Talk:Kouichi Sakakibara/@comment-6052796-20140825160353/@comment-397235-20140913181747

All he would've had to do is touch her. Just be reassuring.

Of course, a lot of this is also cultural. A Japanese wouldn't do something like that to someone they don't know very well. In the West we would. Look at some of the other relationships:

Kouichi and Mei are extremely close by the end of the series, yet never refer to each other by their first names. First names are reserved for your spouse, your family, and people who've known you a really long time. Even though he's saved her life several times, they're still not that close.

The same is more or less true of Tomohiko and Naoya. In the anime they always last-name each other, even though they've been friends for years. It's to show they've grown apart.

That's also where Aya's nicknames come into play. Much like in Russia, Japanese people like to nickname their close friends; Aya's habit of doing so is to show her care-free and extremely forward nature.

Izumi and Takako both first-name each other, which is again to show how close they are. However, when they find her at the Inn, the most Izumi does is put her hands on her shoulders; in a Western context she'd have hugged her.

So a lot of it's also people applying a Western spin to something not Western.