Riku Yagami

**Riku Yagami** (八神 陸, *Yagami Riku*) is the first titular hero of the series. He is a first year student at Honan Academy and one of the stride club's runners who is predominantly a leadoff runner.

Riku is voiced by Ryohei Kimura (Japanese) and Austin Tindle (English).

## Appearance

Riku is a handsome and slender young man with messy pale-brown hair that is usually tied in a high ponytail with bangs and some strands hanging out from the back and reddish-brown eyes.

He wears a white jersey (with a thick blue and thin red line running across the shoulders until the elbows and Honan Academy's emblem on the left) with a red t-shirt underneath. He wears it with short black leggings, white track shorts, socks and white running shoes.

His school uniform consists of the black school gakuran which contains both jacket and pants, that has a slightly unbuttoned white dress shirt underneath and a red vest. He also wears white-red sneakers.

## Personality

Riku has a bright and cheerful personality that he is able to become friends with anybody. He is very athletic and has good motor skills but only has average cardiovascular fitness. Due to his superior athleticism, Riku has been recruited for several other clubs (specifically basketball, volleyball and table tennis) in the school, more for his speed and agility rather than his ball skills. Tomoe Yagami (Riku's older brother) was a member of the Stride club previously who was studying in America before joining Kakyoin, but he had quit Stride before because he is nowhere near as talented as Tomoe (and later Takeru Fujiwara).

## Skills

Riku has great acceleration and poor parkour skills because while he can jump and hurdle, he can never land safely. He also has average stamina and poor slope skills as Asuma Mayuzumi of Saisei retook the lead in the downhill section, and in the second race, he ran too hard and lost the lead in the twisty and sloping tunnel against Takeshi Eifuku. He also lost the lead against Tetsu Hachiya in the third race in the longer-than-expected opening section where Hachiya dodged Yagami's attempt of a block, and almost collapsed before the transition.

He also has poor flexibility, something Takeru Fujiwara suspected, but never confirmed until he saw him struggling with stretches with Asuma during summer camp. Asuma also pointed out that his hunched posture meant he cannot take in as much oxygen if he was more upright, causing his stamina to drop in longer runs.

By Episode 10, his stamina has improved, but because he is caught up with trying to match Takeru and Tomoe Yagami, he mentally ran into a wall. Technically, his breathing technique was noted to be incorrect and his upper body is unstable. By Episode 11, his mental game has improved so remarkably that he wanted to run as an anchor against Tomoe, which Takeru and Kyosuke Kuga gave their full support.

## Etymology

* The name **Riku** means "land" (陸).
* Riku's surname **Yagami** means "eight" (八) (**ya**) and "god, deity" (神) (**kami**/**gami**).

## Trivia

* The Yagami family runs a bakery, which happened to be the favorite place of Asuma Mayuzumi and Reiji Suwa.
* Riku has his likes and his dislikes:
	+ Likes: Japanese Soba Bread, red meat and seafood, walking and almost all sports.
	+ Dislikes: Kabaddi, running in the rain, something his older brother loves doing, which is partly why he resisted joining Stride Club, and that he wanted to join three other indoor sports clubs at the same time instead.
* Ryohei Kimura (Riku's voice actor) has also voiced Kōtarō Bokuto (Haikyū!!) and Ryōta Kise (Kuroko's Basketball).
* While Riku and Takeru Fujiwara both have poor grades compared to Ayumu Kadowaki, they have basic knowledge of science when they point out that just because Ayumu has green hair, he can't perform photosynthesis.
* In the visual novel, Riku falls for Nana Sakurai on the first day of school.
	+ But, it seems like he doesn't have any romantic interest in her in the anime.
* In Episode 11, it is revealed that Takeru, Riku and Nana actually met 7 years ago in 2010 in primary school, but they all changed so much in appearance that they forgot over time. At the time, Riku was a better runner than Takeru. He also wanted to run against Tomoe despite not being an anchor.