Izumi Akazawa

"Do you remember?"

- Izumi Akazawa

Izumi Akazawa is the head of countermeasures and later on becomes the Class Officer of Class 3-3 of 1998 at Yomiyama North Middle School. She is in the drama club with Aya Ayano and Yumi Ogura. She has an older brother named Kazuma Akazawa.

Appearance
She has long reddish-brown hair that she wears in pigtails held up by two blue ribbons, and brown eyes. She is typically seen wearing the school's standard uniform, though she has worn different outfits - a pink-and-white dress in Episode 6 and a red blouse with a white miniskirt in episode 8. Her hair is shorter in the manga, though it's worn in the same style.

Personality
Izumi is the straightforward, unabashed and strong leader of the Countermeasures at Yomiyama Middle School's  3rd year  class. She has a bit of a tsundere personality. Izumi is impulsive and irascible, even though she puts on a show of being tough she is actually rather fragile and can be shown to have a tender side. She seems to hate Mei  and even goes as far as to blame her for the deaths of the students. She also seems to dislike Kouichi, until it was revealed near the end that she was fond of him.

Manga Continuity
Not much is known about Izumi's history, but she is close friends with Yukari Sakuragi. She also has a troubled home life, having an older brother who failed to find a job after leaving school, and now shuts himself up in his room. Her brother would often spend nights violently punching the walls of his room out of depression, placing severe strain on Izumi.

On the first day of Class 3-3, Izumi watched as fellow student Mei Misaki was chosen as the 'non-existent'. Misaki was seemingly unaffected, and calmly accept the role. Having a troubled home life, seeing Misaki so unaffected even when having such responsibility led Izumi to develop a deep resentment, bordering on outright hatred, but she did not reveal this to Misaki.

Anime Continuity
One and a half years before the events of Another, Izumi had a cousin, thought they were raised more like siblings. Unfortunately he died as a result of the 3-3 class calamity, possibly either by suicide or accident. On the path next to the riverside, a distraught Izumi called her cousin an idiot for dying and furiously kicked a can lying on the ground. The can flew and accidentally hit someone on the path at the bottom of the grassy hill. As Izumi rushed down the hill to apologise she lost her balance and fell, landing at the bottom. The boy she hit with the can, Kouichi Sakakibara, offered her a hand. Touched, Izumi accepted. Kouchi noticed that Izumi looked upset, and she tells him that she lost someone close. He admits that he has also lost someone, having visited Yomiyama that day to attend the funeral of a relative. It is unknown how their encounter ended, but Koichi later returned to Tokyo.

After the calamity began one and a half years later and the extra one for that year entered the class, Izumi's memory of this encounter was altered along with Koichi's, but she still recalled the impression of Koichi's hand when it held hers, and for most of the series she would struggle to recall her memory. At the very first day of the school year (before Kouichi transferred), Izumi volunteered herself to be the head of countermeasures for Class 3-3, out of determination to ensure that the calamity that killed her brother never happens again. At the same time, fellow student Mei Misaki is chosen as the 'non-existant', to balance out the number of students and prevent the calamity, and it became Izumi's job to enforce this countermeasure. However, complications arose when Koichi returns to Yomiyama to live with his grandparents and aunt Reiko and becomes the transfer student for Class 3-3. Since the non-existant had already been chosen, they could not tell Koichi about the curse as it would mean acknowledging Misaki's existence, leaving Izumi and the rest of the class in a difficult position for the first half of the series.

Plot
In Episode 1, the new transfer student Koichi is admitted to hospital with a collapsed lung, forcing him to miss the first couple of weeks of school. As he was recovering, Izumi, along with class representatives Kazami and Yukari, paid him a visit on behalf of the class, and partly to see if he was the extra one that year. After they ask him several questions regarding whether or not he had been in Yomiyama before, Izumi offers to shake his hand, since there was a rumor that the extra one's hands felt cold to touch. When Koichi accepted, Izumi's hand remembered the impression of his, but Izumi was unable to recall the memory.

Like the others, she hesitates to tell Kouichi about the class' curse after Sakuragi's death, a decision she comes to regret later.

In Episode 4, she can be seen with Teshigawara in the background when they hear a huge crash through Kouichi's cell phone (which was Sanae Mizuno's elevator collapsing.) She holds a grudge against Mei and Kouichi for ignoring the rules and turning the countermeasures useless, causing the deaths to continue.

In Episode 7, after she witnessed Mr. Kubodera's death, she confronted Kouichi and the others on the rooftop. Later on, Izumi meets up with Kouichi, Teshigawara and Mochizuki in Inoya Cafe. They acquired information about Katsumi Matsunaga and decided to look for him for help to solve the calamity.

In Episode 8, the team went out of Yomiyama to look for Matsunaga and they had fun at the beach while waiting for his call. At the end of the episode, they witness Junta Nakao's death on shore.

In Episode 9, after Nakao's funeral she walks the still-shaken Takako Sugiura home.

In Episode 10, at the beginning of the episode, Izumi dreams of the day she met Kouichi, while mourning her brother's death. During the first dinner the class trip, she gave a speech on the curse issue, demanding an apology from Mei for allowing the deaths to continue. The confrontation is cut short by Daisuke Wakui 's asthma attack, and he's sent to the hospital.

In Episode 11, she talks about Mei's past with Takako. Later when Kouichi and the others are in the hall, she heard the ruckus and went to check. They heard a scream and Izumi recognized Takako's voice. They hurried up to Izumi's room and found the door stained with blood. Takako was missing, but she later appears with a blade and tries to kill Mei. Izumi was shocked and was pushed to the side. Takako later escapes and Izumi tells Kouichi and Mei about how she, as the head of countermeasures, had to listen to the tape. A few seconds later, Takako broadcasts the tape and tells everyone that Mei is the dead one, asking everyone to kill her. At the end of the episode, Izumi finds Kouichi and Mei with Takako's dead body. She was shocked and terrified. Izumi misunderstood the situation, thinking that Mei killed Takako. She shouted at Mei angrily, telling her that she was going to kill her.

In Episode 12, when Kazami attempts to kill Kouichi, Izumi steps in to save Kouichi and hits Kazami with a metal rod, knocking him unconscious. She then attempts to deal a fatal blow to Kazami as she believes Kazami does not deserve to live for murdering two classmates. However, she was stopped by Chibiki-Sensei as he feels classmates should not kill each other and Izumi runs off. Later, she finds Mei and attempts to kill her. However, Kouichi stops her to protect Mei and attempts to reason with her. She ignores him and says that she must kill Mei to end the calamity and protect everyone. When Izumi finally gets a hold of Mei, Kouchi knocks Izumi off of her then restraining her to prevent her from attacking Mei. Feeling the emotion of both anger and sadness she knee-jabs him in the groin then hits him the her metal rod causing him to fall backwards on Mei. Tears in her eyes, she shouts at him saying why he was protecting Mei and that all she wanted to do was protect him and everyone else. Asking if he had some sort of deathwish she angrily suggested  to him too (however being realistic heres he cannot because Kouchi was obviously stronger then her in terms of strength), but at that moment, lightning strikes.

The lightning shatters the hall's giant window, and large glass shards are sent flying towards them. Izumi ends up being skewered against the wall by the glass shards. Kouichi, shocked, removes her from the wall. While lying on the floor bleeding, Izumi tells Kouichi that they had actually met before, one and a half years ago. She was upset over the loss of her brother and kicked a can from the top of the riverbank, which hit Kouichi who was down below. She rushed down to apologize but tripped and fell and had to be helped up by Kouichi. She asks whether Kouichi remembers this and he replies that he doesn't. Disappointed that he doesn't remember, she tells him that he should at least pretend to remember before she dies. As such, she dies, Kouichi escaping as the entire building buries her in the rubble.

Kouichi Sakakibara
Izumi first seems intrigued by Kouichi as she feels that they have met before. Izumi had held suspiscions that Kouichi was the dead student at one point. When informed of Kouichi asking about Mei Misaki, she vaguely warns him and shows signs of beginning to dislike him. However later on in the series she begins to like him and appreciates his presence. In Episode 11, Takako revealed that Izumi was actually fond of him despite her somewhat cold actions towards him.

Mei Misaki
Prior to Episode 9, Izumi seemed more or less indifferent to Mei although it is not exactly known how she truly feels about her due to Mei being the "non-existent" student. As of Episode 9, Izumi appears to dislike Mei, possibly because she blames Mei for starting the calamity. The reason for this being is that Izumi may believe that Mei could have resisted Kouichi's attempts to talk to her, but didn't. In the manga Izumi stabbed Mei's left eye (the artificial one; the doll eye; the green one).

Naoya Teshigawara
Izumi, after hearing of Teshigawara's promises to explain the history of Class 3 to Kouichi without her permission gives off the impression that she sees him as an idiot. Izumi also does not seem to return his feelings towards him and views him as annoying and often calls him a jerk.

Yukari Sakuragi
Izumi and Yukari were shown to be good friends since they were young. In the manga, Izumi cared a lot about Yukari and she blames Kouichi and Mei for Yukari's death as they ignored the class rules, causing the calamity to happen. She was seen in one of the chapters crying for Yukari to save her as she does not want to die. Also in the manga, a picture of her and Yukari is shown on her desk.

Takako Sugiura
Izumi and Takako are shown to be good friends and she seems to care a lot for Takako. In Episode 11, after seeing Takako's death, she was angry over Mei as she misunderstood that Mei killed Takako. She shouted out that she will kill Mei.

Kazuma Akazawa
Kazuma Akazawa is Izumi's cousin but they were raised as siblings. Her brother was mentally unstable and often locked himself in his room. He is yet to make an appearance in the anime, although his name was seen in the Class 3-3 list of 1996. At Chapter 17 of the manga, Kazuma commits suicide by hanging himself in his room. She was devastated after his death.

Gallery
Main article: Izumi Akazawa/Image Gallery

Quotes

 * "Don't judge a book by its cover."
 * "Let me apologize in advance. I'm sorry. But this is for all of us. Forgive us."
 * "Honestly, I miss one day of school, and this is what happens?!"
 * "Misaki...Mei...I'll kill you!"
 * "You're supposed to say you remember, even if it's not true..."
 * "It's your fault."
 * "We're the same."

Trivia

 * She is ranked A+ in Another characters ranking.
 * Her first name, Izumi, means fountain or spring.Another 87.jpg
 * Her home address is 1-1 Akatsukicho Yomiyama City.
 * In the original novel, Akazawa is a minor character that doesn't appear until page 256. While she is mentioned periodically, the first speaking lines she has isn't until her confrontation with Mei at the Sakitani Kinenkan near the conclusion of the book. Izumi dies in the original novel.
 * She shares a room with Takako Sugiura during the class trip.
 * Izumi resembles Rise Kujikawa with her pigtails from Persona 4.
 * In the manga, she tried to kill Mei, stabbing her left eye. A moment later, a cupboard fell on her, and she was rescued by Tatsuji Chibiki afterward. During this time, Mei disappeared, leaving the scene. Izumi later regretted her attempt to kill Mei. She was seen in the last chapter at the hospital, where she had cut her hair shorter.
 * In the anime it is revealed that she is fond of Kouichi and calls him as "Kouichi-kun".
 * Izumi's hand is said to be able to recall the impression of someone who once shook hands with her.
 * She survived in the Manga. However she dies in both the Novel and Anime.
 * Izumi is the first of three people that the audience can see the color of death on in Mei's POV. The second being Reiko Mikami and the third being Misaki Fujioka (Though chronologically she was the first.)