Hikari No Densetsu - Characters

Characters

The plot of the manga and anime series is mainly about Hikari and her dream to become one of the world's best gymnasts. As both the anime and manga continued to develop, the story revolves around Hikari, Ooishi and Shiina and the incidents, mishaps, and life learning adventures they experience as they work hard for their dreams to reach Olympic stardom. In the anime series Mao, a young musician is introduced quickly and goes from a secondary character to a primary character within a matter of a few episodes (he appears later as a part of the manga cast in volume 4). The television show would occasionally give more attention to the lives of the antagonists (Mao's manager), minor characters (Hikari's family) or average-everyday people as a way of setting up a plot, or clarifying a point (a common method among anime series of the 1980s and today). Flashbacks were also used occasionally in the show for similar reasons. Some other minor characters were a bit underdeveloped or received very little character development because some of them were only used as part of visual quality of the anime and manga series in general or due to the anime being concluded after only nineteen episodes. The producers had to limit the appearances and character development of some characters in order to focus on the main characters in order to give the anime series a decent ending in the little amount of episodes the anime series had left to conclude the story as well as possible.