Kakeru Manabe

Two cowlicks jut up from the crown of Kakeru's head, a small quirk atop short, faintly spiked dark brown hair that stops around his nape. He is built to an ordinary height and frame, has light brown eyes, and wears a single piercing in his right ear. Most often he turns up in the Kaibara High uniform with a sweater layered over it.

Komaki recalls that Kakeru was once withdrawn and hard to reach, hardened into a cold perfectionist by the strain of an inheritance feud. Once he walked away from that rivalry and found the nerve to stand on his own, he became the buoyant figure Yuki eventually meets. He swings between lazy sprawling and magnetic bursts of energy, a mix that reminds Yuki painfully of his brother Ayame, whom Kakeru salutes as 'commander,' while his talent for making friends echoes Kyo.

Loud, bold, and relentlessly cheerful, he would rather nap or goof off than tackle council paperwork, and he insists the student council is a defense squad shielding students from evil. Teasing is second nature: he pins the nickname 'Yunyun' on Yuki, calls him a princess, and needles Machi about her crush. He can also deliver baffling remarks with a perfectly straight face. Under all that good humor run genuine emotional depth, flashes of self-doubt, and a readiness to turn serious when needed. His concern for others sometimes lands as tactlessness, as when he cruelly told Tohru she was sickening for seeming to hoard grief over the accident that killed both her mother and Komaki's father. Guided by Komaki, he came to see such missteps, and his willingness to meet people on their own level is exactly why Yuki learns to trust him and why the two grow into closest friends.

Kakeru was born to his father's mistress, while his half-sister Machi came from the man's legal wife, and because the family was wealthy the two mothers fought bitterly over which child would inherit. Pushed into that contest from a young age, Kakeru grew cold, brash, and closed off, a version of himself most visible in middle school where even Komaki, who quietly loved him, found him unapproachable. When the sheer pointlessness of the feud finally struck him, he told his mother he was finished, and once she accepted his reasoning both of them withdrew. His old cheer came rushing back, he realized his feelings for Komaki were mutual, and the two began dating. Guilt over how Machi had been cast aside left him determined to look after his younger sister.

His first meeting with Tohru comes when he and Komaki visit to burn incense after Kyoko's funeral, and he coldly wounds Tohru before regretting it. Taking on the role of student vice president under Yuki, he needles the new president without mercy, clashes with him once, then patches things up and forms a quick friendship, later revealing that Machi is his half-sister and unpacking his own family history. In the third year he crosses paths with Tohru again, offers a sincere apology, and confesses the hard truth that the driver in the crash that killed Kyoko was Komaki's father, who died as well. He visits the hospitalized Tohru with a rock CD, and near graduation chooses university at Komaki's urging rather than stepping straight into her family's laundry business. By Fruits Basket Another he has married Komaki and become father to Michi and Kou.