Manari

Still in her mid-teens, Manari wears her straight black hair at shoulder length, though the anime gives her long grey-brown locks and emerald eyes instead. Her dress blends pink and purple, gathered at the waist by a green sash that matches the choker at her neck.

Manari is dutiful and yielding, accepting a crown that was never meant for her without a word of protest. She trusts her advisors to a fault, deferring to the Prime Minister's judgment again and again, and she carries a heavy self-doubt after her single attempt with the Shuigu ended in catastrophe.

For all her passivity, she holds no grudge against the brother who pushed the throne onto her, and the suffering of her people weighs steadily on her conscience.

When the old king of Redaku died, the crown should have passed to his young son, Nanara, but the boy wanted nothing to do with it and pressed his sister to reign instead. Manari took the throne without complaint. Her advisors soon persuaded her to send Nanara away to Nagare Village, claiming the palace was no place for a child to grow up, and she consented, unaware how thoroughly she was being handled. As queen she inherited the duty of working the Shuigu to water the land, but her attempt to summon rain over the capital unleashed a flood that ruined its crops and killed its livestock. The Prime Minister buried the truth behind a story of an overflowing river, and as famine and drought tightened their grip, she refused to touch the relic again for fear of worsening the ruin.

Roughly a year into her reign, with conditions collapsing, the Prime Minister steers her toward seizing water from another nation, settling on the Land of Fire as the softest target. Lacking any army, Redaku hires fifty shinobi for the invasion, and Manari signs off on all of it. Nanara is summoned home for the anniversary of their father's death, and she welcomes him warmly, slipping him a blue gem their father once owned while warning him to keep it from the Prime Minister. When her brother learns of the planned attack, she is forced to explain the water crisis to him. His tutor, Kakashi Hatake, quietly urges her to confront the shortage head-on rather than lean on the water that has mysteriously begun replenishing itself.

Manari travels with the invasion force to Nagare, only to find Nanara and Kakashi fortifying the village against it. The uprising distresses her, yet she does nothing to stop the Prime Minister from laying siege. Watching the battle from a cliff, horrified and paralyzed by indecision, she refuses his demand to turn the Shuigu on the villagers. Enraged, he wrenches the relic from her and wields it with ease, and only after Kakashi saves Nanara does the reason surface: the Shuigu answers only the signer of its contract, a truth the Prime Minister had hidden to keep her powerless. Kakashi blocks his final attack and defeats him. In the aftermath, Manari urges Nanara to sign the contract himself, convinced that being so easily deceived proves her unfit to rule. He accepts, becomes king, and calls down a soft rain that she stands in with joy. Back in the capital she expects punishment for her part in the assault, but Nanara instead names her his assistant, entrusting her with the paperwork and the long task of rebuilding the country.