Ichikawa Kyoutarou

* Manga
* Anime

**Ichikawa Kyoutarou** (市いち川かわ   京きょう太た郎ろう, *Ichikawa Kyōtarō*) is the main character of Boku no Kokoro no Yabai Yatsu.

Ichikawa is an unpopular and dour teenager who enjoys true crime, and has delusions of being an edgy murderer despite his empathetic personality. He is thirteen years old at the start of the series, and attends school alongside his classmates in Daijuni Middle School in Meguro, Tokyo, Class 2-3 (later 3-1).

## Appearance

Ichikawa is a relatively short, small-framed Japanese teenager. His two most notable character design traits are his hair, which is almost always put in a style where one of his eyes is covered by his bangs, and his eyes themselves, which have a notable circular/spiral design, also seen in his family. He is usually seen in his school uniform, but outside of school, he tends to wear "goth" clothing; mainly black, adorned with skulls, chains, and other macabre designs.

## Personality

Early on in the series, Ichikawa is a bitter social outcast, often having violent fantasies involving people who slight or annoy him. This, accompanied with his interest in true crime and fantasy stories has his internal monologue being that of a psychopathic killer. Despite this, he freezes up in social situations, and dislikes people who aren't considerate of other people's feelings, and detests people who bully, intimidate, or objectify others. He constantly worries about being put in the spotlight, ridiculed, or that his presence may cause other people problems or discomfort, even though much of that is only in his head. As a young boy going through puberty, Ichikawa's sexual impulses often get the better of him, particularly when Yamada does something inadvertently sensual around him.

While not a major aspect of his character, he is a bit of an otaku, enjoying action manga and things like moe anime girl figures. He spends a lot of his free time playing on his mobile game device, reading, or watching movies.

Most of the plot of the series is Ichikawa growing out of his hatred of people, usually through his interactions with Yamada Anna, who acts as his love interest and character foil.

## Relationships

#### Yamada Anna

Ichikawa's relationship with Yamada is the core aspect of the story, and virtually every event in the manga circles around their interactions. Yamada initially symbolizes everything Ichikawa dislikes about society and school life, being a popular beauty who, at first glance, seems to have everything in her life together. Jealous of her outgoing attitude, which his negative outlook interprets as her constantly looking down on others, he claims she is "the girl I want to kill the most."

Their first proper interactions mainly revolved around the school library, usually through self-contained chapter "skits" involving Yamada sneaking into the library to snack, and Ichikawa being annoyed by her presence for interrupting his place of tranquility. Small interactions such as him awkwardly offering his box-cutter to cut some material, or giving her a fan when she is too hot causes them to drum up an off-kilter friendship. For Ichikawa, being able to have unique interactions from someone he initially considered unapproachable rapidly changes his opinion of her, and he finds himself being protective of Yamada, such as when she is pressured into giving her contact info to Pickup-pai while she is walking to school and he throws his bike into the river to derail their conversation. Near the end of the first volume, after she has her nose smashed and bloodied during a basketball game, Ichikawa sneaks into the infirmary because he is concerned for her, and admits to himself that he has feelings for her. Though Yamada can obliviously arouse Ichikawa's sexual impulses on occasion, he starts chiding himself more often for thinking indecent thoughts as his love for her grows stronger and he seems intent to form a deeper relationship with her; as such, he respects her personal boundaries, watches out for her welfare, takes care to observe her emotional cues and seeks to take an active interest in her modelling work, something which often makes her happy.

While Ichikawa quickly realizes that he has unique opportunities to interact with Yamada, his poor self-esteem and still-negative personality often causes him to dismiss her cues that she is also developing feelings for him, such as pretending she doesn't have an umbrella to have an excuse to interact with him and wear his raincoat, purposefully switching their named outfits, or asking for his LINE account. His feelings only grow over time, causing internal strife for him because he doesn't believe he is 'deserving' of her. His love (and resulting jealousy, etc.) can also occasionally be self-destructive, causing him to push her away when he believes she "uses" him to avoid Pickup-pai, when he gets sick after chasing after her in the rain because he believes she forgot her menstrual pads, or when he breaks his arm trying to give her an image of snow while visiting his grandparents.

Ultimately, however, Yamada is the primary catalyst for positive change in Ichikawa's life, and a great influence even beyond being a love interest. Through her, Ichikawa is able to create meaningful friendships with the other kids in his school, and participate in things he otherwise would have avoided, like the School Sports Festival or trip.

Yamada later confesses to Ichikawa and they start dating around manga chapter 113.

#### Sekine Moeko

After Yamada, Moe is the classmate that Ichikawa seems to have the best relationship with. She is aware of his relationship with her friend and both helps push it along while also teasing or bantering with him. Sometimes the ways in which she tries to help seem to backfire, only to end up working out in the end, such as when she pretended to be Ichikawa's girlfriend to get him into Yamada's house without incident, ultimately ending with him getting some degree of approval from Yamada's mother. Her tendency to troll her friends often gets on his nerves, though, to the point you could call it a love-hate relationship.

#### Ichikawa Kana

Most of Ichikawa's interactions with his sister is centered around him being embarrassed of or because of her. She is interested in, and wants to be involved in his life, especially when it comes to his blossoming relationship with Yamada. He, however, wants his family uninvolved with them as best as he can, usually causing comedy moments when he can't keep up the charade or keeps accidentally running into her while out with Yamada. Despite getting irritated by her intrusive antics, Ichikawa is still able to confide in his big sister, such as in manga chapter 71 when he gets emotional over the possibility of Yamada forgetting him one day and admitting that he does want to date her.

#### Adachi Shou

Adachi was initially one of the more disliked members of Ichikawa's classroom. His outwardly-perverted and blunt way of speaking consistently got on his nerves, though there were often moments where Ichikawa was hypocritically thinking the same thing as him. Ichikawa frequently disapproved of or is appalled by Adachi's perverse means of getting Yamada's attention, particularly after his own feelings for her start to grow stronger; he later tries to intercept any interaction between them such as sampling his class cooking so Yamada won't and asking her to not speak to Adachi so much.

Ichikawa seemed to have the most violent fantasies involving Adachi, with one imagination point having him lamenting that there is nothing left to destroy. Over time, the two became something like "masculine rivals," such as when Adachi challenges him at the sports festival.

#### Honoka Hara

Though they don't interact much, Ichikawa is on good terms with Hara, who seems especially invested in his developing relationship with Yamada. Even though he didn't initially intend to be, Ichikawa winds up being an external motivator for Hara's relationship with Kanzaki. Ichikawa seems to have a respect for Hara and is mostly satisfied when they temporarily become desk neighbours. Additionally, she also seems to be a person he wishes to protect from bad impressions, such as when he takes the blame for painting Yamada's name over a tombstone for their classes' culture festival haunted house graveyard display, though she ultimately admits that she did so and was simply writing common surnames.

## Etymology

* **Ichikawa** means "city, market, town, municipality, fair" (市) (**ichi**) and "river, stream" (川) (**kawa**).
* **Kyoutarou** means "capital city" (京) (**kyou**), "thick, big, great" (太) (**ta**) and "son" (郎) (**rou**).

## Trivia

* Despite being the male lead in a male-oriented manga, author Norio Sakurai (who is a woman) states that she got the idea for *BokuYaba* from her own interest in idols and imagining interacting with them at school, along with saying that while writing she tries "not to distance myself from Ichikawa," implying she, on some level, self-inserts as him.
* His avatar in LINE is Rem from Re:Zero.
* His favorite movies are Memento and The Butterfly Effect. Manga he enjoys include Baki, Mahou Shoujo of the End, Ika Musume, Mitsudomoe, Beastars, Tokyo Ghoul, and Jujutsu Kaisen. He often plays Fate/Grand Order on his phone, and also likes Apex Legends.
* His favorite bread is Choco Cornet (as listed on Extra chapter 16 or 25.1). He also enjoys meat buns.
* His Blood Type is B.
* His Student Number at Daijuni Middle School is 156.
* His favorite sushi topping is engawa.
* He was ranked third smartest person in his grade in his Grade School yearbook.
* His favorite genre of video games is first-person shooters.
* He failed an admission exam to an applied middle school