Takemichi Hanagaki

Takemichi Hanagaki, or Takemitchy (タケミっち,), is the story's protagonist and a young man who can travel back in time: a Time Leaper. In order to save his girlfriend Hinata Tachibana and over time, everyone he comes to care about, he decides to become a top member of the Tokyo Manji Gang in order to do so.

Appearance
As an adult, Takemichi is a man of average height with tousled, wavy black hair. He wears plain, ordinary clothes. He usually has a tired expression due to the stress of life.

As a teenager, his hair is bleached yellow and kept in a "faux hawk" style. When his hair is undone, it appears more similar to his adult hairstyle. He wears Mizo Middle School's uniform, which consists of a dress shirt, black slacks, and loafers when he is at school. During his time with Toman, he wears the gang's attire: a custom black Toppoku with Toman's logo. His eyes are also noticeably larger and more filled with hope, possibly due to having not yet experienced the hardships of adult life. He wears a necklace matching that of his girlfriend's.

He has a massive scar on his left hand from getting stabbed with a knife. He also has a scar on his left foot from a bullet, though it is never shown.

Personality
Takemichi was an individual who has lost his sense of direction. Thus, he had low self esteem, always apologizing for even the smallest things and easily crying. As noted by those around him and even himself, all he is good for is apologizing. He also holds a grudge towards wealthy people because he himself is not very financially stable.

However, going back in time again and again gradually molds Takemichi into a completely different person. Slowly, he turns from a coward into a man with unshakeable conviction. Even facing insurmountable odds, he refuses to back down. He becomes the one who holds Toman together through their hardships and turns into its unofficial leader, guiding even Mikey and Draken onto the right paths. During even Toman's lowest points, it is Takemichi's unyielding spirit that pushes on his fellow companions.

Takemichi is completely loyal to those he considers his friends and fiercely protective of them. He is willing to risk his very life to ensure that they are safe and sound. This loyalty spurs on his determination to create a better future for the ones he cares about. This is shown through his countless leaps back in time to change the gruesome outcome of his loved ones.

In a fight, Takemichi has never backed down. He is more willing to be beaten within an inch of his life than to admit defeat. This has become a huge source of inspiration for Toman's members and has proven instrumental even against all odds.

Takemichi is noted to be very similar in personality with Shinichiro Sano, with Draken pointing out both are "weak to women, weak at fights, but reliable".

Takemichi has horrible hygiene and habits. He neglects cleaning his room and has become accustomed to its disgusting state.

Authority
As a captain in Toman, Takemichi has power over his squadron and can lead them as he wishes. His outstanding leadership has been instrumental in strengthening Toman as a whole.

Endurance
Takemichi is nowhere near the strongest fighter, but he is noted to be one of the, if not the most, resilient fighter thus far. He has been shown to take blows that would have knocked cold anyone else and still stand up and even retaliate. Amongst his greatest demonstrations of durability include but are not limited to: Being stabbed on his hand with a knife and still be able to fight competently and defeat a much stronger enemy; Taking a bullet to the foot and still be able to run in pursuit of his enemy; Getting ambushed with a brick to his head to fundamentally no effect, even though he was already beaten to a bloody pulp. Thus, his willpower and ability to take hits is his forte.

Fighting Prowess
Takemichi is quite lacking in his attack power. His strength and fighting abilities are around the average delinquent's. Rarely has he won by himself, but his resilience has stalled enemies enough to allow more powerful allies time to rush to the scene countless times. If the situation is desperate enough, his willpower makes it nigh impossible to knock him down and allows him to significantly weaken foes stronger than him through exhaustion. Takemichi's strength scales depending on how high the stakes are. Normally, he has trouble against a few regular delinquents, but he has temporarily knocked down an incredibly strong fighter in his desperation before.

His fighting abilities have nonetheless, been shown to improve over time. Nonetheless, Takemichi lacks finese and technique on his approach even downright resorting to methods considered disgraceful such as biting. He is later capable of overwhelming the likes of Kisaki in a one on one fight, and even kick the gun Kisaki held at Takemichi out of his hands before he could even react, and all of that, despite being previously beaten to an inch of his life and having a gunshot on his foot.

Time Travel
Takemichi possesses a supernatural skill that allows him to time travel. However, he is only able to travel back exactly 12 years. Also, whenever he is in the past, the present timeline does not stop, but keeps going for however long Takemichi is in the past. To trigger this ability, he must shake hands with Naoto in the present to go back to the past and shake hands with him in the past to go back to the present. Whatever Takemichi does has an impact on the present, which allows him to change the future.

This time leaping ability has several side effects, for one it causes memory lapses to occur. When Takemichi travels to the past, he often finds himself in situations he does not understand, as his past self still lived his life normally with Takemichi having to piece together how he came where he is and what he was doing. The same holds true when he jumps back into the present, whether this has changed or not Takemichi awakens with no knowledge of what he was doing at that point in time.

Another effect involves his own persona, because his present self and past self are different despite being the same person, many people note that Takemichi acts more mature at certain intervals, with many people wondering about his rather unusual and drastic personality changes. Whenever Takemichi travels to the past he is in full control of his body and is the dominant entity. It is not know if his past self has any awareness of his future self's time traveling abilities or whether the past self remains conscious or aware of any of the actions of his future self when it takes over.

This ability to travel in time triggers based on a strong, mutual desire to change specific events in the past to alter the future. When Naoto no longer had any major inclination to change time as he had achieved his goals, Takemichi was unable to travel in time. This ability to travel in time, is not limited exclusively to Naoto, but can be triggered by shaking the hands of another individual with whom he shares a strong desire to change events. As of the Final Arc, Takemichi is capable of time leaping by shaking hands with Mikey, however, in this case he is only able to travel back 10 years into the past. Although this difference in time leaping ability is not fully explained as of yet, it can be hinted that Takemichi can leap only at the precise point of time where his actions can have the greatest impact.

Even though the effects of his interventions on the timeline seem to occur immediately after Takemichi alters certain aspects, the full extent of what has changed is not immediately known to either Takemichi or Naoto. In fact whenever Takemichi alters the timeline, Naoto is ignorant of any change that occured, and lives his life normally, as if the time leaping never existed in the first place. It is only when Takemichi travels back into the present that Naoto remembers about the time leaping, thus serving as an instant alert to Naoto that Takemichi has returned. It can be argued that the reverse is true, when Takemichi travels to the past, the past version of the people whom he shook hands with will sense him too. Although Naoto is not seen knowing this, the past Mikey was able to sense that Takemichi was back in the past.

There is a significant limitation to this power, however. In order for Takemichi to time leap back into the present, both him and the person he shook hands with must be alive. If either is dead, then Takemichi is effectively stuck in the past no matter how many times he shakes hands with the person in the present. When this happens his only means to return to the present is by changing the timeline so that both people will live in the present.

Quotes

 * (to Naoto Tachibana) "Listen, when you're dealing with punks like them, you gotta have guts. Get ready to be punched! But don't wuss out. Be prepared to fight back like it's life or death. If they're not totally serious about it, that should scare them off."

Etymology

 * The name Takemichi means "military, martial" (武) (take) and "road, way, street" (道) (michi).
 * Takemichi's surname Hanagaki means "flower, blossom" (花) (hana) and "fence" (垣) (kaki/gaki).

Trivia

 * According to the official character book:
 * His favorite food is potatoes.
 * He hates ghosts.
 * His special skill is solving puzzles.
 * The people he respects are Mikey and Draken.
 * The people he dislikes or fears are Peh-yan and Kazutora.
 * His dream: "I don't know what it was... I can't remember."
 * His motorcycle is a twin of Mikey's.
 * He has Mikey's original Toman uniform in his possession.

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