Kotegawa, Yui
Summary
Kotegawa Yui is a sixteen-year-old student in Rito’s class, characterized by her strict adherence to school morals and an initially uptight demeanor. Her disdain for boys stems from childhood experiences where male classmates harassed her friends by flipping their skirts and bullying them, leading Yui to stand up for her peers and develop a deep aversion to shamelessness. She frequently clashes with Lala, whose free-spirited nature Yui views as an obstacle to a peaceful school environment. Initially, she regards Rito as just another shameless pervert due to the misunderstandings caused by his frequent mishaps, though she gradually comes to realize this is not the case. Despite eventually loosening up, she remains more guarded than the other girls, though she still becomes part of Rito’s harem. There are significant differences in her portrayal between the anime and the manga. While the anime briefly implies romantic feelings for Rito, the manga makes these evident, showing her fantasizing about marrying him and adopting Celine. This shift causes her attitude to mellow considerably, particularly in the latter half of the manga. The anime’s first season depicts her as far stricter and more authoritarian than her source material counterpart, creating a reputation that sticks with anime-only viewers. Many of her character development scenes from the manga were either unadapted or reassigned to Haruna, such as the trip to the fantasy RPG crafted by Lala’s sisters, which was originally a role for Yui in the OVAs and source material. The authors, Saki Hasemi and Kentaro Yabuki, noted in a post-manga interview that Yui was originally the only character intended to develop, while the rest were written to reset each chapter due to the slice-of-life setting. This dynamic changed in To Love Ru Darkness, which was more story-driven and allowed most characters to undergo development.
