Gokusen - Anime Characters

Anime Characters

Kumiko "Yankumi" Yamaguchi (山口 久美子, Yamaguchi Kumiko?)

• Voiced by: Risa Hayamizu (Japanese), Carrie Keranen (English) Portrayed by Yukie Nakama in live action

She is a 23-year-old university graduate and is newly hired at Shirokin Gakuen. She is very idealistic and wants to inspire her students and help them graduate high school. Since the age of 7, when her parents died, Kumiko has been living with her grandfather, who is the head of an influential Tokyo Ninkyo group. Despite this strange upbringing and the bizarre mannerisms she has picked up from it like her use of yakuza slang and a habit of running from the cops when she sees them, Kumiko is a good-hearted girl who has a strong faith in her students even when they think the world is against them. Her belief in them and her combat skills help her earn their respect. They give her the nickname "Yankumi," something she greatly likes. In the drama, she wished for her new students to refer her by it and in the SP manga, despite being injured she becomes energetic and wishes for her class to play soccer when her new student calls her it (something Shin told them to call her to make up for what they did). It is also revealed that she is attracted to men in a fundoshi; going into a trance when she saw Shin in one. In the 2008 SP manga, Yankumi finally returned Sawada's feeling after Sawada saved her from a gang of bikers. A running gag for the drama series is that with each new series almost everyone has completely forgotten she is next in line to run the yakuza, even when asking a fellow teacher from a previous series he replied only with a puzzled look on his face. Another running gag is in the beginning of each new series, she is shown incapable of teaching unless she is teaching the delinquents of the school and, more often than not, scaring her students with her unusual behavior.