Nozomi Matsunaga

* Manga
* Anime

**Nozomi Matsunaga** (松永 希美 , *Matsunaga Nozomi*?) is one of the four female deuteragonists of the *Nijiiro Days* series. She is the younger sister of Tomoya Matsunaga who fell in love with Keiichi Katakura after he helped her when she had gotten injured. She was in her final year of middle school at the start of the series, but she later enrolls at the same high school as her brother since she is aiming for Keiichi whom she was deeply changed by.

## Appearance

Nozomi is said to be a cute fair and light-skinned teenage girl who is below average build and height with straight shoulder-length magenta-colored hair that she has a piece of it tied into a ponytail at the back with side-bangs while there are two strands of hair framing her face and teal-colored eyes.

When Nozomi started high school, she cuts her hair to lower chin-length (at the end of Vol. 8 Ch. 27) and leaves it loose while she occasionally sports hair-clips at the side of her head.

## Personality

Nozomi is a very kind, positive and caring girl, but she has been clumsy, awkward and a crybaby since she was young, in which she is prone to crying and blushing. She is also quite naive, very pure-hearted and sweet, but at the same time has always been an understanding, supportive and strong-headed girl that tries her best in everything since she hates losing. She is very honest and straightforward regarding her feelings towards Keiichi Katakura and is very determined and also a bit pushy to make him fall in love with her. According to Keiichi, her intuition is always spot which is why she tends to do something out of absolutely nowhere. She is sometimes seen as meek and shy, but is friendly with everyone, disciplined and polite. Nozomi had also been very innocent and dependable on other people, which is why she couldn't really make decisions herself, but after falling in love with Keiichi, Nozomi becomes a more confident person and leaves her self-resentment behind. She finally felt a sense of fulfillment after feeling so anxious after seeing friends finding their passions when Nozomi herself really didn't have anything she wanted to do. And even though she has been said to look quite fragile, Nozomi absolutely hates being called this because of her past. Slowly, Nozomi starts becoming more mature, independent, and she finally finds something she can have as a talent and hobby later on. She is now able to set her goals and choices in life and realized the things she was yearning for. This is why she has decided to live for love as she was deeply changed by meeting and falling in love with Keiichi.

It has also been slightly hinted that she is a masochist due to her responses when Keiichi shows her his sadistic side and this side of her was also most likely brought out by him.

## Background

Nozomi has been living with her mother and older brother Tomoya Matsunaga where the two siblings have been very close since childhood and her older brother constantly helped and took care of her.

Since a young age, Nozomi had hated herself because she couldn't do anything but sweeten up to people. When she was a child, she was a crybaby but her family and friends still treated her with kindness. Even if she sweetened up or relied on people, they would still accept her and treat her as an equal, so it eventually became a norm for her. However, after becoming a bit older, she began seeing her friends finding hobbies, joining clubs and chasing their talents, which made Nozomi anxious as she didn't know her own talents or specialties; there was nothing she wanted to do nor did she take any initiative to go look for it. She began thinking that she couldn't do anything, but after meeting Keiichi Katakura, she fell in love with him and felt like he saved her life. She had felt a sense of fulfillment for the first time in her life, and all the worries and anxiety that had piled up over time, disappeared in an instant. This is the first thing Nozomi finally felt like she could be confident about.

## Plot

Nozomi is first introduced in Episode 7 as a girl who Keiichi Katakura met at the beach where she had injured her foot and couldn't walk, so Keiichi helped her and decided to carry her on his back to her friends since she still couldn't walk properly. After this, she developed a crush on him and had only been thinking about him. After finding out that her older brother Tomoya Matsunaga and Keiichi were friends, Nozomi wanted to meet him as soon as possible to thank him for helping her. Eventually, Nozomi becomes a member of the group of friends. Nozomi has confessed a few times to Keiichi, and even though Keiichi is more interested in older women, he accepts Nozomi's attempts to make him fall in love with her. Ever since, Nozomi has been very determined to win Keiichi's affection.

Nozomi was in her third year in middle school when she met Keiichi where she had been studying really hard and took cram classes to enroll at a high school, but still didn't really know her talents or goals in life until later. Although she initially thought about entering an all-girls school, she later decided Seiryou High School, the same school as Mattsun and his friends, simply because she was aiming for Keiichi. She finally felt like she had found something to be confident about and cuts her hair as a symbol of starting anew when starting high school, meanwhile living her life with love by her side. She finally joins a club in high school ― the volleyball club, to which she works very hard.

## Relationships

### Keiichi Katakura

After Keiichi helped Nozomi at the beach in Episode 7, she developed a crush on him stated that he was the one who saved her life. She felt something different from him and ever since that incident, she couldn't stop thinking about him and finally felt something she could be confident about. All the anxiety she had felt for not being good enough, disappeared when she met Keiichi. After finding out that Keiichi and her older brother Tomoya Matsunaga were friends, she immediately wanted to meet him and thank him for helping her at the beach. She straightforwardly confessed that she felt like he was her prince and therefore usually hangs with the group of friends to become closer to Keiichi. She becomes extremely happy when she is able to meet and talk to him. She is totally head-over-heels for him and loves him deeply, saying that his happiness will become her own happiness. Although Keiichi didn't really have an interest in Nozomi, he was still friendly towards her. However, when Nozomi told him that she was really serious about him and had a feeling that he would show her a whole new world, Keiichi revealed that he preferred older women, but Nozomi didn't give in. Even after showing her that he has a split personality, she told him that she wanted to see all of Keiichi's "faces." This made Keiichi shocked, but later lead him to become quite interested in her and feel like she had the potential. Keiichi acknowledges Nozomi's love for him and accepted that she was chasing after him and told her to try to make him hers. After this, they exchange numbers and starts to occasionally email each other about their daily lives.

Nozomi is very honest with her feelings towards Keiichi and says what she's feeling to him directly, and wants to make it obvious as well. She wants to spend as much time with him as possible and therefore decided to enroll at the same school as Keiichi. She also once asked him out one day as she has wanted to give him chocolate for Valentines Day. Even though Keiichi really thought Nozomi was a great girl, he coldly "rejected" her with his sadistic side by saying that nothing would happen between them. This shocked and made Nozomi heart-broken at first, but she didn't shed a single tear. She felt like she couldn't understand Keiichi and even though she tried really hard, her feelings were not reaching him. Even after Keiichi put Nozomi through a "trial" by showing his sadistic side and prying into her heart, she just became more in love with him and still had the instinct that Keiichi was the "one" and told Keiichi that he would be the only one for her. Keiichi thought that Nozomi had done a really good job to endure everything, which is why he has become more interested in her than before, as he even told Mattsun to "expect a lot of begging." Keiichi has become Nozomi's motivation which is why whenever she would think about him, she felt like she could do anything. He has also changed her a lot in a positive way to which Nozomi has become a more confident person.

Even though she isn't entirely sure if her feelings have reached out to him more due to Keiichi's amusement of teasing her, Keiichi revealed that he did become jealous over her, which shocked Nozomi. Keiichi also thinks Nozomi's personality and the aspects of her are really interesting. Following his hints that Keiichi might reciprocate his feelings, Nozomi became quite obsessed with him and states that she would do anything for him whether it would be painful or difficult. She views him as a cool, athletic person and sometimes acts like a "fangirl" and looks up to him greatly, seeing him as a "God". Keiichi also stated that she is dedicated to making him fall in love with her.

Now when she is in the same school as Keiichi, Nozomi wants to do as much as she can to him and takes every opportunity to talk with him. She often ends up day-dreaming about Keiichi; sometimes drooling when thinking about him and has her own fantasies about him. However, she can become self-conscious since that even though she's already close with Keiichi, he is still very popular among other girls in school who like him as well. Despite that, Nozomi wants to understand Keiichi and get to know him better. She is also fully encouraging and supportive towards Keiichi and wants him to talk about his problems with her if he felt like it and will try to cheer him whenever he feels down. She has stated that she loves every side of him- both the good and the bad, and always want to be there for him.

### Tomoya Matsunaga

Mattsun is Nozomi's older brother who have been very close since childhood and Nozomi treasures her older brother. However, Mattsun is very protective of her and he has a sister complex, which is shown as he thinks Nozomi is really cute and becomes very confrontational towards Keiichi Katakura or any other boys when they get too close to her. Nozomi thinks that his over-protectiveness is a bit tiring and gets very annoyed at him whenever he gets between her and Keiichi, but Nozomi still loves and cares for her older brother as a family member. She also admires up to him in the things she herself can't do, and she also wants him to be happy and likes the idea of him and Mari Tsutsui as a couple.

### Yukiko Asai, Mari Tsutsui & Anna Kobayakawa

Yukirin affectionately calls Nozomi "Nonnon" and it has been shown that the two have a friendly relationship as they can freely talk about various topics with each other.

Although Nozomi doesn't interact with Mari and Anna much, there were a few episodes where she has like:

* In Episode 13, the four girls chat with each other in the hot springs where Yukirin talks about how "A while back, I went to Shiretoko with Tsuyopon. The open-air baths there were amazing, too! The scenery was breathtaking!" When Nozomi asks, "Do you go on a lot of vacations", Yukirin replies by saying, "Once in a while. We went to Tokyo during summer break!" When Nozomi hears about this, she talks about how "I hope I can go on a vacation with Keiichi-*san* someday." When Anna asks "Why with Katakura-*kun*?", Nozomi replies by saying ""Why"? Because I love Keiichi-*san*, of course!"
* In Episode 23, Yukirin makes plans with the girls (Nozomi, Mari Tsutsui and Anna Kobayakawa) to meet up in a cafe as Tsuyoshi Naoe tells Natsuki Hashiba that "Well, Yukirin did mention about giving souvenirs from Tokyo." At the cafe, she gives them their souvenirs that she got during "an event" (as she mentioned) where Nozomi receives a mug.

### Tsuyoshi Naoe

Although Nozomi and Tsuyoshi haven't interacted much, they have talked with each other once like:

* In Chapter 52, they talked about Keiichi Katakura and Tomoya Matsunaga.

### Usami

Usami is a guy who went to the same middle school as Nozomi. They were classmates, but Nozomi didn't really consider him as a close friend and wasn't particularly interested in him. Usami, on the other hand, had a crush on Nozomi for a while, and one day when they went home from school together, Usami confessed to Nozomi and said that he wanted to go out with her. He then commented that the way she looked kind of fragile wanted him to protect, which didn't make her happy at all. Before she could give him an answer, Tomoya Matsunaga saw them and gave Usami a scolding. Nozomi later rejected Usami by telling him that she already had someone else she liked.

## Etymology

* The name **Nozomi** means "hope" (希) (**nozo**) and "beautiful" (美) (**mi**).
* Nozomi's surname **Matsunaga** means "pine tree, fir tree" (松) (**matsu**) and "eternal" (永) (**naga**).

## Trivia

* Nozomi likes spicy food, in contrast to Tomoya Matsunaga.
* Nozomi is quite similar to her brother in terms of romance and appearance.
* Nozomi is quite bad at cooking and baking, but she eventually becomes better at it with practice.

### Miscellaneous

* Ai Kayano (Nozomi's voice actress) has voiced characters many from each of the same anime series along with Koki Uchiyama (Tsuyoshi Naoe's voice actor) and Shizuka Ishigami (Yukiko Asai's voice actress):
	+ **Male Voice Actors**
		- Ai and Koki voices two characters from each of the same anime series:
			* Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba
				+ Ai voices Kanae Kocho.
				+ Koki voices Rui.
			* Hori-san to Miyamura-kun
				+ Ai voices Yuriko Hori.
				+ Koki voices Izumi Miyamura.
	+ **Female Voice Actresses**
		- Ai and Shizuka voices two characters from each of the same anime series:
			* Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba
				+ Ai voices Kanae Kocho.
				+ Shizuka voices Makio.
			* The Promised Neverland
				+ Ai voices Anna.
				+ Shizuka voices Nat.

## Gallery

* Manga
* Anime

Nozomi on the cover of the sixth manga volume.Nozomi talking with her brother.Nozomi smiling.Nozomi just after she cuts her hair in Vol. 8 Ch.28Nozomi in her new look, blushing while talking with Keiichi Katakura.Nozomi smiling and thanking Keiichi for accepting her towel.

Nozomi's anime character designNozomi's debut at the beach in Episode 7Nozomi in Episode 15