.
- Competition Freak: Hoo boy. She's always obsessed with winning and beating Umino at everything, even eating faster than him.
- The Illegible: It is repeatedly noted despite her great academic skills, she has terrible handwriting. Nagi originally thought a note from her was a prank because he didn't think she would write that bad. Her brushwork on the other hand is very good.
- Love Hurts: Though Nagi is clearly interested in her, she has moments where he and Erika bicker in a way that only couples would do. This, combined with her Arranged Marriage and rivalry with Nagi, leads her to give him ambiguous answers when he confesses to her. She seems to want to date him, but is being held back by various factors.
- Miko: Her family runs a Shinto shrine, and she also works as a miko there.
- Not So Above It All: Though she normally gives off the persona of being The Ace, there are times where she will break that behavior, such as not studying during their study camp, or lying about her and Nagi's age when they're forced to spend the night at a hotel together, to even drinking alcohol despite being underaged.
- Rivalry as Courtship: She seems to very much enjoy Nagi constantly competing against her. Many arcs have her outright challenging Nagi or being challenged by him for the right to date each other, with the win condition usually being beating her in exams.
- The Tease: She seems to enjoy screwing with Nagi by suggesting something, only to quickly reveal she means something else just to see his reaction. One notable time being when they were alone in a hotel room and she suggest they do something adult, only to reveal she means to drink some alcohol.
Ai Mochizuki
A childhood friend of Nagi and Sachi who moved away due to her father's work. She returns to Japan later in the series as a popular online singer with the aims of fulfilling her longstanding desire to be with Nagi.
- Childhood Marriage Promise: Nagi promised to marry her as a child. When she returns she holds him to that promise.
- Idol Singer: She is a very popular anonymous singer.
- Meta Girl: She's the most aware of the love situation going on, and when she does talk about it with others she puts it in trope terms. One arc she even outright says she and Sachi are just side heroines in the Erika-Nagi-Hiro Love Triangle.
- Stalker with a Crush: She's utterly obsessed with Nagi, to the point where she's devoted a wall of her room to candids of him with his eyes stuck out and announced live on television that she's dating him. She's also followed him to his current residence and situated herself there.
Relatives
Youhei and Namie Umino
Nagi's adoptive parents as well as Erika and Sachi's biological parents. They are a loving couple who run a humble family restaurant together with their kids helping them out on the occassion.
- Former Teen Rebel: Nagi mentions that they both used to be delinquents. While they've mostly mellowed out, they still tend to use rough language when they're angry, and Youhei still has Delinquent Hair.
- Large Ham: Youhei tends to be overly dramatic in most scenes he's in.
- Motherly Side Plait: Namie has the classical anime mom hairstyle, wearing her hair in a loose ponytail over her left shoulder.
- Out of Focus: Namie receives practically no individual focus and only really appears in group scenes. Youhei fares a bit better with a Birthday Episode and a few man-to-man talks with Nagi, but he still doesn't appear terribly often.
- Shotgun Wedding: When Nagi realizes that Youhei and Namie married at only 19, shortly before they had Erika, a shocked Sachi adds that it must have been a shotgun wedding. If Youhei is to believed, though, they were already intending to marry, and Namie's pregnancy only sped up the process a little bit.
Souichirou and Ritsuko Amano
- Souichirou voiced by: Toshiyuki Morikawa (Japanese), David J. Dixon (English) Foreign VAsRitsuko voiced by: Yukiko Aruga (Japanese), Monica Rial (English) Foreign VAs
Erika's adoptive parents and Nagi's biological parents. They are rich and influential people with Souichirou being a hotel tycoon while Ritsuko works as a television producer.
- Big Fancy House: Their house is huge, their garden has a pool and a golf course, and their pet dogs have a smaller house to themselves.
Sousuke Amano
Erika's adoptive older brother and Nagi's biological older brother by 5 years. He's disappeared before the events of the story and Erika is motivated to reach out to him, leading to her usage of Instagram in order to do so.
- Aloof Older Brother: He and Erika used to get along, but she hasn't seen him ever since he left the house and did whatever caused a rift between him and his father. Erika only started modelling because she thought it would get him interested enough to see her again.
- I Have No Son!: Heavily implied. Souichirou often calls Nagi his "only son", and it's implied that Sousuke is disinherited or about to undergo the process. Souichirou has also specifically told Rihito to never mention Sousuke when it comes to discussing the inheritance.
- Off to Boarding School: It's revealed in the Nebula Villa arc that he was sent off to boarding school in England when he was eight, and it's all but stated that this was what caused the rift between him and Souichirou, though it remains unclear if it was the act of being sent off to boarding school itself or it was something that specific that happened at the boarding school.
- Strong Family Resemblance: He's clearly older than Nagi, but he's the spitting image of him and his father in the few pictures we get of him as a child. When we finally see him in the present day, he looks like a Nagi with wavier hair.
