Eiri Yuki

Eiri Yuki (由貴瑛里 Yuki Eiri) is one of the main characters in the popular shonen-ai anime and manga, Gravitation.

Basic information
Eiri Uesugi, who also goes by his pen name, Eiri Yuki, is a popular romance novelist who met Shuichi Shindou in the park and mercilessly dismissed his song lyrics. Through coincidence, they kept bumping into each other, and eventually came together romantically. In the series (manga and anime), Eiri and Shuichi struggle with their celebrity status and their mercurial relationship.

Eiri's father is a monk, who runs a temple in Kyoto. He has one younger brother, Tatsuha Uesugi, who is a monk-in-training. He also has one elder sister, Mika Uesugi, who is married to Tohma Seguchi. At the beginning of the series, Eiri is engaged to Ayaka Usami.

In the Gravitation EX first book, Eiri is temporarily, according to himself, blinded. It is unknown whether or not his eyes will heal. He did it to save Riku Kitazawa (his deceased past mentor Yuki Kitazawa's orphaned child) from being run over by a semi-truck, which is unlike his original character. Later, Eiri and Shuichi find that Yoshiki Kitazawa (Yuki Kitazawa's transsexual sister) had dumped Riku off on them to parent, possibly just until she returns. It turns out in track 76 that Eiri was faking his blindness, though the reason is unknown.

Personality
He is a young writer and an idol of women for his charisma, typical of a popular person. Despite his award-winning talent for writing love stories, he is not very emotional. He is sarcastic and caustic to everyone around him, including his family. His personality is most likely the result of the Kitazawa incident (see below); when he was a teenager he had a bright, easygoing personality, much like how Shuichi is now.

He is shown to have some kind of personality disorder in the manga, which is very noticeable in vol. 9, where he almost kills Reiji and later in begins to flirt with her.

Kitazawa Incident
Tohma Seguchi and Eiri Uesugi lived in New York city when Eiri was young. While there, Yuki Kitazawa encouraged Eiri's desire to write books.

Whether Yuki was an alcoholic is unclear, but on one fateful occasion, he was drunk and sixteen-year-old Eiri came to visit him. Yuki was expecting Eiri and accepted ten dollars from a pair of thugs in exchange for use of Eiri's body. The two men were about to rape Eiri while Yuki watched. Eiri managed to snatch a gun from one of the men and shoot his mentor, killing him. It is unclear whether Eiri killed the thugs as well. In the anime, more than one shot can be heard but only the tutor's dead body is shown in any visual sense. In the manga (vol. 4), Eiri tells Shuichi, "I killed them all."

What happened next is unclear, partly because Eiri repressed his own memories of the situation for several years. It is clear that Tohma found and comforted a disheveled Eiri, sitting with Yuki's corpse. Due to the situation that occurred, Eiri developed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Trivia

 * According to Murakami, Eiri usually sleeps on his stomach.
 * He hates celery. His sister, Mika, once forced him to eat some, causing him, as a result, to run away from home.
 * He is fond of a cat that prowls outside his apartment, even naming it "Mr.Meow"
 * He used to call Mika "Meeks." ("Mikarin" in the Japanese version)
 * His ears are very ticklish.
 * He is left-handed.
 * His favorite foods: strawberry cakes and chocolate pie
 * His favorite drink: beer (Budweiser)
 * Eiri smokes MarlMaru.

Well known quotes from Yuki in the manga:


 * "You write like you're at a third-grade reading level. Is this drivel really your idea of a love song?" - track 1
 * "Your lyrics were awful. I try to forget them, but then my memory wakes up screaming." - track 2
 * "Because I'm a good guy, I have one more piece of advice. If you don't want to kill yourself, you should probably stay away from Mercedes SL's, and SAAB cabriolets. Because if you get in front of me again, I'll hit you and then back up over you for good measure." - track 2
 * "You'd think now that you know I'm a writer, my opinion that you have no talent would carry more weight. But no, not you. You'd rather get on stage and infect everyone with your banal poetry." - track 2
 * "Were you slow as a child?" - track 13
 * "You barely had the knife for a second and you already cut yourself?! What the hell's wrong with you?! Ugh, how revolting." - track 23
 * "I can't believe I did that. I just came out of the closet for real, didn't I? And I did it with a smile. 'Hello, Japan. I'm gay!'" - track 26
 * "Bugger off. I'm sleepy. If you want to talk, do it outside. By YOURSELF! See, the sleep fairy has come to take me away... in 3, 2, 1... (...) Mmmm... One million dollars..." - track 27
 * "I'm a genius. I know many things." - track 27
 * "I've decided, starting now, to kick anyone's ass who kidnaps my boy without my permission." - track 50
 * "Given that you're trying to make a name for yourself as a lyricist, you showed some king-sized balls out there with that humming. I, for one, was impressed." - track 53
 * "Who's the brat? He's been eyeballing me like I'm some kind of criminal." - track 55