Characters / ERASED

Characters from the manga and anime series, ERASED.

WARNING: Unmarked spoilers from the manga ahead. Anime-only viewers be wary.

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Main Characters

Satoru Fujinuma

Satoru Fujinuma

Voiced by: Shinnosuke Mitsushima (adult), Tao Tsuchiya (child) (Japanese), Ben Diskin (adult), Michelle Ruff (child) (English)

Portrayed by: Tatsuya Fujiwara (adult, film), Tsubasa Nakagawa (child, film), Yuki Furukawa (adult, drama), Reo Uchikawa (child, drama)

^{Click here to see Satoru as a child.} 

The protagonist of the story, Satoru Fujinuma is a 29-year-old struggling mangaka currently working as a pizza delivery driver for Oasi Pizza. Satoru regularly experiences a strange phenomenon he calls "revival" everytime a tragedy happens around him. This phenomena forces him back in time just moments before said tragedy and gives him the chance to stop it from happening. Though reluctantly, Satoru does his best to help the people he can, something that he often ends up paying for. Stoic and reserved, Satoru often puts up a facade of being more socially adept than he actually is.

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• Amateur Sleuth: The plot centers around Satoru trying to solve the murders from 18 years ago and find out who the real killer is.
• Amnesiac Hero: After his near-drowning at the killer's hands, Satoru can't remember anything about the previous timeline, nor the events of what he did to prevent the murders and how he came to have a closer relationship with Kayo.
• Blessed with Suck: He has the ability to prevent disasters from happening around him, but they trap him in an ever-repeating loop of events until he can figure out what the problem is, and although his revivals end up saving other people, they always end up badly for him (such as stopping a rampaging truck causing him to be severely injured in the process). It's only when he induces a revival after his mother's death that he's given the chance to do something that'll actually benefit himself, since he'll be able to save people close to him and prevent the murders that ruined his outlook on life.
• Broken Bird: Due to the trauma caused by the deaths of Kayo and Hiromi, Satoru blocked a great deal of his memories from that time, including the otherwise happy childhood that he spent with his mother. This left him as an unenthusiastic husk of what he used to be, a handicap that hinders the positive aspects of his relationships at work and with his mother. Though he was not as enterprising as when he was sent back, Satoru was a happy, normal child with his future ahead of him.
• Character Development: He goes from being a stoic and emotionally reserved individual to a much more outwardly caring person. Through his interactions with Kayo and his mother, he becomes more and more determined to Set Right What Once Went Wrong, fighting not just for the sake of doing the right thing, but also because he becomes more caring towards others in general.
• Classical Anti-Hero: Satoru is plagued with numerous moments of lack of confidence, self-doubt, and just generally thinking he'll never save his friends.
• Clear Their Name: During his 1988 revivals, Satoru has the secondary goal of proving Yuuki innocent of the murders.
• Deadpan Snarker: At times, he has a very dry wit about him.
• Death by Adaptation: He dies in the film adaptation.
• Declaration of Protection: When sent back to 1988, Satoru promises to protect the three children who were murdered that year.
• Determinator: He compromises his own safety in order to protect people in need.
• Did I Just Say That Out Loud?: A frequent victim of this to the point of being a Running Gag. Satoru is very prone to this. Though these are usually him slipping on his tongue, his friends consider this as a sign of his braveness and lack of shyness, like when he absentmindedly calls Kayo "pretty" in front of the whole classroom.
• Disappeared Dad: Sachiko raised Satoru as a single mother after she and his father got divorced. As a result, Satoru says that he doesn't remember much of his father.
• Empty Shell: What Satoru worries he really is deep down.
• Faking Amnesia: In the anime, he recovers his memories when he's visited by Kayo, but he pretends that he hasn't until Kenya calls him out on it.
• Fanboy: Was an adamant lover of an old superhero series, Wonder Guy, and desired to be a hero like him. By the end of the story, he is seen as such by all his friends and family.
• Heroic Willpower: The only thing that keeps him going during all the horrible things that he goes through. Dr. Kitamura also attributes this to why his post-coma recovery was able to go at a miraculous pace, calling it "a man's determination". By the end of the story, his friends almost consider him a superhero, which says a lot about what he is.
• It's Personal: In the original timeline, because Satoru didn't know Kayo and Aya very well in his childhood, he would simply discuss their murders with his friends for purposes of caution. His friend Hiromi becoming a victim led to the problem affecting him personally.
• Knight in Sour Armor: Though Satoru assists those he can during his revivals, he normally doesn't actually enjoy helping others. He helps them because he knows, deep down, it's the right thing to do.
• The Lancer: Among his circle of friends as a child, Satoru generally assumed this role. He slowly takes the role of The Leader during his 1988 revival.
• Like Father, Like Son: Mother in this case as it's revealed that Satoru gained his sense of empathy and justice from her as she was just like him when she was young.
• Maybe Ever After: With Airi in the finale.
• Meaningful Name: "Satoru" means "to know," referencing Satoru's quest to learn the killer's identity, but also means "enlightenment," tying into the series heavy Buddhist symbolism. It's extra meaningful when paired with the killer's surnames, which reference Siddhartha's path to enlightenment.
• The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: Satoru frequently catches himself acting not unlike how an 11-year-old would after getting transported into his younger body. Side effects include lacking a mental filter and shyly blushing upon touching Kayo's hand.
• Mistaken for Pedophile: He states at the beginning of the story that he's not interested in Airi since he's "not into high school girls", and he's later implicitly accused of being one on online discussion boards when he's seen hanging around Kumi.
• Morality Pet: Satoru becomes one for Misato.
• My Greatest Failure: He blamed himself for Kayo's murder because he didn't ask her to go home together the day she disappeared.
• Not So Above It All: Satoru tries to maintain the maturity he's gained from being an adult and even tries to hold Kenya back after he becomes angry with Aya when she insults their clubhouse for being childish. However, when Aya calls superheroes lame, Satoru becomes angry as well.
• Older Than They Look: Although, during his 1988 revival, he indeed looks as old as his actual biological age, he considers himself this due to having the life experience and mentality of a 29-year-old while in his child body.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Invoked. Kenya raises his concerns to Satoru's abrupt personality change, though their conversation convinces him that it was for the better and that he'll support Satoru all the way with his endeavor. Sachiko also notices how engaging and determined her son becomes, so she seeks to nurture this newly-found aspect of his.
• Phrase Catcher: He is the receiving end of Kayo's "Are you stupid?".
• Resigned to the Call: Regularly gets annoyed by and complains about his revivals, stating he knows he shouldn't get involved and help others, because it always ends badly for him. He ends up helping them anyway.
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Satoru is the only one who can remember the original timeline without revival changes.
• Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: The Savvy Guy to Airi's Energetic Girl.
• Serious Business: One does not simply make fun of superheroes in Satoru's presence. Ever.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Satoru's revival ability sends him back to 1988 to prevent the murders of three children (Kayo Hinazuki, Aya Nakanishi, and Hiromi Sugita) from his hometown, and simultaneously stop the killer responsible for their deaths.
• Silver Tongue: After he awakens from his coma, Kayo points out to Satoru that he is very succinct and direct into expressing his thoughts and, above all, not shy, praising that it was this that brought her close to him and his friends.
• The Stoic: Satoru really never was the same after Kayo's death, changing from an energetic and spirited boy into a dry and almost lifeless young man, to the point where his emotional detachment from everything makes him feel like he's just an Empty Shell.
• True Companions: In his personal essay he wrote when he was young, Satoru talks about wanting true friends who trust one another and will help each other in times of need. At the beginning of the series, he's shown to not have any close friends, and nobody besides Airi visits him at the hospital after his accident. By the end of the series, he's got a close-knit group of supportive friends that visited him during his coma for years on end.
• Wise Beyond His Years: By design, as he's mentally 29 years old while in an 11-year-old body. He occasionally slips, though.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Even though he is initially shown to be aloof and withdrawn, the first time the revival is shown to happen to him in the story reveals that he has saved an unspecified number of lives before when other revivals happened, showing that he's considerably less hesitant than how he totes himself to be.

Kayo Hinazuki

Kayo Hinazuki

Voiced by: Aoi Yūki (Japanese), Stephanie Sheh (English)

Portrayed by: Rio Suzuki (child, film), Kanna Mori (adult, film), Rinka Kakihara (child, drama)

A girl from Satoru's childhood, Kayo Hinazuki is one of the original three victims of the serial killer that terrorized Satoru's hometown. Regularly abused by her mother, Kayo is emotionally closed off from other kids, and often spends her free time alone in a park.

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• Babies Ever After: She ends up married to Hiromi, and they have a son named Mirai together.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Invoked and played with. Kayo is considered to be a pretty girl at school, but she is asocial and quiet, so she doesn't garner attention. Her mother makes a point in hitting her in places where bruises won't become visible, like on her thighs, her torso and her shoulders, and whenever damage to her face is incurred, she forcefully submerges her in ice water in order to make the bruises go away. She also dresses Kayo in fine clothes as to avoid the appearance of neglect and abuse. So no, her beauty is not tarnished, but not for lack of trying.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: Satoru becomes the first person she considers a friend after he takes the initiative to actually talk to her and be honest with himself around her.
• Broken Bird: Due to the abuse she suffers, Kayo is quiet and reserved, never interacting with anyone she doesn't have to.
• Broken Tears: She starts bawling painfully when Satoru's mother serves her a decent breakfast after her own mother scantly bothered to do so for years on end.
• Catchphrase:
  • "Are you stupid?"
  • "You're an idiot."
• Character Development: She goes from being an emotionally shut-off and quiet girl to a much more outwardly friendly and caring person as the story progresses.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: At the killer's hands in the original timeline. She was knocked unconscious, had pictures taken of her half-naked body, and was then thrown into a freezer and sprayed with a water bottle until she froze to death.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Satoru has to work hard to get Kayo to truly open up to him, but when she finally does, he knows it was all worth it.
• Deuteragonist: A sizeable chunk of the series focuses on her growth as a person and how Satoru's actions help her through all the horrible stuff she endures. Likewise, it's her interactions with Satoru that help spur him into growing into a much more openly caring and heroic individual.
• Domestic Abuse: She's a victim of this thanks to her mother, who beats her up and forces her head in a sink full of ice water to try covering up the abuse.
• Emotionless Girl: Downplayed. While Kayo is capable of showing emotions, she rarely does due to the mental strain her mother's abuse has on her.
• First-Name Basis: After a fashion, Kenya eventually convinces Satoru to be the one in the group who refers to her solely as "Kayo", signifying the close relationship they've developed. He does so, although he continues to call her "Hinazuki" in his head.
• Forgotten Fallen Friend: Invoked. It's implied that the killer targeted her precisely because no one was going to miss her.
• Happily Married: With Hiromi in the new timeline.
• I Just Want to Be Loved: And she tries her best to hide it from others.
• I Owe You My Life: After Satoru saves her from her mother and the killer, she does the very best thing that she could do at that point for him with what he gave her by living a fruitful, happy life.
• I Will Wait for You: It's heavily implied that she was willing to do this when she found out Satoru was in a coma. However, after he was transferred to a different hospital and she read a letter from his mother explaining why, she ultimately decided to live a fruitful, happy life.
• If You Thought That Was Bad...: As Satoru argues to Kenya and Hiromi, saving Kayo from her mother wasn't his only priority, stating that in addition to that, her life was in danger from an even bigger threat that still lingers.
• Little Dead Riding Hood: One of the most striking things Satoru remembers about her is the red coat she wore the winter she was abducted and killed.
• Loner-Turned-Friend: She goes from being a lone wolf who spends her time alone in a park to a much more outgoing person overall who has numerous friends in Satoru and his group.
• Meaningful Name: "Kayo" is written with the kanji for "to add generations," referencing her Babies Ever After ending.
• The Not-Love Interest: A lot of the story centers around Satoru helping her come out of her shell and trying to prevent her murder. She marries Hiromi in the alternate timeline created through Satoru's actions, as Satoru spending fifteen years in a coma put their relationship on hold somewhat. It's implied Satoru will hook up with Airi instead.
• Put on a Bus: Momentarily, after Satoru saves her from her mother's abuse, only for her to pop right back in for a few chapters. She's finally put back on the bus once Satoru confirms she's an alive and happy adult in the new timeline and focuses his efforts on recovering his memories and stops Yashiro, with the ending simply reaffirming that she's living happily with Hiromi and her son.
• The Quiet One: She doesn't talk with anyone she doesn't have to.
• Reconcile the Bitter Foes: It's implied in the finale that Misato eventually apologized to her and they became more friendly towards each other.
• The Runaway: To protect her from her mother, Satoru helps Kayo do this for brief period of time.
• Ship Tease: With Satoru; neither of them deny anyone's attempts to hook them up or beliefs that they're dating, they end up blushing around each other, and they quite often find themselves in awkward situations together. Ultimately, it ends up going nowhere when, in Satoru's absence for fifteen years, she marries Hiromi.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Underneath the cold, repressed child Satoru initially interacts with is a sweet, funny, and kind little girl who just wants to be loved.
• Tears of Joy: She tears up when she receives a gift on her birthday, and later sobs uncontrollably when Satoru's mother make her a proper breakfast.
• Tsurime Eyes: To highlight her aloofness and emotional detachment.
• When She Smiles: Kayo rarely smiles, making the times she genuinely does all the more special.

Airi Katagiri

Airi Katagiri

Voiced by: Chinatsu Akasaki (Japanese), Cherami Leigh (English)

Portrayed by: Kasumi Arimura (film), Mio Yūki (drama)

Airi Katagiri is a 17-year-old high school student who is a coworker with Satoru in the present at Oasi Pizza. Optimistic, cheery, and always willing to help out a friend, Airi is Satoru's best (or, more specifically, only) friend in the present.

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• Adaptation Dye-Job: Her hair is depicted as being the same color as Satoru's in the colored manga cover on which she appears, but the anime changes it to a lighter brown.
• Ambiguous Situation: She is last seen being restrained by a cop as Satoru gets arrested in the original timeline. It is unclear if she was also arrested shortly after for attempting to resist and interfere with his arrest or not due to Satoru resetting things before they get worse.
• Beware the Nice Ones: She's caring and bubbly, but if you tick her off, she will punch you square in the face.
• Break the Cutie: She has an emotional breakdown after she unknowingly leads the police to Satoru's location, and tries to get them to stop to no success.
• Finger Framing: She does this early on with a bunch of flying balloons, commenting that it would make a wonderful photo. Her doing this again while explaining her lifetime dream, which she had refused to tell Satoru in the first timeline, is what begins to jolt his memories.
• Foil: Serves as this to Satoru's other female companion, Kayo. While Kayo is emotionally withdrawn, quiet, and mature beyond her years, Airi is outgoing, loud, and often behaves like a child. Fitting, as they are both from different time periods.
• A Friend in Need: The first person to believe Satoru in the present is Airi, who goes to great lengths to conceal him from the police because she believes he didn't kill his mother.
• Genki Girl: Her defining characteristic.
• Implied Love Interest: Although they cannot have an open romance due to the age difference, it is implied that Airi fulfills this role for Satoru, with the end of the manga implying a future romance for both of them.
• Leg Focus: The camera likes to focus on her exposed thighs.
• Maybe Ever After: With Satoru in the finale. Their reunion in the snow constitutes the final scene of the manga.
• Nice Girl: Very polite, friendly and always willing to help out a friend.
• Only Friend: She's the closest thing Satoru has to a friend in the present time.
• Power of Trust: Her main philosophy in life is to put trust in people even when others would deny it, stemming from an incident in which she watched her father being ostracized from the community due to a lack thereof. As a result, she ends up being one of the two people who believe that Satoru didn't kill his mother, and helps reaffirm Satoru's ideology.
• Put on a Bus: She has a huge impact on Satoru's ideology and is one of the closest people to him in the original timeline, but since she wasn't involved in Satoru's childhood, she's absent from the narrative for most of the series.
• Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: The Energetic Girl to Satoru's Savvy Guy.
• Ship Tease: With Satoru. Not so much in the beginning; they're both clear on the fact that she only sees him as a friend she respects and he only sees her as a co-worker, and that he has no interest in high school girls. But when Satoru wakes up from his coma, he starts chasing after her as the "key" to him recovering his memories of his past, and Satoru admits to himself that she's become an important person to him.
• Tareme Eyes: They reflect her optimism and friendly personality.

Sachiko Fujinuma

Sachiko Fujinuma

Voiced by: Minami Takayama (Japanese), Sara Cravens (English)

Portrayed by: Yuriko Ishida (film), Tomoka Kurotani (drama)

Satoru's mother, Sachiko Fujinuma raised Satoru as a single parent, and is always loving and supportive of her son. She used to be a news announcer acquainted with Sawada.

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• Dope Slap: She'll give one to Satoru whenever he says something that's inappropriate.
• Good Parents: She's a loving and understanding mother to Satoru.
• Mama Bear: She's highly protective of her son, while simultaneously letting him have plenty of space to do his own thing. Her protective nature also extends to Kayo. Despite the fact Kayo’s mother is an aggressive woman, Sachiko was willing to step in and help Kayo get away from Akemi.
• Meaningful Name: "Fujinuma" means "wisteria lake," with wisterias being symbolic of long life - and, accordingly, many characters comment on how Sachiko is Older Than She Looks. Furthermore, "Sachiko" means "child of bliss," but it's written with the kanji for "to help to know," as she helps Satoru learn about the events of the past.
• Moment Killer: Though pretty lenient when it comes to Satoru and Kayo's interactions, she does purposefully cut into some of their more intimate moments.
• Mum Looks Like a Sister: Airi mistakes her for Satoru's sister when they first meet.
• My Greatest Failure:
  • She believed that her divorce had a negative impact on Satoru as his father left them soon after.
  • This is her reaction before she dies in the original timeline when she realizes that she should have believed Satoru when he said that Yuuki wasn't the killer.
• Older Than They Look: Airi comments that she's young enough to pass for Satoru's sister, despite the fact she's 52 years old.
• Plot-Triggering Death: Her death at the killer's hands in the original timeline is what sends Satoru back to 1988 to save the three kidnapping victims.
• She Knows Too Much: She's murdered by the killer in the original timeline when she figures out his true identity.
• Team Mom: More literal than most cases, as she actually is the mother of one of the "team" members.
• Tears of Joy:
  • When Satoru wakes up from his coma.
  • In the manga, this is her reaction when she finds out that Satoru graduated from high school as she didn't.
• Tomboy: She was this when she was young. She doesn't like when this is brought up as Satoru learns the hard way.
• Youkai: Satoru jokingly believes her to be one due to her uncanny perception making it seem like she has mind-reading powers.

The Killer (SPOILERS)

Gaku Yashiro

Voiced by: Mitsuru Miyamoto (Japanese), David Collins (English)

Portrayed by: Mitsuhiro Oikawa (film), Shigeyuki Totsugi (drama)

Yashiro is Satoru's homeroom teacher in 1988, and the killer responsible for the murders of Satoru's classmates in 1988 and his mother in 2006. He is also responsible for other child murders in Japan and the attempted murder of Satoru in the revised timeline.

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• Adaptational Nice Guy:
  • In the manga, the killer is obsessively replaying the events surrounding his brother's murder, and sees Satoru as a vessel for his "vicarious gratification"; he aims to kill Satoru in the hopes that watching Satoru struggle for his life will help the killer vicariously experience the thrill of being alive. In the anime, however, he's actually unable to kill Satoru (at least without killing himself right after), as he comes to realize he has an obsessive need to be understood by someone else, and believes Satoru is the only one who can truly understand him.
  • In the film adaptation and Another Record, he's under the delusion that he's saving the children he kills from a dark future.
• Adaptational Villainy: Despite the exclusion of Yashiro's Freudian Excuse causing his anime counterpart to be more human, outright craving someone who understands him, it also causes his anime counterpart to appear much more sadistic and psychotic, as his murders lack the complex motivation his manga counterpart has.
• Antagonist in Mourning: Satoru's coma put a real damper on Yashiro's spirits, to the point where he was unable to commit his usual child murders for the fifteen years (eighteen in the manga) that Satoru was unconscious. Apparently, when Satoru woke up, Yashiro was so overjoyed that he couldn't stop crying:
  Yashiro: How many times have I come and gone between home, my workplace, and the hospital? There was I...who realized I'd become a "loner"...just because Satoru went to "sleep." A countless number of days...that I spent as a "loner." Everything had lost its color...since I "lost" him.
• Arch-Enemy: He considers Satoru one after Satoru miraculously survives the attempted drowning.
• Ax-Crazy: Moreso in the anime than in the manga, on account of the exclusion of most of his Freudian Excuse. In the anime, he regularly has onscreen Villainous Breakdowns when things don't go his way, and appears to kill and manipulate purely for the thrill, in contrast to his cold-blooded manga counterpart.
• Bad People Abuse Animals: When he was a child, his classmate put a male and female hamster in the same cage, despite Yashiro's advice. He offered to take care of the resultant litter for her, and decided the best way to do that was to dump them in a jar of water and wait for them to drown. However, he did end up taking good care of the sole survivor, which he named Spice.
• Batman Gambit: Banking on the fact that Satoru knew there was a killer and would attempt to stop him at any cost, Yashiro was aware that Misato was being ostracized and invited her to a school hockey game. He then fed this information to Kayo. He laced Misato's drink with a laxative and ordered catering from Yuuki's father, one of Satoru's prime suspects at the time, knowing Satoru would investigate Misato's disappearance, see Yuuki's father leaving the site, and put two and two together. By being nearby when it happened, Satoru naturally asked Yashiro to follow the Shiratori catering truck in his car, successfully leaving Yashiro with both an alibi (being seen at the hockey game) and an opportunity to kill Satoru.
• Big Bad: Is responsible for nearly every pitfall Satoru faces throughout the story.
• The Chessmaster: Is always a step ahead of every character in the story and regularly outsmarts Satoru and the police. To wit:
  • He stole the class's lunch money and planted it on Kayo, knowing that it would further ostracize her and make her an easier target.
  • In order to fish for information from Satoru without arousing suspicion, he pretends to have forgotten to hand out flyers and recruits Satoru to help him because Satoru knows the neighborhood.
  • He was on the suspect list for the murders of Kayo and Aya, so he murdered Hiromi, an effeminate boy, in order to throw police off his scent. The profile they'd built for the killer was that of a pedophile who targeted girls; ergo, Yashiro, Hiromi's teacher, would not have made that mistake, and he was taken out of the suspect pool.
  • The murders he has successfully gotten away with include dozens of children, his brother, his fiancée, his father-in-law, and his wife. By the time he's caught in the manga, he's responsible for over thirty cases.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Some of his murder methods can be seen this way, most notably his murder of Kayo, which involved binding her with ropes and spraying her with water in a freezer until she died.
• Crazy-Prepared: Does tons of research on both his targets as well as his patsies, hides his murder equipment far away from where he lives, always has an alibi, and even goes so far as to buy cars of very common make and model so that he can steal one similar to his own to use in case he needs to, althought it seems that last one has only come in handy once.
• Criminal Mind Games: His attempt on Kumi's life is filled with references to his past murders, in an attempt to help Satoru recover his memories (since Yashiro hasn't realized at this point that Satoru already has his memories back).
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: When we finally get to hear his thought process in the manga, he talks about his "urges" to kill in ways that resemble sexual innuendo, at one point claiming that his brother (a rapist) was living inside him. He also describes his euphoria over Satoru's role as a murder target in equally questionable terms:
  Yashiro: At the sight of you, the fulfilling sensation I hadn't felt in years started flowing inside me. It's the very sensation I've been waiting for. Satoru...you, the only target I failed to kill back then, could give "it" to me. "Joy" and "thrill." I'm grateful you're alive. Satoru...I'll call you "Spice" from now on.
• The Dog Bites Back: After his physically abusive older brother attempted to frame him for an accidental murder, Yashiro got his revenge by killing his older brother and making it look like a suicide.
• Driven to Suicide: One of the shots in the manga of Yashiro as a high schooler includes him standing outside the safety guardrail on a rooftop, accompanied by an internal monologue mentioning that he was indifferent to the value of life - that of others as well as his own. Considering his Freudian Excuse, it's easy to imagine that he was genuinely considering suicide as an option:
  Yashiro: You often hear that someone is "as good as dead." What does that mean? It means they're not fulfilled, physically or mentally. Right, in other words...I'm dead at this very moment, as I'm living a peaceful life without any risk. I knew I had little sense of attachment to life. My own, and others' too. It was Spice that kept me alive, with all sorts of stimulation for me.
• Enfante Terrible: Yashiro was coerced into luring young girls to his brother for him to rape, and decided that the easiest way to take care of an unwanted litter of hamsters was to drown them in a jar. This culminated in the murder of his brother, covered up to look like it was a suicide. All of this before he turned 13.
• Evil Counterpart: For Satoru. The killer feels a similar sense of emptiness and disillusionment with life, but where Satoru maintains his moral ground and fills that emptiness by opening up to others, Yashiro fills it via "vicarious satisfaction," using his patsies as surrogates by watching them struggle for their own lives once they've taken the fall for his kill.
• Evil Teacher: His real identity is Gaku Yashiro, and he reveals via internal monologue that he became a teacher expressly so he would have easy access to children to murder.
• Faux Affably Evil: Always keeps up a friendly, jovial personality, even as he tries to murder his victims.
• Foil: To Satoru. They both have the same life philosophy, since Satoru picked it up from the graduation speech Yashiro gave him in the original timeline: that life is about filling the "void" in one's own heart. However, where Satoru's void was a result of feeling as though he failed to do all he could have done to help those around him, and he had always been surrounded by supportive friends and a loving mother, Yashiro's was a result of being regularly abused, neglected by his parents, and eventually, forced to kill his brother in order to save his own hide. Eventually, Satoru finds a way to permanently fill his "void" by opening up to others and tackling his problems, while Yashiro's solution was to attempt to feel alive by killing children and watching his patsies struggle for their lives.
• For the Evulz: Moreso in the anime than the manga, as the anime had to exclude much of his Freudian Excuse for time. He kidnaps and murders children while framing others for his crimes solely because it brings "thrill" into his everyday life.
• Four Eyes, Zero Soul: He's an unrepentant murderer who wears glasses in the present time.
• Frame-Up: His modus operandi. Satoru suspects he framed Yuuki for the three murders in 1988, and he himself gets blamed for his mother's murder; Kenya also tells Satoru about a similar case in which his father defended someone who was similarly framed, while stating that "anyone with rudimentary knowledge about the family could have pulled it off." In the manga, this is because he was subjected to one of these by his older brother. His serial child murders mirror the circumstances of his brother's death: a young girl dead and someone else is framed for the murder. He then uses his patsies as surrogates for his "vicarious gratification," whereby he feels the "thrill" of life by watching his stand-in struggle for theirs.
• Freudian Excuse: His older brother would beat him daily while his parents were too mild to stop him and the school did nothing. Around the time Yashiro was 10-11, his brother roped him into being his accomplice, luring young girls to their home's storage shed so his brother could rape them and then hushing them up afterwards - this went on for about a year. When his brother accidentally killed one of the girls, he beat Yashiro and then attempted to frame him by hiding Yashiro's hamster feed with the body. Realizing that, even if he weren't framed, he'd still be punished alongside his brother despite being an unwilling accomplice, he murdered his brother and covered it up as a suicide. In high school, he realized that he was "as good as dead," owing to how empty he felt after his hamster died, and realized that the only thing that could take Spice's place was someone else's death on his behalf - or, rather, recreating the circumstances of his brother's murder (a dead young girl and someone framed for the crime) and receiving "vicarious satisfaction" from watching the patsy, which he uses as a surrogate, struggle for their life after taking the fall. This is omitted in the anime.
• Friendly Enemy: Their final confrontation on the bridge in the manga is actually relatively amiable, with Yashiro earnestly answering Satoru's questions and genuinely asking how Satoru managed to out-gambit him. Satoru asks if Yashiro believes that he's a time traveler, and Yashiro answers that he does, to which Satoru responds that not even Kenya would believe him.
• Graceful Loser: In the manga, after being totally defeated by Satoru and taken to the authorities, he openly confessed to all of his crimes as a compensation for Satoru's heroic efforts.
• Inheritance Murder: He got his last name, Nishizono, from his wife, and his position on the city council from his father-in-law. It was confirmed that he killed both his father-in-law and his love rival, and since his wife is never seen nor mentioned, it's implied he killed her, too.
• Insanity Defense: His lawyer almost gets him acquitted on one of these in Another Record, which leads Yashiro to fire him. It's unclear whether or not Yashiro considers himself insane, but he believes his death row status is the "return" of Satoru's efforts.
• Karma Houdini: In the original timeline, at least before Satoru's revival allowed him to go back and fix everything.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: In the current timeline, the killer is finally apprehended, although the amount of punishment differs depending on the source:
  • In the manga, he's arrested for the attempted murder of Kumi and Satoru, and as compensation for Satoru's efforts, he openly admits to all his crimes, even the ones he can no longer be convicted for, earning him a death sentence.
  • In the anime, he also ends up arrested for attempted murder, although his ultimate fate is left unclear.
• Kick the Dog: He seems to enjoy being able to speak honestly about his murders, which ends up coming across as a gloat. His cool, unhurried demeanor also lead to him allowing a dying Sachiko to reach for her phone before pulling it out of her reach right as her fingers are about to close on it.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: The murders of his brother and fiancée were both made to look like suicides, despite his usual modus operandi.
• Manipulative Bastard: Is able to to play the part of a fatherly, kind teacher disturbingly well, which he uses to his advantage in order to trick everyone around him. The fact that he's seen as an earnest teacher, if slightly airheaded, is why he was able to pretend not to notice Kayo's bruises, and eventually, why Satoru never even considered him as a suspect, even though he saw Yashiro's name on an early suspect list.
• Meaningful Name:
  • In chronological order, his surnames are "Mikohara," "Yashiro," and "Nishizono," meaning "princely field," "eight generations," and "western garden", respectively. These mirror Siddhartha's path to enlightenment - he started as a prince, went through the eightfold path, and reached the Western Paradise. Becomes even more meaningful when he claims to Satoru, as he attempts to kill him on the bridge, that all he wants is the deaths of himself and Satoru, whose name means "enlightenment." Furthermore, he's apprehended after rising up out of a pond filled with lotus flowers, a reference to the lotus pond Shakyamuni looks through in "The Spider's Thread," further implying that he's reached paradise/enlightenment as a result of being caught.
  • "Spice," the name he gives his pet hamster, looks very similar to the word "spider" written in katakana (スパイスvs. スパイダー), another reference to "The Spider's Thread." Just like Kandata spared the life of a spider and was given a chance at salvation, Yashiro spared the life of a hamster, and later claimed that Spice was the only thing keeping him alive.
• Out-Gambitted:
  • In the manga, he attempts to lure Kumi to her death in an effort to rekindle Satoru's memory (which he doesn't know Satoru has recovered), at which point he was expecting Satoru to show up at a suspension bridge over the lake to confront him. However, because of Satoru's memories of the future, in which Yashiro framed him by sending Airi a falsified text, he was on the lookout for traps involving Kumi's cell phone - which Yashiro had not predicted, as cell phones were not commonly in use before Satoru's coma. This allows Satoru to confront Yashiro 15 minutes earlier than Yashiro had anticipated, as well as foil Kumi's murder, ultimately leading to Yashiro's arrest.
  • In the anime, Satoru is aware that Yashiro is planning to kill him and Kumi, but is also aware that Yashiro will be unable to kill him, since Yashiro is obsessed with the idea of someone able to truly understand him, and so he escapes the killer's clutches by pretending to commit suicide by jumping off the hospital roof, with his friends and an air mattress waiting below to catch him.
• Parental Substitute: As a kid, Satoru saw him as a father figure. This makes the reveal all the more heartbreaking once he realizes Yashiro is the killer.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: He kills his older brother after realizing he was about to be framed for his older brother's accidental murder.
• Pet the Dog: In the anime, he is given Airi's scene from the manga of confronting the paparrazi at the hospital looking to slander Satoru with a false story.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Yashiro helps Satoru with rescuing Kayo, but that's only so he doesn't suspect him as the killer.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: In the anime, Yashiro has red eyes when he drops his persona.
• Reminiscing About Your Victims: Surprisingly enough, he does this in his teacher persona, mentioning that he's used many methods to "get closer" to girls and that he once made a "painful mistake" as an answer for why he hasn't gotten married yet. Those methods, of course, helped him lure prepubescent girls to their deaths, and the painful mistake was the murder of his fiancée.
• The Reveal: He's none other than Satoru's elementary school teacher, Gaku Yashiro. Later on, Manabu Nishizono and Gaku Yashiro are revealed to be the same person.
• Riches to Rags: In the manga, happened to him in his childhood. His parents, who came from wealthy backgrounds themselves, raised him and his brother in a mansion. However, after his brother's death, his parents divorced and sold the mansion for almost nothing, forcing his mother to move in with her father.
• Sadist: As he's portrayed more psychotically in the anime, it seems one of his major motivations is that he enjoys the suffering of others. The manga actually averts this in many ways: while he clearly has no empathy, his murders are often relatively painless and he's physically absent for many of them. However, his major motivation is that he feels a vicarious "thrill" of living by watching his patsies struggle for their own lives, so he always sticks around to watch that.
• Sanity Slippage: He was never exactly sane, as he was already incredibly cold and sociopathic as a child, but after his brother attempts to frame him for a murder, he begins to hallucinate spider threads coming off of peoples' heads. This is at the same time he makes up the resolve to kill his brother, and from then on, he sees the threads on people he intends to kill.
• Serial Killer: He has terrorized the public for decades. His modus operandi is to murder 1-3 prepubescent girls, then pin the murder on someone else, whom he uses as a surrogate for himself to experience the vicarious thrill of being alive. He'll break from this formula when he simply needs someone dead out of convenience or necessity, such as his brother, fiancée, love rival, wife, and father-in-law.
• Sibling Murder: Killed his brother when they were children.
• Slasher Smile: Rarely isn't sporting one when he drops his persona.
• The Sociopath: In every iteration:
  • In the manga, he may have actually had empathy at some point - while his delivery is cold, he mentions that he was an unwilling accomplice to his brother's rapes, donated his shoes to Jun Shiratori, whose bullies had stolen his, and genuinely took care of his pet hamster, Spice. However, the constant, daily beatings from his brother and the refusal of his parents to intervene, which ultimately led to the murder he committed out of fear that he'd be dragged down for his brother's crimes, wound up leaving him supremely empty and disillusioned, only able to feel alive (or any emotion at all) when watching a surrogate for himself struggle for their own life.
  • The anime, having excluded most of his Freudian Excuse, plays him as a more straightforward example.
• Taking You with Me:
  • His final wish is to die with Satoru, and to that end, he tries to burn both himself and Satoru alive at the end of the story.
  • In the anime, when he realizes he can't live without Satoru, he elects to let Satoru fall from the roof before gearing up to jump off himself.
• Through the Eyes of Madness: After The Reveal, he gets a few narrations in the manga, at which point it becomes clear that he's insane. First of all, his narration is exceedingly blunt and lacking in empathy, even for himself (going so far as to excuse his parents' negligence in curbing the daily beatings he received from his brother by claiming they were too "mild-mannered" to have done anything or casually mentioning that he has no attachment to his own life). Second, he sees spider threads coming off of peoples' heads he intends to kill that extend upwards indefinitely, in reference to "The Spider's Thread" by Akutagawa Ryuunosuke. He sees killing people as snapping their threads, much like how the thread breaking in the story sends the sinners back to hell, although he also starts seeing one on himself after he kills his fiancée. He no longer has it at the end of the story, which, coupled with the symbolism of being fished out of a lotus pond, implies that he believes he's reached Paradise by finally being caught.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Gaku Yashiro is an earnest and hard-working schoolteacher, adored by the girls in his class, if a little airheaded at times. Nishizono Manabu is a fine, upstanding member of the Chiba city council, who put together a fun activity day at the park for a local hospital. Both of these are the false personas of a sociopathic serial child murderer.
• Villainous Breakdown: In a sharp contrast to the manga, the killer snaps in the anime adaptation in numerous scenes, such as when he is unable to murder Kayo as planned, or when Satoru psychologically tears him down in the finale. The manga itself averts this, as the killer never seems to lose his cool, even calmly explaining that his final wish is to commit a murder-suicide with Satoru.
• What Is Evil?:
  • Claims in the monologue he delivers to Satoru before attempting to drown him that the essence of good deeds and evil deeds is the same - it's all just efforts to fill the "void" inside one's heart.
  • As he's confronted at the end of the manga, he once more affirms that, while he meets society's standards for "evil," the two are nothing more than empty words that people use to reassure themselves, claiming that Satoru, too, doesn't fit others' definitions.
• Would Hurt a Child: More specifically, he would murder children through any means, including suffocation, drowning, freezing, a hammer to the skull...and those are just the methods we know about.
• Xanatos Gambit: He always sets up several possible targets and switches between them depending on how bad the heat looks. This way, he's always sure to kill someone, and those someones are always the least risky. He also does an enormous amount of research on his potential patsies, even planting evidence as the police investigation unfolds, to make sure they get caught instead of him.
• Xanatos Speed Chess: His original plan for the 1988 murders was to kill Kayo and Aya and frame a Shiratori, most likely Yuuki's father. When police suspicion fell on Yuuki instead, Yashiro planted incriminating photos of Kayo and Aya in his room. When Yashiro himself became part of the suspect pool, he killed Hiromi, an effeminate boy, in an extremely violent way, playing into the police profile of the killer as a pedophile who targeted little girls (and was thus angry upon finding out that Hiromi was male). Because Yashiro was Hiromi's teacher, it was unthinkable for him to have made that mistake, so he was taken off the suspect list. However, when information came to light that perhaps Yuuki also knew Hiromi was simply an effeminate boy, Yashiro further planted homosexual pornography in Yuuki's room, with the end result that Yuuki was arrested, convicted, and put on death row.

Mikoto Elementary School

Kenya Kobayashi

Kenya Kobayashi

Voiced by: Yo Taichi (child), Tasuku Emoto (adult) (Japanese), Erica Mendez (child), Xander Mobus (adult) (English)

Portrayed by: Seiji Fukushi (adult, film), Jin Shirasu (adult, drama)

A student at Mikoto and one of Satoru's childhood friends, Kenya is far smarter than most kids his age, and despite his suspicions that Satoru isn't what he seems, works to assist Satoru in any way he can.

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• Academic Athlete: Implied. Satoru often notes that Kenya was the most intelligent in their circle of friends, and the kids say that either he or Hamada, the hockey player, would likely be the fastest skaters in the class.
• Acting Your Intellectual Age: Subverted. Kenya is highly perceptive and mature for his age, but he still engages in typical 11-year-old activities and hangs out with kids his age.
• Alliterative Name: Kenya Kobayashi.
• Aloof Older Brother: Admits that he is one to his younger sister Miyuki who is five years younger than him. However, she doesn't seem to have any hangups about it since she congratulates him warmly when he passed the entrance exams of the university of his choice.
• Ascended Extra: He starts off as another member of Satoru's circle of friends, but due to his natural perception soon becomes Satoru's confidant in his plans and eventually ends up being one of the most important characters in the story as he gathers up all the information on Yashiro and becomes a key player in stopping him from killing Kumi. He also serves as the main character of the light novel, Another Record.
• Best Friend: Though Satoru has numerous close friends, Kenya is by far the closest.
• Berserk Button: Call him or anything he deems serious enough "childish" and he snaps. Even Satoru knew better to avoid the word, saying that it's taboo in front of Kenya.
• Crusading Lawyer: Satoru's dedication to see justice through inspires Kenya to be a lawyer in the new timeline, and he helps Sawada investigate the case while Satoru is comatose.
• Determinator: Considers it his mission to track down the killer responsible for the serial kidnapping-murders and Satoru's coma and to bring him to justice. He spends fifteen years working towards this goal, becoming a lawyer and investigating the linked cases with Sawada.
• A Friend in Need: Kenya's determination to help and believe in Satoru stems from the disappointment he feels seeing his father being abandoned by all his colleagues and friends when taking on a case where nobody believes his client to be innocent. He's happy to learn Satoru's actions are for the sake of protecting people he trusts, like Yuuki.
• Gray Rain of Depression: He cries out of anger when the statute of limitations passes on the kidnapping-murder case that his father worked on, unable to acquit the victim's father of the crime. Of course, it was raining that day.
• Hairstyle Inertia: His hairstyle in 2003 is practically identical to his hairstyle in 1988.
• Hidden Depths: As a child, when he observes Satoru's concern over Kayo's bruises and sees Satoru actively trying to do something about it, Kenya becomes deeply ashamed of his own inaction, to the point of barely holding back tears. In a way, he's living the same story as Satoru, though he isn't aware of the time travel. It may even have been Satoru's desire to do good that ultimately inspired him to become a lawyer as an adult.
• The Lancer: Gradually becomes this during Satoru's 1988 revivals as Satoru becomes the vocal leader of the group that brings his friends together, and Kenya becomes his most trusted confidant.
• The Leader: Was this in Satoru's original childhood, though he slowly becomes The Lancer during Satoru's 1988 revival.
• Loony Friends Improve Your Personality: He used to be a lone wolf who cared only about being the best at everything. Kazu invited him to what would be their hideout and that was how their friendship started.
• Not So Stoic: He comically flips his lid when Aya tells him, Satoru and Hiromi how secret hideouts were childish, so much so that Satoru had to hold him back.
• The Only One I Trust: In 1988, Kenya is the only person Satoru discusses his plans to save the three murder victims with, as he knows Kenya is the only one who will not only believe him, but keep his plans a secret. That said, Satoru still doesn't disclose his ability to use "revival" until the very end of the story when Yashiro/Nishizono is finally brought to justice.
• The Reliable One: Out of Satoru's friends, Kenya is the most mature and even-headed. He consistently tries to be Satoru's right hand and proves his dedication to his friend by spending the 15 years of Satoru's coma trying to find the culprit.
• Remember That You Trust Me: Kenya has to remind Satoru that he's there to help him when he senses that something is still bothering him.
• Sherlock Scan: Downplayed. He's good at reading people's facial expressions and quickly catches on to the fact that there's something off about Satoru in 1988. While Kenya is good at reading people, he admits that he's not particularly good at thinking of solutions to problems.
• Shipper on Deck: He suggests that Satoru should be the only one to call Kayo by her first name (and also teases him a bit for it), and ends up calling her "Hina" instead.
• The Stoic: Kenya's general temperament is calm and cool, and would think things through before actually doing them.
• A Tragedy of Impulsiveness: Defied. Satoru's desperation to save Kayo in his second revival leads to recklessness, almost going as far as to physically harm Kayo's mom. Luckily, Kenya is there to stop him before he does anything too dangerous, warning Satoru of the consequences of acting too rashly and generally keeping his friend from losing his composure.
• Tears of Joy: As written in his files to Satoru, Kenya was so happy Satoru had finally woken up from his fifteen year coma that he couldn't stop crying.
• Wise Beyond His Years: He's far more mature than most kids his age with a detective-like intuition, although his dream is to become a lawyer.

Kazu

Kazu

Voiced by: Yukitoshi Kikuchi (Japanese), Bobby Thong (English)

Portrayed by: Ryoya Shinoda (film)

One of Satoru's friends, Kazu is brash and impulsive, but at the same time, is fully capable of rational thinking and being trustworthy. He is the one who arranges Satoru's first meeting with Kayo.

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• Big Fun: Is easily the most outgoing and fun-loving member of Satoru's group, and is also the most big-boned.
• The Big Guy: Is the largest and most outrageous friend of Satoru's.
• Maybe Ever After: The final chapter depicts him as an adult opening a bento with a heart on it. This is juxtaposed with a picture of him blushing in his childhood, implying the bento was probably made by Aya.
• Ship Tease: With Aya; they end up constantly blushing and flustered around each other in ways that far surpass Satoru and Kayo. Satoru suspects that Aya's attracted to his "manliness".
• Shipper on Deck: Ships Satoru/Kayo and tries to help them become closer.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Compared to other characters, Kazu has a fairly minor role, but without him, Satoru would have had a much harder time getting to know Kayo, protecting Aya would have been harder still, and without him, their group of friends would have probably never met.

Hiromi Sugita

Hiromi Sugita

Voiced by: Akari Kitou (child), Atsushi Tamaru (adult) (Japanese), Christine Marie Cabanos (child), Kyle McCarley (adult) (English)

Portrayed by: Kairi Jyo (drama)

One of the members of Satoru's circle of friends. Due to his feminine looks, he was seemingly mistaken as a girl by the killer, and was killed because of it.

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• Babies Ever After: During Satoru's fifteen year coma, he and Kayo eventually fell in love and had a son named Mirai. Satoru's genuinely happy for the both of them.
• Camp Straight: He's very girly-looking and has many feminine mannerisms, but he marries Kayo in the new timeline in which both of them survive.
• Catchphrase: "That's gutsy!" and numerous variations of it.
• Dude Looks Like a Lady: Hiromi is often mistaken as a girl, and it was believed this was the reason he was targeted by the killer. In reality, the killer was well aware of Hiromi's gender and he killed Hiromi in order to ensure that the police would eliminate him as a suspect.
• Happily Married: With Kayo in the new timeline.
• The Heart: Hiromi is the most emotional and polite one of the group.
• Hidden Depths: He beats Kenya in a game of shogi after beating Kazu and Osamu twenty times straight. And then there's the fact that he successfully became a doctor during the fifteen year Time Skip.
• In Touch with His Feminine Side: Hiromi's primary characteristic is not only his feminine appearance, but also the fact that he is much less masculine than any of his friends.
• Nice Guy: A kindhearted and polite boy in the group.
• Shipper on Deck: Like Kazu, Hiromi supports Satoru's "crush" on Kayo. Ironically, he's the one who ultimately marries her.
• Shrinking Violet: Prior to befriending Kayo during his revival, Satoru's biggest regret was not encouraging Hiromi, who was too shy to completely integrate with their group of friends, and therefore not being there to protect him when he was killed.

Osamu

Osamu

Voiced by: Ayaka Nanase (Japanese), Ryan Bartley (English)

Portrayed by: Tatsuki Ishikawa (film)

Another of Satoru's friends, Osamu is the "nerd" of the group, being a self-proclaimed video game fanboy.

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• Adaptation Dye-Job: In the manga, it was possible to mistake him for Hiromi with a hat, but the anime gives him glasses and much shorter hair.
• Fanboy: Is a huge fan of Dragon Quest.
• Geek: Even among his superhero and video game loving friends, Osamu sticks out as the geekiest of them all.
• Minor Major Character: Has the least amount of screentime, lines, and impact out of Satoru's friends, but is still an important member of his group. He's the only member of Satoru's group who has no major influence in the events surrounding Satoru's mission, though he's always present.
• Shipper on Deck: He and Kazu try to ship Satoru and Kayo, though Kenya tells them to calm down because their overeagerness might push Kayo away from Satoru.
• Those Two Guys: He is most often than not at Kazu's side.

Gaku Yashiro

Gaku Yashiro

Voiced by: Mitsuru Miyamoto (Japanese), David Collins (English)

Portrayed by: Mitsuhiro Oikawa (film), Shigeyuki Totsugi (drama)

Satoru's homeroom teacher at Mikoto Elementary School, Gaku Yashiro is smart, resourceful, and attentive to all the children. His students greatly respect him, so much so that many of them come to him for advice regarding their problems. He works alongside Satoru to assist Kayo in any way possible.

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• Addiction Displacement: Is trying to stop smoking, and uses candy to curb his cravings. He's not proud of his reliance on the sweets, though.
• Cool Teacher: Gives his students advice, works to help them in their home lives, and is generally competent at mediating disputes in the classroom.
• Meaningful Name: His first name, "Gaku," means "education," and he's a schoolteacher.
• Parental Substitute: Yashiro often treats Satoru like his own son, causing the latter to muse that, if he ever were to have a father, he thinks it'd be ideal if they were like Yashiro.
• Pretty Boy: One of his notable traits is being extremely good-looking. As a result, his female students are quite smitten with him.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: One of the most level-headed and attentive characters in the story, who hears Satoru out about Kayo's situation and personally contacts Sachiko to help catch Kayo's mother.

Misato Yanagihara

Misato Yanagihara

Voiced by: Hina Kino (Japanese), Mela Lee (English)

^{Click here to see Misato as an adult.} 

Misato is a classmate of Satoru's. A spoiled girl, Misato is shown to make fun of Kayo.

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• All of the Other Reindeer: By her own hand, she unwittingly ostracized herself from her classmates by falsely accusing Kayo of theft.
• Alpha Bitch: She bullies Kayo by making fun of her poverty.
• The Atoner: She makes a great effort to raise funds for Satoru's treatment after he falls into a coma. She is also considerably ashamed of what she attempted to do to Kayo.
• Attention Whore: She likes to be the center of attention by making Kayo her stepstool. She attempts to one-up Kayo when Satoru starts paying attention to her until it completely backfires on her.
• Cannot Spit It Out: She is shown to be deeply ashamed and angry with herself for what transpired between her, Satoru and Kayo, but none of them make a move until Satoru realizes that she's in harm's way, risks his life and ends up hospitalized for 15 years by trying to save her. She then dedicates all her efforts to atone her faults.
• Girlish Pigtails: She sports a pair of pigtails.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: She is utterly left alone by her classmates when her attempt to accuse Kayo of theft backfires. She is also shown to be increasingly jealous and saddened of how Satoru's group becomes gradually more closely knit.
• I Owe You My Life: Satoru's friends deduce that someone tried to kill him precisely because he was attempting to save Misato's life. It's implied by her efforts to raise money for Satoru's treatment that she was made aware of this as well as proceeding out of her own drive to redeem herself.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She completely repents of her bullying of Kayo and her behavior by making every effort possible to raise funds for Satoru's treatment; she is later shown to be received with open arms when they reunite years later.
• Oh, Crap!: She is floored and frightened by the anger she provokes in Satoru, who defends Kayo from her accusations of theft. This leaves her shamed for almost the rest of the story.
• Puppy Love: Implied. It's apparent that Misato might have something close to a crush on Satoru, this being the reason why she tries to badmouth Kayo.
• Reformed Bully: Much to Satoru's surprise, she spearheaded the campaign to raise funds for his treatment, and later attends their reunion.
• Sacrificial Lamb: Satoru realizes that he made her a target with the ostracizing that she's going through, so he seeks to protect her as well.
• She's All Grown Up: When she attends the group's reunion to celebrate Satoru's waking up from his coma, the men (including Satoru) are left blushing at her sight, having grown into a very beautiful woman.
• Spoiled Brat: She is considerably more well-off than Kayo, making fun of her relative poverty.
• Stubborn Mule: She knows that she's in the wrong, but she's largely unable to apologize for what she did and used to do to Kayo until she does so with her actions.
• Unwitting Pawn: She is used by the killer to lure his pursuant, the latter who is trying to save her.
• You Are Worth Hell: Satoru almost dies and spends most of his life in a coma because of his efforts to save her from the killer.

Koichi Hamada

Koichi Hamada

Voiced by: Asami Yoshida (Japanese), Cristina Valenzuela (English)

Hamada is a member of the school's ice hockey team that won the 1988 national championship. A classmate of the boys, Hamada is visibly uncomfortable with the attention that the championship has brought on himself, especially from the girls.

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• Jerk Jock: He is a star athlete at school and has a permanently sour attitude to match.
• No Guy Wants to Be Chased: As the description states, he doesn't like the girls' attention or their praise towards him.
• Not So Above It All: While he doesn't care for everyone's praise, he gets visibly mad at Satoru's apparent attempt to upstage him at their race. This is a case of It's Personal because he's supposed to be trained in ice skating, while Satoru would be considered an amateur.
• Oh, Crap!: He is surprised at how Satoru is able to overtake him in their ice skating race.
• Perpetual Frowner: He's never seen smiling.
• Pet the Dog: Satoru lets him win in both the previous timeline and the new one. The first time, it's implied that he doesn't want to upstage Hamada; the second time around, because he isn't sure if winning is going to make a difference with the events he is trying to prevent.
• Sore Loser: If his reaction to nearly losing to Satoru is any indication, he does not take a loss very well.
• Unwanted Harem: Albeit he isn't the focus of the story, Hamada has the attention of most of the girls in class, though he doesn't quite like it.

Supporting Characters

Jun "Yuuki" Shiratori

Jun "Yuuki" Shiratori

Voiced by: Takahiro Mizushima (Japanese), Max Mittelman (English)

Portrayed by: Kento Hayashi (film), Masato Yano (drama)

A food delivery worker, "Yuuki" was a close friend of Satoru's in 1988, and, despite being much older than them, was a friend to kids in general. His kind-hearted relationship with the neighborhood children makes him the primary suspect when three of them are kidnapped and murdered.

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• Catchphrase: He often tells people to "bring out your courage" ("yuuki"), which is why he's nicknamed "Yuuki". Kids whom he tells this to tend to take this advice to heart, so someone using this is a good way to identify that they're friends with him.
• Fall Guy: Is unknowingly this for three of the killer's murders.
• Friend to All Children: He likes to talk to and give advice to children, and the serial murders were blamed on him because the victims were known to hang out with him.
• Kindhearted Simpleton: Though childish and seemingly rather dimwitted, Yuuki is one of the nicest characters in the story.
• Meaningful Name: "Shiratori" means "swan." In the heavy Buddhist symbolism of the series, it's likely that his name references an old buddhist story about a swan being shot down by Siddhartha's cousin, Devadatta. In that story, the swan is wounded, but alive; Siddhartha argues that he wants to nurse it back to health, so it should belong to him, while Devadatta argues that the law states that anything shot down belongs to the person who shot it. The dispute is eventually resolved when an old sage rules that, if the swan were able to speak, it would say that it wants to live, and so, it should go to the person who wants to help it do so. Upon hearing this, Devadatta realizes that all things have feelings and wish to live, and agrees it was the right choice. As Yuuki was framed by the killer, and Satoru is working to save him, this sets him up as the swan, with Satoru as Siddhartha and the killer as Devidatta.
• Mistaken for Pedophile: Played for Drama. This is what makes him the main suspect of the kidnapped children investigation.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: All the kids call him "Yuuki," meaning "courage," since he's always telling them to face their fears and speak their minds.
• Speech Impediment: He has a stuttering problem, which contributes to his socially awkward demeanor.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: Yuuki is far too optimistic and cheery for his own good.

Akemi Hinazuki

Akemi Hinazuki

Voiced by: Akemi Okamura (Japanese), Carrie Keranen (English)

Portrayed by: Tamae Andō (film), Noriko Eguchi (drama)

Akemi Hinazuki is Kayo's abusive mother. Abusing her daughter on weekends, Akemi regularly locks her in a storage shed for added cruelty, and this leads to Kayo's abduction. She is the secondary antagonist for Satoru in his quest to save Kayo's life.

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• Abusive Parents: She regularly beats Kayo, barely feeds her, and, to ensure the bruises on her face heal fast, shoves her head into ice water on numerous occasions, nearly drowning the girl. When Kayo disappears she barely seems to notice, let alone care.
• Cut Himself Shaving: She forces Kayo to claim the bruises are because she "fell". Satoru doesn't buy it for an instant.
• Foil: To Sachiko, in that Sachiko is an incredibly supportive mother who puts her son's well-being before all else, while Akemi cares only about herself.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: Satoru has nothing but contempt for her, considering her tearful breakdown to be one of self pity than of any regret for her abuse of Kayo. Kayo doesn't buy it either.
• Hate Sink: She was a horrible mother who almost killed Kayo from the abuse.
• Hidden Depths: For most of the story, she seems like nothing more than an abusive lunatic who cares for her daughter only as a punching bag. However, when confronted by Yashiro and Child Services, she is revealed to be far more human and broken than initially believed.
• Shovel Strike: She attempts a dangerous form of this on Sachiko with a snow shovel. Kayo stops her from delivering a fatal blow.
• Troubled Abuser: She was physically abused by her ex-husband. The stress from that, along with the fact that Kayo has her father's eyes (in the anime), led to Akemi's abusive nature.

Aya Nakanishi

Aya Nakanishi

Voiced by: Sayaka Kaneko (Japanese), Corina Boettger (English)

Another of the killer's victims in 1988, Aya Nakanishi is a hardworking student with little free time. As such, she has very few close friends, making her a perfect target for kidnapping. She attends Izumi Elementary School.

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• The Ace: She's very smart and talented, and one of the most popular kids at her school.
• Child Prodigy: She reads Shakespeare, attends cram school, and is an excellent pianist. Though, all of this leaves little time for her to make close friends.
• Didn't See That Coming: She turns out to be more accessible and receptive than what she showed the boys the first time they met her. They were definitely not expecting her to show up to their hideout later on.
• Foil: After getting to know her better, Satoru points out that she's exactly the opposite of Kayo - she's sociable, friendly, and independent, while Kayo is (formerly) friendless, abrasive, and needed others to help her - and yet they were both in the same circumstances of wishing for a better future, only to be murdered.
• Girlish Pigtails: She sports pigtails in the manga. In the anime, however, her hair is simply tied in the back.
• Not So Above It All: Even though she's not particularly lonely per se, she joins Satoru's group at their hideout after she apparently rebuked them.
• Ship Tease: With Kazu. As Satoru puts it, he thinks she's "attracted to Kazu's 'manliness', in a way that went beyond 'childishness'".
• What Happened to the Mouse?: In the manga, where she doesn't appear anywhere after Satoru wakes up from his coma, though it is heavily implied that she's the one who made the bento for Kazu in the "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue. The anime rectifies this, and makes sure◊ to include her◊ in the reunion the friends had in celebration of Satoru's visit to Hokkaido.

Takahashi

Takahashi

Voiced by: Eiji Takeuchi (Japanese), Kyle Hebert (English)

Portrayed by: Tsutomu Takahashi (film), Hiroki Konno (drama)

Satoru's boss at Oasi Pizza, Takahashi is abrasive and arrogant, though he seems to genuinely care for Airi.

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• Bait the Dog: Helps Satoru save Airi's life, at which point he reveals he only did so to take credit for her rescue. That said, Satoru himself wonders if that was a self-serving act or if the manager was doing it to cover for him, since telling the police Satoru had just been there would just set them on his trail. In fact, the manager himself indirectly requests that Satoru thank him, which would suggest there was, indeed, at least some degree of altruism in his actions. The end result is the same - Airi is saved and the police are still clueless as to his whereabouts - , so Satoru decides it doesn't matter.
• Jerkass Has a Point: While he's far more smug and jerkish about it than necessary, Takahashi is technically doing the right thing by the law's standards by working with the police to catch Satoru. Satoru even comments that he'd do the same thing if he were in his position.

Sawada

Sawada

Voiced by: Tōru Ōkawa (Japanese), Will Barrett (English)

Portrayed by: Tetta Sugimoto (film), Hidekazu Mashima (drama)

An old reporter friend of Sachiko's, Sawada is still investigating the 1988 kidnappings in the present, believing the true killer was never caught. Observant and determined, Sawada is a helpful ally to Satoru in his quest to unravel the truth regarding the killer.

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• Intrepid Reporter: He was a reporter in the past, and believes the true kidnapper was never caught, leading to his continued investigation of the incident decades later.
• The Mentor: He functions as a version of this to Kenya in the new timeline, mentoring and assisting him in his investigation of the killer.
• The Only One I Trust: In the present, he's the only one Sachiko informs regarding her suspicions about the killer, and he is also one of the two people who believe Satoru was framed for his mother's murder, and assists him in any way he can.

Untagged Spoiler Characters

Kumi

Kumi

Voiced by: Reika Uyama (Japanese)

Portrayed by: Miyu Ando (drama)

A fourth grader whom Satoru befriends during his post-coma rehabilitation.

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• Cheerful Child: Despite her life-threatening condition, she is almost always wearing a smile.
• Delicate and Sickly: She's in the hospital for leukemia, although she does her best not to put on the appearance of someone sickly. She gets through it after a bone marrow transplant from her sister, and ends up making it to middle school in good health.
• Demoted to Extra: In the manga, she's quite a prominent character in the Post-Coma arc. In the anime, however, she has only three or four scenes in total.
• Littlest Cancer Patient: Has leukemia, and, for quite a while, wears a hat to cover the fact that her hair is gone due to the treatments.
• Precocious Crush: Is heavily implied to have a crush on Satoru, who is years older than her.

The Killer's Brother

The abusive and sociopathic older sibling of the killer, "Brother" shows up only in flashbacks in the manga, and is one of the primary factors that lead to the killer's sadistic nature.

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• Accidental Murder: While trying to keep one of his rape victims from screaming for help, he accidentally killed her, something for which he only shows concern for because he's scared of being caught for it.
• Adapted Out: He doesn't appear at all in the anime or the live action adaptations. Seeing as his only appearance is in the manga, the killer's backstory is cut almost entirely in the anime and live action adaptations.
• Asshole Victim: He's killed by the very brother whom he tried to frame for murdering a girl.
• Big Brother Bully: He physically assaulted his younger brother for years, only stopping when he began using him as a subordinate.
• The Bully: He was known to regularly attack students at his school.
• Frame-Up: After accidentally murdering one of his rape victims, he planned to frame his younger brother for the crime. This didn't end well for him.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Regardless of his one time appearance, he is still the overarching antagonist since he was the reason why his brother became a psychologically broken Serial Killer.
• Hate Sink: He was a serial rapist who coerced his abused brother into being his accomplice. Not only that he also ruined his brother's life by psychologically breaking him.
• Posthumous Character: He was dead before the events of the story.
• Serial Rapist: He raped dozens of young girls over the course of a few years, using his brother to lure them to a shed.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Despite his very limited appearances, he manages to be one of the most wicked characters in the story, and is one of the main reasons why his brother became a serial killer.
• The Sociopath: He raped numerous little girls, beat his younger brother, and tried to frame said sibling when he accidentally murdered a girl, all while never showing a shred of remorse or empathy.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: He had no idea his actions would contribute to his brother becoming a psychopathic murderer. Not that he would have cared.