Nana Sakurai

**Nana Sakurai** (桜井 奈々, *Sakurai Nana*) is the main protagonist of the series. She is the daughter of Joe Sakurai and a first year student at Honan Academy who is the stride club's manager/relationer.

She is voiced by Kana Hanazawa (Japanese) and Natalie Hoover (English).

## Appearance

Nana has mid-long light-brown hair that is often tied up in low pigtails by two white bows on both sides (both tied into a bun when she was at the poolside in episode 9) with her bangs cut short and straight across her forehead and above her eyelashes and brown cream coloured eyes (there's a hint of pink in the anime).

She 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) over a pink thigh-length dress which is decorated with white ruffles. She wears black knee socks and pink running shoes.

In the game, **Prince of Stride**, Nana wears a unbuttoned light blue t-shirt with the hem of her shirt tying into a bow over a white spring dress. In the anime however, Nana wears a light blue jacket (the collar held up high and the sleeves rolled up) over a white shirt with four pink horizontal lines on the front. She wears it with a matching white skirt and shoes. She only wears two black elastics for her pigtails with this outfit.

Her school uniform consists of the white school blazer with four black buttons over a black shirt with a sailor collar and white lining. The bottom is the black uniform skirt that ends above her knees. She wears it with white knee socks and brown dress shoes.

As a child she wore a yellow T-shirt, a purple skirt with black spats/shorts underneath and pink shoes with which socks.

## Personality

Nana is a brave and hardworking girl, who moved alone from Hokkaido to Tokyo to pursue her passion for the extreme sport of Stride. She lives with her legal guardian and unrelated uncle, Koichi Takahara, in his tea house.

After transferring to Honan Academy, she becomes a member of the school's stride club as a relationer that relays information to the runners to co-ordinate the relay tags, she is also the manager of the team as she originally intended. Nana is a fearless girl who is not afraid to face challenges. She is also known to be meticulous in her preparations.

## Skills

**Relationer** - Her communication skills are still under development, but she has full faith in her runners. As she has no competitive experience, she relies on making detailed notes rather than instincts to make decisions, she also concentrates too much and gets nervous during races. She has become more trusting of her teammates, and often points out Shiki's flaws. She is also very persistent, and using a Giant Ice Cone Slushie Eating Competition to force Riku and Takeru to work together with her to achieve their goals.

**Manager** - She is able to convert Takeru into eating foods with more flavor, and her knowledge of basic nutrition has quashed many of his long-held beliefs about having a carb-free diet and relying on supplements. Her knowledge and passion for Stride are also impressive. As such, she repelled her father's request to join him in Kakyoin as a backup relationer.

**Cyclist** - As she is no longer a runner, she keeps fit physically by riding a bike, trailing behind every runner.

## Background

Nana loves Stride, the street-running team sport that she chooses to move from Hokkaido to Tokyo and enter Honan Academy, based on an internet video she saw of the Honan Stride Club. However, choosing an academic path based on an internet video may not have been a good idea. According to the video game, her father, non-related uncle, Ms. Sakura and Mr. Dan were Stride runners in their youth. She now lives in Koichi Takahara's tea house with him being the tea house owner and her legal guardian. Before then, given Joe is hardly home, Nana was raised by her grandparents as her mother passed away when she was small.

On episode 9, despite her father wanting her to come to Kakyoin as a backup relationer and live with him again, Nana is not swayed by the the offer.

Soon after joining the Stride Club, she was given the position of the relationer of the club by Takeru Fujiwara as well as her role as a manager.

In Episode 11, it is revealed that Takeru, Riku Yagami and Nana actually met 7 years ago in 2010 in primary school, but they all changed so much in appearance that they forgot over time.

## Etymology

* The name **Nana** means "apple tree" (奈).
* Nana's surname **Sakurai** means "cherry blossom" (桜) (**sakura**) and "well, mine shaft, pit" (井) (**i**).
	+ Part of the surname **Sakura** can also mean "blossom" (咲) (**saku**) and "good, virtuous, respectable" (良) (**ra**).

## Trivia

* In **Episode 8**, it was suggested that Nana was an anchor when she was small, but since no female runners can be running with male runners since junior high school level, she became a relationer instead.
	+ Nana is called the "princess", most likely in response to Joe Sakurai (Nana's father) being called the "king" of stride. A fan theory is that since Nana is the princess, the boy she "chooses" in the game would be the "prince" of stride, and that is the reason for the name of the game/anime/light novel. In the light novel, it was Reiji Suwa, who is already born into a wealthy and prominent family. At the end of the light novel, depending on the path chosen, other possibilities are Kyosuke Kuga, Riku Yagami or Takeru Fujiwara.