Handa, Sei
Summary
Sei Handa is a twenty-three-year-old calligrapher born on April 15. His professional reputation was shattered after he physically assaulted an art gallery director who had harshly criticized his work as boring, rigid, academic, and bland. Following this incident, he retreated to the Goto Islands in Nagasaki, a move suggested by his renowned calligrapher father, to wait out his self-imposed exile and refine his art. During his time away, he discovered the value of human connection, particularly through his interactions with a tomboyish young girl named Naru. These experiences helped him find new inspiration and develop his own unique artistic style. Initially, Naru referred to him as "Junon Boy," a term derived from a magazine featuring street photos of male idols, implying he was a city-dwelling pretty boy who did not exist in reality. She later began addressing him as "Sensei." Handa also appears in the prequel manga Handa-kun, which depicts his high school years. In that series, he is a popular school idol and a prodigy calligrapher who suffers from the delusion that he is disliked by everyone. He mistakenly interprets the distant admiration of his peers as bullying, a misunderstanding stemming from a prank by his best friend, Kawafuji. Kawafuji had falsely told Handa that he was hated, a lie Handa took as truth, and Kawafuji never corrected him because he found the situation amusing.
