Izumi Akazawa

""Honestly, I miss one day of school, and this is what happens?!""

- an irritated Izumi Akazawa vents to Takako about Naoya's meddling in her affairs.

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 remembers having met Kouichi Sakakibara somewhere previously, but cannot remember where or in what context.

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, except when at home, where she leaves her hair down.

Personality
In the manga, Izumi isn't very sociable to new people, rarely conversing with anyone aside from close friends such as Yukari Sakuragi. When she does speak with someone, she is straightforward and sometimes confrontational. This stems from a troubled home life, where she often has to deal with her reclusive and unstable older brother. Her troubles also cause her to resent anyone who is able to deal with heavy burdens with hardly any suffering, especially Mei Misaki.

As the calamity claims several people around her, including people she cares about, Izumi grows more and more unstable, culminating in her attempting to kill Mei after she becomes convinced that Mei is the extra. After Mei survives the assault and assures her that despite the calamity, she is still alive, izumi regains her mental stability and even develops a sense of humor.

In the anime, 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. While she doesn't hesitate to blame others when misfortune occurs, she is humble enough to admit responsibility herself if she makes mistakes.

Izumi has a strong protective nature, which is probably why she volunteered to be head of countermeasures in the first place. On several occasions she can be seen trying to console her friends, most notably Aya after Kubodera's suicide, and Takako after the latter became depressed following Junta's death. Despite her outwardly harsh personality, Izumi cares deeply for her friends, and her inability to protect them (especially Takako) leads to her repeated attempts to kill Mei in the series finale.

Over the course of the series she grows to resent Mei for apparently starting the calamity, and also seemed to dislike Kouchi for constantly fraternizing with her. It was eventually revealed that she was actually quite fond of him, with hints of romantic attraction. However, at the end of the series, the death of her loved ones and the threat of the calamity eventually causes Izumi to put those feelings aside, as she concludes the only way to end the curse and protect her friends is to kill Mei...even if that means killing Kouichi in the process.

Background

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.

Manga Continuity
Main Article: Izumi Akazawa/Manga

Izumi is a major character in the manga and fills much the same role as she would later on in the anime (her role in that adaptation having apparently been inspired by her larger role in the manga; Izumi was a minor character in the original novel).

Anime Continuity
In "Rough Sketch", the new transfer student Kouichi 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 "Put Flesh", 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. Then in "Build Limbs", she apologized for no reason to Kouichi. Then, like every other classmates, she ignored him as he didn't existed.

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, as he's putting the entire class in jeopardy. However later on in the series she begins to like him and appreciates his presence, rebuffing Naoya's advances to ride with him to the beach.

Whatever feelings Izumi had for Kouichi, she'd expressed to Takako, which actually saved his life, as Takako went out of her way to avoid killing him, as it would devastate Izumi. However, once Takako died, Izumi became actively hostile toward both Mei and Kouichi, attacking him and asking if he had a death wish when he protected Mei. Still, upon being mortally wounded by flying glass, Izumi relented, finally remembering where she'd met Kouichi. Her last words were to him, half-jokingly telling him he was terrible, and teasing him for still not remembering her and not lying to make her feel better.

Izumi's first meeting with Kouichi left a strong impression on her, as she was able to remember bits and pieces of it despite the curse having altered events so Kouichi wasn't present at the time. This suggests, however briefly the two had known each other, she felt a strong connection to him.

Mei Misaki
It is unknown how much of a hand Izumi had in Mei's being chosen as the student to be shunned, and because of the rules of countermeasures the two don't often speak. However, as more and more people die (including Yukari, one of Izumi's best friends), Izumi becomes increasingly hostile toward her, going so far as to single her out on the school trip in front of everyone and demand an apology, as she saw Mei as the sole person responsible for the calamity that year. This is possibly because Izumi may believed Mei could have resisted Kouichi's attempts to talk to her, but didn't.

Still, unlike the vast majority of her classmates, Izumi didn't believe Takako's broadcast and didn't attack Mei, instead going looking for her friend to try and reason with her. Unfortunately for all three girls, Izumi was too late, and upon finding Mei standing with Takako's body, having apparently just murdered her, Izumi flew into a rage, vowing to kill her in revenge. Izumi's hatred burned deeply, going so far as trying to kill Kouichi when he tried to protect Mei (something even Takako had hesitated to do). Izumi's vendetta against Mei led to her own death, when, about to kill Mei, a window exploded and impaled her to a wall. Dying mellowed Izumi, and she calmed down considerably before dying in front of Kouichi and Mei.

In the manga Izumi's relationship with Mei is much more developed, as Izumi resents Mei's stoic acceptance of her role as the nonexistent student. Though the two have much in common, Izumi is jealous of Mei's calm demeanor. She attacked Mei in the kitchen during the school trip, having convinced herself Mei is the extra student, and stabbed her in her glass eye, unaware of the prosthesis. Mei survived this, however, and bearing Izumi no ill will, instructed her to flee the now burning kitchen, lest she become another victim of the curse.

Naoya Teshigawara
Izumi, doesn't have much patience for Naoya, seeing him as an idiot. After hearing of Teshigawara's promises to explain the history of Class 3 to Kouichi without her permission, she was furious.

In the anime and manga, Naoya has a rather obvious crush on her, which Izumi does not return, refusing to sit by him on the trip to the beach and generally disliking his attitude, often calling him a jerk or an idiot. However, in the manga, Izumi survives, and upon waking up in the hospital, finds Naoya waiting for her. This implies the two may at least be on friendly terms in the post calamity.

Yukari Sakuragi
In the anime what, if any, relationship Izumi had with Yukari is not developed. Though the two were apparently at least on friendly terms, they never interacted on screen outside of a handful of scenes. While Izumi was upset over her classmate's death, the two don't seem to have been especially close.

This is different in the manga. Izumi and Yukari were shown to be good friends since they were young. Izumi cared a lot about Yukari, keeping a picture of them together on her desk, and blamed Kouichi and Mei for her death, as they ignored the class rules, which she believed activated the curse. After Yukari's death, Izumi can often be seen glaring at Kouichi, at one point even saying she'll never forgive him. In one chapter Izumi sad in her bed and despaired, crying for Yukari to save her from the curse. Yukari's death isolated Izumi, who felt alone and no longer had anyone to discuss her problems with. This loneliness led her to attack Mei at the inn. When Chibiki rescued Izumi from the burning inn, Yukari's name was one of the two Izumi muttered, the other being her brother's.

Takako Sugiura
Izumi and Takako are shown to be good friends, sharing a room together on the school trip. Izumi seems to care a lot for Takako, escorting her home after Junta's death and later expressing concern for her well being, commenting that ever since she's been increasingly unstable. Takako expresses relief upon encountering her in the inn, having just been attacked by the inn keeper, commenting she'd rather die if Izumi had been killed. However, Izumi doesn't listen to Takako's broadcast, refusing to attack Mei as she doesn't believe she's the extra. In Episode 11, Izumi went looking for Takako to try and calm her down. Unfortunately, she was too late, and Takako attacked Mei a second time, accidentally killing herself in the process. Arriving just in time to see this, but unaware of the context, Izumi flew into a rage, vowing to kill Mei in revenge.

Tomohiko Kazami
Izumi and Tomohiko worked together as class representatives, though their duties in this role aren't shown very often. In matters pertaining to countermeasures Tomohiko deferred to Izumi, as this was her area of expertise. Still, the two were apparently friendly, as Izumi referred to him as "Kazami-kun" at least once. However, as things began to unravel at the inn, Tomohiko opted to take matters into his own hands and start murdering his classmates. Having encountered the corpses of two of his other victims, Izumi put a stop to his rampage before Tomohiko could kill Kouichi, who Tomohiko was convinced was the extra student. After hearing Tomohiko blame Kouichi for their mutual friend Yukari's death, Izumi killed him with an iron bar she'd acquired earlier (presumably to kill Mei).

Standing over Tomohiko's body, she berated him for thinking Kouichi was the extra, as well as his earlier murders, before coldly offering to help him die as he didn't deserve to live. As a consolation, she informed him he'd be able to keep Yukari company. Izumi prepared to hit him again, only to be stopped by Chibiki, who informed her classmates shouldn't be killing each other.

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 does not appear in the anime, although his name was seen in the Class 3-3 list of 1996, and it is implied heavily that he is dead in that universe, and that furthermore Izumi first met Kouichi at his funeral.

In Chapter 17 of the manga, Kazuma commits suicide by hanging himself in his room. Izumi, who'd noticed his room was quiet, went to check on him, and found his body. His death devastated her, though she tried to hide this; this, coupled with Yukari's death, was what motivated Izumi to attend the class trip, in order to break the curse. After being rescued from the burning inn, a delirious Izumi muttered Kazuma and Yukari's names, suggesting their deaths were her motivations for attacking Mei in the first place.

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."
 * "Idiot, Kouichi isn't dead. But you...You've killed two people. You don't deserve to live. I'll help you die. You can keep Yukari company."

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. Her role has been greatly expanded in every adaptation since.
 * 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.
 * 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 by airdate order she was the first.)