Riku Nanase

Personality

Riku has a cute and energetic disposition in spite of his frail body; he tries his best in whatever he does, and doesn't want to be a burden or cause worry to anyone around him. This often results in him overstepping his body's limits. Riku will often say things without thinking, and those things can unintentionally be very rude or otherwise insensitive. As he wears a heart on his sleeve, he would often let his emotions take over his rationale. He is also rather clumsy, often breaking cups in the dormitory amongst other things. Because he spent most of his childhood away from peers his age, there's a lot about this world that Riku doesn't quite know much about and comes off as naive. Despite that, Riku is a bookworm and read a lot of books during his stays in the hospital. It is noted by Iori Izumi that Riku has an influence similar to a cute animal, referring to how he is able to appeal people of any age with his emotions. He is able to sway the emotions of the whole audience by simply crying on stage, or any other displays of strong emotion. Iori also mentioned that companies have picked up on this, frequently hiring Riku for their advertisement commercials. Takamasa Kujo refers to him as a "monster" for this reason.

History

Due to his frail body, Riku has been in and out of hospital ever since he was young. His parents owned a club and were often busy, leaving his twin brother Tenn Nanase to take care of him. Tenn would often perform for him and find numerous other ways to cheer him up and make him smile. At the age of thirteen, the club that their parents owned went bankrupt and was forced to close down. In part of covering their funds and paying for Riku's hospital bills, Tenn left with Takamasa Kujo and was removed from the Nanase family registry. For the most part, Riku was unaware of this fact. In order to see the view that Tenn sees as an idol and understand why he chose to leave home, Riku joined IDOLiSH7 when scouted by Otoharu Takanashi. Riku was singing at a karaoke box with friends when Otoharu suddenly came in. Although Riku thought that Otoharu had gotten the rooms mixed up and would turn around and leave, he instead just stood there and asked Riku to start singing. Once Riku finished singing, Otoharu started clapping and gave Riku his business card. His friends all thought that he was being tricked.

Appearance

Riku has red eyes and short red hair with an ahoge (two in some puchinanas) and a longer lock of hair on his left side. He is the second shortest member of IDOLiSH7, being only one centimeter shorter than Iori, and the same height as Tenn, about 5’9. He is very thin yet has slightly defined muscles on his arms and decently defined abdominal muscles. Riku's hairstyle is the mirror image of Tenn's, who has a longer lock of hair on the right. but Tenn has white hair and pink eyes.

info

When he was still in school, Riku received Valentines chocolate from a female friend of his, but he probably wasn't aware that it was out of genuine sentiment. Riku has spent many New Year's in hospitals. An unexpected habit of his is that he hugs his knees like in gym class when he sits down. Once, when the female talent who appears together with Riku asked for his contact address, he told her the office's phone number instead. Before, when the Nanase family didn’t know that much about Riku's illness, they tried as much as possible to keep chocolate away from him, since there were kids for whom chocolate could trigger an attack, too. So whenever Tenn received any, they would hide them, or take them from him, and that made Riku cry many times. Eventually, Riku gave up to the point that he didn't even want to see chocolate anymore. When Sogo is with Riku, they'll talk together, go out shopping together, or sometimes Sogo helps Riku with his housework. They've also watched TRIGGER DVDs together countless times. According to Iori, when Riku watches TRIGGER live DVDs, he will suspend it during Tenn's scenes alone, advance it a bit, and then repeat and watch it again. Riku has very low alcohol tolerance. He got drunk on Yamato's image chocolates (during valentines) which had a little alcohol in it, and he seemed to be drunk on amazake too (during new years). Riku also got drunk off chanmery, which doesn't even have alcohol in it. Iori usually doesn't hum songs. But there was once when he was standing in the kitchen, Riku started singing Fly away! while rummaging through the refrigerator, and at the place where it's Iori's part, Riku will fall silent. Iori then began to sing because he lost to the pressure of the silence. When Riku was a child, he bought two wood-carved statues and ended up putting one in Tenn's room.