Makoto
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Makoto Sawatari
Makoto is a young girl who attacked Yuichi Aizawa suddenly in the middle of town early on in the story, though so weakly he was able to defeat her by simply extending his arm out. She is carried back to Yuichi and Nayuki Minase's house where she lives as a guest for the remainder of her story. Despite having lost her memories, she remembers what her name is and is sure that she holds a grudge against Yuichi from the past when he visited the city back when he was younger. Makoto's amnesia, or memory loss, is much more severe than Yuichi's or Ayu Tsukimiya's, but from an entirely different source. She feels sad that pets sometimes are abandoned when their owners cannot take care of them. Due to this attitude, it takes her a while to warm up to a stray cat she finds halfway through her story which Yuichi later names Piro. Makoto is shown to love Piro very much and often carries the cat around on her head.
Makoto can be clueless about things that people her age should know, such as the fact that she can buy her own pork buns and manga; Yuichi had commented once how she lacked common sense due to a lack of social experience. Like Ayu, she too has an idiosyncratic expression, "Aū" (あうぅ?), which she says when she is frustrated or sad; likewise, it has no real meaning. Another unique speech pattern of hers is that she always refers to herself in the third person. Near the end of her story, Makoto starts to wear two bells around her right wrist and enjoys the sound they make. From early on, it becomes obvious that Makoto has a mischievous personality, which leads to her performing various pranks. These are done exclusively on Yuichi because of her strong dislike for him, something she constantly reaffirms. Her persistent attempts at pranks on Yuichi vary in severity, such as simply dropping food on him or once even throwing lit firecrackers in his room. However, he manages to turn each prank back on her, which makes her all the more determined to successfully prank him. As time passes and Makoto begins to feel more as a member of the Minase family rather than a stranger, she honestly grows to like Yuichi, effectively looking beyond her latent distaste for him. Soon after her attitude change, she starts weakening and eventually becomes incapable of communication because her wish to be at Yuichi's side would only last for a short period of time. Makoto falls in love with Yuichi and says she wants to be his bride and stay with him forever. At the end of her story, after she and Yuichi have been "married", she disappears in front of Yuichi, and is presumed to have died.
Makoto is in fact not a human being but instead a fox that Yuichi found ten years prior to the beginning of the Kanon story. Yuichi first found Makoto, then a young fox, injured on Monomi Hill and he took the fox back and kept it in his room for the rest of the summer. One day, Yuichi tells the fox about an older girl that he had a crush on named Makoto Sawatari, which is where Makoto's name is derived from when the Kanon story is just beginning. At the end of summer break, Yuichi takes the fox back to the hill, and he runs away soon after releasing her, leading her to be angry with Yuichi. With her desire to see Yuichi being so strong, her wish was granted at the cost of her memories and later her life. The two later reunite after the fox transforms into Makoto near the start of Kanon.
