Information
Personality:
Naoto is the embodiment of determination. Because most of her life has been spent in pursuit of a single goal (revenge for her parents' death and her own amnesia), it can sometimes be hard to see her true personality.
As an adult, Naoto usually maintains a stoic exterior, presumably because she's so driven and believes that she won't be taken seriously if she shows any signs of weakness. She can come across as ruthless: she severely injures several people when they won't give her the information she needs unless she meets their price (sex), and she dismisses a decently large portion of Haine's back story with the words "I don't care, just tell me how to get down there."
Beneath her cool exterior, though, Naoto is a compassionate person. She rarely says anything to that effect (in fact, she isn't much of a talker at all), but her reaction expressions are often sympathetic, even towards people that she dislikes. Another example of this, buried beneath her violence, is the fact that until recently, she was unable to strike an enemy with the intent to kill them. Badly injuring people is acceptable by her standards, but killing is going too far. She only changes her mind about this after deciding to use her sword to protect the people she cares about, with the idea that she couldn't truly protect anyone if she let her fears hold her back.
Naoto is especially dedicated to protecting Nill, and as the series goes on, we see that this sentiment applies to other children as well. She even tries to stop Haine from 'killing' a child that she doesn't realize is invincible, despite the fact that the girl and her twin just spent quite some time attacking the two of them with guns and blades. It's likely that this protectiveness owes something to her own lost childhood, or the violence that she witnessed at such a young age.
Strengths:
Physical: Naoto is an excellent fighter when it comes to any bladed weapon. Fuyumine fought her well and it seems that she's further developed her own style, taking advantage of her small frame and dexterity to perform many of her attacks from the air in the hopes of catching an opponent off-guard. She's good enough at this style to cause another character to question whether she's an acrobat. Naoto is the only character shown to be able to keep pace with characters who have been modified in order to fight: specifically, Haine and the twins Luki and Noki. She can fight ambidextrously, using a sword and her katana, but prefers to use only the latter. She seems to display a lot of endurance as well: when she was training, Magato remarked that it was all she did from sunrise to sunset, and she doesn't seem to tire during fights, even lengthy ones.
Emotional: Naoto does not give up. No matter how impossible a task may seem, she confronts it with the certainty that success is only a matter of time. She spent roughly 10 years training to kill Fuyumine, who she believes to be a highly skilled assassin, despite how the fact that she's never used a knife before. When Fuyumine dies and Magato tells her the truth about her parents' deaths, she turns that same determination toward finding their true killer.
Mental: In combat, Naoto can divide her attention among multiple targets with little difficulty. Beyond that, though, she has the intellect of an ordinary human being.
Weaknesses:
Physical: Unlike pretty much everyone else in the series, Naoto does not fight with a gun. Ever. Considering Fuyumine's history and the shape of the scars he's accumulated, it's likely that he too fought solely with bladed weapons, meaning she was never taught how to use a gun (despite having decent aim in other regards, as we see when she dislodges her knife from the ceiling by throwing a nearby stone). In theory, this should put her at a huge disadvantage, but thanks to manga magic, katana skills = gun skills, so this is never actually shown to be a disadvantage.
Despite being reasonably strong, she's still a slight-bodied girl without much visible muscle. Her agility and speed make her a difficult target, but if she were to be properly restrained, it's unlikely that she'd be able to break free by strength alone.
Emotional: Naoto's emotional strength is also her biggest weakness: she approaches the world with blinders on, seeing nothing but her main goal. Although her goal shifts somewhat shortly from the point I'd like to take her from, her new goal (protecting people) has the potential to become another obsession. Because she doesn't take in any part of the world beyond that which brings her closer to her objective, she can seem closed off and brusque, meaning that she seldom develops friendships and almost never trusts people. While most other central characters have given detailed accounts of their back history, Naoto has given the barest elements, and even then, only in exchange for potentially useful information.
That said, she can also become overwhelmed by the emotions that she does acknowledge. Her internal monologue describes her confrontation with Magato as beginning with a blacking out, though she emerges from this trance mid-fight. When she recognizes the eyes of the woman who killed her parents and then sees a blade identical to her own lodged in Mihai's shoulder, she screams and literally faints. This period of unconsciousness seems to last a while, since the next time we see her, she's in bed being watched over by Nill.
Mental: Due to her singlemindedness, Naoto sometimes misses useful clues because she doesn't see them as directly connected to her goal. Aside from that, she remains pretty average on an intellectual level.
Samples
Q/A:
1. What is your greatest ambition? Protecting the people I care about.
2. What is the most difficult thing you've ever done? Fight Magato. I think he deserves to die. He deserves to die. But I didn't understand why and I couldn't control myself, I just knew that: that he deserved to die. He was good at what he did and almost killed me a hundred times over, but I didn't understand why I wanted him to die. It's hard to want to kill someone, if you don't know why they have to die.
3. If you were stranded on a desert island, what three things and one person would you want with you? That's not a fair question. Everyone I know has people who depend on them, who need them, and I couldn't just take someone like... No. I know. That woman, the one I saw on the train. And my katana. I wouldn't need anything else.
4. Share your most beloved memory. [Naoto wouldn't answer this. If forced, she'd make up some Hallmark-style lie about Christmas that anyone who knew her would see through].
5. Describe what the word 'honor' means to you. Doing what's right, without expecting acknowledgement or gratitude or respect. It's hard to see honor. There aren't many honorable people in the world.
Third Person:
At first, Naoto thought she’d fallen asleep in her bathtub. It wasn’t a far-fetched idea, really, considering the day she’d had, and the fact that the tap ran cold in such a cheap place didn’t come as much of a surprise. She could hear the rushing water, louder than it usually was, and the cool ceramic beneath her was larger, but there was something else. Something bright, brighter than her temperamental lightbulb, and when she opened her eyes she clamped them shut immediately, lifting a hand to shield them.
That was when she realized that she was wearing clothes. Soaked clothes. When she pressed her hand against what should have been ceramic, her palm slid away slimy.
The day just kept getting better.
Naoto rolled over and pushed herself to her hands and knees. Her back ached, no surprise there, and she carefully inched toward the bank of what seemed to be a shallow river.
A real river. In a real forest. Clean and crisp, smelling like…like something she didn’t recognize, but probably something good, something alive. This wasn’t how her dreams worked. She climbed to her feet, but again, something was wrong. Her balance was off, and her balance was never off. Naoto reached an arm around to her back and froze.
The wings were not large, scarcely larger than Nill’s, but they were connected to skin and their bases felt like two deep bruises, maybe something surgical. The feathers were soaked, adding to the heaviness. In the water, in a small eddy formed by moss, a grey feather circled slowly. What if it wasn’t a dream?
There might be others here, she realized. The wings, though different in color and firmly anchored to skin and muscle, reminded her of Nill and how valuable wings were on the street-valuable to someone else. Naoto could defend herself, but Nill? She couldn’t even cry for help.
Quickly adjusting to her new center of gravity, Naoto took in the river and the small waterfall overhead. No sign of the girl. Nothing. Leaves rustled in the forest as light as loose papers in an alley, but that could be the slight breeze. That could be anything. Including a small and silent girl.
Without another thought, Naoto turned her back on the river, stepping quickly beneath the dim canopy of trees.
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Expanded Personal History
[Rather than summarize the whole series, I only covered Naoto's role and experiences. I figured that it made more sense to do it that way, since there are plenty of sub-plots and large portions of the main plot that don't relate to her, and they would just feel like padding in a character-specific history]
Naoto's first clear memory is of running away from something. She doesn't remember who or why, only that her parents were running too, and once they'd paused to hide in an alleyway, she saw a person's katana and then two slashes of light before passing out. When awareness returned, she was lying under her parents' quartered bodies, dazed and cut deeply where the blade that passed through her parents hadn't made it through her.
This event would shape the rest of her life.
When a man stood before her and asked if she wanted to live, Naoto recognized the katana and believed that this man had killed her parents. She decided then that she would kill him, no matter how long it took, and spent at least ten years pursuing that goal.
The shock of the attack had left Naoto with amnesia so complete that she didn't know her own name. The man, whose name we later learn is Fuyumine, gave her the name 'Naoto' to use until she remembered her own, but never offered his name nor called her by the one he'd given. Magato, the other person who lives in the house, remarks that the name Naoto must bring up some memories for Fuyumine, but does not elaborate further. It's never made clear why Magato is part of the Fuyumine household; he seems to work as a janitor of some sort, but he's also a skilled swordsman who's sparred with Fuyumine and seems to know a lot about Fuyumine's past. His demeanor is usually a mixture of joviality and complete sleaziness.
Fully aware that Naoto intends to kill him, he begins training her to fight with a knife almost immediately after taking her in (we know this because bandages are still visible at the collar of her shirt). Fuyumine seems to be a complex character, saying that he's glad she hates him, because that hatred is better than becoming a lifeless shell. He suggests that she learn by watching but later seems to train her more conventionally, offering advice and occasional compliments as she progresses. Meanwhile, Magato watches, following the advice Naoto was originally given.
One afternoon, after her practice, Magato stops her with seemingly idle chatter. When she resists his obvious advances he pins her arm behind her back and slits her shirt down the center, apparently intending to rape her. He's interrupted when Fuyumine arrives and calmly tell him "that's enough." As Magato leaves, laughingly remarking that neither of them can take a joke, Fuyumine throws his coat over Naoto and tells her to get dressed. This is a turning point in her emotions for him: although she still believes he killed her parents, she also sees that he cares about her in a gruff, fatherly way.
More time passes, filled with more training, and one day Naoto returns from her day job to find Fuyumine murdered. Magato declares this to be "Magato's Glorious Independence Day!" and says that he spent years working to become strong enough to surpass Fuyumine. Without seeming to understand her own motivation, Naoto attacks him immediately with such passion that she describes a moment of fugue before returning to her senses, swinging her blade wildly.
The fight continues for a long time, but by using a skill that Fuyumine taught her, Naoto finally emerges the winner. Unrepentant but seemingly lethally wounded, Magato tells her that her parents' true killer is the one whose name she was given, another Naoto who lives, as he describes it, below. It seems that Fuyumine never told him this, but Magato deduced it from the skill of the person who sliced the cross over her chest. Fuyumine allowed her to believe that he'd been her parents' killer, but Magato explains that he did this to give her a reason to live. With that, Magato stumbles out, claiming that he will be the one to choose where he dies and saying that, if they're both lucky, maybe they'll meet again.
Naoto sets out with the goal of finding the person who murdered her parents and finding out more about Fuyumine, which she hopes to accomplish by learning more about this 'below.' Her first contacts are a group of information-broker thugs, whose leader tells her that he'll only take payment in sex. A few blade slashes change the mind of both him and his cohorts, but he admits that he knows nothing beyond rumors that there's an underground beneath this underground, possibly an old government facility, and that two other people had previously asked him for the information. He gives her a description: a guy with an eyepatch and a guy with white hair. At some point, he also tells her that the person who knows the most about the area is the Bishop (or at least plays the part of a Bishop) at the nearby church.
So, her next stop is the ornate, peaceful-seeming church. It's inhabited by Bishop, who's blind, and Nill, a fourteen-year-old mure and biologically modified girl who was rescued from would-be pimps who'd hoped to peddle her for a great deal of money due to the small wings on her back. Naoto begins to explain her problem when a group of gangsters arrive at the church, prepared do whatever's necessary to recapture Nill. Though they're all heavily armed, Naoto incapacitates them, and Bishop is a little more likely to try to answer her questions.
When it becomes obvious that Naoto doesn't have enough information to go on (especially since her main piece of evidence is the fact that the killer's sword is identical to hers, and that detail is lost on a blind man), Bishop asks more questions about why this matter is so important to her. When she explains that the killer stole her past, he suggests that it's better for her not to pursue it and to find a way to live with what she's lost.
So, one seemingly dead-end reached, Naoto starts searching for the two people described by the thugs. They're not hard to find: Haine and Badou, who are making their way to the underground home of their occasional employer. When she confronts them, Badou watches with amusement while Haine seems actively hostile...or, as hostile as a person can be while backing up to keep at least ten feet between them (she later finds out that he has serious issues with women). Naoto follows them and ends up in Granny Liza's. Granny Liza, as most characters call her, cares for a fairly large number of genetically modified children (and is genetically modified herself, having cat ears and being extremely short). It's more of a colony, as it includes a few adults, but most of her charges seem to be children.
After Badou spends a whie complaining about a recent job (it appears that she hires them to clean up the problems that her wayward youths create), Naoto asks Liza about the katana. For the first time, there's a strong recognition, so strong that Liza will not explain anything until Naoto tells her everything she knows. She explains that it's a memento from the man who raised her (the word that's translated as 'memento' has stronger emotional connotations in Japanese than it does in English), and Liza demands to see it, clearly suspicious. Upon recognizing the black blade, she next demands to know Naoto's relationship to Fuyumine. This is the first time Naoto has heard the man's name.
Naoto explains that she knew absolutely nothing about Fuyumine, despite living together for years. She explains that she remembers nothing of her life before her parents were killed, that she'd grown up believing he was the murderer, and that she'd intended to kill him. When Liza asks if she did kill him, Naoto says that she couldn't do anything, inexplicably leaving Magato out of the whole explanation.
Liza tells her that there was a period, long ago, when their young ones (the genetically altered, as distinguished from 'humans)' were being abducted, and people with identical swords were often seen during the abductions. Fuyumine saved many of them, leaving them with Liza and then disappearing. No one trusted him, including her, because he would give no explanation and wielded the same katana as the abductors. Apparently, her opinion changed at some point, though Liza doesn't say how or why. Liza demands to know her name, and for the first time, Naoto takes Fuyumine's surname as her own.
After leaving, Naoto encounters a pair of twins no older than eight. They wear identical clothing, though in opposite colors, and both have heterochromia, though in opposite eyes. Mirror images, in essence. After seeing them leap an inhuman distance, she follows them and ends up in the middle of a gang-related gunfight than Haine and Badou were just finishing. The girls reveal that they're heavily armed and ready to play 'tag,' a game that could have just as easily been called 'kill Haine.' Naoto refuses to permit this, saying that she still has questions for him and he'd better not die before answering them.
Luki and Noki recognize Naoto's sword as "Fu-sama's," but it's not immediately clear whether they mean Fuyumine or another character with a similar name. This is enough to cause her to enter the fight, but when she confronts the two girls, it's clear that they're referring to another person, a woman who is "really strong and cuts everything beautifully."
The ensuing battle is not going to be an easy one. While Badou goes on a shooting spree (something he apparently does whenever he's out of cigarettes), Haine tells Naoto that there's something like a human farm in the under-underground, and they're raising an army of soldiers like these kids...literally hell, he describes. When he compares the normal world to a farm raising sheep, though, Naoto firmly insists that she's not a sheep. The battle turns back to them, but she goes on to say that she doesn't care if her enemy is a dog or a wolf: if it bares its fangs at her she'll do the same, and her fangs are sharper and deeper. This line becomes important in Naoto's future.
When the fight turns intense, Haine kicks down and knocks out Badou, telling him to shut up and stay down. Naoto stays, though the reason's not made clear. Most likely, Haine isn't able to take action to stop her (since that would involve physical contact) and he probably doesn't care if she does, though there's a chance she's proven herself skilled enough to fight. The battle is a struggle: the girls are clearly more than human, and both Haine and Naoto accuse the other of invading their personal space. One of the girls' arms is badly injured, and at this point Naoto notices that her body is made up of mechanical parts, rather than muscle and bone. It isn't until the children are called back to an unknown home and one leaves two blades through Haine's chest that Naoto demands to know what the hell they are. To simplify his explanation, he says they're all monsters made to fight, given enhanced endurance, speed, and strength. For reasons never explained, the two spend enough time furiously glaring at each other over the next several chapters to cause both Badou and Nill to (mostly unsuccessfully) try to intervene.
When everyone returns to the church, Nill drags Naoto away, noticing that she's lost a button. While Nill struggles to sew a new one on but shows curiosity about Naoto's scar, she says that it's okay, it doesn't hurt anymore. This is also a line Naoto uses multiple times in the series, whenever her scar is seen by another character. It almost never is...although she doesn't make effort to hide it when being measured for new clothes or given something to temporarily wear while her own are repaired, she chooses only high-necked dresses for herself.
Once Naoto's dressed (for some reason, Bishop keeps a bunch of random Lolita clothing in the church), her and Nill return to the room. Cue Haine telling them part of his back story at Badou's demand--I doubt I need to go into that, since it's probably covered in potential Haine-mun's application and I already feel guilty about the length of this history.
Meanwhile, in the manga's main storyline, the woman named Campanella Fruhling ("Fu-sama", it seems), is gathering forces in the under-underground to mount an attack against the city via the underground's tunnels. When trains begin to roar through the tunnels, both Naoto and Haine run toward the sound, though Naoto has no idea why she's compelled to do so. At the bridge, when trains pull into view and race into the two tunnels, Naoto recognizes Fruhling's eyes as the eyes of the person who killed her parents. She begins to panic at the memory, but it isn't until Mihai (Badou's friend) emerges from the tunnel with an identical sword in his shoulder that Naoto screams and passes out.
She seems to remain unconscious for some time, since the next time we see her, she's in bed being watched over by an anxious Nill. A few days pass before she's called to a tea house run by Granny Liza, probably hoping that Liza would have information for her, but such was not to be. Nope, Granny Liza only has clothes. Naoto, she says, has terrible fashion sense, and it must be rectified immediately.
Stronger rumbling and a series of explosions begin, and dark-armored soldiers armed with guns begin to pour through the subway tunnels. They enter the tea shop but Liza's men have trouble holding them off until Naoto gets involved, and a few minutes later, Haine arrives as well. They tell Granny Liza to account for everyone and bring them there so that they can all be defended by Liza's men, while Naoto and Haine will go slightly ahead. When Naoto falters, unable to bring herself to kill, Haine points out that they're not human, and it's like playing whack-a-mole. Naoto is perplexed, unsure if it's meant as encouragement. Shortly after, Haine runs off to attack a man in normal clothing (Giovanni), but Naoto can hold her own.
After seeing one of Liza's men potentially die and another recklessly brave child be injured by the soldiers, Naoto has a revelation: if she falters, she'll be killed. She remembers Haine's words reminding her that she couldn't act like a sheep, and Fuyumine's words to live on, to bite and claw her way to survive. Most importantly, she realizes that if she falters, then she won't be able to protect anyone. She rushes out once again, back to where Haine and Giovanni are fighting. Giovanni informs them that all of the soldiers are about to explode and there's no way to prevent it, then gives a brief example. It's effective: the single explosion throws Naoto and Haine back several yards, and it's clear that if Giovanni's plan takes effect, a significant part of the city (particularly the tunnels) will be destroyed. When Naoto attacks him again, he claims that he has no control over the explosions, and they will be triggered elsewhere. Naoto runs off to find Nill and the other demi-humans, leaving Haine to deal with Giovanni. The threat was true: moments later, the beings combusted, killing roughly 60,000 people and leaving 300,000 missing or injured. The entryways to the tunnels were left completely blocked off. After a few panicked moments of looking over rubble, though, Naoto sees one of Granny Liza's strongmen punch through the fallen stones. It seems that, aside from a few injuries, Liza's group of demi-humans somehow survived. Haine seems to be in some sort of trance, which Naoto and the others probably don't recognize as something caused by the thin line between himself and the monster he was intended to be. Regardless, Naoto approaches him and taps his shoulder, telling him that it's over This is a significant risk, since she knows enough about his history of uncontrollable violence and issues with women to know that touching him is most likely a Bad Idea, and it's important to her development because it's evidence that her resolution to protect people without faltering extends to emotional protection as well. It's further reinforced during her next appearance, after a timeskip during which Granny Liza has been made suspicious about the fact that Haine shares many characteristics with the soldiers. When Haine explains that he's a monster like the rest of them, she argues that he's not, because he fought to protect them. Cue several chapters of backstory-explanation-flashback on his part (I'm sure Haine mun's app covered this, so I won't be redundant).
Before anyone can respond to it, though, a face Naoto never thought she'd see again appears before the small group: Magato. He acts cheerful and enthusiastic to see her in his usual creepy way, and it's likely that Naoto senses that this will become another fight (it does in the following issue, and she doesn't seem overly surprised). I'm taking her from the end of chapter 47, before that fight starts, so when Naoto appears in Luceti, she'll be rife with confusion and internal conflict. And internal conflict is fun, right?