Characters / Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches: The Main Couple

Character index | Yamada and Shiraishi | The Supernatural Studies Club | The original witches | Other characters from the first witch war | The two other witch groups | Other characters from the second witch war

The main Official Couple of Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches.

Warning: The story has several plot twists and other revelations upon revelations. Beware of spoilers.

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Both

• Amnesiac Lover: In chapter 212, it's revealed Yamada and Shiraishi had started dating since their first year in high school, a year before their presumed first meeting. They forgot each other because Shiraishi accepted the role of the "Original Witch" who enabled the witch powers at the school, so she could be with Yamada, at the cost of having everyone except for Yamada forget her and she would forget him when she leaves school during her senior year. Even after all the memory wipes, they find their way back to one and another.
• Babies Ever After: At the end of the series, Yamada and Shiraishi get married and some years later, share their story with their two children.
• Energetic and Soft-Spoken Duo: Yamada yells a lot of his lines, and he usually expresses himself in a very brash and crude way, while his girlfriend Shiraishi is a lot quieter, hardly ever shouts and is generally more polite and well-mannered (though she also has a knack for Brutal Honesty at times).
• Hair-Contrast Duo: Yamada has dark blue hair in contrast to Shiraishi's blonde hair, and they form a Red Oni, Blue Oni relationship.
• High-School Sweethearts: Yamada and Shiraishi meet in high school and start dating soon after. They're still together, married with kids, more than 10 years later.
• Official Couple: They're the main couple of the series, starting to date from chapter 90. The series ends with them married.
• One True Love: Yamada and Shiraishi truly love each other and have never loved anyone else, fate has them meet again and again despite any memory-wipes (though actually, it's the wish Shiraishi made when she became the original witch that has them meet again as long as she goes to Suzaku), and they go from High-School Sweethearts to Happily Married with kids at the end.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Yamada is a very classic Hot-Blooded red to Shiraishi's Stoic blue. Downplayed since they both have blue as their default mood, but Yamada is so easy to rile up that you barely notice it.
• Second Year Protagonist: The story begins shortly after Yamada and Shiraishi have started their second year. The story does follow them into their third year, but given that most of their third year is skipped, they're second-year students for the majority of the series.
• Single-Target Sexuality: Yamada and Shiraishi are solely romantically interested in each other. However, it's downplayed in Yamada's case as he is able to be turned on by other girls and fantasize about them, especially before the Relationship Upgrade, but it's still obvious that he is more attracted to Shiraishi than the others.
• Twice Shy: The reason they take a relatively long time to start dating is that they're both too awkward to talk about feelings for each other. Later on, shyness is also the main reason for any trouble in their relationship because they can't bring themselves to say it whenever something's bothering them.
• Undying Loyalty: They're completely loyal to each other. Ever since the point where Yamada fears that Itou's rumor has made her friends ditch her, so he switches bodies with Itou and goes through a lot of trouble to dismiss the rumor. Similarly, Shiraishi does everything she can to get Yamada back to the club in case he lost his memories, and later promising to be by his side as much as she can.
• Uptight Loves Wild: Yamada is a rough-and-tumble Hot-Blooded former delinquent. Shiraishi is an honor student. They are still each other's One True Love, and in fact Shiraishi originally fell in love with Yamada exactly because he called her out on being boring instead of admiring her stoic and studious attitude.

Ryu Yamada

Ryu Yamada

Voiced by: Ryōta Ōsaka (Japanese), Newton Pittman (English), Alejandro Orozco (Latin American Spanish)

Portrayed by: Yusuke Yamamoto

The main protagonist of the story and one of the "rookie" members of the Supernatural Studies Club. Has the copying power which means he can copy the power of a witch by kissing. Suffers from a Friendless Background and a boring life at the start, but after suffering an Accidental Kiss with Urara Shiraishi, a whole new world and a lot of friends (and love interests) open up to him.

Ten years later, in the epilogue, he's a valued employee at some kind of engineering firm. He marries Shiraishi, and a few years later, he has two children with her.

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• Above the Influence: Early in the series, when Miyamura suggests that Yamada could use the charm power on Shiraishi to make her do anything he wants, Yamada first nosebleeds at the thought, but then refuses.
• Accidental Pervert: Though he can be a bit of a pervert, the awkward situations he ends up in are usually accidental. For example, when he swaps bodies with Shiraishi and encounters Odagiri in the bath. As ridiculous as it sounds to Odagiri, Shiraishi really did ask Yamada to get naked in her body and take a bath for her.
• Adaptational Attractiveness: He looks somewhat more Bishonen-like in the anime. Actually, since the anime is drawn in the same art style as the manga has after Art Evolution, episode 1 Yamada looks glaringly more Bishonen-like than chapter 1 Yamada - by the last episode, it has evened out more.
• Adaptational Dumbass: In a case of Character Exaggeration, his inability to grasp complicated concepts reaches new heights in live-action drama where he generally cannot understand any of his friends' observations without long explanations, the most noteworthy example being when Shiraishi has to use five minutes of an episode to explain to him how his copy power works, and whose powers he has copied.
• Aesop Amnesia: Despite how many times Shiraishi tells him that he shouldn't be afraid of telling her about his feelings and worries, and that she won't be angry with him for telling the truth, he doesn't completely seem to learn the lesson; he constantly avoids telling her things that she should know, but that he fears will upset her.
• After-School Cleaning Duty: After his friends forget him the first time, he devotes himself to this to have at least some purpose in his school life.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: He has been shown begging on his knees a couple of times, like when he wants Nancy and Sid to introduce him to a new witch in order to overwrite Kotori's power.
• All-Loving Hero: He doesn't always show it, but he has extreme amounts of compassion and patience. He doesn't give up on helping witches like Noa and Rika no matter how much they mistreat him or oppose him, he managed to forgive Odagiri and (temporarily) Ushio despite the notion that they ruined his life, he puts his club on the line to help Kimishima, he goes out of his way to save Kaori who is a member of an enemy group, and he quickly comes to terms with the fact that Miyamura initially didn't trust him at all. The only ones he doesn't show compassion are people who seem to be nasty entirely for selfish, superficial reasons.
• All of the Other Reindeer: At the start because he is distrusted as a delinquent. Later in the series, even though he has friends, this trope is still parodied as they like to remind him now and then that "she didn't want to talk to you because you are Yamada" or similar insults.
• Almighty Janitor: He is considered a nobody by the general student body, and yet he's one of the most significant figures when it comes to solving problems and keeping the witches in check. It was especially noteworthy when he was student council secretary which is generally seen as a lowly position that allows other members to order him around, but Nancy pointed out that he was the student council's ace because of his copy power.
• Always in Class One: Averted at the start of the story where he is in class B, but played straight in his third year when he's moved to class A. During his first year, he was sometimes stated as being in class A and other times in class E, but it isn't known which one is his intended class and which one is a writer's mistake.
• Always Save the Girl: The primary reason he helps Miyamura become president is because he saw a future in which Shiraishi becomes unhappy and lonely because Tamaki becomes president and she is his secretary - and he wants to change that future for all costs. Not because he especially wants to see Miyamura as the president.
• Ambiguously Bi: Not at all to the degree of Miyamura or even Tsubaki, but he becomes surprisingly comfortable with kissing other guys later on in the series. He has a couple of Stupid Sexy Flanders moments with Miyamura and mentions that during the second ceremony, he was almost distracted from his wish because he was looking at Ushio's underwear (even though there were also girls with exposed underwear present).
• Amnesiac Hero: Albeit not one who makes a big deal out of it initially, since it is only about a year of his life that he cannot remember. He eventually gets his memories back.
• Amusing Injuries: He frequently gets comically hurt, especially when he uses the precognition power on Itou who apparently wants to see him getting comically hurt...
• And Another Thing...: When he leaves Yamazaki's office in chapter 61 after realizing he didn't find the seventh witch after all, he suddenly turns around in the doorway and asks Yamazaki if he has seen Tamaki recently, implying that Yamada is suspicious of Tamaki being up to something.
• Anger Born of Worry: Sometimes reacts this way towards Shiraishi, like when she tries to take the blame of the school fire in his place, or when she follows him around to meet the seventh witch instead of fleeing.
• Anti-Hero: At the start, he is anti-hero of the pragmatic type. Later, he transforms into more of a traditional hero, though he can still show a pragmatic streak if he needs to.
• Antiquated Linguistics: He talks in a very old-fashioned way (or at least tries to) when he plays the Fortune Teller "Dragon Dayama".
• Anxiety Dreams: He tends to get these - combined with Asleep in Class - whenever he has stuff happening to him that he fears will affect his relationship to Shiraishi. In the dreams, Shiraishi will always break up or refuse to see him because of said stuff, but outside of the dreams she accepts it.
• Apathetic Student: At the start of the series, he doesn't care about school one bit, is constantly close to eviction due to his bad grades and only hangs around because he doesn't know what else to do. Later on, he comes to enjoy going to school due to having friends, but he remains fairly apathetic towards the actual schoolwork until the very end of the series where he tries to get accepted into university.
• Arch-Enemy: To Yuri who is the only villain who has a personal score to settle with him, unlike the others who'd have left him alone if he hadn't interfered with their plans.
• Asleep in Class: He is mentioned to do this constantly at the start of the story. It also sometimes happens on-screen, particularly when he's having Anxiety Dreams.
• Backported Development: He starts out the series as a Jerk with a Heart of Gold and matures into a Nice Guy. In the flashback from chapters 157 to 161 that shows his first year, he's portrayed with the same personality as his present-day self, meaning that he's not nearly as apathetic, rude and surly as he should be in that point in the timeline.
• Badass Boast: He sometimes manages to pull these boasts off when he's feeling confident enough. For example when he tricks Noa's friend Fukazawa to swap bodies with him instead of Shiraishi:
  Yamada: Good thing I already switched bodies, just in case...!! Things have turned out quite nicely!!
• Bash Brothers: He and Ushio always had each other's backs in street fights during their delinquent days.
• Bathtub Scene: In Shiraishi's body, he has a short one (and somewhat awkward one because Itou suddenly enters the bathroom) in the bonus chapter about his and Itou's sleepover.
• Beat Them at Their Own Game: When Ushio wants to steal Nancy's power to gain an advantage in election race, Yamada's solution is copying the power before Ushio can steal it to fight fire with fire.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Over time, he actually becomes a fairly nice guy in casual situations, but if you provoke him sufficiently, his old delinquent side will resurface.
• Bewildering Punishment: The Downer Beginning of the series as well as his flashback with Himekawa is due to him being angry and miserable because he has no idea (until he finds out his memory was changed) why Ushio suddenly betrayed him and framed him for the street fight, making him the outcast of the school.
• Big Damn Heroes: He saves Kaori from being molested (or possibly worse) by violently kicking her ex-boyfriend into a tree so that the two molesters run away in fear.
• Big Eater: Not of the Obsessed with Food type, but when he does eat, he eats a lot. He manages to give Odagiri a Balloon Belly so that she looks pregnant when he has swapped bodies with her and eats from a buffet.
• Big Entrance: When he wants to ask Yamazaki for help regarding the memory wipe, and chooses to bust the student council's door open before doing so.
• Blue Is Heroic: He has blue hair, blue eyes, and is the definite hero of the story.
• Boisterous Bruiser: Hot-Blooded, reckless, not afraid to shout and a good fighter. He's a bit smaller and younger than your average Boisterous Bruiser, though.
• Book Dumb: He's far from the best student and has trouble grasping complicated concepts, but he's surprisingly observant and intuitive. Later, it becomes more and more obvious that school simply doesn't motivate him, and when properly motivated, his brain works perfectly well.
• Boring Insult: Twice, he manages to rile up Shiraishi which eventually makes her fall in love with him by calling her out on being so uptight and boring, though both times it's a matter of him bluntly speaking his mind more than actually intending to insult her.
• Break the Cutie:
  • He got hit by this hard after meeting Rika. Instead of losing his memories, everyone's memories of him got replaced. He was, for a while, alienated by his former friends as he was nothing but a stranger to them until they regained their memories.
  • Subverted when everybody forget him the second time around. Before he gets to the breaking point, a mix of Shiraishi's diary preparations and the machinations of Ushio make his old friends accept him into their rows even if they cannot remember him.
• Break Them by Talking: A very beloved tactic of his when someone he wants to help doesn't want to be helped.
• Breaking the Bonds: When Noa's friends capture him and tie him up to question him, he first sits helplessly still to find out what they're up to. Once he decides that they need a good beating to come to their senses, he effortlessly frees himself of his ropes.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: While he is naturally Book Dumb to some degree, he's able to get better grades than he usually does when he gets his act together:
  • He did manage to pass his first summer make-up exam without help from smarter friends, and he has mentioned at one point that he doesn't really take school work seriously until he's threatened with expulsion. The fact that he actually got into a prestigious high school is also saying something.
  • When Shiraishi helps him study for the spring make-up exam, he gets straight A's all over, proving that he is only Book Dumb because the school system cannot motivate him.
• Bully Hunter: He dislikes bullying, especially evidenced by his reaction to Sasaki in the first chapter, but he also regularly goes after people he thinks are bullies in later chapters.
• Burning with Anger: When he swears to find the witch who messed up Shiraishi.
• Butt-Monkey: He seems to get most of the slapstick, the harshest jokes and the blame directed at him.
• Calling Your Attacks: Not normally, but when he fights some thugs to help/avenge Itou, he dubs his signature roundhouse kick "Crushing Tornado Kick" as a homage to her since she did call all of her attacks.
• Cannot Spit It Out: He often suffers from this problem, both in the first part of the story regarding his love for Shiraishi, but also about his worries later on.
• Can't Act Perverted Toward a Love Interest: When he admits that he has feelings for Shiraishi, he gets much more awkward about kissing her, to the point that he cannot do it in front of other people. He also panickily turns away when he sees her naked while he didn't have a problem with stripping in her body or touching her breasts in the early chapters.
• Captain Morgan Pose: He does this pose on Yamazaki's desk the first time he meets Yamazaki, to threaten him by bringing his foot dangerously close to his face. According to the Flavor Text, it was comically deconstructed in that Yamada painfully strained his leg afterwards.
• Casanova Wannabe: He’s only a Chick Magnet because girls fall for his altruistic personality when they get to know him. Otherwise, he has no idea about how to pick up girls on a short notice, and he is often rejected as a total creep when he tries to kiss girls he’s just met.
• Catapult Nightmare: Happens to him when he copies Noa's power (which induces a Flashback Nightmare) and dreams about her past.
• Cathartic Chores: When Rika wipes his friends' memories of him, he starts being really passionate about his After-School Cleaning Duty which works as a (temporary) coping mechanism for his loneliness.
• Chained by Fashion: He wears two chain necklaces and a set of chains criss-crossing his shirt when he's putting on a delinquent act to help Hikaru.
• Chairman of the Brawl: When enraged that Miyamura and Itou made him waste time with Sarushima's power, he tries to beat them up with a chair.
• Character Catch Phrase: "Kiss me", "I want you to kiss me" or some variation of that. Used quite often, since he does want people to kiss him quite often.
• Character Check: At the start of the series, he's a Jerk with a Heart of Gold. In the latter half of the series, he has developed into a Nice Guy, though he'll still have a couple of moments here and there where he acts somewhat rude and unreasonable, for example when Alex refused his kiss for understandable reasons, and when he randomly leaves his friends during the college preparation trip.
• Character Narrator: The series doesn't have a narrator in most chapters, but when narration boxes do pop up, it's always Yamada's own thoughts and recountings that are shared. Even the Opening Narration which seems to be told from a third-person perspective is revealed in the last chapter to be Yamada reading aloud from a book he himself wrote.
• Characterization Marches On: The action of his that starts the entire plot is actually really weird if you look at how he is now. He is having a bad day when he sees Shiraishi on the nearest staircase. He only knows her as an annoying teacher's pet and apparently considers it alright to take out at least some of his anger on her, so he stomps in front of her and gives her an obnoxious grin. Cue him slipping, them swapping bodies, and the story beginning. While Yamada later in the series is still not always pleasant when you make him angry, he is far too just to take out his anger on a completely unrelated person.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: He's strong enough to casually punch holes in walls and send people flying several meters with a single kick.
• The Chew Toy: His minor misfortunes are usually seen as comedic. Apparently, Itou sees him as one in-universe, since all of the visions he got from her with Sarushima's power were about him getting amusingly injured.
• Chick Magnet: He has attracted quite a lot of girls throughout the series - Shiraishi, Odagiri, Otsuka (though she is attracted to Shiraishi's personality in his body), Takigawa, Konno, Kimishima, Sasaki (at least in the first chapter), Himekawa, and Nancy are obviously in love with him, Hino was in love with him during their first year, and Itou and Sarushima are sometimes implied to have crushes on him. He's also received Ship Tease with most other girls.
• Chivalrous Pervert: While not to the degree of Miyamura, Yamada is a teenage boy and is as such not above having perverted thoughts and interests. However, what really defines him is his huge respect for the girls he meets and his insistence to help them.
• The Chosen One: Shiraishi believes he is this when it comes to helping the witches, stating that it may not have been a coincidence that he met her and Odagiri and helped change their lives.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: He helps his friends because they are, well, his friends, and he helps the witches for assorted reasons, but when it comes to some of the other people he has met, he seems to help them only for the sake of helping them, not because it would immediately benefit him in any way.
• Clueless Chick-Magnet: He has new girls falling in love with him pretty often, but it's extremely rare for him to actually notice.
• Cluster Bleep-Bomb: He invokes this by purposely censoring himself when he's talking to Kotori about what dirty thoughts Shiraishi might have.
• Color Motif: Blue. He has blue hair, blue eyes and is regularly shown on blue backgrounds, sometimes to contrast with Shiraishi’s red. In personality, he’s not what you’d expect from the color blue, though. (Except for possibly at the start).
• Comedic Underwear Exposure:
  • At the third ceremony, Takuma pulls his pants down as part of his Time-Freeze Trolling Spree.
  • Arisugawa accidentally pulls his pants halfway down when she grabs them to prevent him from walking away on the first student council trip.
• Comical Overreacting: Constantly. Sometimes he even freaks out over his friends doing completely mundane things such as playing cards or cooking, just because he assumes they're doing crazy things that he should overreact to.
• Comically Missing the Point: When he's about to use the manipulation power on Noa, she thinks the power is activated with a kiss like most witch powers, while Yamada isn't aware that she doesn't know about the headbutt aspect. When Noa says that him using the power on her (i.e. kissing her) in front of everybody else would turn her on, Yamada is hilariously dumbfounded as to why being headbutted at the student council office would turn her on.
• The Comically Serious: He is actually very serious-minded as a rule, almost as much as Shiraishi (if not more) - he just seems more goofy because of his tendency to exaggerate all of his reactions and make Serious Business out of irrelevant, mundane things.
• Contrived Clumsiness: In chapter 68, when Yamada's tired of Tamaki's blabbering, he hits Tamaki with the squeegee he happened to be holding and claims that his hand slipped.
• Conveniently Seated: He sits at the window in his and Shiraishi's classroom. Probably not the best seat for someone who is already not very attentive in class, as looking out of the window has distracted him once.
• Convicted by Public Opinion: Most of the students ostracize him because they heard he was the perpetrator of a street fight, even though none of them know what actually happened (Ushio and Odagiri are another matter since they had Fake Memories implanted where Yamada actually was the perpetrator).
• Corner of Woe: Regularly subverted for laughs. When his plans go wrong, he's sometimes seen sulking in a corner or at a table, but when others try to cheer him up/make fun of him, he angrily gets up and reveals he wasn't really sulking, just preparing for his comeback.
• Cranial Eruption: He always gets at least one of these whenever Odagiri beats him up.
• Crazy Jealous Guy: Subverted. He seems to act like this when he sees Shiraishi and Tsubaki together at a book store, but then correctly deduces an entirely innocent explanation for it, and concludes that he's being messed with.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Despite how dopey or reckless he often acts, he can be really competent when he gets serious enough.
• Crush Blush: Often gets embarrassed to the point of blushing around Shiraishi.
• Curse Cut Short: "Are we gonna have s..." - after which his inner monologue is interrupted by Shiraishi asking a question.
• Curtains Match the Window: Blue hair and blue eyes.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Subverted when it comes to his past with Himekawa. At first, he only gets happy memories back, and we soon find out that the terrible part that Himekawa had erased wasn't terrible to Yamada; it was only terrible to Himekawa because she had her heart broken from finding out that he loved someone else than her. Also subverted when it comes to the next part of his part since it turns out he had nothing to do with why the memories were erased.
• Daydream Surprise: He gives the readers one at the start of chapter 186, making you think (especially because of the ending of the former chapter) that Yamada and Shiraishi are about to have Their First Time - only for it to be revealed to be one of his fantasies.
• Delayed Reaction: Happens during his and Itou's sleepover, when he (in Shiraishi's body) lazily lies down to sleep in Itou's bed, only to realize that he's sharing a bed with a girl.
• Delinquent: He was one before high school, often getting into fights. He changed his ways when he started high school, but seemed to become one again for a short while before he met Shiraishi.
• Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: A recurring theme of his character arc is that he struggled to find a place to belong (and thus turned to delinquency) before he became a member of the Supernatural Studies Club, and even then he feels unsure of what he should do in life. His quest to find out why he has the copy power and his Chronic Hero Syndrome (helping others to find a place to belong) derives from this, and in the college preparation arc it's shown that he has no idea what he wants to do after high school.
• Determinator: In the best hero fashion, he doesn't like to give up. He just gets angrier and angrier and tries again.
• Disappointing Older Sibling: While she has enough Pet the Dog to show that she does care about him, his little sister Tatsumi doesn't show him any respect most of the time and clearly sees him as an easily manipulable halfwit.
• Distinguishing Mark: When Shiraishi writes down his physical traits in her diary as a counter-measure so she'll be able to remember him again if her memory is wiped, she notes that he has two distinguishing marks; a birthmark on his back (that Yamada himself didn't even know about) and a "strange thing between his legs".
• The Ditherer: After finding out that Himekawa had feelings for him, and that he might have returned them, he suddenly becomes unsure of whether he wants to be Himekawa or Shiraishi (even if his Gut Feeling says Shiraishi). In the end, he decides for Shiraishi, probably because she jokes that she'll find a new boyfriend if he leaves her hanging for too long.
• Does Not Know His Own Strength: Happens when he swaps bodies with Alex and tries out for various sports clubs. He comically maims several co-players, and in the boxing club he breaks the punching bag with one punch, all because he cannot control Alex's tremendous strength.
• Don't Think, Feel: There seems to be a certain consistency in that he's a great deal smarter when he lets his instincts guide him than when he's purposely trying to think and analyze. That probably explains why he's Book Dumb and oblivious when given explanations, but can be clever and cunning in other matters.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: He has enough pride that he usually doesn't let others show open pity towards him. It seems to mostly count towards guys, though - he's slightly more comfortable letting girls have compassion with him.
• The Drag-Along: In some cases – especially at the start of the series when he was more apathetic – he prefers to just hang out in the clubroom and relax, but is dragged into misadventures by his friends.
• Drama Queen: Downplayed. He can always be talked out of it, but he usually makes a bit of an effort to act weirdly or sulk alone when he's feeling upset or dissatisfied about something.
• The Dreaded: For a while, he made everybody in school shake in fear because of his involvement in the violent street fight. One year later, it seems like he has lived down the fight, though not the terrible reputation it gave him - people still tend to hate him, but he isn't really feared anymore. The students' fear of him comes back when everybody gets their memories of his fight with Dark Takuma back.
• Dream Reality Check: Right after Shiraishi says yes to become his girlfriend, he thinks it's a dream too good to be true and has to pinch his cheek to convince himself that it's real.
• Driven to Suicide: In his long first year flashback, it's implied that he - after being betrayed by Ushio for seemingly no reason and realizing that everybody but him has fun and enjoys life - at least starts to consider it with his unfinished thought "If things continue like this, I'd rather..."
• Dumbass Has a Point: While Yamada can be dumb when it comes to more complicated schemes, he is regularly the one to preach common sense to his friends.
• Dumbass Teenage Son: He plays this role to some degree in his family, as his sister and probably his mom are smarter than him and easily manipulate him and push him around. He likely takes after his dad who seems to be a Bumbling Dad at best.
• Dynamic Entry: When he jumps in and kicks Kaori's ex into a tree. Overlaps with Big Damn Heroes.
• Early Installment Character-Design Difference: He looked noteworthily older and more masculine and had small eyes when he first appeared. As the series goes on, he starts looking younger and a bit more androgynous - especially due to bigger and more expressive eyes - probably to reflect his increasing kindness. His hair also seems to be a bit longer and more spiky than it was originally.
• Earn Your Happy Ending:
  • In the first witch war and anime: He has to go through various minor problems in the early arcs, only to lose all of his friends and Love Interest in the last arc, but because he manages to never give up, he ends up happy with everything he wanted.
  • In the second witch war, he also goes through some problems like the whole situation with the erased memories, and in the middle of his third year Shiraishi suddenly leaves him and the school with everybody's memories of her erased and doesn't even tell him why, though it's revealed that she did it for justifiable reasons, and when he finally gets her and the memories back, they live happily forever after.
• Eating Lunch Alone: He did it when his friends had forgotten everything about him. He also had a rather sad example at his first make-up exam camp when he realized that everybody else had friends and had fun eating dinner with them, while he was was alone - fortunately, Himekawa came by and invited him to eat dinner with her.
• Eating the Eye Candy: Whenever he feels that a girl's flirting with him (which he doesn't feel very often, mind you), he'll usually give her the elevator eyes from breasts to crotch.
• Et Tu, Brute?: Subverted. He thought for a long time that Ushio had betrayed him by framing him for the street fight, but he really hadn't - he only reported Yamada because he felt morally obligated, and he framed him by accident because he really thought (due to memory manipulation) that Yamada had started the fight. He never meant to betray Yamada.
• Even the Guys Want Him: Of course, it includes Miyamura to the point where his sexuality is a wonder, but other guys are not afraid to get physical with him too: Yamazaki, Tamaki, Tsubaki, and Takuma have all had their moments.
• Everyone Has Standards: Despite all of his trouble-making, he is not a bully. He initially dislikes Shiraishi because he sees her as a suck-up and Insufferable Genius, but when he finds out that she is being systematically bullied, he immediately sides with her.
• Excellent Judge of Character: While Yamada can be socially awkward in other respects, his good Gut Feeling almost always makes him able to tell whether other people have benevolent intentions. He thus often helps students who are viewed as simple jerks by people who are worse judges of character.
• Exhausted Eye Bags: He is briefly seen with these when copying Noa's power made him go into trance instead of properly sleeping for a whole night.
• Expansion Pack Past: At first, it seems like the only major thing there is to his past is the street fight incident with Ushio, but as the series goes on, it's revealed through all the memory wipes and memory recovering that he experienced so many things in his forgotten first high school year that it could practically fill a new series.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: He used to have another hairstyle, but changed it to his signature hairstyle when he started high school to signify that he wanted to be a new and better person.
• Expy: He's essentially a slightly dumber and more actively helpful Daichi Shinagawa - their similarities are seen quite clearly in the Crossover with Flunk Punk Rumble. Yamada's circumstances are different enough to keep him from being a carbon copy, however.
• Extremity Extremist: He mostly fights by kicking, and his strongest attack and Signature Move is a roundhouse kick, but he can also throw a punch if needed.
• Family Theme Naming: He and his sister Tatsumi's name both contain the kanji for "dragon".
• Finger Muzzle: On his fake date with Tsubaki (when he's in Shiraishi's body), he puts a finger on Tsubaki's mouth to seem flirty and at the same time stop Tsubaki from making a Love Confession.
• First Love:
  • To Odagiri. He's the first one she learns to love, and she obsesses with him for all of her high school years, but she eventually marries Ushio.
  • To Shiraishi, of course. Even after all the rumors and misunderstandings that he dated someone before her - someone who turned out to also be Shiraishi.
• Forgot About the Mind Reader: When he copied Kotori’s power and found out that she could also read his mind, he struggled a lot with trying to not think about things he didn’t want her to know.
• Fortune Teller: His role at the club's attraction at the cultural festival, having copied Sarushima's precognition power. He repeats it on the Guam trip.
• Friendless Background: He used to be friends with Ushio, but when Ushio seemingly betrayed him, he became estranged from the rest of the school until he met Shiraishi and Himekawa before that.
• Friendly Rivalry: From elementary school and up until the first few months of high school, his and Ushio's friendship was mostly based on rivalry, from who was the better fighter to who got the most Valentine's Day chocolate. A deconstructed case since that relationship wasn't healthy for either of them and drove them into delinquency, after which they tried to attend different high schools to get a fresh start but happened to meet on the same high school anyways, and soon their friendship ended. When both of them have become a bit more mature by the end of their second year and are able to actually talk about things instead of just competing, they manage to rekindle their friendship again.
• From Zero to Hero: Goes from being a good-for-nothing delinquent who doesn't even garner respect among other delinquents to a unselfish and caring boy who's considered to be one of the school's biggest assets because of his ability to help witches.
• Gasp!: He lets out shocked gasps very often whenever he realizes something or his friends point out his stupidity.
• Gift-Giving Gaffe: As a souvenir from Guam, he buys Tatsumi coconut oil even though she wanted coconut body cream, as he completely obliviously thought they were the same thing.
• Girl on Girl Is Hot: He quite liked seeing Shiraishi and Itou kiss.
• Giving Up the Ghost: Happens to him when Noa strangles him in a fit of jealousy after he helped Kaori.
• Go Through Me: A variant where the person he blocks is also the person he wants to protect. When Leona wants to return to school, Yamada places himself between her and the door to prevent her from returning to the nightmare she fled from because he thinks she only does it for his sake.
• Going Commando: By accident after he swaps bodies with Shiraishi, and she takes off his underwear after sleeping but doesn't have another pair to change with. It makes Rika mistakenly think they have a Commonality Connection.
• Good Is Not Nice: He's pretty much the most heroic character in the series, but he also knows that being straight-up nice isn't always the most efficient way of helping a person.
• Good Parents: While not above some playful teasing, he's nonetheless strongly implied to be a good dad to his two children in the epilogue, spending time cuddling up with them and reading stories to them.
• Good Samaritan: To an increasing degree the further you get into the series. He'll often help people that he's only just met, maybe even people who outright oppose him, due to his Chronic Hero Syndrome.
• Goofy Print Underwear: Not all of his underwear, but he has a pair of the ever-classic polka-dotted boxers.
• Grin of Audacity: He gives a slightly forced, yet very sneaky smile when the plan for him to swap bodies with Shiraishi and trick Tsubaki as to prevent the fire is about to commence.
• Growling Gut: Always occurs to him when he's hungry.
• Guile Hero: He can manipulate people when he wants to, though usually in a benevolent way. A favorited tactic of his is somewhat obnoxiously pinpointing people's weaknesses or insecurity so that they drop their shields and make it easier for him to help them. He has used this tactic against Noa, Miyamura, Rika, Konno and Kaori among others.
• Gut Feeling: He tends to use gut feelings and instincts to plan courses of action, and he's often right.
• Hand Behind Head: After taking a level in kindness (and a few times before), he often does this to show awkwardness.
• Hand Gagging: He immediately covers Miyamura's mouth with his hand when Miyamura is about to start telling Nancy about Yamada's "complicated relationship" to Himekawa.
• Has a Type: He prefers girls who wear their hair loose rather than in pigtails, as he has said to Noa and Nancy. Shiraishi and Tamaki also like to blame him for liking girls with big breasts - he probably does, like most teenage boys, but he may not have an actual preference, given his relationship with Himekawa who is not busty at all.
• He Cleans Up Nicely: He is generally implied to be rather plain-looking, but when Shiraishi takes a bit care of his appearance, he starts considering himself attractive, and going by the expressions of some of his classmates in the background, he isn't the only one.
• Head Desk: He bangs his head into a brick column when he keeps finding himself attracted to Himekawa.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: All students who don't know him hate him or at least distrust him due to his bad reputation, even though has done tons of good deeds. However, to be fair, if you don't know about the witch powers, you wouldn't know about most of his good deeds.
• Heroes' Frontier Step: When he decides to help Noa and her friends out of their misery. Most of his former acts of heroism had slightly selfish elements to them (he helped Kimishima partially to spite Ushio and Yamazaki, he helped Shiraishi because her bullies also bullied him, he helped Sarushima because he himself was also in danger of being blamed for arson etc.), but in Noa's case, he shows unadulterated altruism and empathy (since she was a villain, and his goal of stopping her had already been reached), and this cements his Chronic Hero Syndrome for the rest of the series.
• Heroic BSoD: Goes into one of these when Takuma tells him that Shiraishi is gone from Suzaku High and wished to be forgotten by everyone, freezing in a kneeling position on the ground and seemingly not registering what Takuma says.
• Heroic Fatigue: His Chronic Hero Syndrome sometimes takes a toll on him, and he has to be reminded by his friends (especially Shiraishi) that he needs to think about his own needs once in a while.
• Heroic Resolve: When it comes to willpower. He tends to find a ray of hope to cling to when things technically would be looking hopeless.
• Heroic Sacrifice: He at least tries:
  • He was completely willing to sacrifice his memories so that Miyamura could become president and Leona could be saved. Of course, only after he made the others promise to get him back into the club, but even so he was still prepared that his memories would never come back. As we all know, his sacrifice didn't work as intended...
  • He was also willing to use the seventh witch's power and make himself forgotten so that Tamaki wouldn't lose the presidential election to the enemy's cowardly move.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: He and Miyamura become very close friends during the course of the series, and he hangs out with Miyamura just as often as with Shiraishi. Miyamura presumably wouldn't mind changing the "heterosexual" part, though.
• Hey, That's My Line!: Exclaims this when Ushio says that he's surprised there's more than one power user at the school.
• Hey, You!: When he first got to know Shiraishi, he didn't call her by her name. When he grows closer to her and starts liking her during the next few chapters, he starts using her name much more.
• Hidden Heart of Gold: Especially at the start of the series, he sometimes excuses himself when he helps people by saying he mostly did it to help himself, even if his motives were more or less unselfish.
• Home Nudist: In the epilogue, the first thing he does when he gets home from work is stripping down to his boxers.
• Honor Before Reason: He often follows his heart before his head, like the time when he had the perfect chance to learn about Noa's power and have her notebook as per the plan, but suddenly refused because she refused stopping targeting the witches.
• Hot-Blooded: He acts nonchalant when he is bored, but if something gets his interest, he is definitely this. In fact, it's the main tell that he is in Shiraishi's body - if Shiraishi suddenly acts hot-tempered and hammy, then it isn't actually her.
• How Do I Shot Web?: He tends to struggle with using witch powers that require manual activation (instead of those that activate instantly during the kiss), such as the telepathy power and the manipulation power, and he usually doesn't get the hang of it until he receives personal guidance.
• Hypocritical Humor: Usually, he's the victim of it and/or the one who points it out, but sometimes - especially at the start - he's fully able of being an offender. Especially seen when he complains about other people doing irresponsible things in his body during a body swap, yet doesn't act much more responsible himself.
• I Can See My House from Here: Utters this when looking out of the window on his first ever flight. Miyamura points out that it's unlikely.
• I Can't Do This by Myself: He admits that he probably won't be able to find and ally himself with all of Takuma's witches on his own, so he asks his fellow club members as well as Noa and Ushio for help.
• I Gave My Word: Zigzagged. Usually, he’s very keen on keeping his promises, but he has noteworthily, though in desperation, broken two of the most important promises he gave in the series; letting Shiraishi be his first kiss after the memory wipe and not using Nancy’s power after he copied it.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: He worked hard to get admitted to Suzaku High because he wanted a normal life, which included having friends. Of course, he was friends with Ushio at that point, but he wanted friendships that consisted of more peaceful things than going around and causing street fights. At first, he wasn’t able to make any friends, but after some time, and with luck and perseverance, his wish got fulfilled.
• I Was Just Passing Through: When Noa is staying alone in the study hall, Yamada enters, tells her about the vision she gave him and taunts her for wetting herself. When she asks him if he actually wanted to discuss something, he claims that he was just passing by. Noa points out the unlikeliness in that he just happened to pass by a dead-end hallway in the opposite wing of the school, forcing Yamada to admit that he wants to help her.
• I Will Find You: He realizes that the fact that Shiraishi went out of her way to make him not forget her after she left the school must be a sign that she wants him to find her and declare his love for her again - so that becomes his new goal at the end of his third year. He succeeds when she returns for the graduation.
• I Work Alone: He is sometimes more insistent to do things alone than his friends want him to be - most noteworthily when he has to meet Rika for the first time and when he wants to get back his memories from his first year.
• Idiot Hero: Downplayed. He is smarter than your average Shōnen Idiot Hero, but he does share some of the traits, like being Book Dumb, not understanding complex things in general (at least not in the orthodox way), and rushing into danger without a plan.
• Ignore the Fanservice: When Odagiri comes at him wearing skimpy clothing and a corset, he isn’t fazed at all. He’s just a bit puzzled that she would wear so little clothing on a winter day, and later annoyed that her butt is blocking his view.
• Illness Blanket: When he has swapped bodies with Shiraishi who caught a bad cold, he spends most of the chapter with a blanket wrapped around himself.
• Imagine Spot: Frequently has some funny ones. Usually, his imagination is very crude and simplistic, just like when he draws, but when he - on cue from others - imagines himself about to have sex with Shiraishi, his imagination suddenly becomes unexpectedly detailed...
• In the Name of the Moon: When playing the Masked DK, he shouts a Kamen Rider-inspired creed when he confronts his opponents.
• Indy Ploy: What he usually ends up doing, due to the Unspoken Plan Guarantee of the series - most noteworthily during "Shiraishi's" fake date with Tsubaki and the graduation, at which he has to impress Shiraishi again.
• Inelegant Blubbering: When he cries, he doesn't cry Manly Tears. The expression he made when he cried because his friends got their memories back was apparently so horrible that the readers were not allowed to see it...
• Informed Attribute: He has been mentioned to be very thin a few times, but doesn't look any more skinny than the other guys, and Shiraishi's diary data confirm that he's indeed normal-weight.
• Informed Flaw: Most of his delinquency. While he's certainly got something of a bad attitude at the start, he seems ultimately harmless. He's stated to regularly get into fights with students from other schools, but from what we've seen, he doesn't fight unless he has a very good reason to, or if he needs to defend himself or others. Other delinquent acts he's done are limited to sleeping in class, being too late, and going home too early.
• Informed Loner: People still often call him a friendless loser, but... he has a beautiful girlfriend, more than a dozen good friends, and several girls lusting for him. That's probably more than can be said about your average teenage boy, even if people who don't know him still dislike him.
• Innocently Insensitive: A few times, most notably in Otsuka's arc; when he tries to befriend her and her friends, he instantly starts joking about how stupid they are for having to attend a make-up exam, not realizing that even though that sort of banter may be alright with friends who know you're joking, it doesn't fare as well with strangers. He seems to be aware of this side of himself, however, as when he makes Odagiri cry out of happiness, he thinks he accidentally hurt her.
• Insecure Love Interest: Shortly before they recover everybody's memories, Odagiri jokes about how Shiraishi would clearly say no if Yamada asked her out. He takes it seriously and feels like he may not actually be a good fit for her and that he should probably just move on. Fortunately, Odagiri manages to make him snap out of it.
• Jack of All Stats: In many regards. He's smart when he wants to be, but not to the degree of Shiraishi and Miyamura. He's a very strong fighter, but not quite in series' top tier, being bested by Tsubaki and Asuka among others. He's not ugly, but he's not a real looker either. He's nice, but not quite as gentle-natured as Shiraishi. The only thing that really sets him apart is his Chronic Hero Syndrome.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: In the first witch war. His attitude isn't always the best, but he will go out of his way to help people in trouble. By the time of the second witch war, he has taken so many levels in kindness that he's a Nice Guy.
• Just Friends: He sees his relationship with Odagiri like this to a ridiculous degree, and it's most definitely one-sided. He is completely oblivious to her infatuation and approaches, but he gladly states how fond he is of her as a friend, making the poor girl even more confused.
• Kid Hero: He's 16 when the story begins, and he quickly takes to helping the witches as well as others in need.
• The Klutz: Regularly when the plot or comedy calls for it. The entire story wouldn’t have happened if he had just watched his step on the stairs in the first chapter, and his chaotic first meeting (in the present time) with Himekawa is also facilitated by how he trips on a book.
• Knuckle Cracking: He's often seen doing it when picking fights.
• Large Ham: He often shouts, generally exaggerates all of his moods, and he always overdoes it completely when he has swapped bodies with a girl and has to act like her (ramping up his idea of general girliness instead of actually trying to act like the individual girl).
• Last-Name Basis: Calls almost all people by their last name. He continues referring to Shiraishi by her last name even after they become an item. Everyone is also on last name basis with him except for his family and Ushio after they recommence their friendship.
• Leeroy Jenkins: Half of the time. The other half of the time, he does try a strategy, but he either forgets it, doesn't understand it or simply screws it up, forcing him to wing it anyway.
• Lightning Bruiser: He is fairly quick on his feet, has Charles Atlas Superpower, and can also endure some hits if he needs to.
• Literal-Minded: He takes some of Miyamura's wingman advice a bit too literally. When Miyamura tells him that girls often like an aggressive approach, Yamada understands aggressive as "rowdy" and just stands there, looking mad and yelling, "Kiss me!!!". Kaori thinks he's a freak doing a gorilla impression.
• Living Emotional Crutch: It’s shown that he is this to several of the witches when they forget about him, with Odagiri and Noa going back to their villainous ways, and Shiraishi becoming (subconsciuously) unhappy.
• Look Behind You: Tries to use this tactic when he wants to put Yamazaki under Odagiri's spell. He doesn't succeed because of Asuka's Dynamic Entry.
• Loony Friends Improve Your Personality: The Supernatural Studies Club has changed him, especially some of Miyamura and Itou's antics, but also Shiraishi who may not be loony but certainly has a loony power which kickstarted the plot. Even earlier on, Himekawa did the same thing.
• Loud Gulp: Very often does this whenever he's nervous.
• Love Confession: He gives a somewhat desperate one (that isn't reciprocated) to Shiraishi when she has forgotten him, and a much more genuine one (that is reciprocated) at the end of the first witch war.
• Love Confessor:
  • He confesses to Miyamura that he loves Shiraishi several chapters before he first tries to ask out Shiraishi herself.
  • He confessed the same thing to Hino in his first year, after which she set up a meeting between him and Shiraishi.
• Lower-Class Lout: He's a rare example of this attending a prestiged high school, as he comes from a working class family, and at the start of the series, he's a rude and maladjusted delinquent. He does become closer to a Working-Class Hero over time though.
• Lust Object:
  • To Noa - his other female suitors have a more wholesomely romantic love for him, but Noa's love is clearly both romantic and sexual in nature, with all of her moaning and drooling around him.
  • Also to Miyamura, given how often Miyamura sexual harasses him. It's up for interpretation how much of it is trolling and how much of it is actual lust, though.
• Made of Iron: He (actually Shiraishi in his body) doesn't take much damage from a fall down a flight of stairs - unlike Shiraishi (actually him in her body) who at least has a mild concussion the first time.
• Magic Kiss: Even though some of the witches can use their powers by other means than kissing (headbutting, shaking hands etc.), and Yamada can copy the powers that way, he always needs to kiss to use the powers himself.
• Magnetic Hero: He gets at least one new friend/ally/love interest for each arc. Unlike most magnetic heroes, though, he doesn't have any natural charisma (at least not in-universe), and he often has to go to great lengths to remove people's bad first-hand impressions and make them like and befriend him.
• Man Bites Man: When he tries to fight back against Takuma's evil alter ego, he bites the arm of Yuri who's restraining him.
• Man, I Feel Like a Woman: The first thing he does in Shiraishi and Itou's bodies? Strip down to look at their underwear. The first thing he does in Arisugawa's body? Grope her boobs since "this is his one chance". Averted when he swaps bodies with Odagiri, possibly due to the Running Gag of how he only sees her as a friend no matter what.
• The McCoy: Of the Supernatural Studies Club, being much more (openly) emotional and (again openly) heroic than the calm and logical Shiraishi. Miyamura balances the two.
• Men Can't Keep House: According to Tatsumi, a recurring problem at their household is that Yamada's room is much messier than the rest of the house.
• Meta Guy: He is generally written to react the way that the average viewer would probably react if inserted into his situation (with a sprinkle of Comical Overreacting) - he especially enjoys to point out when the others are acting weird, and when something doesn't makes sense.
• Missing Time: Throughout most of the story, he cannot remember at all what happened between his and Ushio's street fight and his meeting with Shiraishi - time apparently just skipped forward in an instant for him, and he only realizes after seeing a glimpse of Himekawa's past. Later, he gets his memories back.
• Mistaken for Cheating: When he travels one year back in time with Kurosaki's power and sees his past self start dating Shiraishi after Hino sets up the two of them. To get back to the future, he has to kiss Hino, but she thinks it's past!Yamada who's already cheating on Shiraishi few minutes after becoming her boyfriend. As something unusual for the series, this trope is played for drama rather than for laughs, and the presumed cheating along with the notion that Yamada was ruthlessly playing Hino's feelings was what broke their friendship.
• Mistaken for Dying: When Tatsumi sees him with an empty stare (because he’s deep in his thoughts) and toothpaste dripping from his mouth, she panickily asks him to not die on her.
• Mistaken for Gay: This trope actually happens surprisingly little for someone who has become practically indiscriminate about kissing other guys, but it does happen now and then, mostly because Miyamura wants to assume Yamada’s into him. A non-kissing example is when Shiraishi (who had her memory wiped) interrupts Yamada and Tamaki when they are fighting. The Love Bubbles and the way she awkwardly wants to leave the room suggest she thought they were doing other things than fighting…
• More Hero than Thou: When a seventh witch needs to wipe everybody's memories of Ichijo to make Tamaki the presidential election, Yamada and Ushio cannot reach an agreement about who should do it and let himself be forgotten for the sake of the school. A fight breaks out between them and only stops when Ushio does the memory-wipe against Yamada's will.
• Ms. Fanservice: Whenever he is in a girl's body, expect to see said girl's underwear and possibly even more naked skin.
• Muggle Best Friend: Incredibly, he was this to Himekawa and Nancy when he became friends with them the first time as he didn't have his power back then and they were witches.
• My Greatest Failure: He considers the fact that he has neglected Shiraishi (and his old friends in the club) too much to be his greatest failure. Of course, he hasn't truly neglected her, but he definitely hasn't spent so much time with her as he should because of all of his student council work. Because of that, he doesn't mind any irrational things she does when under Ichijo's witch power, because he believes it's his own mistake that things would get so far. He also swears to return to the club again when the council opposition has been defeated, a promise which he keeps.
• Mysterious Past: For a long time, he cannot remember most of what happened between when Ushio betrayed him and when he met Shiraishi, and as such only assumed that he was a loner. After two ceremonies, the trope is subverted as he gets all of his memories back, and the readers are told/shown what happened.
• Mythical Motifs: Dragons. His first name means "dragon", he was shown with a dragon on a cover page, and like a dragon, he's fiery, boisterous and seen as very special.
• Never Gets Fat: He keeps his slim physique throughout the entire series even though he can eat huge amounts of food in one sitting.
• Never Got to Say Goodbye: When Shiraishi moves overseas, he's understandably distressed, and it's made even worse by how he never managed to properly part with her before she left and Takuma wiped everybody's memories of her.
• Nice Guy: He has more or less become this by the time of the second witch war. He still has a couple of Character Check moments here and there where he may act a bit unresonable, but usually he's pleasant to hang around with and his Chronic Hero Syndrome remains.
• Nice to the Waiter: One thing that has drawn a few girls - especially Shiraishi and Odagiri - to him is that he doesn't see anyone as above or below him and doesn't show people more respect just because they're good-looking, honor students or similar. Shiraishi and Odagiri who were used to being revered because of their charms suddenly met someone who actually treated them as equals - and got to know them as the people they actually were.
• No-Respect Guy: Whenever he plays the Only Sane Man, he isn't taken seriously and is often demeaned and made the Butt-Monkey. Maybe people can't take him seriously due to the times he doesn't play the only sane man.
• No-Sell: Witch powers don't work on him. If a witch kisses him, he will automatically use her own power against her and store a copy of the power for later use, and if a witch killer kisses him, nothing happens.
• Non-Uniform Uniform: He never wears the sweater or vest of the Suzaku school uniform, instead wearing the jacket indoors during the cold months.
• Nose Nuggets: He's seen picking his nose a couple of times, using the excuse that he's just scratching it. As such, Arisugawa also does it when she impersonates him during the body-swap game.
• Not a Morning Person: He's always shown to be dead-tired when he gets up early.
• Not Good with Rejection: As long as he doesn't know the exact reason for being rejected, or doesn't feel it's justified, he isn't very good with it. When Shiraishi said that she was in love with someone else, he didn't stop until he found out who that someone else was.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Shiraishi points out that Noa and Yamada aren’t all that different when it comes to their good hearts; they both tried to use a witch power for somewhat selfish reasons and ended up being close friends with people they thought were their enemies.
• Not-So-Innocent Whistle: He awkwardly whistles and looks to the side while giving a vague answer when Ushio asks him if he and his friends went to the clubhouse to look for the notebooks.
• Note to Self: He writes a note to himself the night before he thinks he's going to lose his memory, just to make sure he'll find Shiraishi and his friends. He's clever enough to write a brief note simply saying "Don't forget: Shiraishi. Supernatural Studies Club", because he thinks that'll make him more curious than long, complicated instructions.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: He is no school genius by far, but he is smarter than he lets on, and will easily feign ignorance or a specific reaction to allow a person to think it their tactic is working.
• Obliquely Obfuscated Occupation: In the epilogue. It can be inferred that he probably works at some kind of engineering company, given that he's in the "development department", and Miyamura mentions projects related to sea and space, but it's not revealed what his actual position is.
• Oblivious to Love: Is kind of dense about the matter. As his focus is only on Shiraishi, he doesn't realize if other girls are infatuated with him - and even with Shiraishi, he is oblivious, as even though she practically gives him a declaration of love in chapter 65, he still doesn't fully realize it until she outright says yes to become his girlfriend much later.
• Odd Friendship: His boisterous personality is as different from the chairperson's straight-laced personality as can be, but they still seem to develop an actual friendship after the Guam trip, given that they still keep in touch 10 years later, and he invites her to his wedding.
• Oh, Crap!: When he realizes that Noa made herself his spotter before he could choose anyone else, the chapter ends with a hilarious expression of horror painted on his face.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: He has never managed to live down being the sole investigator of the street fight (which he of course wasn't, but very few students know that). Even the extremely few students who don't judge him for it still know of the incident and will probably bring it up sooner or later.
• The One Guy: In his first year, he hung out in the handicrafts club with Himekawa and Nancy.
• Only Sane Man: Despite being quite dumb at times, he often shows surprising degrees of common sense and tends to play the Straight Man.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Given that he's usually a terrible actor whenever he's in Shiraishi's body, you know that he means business when he actually does manage to copy her mannerisms. For example, when he had to trick Noa's friends to swap bodies with him.
• Origins Episode: Chapter 22. To some degree also chapters 157-161, though these focus more on his relationship to Himekawa than his overall past.
• Outside-Context Problem: While he's not the first person who has tried getting unruly witches under control (since the seventh witch exists for the same purpose), he's the only character known to be both immune to witch powers and able to use a witch's own powers against her so that she gets a taste of her own medicine - giving him a unique prerequisite for stopping and helping troubled witches.
• Palm on Cheek Pose: He tends to do this (along with Shaking the Rump) whenever he is in a girl's body and wants to look cutesy as to not be mistaken for a boy.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: His Dayama costume only consists of a wrestler mask and a cape, and yet no outsiders, of which there were many at the culture festival, seem able to recognize him when he's wearing it, Ushio and the chairperson being the sole exceptions.
• Paralyzing Fear of Sexuality: He becomes debilitatingly awkward when the topic of sex with his own girlfriend is brought up, often blushingly stuttering that he'd never do such stuff. When he actually gets a chance to do it with Shiraishi during spring break, he becomes more paralyzed than ever and tries to convince himself that she is not interested in bedding him (which isn't exactly true), resulting in nothing happening. The paralyzing fear mostly disappears later on, though the events still conspire to prevent him from sleeping with her.
• Parrot Expo What: When Takuma and Shiraishi speculate that the witch powers may actually be activated by the testosterone and oxytocin that are secreted by a kiss, the Book Dumb Yamada can only ask: "Testo-what? Oxy-what?"
• Perfect Disguise, Terrible Acting: When body-swapping with Shiraishi. He doesn't just look like her - he literally gets her body - so it's a perfect disguise. However, he can't imitate Shiraishi's stoic and quiet demeanor to save his life, instead acting like his loud, boisterous self. It becomes especially bad by how he also always fails to imitate feminine body language and speech mannerisms.
• Perpetual Poverty: When he needs money for something big, he is always mentioned to be really poor (one chapter is even titled "I only have 400 yen"). It doesn't stop him from buying lots of yakisoba breads, light novels etc.
• Personality Powers: Since witches get their powers from their troubles and desires, he assumes that the same goes for his copy power. He hasn't found exactly what troubled him/what he wished for yet, though.
• Perverted Sniffing: Does this to his own body when he has swapped bodies with Shiraishi, and she shines up his body with some beauty products. Also does it to Odagiri when she hugs him.
• Pet the Dog: In the first chapter, he initially seems to be a jerk, but he soon proves that he has a good side when he feels bad for Shiraishi being bullied and offers to help her.
• Ping Pong Naïveté: At one moment, he seems more aware of the going-ons than practically anybody else, is really observant and can piece together almost hidden clues - and the next moment, he's a standard Idiot Hero who thinks everything can be solved by forcing kisses.
• Play-Along Prisoner: When Noa's friends ambush him and tie him up, he pretends to be helpless - even though he can easily free himself of the ropes - to find out what they want. He breaks the bonds when he loses his patience with them.
• Playing Card Motifs: He is often likened to the joker because he serves as some sort of wild card among the witches by being able to copy all of their powers and use them against them.
• Plot-Sensitive Snooping Skills: He can be observant as all hell when faced with a witch in trouble even though he doesn't know her well, but he tends to mind-numbingly oblivious when it comes to noticing girls who are crushing on him, and even after they start dating he has some trouble reading Shiraishi.
• Polite Villains, Rude Heroes: In the first witch war. Yamada is very rough-mannered and informal, while Yamazaki is much more formal and affable, at least when he wants to be.
• Porn Stash: He has a book called "Guide to Huge Breasts" in his room, which Shiraishi finds during the New Year cleaning. Hilarity Ensues. Yamada claims it is Miyamura's, which - knowing Miyamura - could be right, but going by Yamada's reaction and the fact that he isn't completely chaste himself, it may very well be his own. Later on, he has become smart enough to only watch porn on his phone as to avoid that his mom (or Shiraishi again) finds his stash.
• Positive Friend Influence: Practically every witch (and many other people) he knows has become a friendlier and more psychologically balanced person after meeting him. His Chronic Hero Syndrome has even rubbed off on some of them. Deconstructed a bit in the height of the first witch war when it's revealed that he's a Living Emotional Crutch to many of the witches and they return to their old ways when they don't remember him.
• Post-Kiss Catatonia: After kissing Shiraishi at the end of the first chapter. At first, he mostly cares that he's back in his own body, but after that he's clearly dazed that a girl willingly kissed him.
• Post-Victory Collapse: He has to use all of his mental strength to telepathically communicate with Otsuka during their summer make-up exam, so once he finds out that they finally passed, he promptly collapses with a nosebleed.
• Power Copying: His power is that he can copy the witch powers and use them as his own (only one at a time, though). Because of that he has used the following powers at one point or another:
  • "Freaky Friday" Flip: Shiraishi's power which he uses a lot throughout the series. Also Seishuin's power which he uses for a make-up exam and on the school's winter trip. Furthermore, it's Alex's power which he has used for another few body-swap hijinks.
  • Charm Person: Odagiri's power which he has also used several times. Also Hikaru's power which he copied for a short time to find out what it was.
  • Telepathy: Otsuka's power which he uses in her arc and later in Sarushima's arc to transfer visions. Also Moegi's power which he copies in her arc to find out what it is, and later again to find out if Leona likes Yamazaki.
  • Seers: Sarushima's power which he uses in her arc and later to act as a fortune-teller at the culture festival. It's also thanks to her power that the whole ordeal with the seventh witch starts because he sees a future he wants to change. Also Chikushi's power which he uses in her arc and on the Guam trip.
  • Flashback Nightmare: Takigawa's power which he only uses one time to see her past.
  • Compelling Voice: Konno's power which he uses in her arc.
  • Personality Swap: Seishuin's power which he uses along with her "Freaky Friday" Flip power.
  • Mental Time Travel: Kurosaki's power which he uses to delve into his, Shiraishi's, Odagiri's, the chairperson's and Hino's pasts.
  • Mind Manipulation: Yuri's power which he is allowed to copy and test on Noa. He later uses it on Kaori with unexpected results.
  • Laser-Guided Amnesia: One of Nancy's powers which he copies to get back at the Japanese chess club. Gains it again later when he copies Takuma's powers.
  • Enemy Scan: Another of Nancy's powers which is also copied. Also Takuma's powers later on.
• Power-Strain Blackout: Using Otsuka's telepathy power takes quite the toll on him at first because he isn't used to be so focused. It overlaps with a Post-Victory Collapse when he uses telepathy to pass a make-up exam and immediately faints after he passes.
• Pragmatic Hero: Especially at the start of the series, he is not above things like beating people up or trying to force them to kiss him if he thinks that will solve a problem. Sometimes his friends let him go through with it, sometimes not. He later starts to stray away from the trope, displaying Honor Before Reason instead, though he can still show pragmatism in really dire situations.
• Pride: During the first memory wipe, his pride is what made him refuse to go back to the club even when Shiraishi invited him, because he thinks she only did it out of pity.
• The Promise: Shortly before the meeting with Rika, when he thinks he'll lose his memories, he promises Shiraishi that she'll be the first one he kisses after the amnesia. When it turns out his friends lose their memories instead, he grows increasingly desperate and breaks the promise, leading to one of the signature sad moments of the series.
• Prone to Tears: Unusually for an (ex) delinquent, Yamada is probably shown crying more often than any other character in the series - almost solely for comical reasons, but it still shows that he's really a big softie.
• Pstandard Psychic Pstance: When he receives a vision from Sarushima, he occasionally puts his hand to his temple to concentrate better on the vision.
• Quest for Identity: One of his major goals is to know why he got the copy ability, apparently to get to know himself better. To do this, he tried to recover his lost memories.
• Ready for Lovemaking: The second time Shiraishi stays over, he fully anticipates that they will have sex this time, and greets her with a rose in his mouth and wearing only a bathrobe. Unfortunately, no hanky-panky since Shiraishi brought the entire Supernatural Studies Club.
• Real Men Wear Pink: He is mostly fairly boyish, but he is good at sewing due to being in the handicrafts club during the second term of his first year.
• Really Gets Around: He has kissed most named characters in the series and a fair amount of unnamed students (as a fortuneteller at the culture festival).
• Reformed Criminal: He was a fairly rough delinquent before high school, but he wanted to get his act together when starting high school, and thanks to Himekawa and later Shiraishi, he ended up as the witch-helping hero we know.
• Reluctant Fanservice Guy: An in-universe example; he's awfully shy about girls seeing him naked, so to his misfortune any girl who ends up swapping bodies with him decides to check out his junk immediately after the swap.
• Roundhouse Kick: His Signature Move at the start of the series. Characterization Marches On and he never uses it again after chapter 9.
• Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: He and Himekawa made up this kind of duo during their first year, with Yamada mostly acting as the Only Sane Man like he does in the present, while Himekawa was the Genki Girl with all of the initiatives.
• Say My Name: He calls Nancy by her real name when he tries to convince her that she's better off not being a witch anymore.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: In the first part of the story, he regularly breaks school rules in order to achieve what he wants, though his friends usually try to make him do the rule-breaking in secrecy. In the second part, it becomes much toned down as he - with his student council position - is an authority figure, so he knows he can't start fights in the street for example.
• Selfless Wish: When he, Himekawa and Nancy first heard about the ceremony during their first year and wanted to hold one, Yamada suggested to wish for Himekawa to make friends. When Himekawa disagreed, having selfless wishes of her own in mind, Yamada then insisted that the wish should go to her.
• Serious Business: He randomly treats certain things with a dead-serious approach - such as microwave ovens and yakisoba bread.
• Shaking the Rump: He tends to wiggle his hips (along with a Palm on Cheek Pose) whenever he is in a girl's body and wants to look cutesy as to not be mistaken for a boy.
• Shared Family Quirks: His mom can be seen wearing a Shoba shirt in chapter 218, meaning that being a fan of the iconic yakisoba bread mascot is apparently something that runs in the family.
• Shipper on Deck: He used to ship Ushio and Odagiri back in the day, asking why they didn't just become a couple already.
• Shonen Hair: He is a fairly classic, Hot-Blooded shonen protagonist, and he has spiky hair.
• Silly Walk: Often walks with a heavy trample and his legs wide apart, which looks especially weird when he is in a girl's body. As Miyamura says: "You look like you have a pair of bowling balls between your legs".
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: He has a truly potty mouth in fan scanlations. In the official translation, it isn't too bad though he's still fond of using mild profanities. In the original Japanese text, he utters the word "kuso" ("crap" or "shit") more than anyone else.
• Slasher Smile: He can be seen with one during some of his Pragmatic Hero moments.
• Sleep Deprivation: Happens to him when he copies Noa's power because the Flashback Nightmares send him into some sort of trance where he doesn't really sleep. It results in him constantly being about to doze off during the following day.
• Slippery Swimsuit: When swapping bodies with Shiraishi and taking a swim in the ocean, he loses his bikini top. Miyamura is pleased.
• The Slow Walk: In a fit of Tranquil Fury, he walks very slowly and ominously towards Sasaki in the first chapter to trick her into thinking he's gonna beat her up.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Though he can be humble if he wants to, he does have a few moments when he thinks quite highly of himself. But due to his Butt-Monkey status, he is always brought down to earth immediately.
• Smart Ball: One of his main traits has always been that he's smarter than he initially seems, but sometimes he acts a bit too clever when it's convenient for the plot that he figures something out, often beating the generally smarter Shiraishi and Miyamura to conclusions.
• Smarter Than You Look: He can be quite Street Smart and has good intuition even though he is often considered stupid because he isn't book smart.
• Smells Sexy: He is often attracted to girls due to their scent - Shiraishi, Odagiri, and Rika among others. (And himself at one point)
• Socially Awkward Hero: Since this series doesn't feature battles of life and death, he could be more accurately described as a romantically-awkward hero. He'll go out and help witches and stop bullies without hesitating at all, but when it comes to admitting his feelings to Shiraishi and similarly furthering their relationship, he's often paralyzed.
• Something about a Rose: He has a rose between his teeth as part of his Ready for Lovemaking get-up.
• Spanner in the Works: Half of the plans he thwarts are due to this - for example, he didn't know that he would use Odagiri's power against her when he first kissed her.
• Special Person, Normal Name: "Ryu Yamada" is a surprisingly ordinary name for a Shōnen protagonist. Yamada is one of the most common last names in Japan.
• Spirited Competitor: Downplayed in that he can also be lazy and complacent, but when he does go out to get his hands dirty, he loves a good challenge and setting seemingly unreachable goals, for example getting into Tono U.
• Spit Take: He regularly does this as a reaction to unexpected or absurd things. Played entirely literally when he isn't eating or drinking something, in which case he doesn't spit out food or drink, but simply spits.
• Stepford Smiler: After his friends lost their memories of him the first time, and he became lonely, he tried to pretend that he was content with his new life as the cleaning boy of the class. Obviously not true, which Tamaki soon found out.
• Still Wearing the Old Colors: After the second witch war, he isn't in the student council anymore, but keeps wearing his secretary badge. Once the problem that started the second witch war has finally been fully resolved - namely recovering the lost memories - he gives the badge back to Tamaki.
• Stock Shōnen Hero: He has Idiot Hero tendencies, he's Book Dumb but is great at reading people and he's a good fighter, and he values his friends and girlfriend over pretty much anything else.
• Straight Man: His role in most of the comedic scenes is to make his friends' silly antics even more funny by reacting to them in a defeated or angry way.
• Street Smart: His forte since he is Book Dumb. He is much more observant than he seems, has a good intuition, can read intentions, and knows how to approach and help people better than most (though he usually makes a few bumbling beginner's mistakes).
• Strong Family Resemblance: His three-year-old son in the epilogue looks very much like a miniature version of him.
• Suddenly Shouting: When he fails to use Sarushima's power to see the fire because Miyamura and Itou keep giving him visions of underwear and slapstick respectively, he first seems exhausted and only mildly annoyed... After which he loudly scolds them and threatens to beat them with a folding chair.
• Surrounded by Smart People: How he found himself when he started at Suzaku High. He struggled to make friends because all of his class mates were only interested in things such as reading literary classics, listening to English audiobooks and playing Go, so he had to hang out with Ushio, whom he had otherwise cut ties with, because Ushio was the only one on the same intellectual level. Averted later on; while the majority of the friends may be more academically gifted than him, they are not necessarily smarter in other areas and don't generally have high-brow hobbies.
• Take a Third Option: He's quite good at this, though often only through his When All You Have Is a Hammer… M.O. Two slightly more intelligent examples is when he figures out how to save Shiraishi from being Tamaki's secretary and meet her again after Rika's memory wipe (by letting his memory be wipped and putting up a big note to himself about Shiraishi), and when he realizes how Kimishima can fulfill her club's time-honored tradition before she loses her clubroom.
• Talking in Your Sleep: Whenever he has Anxiety Dreams in class, he always ends up saying the same thing as he said in the dream, usually leading Shiraishi to look at him weirdly.
• Tareme Eyes: He has them from the start, but they become more obvious as the art style changes, and he softens up.
• Taught by Television: When meeting Alex the Foreign Exchange Student, he claims he knows how to interact with Americans because he has seen American movies. Leads to a blunder when he thinks Americans always kiss their friends because he has seen them do that in the movies - given that Yamada is known to have a Porn Stash, it makes you wonder just which American movies he has seen...
• Team Dad: When he's actually able to show some competency, he tends to play this role in the club, being the strict guy who nonetheless wants the best for all of them.
• Tears of Joy: A major example in chapter 224, when his friends finally get back their memories of him after not being able to remember him for months.
• Terrible Artist: To the degree that people scream or ask him to see a doctor whenever they see his drawings. Sometimes, it's a bit of an Informed Flaw - the faces he draws are crude and stickman-like, but he at least has an eye for detail when it comes to hairstyles.
• Terror Hero: He regularly tries to be this, for example by threatening people to beat them up if they don't comply. It never works.
• Think Nothing of It: He often has this reaction whenever someone shows heartfelt gratitude for his help.
• This Is My Name on Foreign: His fortune teller alias is "Dragon Dayama", since his first name "Ryu" is Japanese for "dragon" ("Yamada" means "mountain field", but that doesn't roll off the tongue as easily, which might be the reason for him making it an anagram instead).
• This Means War!: He takes Ushio's "I'll get what I want" line as a declaration of war and says that if he wants war, he'll get war.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: Quite often, to the point that his Butt-Monkey status is almost only comedic. The major one probably is that he, the hated outcast of the school, ends up being one of the most inexpendable students and gets together with the school's beautiful and sweet honor student who genuinely loves him. His interactions with Shiraishi generally use this trope a lot; she will often mess with him or even annoy him (if rarely on purpose), but their conversations always end with a hint or declaration of how much she cares about him.
• Token Super: In the second witch war, he's the only club member with a power. It also stays like this for a while after the second witch war until Hikaru joins.
• Tomato in the Mirror: The fact that he suffers from amnesia regarding his first high school year. He is somewhat forced to change his outlook when he realizes it.
• Too Dumb to Fool: Whenever somebody has a "wait a minute..." moment, it's usually him.
• Too Hungry to Be Polite: When he's really hungry, he doesn't have much in the way of table manners. Funnily, it's mostly showcased when he's in a girl's body, so that people get dumbfounded over seeing a girl stuff herself to the point of a Balloon Belly, eat with her hands instead of utensils, and burp.
• Took a Level in Cheerfulness: He was a lot more grumpy at the start of the series, and when he did smile, it was often an arrogant smile or borderline Slasher Smile. Combined with him taking level in kindness, friendly smiles are seen more and more on his face the longer you get into the series.
• Took a Level in Kindness: He was a Jerk with a Heart of Gold from the get-go, but the "heart of gold" part is much more pronounced in later chapters, and the "jerk" part practically only comes out when it's justified, like when people are making fun of him, and he reacts angrily.
• Trademark Favorite Food: He loves yakisoba and yakisoba bread more than basically anything else.
• Tragic Keepsake: When Shiraishi forgets him after the second witch war, the love charm he bought at a shrine for her sake becomes this - at least very briefly, since she soon seeks him out to be with him again.
• Tranquil Fury: When he's at his angriest, he often doesn't raise his voice the way he usually does. For example when he tried to scare away Sasaki, and when Yamazaki told him that Shiraishi in Asuka's body had been suspended.
• Trash of the Titans: Downplayed; his room is certainly messy, with books, food packagings and underwear lying around on the floor, but not to a degree that seems unrealistic for a typical teenage boy.
• Uniqueness Decay: Downplayed. At the start of the series, it's regularly mentioned how unique he is due to being the only student with a power that can counter witch powers. Then the existence of other witch-killers is revealed, making him less unique. However, he is still the only witch-killer in the series who copies powers instead of stealing them, meaning that he has slightly different prerequisites from the others.
• Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist: At the start where much of the fun came from seeing him angrily trampling around and reacting to most things like either a retard or the Only Sane Man around. However, it doesn't take that much time before he becomes too sympathetic to fit into the trope (especially after his past with Ushio is revealed).
• Unwilling Suspension: Asuka hangs him in ropes by his wrists when she wants to interrogate him.
• We Want Our Jerk Back!: His friends often lose their patience with him when he's too openly friendly and jovial. Especially Itou seems to like him more when she can bicker with him compared to when he's completely nice toward her.
• Weak, but Skilled: It's indicated that he isn't really that strong, but gets by on skills, experience and determination. He proves to be just as good of a fighter in the bodies of smaller and frailer girls, while Itou - who has no fighting experience - loses miserably in his body against some thugs that Yamada himself easily beat up. He lampshades it by saying that in battle, spirit is more important than power. Shiraishi dismisses it as ridiculous, but since Yamada is a Shōnen protagonist, he's probably speaking the truth.
• What the Hell, Hero?: The short time when he loses himself to Kotori's power isn't his proudest moment, and Nancy, Sid and Kotori soon stop him to call him out on it. Kotori asks him how he would like it if Shiraishi just randomly read his thoughts without asking.
• What You Are in the Dark: Most of the time, he is responsible with the witch powers, but when he copies Kotori's mind-reading power and makes it one-way so no-one knows that he uses it, he completely misuses it to read the thoughts of all of his friends and acquaintances. Fortunately, most of the nastiness isn't on purpose - he just seems to forget that just reading others' minds without asking them is a slightly disrespectful thing to do.
• When All You Have Is a Hammer…: His general approach to a problem is: Kiss the involved, either to copy their witch power or to use a copied witch power against them. If that fails, and the situation is dire enough, he sometimes goes for a second approach: Beat them up. He has proved able to manipulate or persuade people through words, but consistently thinks that randomly kissing them is the best strategy.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: He hasn't tried flying before, so he's terrified the first time he gets on an airplane. He seems to get over it once he starts enjoying the view, though.
• Wig, Dress, Accent: His Dayama costume consists of him wearing a wrestling mask and a cape (a palm leaf skirt on Guam) while he speaks in a very formal way.
• Wistful Amnesia: Despite having his memories of Himekawa wiped, he immediately comes to like her when he meets her again and has a feeling that she is someone he met before.
• The Worf Effect: As strong as he is, he seems to lose a good chunk of his battles just to prove that another character is just as badass as him (or more badass).

• Wouldn't Hit a Girl: Implied with how he only wanted to pretend to hit Sasaki, and he didn't hit Fukazawa during his fight against Noa's friends. He will sometimes find loopholes, though: When he's angry enough, he doesn't mind threatening girls with violence; he doesn't have any qualms with hitting a girl who's in his own body (as Itou and Ando can attest); and he will gladly headbutt a girl if he thinks it's the only way to put her under a witch power (as Noa can attest).
• Your Size May Vary: With his 172 cm, he should be about half a head shorter than Miyamura and Ushio who are 181 and 183 cm respectively. However, in the actual story, he can be almost the same height as them or even more than a head shorter depending on the frame.
• Zero-Approval Gambit: When he wants to make Hikaru stand up to his bullies and make friends, he pretends to be a scary delinquent who wants to beat them up for stealing his usual hangout. His plans works a bit different from what Hikaru thought, though; Hikaru thought he was meant to beat Yamada up to make the bullies grateful, but actually Yamada meant to beat up Hikaru and the bullies to show them that they aren't as strong as they thought.
• Zombie Gait: He walks like this, zombie-like facial expression included, after a whole day of exhausting sightseeing in Guam.

Urara Shiraishi

Urara Shiraishi

Voiced by: Saori Hayami (Japanese), Mikaela Krantz (English), Jessica Ángeles (Latin American Spanish)

Portrayed by: Mariya Nishiuchi

Yamada's first friend and the president of the Supernatural Studies Club, appointed by Miyamura. She's the deuteragonist of the entire first witch war, but after becoming Yamada's girlfriend, her plot importance varies from time to time. She's the first witch encountered, and her power is that she can switch bodies with anyone she kisses.

She becomes Yamada's girlfriend at the end of the first witch war, and except for a couple of on-off periods, they have gone steady ever since.

Like the other original witches, she loses her power permanently after the ceremony.

Ten years later, in the epilogue, she works at an investment bank overseas. She marries Yamada, and a few years later, they have two children together.

---

• Adaptational Nice Girl: In the manga, she's a Jerk with a Heart of Gold at her introduction, often acting rude and aloof because she's not used to being around people. It takes around 20 chapters before she grows into her trademark sweet demeanor. In the anime, she has her sweet demeanor from the very start, though she's still a bit more reserved in the first couple of episodes than later on.
• The Alleged Boss: It's easy to forget that she's actually the president of the Supernatural Studies Club because she usually acts like a normal member and lets the others take charge. She may assert herself and give orders if she really thinks it's necessary, though.
• All-Loving Hero: While not as actively heroic as Yamada (because her personality in general is more passive), she is nonetheless extremely understanding as well as caring and tolerant. Except for Sasaki, she hasn't shown to dislike anyone, meaning that to get on her bad side, you have to outright ruin her life, and in that case, it's definitely your own fault.
• All of the Other Reindeer: Downplayed example at the start of the series, as while she was popular with the boys for her looks, no students seemed to like her personality (except for the teachers because she was a model student).
• All Witches Have Cats: She is a witch (by this series' definition of "witch"), and she has a black cat.
• Animal Motifs: Rabbits. She is very cute, has her phone decorated with a pair of bunny ears, and is shown with two rabbits on a cover page.
• Aren't You Going to Ravish Me?: It is bewildering how honestly worried she looks after Yamada refused to have sex with her, on the street, in the middle of winter, in front of a stranger, just because he asked to, while she's a virgin.
• Athletically Challenged: She is not athletic at all (except for when Yamada's in her body), and contrary to other subjects, she is quite comfortable with skipping gym class.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Always played straight when she's in her own body, so she sometimes lets herself go when she's in Yamada's body: She tends to make more exaggerated (and thus "ugly") facial expressions in his body and is shown vomiting at one point.
• Berserk Button: Being called "boring" makes her enraged to a degree never before seen in the series, though it's also a subversion. When Yamada, during their very first meeting, calls her boring, she flips out and yells at him, but afterwards she realizes that he was right and there's more to life than being an aloof honor student, after which she falls in love with him. The same happens again at the graduation.
• Beware the Nice Ones: She is even-tempered almost all the time, but if you're Yamada, you don't want to make her angry. When Yamada refuses to help Odagiri because he hates her henchman Ushio, she outright slaps him and tells him that he is mean because those things have nothing to do with each other. She's also unusually pissed and shouts at him when he leaves the school in her body (even though she was sick and was ordered to go home by the school nurse).
• Beware the Quiet Ones: In the live-action drama, she is just as quiet as in the manga, so when everybody are arguing at the ceremony, she manages to make them shut up and look shocked by loudly shouting "stop!".
• Book Smart: She is noted to be the school's consistently best student (Takuma does slightly better in tests than her when he comes to school, but he's usually skipping school) and almost always gets A's in her subjects.
• Bookworm: Is seen with her nose in a book more than half of the time, though she has become a bit more social with time, especially after becoming Yamada's girlfriend. She almost solely reads textbooks, but does express interest in reading a Light Novel at one point.
• Brainwashed: Since she is Shiraishi, it was not apparent at first, but she was, for a while, under Ichijo's provocation power, and that made her incredibly clingy to Yamada and claiming ownership over him (creating an Ironic Echo, since she formerly said that he belongs to everyone), to the point that she took a break from him when he didn't give in to her needs.
• Broken Ace: At her introduction, she is known as the perfect, if seemingly stuck up, honor student of the school. But alas, she is a sad victim of bullying and (initially) only studies because she doesn't know what else to do in life.
• Broken Bird: At the start, she is undeniably not happy that she has been alone, friendless and bullied for most of her life. Even when she gets friends and stops being bullied, her past bothers her more than she lets on, like when she goes sick to school to not be alone, or the time she is visibly distraught because she thinks Yamada finds her annoying and doesn't want to switch bodies with her anymore. Later in the series, she gets over it, but when she loses her memories of Yamada, she becomes a bit broken again even if she doesn't realize why.
• Brutal Honesty: Probably her main quirk - for example, she straight-out called Yamada retarded when he didn't understand the concept of switching bodies back. She's a bit more downplayed than Tsubaki, though, in that she doesn't say everything she thinks, but when she does say something, she's almost always completely honest.
• Bully Magnet: Although her studiousness and stoic attitude bring her admirers, these traits bring her just as many bullies (especially people who are envious of her smarts, like Sasaki). She mentions that she gave up on having friends for a long while because all of her so-called "friends" ended up being bullies.
• Bunnies for Cuteness: Bunnies are her Animal Motifs, and she's The Cutie.
• Bust-Contrast Duo: With Itou. Shiraishi is very busty, while Itou is more average in that department (although not flat-chested), and they've got the personalities down, with Shiraishi being gentle and Itou being hotheaded. A slight variation is that Itou never displays A-Cup Angst, and Shiraishi seems oblivious to the fact that she is busty (often wondering why Yamada likes girls with big boobs).
• Buxom Beauty Standard: One of the reasons she's seen as beautiful and perfect is that she has big breasts - she uses an E-cup.
• Character Catch Phrase: Similarly to Yamada, she says "kiss me" and "can we kiss?" a lot.
• Character Check: From the second witch war and onwards, she's generally much more cheerful and more sociable than she was at the start of the series, but she'll still have some moments now and then when she acts stoic and aloof, especially when she's feeling jealous.
• Character Development: She is probably the character in the series who has changed the most, gradually going from a somewhat cold, aloof and tormented girl who only studies because she has nothing else to do, to a much more open, cheerful and friendly girl who enjoys being with her friends and only studies because she likes to study.
• Characterization Marches On: In early chapters, she was very stoic, but when she did show emotion, she didn't understate it; she had no problem with raising her voice when angry. In later chapters, she shows plenty of emotion, but always does it in a subdued way; it becomes exceedingly rare for her to raise her voice. It can make the early chapters quite odd to reread.
• Clingy Jealous Girl:
  • Take a sip for each time this is subverted, and you won't be able to walk home. The formula usually is that she asks Yamada not to kiss or simply interact with a certain girl, and he thinks she's jealous, after which she reveals an entirely practical reason for why he can't do it. When she genuinely falls in love with him, she does show jealousy at times, but always makes a point of not being clingy.
  • It was unfortunately played completely straight for a while when she was under the provocation power.
• Clothing Reflects Personality: Lampshaded by Miyamura who claims that the reason why she mostly wears white underwear must be that she is kind and gentle.
• Color Motif: Red. She has red eyes, red hair pins and is regularly shown on red backgrounds, sometimes to contrast with Yamada’s blue. In personality, she’s not nearly as fiery as you’d expect from the color red, though.
• Comically Missing the Point: When Yamada desperately tries to make her go back to class and not follow him to meet the seventh witch, she reassures him that he shouldn't worry since the next class is gym class, so she won't be missing any important studies.
• The Comically Serious: Her mundane or completely lacking reactions to really absurd things can be even funnier than her friends' exaggerated reactions.
• The Confidant: She really wants to play this role towards Yamada, and she's always willing to listen to his troubles without judging him, but it sometimes takes some goading from her side to make Yamada confide to her because Yamada worries too much about not hurting her.
• Could Say It, But...: When her memory is wiped and she tells Yamada that Miyamura is going to be the next student council president (because she's not aware that Yamada knows it already), she starts by admitting that she isn't actually allowed to reveal it.
• Covert Pervert: She may seem very proper and detached from that sort of thing, but it has been shown through her reactions and manners that she is just as interested in having sex with Yamada as he is with her, just too awkward to openly show and talk about it. There's also her tendency to look down Yamada's pants during body-swaps and sometimes talk about underwear, which may be pervyness or just innocent curiosity. Yamada once claimed jokingly that she secretly has a dirty mind.
• Cram School: She spends most of her after-school hours at one, though you'd think that she doesn't really need cram school studying that much.
• Crazy-Prepared: When she prepares to meet Yamada again at the graduation after she leaves Suzaku High, she writes him a long guide on how she wants him to behave when he meets her memoryless self, down to the most subtle nuance in politeness and body language. She even makes sure to write that she doesn't want to fall down stairs again. And in line with the Unspoken Plan Guarantee - it doesn't work, but a much simpler solution does.
• Crush Blush: Generally, she is unfazed and hard to embarrass, but she has been seen to blush around Yamada now and then.
• Cry into Chest: She does it when Yamada rescues her from being locked inside Asuka's house.
• Culture Blind: Downplayed. She's not Book Dumb in the slightest, but she is sometimes shown to have a lacking knowledge of basic things you learn outside of school, from what constitutes a date to how to handle fireworks.
• Cute Bookworm: Has some elements of the trope, for example the awkwardness and sweetness, though she isn't as much shy as she is just reserved.
• The Cutie: She may be more mature and reserved than your average example of the trope, but she is nonetheless sweet and gentle, and the series regularly stresses how her smiles are among the most adorable things on Earth.
• Damsel in Distress: At the end of the first witch war, when Asuka swaps bodies with her, and she is suspended and trapped in Asuka's house.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Throughout her whole life before high school, she was never really loved by anyone (her parents only cared about her studies), neither did she know how loving someone felt, she never made any friends, and was often bullied.
• A Day in the Limelight: The first chapter that truly focuses on her and not just shows her as a friend (or later girlfriend) to Yamada is chapter 239, the chapter that reveals her past.
• Deadpan Snarker: At the start, she was prone to having a dry humor and coming with sarcastic or disparaging comments. Mostly averted later when she becomes much less deadpan, but she still comes with a snarky comment once in a while.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: She wasn't friendly at all to Yamada when they met and switched bodies, and she refused his help because her being bullied was a "girl's problem". This is saying a lot with how close they have gotten later.
• Demoted to Extra: In terms of actual screen-time, she is not quite as important in the second part of the story as in the first part. In terms of emotional importance, however, she's not demoted at all and may actually have become more important because she's Yamada's girlfriend. She gets some more importance when Yamada returns to the club.
• Demoted to Satellite Love Interest: In the second part of the story, she's Yamada's girlfriend and doesn't get a whole lot of characterization beyond her relationship to him. She's also less able to be relevant to the main plot because she lost her body-swapping power.
• De-power: She loses her power after the ceremony and becomes a normal student.
• Deuteragonist: In the first part of the story. In the second part, she is mostly Demoted to Extra, but acts as the deuteragonist in some chapters by virtue of being Yamada's girlfriend.
• Did You Think I Can't Feel?: She put up with Sasaki's bullying with a stoic face, but of course, she was deeply bothered and miserable from it, to the point of having one of her gravest Not So Stoic moments when she feared Yamada would make it all worse.
• Disapproving Look: She gives some epic ones now and then - apparently her way to show that something is just too damn stupid while the others freak out or come with insults.
• Ditzy Genius: Despite how clever she is, she seems oblivious to certain everyday things, possibly because of her Parental Neglect and Friendless Background. Examples include not knowing anything about fireworks, not realizing that you can get carsick from reading, and thinking going to the supermarket equals a date. And like any major character in the series, she has had her thoughtless moments, e.g. looking at her own panties while being in Yamada's body.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: She did not want to accept Yamada's help to stop her bullies before she made friends with him. However, it's indicated that she mostly refused and acted angry because one of said bullies (Sasaki) was eavesdropping, and it would probably make the bullying worse if they knew she'd gone and asked for help.
• The Dreaded: At the end of the first chapter because everybody thought she had beaten up Yamada. In the next chapter, she manages to live it down and be considered a hero instead, because she supposedly (actually Yamada in her body) beats up some peepers.
• Dude Magnet: There aren't many guys in the series who haven't been attracted to her.
• Dumb Blonde: Completely inverted when it comes to academia where she's the smartest character in the series after Takuma. Sometimes played straight when it comes to other things. She's the kind of girl to believe fireworks as big as extinguishers can be lit while she holds them.
• Emotionless Girl: Subverted. She seems emotionally blank at her introduction, but shows plenty of emotion later on. However, the series does make a point out of showing that one of her fortes is that she isn't overemotional: She never jumps to conclusions, is very patient and always keeps her cool.
• Even the Loving Hero Has Hated Ones: Shiraishi is sympathetic - if sometimes reserved - to everyone, but she has made it clear that she doesn't like Rin Sasaki one bit. Very understandable since Sasaki's bullying is a big part of what made her life hell.
• Everyone Loves Blondes: She is considered one of the school's most attractive girls and is one of the few blondes.
• Extracurricular Enthusiast: After making friends, she becomes one, since she wants to try what high school has to offer other than just studying. Unlike Yamada, she was instantly up for joining a club, and she has also shown being interested in things like the summer camp and the cultural festival. Not that she stops being enthusiastic about the actual curriculum, though
• Extreme Doormat: She isn't an authoritarian person, let's just say that. Justified in that she has a pragmatic "each to his own" standpoint - she knows that people can't be controlled, and that no-one belongs to anyone, so she generally doesn't object to things that don't directly affect her or her goals even if she hates them (such as Yamada kissing other girls), but will object to things that do (such as a body swap).
• Fantastically Indifferent: When she and Yamada accidentally switch bodies the first time, she doesn't seem to care or worry the slightest that something that outrageous just happened, treating it like another everyday thing and just walking back to class in Yamada's body. The only thing that actually freaks her out (or at least she says it freaks her out with a deadpan face) is having Yamada's so-called "thing" between her legs.
• Feminine Women Can Cook: She's one of the more conventionally feminine characters (having many Proper Lady traits), and she is revealed to be a Supreme Chef.
• First Girl After All: Yamada assumed he met Shiraishi during his second year and later finds out he dated a girl during his first year. Turns out that girl is actually Shiraishi.
• First Girl Wins: She is the first female character introduced in the series, and the first new girl Yamada meets in the series. Naturally, she becomes his girlfriend and later, his wife.
• Forehead of Doom: Covered by bangs, but she still (as the brains of the club) has a quite big forehead.
• Forgotten First Meeting: Yamada actually met her and even dated her during his first year, meaning that the fated tumble down the stairs wasn’t even their first meeting. Their first meeting was only a few months into Yamada's first year, and their first real meeting (since Yamada didn't know who she was during their first meeting) was during the second term of their first year, in the staffroom.
• "Freaky Friday" Flip: Can swap bodies with others as her power. It's a mental ability meaning that she can swap bodies even if she's not in her own body.
• Friendless Background: Initially, it seems that the reason she doesn't have friends is that she only cares about studying, but later it is implied that she couldn't make friends because of her reserved personality and thus chose to study instead.
• Friend to All Living Things: She defies the trope despite having the typical personality for it; when Takuma, who has birds flocking around him, asks her if she would like to join in feeding them, she refuses, stating that she wouldn't know what to do if they came flocking to her.
• The Gadfly: Her sense of humor seems to have turned into playful teasing instead of the wryness she had originally. When she meets Yamada again after Ichijo's power is lifted off of her, she puts him on tenterhooks by pretending she's angry that he helped Himekawa, only to smile and state she was kidding.
• Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: When Yamada gets into a stubborn one-track mind regarding not helping Odagiri because of his grudge to Ushio, she slaps him for the first and only time in the series to bring him back to his normal and helpful self.
• Girlish Pigtails: She likes to wear her hair this way (though sometimes just in one single pigtail) when she's in particularly studious or hard-working mood.
• Girls Love Stuffed Animals: She has many stuffed toys and other cutesy things in her room - which surprises Yamada and Miyamura.
• Glasses-and-Ponytail Coverup: During her childhood and first few months at Suzaku High, she wore glasses and below-the-ears pigtails which apparently made her look somewhat frumpy, since she first starts being coveted among boys once she lets go of the glasses and lets her hair down. In-universe, she looked so extremely different from her later self that Yamada met a girl with glasses and pigtails a few days after starting Suzaku High and didn't know this girl was Shiraishi until much, much later.
• Godiva Hair: The very long locks of hair she has at the sides of her face have been used as this a couple of times.
• Going Commando: When she stays the night at Yamada's place during the spring break, she forgoes wearing underwear when she has taken a shower and is ready to have sex with him.
• Good with Numbers: While she is good at all subjects, it's especially math that she is seen excelling in, like when she solves a difficult equation in few seconds without even reading it.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: She is big-hearted and very compassionate, and she is a blonde.
• Hates Being Alone: A variation where she doesn't need to be social all the time - a lot of the time she's perfectly content or even prefers reading a book without talking to anyone - but she still needs to feel that she has friends around her. This probably derives from an entire life of being friendless and suffering from Parental Neglect. She even comes sick to school because she doesn't want to be home alone.
• Hates Being Touched: Played straight when it's not Yamada; she doesn't want to kiss or hug anyone but him. Zigzagged when it's Yamada; she likes kissing him, but doesn't always seem to enjoy being hugged. And then again, she has shown that she does want to move further.
• The Heart: Of the Supernatural Studies Club, to the degree that she usually pulls Yamada down to earth when he gets too pragmatic - like when he refused to help Odagiri because of his grudge to Ushio, and when he wanted to fake a love declaration from her to Tsubaki, not realizing how hurt Tsubaki might be if he found out the truth.
• Her Boyfriend's Jacket: She wears some of Yamada's casual clothes after she takes a shower at his place and hangs all of her own clothes to dry as laundry.
• Heroic Sacrifice: A non-lethal and non-harmful version, but she intended to take the blame of the old school building fire for Yamada and Sarushima which would mean she would be banished from school and/or completely ostracized for being an arsonist. Fortunately, the fire was prevented so nothing happened to either of them.
• Heroic Willpower: Unlike the other victims of Ichijo's witch power, she actually manages to resist its effects until Yamada outright triggers her jealousy by saying he's going on a trip with Odagiri. And even then, she still acts much more sensible than the other victims: She decides to take a break from Yamada in order to not hurt him, and she stays away from the school because she is less affected by the power when she is far away.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: She becomes this with Itou as time goes on, usually hanging out with her when Yamada isn't available, and even confiding her crush on Yamada to her very early in the series.
• Hey, You!: When she first got to know Yamada, she didn't call him by him name. When she grows closer to him and starts liking him during the next few chapters, she starts using his name much more.
• Hidden Heart of Gold: Her cold personality at the start of the series is due to the fact that she doesn't want to get close to anyone, because every time she thought she had made friends throughout her life, they just ended up bullying her. Note that when she gets friends and realizes that there are, in fact, good people out there, she starts being much friendlier towards strangers.
• Hint Dropping: Although she's usually either a straight-shooter or completely quiet about her feelings, she does do some old-fashioned hint dropping in chapter 65 when she tries to follow Yamada around to meet the seventh witch. Even when she makes him promise that he'll be her first kiss once again, he still doesn't get that this may mean she likes him.
• Hot Witch: She is good-looking and a witch, so it's inevitable.
• Hyper-Awareness: She can always recognize the real Yamada when he has swapped bodies with another person, even though she didn't know about the swapping. Even masters of acting, like Arisugawa, cannot fool her. Perhaps she just knows him that well.
• Hypocrite: She has made it clear to Yamada that she always wants him to speak his mind and be open about things that are bothering him. Problem is, she doesn't have the best track record in that area herself. She completely bottled up her frustration about Yamada spending too much time at the student council and her rivalry with Odagiri until a witch power made her spill it, and she doesn't reveal the fact that she would eventually have to leave Suzaku and forget everything about him.
• Hypocrite Has a Point: She has a tendency to gently criticize Yamada for not sharing his worries and other bad feelings with her, even though she is generally worse than he is when it comes to bottling up her feelings. Despite that, her point is very much valid - in a relationship, you shouldn't go and hide everything from each other.
• Hypocritical Humor: She has more than once (albeit not angrily) called Yamada out for liking girls with big breasts, funnily unaware that she has one of the biggest pairs in the series herself, and how that may be one of the reasons he is so attracted to her.
• Idiot Ball: She has written a diary about Yamada to help herself remember him if her memories of him are wiped again. Instead of doing the smart thing and placing it in her bag where she would easily find it, she does the stupid (albeit sentimental) thing and hides it among her valuables at home. It takes Yamada more effort than should be necessary to convince her (after her memory is wiped) that she has it.
• I'm Crying, but I Don't Know Why: She mentions, after forgetting Yamada, that she regularly starts breaking into tears for no apparent reason which is, of course, due to her Wistful Amnesia, but she doesn't know that.
• Immune to Slapstick: While Shiraishi isn't incapable of having funny moments, it's usually because she's being The Comically Serious or brutally honest. She hardly ever has any Wild Takes or similar ridiculous overreactions (such as yelling for no reason) compared to her friends. There can be slight exceptions when she's in Yamada's body, for example when she gets comically carsick on the first school trip.
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Even if she's a bit cold and aloof at the start (for understandable reasons), Shiraishi seems completely uncapable of being actually mean. Even after being put under the provocation power which turns everybody else into jerkasses, she never betrays Yamada and still does her best to be gentle and considerate.
• Indifferent Beauty: She seems somewhat aware that she is beautiful, as she is annoyed by the attention some of the love-struck students give her, but she never mentions her appearance or shows to care much about it.
• Informed Attractiveness: Supposedly one of the school's prettiest girls. Even though for example Itou and Odagiri are still pretty, Shiraishi is apparently even prettier, even though she doesn't look that different from them.
• Informed Ability: Her intelligence is a downplayed example. There's no doubt that she is smart as she has shown to be observant and good at piecing clues together, but it depends on the situation how good she is - at times, some of the other characters, even Yamada, seem to be just as good or even better, even though Shiraishi's supposed to be the smartest of them all.
• Innocently Insensitive: There is almost never any Subtext in what she says, so a few of the things she says without meaning to be hurtful can seem hurtful if you think there is subtext. There's also the fact that since she's a Shameless Fanservice Girl, she doesn't always understand that Yamada has more modesty and may not be entirely comfortable about her looking down his pants/taking them off while she's in his body.
• Insufferable Genius: She was a minor case of this in the first chapter - she wasn't in-your-face about it, but it was obvious that she considered herself more intelligent than Yamada. In the second chapter, she also gets him a 99 in his make-up exam to show off without helping him perfectly.
• Intelligence Equals Isolation: Again, she was a loner and bullied by other girls before she met Yamada.
• Introverted Cat Person: The quiet girl who often keeps to herself takes care of a (formerly) stray cat. She's also a Kindhearted Cat Lover.
• Jade-Colored Glasses: At the start, she was something of a cynic who had not too much faith left in other people - which is also why she wasn't quite as nice back then as she would later become. Fortunately, her spirit was lifted very quickly.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: At the start, she liked to hide her good heart behind an aloof facade. She would also regularly be a bit rude and comically honest. With time, she develops into a through-and-through Nice Girl.
• Kindhearted Cat Lover: While it's known from the start that she's kind-hearted and has a cat, the "cat lover" aspect is emphasized when it's revealed that her cat is actually a former stray cat that she decided to take in.
• Laugh of Love: She doesn't giggle very often, but when she does, it's always around Yamada. The only time she's shown breaking out into actual laughter is also around Yamada, when she laughs at his fear that he did some terrible things during the forgotten time of his first year to reassure him that he would never hurt anyone on purpose.
• Lethal Chef: A downplayed (for a shonen comic) example. She makes yakisoba for herself and Yamada that looks like two plates of burned sticks drowning in soy sauce. She thinks they taste just fine while Yamada is barely able to stomach them.
• Letting Her Hair Down: She wore her hair in pigtails and only started to let it down when she met Yamada, implying that he was the first one she met that she could relax around, and that she made her have other interests than just studying. She'll still revert to the pigtails once in while when she's in a particularly studious mood.
• Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: Of Yamada's two most serious suitors, she's the light feminine to Odagiri's dark feminine. She's gentle, sweet and wholesomely beautiful, while Odagiri is more hysterical, has a better grab on feminine wiles and is sexy more than she's outright beautiful.
• Literal-Minded: Not unheard of, given her often overly logical train of thought. For example when Yamada tells her that he wants her - as his girlfriend - to always be by his side, and she confusedly tells him how that's not possible since they live in different houses, sometimes take different classes etc.
• Lonely Rich Kid: Probably, since it certainly looks like she has a wealthy family, going by the size of their house. In the vein of the trope, her parents have never really been there for her, and she is definitely lonely and friendless at the start.
• Loners Are Freaks: Yamada finds out why she has a Friendless Background when he notices other girls tended to bully her, and her parents were often not home. This resulted in her deliberately trying to distance herself from others.
• Loner-Turned-Friend: She was a loner without too much trust in other people at the start, but when she realized Yamada only meant good, she quickly came to appreciate their friendship.
• Love Confession: She gives her first real, spontaneous one to Yamada in chapter 235 (before that, she had just been responding to Yamada's love confessions) when he goes out of his way to make sure she can focus on her own studies instead of his (yes, when it's Shiraishi we're talking about, that really is a grand romantic gesture).
• Love Confessor: As soon as during the summer camp, she confessed to Itou that she had fallen for Yamada, though it's not revealed that she did it until much later.
• Loved I Not Honor More: She knows Yamada has a specialness about him, and that his ability and quirks are needed to help deal with the school witches. Even after she and he start dating, she gives him full permission to continue on with his job of helping the witches.
• Love Epiphany: In her own flashback, she runs away after yelling at Yamada and wonders what would make her lose her temper like that. Then she stops, blushes and realizes exactly why.
• Meaningful Name: Urara means "beautiful" which is a trait that certainly applies to her.
• Mellow Fellow: After taking levels in kindness and cheerfulness, she becomes this instead of The Stoic, always being calm and level-headed, but usually also happy and friendly.
• Memory Gambit: When she leaves Suzaku, and everyone forgets her as her term as the "original witch" ends, she sacrifices her own memories so that Yamada can still remember her as to make sure he'll find her again and they can be together again.
• Minor Living Alone: Most of the time. Her parents officially live in the same house as her, but it's very rare for them to be at home, and they are certainly not caring parents. As such Shiraishi generally cares for herself, whether it's cooking, doing laundry or other things.
• Mistaken for Badass: After Yamada, in her body, beats up the three peepers, she is believed to the epitome of a Badass Bookworm with a penchant for extremely strong roundhouse kicks.
• Misunderstood Loner with a Heart of Gold: Well, she's of course never believed to be evil, but both the readers and Yamada initially get the impression from her aloofness and solitaryness that she's snooty and indifferent to others' feelings, which is something that couldn't be further from the truth.
• Morality Pet: To Yamada in the early chapters - he probably would have stayed a bored delinquent instead of the hero we know if it wasn't for her.
• Mysterious Past: Her past and her parents are purposefully kept hidden until the very end of the series. Yamada notes earlier on than he doesn't know her as well as he should because she never talks about herself.
• Mysterious Waif: For most of the series, she has a Mysterious Past, and we never really know what she thinks, and what force actually brought her and Yamada together.
• Nerds Love Tough Schoolwork: She is constantly studying and actually likes taking all sorts of tests and exams (she would rather take Yamada's make-up exam for him than write the club report).
• Nerves of Steel: Good luck making her show other states of mind than calmness and rationality. Or actually, if you do, beware.
• Never Be Hurt Again: The reason for her stoic and stand-offish demeanor at the start of the series is that every time she would try to make friends before high school, they ended up bullying her, so after that she didn't want to make friends with anyone again. (Well, until she grew close to Yamada)
• Nice Girl: She's friendly and caring all the time (save the occasional Innocently Insensitive or snarky comment), if not always good at showing her emotions clearly.
• Nice to the Waiter: She has never judged Yamada or treated him differently because of his bad reputation - she rarely brings it up, and when she does, it's usually out of sympathy. Even in the first chapter, when she is a bit cold and rude towards him, it’s clearly because he acts like a bumbling idiot to her – not because she held anything against him before.
• Non P.O.V. Protagonist: Shiraishi is the only one of the main cast whose thoughts and inner monologues are never shown, making her more mysterious than the others, especially since she doesn't emote much to begin with. The only two exceptions are during the Beach Episode when she thinks to herself that she didn't expect the sea water to be salty and during the flashback that finally reveals her past.
• No-Sell: As a witch, she is immune to other witch powers except for the seventh witch's powers. When she stops becoming a witch, she can be put under most witch powers, but she is still immune to the charm power, since her real love for Yamada is much stronger than the fake love the charm power induces.
• No Sympathy for Grudgeholders: Downplayed. She can understand that Yamada would hold a grudge towards Ushio for seemingly betraying him, but she doesn't give a damn about the fact that he feels entitled to not help Odagiri just because Ushio asks him to, and becomes pretty angry with him.
• Not So Above It All:
  • In her own subtle way, she can be just as silly as her friends - especially with her tendency to be The Comically Serious and her random bouts of cluelessness.
  • Despite being logical-minded, she has a superstitious streak: She buys a love charm at a shrine, hoping it will work, and she mentions off-handedly that she doesn't wear red or white underwear at tests because blank paper is white and correction marks are red.
• Not So Stoic: While very calm, she is definitely not as unemotional as her facade would have you believe - it can be particularly when she becomes angry at Yamada in the first chapter or during the few scenes in which she cries.
• Oblivious to Love: She was just as unaware of Yamada's feelings for her as the opposite until he actually admits it to her. Also, when they do become a couple, she tends to act more like a platonic friend than a girlfriend because she, in her own words, doesn't know what a girlfriend should do.
• Obsessed Are the Listmakers: She makes an extremely (and comically) exhaustive list on how Yamada should behave at the graduation to ensure that she warms up to her again despite being amnesiac.
• Only Sane Woman: Sometimes, but not as often as you'd expect from a stoic, logical person. Usually, it's actually Yamada being the sane man instead.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: When she seems genuinely angry or sad, you just know that something is really wrong...
• Origins Episode: Her entire past is finally revealed in chapter 239.
• Paralyzing Fear of Sexuality: A slightly more justified case than Yamada since she, as the girl, expects him to make the first move, but she's very awkward about sex when the chance actually arrives. Instead of opening her mouth or coming with more obvious hints, she just nervously waits for Yamada to do something, and nothing happens because Yamada himself is even more nervous.
• Parental Neglect: Her parents are constantly working and are almost never at home (not even at New Year's Eve), so Shiraishi is always completely alone at home which she does not like to be. Her flashback shows that they don't really care about her as a person - they only care about her studies - and they just provide her with material necessities instead of giving her affection.
• The Perfectionist: She never compromises or tries to hurry when it comes to schoolwork.
• Personality Powers: Her body swap power derives from the way she was miserable with her current life and wanted to have a new life.
• Picked Last: In the anime, this is briefly shown to happen to her, as she's very unathletic and few of the other girls are interested in associating with her.
• Ping Pong Naïveté: When it comes to social skills. At times, she seems a bit gullible and oblivious, and at other times, she reads Yamada like an open book.
• Please, Don't Leave Me: She says this to Yamada when he is about to go on a trip with Odagiri and Kurosaki - as an impulse out of witch power-induced jealousy.
• Proper Lady: Zigzagged. She is gentle-natured, polite, extremely loyal and nurturing to her man and at times a bit submissive like a lady should be according to old-fashioned beliefs. On the other hand, she has some less "proper" traits such as a knack for Brutal Honesty and next-to-none modesty around her body (to the point of being a Shameless Fanservice Girl).
• Puppy-Dog Eyes: Often, but it's usually not on purpose. One time when it's clearly on purpose is in chapter 175 when she asks Yamada to kiss her immediately if she loses her memory of him again.
• Purely Aesthetic Glasses: That, or she switched to contacts. At least, she doesn't seem to have any problem seeing even though she doesn't wear glasses like her younger self did.
• Put on a Bus: She was temporarily written out of the story two times:
  • When she was affected by Ichijo's witch power, as she stopped going to school in order to not hurt Yamada.
  • When it's revealed she's moved overseas without saying goodbye to anyone, and thanks to Takuma, all students at Suzaku High but Yamada forget her.
• The Quiet One: Not overly so, but she generally only speaks when she feels she has something practical and meaningful to add to the conversation. After she started dating Yamada, she seems to have gotten over it, as she regularly wants to chitchat with him.
• Quit Your Whining: What she essentially says to Yamada in the first chapter when he angrily laments how annoying it is to have swapped bodies with her, pointing out that it was his clumsiness which got them in that predicament in the first place.
• Ready for Lovemaking: In a somewhat unconventional and subtle way, but she clearly tries to show that she is ready and willing to do the deed when she stays the night with Yamada, by inviting him to see her in the shower, and after the shower making it clear that she is Going Commando. Of course, Yamada doesn't get it at all (until next day at school).
• Red Is Heroic: Plays this trope straight by having red eyes, while at the same time inverting another trope.
• The Reliable One: She may not be the most talkative or fun-loving member of the club, but there's no doubt that she is loyal to a fault.
• Ret-Gone: A temporary version. When she leaves Suzaku High at the middle of her third year, everybody (including those who would usually be immune to memory wipes) loses their memories of her. Unlike regular memory wipes where the forgotten people are still physically present at the school and as such can prove that they exist, Shiraishi leaves the school and country, and as such she effectively doesn't exist to anybody who ever knew her. The exception is Yamada because Shiraishi offered up her own memories to let him remember her. When they reunite at the graduation, Yamada manages to return everybody's memories.
• Safety in Indifference: Combines this attitude with Never Be Hurt Again at the start of the series. She acts indifferent to anything but her studies because that's a safer and more comfortable feeling than making friends and having them betray or bully you, which is something she's tried several times before.
• Say My Name: She begins calling Yamada by his name more often when she grows closer to them, to the point that she does it in practically every other sentence after becoming his girlfriend.
• Scholarship Student: In the flashback from her first year, she mentions to be one of these when wondering why Amamiya wants to make her into the original witch, but it's never elaborated on.
• Shameless Fanservice Girl: She doesn't really mind being seen naked, as long as there is a practical reason - she has no problems with Yamada taking a bath in her body, and even when Leona in her body took off her panties and let Yamada look up her skirt, she deemed it a necessary sacrifice. Ironically, despite not being bashful, she doesn't have many Fanservice moments herself - most of them occur when another character is in her body or during Yamada's Imagine Spots. Later, she even hints that she would be okay with having sex in front of Takuma in order to test if the witch powers can be activated by other means than kissing.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Even without makeup and in plain clothing, she is very pretty, but when Itou dolls her up, she becomes truly stunning.
• Shouldn't You Stop Stealing?: Her dedication to school work, sometimes bordering to an obsession, is due to the fact that she actually hated going to school and never had friends before, so to endure the days in school she dedicated herself as much as possible to academics. However, even after making friends and starting enjoying school, she still spends most of her time studying.
• Shower Scene: A brief one when she stays the night with Yamada during spring break.
• "Shut Up" Kiss: She tends to give Yamada these when he's awkward or hesitant about using a witch power on her.
• Signature Headgear: While Shiraishi otherwise has a fairly generic design when it comes to her face and hair, she can always be distinguished by her red, X-shaped hairpins that have more or less become her trademark. (To the comical point that her Spear Counterpart Orara in the Gender Flip omake also wears them)
• Significant Birthdate: December 24th. While she's not quite a Messianic Archetype, it's still a noteworthy coincidence that one of the sweetest and most wholesome characters in the series just so happens to be born at the height of a holiday associated with peace and happiness.
• Silent Snarker: Her most effective snarking is not her words, but rather the disapproving looks she sometimes gives, as well as her tendency to solemnly retract into the background when something is so stupid that she doesn't even bother to react to it.
• Silly Walk: She walks pretty normally in her own body, but when in Yamada's body, she often has an odd, knuckle-kneed gait.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: She fell in love with Yamada because he saved her from bullies, changed her life for the better, and because of his altruistic willingness to help others despite his rough facade.
• The Smart Girl: Of the Supernatural Studies Club, as while she doesn't always talk much, she's usually good for a calculation that changes the course of action.
• Smart People Wear Glasses: She's one of the smartest characters of the series and has worn glasses for most of her life, only ditching them when she met Yamada.
• Socially Awkward Hero: Somewhat, even though she often hides it behind an aloof facade. An example is when she goes on her first field trip because she wants to get closer to her schoolmates, but ends up studying alone all the time because she doesn't know how to hang out with them. On the other hand, she is not at all afraid of the witches and their powers.
• Sophisticated as Hell: She is more soft-spoken than almost all of the other characters, but she is not above using slang terms and sometimes mild swears, especially during her moments of Brutal Honesty.
• Sour Outside, Sad Inside: At the start because of her bitter experiences with so-called "friends" just ending up being bullies, so she doesn't want to make new friends.
• The Spock: Of the Supernatural Studies Club, but she's also calm and overly logical in general.
• Stepford Snarker: She was much more of a Deadpan Snarker at the start when she was also less cheerful, suggesting she largely snarked to cover up any insecurities and to not seem too friendly.
• The Stoic: Her serious facial expression rarely changes, though she gets a wider range of facial expressions later on in the series. It's parodied a bit when the club members play Cheat - she puts on a silly, slightly smug expression as her poker face, even though her normal expression is more or less a perfect poker face. That said, a self-confident expression still works in her favor compared to the others' nervous expressions.
• Stoic Spectacles: She looked even more stoic when she, in the past, wore glasses.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: She most often shows her sugary side to Yamada. Throughout the series, her ice side changes from cold and somewhat rude to usually just stoic.
• Super-Empowering: Being the so-called "original witch", she is the reason that all of the other witches have their powers, though it isn't made clear if she had any choice in which powers to bestow to which people.
• Supreme Chef: She managed to make a very delicious meal from some leftovers she found in Yamada's fridge.
• Tareme Eyes: She has them and fits the description pretty good; she is friendly and gentle, but also a bit reserved and meek.
• Team Mom: She sometimes acts as a gentle mom in contrast to Itou's role as a strict mom. Most of the time, she is more of an equal to the boys than a motherly figure, though.
• Tears of Joy: When she finds out that the girl Yamada dated during his first year was actually her all along.
• Teen Genius: When it comes to academia, she is very much one. She is easily able to conversate like-mindedly with Takuma who is stated to be a literal genius (as in a person with a very high IQ).
• Textile Work Is Feminine: When preparing for the culture festival, she and Itou did the sewing.
• That Makes Me Feel Angry: At the start of the series, she sometimes described her feelings without really showing them. Characterization Marches On, though, and in later chapters, she's probably better at showing her feelings than describing them.
• They Call Me MISTER Tibbs!: A very indirect case where she starts signing her mails with "Urara" instead of "Shiraishi" after she and Yamada become a couple, to signify that it's okay for him to call her by her first name now; though Yamada either doesn't get it or doesn't care and keeps calling her by her last name until they marry.
• Token Wholesome: Unlike some of other girls, the emphasis is usually on her being beautiful rather than sexy. She provides very little Fanservice except when another character is in her body or she appears in an Imagine Spot, and she usually doesn't show any perverted tendencies (she is completely casual about nudity and open to sex, but she is never (openly) perverted or slutty).
• Took a Level in Cheerfulness: Most definitely, especially after becoming Yamada's girlfriend. In early chapters, it was a rare, heartwarming moment to see her smile, but in later chapters she does it fairly often - though it can still be heartwarming.
• Took a Level in Idealism: She had a cynical streak to her at the start of the series due to being betrayed again and again, but then she finally met some decent people and had her life changed, and for the rest of the series she's not anymore cynical than her friends.
• Took a Level in Kindness: The nonchalant impoliteness she would regularly display in earlier chapters mostly disappears after a while, but may pop up here and there for the sake of a joke.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Like her boyfriend, she seems to like soba noodles a lot. Albeit she's not as obsessed with eating them and has a slightly different taste (she gladly ate some noodles that Yamada considered inedible)
• Trauma Conga Line: Not counting the bullying she went through before the start of the series, she cannot get a break in Rika's arc: first she loses her memories of Yamada, with her Wistful Amnesia affecting her a great deal. While she is confused by the weird feelings she gets when Yamada, now a stranger to her, is around, her club (which is generally the bright spot in her life) starts falling apart because the other members also forgot Yamada. Near the end, Asuka suddenly swaps bodies with her without her consent and has her confined in a house full of strangers - she is scared because she doesn't know if she'll get her body back, while the regret that she didn't believe Yamada when he told the truth also pains her. When she gets her memories back, she is very sad that she didn't manage to keep her promise to Yamada to be the first person he kissed. Fortunately, she gets much better when she finally becomes his girlfriend.
• Unkempt Beauty: At least at the start of the series, she doesn't use any makeup, yet is still considered extremely beautiful. In chapter 65, she applied some beauty products to Yamada's body, so she it's fairly likely that she has also started using makeup on herself - possibly on cue from Itou.
• The Un-Smile: In the anime, she's seen with a very unhappy, almost creepy smile on some old pictures of her from her childhood, suggesting that her miserability goes way back...
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Downplayed. She (in Yamada's body) vomits from motion sickness on the second-year school trip. During the act, the bag hides her mouth, but afterwards she's shown with vomit running out of her mouth.
• What Is This Feeling?: When she, in her amnesiac state, sees Yamada kiss Odagiri, she wonders why that makes her cry since she rationalizes that he's just a stranger that she shouldn't care much about. She instead makes the conclusion that she must be sad because her friends aren't coming much to the club anymore.
• When She Smiles: Lots of the series' heartwarming moments come from her smiling at Yamada.
• Who's Laughing Now?: This is what Sasaki thought when Shiraishi suddenly went on the offensive after having had enough of the bullying, even beating down the school delinquent in the process. Of course, it was Yamada in Shiraishi's body, but Shiraishi herself certainly didn't mind having gotten rid of her bully.
• With a Foot on the Bus: A variation where she does get Put on a Bus, but makes arrangements so that the bus can come back permanently. When she has to leave Suzaku High to move overseas and be forgotten by everyone, she sacrifices her own memories so that Yamada can remember her, find her and make sure they get together in Japan.
• Wistful Amnesia: She is hit by it two times when it comes to Yamada. First time, she doesn't know he is and doesn't believe in anything he says, yet she still starts crying when she sees him break his promise and kiss Odagiri. Second time around, she does believe in what he says because she reads about him in her diary, and immediately after that she finds herself attracted to him, wanting to kiss him even though she technically barely knows him.
• Your Size May Vary: Her official height is 160 cm, which - very realistically - is about half a head shorter than Yamada. Her height in the actual series, however, varies from being almost the same height as Yamada to more than a head shorter than him, depending on what's more convenient for the scene.