Haruka Nogizaka (乃木坂 春香 Nogizaka Haruka) is the female protagonist of the series. She is idolized at school due to her beauty and intelligence who is regarded as the school's most unattainable girl. However, her deep-hidden secret is that she is a major otaku who loves anime and manga, in which these hobbies brings her closer to Yūto Ayase after he discovers her secret and decides not to divulge it. He becomes her trusted confidant and they both develop feelings for one another.
Appearance[]
Haruka is a very beautiful teen girl with long wavy sandy-brown hair that prefers to be loose and brown eyes. She also has the figure which is somewhat mature for girls of her age.
Her sense of fashion is elegant and feminine, which is one-piece dresses and complementing footwear.
Haruka is rarely seen having her hair styled in any manner.
Personality[]
Haruka has a kind,gentle,timid and shy personality but is also a natural airhead and quite clumsy. In spite of this, she holds a black belt in a number of martial arts, notably aikido, which she once utilized to effortlessly throw a jock who was harassing Yūto Ayase onto his back.
Introduction[]
Haruka is the idol of Hakujou Academy and the classmate of Yūto Ayase who is academically gifted as well as very skilled at playing the piano and she has won international piano competitions. In fact, she is known by the French nicknames "Nuit Étoile" (The Night Star) and "Lumière du Clavier" (The Piano's Light). She is also skilled at cooking and fluent in multiple languages (including Russian) and this earned her a fan club which acts as her "bodyguards" in later events. While being very talented in many areas, she cannot draw well, but does not realize it because she is too proud of her artwork for anyone to tell her directly.
Her shameful secret is that she is an otaku, which means that they usually frown upon by society and she is vulnerable to this despite having a high status. In middle school, her secret was exposed and she was shunned by everyone, including the people she thought of as her closest friends. The pain of the isolation she felt prompted her to develop an introverted personality and even transfer schools. This hobby developed from a chance encounter when she was younger. After an argument with Gentō Nogizaka (Haruka's father), she ran away to a park where she sat crying on a swing and a boy whom she did not know (revealed in flashbacks to have been Yūto) stopped and tried to cheer her up by giving her a copy of the first issue of Innocent Smile.
Plot[]
Haruka and Yūto Ayase met by chance in the library, when she was trying to surreptitiously borrow a copy of Innocent Smile, an anime-related publication. With her secret exposed, Haruka does not show up at school the following day for fear of being ridiculed again. However, Yūto stays quiet about his discovery and, when she returns to school, tells her that she is still herself regardless of whatever hobbies she might have, thus forging a relationship with her through their shared secret. Yūto later helps her return the borrowed copy of Innocent Smile that she had forgotten to return on time. The next day, Haruka declares Yūto to be her friend.
Eventually, she and Yūto became inseparable, usually accompanying each other on trips to Akihabara and on their everyday walk to and from school. She also invites Yūto to visit her house, the first friend, and only boy, to have been accorded that honor. She and Yūto are teased over this by Mika Nogizaka (Haruka's younger sister) and the family maids Hazuki Sakurazaka and Nanami Nanashiro, all of whom support relationship building between them.
After Yūto accompanies Haruka to Comiket, Haruka's secret is exposed to her father, Gentou, who disapproves of his daughter's hobby. Haruka runs away to Yūto's house where, with the help of the family maids, Ruko Ayase (Yuuto's older sister), Yukari Kamishiro and later on, Akiho Nogizaka (Haruka's mother), she and Yūto defend her hobby and win his grudging tolerance of it.
The arrival of Shiina Amamiya in their class introduces a strain in the relationship between Haruka and Yūto. Over time, Shiina's attraction to Yūto becomes more apparent. His relationship with Haruka seems in jeopardy after Haruka sees Shiina and Yūto in a compromising position. Fortunately, Yūto is able to get Haruka to listen to him and he explains what happened, averting the crisis.
In the final series, Haruka and Yūto go on a class trip to Hokkaido where Shiina confesses her feelings for Yūto. Haruka overhears the confession and becomes distressed that Yūto may choose Shiina over her. After some soul-searching, Yūto seeks Haruka out and tells her that he loves her, not Shiina. Haruka is overjoyed to find that her feelings for Yūto are reciprocated and they decide to become a couple, but in secret, to prevent their classmates and everyone from making a big deal out of it. Inevitably, Mika and the maids find out and do their best to help the relationship along, with a predictable lack of success.
Later that summer, Haruka and Yūto create a manga to sell at Comiket where they encounter some of her old friends from middle school. They apologize for having abandoned Haruka and reveal that they were forced to do so by a fellow student. Haruka forgives them and they reconcile.
The next day, Mika phones Yūto and tells him that Haruka has disappeared. As he is about to leave to go search for her, Haruka's mother phones him to let him know that Haruka is perfectly safe and that she is getting married the following day, leaving him stunned. Realizing that Haruka is not participating in her own free will, Mika, the maids, Ruko, Yukari-sensei and their friends, including Shiina, help Yūto storm the location of the wedding. Everyone sacrifices themselves to allow Mika and Yūto to proceed. Yūto ends up facing off against Haruka's father and Haruka faces off against her mother. Both of them prevail and are reunited, after which they are informed that the entire exercise was a test organized by Haruka's parents to see how strong their affections really are. Having proven themselves, Haruka and Yūto get married. It is also revealed in the light novel that they have two daughters named Miku Nogizaka & Asuka Nogizaka.
Trivia[]
- Her name Haruka means "spring" (春) (haru) and "fragrance" (香) (ka).
