Yanagi Sakoshita Yanagi Sakoshita

Age: 16
Gender: Female
Grade: First year student in High School
Psychic devices: None
Ability: Power to heal almost any wound
Element: Healing

In the beginning of the story, one of the very first characters that Recca meets is none other than 16-year-old Yanagi Sakoshita. Yanagi first appears in the first episode where Recca pushes her out of the path of some falling pipes in a construction site. He was badly injured and Yanagi risked used her secret healing powers to heal his wounds. From that point on, Recca swore to be her personal ninja, protecting his "Princess" from any harm. In the manga, it's slightly different, and less heroic. Recca sees Yanagi being pestered by a bunch of guys asking her out on a date (Yanagi: Date? What's that?) and beats them up for her. Unfortunately he gets knocked out by them (The ratio is pretty unfair) and Yanagi heals him, asking him to keep her power a secret. He agrees, and in turn decides to show his own special power - the ability to create flame from his bare flesh - to this girl with whom he is strangely attracted to. The end result is the same, with Kagerou beating up Recca and injuring Yanagi, yada yada yada.

Yanagi is a very sweet girl who hates to see her friends in pain. Although she cannot fight, she contributes to the team by helping them to heal their wounds sometimes. Unlike Fuuko, who can pretty much take care of herself, Yanagi does not have any special abilities other than her aforementioned healing powers, and depends on her friends to rescue her whenever in danger. Unfortunately, Kouran Mori has been eyeing her powers because he believes that she is the key to achieving immortality, and he will do anything to get it.
Despite the fact that Yanagi is portrayed as the "Damsel in Distress" in this story, she isn't as weak as she looks. During the first part of season one, Kurei was torturing her, hoping that by doing so, he would trigger her healing powers and, subsequently, find out the identities of Recca, Fuuko and Domon when they entered his mansion to rescue her. She knew that her friends where coming and refused to reveal who they were. (Telling him Recca's name doesn't count, since she didn't know that Kurei knew about him) She managed to hold on and stay alive long enough for the others to rescue her, and this shows that she has an incredible amount of determination and will power. She even volunteered to be the prize in the Dark Martial Combat Competition! (Recca refused to let her do it originally, but she managed to convince him.) The reason for this is because she feels useless, since she cannot fight and she wants to prove that she too can help the team by offering to be the prize. Yanagi is considered quite beautiful by many, and this is what attracts so many guys to her, mainly one, Recca. ^_^ He himself is in love with Yanagi, and although both are too shy to admit it, they do make a good couple.

Not many people like Yanagi that much, because she doesn't really do much except look anxiously on as her friends fight and faint when they are seemingly doomed. However, not all this is true. She DOES show some fire sometimes, like when one of the referees announced Recca as her favourite fighter and kissed him. ( Yanagi - *dangerously* "Oh, Recca, you are so popular with everybody!" then WHAM! she stepped on his foot. ^_^) She's the reason why Recca keeps fighting and refuses to give up, because if they lose, Yanagi will be given away. Recca will NEVER let that happen. All in all, you just have to agree that without our Yanagi, the show just wouldn't be the same.

Interesting Facts:

1) Yanagi works ( Does she still?) in a kindergarten as a parent's helper (I think). The kids simply ADORE her.

2) Yanagi likes to draw little comics/stories for the kids to read. I know one of them is called something like "Recca Man 4" or something like that. ^_^ (The 4 is the number of the volumes she's drawn so far. I've read somewhere that she's written about up to six already)Team Hokage finds them a bit... silly, but I think the kids like them.

3)Yanagi seems to become much stronger in the manga after the Dark Martial Combat. For instance, she yelled at the audience when they thought Recca had lost, saying "Recca won't lose!" (Manga 16) and even pushed Recca on the floor just as Kirin was about to attacke him with her psychic device. (Manga 17) Doing this was quite a big risk, since she could actually have been hurt in the process.

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