Mito Uzumaki

Mito wears her vivid red hair swept up into buns, pinned in place and framed by three clips at the front, with kanji-inscribed tags tucked among the decorations. Her large eyes are black and without pupils, her lips painted a deep red, and a rhombus mark, echoing the seal her granddaughter Tsunade would later bear, sits on her brow. She favors an ornate, high-collared kimono, the Uzushiogakure crest stitched onto the sash at her back. Age lengthens her hair, which the anime recolors brown, though she keeps the twin buns and switches to a looser, plainer robe closed with a dark obi.

A calm, dignified bearing marks Mito, along with a deep sense of obligation to her husband and their village. Duty leads her to make herself Kurama's vessel so that Hashirama might gain its power. For all her composure, she is warm and steadying, especially toward Kushina Uzumaki, whom she reassures about the burden of becoming a jinchuriki, telling the younger woman how she would climb the stairs of her home just to glimpse her husband's face carved into the Hokage Rock.

The Uzumaki and Senju are distant kin bound by long-standing ties, and Mito's marriage to Hashirama, founder and first leader of the Hidden Leaf, strengthens that connection. After Hashirama overcomes Madara Uchiha within the Valley of the End, claiming Kurama in the process, Mito seals the fox away inside her body and becomes its very first host. Her fuinjutsu is formidable enough to contain the entire beast, and her rare, potent chakra makes her uniquely suited to holding it in check, a strain that nearly breaks the seal when she gives birth. Uzumaki blood grants her an unusually long life, spanning the tenures of the first three Hokage, and though she never fully tames Kurama, she learns to borrow its knack for sensing hostile emotions. In her final years a new vessel must be chosen, and the special chakra of her clanswoman Kushina makes her the pick. Mito consoles the frightened girl and passes on her greatest insight, that the fox's hatred can only be met and overcome with love, likening a person to a helix that rises by filling itself with feeling rather than a flat, static spiral. The beast is eventually drawn out of Mito and placed within Kushina, and Mito dies soon after. Her teaching outlives her, steadying Kushina and, in time, guiding Naruto to master the same power.