Kozue Otomune

Name: Kozue Otomune.

School: Hasu no Sora Girls' High School, enrolled during the 102nd to 104th classes.

Year: Second-year student in the 103rd class year, third-year student in the 104th class year, then alumna from the 105th class year onward.

Generation: 102nd class.

Birthday: June 15.

Height: 167 cm.

Hobbies: Stargazing, listening to music, and making tea sweets.

Special skills: Classical ballet and strength training.

Favorite foods: Tea and boiled tofu.

Favorite saying: “Stand like a peony, sit like a tree peony, walk like a lily.”

Favorite subjects: Art and world history.

Favorite animal: Cats.

First-person pronoun: A very formal “I.”

Member color: Mermaid Green.

Voice actor: Hana Miyya.

Kozue is one of the central characters of Love Live! Hasu no Sora Jogakuin School Idol Club.

She is from Ishikawa Prefecture and belonged to the school idol club while attending Hasu no Sora.

From the 103rd to the 104th class years, she served as club president.

After the retirement of Sachi Ogami and until her own graduation in the 104th class year, she was the club's leader.

Within the mini-unit lineup, she belongs to Cerise Bouquet.

During her time in the unit, she performed with Sachi Ogami, Kaho Hinoshita, and Ginko Momose.

She appears flawless at first glance: academically strong, athletic, beautiful, and refined.

At the same time, she is hilariously bad with machines and unexpectedly terrible at drawing, though she does not realize either weakness.

Kozue was born into a musical family and was expected to become a musician.

Instead, she persuaded her family to let her attend Hasu no Sora, a school with a history of winning Love Live!, because she wanted to become a school idol.

Her dream was singular and absolute: to win Love Live!.

After finally achieving that dream, she burned out and fell into a songwriting slump, but later found a new goal: to keep creating performances that surpass even the best live show, again and again.

After graduation, she enrolled in a music university's vocal music department to pursue that new dream.

Kozue has long purple hair tied into a side ponytail on the right side.

She wears a red camellia hair ornament at the base of the ponytail.

Her eyes are a yellow-green shade, and her eyes are gently drooped.

Her overall design gives her a graceful, mature, and soft impression.

During her first year, she did not yet wear the camellia ornament, and her hairstyle was noticeably different.

At that time she wore a simple ponytail, but when and why she changed to her current style has not been explained.

She takes great care of her hair.

During a summer training camp in her second year, she packed an impressive amount of hair-care products.

She has said that she worries about her short eyelashes and once asked Sayaka Murano for advice because Sayaka's are longer.

At one point, she even prepared a suitcase just for going home to work on composing.

At 167 cm tall, she is one of the taller members of the club.

Only Tsuzuri Yugiri and Izumi Katsuragi are taller.

Her private clothes are generally calm and elegant, often featuring long skirts.

Fans also commonly interpret her as being on the more voluptuous side among the club members, though no official measurements are given.

Kozue speaks in a highly formal, old-fashioned, refined feminine manner.

Her speech has a distinctive stiffness that makes even ordinary conversation sound elegant.

She addresses older students with “name + senior.”

With people her age or younger, her form of address changes according to closeness.

At first she uses “family name + honorific.”

As relationships deepen, she shifts to “given name + honorific,” and only with especially treasured people does she drop honorifics entirely.

She uses only given-name-only forms for a very small circle.

That circle includes Tsuzuri, Megumi, Kaho, and Sumina Katashiro from flowers.

Kozue is extremely serious and disciplined.

She believes that careful training and steady preparation are the proper way to approach a live performance.

Even when hurt, sad, or cornered, she rarely cries and almost never gives up.

At the same time, she is surprisingly self-punishing and carries regret for a long time.

If she makes a mistake, she tends to keep the object connected to that failure as a reminder or “penance.”

Because of this habit, Megumi once jokingly called her a “penance fool.”

She is emotionally reserved and often hesitates to push herself into changing relationships.

This makes mentoring, speaking up, and handling emotionally complex situations harder for her than they look.

Her low self-esteem is one of her most important character traits.

From the start of the story, she repeatedly insists that she has no real talent.

She has spoken about being unable to list musical skill as a “special talent” despite her upbringing.

She also downplays her ballet experience and compares herself unfavorably to Kaho's natural brightness and confidence.

Kozue admires Tsuzuri's dance talent but also feels jealousy toward it.

During her first year, she even assumed that Megumi, with her charm and gifts, would probably become the future club president instead.

She thinks cute fan service does not suit her.

Unlike Kaho or Megumi, she remains shy about acting cute even after three years.

When imitating Megumi's cheerful greeting style, she does it in a tiny voice.

For some reason, however, she performs the muscular pose from Mix shake!! with complete confidence.

Although she can be absentminded in a charming way, she is not oblivious to malice.

She notices unkind jokes or gossip about herself and tends to remember them.

She is academically excellent and physically capable.

In her best subjects, she can compete for top rank in class.

She enjoys running and is especially good at long-distance races.

She is even faster than Sayaka Murano in that area.

For sports she was not naturally good at, such as ball games, she quietly practiced in private so she could at least meet expectations.

That detail says a lot about her pride and work ethic.

Her hobby of stargazing is serious enough that she brings her own telescope onto school grounds at night.

She enjoys both observing the stars and simply spending quiet time under the sky.

She also likes personality quizzes.

In one live stream series, she hosted sessions where she invited members and asked them several test questions.

Her favorite mascot character is the white guinea-pig-like car from a famous stop-motion franchise.

She owns plush toys of it and even makes handmade wool-felt creations.

She likes cats, and other members often represent her with a cat icon.

Besides tea and tofu, she also enjoys Japanese sweets and likes matcha tea lattes.

As club president, she was the one who opened each Fes Live greeting through the 104th class year by addressing the fans with the group’s standard affectionate title.

Megumi once commented in a comic that it sounds especially funny when Kozue says it.

Kozue is one of the most versatile members in the entire franchise.

She handles an astonishing number of creative and technical roles herself.

Raised in a musical household, she learned many instruments from childhood.

These include guitar, piano, flute, and saxophone.

She can also compose music.

Cerise Bouquet's Suisaisekai was written by Kozue for the 103rd class year new student welcome event.

When composing, she uses acoustic guitar and keyboard and can also perform while singing.

She later taught composition to Megumi and taught keyboard or piano to Kaho and Ginko.

Her lyric writing was originally done in collaboration with Kaho.

Until December of the 103rd class year, Kozue usually gathered Kaho's ideas and shaped them into finished lyrics.

From January onward, Kaho began taking direct responsibility for lyrics, which gave the pair a clearer division of labor.

With Ginko, Kozue initially used the earlier method again, but by summer she trusted Ginko enough to leave lyric writing to her.

Interestingly, Kozue only began composing seriously after joining the club.

Before that, she had written only one casual song in middle school.

Even so, her very first true composition was praised as being at an exceptional level from the start.

That natural polish reinforces how extraordinary her ear is.

Because Hasu no Sora traditionally centers its activities around units, she also creates choreography.

On top of that, she designs and makes costumes.

For much of the 103rd class year, costume work was shared between Kozue and Sayaka until Megumi returned.

Kozue once worried about what her parents would say if they knew she got needle injuries from sewing.

Put simply, she combines the roles that in other groups would be spread across several specialists.

She can handle composition, choreography, lyric support, costume design, and live performance direction.

Although she does not brag, her singing voice is often treated as one of her signature strengths.

Within the club, people say, simply, that “when it comes to singing, it is Kozue.”

Kozue does not dislike training.

In fact, she embraces it with almost frightening sincerity.

She often includes strength training in the club's practice menus and even bragged to Kaho on first meeting her that she trains seriously.

Once Kaho became her unit partner, Kozue assigned her strength training as well.

If Kaho skipped practice, Kozue could hand down a full-course strength-training punishment.

At one point, she explicitly stated that strength training is one of her hobbies.

When asked for a recommended protein supplement in a live stream, she named a chocolate-flavored product.

That small detail has become one of her funniest pieces of trivia.

Tea is one of Kozue's great loves.

She serves tea to the other club members and selects blends according to the day's weather and mood.

She keeps both tins and tea bags.

Her tea is known to be delicious, and the sweets she pairs with it are often homemade.

Among the treats she has prepared are madeleines and apple pie.

In free-talk broadcasts, she has even spoken about the kinds of tea she recommends and how to brew them.

Her personal tea set remained in the club room even after she graduated.

She eventually gave it to Kaho under certain conditions.

Kozue is famously bad with machines.

She insists she is merely “in the middle of becoming good at them.”

Tsuzuri says the real problem is that Kozue refuses to admit the truth.

Her inability with technology is one of her most enduring comic traits.

When trying to help Kaho set up the club's app account, Kozue struggled badly despite having taken detailed notes the year before.

In the end, she had to ask the tech-savvy Tsuzuri to do it.

This trait became a running joke during the live-stream series.

In her first solo chat broadcast, she began with a proud little comment that she could stream by herself.

The talk portion went fine.

The real problem came at the end, when she somehow could not figure out how to end the stream properly and finally cut it off awkwardly.

Kaho later kindly taught her how to do it.

Even after that, she still sometimes failed when trying to close broadcasts.

In one especially funny incident, she received an email claiming she had won a brand-new smartphone and excitedly celebrated it.

Viewers warned her it sounded like a scam, but in the setting of this world it apparently turned out to be genuine.

With the new phone, she managed a smoother ending in the next stream.

Later she said she had been trying to become friends with her “machine” by taking it on walks, sleeping beside it, and even bringing it into the bath.

That confession was immediately followed by technical trouble and a forced shutdown.

Afterward, she apparently started using cooling patches on the phone as a countermeasure.

As a result, whenever Kozue announces she is about to press the end button, both viewers and members tense up.

Her awkwardness with devices is so well known that novels also tease her whenever she uses a smartphone.

She is also bad with technology-related loanwords and can sound completely lost when discussing game terminology.

Oddly enough, she is unexpectedly good at a rhythm game cabinet tied to the franchise, perhaps because of her musical background.

Unlike with machines, she is not afraid of ghosts.

In a haunted house, she was calm enough to admire the mechanisms and even accidentally suggested another trip through to a girl who had insisted she was not scared.

Her character icon, an antique gramophone, likely reflects both her musical upbringing and her discomfort with modern devices.

Naturally, she can still operate the gramophone sitting in the club room.

Kozue is also notorious for her bizarre drawings.

During multi-member streams, she often drew on a whiteboard, and viewers would guess what the drawing was supposed to represent.

Her creatures tend to share the same basic face design: dot eyes and a wavy mouth.

The results are memorable, though not exactly accurate.

The funniest part is that Kozue has no idea she is bad at drawing.

Art is one of her favorite school subjects, and she confidently says the secret is to observe the subject carefully.

The other members are generally too kind to tell her the truth.

Megumi, shortly after returning, was one of the few who lightly joked about it.

Kozue's dorm room appears early in the story.

It is decorated in calm white and green tones.

The room contains many floral decorations, including vases and a flower-shaped lamp.

On the shelf above the bed are tea tins, cookie tins, and a large floral ornament.

Near the entrance there is also a container labeled as protein.

By the window, she has placed a Western-style side table and chair.

The room reflects her personality perfectly: elegant, disciplined, and secretly intense.

Tea and training coexist in peace.

Kozue comes from a wealthy musical family.

She grew up surrounded by music and was expected from childhood to become a professional musician.

She was exposed to many instruments very young.

Family birthdays were celebrated with improvised birthday performances.

Her family did not initially approve of her desire to become a school idol.

She convinced them and won their support before entering Hasu no Sora.

Her family includes, as far as known, musician parents and grandparents.

She refers to her mother with an especially formal and respectful expression.

By March of the 103rd class year, her mother had become a fan of Kaho and even watched Kaho's broadcasts.

The family employs many household staff, including people who handle cooking.

Their main home is a vast estate in Ishikawa Prefecture, somewhat distant from the school.

Kaho jokingly compared it to a garden on the scale of a famous historical landmark.

The family also owns a seaside villa used for composition.

That villa later became the site of the club's summer training camp.

The visual model for the family mansion was based on a famous old Western-style garden residence in Tokyo.

The model for the villa area was based on a coast in Hakusan, Ishikawa.

The school idol who inspired Kozue in childhood was from Muse.

The story avoids saying the group name directly at first, but the clues point clearly to them.

She admired the school idols who saved their school from closure.

She has also said that her ponytail hairstyle in one costume references the hairstyle of the school idol she adored.

In an interview, the song she selected was Mermaid festa vol.1, whose center is a ponytailed school idol.

Because of this, fans widely regard Eli Ayase as Kozue's favorite.

That reading is strengthened by the fact that Hana Miyya also loves Eli Ayase.

Promotional material has at times grouped Kozue, Eli Ayase, and Dia Kurosawa together in ways fans found delightful.

Kozue's dream of winning Love Live! began when she was in first grade and saw a school idol performance on television.

Unlike many characters whose goal is simply their group's shared ambition, Kozue had this dream as a deeply personal childhood wish.

When she finally won Love Live! in the 104th class year, many fans celebrated it not only as a team victory but as the fulfillment of Kozue's lifelong dream.

She chose Hasu no Sora partly because it had already won before and seemed like the place where that dream could come true.

When she first saw Hasu no Sora perform, she was especially moved by Reflection in the mirror, performed by the earlier Cerise Bouquet.

From that moment, she knew she wanted to join Cerise Bouquet if she entered the school.

Her member color, Mermaid Green, comes from the idea that she had been praised since childhood for having a voice that flowed like water.

That image led to the mermaid association behind the color name.

Kaho Hinoshita

Kaho is Kozue's partner in Cerise Bouquet.

Kozue tries to guide her with a balance of kindness and strictness, though from the outside she often seems softer on Kaho than she thinks.

Kaho once called her an “ogre” behind her back because of her demanding training style.

Still, the bond between them became one of the emotional cores of the story.

Kozue met Kaho the day after the entrance ceremony, when Kaho was depressed over a failed attempt at reinventing herself.

Kozue listened seriously to Kaho's worries and gently drew her into the world of school idols.

Kozue had wanted to perform as Cerise Bouquet with Kaho from the moment they met.

She even secretly prepared two costumes for Suisaisekai before Kaho had officially joined as a school idol.

At first, Kozue treated Kaho as a junior to be guided.

After the painful defeat at Love Live! in the 103rd class year, she resolved to stand beside her as an equal partner instead.

From then on, she changed the way she addressed Kaho, dropping honorific distance and calling her simply Kaho.

That small shift carries enormous emotional weight.

Near graduation, Kozue told Kaho that she felt guilty about leaving her behind.

At the same time, she also thanked Kaho, because meeting her allowed Kozue to discover a new dream and move forward.

After graduation, Kozue entrusted Ginko with the role of handling Kaho's more reckless tendencies.

She even left behind an instruction manual on how to deal with Kaho.

Ginko Momose

Ginko is the junior member brought into Cerise Bouquet through Kaho's invitation.

Ginko admires Kozue as someone graceful and refined.

When Kaho began trying to imitate Kozue's old mentoring style, Kozue advised her not to copy the past.

She told Kaho to lead Ginko in her own way, because Kaho was the one spending the most time with her.

Later, when Ginko worried about remaking old ceremonial costumes tied to club tradition, Kozue helped her by speaking about the traditions of the Otomune family.

Kozue also personally gave Ginko's grandmother a ticket so she could see Ginko wear the completed remade costume.

During Kozue's songwriting slump after the Love Live! victory, Ginko was one of the people she confided in.

Their conversations helped Kozue find her next dream.

Tsuzuri Yugiri and Megumi Fujishima

Tsuzuri and Megumi are Kozue's fellow 102nd class members and closest friends.

Because both are highly individualistic, Kozue naturally became the one who held the trio together.

Their teamwork is remarkable.

Megumi brings dance ideas, Kozue identifies what should be improved, and Tsuzuri shapes the movement itself.

Kozue becomes a little tsundere only with Megumi.

Because Megumi can be unserious, Kozue often scolds her and gets teased in return, and the two quarrel often.

Even so, Kozue deeply respects Megumi's charm, ability, and sincerity toward school idol activities.

Whenever Megumi hit painful obstacles, Kozue stayed beside her.

Kozue also admires Tsuzuri's genius-level performance ability, though it stirs up frustration and envy in her.

She once compared Tsuzuri's profile to an antique doll or even to the beauty of an ancient queen, making it clear how captivated she was by her presence.

Because Kozue and Megumi used to care for Tsuzuri's everyday needs in their first year, Kozue can be exasperated by Tsuzuri's lack of life skills.

Still, she trusts Tsuzuri enough to seriously discuss difficult matters with her.

For a long stretch, Kozue's relationship with Tsuzuri was painfully complicated due to events from their first year.

After those issues were finally resolved, their bond became much stronger.

Sayaka Murano and Rurino Osawa

Sayaka and Rurino are juniors from other units.

Kozue connected especially well with Sayaka because of their similar personalities and because they shared costume-making responsibilities during much of the 103rd class year.

The two later formed the shuffle unit Hasu no Holiday.

Kozue wrote Pleasure Feather with Sayaka's singing in mind from the start.

In the 104th class year, Kozue gradually entrusted Sayaka with more club management work.

She brought Sayaka to club meetings, let her lead parts of group practice, and directly appointed her to take charge during Kozue's absence on the school trip.

These actions strongly suggested Kozue saw Sayaka as her successor as club president.

Eventually, she formally named Sayaka as the next leader.

Kozue also often helps Rurino with advice.

A playful “younger sister” joke developed between them in one broadcast project, leading to occasional exchanges like “my sister Kozue” and “big sister Rurino.”

Younger members of the 105th class year

Kozue interacted with Izumi Katsuragi and Ceras Yanagida Lilienfeld while supporting the Love Live! playoff in the 104th class year.

In a later comic, both called her a great benefactor.

Kozue entered Hasu no Sora because she wanted to win Love Live! and saw the school as a nearby institution with a strong school idol tradition.

In her own reflection, she says that before and around admission she had emotionally armored herself and kept distance from others.

That made her especially able to sympathize later with Ginko's difficulties in social relationships.

As a first-year student, she joined the school idol club and came in with enormous seriousness.

She taught Tsuzuri what Love Live! was all about.

She lectured Megumi about how serious club activity should be.

Tsuzuri even nicknamed Kozue and Megumi's frequent arguments something like a “loud voice championship.”

Kozue also passionately argued about insufficient practice in front of senior Sachi Ogami and managed to trouble her as well.

By around the autumn entry period for Love Live!, after she had grown closer to Tsuzuri and Megumi, Kozue began calling them by name without honorifics.

At first she stumbled awkwardly over their names and clearly was not used to that level of intimacy.

Megumi later revealed that she used to call her simply by family name for a while.

As time passed, the history of the club and the legacy of earlier members became a source of pride for Kozue.

In visuals from this period, she looks much sterner than later on.

Her expression in the 102nd class activity materials is notably severe.

At the start of the year, Kozue was carrying materials down from a mountain outside school to prepare for an April live event when she happened to meet Kaho, who was trying to run away from school.

She showed Kaho the introductory live and invited her to help the club as support staff.

Kozue hoped from their first meeting that they could become Cerise Bouquet together.

Without telling Kaho, she made costumes for both of them for Suisaisekai.

Tsuzuri later said Kozue muttered every day that she hoped Kaho would join.

As they talked more, Kaho revealed she was unsure whether to leave the school, and Kozue shared her own story about persuading her family to support her dream.

Eventually Kaho decided to become a school idol and Kozue's partner.

Kozue cherished her first junior while also making many mistakes, such as hesitating to put Kaho through harsh training or unintentionally encouraging reckless behavior through lessons about tradition.

Through those stumbles, they gradually deepened their bond.

Kozue also worked with Tsuzuri, who had likewise just become a senior student, on how to guide Kaho and Sayaka.

The 102nd class year secret

During the June festival, first-year students wrote school newspaper articles about the greatness of seniors Kozue and Tsuzuri.

That led to the revelation of a painful secret from the 102nd class year.

The secret was that the club had withdrawn from the previous Love Live! finals.

The reason was a disaster of broken relationships and impossible choices.

In autumn of the 102nd class year, club president Sachi and Megumi both left the club for unavoidable reasons.

Kozue and Tsuzuri, left behind, formed a temporary two-person unit and practiced a song that Tsuzuri created so the two of them could keep going together.

At that time, Kozue learned through the student council president that another school wanted to scout Tsuzuri away.

If Tsuzuri left, the club would fall below the number of members required by school rules and would be disbanded.

Panicking, Kozue did not tell Tsuzuri about the scouting approach.

Instead, for the regional Love Live! performance she unilaterally changed the staging so Tsuzuri would stand out more strongly as the face of Hasu no Sora.

The strategy worked in one sense.

Tsuzuri's overwhelming dance performance won the region and secured a spot in the finals.

But the unauthorized change betrayed the song's original intention and symbolically meant Kozue had given up standing beside Tsuzuri.

Combined with Kozue hiding her true reason and claiming she “did it to win,” it deeply hurt Tsuzuri.

After discussion involving Megumi, a terrible agreement emerged.

Kozue and Tsuzuri promised never to stand on stage together as a pair again, and the three 102nd class members vowed not to involve themselves with one another.

Tsuzuri came to see Kozue as someone who threw away herself for the sake of a dream and could not be trusted fully.

She sensed Kozue was hiding something, even if she did not know everything.

Kaho and Sayaka felt responsible for exposing the truth and seeing the seniors' pain.

Through shared work on festival stalls and later group practice, the relationship between Kozue and Tsuzuri slowly began to mend.

Then another complication struck: this time a stronger school tried to scout Kozue instead.

Kozue turned the offer down, but Tsuzuri, learning the details, could not understand why Kozue would reject the kind of move she had once tried to force on Tsuzuri.

That caused another major clash.

Finally, with encouragement from the younger members, Kozue told Tsuzuri the truth: she had been unable to trust that Tsuzuri would choose to stay, and more than anything, she simply did not want to be separated from her.

That confession dissolved the core misunderstanding.

Later they performed DEEPNESS with a four-member formation, giving shape to what had once remained unresolved.

After that, Kozue began openly speaking again about her dream of winning Love Live!, something she had stopped doing in her second year.

This marked a major emotional turning point for her.

Megumi's return and the road to the finals

In July, Rurino joined the club.

In August, Megumi finally returned.

Kozue later said Megumi's return was the happiest thing that happened in the 103rd class year.

Megumi had left because of a leg injury and, after healing physically, a severe case of performance-related freezing.

Kozue and Tsuzuri had repeatedly covered for her on stage and supported her rehabilitation.

Megumi eventually gave up on returning because she could not bear how much trouble she felt she was causing them.

That pain was one of the reasons the three had distanced themselves from one another.

It also explains why Kozue became so anxious about injuries after her own minor sprain early in the story.

In the autumn festival period, Kozue worked so hard in preparations and committee duties that she collapsed with a high fever.

After that, Sayaka began helping more with club leadership and event work.

At the Ishikawa preliminaries for Love Live!, Kozue honored Hasu no Sora tradition by having each unit enter separately.

Kaho and Rurino seemed a little uneasy, but they accepted the policy.

With Kaho, Kozue performed Senpen Banka and advanced through the qualifiers.

At the November open campus event, the strained relationship between former president Sachi and Tsuzuri was finally repaired, allowing Kozue to feel free of that remaining burden as well.

In December, the school faced a ban on internet use, and Kozue tried to prove the usefulness of online resources by demonstrating study videos.

Her machine troubles caused a public failure over the school broadcasting system, exposing her weakness to the entire student body.

Eventually, the strategy of demonstrating the value of the internet led to a switch from in-person entry to online entry.

The six members then performed the medley-style Link to the Future together and advanced to the national finals.

At the January finals, however, they narrowly lost.

Kozue, as president, focused on caring for the other five members.

She acted strong in front of Kaho.

But after they separated, all the emotion she had held back burst out, and she collapsed in tears.

Kaho came back and witnessed it.

Kozue confessed that she had pursued many things in life, including music, but believed she lacked talent and had achieved nothing, and that without the goal of winning Love Live! she felt empty.

Kaho's encouragement and determination pulled her back from despair.

Kozue vowed to challenge Love Live! again in her final year.

After that, she stopped treating Kaho simply as a junior and instead chose to move forward with her as a true partner.

This is when she began calling her just Kaho.

In February, during a shuffle-unit project proposed by Rurino, Kozue teamed up with Sayaka as Hasu no Holiday and performed Pleasure Feather.

In March, she and Kaho composed Dakishimeru Hanabira to send off Sachi at graduation.

Kozue cried at the thought of Sachi leaving, especially because she felt she had caused Sachi trouble ever since joining the club.

It was one more sign of how deeply she cared beneath all her formality.

Kozue warmly welcomed Ginko, the new first-year student invited into Cerise Bouquet by Kaho.

She also advised Kaho not to imitate Kozue's old style but to guide Ginko in a way true to herself.

Throughout the year, Kozue increasingly behaved like someone preparing a successor.

She let Sayaka accompany her to club meetings, assigned Sayaka part of the group-practice leadership, and selected her to manage things during Kozue's absence.

After her birthday broadcast on June 15, Kozue vanished from live-stream appearances for about a month.

Fans worried that something might be wrong with her or with Hana Miyya.

When she finally returned in a July stream, she explained that exams and club-president meetings had kept her too busy.

After that, she streamed frequently, almost as if making up for lost time.

In July, the club discovered badly damaged old debut costumes of the first Cerise Bouquet, DOLLCHESTRA, and Mira-Cra Park.

When they brought them to Ginko's grandmother for restoration, Kozue realized this was the same craftswoman long used by the Otomune family.

Kozue had known her from childhood through formal wear made for the family.

When it became clear the old costumes could not simply be repaired and had to be remade, Kozue encouraged Ginko by speaking about how tradition can be carried forward through change.

During Kosuzu Kachimachi's self-produced film shoot in August, the club held a camp at Kozue's family villa.

Kozue worked behind the scenes to manage the entire schedule so the production could survive repeated retakes.

Love Live! victory and the slump afterward

In January of the 104th class year, the nine-member club challenged Love Live! with all their dreams aligned.

Their path included Link to the Future at the Ishikawa preliminaries, Key of Like! at the Hokuriku tournament, and Aurora Flower at the finals.

The finals even led to an unprecedented playoff.

When their opponents from Mizukawa Girls' High School School Idol Club ran into trouble, Hasu no Sora cooperated with them so that both sides could protect their dreams and still compete at full strength on the final stage.

At last, Hasu no Sora Girls' High School School Idol Club won Love Live!.

In commemorative material, Kozue is shown carrying the victory flag.

Even in February, the club remained giddy with celebration.

Kozue gently scolded the others for staying too overexcited, but she herself looked just as happy.

Then came an unexpected crisis.

While Tsuzuri and Megumi quickly developed shape for their graduation songs, Kozue found that she could not write anything at all for the new Cerise Bouquet song for the graduation live.

She admitted to Ginko that she was in a slump.

The reason was simple and devastating: Love Live! victory had been her one great dream, and after achieving it she felt burned out.

Through conversations and a change of pace with the others, she gradually found a new path.

Her new dream became to build live performances that surpass the best one over and over again.

With that realization, she completed the song.

Around the same time, she officially appointed Sayaka as the next club president.

In March, Kaho struggled with making an album for the graduating seniors.

Kozue told her that she felt sorry for leaving her behind, but also that because of meeting Kaho she could now depart carrying a new dream.

Together with Tsuzuri and Megumi, she secretly prepared an a cappella version of Dream Believers.

When Kaho became hopeful again and proposed making yet another new song so the graduates could one day return and perform as school idols, Kozue reacted with amused affection, saying she had thought she could graduate neatly.

She was happy that the future looked bright.

With that in mind, she decided to improve the special version of Dream Believers.

At the Lotus Festival, which functioned as the seniors' de facto graduation ceremony, she performed the improved spring version of Dream Believers and the new song Itsudemo, Itsumademo.

Having done what she wanted to do, she left the school while being seen off by the younger members.

After leaving campus, Kozue, Tsuzuri, and Megumi recorded a video message for the fans.

That message was later shown during an intermission at the fourth live graduation performance focused on the 102nd class.

Kozue no longer appears directly in the main story app and communication systems in the same way, so much of her day-to-day life is unknown.

Still, the others mention her from time to time.

A card story reveals that she left Kanazawa for the first time in her life to attend a university with a vocal music department.

She also began living alone.

In a comic episode published on June 15, 2025, Kaho and Ginko in the 105th class-year club room called her and celebrated her nineteenth birthday over video chat.

That confirmed she remained closely connected to them.

Later, in an interlude titled From Then to Here, she appeared again from behind while speaking on the phone with her close friends.

Tsuzuri was shown at Tokyo Station and Megumi in California, making this the first major appearance of the three together in half a year.

After hearing about the 105th class year's activities, they renewed their promise to work hard toward their own dreams.

In another episode, she spoke by phone with Kaho before the event later known as Starrig Bloom.

After that event and the December Fes Live, Kozue appeared in person before the club while they were beginning cleanup.

She was holding the message board inspired by Kaho's proposal, on which people had written dreams they wanted to fulfill at Love Live! Hasu no Sora Jogakuin School Idol Club: Bloom Garden Party.

Kozue praised Kaho and the others for accomplishing the event.

She admitted that she had become frightened about stepping onto her first major university stage and had come because she wanted courage from them.

Smiling, she said she was looking forward to the March Bloom Garden Party.

An illustration released after the December Fes Live also shows Kozue sitting outdoors on a bench with Kaho, happily talking together.

At the end of 2024, when extended business operations were announced for Kanazawa Gamers, Kozue was chosen as the store's poster girl.

This was only the second time a single Hasu no Sora character had received a newly drawn solo collaboration illustration of that kind.

She appeared in a Gamers apron and also covered the store's commercial song, Welcome!.

The campaign became especially memorable because of the impact of her cute, unusual delivery in the promotional video.

Her term as poster girl appears to have ended when she graduated.

On April 28, 2025, a new project was announced to choose the 105th class year's Kanazawa Gamers poster girl.

That means Kozue's effective term lasted seven months and twenty-three days from the original announcement on September 5, 2024.

For such a short period, it made a strong impression.

A solo-associated song listed for Kozue is be proud.

She is also deeply tied to many unit and full-group songs through composition, lyrics, performance, and arrangement direction.

Kozue is voiced by Hana Miyya.

Before landing the role, Hana Miyya auditioned for the Love Live! series three times in total.

She first auditioned for the public casting of Love Live! Superstar!! while still an ordinary university student.

After joining Aoni Production, she also auditioned for the second-generation cast there, but was unsuccessful both times.

During the final stage of the public audition, she was reportedly in the same group as Sayuri Date, the eventual voice of Kanon.

She later became the first main Love Live! cast member from Aoni Production.

Hana Miyya has repeatedly said that she became a voice actress because she wanted to appear in the Love Live! series.

In Hasu no Sora's first live broadcast, she was so overwhelmed that she nearly cried.

Her own entry point into the franchise was watching Love Live! in middle school.

She especially connected with Eli Ayase because both shared a background in ballet and experiences of frustration.

She proudly noted that her height at the time she joined Hasu no Sora matched Eli Ayase's.

In another program, she revealed that she likes cosplay and once dressed as Nico Yazawa when she was shorter.

At the Asia Tour 2024 Yokohama performances held in February 2025, she fulfilled a dream by performing Muse songs on the same stage as the original Muse members.

Afterward, her agency posted unusually high-energy dance clips of her celebrating.

Unlike Kozue, Hana Miyya is extremely good with games and is considered one of the most dedicated players among the cast of the franchise's school idol stage game.

Her skill level became widely known in a broadcast in October 2023.

In a radio segment, she even bluntly told another cast member to practice more.

She also belongs to a high-ranking circle in competitive in-game events and often posts strong results.

In a September 2024 live broadcast, she demonstrated her full serious play style, constantly pausing the game to inspect cards, resources, and options before every move.

The result turned a performance that should have lasted under two minutes into a ten-minute marathon of stop-start audio, intense concentration, muttering, and relentless teasing from the other eight cast members.

The same thing happened again in January 2025.

It became legendary.

Hana Miyya and Kozue share many traits.

Both love Muse, both have classical ballet in their background, both like tea and music, and both are good at making sweets.

Like Kozue, Hana Miyya is also reliable and somewhat strict with certain people while becoming soft toward others she finds cute.

She has said her personal favorite within Hasu no Sora is Kaho Hinoshita.

There are also signs that Hana Miyya may be a genuine upper-class young lady herself.

She has mentioned earning a flower arrangement teaching credential in high school, being driven around by car as a student, never having ridden a bus, and living in a house with a spiral staircase.

Her drawing ability is also relevant to the role.

She has explicitly said that the strange drawings shown as Kozue's in live content are actually drawn by her own hand.

The surname Otomune is unusual but does exist in real life, especially in parts of western Japan.

A speculative theory links the name choice indirectly to the distinctive way subdistrict place names in Ishikawa often use characters equivalent to “A, B, C” ordering markers.

Because Kozue's icon is a gramophone, the Kanazawa Phonograph Museum has become one of her notable pilgrimage spots for fans.

In one card illustration for Pleasure Feather, she visits there together with Sayaka.

In official collaborations with Ishikawa Prefecture, the museum was also used as one of the rally locations.

When fans represent Kozue with an emoji, they often use a teapot.