Mieko Yotsuba

Mieko Yotsuba is introduced as the woman Touma Inaba meets at a university entrance exam venue.

He is immediately captivated by her extraordinary beauty and dreams of walking with her beneath the cherry trees on the Keio University campus.

Despite being described as breathtakingly beautiful, Mieko sees herself as an ordinary, life-sized woman.

That self-image shapes many of her actions, including her desire for small, pre-marital intimacies from Touma and from Tatsuya Mashuu.

She is a student in the Faculty of Letters at Keio University.

She comes from a good family and is said to have a fiance.

Her name is derived from the four-leaf clover, something she herself mentions when explaining her surname.

It may also carry a metaphor related to the four seasons.

Voice actress

In the original video animation and the Sega Saturn version, Mieko is voiced by Mako Hyoudou.

At the beginning of the story, Mieko gives Touma a false phone number and effectively rejects him.

Later, she resumes a relationship with him without clearly explaining why she did so.

During this period, she is deceived by Touma when he claims to be a Keio student rather than a cram school student preparing to retake exams.

When the truth comes out, she reveals her own feelings and circumstances.

She also mistakenly believes that Urara Kasuga is Touma’s real younger sister.

In another notable scene, Tatsuya Mashuu forcibly kisses her right in front of Touma.

Although she is one of the principal heroines, the story often focuses less on her present university life than on memories of her high school years.

As a result, her appeal as an adult woman is not explored as much as it could have been.

Mieko is written as an idealized beauty, yet she does not think of herself as exceptional.

This contrast gives her a slightly wistful and human quality.

She wants love with someone from the same university, suggesting a desire for a relationship that feels socially and emotionally appropriate to her world.

At the same time, her arranged engagement places limits on what she can pursue.

The text presents her as a heroine not only for Touma, but also as the true object of Mashuu’s affection.

This gives her the qualities of a co-lead heroine, with Komi Natsuki as the other half of a double-heroine structure.

Her relationship with Touma is described as somewhat contrived or forced by the narrative.

Even so, her presence remains central to the emotional complications of the series.

As the story progresses, Mieko is said to speak more and more about her past rather than her current life.

This shift contributes to the sense that she loses some of her mature presence as the series goes on.

Her facial design also changes over time.

Later in the work, she comes to resemble the younger-looking supporting heroines, with a softer and more childlike anime style.

Some of her expressions are drawn in a way that resembles Urara Kasuga.

Urara’s mother is also said to look similar to her.

This visual change creates a curious paradox: her earliest, more mature design is considered more charming than her later, more youthful appearance.

The text even suggests that this works as a faint counterpoint to works that strongly favor very young-looking character designs.

A naming pattern is noted among the female cast.

Several early supporting heroines, and later Mieda Hotta, have given names containing the element "Mi," while Etsuko and Momoe share the sound "e."

Within that pattern, Mieko’s existence can be seen as foreshadowing her place as the other heroine.

This gives her a subtle structural importance beyond her direct scenes.

In the latter half of the story, both Mieko and Mashuu appear less frequently.

The plot instead introduces a large number of new supporting heroines.

At that stage, a new character named Mieda Hotta appears, whose given name has the same reading.

She is treated with an intensity in intimate scenes comparable to that of a main heroine.

By the final episode, it is explained that Mieko marries her fiance.

However, the groom shown in the photograph is unnamed and drawn with an ordinary, anonymous face.

Because of that, her marriage is presented as somewhat mysterious and emotionally distant.

The ending leaves a sense of unresolved questions around her fate.

Mashuu, meanwhile, is said to have headed to Southeast Asia and disappeared.

This adds another strange, unfinished note to the conclusion surrounding Mieko’s storyline.