Takeru Fujiwara

**Takeru Fujiwara** (藤原 尊, *Fujiwara Takeru*) is the second titular hero of the series. He is a first year student at Honan Academy and one of the stride club's runners, predominantly an anchor (final runner).

He is voiced by Nobuhiko Okamoto (Japanese) and Ricco Fajardo (English).

## Appearance

Takeru is a handsome young man with short cropped black hair that has a v-shaped fringe that hangs just above his blue coloured eyes and he has a rather impressively sharp glare. Normally, Takeru wears black framed glasses, but he uses contacts when he plays Stride in order to run more freely. He wore full thick-rimmed glasses as well when running before middle school.

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 black/blue t-shirt underneath. He wears the jersey over black knee-length leggings and navy blue running shoes.

His school uniform consists of the black school gakuen which contains both jacket and pants, with a white shirt underneath and blue sneakers.

## Personality

Takeru is always cool and stoic with sober eyes. He has little interest in things other than playing Stride. In middle school, Takeru was a famous Stride player in the under 15's category. He seems to have strong faith in Riku Yagami's athletic ability as Riku finished in a dead-heat in the 2-on-2 race against Heath Hasekura. He tends to feel people's legs to determine one's talent.

Takeru has great cardiovascular fitness, flexibility and running speed (just not quite as fast on a treadmill), so Nana Sakurai must initially delay the call for him to start running, but by Episode 10, Nana was being told not to delay the call in order for Riku and Takeru to work better. Despite this, he only has average parkour techniques. Takeru also has a good grasp of sport science, biomechanics and nutrition, though his nutritional advice is skewed as well because he avoids carbohydrates altogether.

## Skills

According to the PSV game, Takeru has great running speed (but not as fast on a treadmill due to shorter stride lengths than Kyosuke Kuga) and corner speed, decent stamina, average parkour skills (but in the anime, he cares more about maintaining speed to run than proper form or aesthetics to please the fans) and poor mental game. In the anime, he was close to wiping out large deficits from Ayumu Kadowaki against Saisei. He also used his great speed to make the win over Ichijyokan more convincing. Reiji Suwa is his foil outside of Stride because they like to compete outside of Stride as well, but they traded Kobe T-shirts after the summer camp. Tasuku Senoo is his foil in the sense that they are both very serious. Tomoe Yagami and Takeru are similar in the sense that they are both genius runners that made Riku look bad in Riku's opinion.

## Quotes

* *"If you're serious about Stride, eat white meat."*
— To Riku Yagami

## Etymology

* The name **Takeru** means "revered, valuable, precious, noble, exalted" (尊).
* Takeru's surname **Fujiwara** means "wisteria" (藤) (**fuji**) and "field, plain" (原) (**hara**/**wara**).

## Trivia

* Takeru has his likes and his dislikes:
	+ Likes: Clean and healthy cooking, high protein diet, banana milk shakes, egg whites and high quality chicken breast (white meat), legs, Saisei's training complex (after seeing it, he sways a lot to the point that he hoped for a transfer )
	+ Dislikes: Losing, high carb and high fat diet, karaoke (punishment for losing at table tennis against Saisei, also he's tone-deaf), extremely hot baths and swimming as he cannot swim.
* Takeru's key ring in the anime is a cow mascot, a nod to his hometown of Kobe, the capital city of the Hyōgo Prefecture. It impresses Reiji Suwa so much that he got Shizuma Mayuzumi to arrange for them to go to Kobe to buy them. Shizuma also offers to set up a tour of Kobe, either as a trip, a concert tour, or as an exhibition stage.
* Nobuhiko Okamoto (Takeru's voice actor) is actually a certified skilled shogi player.
* Ayumu Kadowaki hates Takeru for stealing signature one-liners.
* Takeru is Honan's anchor even though he is only a 1st year (excluding the last race)
* Takeru is well known in the Under-15 category.
* In Episode 9, it is shown that Takeru can't swim.
* In Episode 11, it is revealed that Takeru, Riku Yagami and Nana Sakurai 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.
* Takeru is like Haruka Nanase, but waterproof.

## References

1. ↑ Episode 4
2. ↑ Episode 6