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Nov 29, 2015 09:44

Character Name: Yuki Nagato
Canon: The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (anime, chronological order)
Age: After the events of Endless Eight, Yuki is over five hundred years old.  However, chronologically, she was created three years ago.


Background: I’ll link you to the Wikipedia in addition to making my own notes. I’m only going to detail the plot-related episodes, if that’s OK, since the others are interesting but not really all that relevant.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuki_Nagato

Anyway, I'll begin at the start. Kyon is a normal high school student who has just entered his first year. He begins the series by speaking of such imaginary things as espers, time travelers, aliens, etc., saying how he had been fascinated by them with he was younger but now knows better. He is sharply contradicted several moments later in homeroom introductions, however, when a girl named Haruhi Suzumiya stands up and loudly declares that she will only talk to ‘special’ people. Like time travelers, espers, and aliens. Though Kyon is slightly amused, he eventually realizes that Haruhi is serious and begins to wonder what is wrong with her. Though his classmates inform him of her many quirks, he soon makes the effort to spark a conversation. Surprisingly, he succeeds. Unfortunately, after several of these talks, Haruhi seems to decide that Kyon is her new best friend and declares that he will help her with whatever she desires.

Enter Yuki Nagato. She is first introduced to us in Episode 2, after Haruhi has determined to form a school club (called the SOS) for the purpose of finding espers, aliens, and time travelers and having fun with them. Yuki is the last remaining member of the Literature Club (all the other members graduated), and can thus be found reading quietly in their assigned club room every day. Haruhi, however, informs her that her new club will be taking over the room; to Kyon’s great surprise, Yuki quietly agrees without a fuss, returning to her book immediately after. Thus, Yuki becomes the first (and only) student who willingly joins Haruhi’s insane club. She becomes, in Haruhi’s words, the ‘indispensable silent character’.

Throughout the club’s initial activites, Yuki mostly takes a backseat role, constantly seen in the background with book in hand. A running gag of sorts develops: every time she finishes reading a book and replaces it, Haruhi is in the middle of sexually molesting Mikuru Asahina (the moe character) in some way; her motion of placing the book on the shelf and picking up a new way obscures the ‘camera’ in such a way that the sexually molestation cannot be seen. Other than that, she does not appear to do very much at all, speaking only when spoken to and even then, giving out only exceedingly short responses.

In Episode 3, however, Yuki greatly surprises Kyon by offering him a book. He takes it with some measure of hesitance, and due to certain traumatic events involving bunny girl outfits and women being ruined for marriage, neglects to read it. The next day, Yuki somewhat forcefully asks him to read it that night. Kyon complies and halfway through, he finds a bookmark with several words scribbled on it: “7 PM, waiting in the park.” After a frantic bike ride, he finds Yuki waiting.

Kyon notes that Yuki lives alone, which he understandably finds a bit odd. This becomes the least of his worries, though, when after serving an excessive amount of tea, Yuki begins to spill her guts. To summarize a very long section of plot exposition, Yuki is, in fact, a member of a group known as the Integrated Data Entity, a group that has been observing Earth and its inhabitants for quite a long time. In other words, she is an alien - a data life-form. She has been sent as a humanoid interface in order to observe one Haruhi Suzumiya, a being who created a massive explosion of data three years ago. The Integrated Data Entity believes that Haruhi Suzumiya may be the key to the continuous evolution of humans, juxtaposed to the inability of the Data Entity to progress any further in their own development.

Kyon doesn’t buy it. But he is soon astounded to find that everybody has been affected by some sort of mass insanity effect, as Mikuru Asahina proceeds to inform him that she is, in fact, a time traveler from the future, while Koizumi Itsuki (mysterious transfer student) reveals himself as an esper. The same event that the Integrated Data Entity noticed was observed by a group of time travelers from the future, who found they could no longer access any time before the ‘timequake’, and a group of espers called the Agency, who discovered their abilities shortly after the same event three years ago. As to why they were all revealing themselves to Kyon? Because Haruhi Suzumiya had chosen him. She had gathered the other three around her due to her desire to meet special people, but Kyon is not special in any way, shape, or form. Yet she has chosen him nonetheless.

As theories beginning to develop about Haruhi’s true nature, the most striking is that of the Agency - that she is, in fact, God. Three years ago, she created the world as they know it today, and she is capable of destroying it at any time if ever she feels bored or unsatisfied. Every time she is emotionally unstable, she creates something called ‘closed space’ - an alternate dimension of sorts in which giant monsters called Shinjin systematically destroy everything in sight. The espers are the ones who combat the Shinjin; they believe that if the Shinjin were left unchecked, they would destroy both the closed space and the real world around it. Thus, Itsuki informs Kyon, they must do everything they can in order to keep Haruhi satisfied.

After everyone’s startling revelations, Kyon returns to school to find that Haruhi Suzumiya is absent. This is inferred to be because of a spectacular failure on the club’s part to find anything of any interest the day before - What was worse, Kyon had spent a whole lot of alone time with both Yuki and Mikuru. Basically, she was feeling sulky. Responsible class rep Ryoko Asakura is concerned and asks Kyon to please keep an eye on Haruhi. The next day, Haruhi is back in class and Kyon finds a mysterious note in his locker asking to meet him after school. Perhaps something interesting was going on after all.

Kyon stays after and finds, to his surprise, that the person who left the note was Ryoko Asakura - She has a question. Would it be better to regret doing something than to regret not having done anything at all? Kyon mumbles out an answer. Good! She exclaims. She agrees. It’s better to have tried for success despite the consequences than to have not tried at all. So with that, please die. Taking a knife, she leaps in for the attack. You see, she explains, Haruhi Suzumiya values Kyon above everything else. If he were to die, there would surely be a massive explosion of data. A wonderful opportunity for observation! Ryoko reveals that she, too, is a member of the Integrated Data Entity - a backup of sorts. With her powers, she freezes Kyon in place and goes for the finishing strike.

She is stopped at the last moment, however, by Yuki. Demonstrating her superior power and intellect, Yuki beats Ryoko in an amazing showdown, though her body is severely damaged in the process. She quickly repairs both the classroom and herself, however, although she forgets to reform her glasses. Kyon informs her that he’s not the type of guy who’s into that - So she leaves them. Haruhi is ecstatic the next day when she finds out Ryoko has mysteriously disappeared. Finally, something exciting has happened. Kyon has more excitement of his own in store, however - Another note asking to meet him during break. When he arrives, he is faced with a future version of Mikuru Asahina, who has come to develop an important message. Remember ‘Snow White’. Also, do not get too close to the younger Mikuru.

Afterwards, Kyon is roped into investigating the not-so mysterious disappearance of Ryoko, who happens to have lived at the same apartment as Yuki. After finding nothing of any importance, Haruhi uncharacteristically grows serious and tells Kyon a story. When she was a child, she went to a baseball game with her father. She’d always thought she was special in some way, but after seeing so many people , she realizes that she is insignificant. Merely a drop in the sea of humanity. But, she believes, there must be at least one extraordinary person out there - and thus, she has devoted her life to searching for that person. After listening in silence, Kyon returns home, but is interrupted by a taxi. Itsuki has come to show him the extent of his powers. He is taken into closed space and witnesses the Shinjin in action. Itsuki informs him that closed space is appearing more and more frequently, because Haruhi is becoming very distressed for some reason. The reason is soon made apparent - Haruhi is jealous of Mikuru and Kyon and expresses this anger when she discovers them in a compromising position.

That night, Kyon goes to sleep and awakens in an unfamiliar world. Closed space. Haruhi is there as well, though no one else. Itsuki , in his esper form, appears briefly and informs Kyon that Haruhi has created a new world, one with only herself and Kyon in it. Due to Haruhi’s disappearance from the old world, however, he is losing his power and soon disappears after telling Kyon to turn on his computer. He does so and is contacted by Yuki, who can, of course, manipulate data. A brief conversation later, she leaves him with one last hint - “Sleeping Beauty”, telling him that she personally desires him to return. This provides Kyon with what he needs. When Haruhi gushes about how exciting this place is and how she never wants to go back, Kyon contradicts her and tells her how much he likes the old world better. As if to prove this, he kisses her - And everything goes back to normal.

The rest of the episodes are not really all that important since Yuki plays a fairly small part in them. Throughout, however, Yuki does demonstrate more of her abilities - Homing mode for a baseball bat, for instance, or the ability to play the guitar perfectly as soon as it was needed. She also demonstrates an incredible talent with computers, being composed of data herself and the ability to tell the future. Personality improvements will be noted below.

Season Two:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuki_Nagato
http://community.livejournal.com/mayfield_rpg/398.html?thread=70286#t70286

Season Two, as stated above, covers several of the events that occurred in between Season One episode. Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody is where we get a glimpse of the background behind Haruhi and Kyon. Yuki is seen here with considerable power over the space-time continuum. Endless Eight shows the gang being caught in an Infinite Recursion of Time that lasts for nearly 600 years before Kyon is finally able to break through it. Even more interesting, it's revealed that the Integrated Data Entity actually exists outside the space-time continuum, and so in extension, does Yuki. The Sigh of Haruhi Suzumiya details the makings of the movie shown in the first season. Yuki appears to be capable of synthesizing nanomachines and injecting them through a bite.

Personality: Yuki appears to have a very underdeveloped personality at the beginning, most likely due to the fact that she has only recently begun to interact with humans. It is worth noting, however, that she may eventually achieve normal functioning - Emiri Kimidori is somewhat more emotional than Yuki, and Ryoko Asakura, for all intents and purposes, behaves precisely as what one might expect of a human (though slightly more homicidal). Whether this is because these two interfaces have spent more time with humans or whether because they are different types of interfaces is unknown. Either way, at the present, Yuki responds to everything in a concise, intellectual manner, seemingly not finding it worth the effort to attempt normal conversation.

When she does have something to say, however, she doesn’t hold back. In her long plot exposition with Kyon, Yuki takes a good nine or ten minutes to explain the situation (though still more or less in a montone), rapidly spitting out highly sophisticated language that she may have picked up from her constant reading of books. She exhibits this same behavior whenever she needs to explain anything - for instance, in the battle against the cave cricket. A good place to note her intelligence, as well. As a data lifeform, Yuki is brilliant. Though she initially had no idea how a computer functioned (waving the mouse around in the air), in less than a week, she was seen typing and hacking at superhuman speeds, able to circumvent the Computer Society’s rules and turn their cheating tables upon them. The same superhuman learning was seen when Haruhi asked her to play the guitar during the show. She performed her solos perfectly, though still without a trace of emotion on her face.

As the series progresses, however, Yuki does undergo some character development. It is shown that she is highly receptive of Kyon’s comments - After the battle against Ryoko Asakura, she does not reform her lost glasses after Kyon informs her that he is not a ‘glasses man’, meaning that he finds her more attractive without. At the last plot episode, she informs Kyon that even though there were many other interfaces on Earth, she would not allow any other rogue data entities to harm him. And during the mysterious incident on the island, Kyon is able to override Haruhi’s orders of not letting anyone in no matter who they may be. It is here that he also notes that she may be developing a sense of humor. Her actions may have been her idea of a joke.

I understand a key point of one of the novels is Yuki’s development of emotion, which is supposedly not supposed to happen for a humanoid interface. The paragraph above details her feelings towards Kyon, and it seems it is mostly in regards to him that she displays her feelings. For instance, as stated in the Wikipedia article, she wraps a cardigan around Kyon while he is sleeping, thanks him for his promise in a situation in a light novel, and is disappointed when she realizes that someone is not really in love with her in another light novel. Either way, she expresses her emotions in a very vague and subtle manner.

During her first stay at Mayfield, Yuki had begun to draw out of her self-imposed isolation. Though she is seen to rarely converse with anyone except Kyon in the anime, I believe that the situation was dire enough to warrant bringing her out of her 'observation role' to assume a more active position. Though still largely passive and prone to value the collection of data above all things, Yuki began to form connections with the other townspeople, largely because she recognizes that she is not as powerful as she was at home and requires the help of others in order to get things done.

When Haruhi droned the first time around, Yuki believed that her role was finished in that the potential for auto-evolution had either been successfully protected or lost entirely. This led to an extreme action on her part in order to test the limits of the town.

Abilities: Yuki has quite a few. Though it may be difficult to distinguish what is attributable to her status as a data entity and what is simply intelligence, there are a few obvious things.
-Data Access : The ability to read the data that constructs an environment.
-Data Manipulation : Everything related to the alteration of data in that environment.
-Foresight : The ability to tell the future based off of understanding the current data.
-Aptitude : Superhuman learning of techniques that would normally take years to master.
-Heightened Physical Abilities : Superhuman strength, speed, and stamina. Her ability to self-heal would most likely be covered by Mayfield’s own properties.
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