Anko Mitarashi

Through Parts I and II Anko keeps a lean build and wears a body-hugging suit of fine metal mesh that runs from her collar to her thighs. Over it sit a tan coat lined in purple, a short skirt in dark orange, a navy belt, and pale shin guards, while a fang-shaped pendant hangs beside her forehead protector. Her spiky ponytail fans outward, its shade black with a bluish cast on the printed page and violet in the anime adaptation, and her pupil-less eyes are pale brown. As a girl she favoured sleeveless chainmail and knee-high boots, later a reddish tee with bracelets during her time trailing Orochimaru. More than a decade past the Fourth Shinobi World War, an unchecked love of sweets had rounded out her once-slim figure, and she took to red lipstick, an orange blouse, and a white caped coat in place of the mesh.

Rowdy, teasing, and stubborn, Anko carries a hyperactive streak so pronounced that Sakura Haruno once likened her to Naruto Uzumaki. Beneath the clowning lies a disciplined operative who studies terrain before a mission and prepares thoroughly, yet she also owns a genuinely bloodthirsty edge, famously nicking Naruto's cheek and tasting the blood. Comrades and villagers alike call her unhinged, a label she resents even as she leans into it to rattle people. She is blunt to a fault, delivering bad news without cushioning it, and confident enough to take on strong foes by herself. Her feelings toward Orochimaru curdled from worship into hatred once he branded her with a cursed seal, and the trauma left her waking from nightmares in cold sweat, hardened into a vow to be the one who stops him even at the cost of her life. Softer moments surface too, as when she steadies the frightened Isaribi. Above all she is ruled by an unbending sweet tooth, spending free hours on dango and turning dangerous on anyone who raids her plate.

As a genin, Anko trained on a squad led by Orochimaru, who singled her out and passed on several of his signature methods, among them the Hidden Shadow Snake Hands and his murder-suicide technique. He later used her as a test subject for the Cursed Seal of Heaven; of ten recipients she alone lived. In the anime he wiped her memory rather than kill so valuable a specimen, and Konoha's Anbu recovered the amnesiac kunoichi in the Land of the Sea, where the Third Hokage consoled her. That betrayal shaped the rest of her career.

Years on, she oversaw the Forest of Death stage of the Chunin Exams, sensed Orochimaru's return after finding faceless corpses, and hunted him alone, only to strike a shadow clone before he flared her dormant seal. During the Fourth Shinobi World War she led an infiltration team after Kabuto Yakushi, was overpowered and kept comatose while he drained the seal's chakra to fuel his reincarnation jutsu, and her seal ultimately vanished when Sasuke Uchiha revived Orochimaru from it. A decade after the war she settled into teaching at the Academy alongside Shino Aburame, still famed for pinpoint aim, sharp tracking, and mastery of Orochimaru's serpent arts.