Futaba Igarashi

* Anime
* Manga

**Futaba Igarashi** (五十嵐 双葉 *Igarashi Futaba*) is the main protagonist in My Senpai is Annoying. She is a junior employee who thinks that her workplace senpai Harumi Takeda is annoying, but she slowly develops feelings for him which she feels conflicted about.

## Appearance

Igarashi is a short adult woman of a relatively slender build who is often confused for a child with shoulder-length green hair that she usually ties in a ponytail and forest-green eyes.

She wears a suit in the office and she often wears a red muffler whenever the weather turns cold.

## Personality

Due to her having a petite figure, Igarashi adopts a boisterous and outspoken demeanor to her coworkers and family who often treat her like a child despite knowing her actual age. She is prone to being easily flustered and is often emotional though she works to hide it from others.

## Plot

To say Igarashi’s relationship with her senpai Harumi Takeda is complicated is an understatement. When they first met, he mistook her for a middle-schooler on a fieldtrip and it was all downhill from there. Everything about him became an annoyance, his familiarity, his boisterousness, but at some point that started to change.

Once Takeda took Igarashi under his wing, they spent most of every day together in the office or going on sales calls. He provided her with guidance and support as any good mentor should. One evening, while they were drinking after work, Igarashi had too much and flirts with him saying that he must like her. He admits to it, seemingly not taking it the way it’s meant and commenting that if he were married and had a kid, he would want the child to be like her. In her state of tipsiness, Igarashi takes issue with this and wonders aloud why she couldn’t be the wife in this scenario. Takeda brushes off the outburst, but it’s too late. Igarashi’s feelings are out there for her to acknowledge. Or not.

Throughout the rest of the manga and the anime, Igarashi wrestles with her feelings, wanting to lean into them while at the same time not admitting to them. As things progress, her relationship with Takeda expands beyond a senpai-kohai (mentor-mentee) situation and turns into a friendship at the least. They visit each other when they’re ill, spend the night, and she ends up taking care of him outside of work as much as he takes care of her at the office.

Though she refuses to admit her feelings and Takeda is either oblivious or intentionally keeping his distance, Tōko Sakurai, Sōta Kazama and Natsumi Kurobe (Igarashi's best friend) notice and cheer them on from the sidelines, whether it’s encouraging her on what kind of gifts to buy for a mystery recipient or helping her pick out an eye-catching bathing suit for their beach trips. Her grandfather notices as well and takes issue with a man hanging around his precious granddaughter. He eventually warms up to Takeda for sharing the same love for his granddaughter. Though he means well, all Igarashi seems to want is to be seen as an adult, and so far, the only person who has acknowledged that (most) of the time is Takeda. Will they? Won't they? As of this posting, the series is still ongoing and it's not confirmed.

## Relationships

### Harumi Takeda

Takeda is Igarashi's senior and mentor at work for whom she develops a deep affection. Despite loving to occasionally tease his junior about her, Takeda seems to see Igarashi as a competent colleague, as well as an adult, though he would not admit it to her face.

### Sōta Kazama

Kazama is a coworker and senior of Futaba's. He sees the connection between Futaba and Takeda, although he does not pressure or tease them the way Tōko Sakurai and Natsumi Kurobe do.

### Tōko Sakurai

Sakurai, another senior, noticed Futaba's feelings for Harumi Takeda before she did and she enjoys teasing Futaba about her feelings.

### Natsumi Kurobe

Kurobe is a classmate of Futaba's from high school where they have a good relationship with each other, although Igarashi is sometimes jealous of Kurobe's figure.

It is heavily implied that Kurobe had a crush on Futaba at one point (My Senpai is Annoying Vol. 9).

### Futaba's Grandpa

Futaba's Grandpa is the only relative of Futaba's shown, as no one else is mentioned aside from her deceased grandmother. They seem to have a good relationship outside of his inability to see her as an adult. He is overprotective of her and has come to blows with Takeda over it, as he doesn't appreciate this strange new man's closeness to his granddaughter.

## Etymology

* The name **Futaba** means "pair, set" (双) (**futa**) and "leaf, plane, lobe, needle, blade, spear, counter for flat things, fragment, piece" (葉) (**ha**/**ba**), which literally means "bud, sprout, two leaf/twin leaf" altogether.
* Futaba's surname **Igarashi** means "fifty" (五十) (**ig**) and "storm, tempest" (嵐) (**arashi**).

## Trivia

* Igarashi's favorite drink is Oshiruko.
* The number on Igarashi's house number plate is 502.
* Igarashi hates summer, and especially when it rains non-stop.
	+ She likes winter because one can dress up to stay warm, and most importantly, because she can wear the muffler Takeda gifted her for Christmas.
* Igarashi has a single fang that reinforces her youthful appearance.
* Igarashi is often called Anzu-chan by Tōko Sakurai and Natsumi Kurobe.
* Igarashi has the same birthday as her senior Harumi Takeda, which is March 9.
* Although Igarashi was part of the art club in high school, she's still bit bad at drawing.
* Igarashi is often represented by the color green or a cat, sometimes both at the same time.
* Igarashi's bed is covered in various stuffed animals, which highlight her childish image, both in body and personality.
* In both the manga and anime, Igarashi is left-handed as she was seen holding pencils or anything with her left hand several times.
* Igarashi adopted a pet Japanese rhinoceros beetle and named it *Kabukichi* after it followed her from the park to her workplace and back home.
* Igarashi cannot handle horror games or movies that she calls Takeda over to her house if she wants to watch a movie, or to watch him play through a game, instead of her.

## Gallery

### Profile

From left to right: Sōta Kazama, Tōko Sakurai, Igarashi and Harumi TakedaFutaba Igarashi's Profile