Touko Nanami

Anime

**Touko Nanami** (七海 燈子(ななみ とうこ), **Nanami Tōko**? ) is the deuteragonist in Bloom Into You. She is the younger sister of Mio Nanami, a second-year high school student, a member of the student council and the best friend of Sayaka Saeki.

She hides her true personality and insecurities from everyone except Yuu Koito, the girl she loves.

## Appearance

Touko has long black hair that has bangs hanging on the right side of her face, grey eyes  and many people who meet her remark upon her striking beauty.

## Personality

Externally, Touko is an extremely self-assured and dependable, outgoing, approachable, incredibly determined, and even stubborn girl when it comes to achieving her goals – once she sets her sights on something, nothing and nobody can dissuade her.

However, beneath appearances, Touko obsessively hides all of her weaknesses and insecurities from everyone, meaning that she has nobody to confide in and no real bonds with the people who surround her. She conceals any sign of uncertainty behind a self-confident veneer, and her immense feelings of loneliness and isolation beyond an extroverted facade. The perception that she can do anything she sets her mind to means that she feels immense pressure to never fail or falter.

In the course of her almost lifelong effort to replace her sister Mio Nanami, Touko came to believe that nothing in her life, neither her relationships nor her achievements, truly belonged to her. As a result, she feels incapable of receiving the love or even kindness of others, keeping everyone at a great distance from her true self. She also conceives of love as being heavily conditional, in that if she changes or stops acting like her sister, people will stop loving her.

The only person she lets her guard down around is Yuu Koito. The ability to feel genuine love for Yuu is the only thing she believes is truly hers.

Touko eventually realizes that, by insisting that Yuu not fall in love with her, she forced Yuu to keep her burgeoning feelings for her secret. She realizes that her insistence on not being loved has forced Yuu to keep her feelings to herself, and she's ashamed of how much she's hurt Yuu.

After a heart to heart talk with Yuu confessions of their love for each other, Touko has outgrown her belief that loving someone requires that person to remain unchanging, and getting over the idea that she has to be perfect.

## Background

As a child, Touko was withdrawn, quiet and described as constantly hiding behind her older sister Mio Nanami. By contrast, Mio, seven years Touko's senior, was a model student, universally well-liked, and the center of attention at her high school.

Mio's unexpected death in a traffic accident had a profound effect on young Touko. From that point onward, Touko made every effort to emulate her late sister while concealing her own personality from everyone in her life.

In this role as a replacement for her sister, Touko threw herself into her studies and athletics to great success, while also adopting a confident and friendly persona, earning the admiration of her peers and teachers alike at the cost of her own identity.

Aiming to complete everything Mio was unable to, Touko closely followed in her footsteps, attending the same high school and joining the student council, just as her sister had seven years ago.

## Etymology

* The name **Touko** means "light" (燈) (**tou**) and "child" (子) (**ko**).
* Touko's surname **Nanami** means "seven" (七) (**nana**) and "sea, ocean" (海) (**mi**).

## Trivia

* According to Yuu Koito, Touko prefers reference books and bestsellers when she comes to her family's bookstore.
* If Yuu had been born 1 week earlier, she would have been in the same school year as Touko .

## Gallery

### Anime

Episode 4Episode 5Episode 10Episode 12Episode 12

### Other

From left to right: Yuu Koito, Touko and Sayaka Saeki
## Notes

1. ↑ Promotional art and color pages of the manga portrayed Touko with various different eye colours, including grey, blue and purple. The anime consistently shows her with grey eyes.

## References

1. ↑ *Bloom Into You* 2018 Schedule Book
2. ↑ Volume 3 Extras
3. ↑ Volume 6 Extras
4. ↑ Japanese School System / Tokyo International Communication Committee – "Children who have their 6th birthday on or before April 1 enter the first grade of elementary school of that year."

Miyako Kodama • Riko Hakozaki • Rei Koito • Hiro • Tomoyuki Ichigaya • Mio Nanami