Shinichi Nomiya

Shinichi Nomiya (野宮 紳一, Nomiya Shinichi) is the art teacher at the Yamaku Academy. Years before the events of Katawa Shoujo, he was an artist himself, but retired from the profession to teach. He's in charge of the Art club. He sees Rin Tezuka as nothing short of a prodigy, and will always go out of his way to praise her work.

Personality

He is a generally laid-back sort of person, coupled with being flamboyantly dressed. Nomiya tries to get his students interested in the arts, though sometimes he gets rather carried away, in one instance going on an impassioned speech about what art is. Despite his affability, he seems particularly invested in Rin's progress. His investment is such that he even goes as far as to railroad Rin into a path where she misses all her lessons in favour of working on her art. As Rin's route gradually progresses, it's revealed that Nomiya's actions are far more selfish due to various factors such as his inability to go down the same path Sae's husband did while forcing Rin to go down that path herself or only focusing on Rin's ability to create art with no actual regard to her wellbeing. During the exhibit, Rin suffers from sensory overload and shuts down before eventually leaving after Hisao escorts her away. Nomiya's response is to do nothing, and when she goes missing after the exhibit, he cares more about reputation and devotion to the arts while also failing to acknowledge that he limited Rin's potential to do anything else but art. During the end of Act 4, he hits breaking point and goes into an angry rant when Rin decides that she'll apologize for leaving the exhibit.

To people he does not know, Nomiya is a fairly friendly person, but at the same time a bit condescending. He does not seem to get along with fellow Yamaku teacher Akio Mutou due to their differing teaching styles and because Nomiya seems to lack the professionality that Motou has towards his students.

Hanging Up the Paintbrush

Nomiya is close friends with Sae Saionji, the owner of the 22nd Corner Art Gallery. Sae's husband was a fellow student of Nomiya's when they were in art school. Nomiya looked up to Mr. Saionji, and after the latter's passing, Nomiya gave up being an artist and began teaching it, in hopes of inspiring future artists.

Etymology

• The name Shinichi means "gentlemen" (紳) (shin) and "one" (一) (ichi).
• Shinichi's surname Nomiya means "field, wilderness" (野) (no) and "temple, shrine, palace" (宮) (miya).

Trivia

• Though unintentional, most of Nomiya's colours allude to primary colours (red and yellow tie), secondary colours (pink glasses and grey hair) or tertiary colours (salmon), something that is taught in regards to using paint and mixing them to create different colours.
• His glasses are rose coloured, referring to the phrase "rose coloured glasses", a phrase which refers to seeing things as far better than they actually are.
• During his rant at Rin, some of his statements seem to be a psychological projection of sorts implying that he may've tried to create art to pay for his rent but he wasn't able to due to a combination of lethargy and an inability to come up with any artistic ideas. Coupled with his admission that he retired from being an artist because he wasn't as good as Sae's deceased husband, and how he expresses joy that one of Rin's art pieces made a decent amount of money, its possible that he was hoping to live vicariously through Rin's artistic talents to make up for his own failures.