Kaede Azusagawa

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**Kaede Azusagawa** (梓川 かえで, *Azusagawa Kaede*) is one of the main characters of *Seishun Buta Yarou wa Bunny Girl Senpai no Yume wo Minai*. She is the younger sister of Sakuta Azusagawa who suffered amnesia and gained a different personality after her ordeal with Adolescence Syndrome stemming from online bullying. Since then, she has lived with Sakuta and has not attended school.

## Appearance

Kaede has medium length, light brown hair tied to a loose ponytail at the front, and a strand of hair on both sides adorned with a tiny pink bow each. She also has square bangs and possesses large, pale brown eyes.

She is normally shown wearing a panda onesie with a pink shirt underneath. This is primarily due to her insecurity and paranoia as a result of her Adolescence Syndrome. She stops wearing the onesie after regaining her memories.

## Personality

### Pre-amnesia

Kaede originally had a kind, yet cheeky personality which granted her little difficulty with social interaction. She regains this personality after completing her list of goals.

### Post-amnesia

As a result of being bullied online, Kaede lost her memories, gained a new personality and became a shut-in. Kaede's new personality considers her pre-amnesia self as an entirely different person that everyone was talking about, causing her to become fearful of strangers. She ironically shows a more outward, cheerful personality at home in front of her older brother, the first person to recognize Kaede's new personality as such.

Kaede develops a liking for pandas after watching them on a DVD that Sakuta bought for her, and as a result, wears a panda onesie at home. Kaede also tends to refer to herself in third person, although she distinguishes between herself and the "other" Kaede, who she calls "Kaede-san".

After seeing several girls visit her and her brother's home, Kaede becomes inspired to start leaving home herself, writing out a list of goals to accomplish with Sakuta. As stated in her diary entries, she also does this having long accepted that she is a placeholder for Kaede-san and will be superseded when Kaede-san gets her memories back.

## Background

Sometime during Kaede's time in middle school, she was a victim of online bullying and death threats. As a result of Adolescence Syndrome, this caused her to suffer various physical injuries and she was only able to recover after she stopped using social media and going to school. Unfortunately, she had also developed amnesia as a way to separate herself from her experience with being harassed, which drove her mother (also forcing her father) to abandon her with Sakuta Azusagawa. After her brother received advice from Shoko Makinohara, she was gifted a pen and notebook and she was suggested to write her first name in hiragana (かえで) instead of kanji (花楓). Kaede was declared the current "Kaede" and her former self was dubbed "Kaede-san", which earned her tearful approval.

## Adolescence Syndrome

*Main article: Adolescence Syndrome*
Kaede was inflicted with multiple cuts and bruises after being harassed online by her classmates, which forced Sakuta to isolate Kaede from the internet as a whole. She had also lost her memories of everything up until the time when she was first hospitalized, as a subconscious way to sever herself from her experience with bullying.

When attempting to complete her goals to become more social again, large bruises appeared on her neck. After managing to complete them, she regained her old memories, but lost her memory of everything that had happened after her first experience with Adolescence Syndrome. In the eighth light novel, her bruises flare up again, largely due to conflicting thoughts after being made aware of her other personality that lived at home in place of her.

## Relationships

### Sakuta Azusagawa

After experiencing injuries and memory loss from Adolescence Syndrome, Kaede saw her brother as the only who understood her once Sakuta decided to refer to her pre-amnesia self as a different Kaede. As a result, Kaede is extremely fond of Sakuta, often climbing on his bed while he was sleeping and occasionally making affectionate advances toward him. She trusted her brother enough to escort her outside, crying with joy after she made it out.

Knowing that her brother would have regrets once she regained her old self, Kaede took it upon herself to complete her list of goals with her brother so that she could fill his mind with happy thoughts before that happened. Sakuta is shown to have also regretted the initial memory loss that Kaede suffered.

### Mai Sakurajima

Being the first person she's interacted with outside of Sakuta since her loss of memories, Kaede first appears to Mai as a nervous wreck who cannot even introduce herself. After some time, however, and after Mai gives her some clothes, Kaede opens up a little to Mai to the point where she is able to act normally in her presence.

After regaining her memories, Kaede is introduced once again to Mai.

### Rio Futaba

When Sakuta brought Rio back to their apartment due to the duplicate Rio, Kaede was nervous in introducing herself, but fared better than when she had first met Mai. She later warmed up to her as Rio helped her and Shoko Makinohara with studying, as well as made her food. Kaede later starts calling her by her first name.

### Nodoka Toyohama

Kaede was first introduced to Nodoka during the month in which Nodoka and Mai were in each other's bodies; Kaede is never made aware of the bodyswap, thus assumed that Nodoka acted just like her older step-sister. In the eighth novel, Kaede watches Nodoka's idol group perform live, and becomes a fan of her music.

### Kotomi Kano

Kaede's old childhood friend refers to her as "Kae". Though the post-amnesia personality of Kaede doesn't recognize Kotomi, her pre-amnesia self has always remembered her, addressing her as "Komi", and they finally meet again in the eighth novel.

### Tomoe Koga

In the tenth novel, Kaede takes over Sakuta's old job at the diner and becomes Tomoe's newest colleague. Prior to that, Tomoe had been aware of Sakuta having a younger sister, but served her just once.

## Etymology

* The name **Kaede** means "maple" (かえで) in Hiragana.
* Kaede's surname **Azusagawa** means "catalpa" (梓) (**azusa**) and "river, stream" (川) (**kawa**/**gawa**).
	+ **Catalpa** is a tree with large heart-shaped leaves, clusters of trumpet-shaped flowers, and long, slender seed pods, native to North America and eastern Asia and cultivated as an ornamental.

## References

1. ↑ Light Novel Volume 2 - Chapter 2
2. ↑ Light Novel Volume 3 - Chapter 2
3. ↑ https://ao-buta.com/character/
4. ↑ http://rascaldoesnotdream.com/character/