Izumi Nijou

Izumi Nijou (二条 泉 Nijō Izumi) '''is a first year at Senriyama Girls' High School and the sergeant for Senriyama's mahjong team as a first year, a feat that even Sera Eguchi and Ryuuka Shimizudani did not accomplish (both being placed as regulars starting in their second year).

Appearance
Izumi has dark brown hair with a short haircut and brown eyes. She wears the standard Senriyama school uniform but without the bow.

When she was young, she wore her hair longer like her idols Sera and Hiroe. However, after losing a match where the players bet the most important thing to them, she cut her hair which represented her reverence of her idols.

Personality
Izumi is shown to have a leadership type of personality despite being a first year. She is headstrong and confident: when she was pushed down, she tried her hardest to get back up and push back. However, she is also conscious of the fact that she let down her teammates by losing over 30, 000 pts, apologising to both Sera Eguchi and Hiroko Funakubo, with tears in her eyes; noting that Sera (Toki Onjouji and Ryuuka Shimizudani) was a third-year and she felt it her fault that they might not continue onto the finals.

When she was a child she had a strong personality, concocting a plan to lure Toki and Ryuuka into play mahjong with her. She hated being treated like a child, and looked down on her classmates because she felt she was better than them.

Izumi Challenge Arc (Toki Manga)
Izumi took a water pistol out onto the streets in the hopes of bringing some girls to a store to play mahjong with her. She hit Ryuuka, soaking her completely. She then took Ryuuka, Toki, Ayumi, and Youko to a store her friend owns in order to dry Ryuuka's clothes. The girls questioned what kind of store it is, and Izumi reveals that it's a mahjong parlour. She convinced the girls to play mahjong with her, but Ayumi questions Izumi's intentions and plans, revealing many holes in Izumi's story (playing alone, playing near a store her friend owns, etc).

Izumi then locked the door, telling them that they must beat her in mahjong in order to get her to unlock the door. She tells the girls to let the best three play her, even if one of them beat her, she will unlock the door. Ayumi stepped down, allowing Youko, Toki, and Ryuuka to play against Izumi. Izumi opens by discarding many centre tiles, but notably no pinzu tiles.

Youko declared riichi on the 5th turn, but Izumi continued discarding centre tiles that are seemingly dangerous. The round continued until Izumi declared riichi herself, with Toki dealing into her haneman immediately afterwards.

Ryuuka wins off of Izumi, and it's noted that she ignored the others in order to win directly off of Izumi, and Ryuuka continues to win off of Izumi, which also allows Toki to win off of Izumi. When Toki begins acting funny, Ryuuka tries to take her and leave but Toki convinces her to stay. Ayumi tells Izumi that if she wanted to Ryuuka would've kicked the door down for Toki. She call this gross. This begins to irritate Izumi. On a later hand, Toki was taking her time and Izumi asks if she has an ippatsu but she did not. She starts to envy Toki a bit before the girl hits everyone with a tsumo win. She drops to last place and Ryuuka hits her twice more. Izumi starts feeling down but Toki cheers her up. She begins to put her hand together and try and make a comebcak. However, Ryuuka wins the final hand ending the game. Izumi then appologizes to the girls and asks to play together next time. She then signs Ryuuka's shirt and tells her it will be worth a forturne one day. She unlocks the door for the girls to leave.

Practice Game Arc
The day of the practice game, the Sekirenji Elementary School mahjong club are informed that only two people will show up and only one is from the club team. Toki says she's disappointed but is quickly interrupted by the arrival of Izumi. Yayoi Yokeguchi says that Izumi is just a bonus player today. Izumi sees Ryuuka and tosses her her clothes from the previous encounter. She apologizes to them before Sera appears. All the girls are split into tables and Izumi is paired with Youko, Ayumi, and the twins Chie Kurachi and Tae Kurachi. Ayumi tries to get out of the games to observe but Izumi and Youko won't allow it. Not much of their game is shown but Izumi did win a couple of hands. The girls thank each other for the game and go their separate ways. Izumi and Sera are picked up by Hiroe Atago and Masae Atago.

Battling Fujishiro Arc
We get a flashback to the previous year. Sera and Hiroe are looking for tough opponents and Izumi thinks she has found someone at her parlor. She says her play style is hard to explain but her name is Nanami Fujishiro. The girls find her at the parlor and challenge her. Nanami says that if they're challenging her then they're ready for "that rule" but they have no idea what she means. She tries to shoo them away but to no avail. Sera wins with a dealer haneman and Izumi praises the girl for it. She continues to do so until Nanami digs at her. Sera mentions that Izumi was the first to start acting strange then one by one all of them till Nanami was the clear winner. Nanami decides to make Izumi cut her long hair because she feels it was important and she was trying to copy Sera and Hiroe's style.

Finding Fujishiro Arc
Izumi was invited to a barbecue set up by Toki's mother. She notices Toki feeling down and tries to cheer the girl up but ends up smacking her. Sera sees this and scolds her. They then start playing with Sera's dog. Izumi asks her if Toki will be okay but Sera tells her she may struggle but she will be fine. She then apologizes to Izumi for getting her involved. Izumi then tries to cheer her up.

The girls gather at Mahjong Parlor Nijou for their game with Hiroko Funakubo. Izumi didn't want to be in the way so she watches from the monitor in the back with Kinue Atago. She comments on Ryuuka and Toki a bit for Kinue and tells her Sera's new friends are nice. After the games she lets Kinue go without seeing the others and tells her to give her regards to Hiroe.

National Tournament Arc (Achiga-hen)
Izumi appears with her teammates coming back from sightseeing. After checking on their sickly member, she suggests watching the tapes of their opponents matches right away. With a bit of negotiating, she and the others decide to meet in one hour. Before watching the tapes, her sempai tells them not to spoil who the winner of the matches because it makes it exciting, Izumi says that they should be paying extra attention to their opponents.

After Toki's match she tells her not to worry and enjoy her rest. And before her match it was revealed that Hiroko Funakubo had set a similation program up to help her deal with Yuu Matsumi. Izumi started the match off great, being able to predict what Yuu was going to do and capitalized. However after Yuu switched to playing style she dominated the rest of the match.

When Izumi returned she noticed Sera Eguchi had switched into her uniform before she ran away. She was shown comenting on Ako Atarashi's playing style, thinking it was beautiful. After Sera's match, she notices how quickly Sera changes her clothes.

Final Eight Arc
Izumi appears with the rest of the Senriyama team walking towards their waiting room. During the last of Teru Miyanaga's turns as dealer, Toki again is on the verge of collapsing and has another flashback. Here she and the others are gathered around Toki's bed and tell her of the "Toki shift", which is a schedule for Senriyama to help her. Izumi then tells her that with all of them together, she'll get better right away. She is then seen arguing with Hiroko. Afterward we see flashes of the training camp. She is later seen with the rest of Senriyama going with Toki to the ambulance afte she collapsed after her match. Toki tells her to go on to her match and Izumi tells her that she can count on her.

Walking toward her match, Izumi is seen crying. At the start of her match, she declares that she is going to beat Shiraitodai. She then says that even if thats not possible she is going to make sure that she gets into second place so her team can worry about victory in the finals. Izumi then loses two hands as well as getting directly hit by Sumire Hirose. She is left wondering why Sumire would attack her and not finish off the last place team, also wondering as to why Toki would help Achiga in the first round. After losing again, Izumi realizes that she is the only first year but quickly decides that she is the best first year in the country and then once again loses points. Later after she kepts losing, she notices that she hasn't won a single hand.

After the match is over, Izumi spaces out at the table and is embarassed after she thanks everyone twice. She is next shown dragging through the halls until Sera appears before her. Sera then comforts her and tells her to go to the hospital to bring Ryuuka back before the captains match. When she enters the waiting room is is greeted by Hiroko. She then apologizes and says she has not excuse. Later she is seen eating and talking to Hiroko about strong first-years. Izumi then tells her that she ranks herself among those monsters but is shot down quickly by Hiroko. After getting Toki's room number she quickly runs off from Hiroko, who was in mid sentance. When Toki wakes up she says it smells like hospital. Izumi then inform her its because she is in a hospital and since it was close to the captain's match, she had to tear Ryuuka way from her. Izumi then turns on the televison for her to watch the matches. When Toki says one more time, Izumi wonders what she means. Toki then says if she wasn't in the hospital she could've put energy in to Ryuuka's thighs. Izumi thinks Toki hit her head and calls for the doctor. After the loss and crying, she turns to Toki not knowing what to say to her.

While watching the Side B semi-final vanguard match, Izumi notes that Usuzan's player was lackluster compared to the other. During the lieutenants match, she listens to Hiroko's explaination of Choe Myeonghwa's abilities and guesses that she isn't strong. However Hiroko immediately corrects her saying that Choe is very strong. After Sera mentions that Hiroe owes her 30 yen, Izumi mentally notes how little that is.

National Championship Arc
During the vanguard match of the fifth place match, she is seen discussing the game with her teammates. Later in the sergeant's match, Izumi remains on the defensive, not wanting a repeat of the semifinals. Despite reaching tenpai, she decides to bail to avoid dealing into Yuuko Mase's riichi. She is surprised again when Yoshiko calls tiles and wins off of Yuuko, but also thinks that it's for the best to keep the point difference increasing from Himematsu. After the game, she speaks with Yuuko Mase who is also from Osaka about the results of their tournament, lamenting that despite getting a positive score in the quarterfinals, Izumi ended up losing points in both the semifinals and again in the 5th place match (albiet, a much smaller point loss).

Playing Style/Abilities
Izumi has very stable play and protects points well; just as Izumi herself notes, she made it onto Senriyama's team as a regular as a first year, a feat that not many others have accomplished, including national powerhouse players such as Sera and Ryuuka. Even so, she is a normal person, without special abilities, and thus, was unable to defend against Sumire Hirose's piercing shots. She is shown to be able to take into account other player's quirks and habits (given to her by Hiroko) and play effectively given skewed tiles, saying if you know there's an imbalance then all there is to it is to set up your game with that in mind. Also, despite playing into Yuu's dealer mangan, Izumi ended the quarterfinals with a positive point total.

She is about as strong as the best boy's individual player.

Etymology

 * The name Izumi means "fountain, spring" (泉).
 * Izumi's surname Nijou means "two" (二) (ni) and "article" (条) (jou).