Kanata Shinkai/Profile

Mild-mannered and mysterious, Kanata is one of the "Three Oddballs." The teachers often keep a close watch on him since his eccentric behavior stands out a lot, such as installing a giant fish tank and other enigmatic apparatuses in the academy as a part of the Marine Bio Club.

He's usually calm and takes it easy, but gets excessively excited when it comes to marine life. He seems obsessed with eating his food with soy sauce. He loves soaking in water and watching the ocean despite the fact that he cannot swim. He often complains his skin will dry up if he is not soaked in water. He watches over the rest of the RYUSEITAI members as they get dragged around by their leader Chiaki Morisawa's brash nature. He is RYUSEI Blue from the unit RYUSEITAI.

Appearance
Kanata is a tall young man with a good build. His hair is a cyan color, cut short, and slightly wavy. Kanata has a curved ahoge on the top of his head. He has light green, narrow eyes. He wears the school's uniform with a white shirt with the collar undone, a green tie, and his blazer buttoned up. He wears brown loafers.

On stage, he wears the blue color version of RYUSEITAI's uniform. It includes a blue leather jacket with white accents and a black shirt underneath. He also wears black form-fitting pants with a blue stripe down the middle of each leg, accessorized with a star on a belt that has blue and yellow strings dangling from it and wrap around the waist. He also wears tall white boots with blue accents and a pair of black fingerless gloves.

Trivia

 * Kanata's first name is homophonous with a word which means "faraway". His last name means "deep sea". The provenance for Kanata's name is perhaps linked to various of his physical and personality traits, such as his hair color, his fascination with marine life, and his color in his idol unit.
 * Kanata's autograph consists of his full name rendered in hiragana and inside a picture of a lantern fish.
 * Kanata only "speaks" in hiragana, never in kanji and katakana, which reflects his slow speech style--perhaps another aspect which earns him the status as one of the "Three Oddballs."
 * He often soaks in the school's water fountain.
 * Apparently he can communicate with sea creatures. Aquarium reveals his ancestors could do it as well.
 * Kanata has never read manga before, not until Keito showed him one in Comic World. He says that it's because whenever he attempts to read any book, it becomes wet and unreadable.

Spoilers :
 * He's childhood friends with Madara Mikejima, but Kanata is very hostile towards him for some reason.
 * Aquarium reveals that Madara and Kanata played together as children while Madara's father, a high ranking police officer, spoke with the Shinkai household.
 * In Purple Wisterias of May, it's revealed that Kanata most likely met Chiaki thanks to Madara. How this exactly happened is still unknown.
 * It's revealed throughout several stories (mainly Aquarium) that Kanata is considered a living God by his family.
 * His household does not like the idea of him sleeping away from home.
 * According to Chiaki in Orihime and Hikoboshi, Kanata would always have a "blank look" on his face at his home. In the same story, Kanata has mentioned that in summer, he typically has to do beach opening ceremonies for his household, and he tends to find it bothersome.
 * It is heavily implied by multiple characters that Kanata used to be much more "alien-like" and "disinterested" in everything, and that he has slowly changed since his third year.

Voice Actor Comment
"Shinkai-kun seems like a guy who would share with you all sorts of trivia if you were to go to the beach with him. He can't actually swim--throw him in the water and he'd sink like a stone, but I can't swim, either, so that works out perfectly (laugh). He does everything in his own pace, and he kind of has a mysterious air. At the same time, there's something about him that draws you in and makes it impossible to leave him to his own devices, so I'm personally very interested in this character. I look forward to seeing how he'd develop and how he'd interact with the other characters around him."