An organic life contact purpose humanoid interface created by the Data Integration Thought Entity which supervises this galaxy. That would be me.
Yuki Nagato is a character from the Haruhi Suzumiya light novel/anime series. On the surface, she seems like an unassuming, asocial bookworm, but in reality, she's a shy, caring bookworm.
The fact that she's an alien is merely incidental.
To be precise, she's a humanoid interface created by a being called the Data Integration Thought Entity (Data Overmind in the light novels). Since the Entity is incapable of communicating with humans, humanoid interfaces must act in its stead to gather data on Earth. Yuki is part of a small squadron of interfaces that have been tasked with observing one Haruhi Suzumiya, a rambunctious high schooler unaware of the fact that she has godlike powers.
To this end, she enrolled in the same high school as Haruhi and became the sole member of the dying Literary Club. Haruhi, inspired to create a new club to search for interesting phenomena, stumbled across the Literary Club room and decided to comandeer it, along with Yuki, for her own nefarious purposes, resulting in the birth of the SOS Brigade.
All according to plan.
about:nagato
Interesting [alien].
- Name
- Yuki Nagato (長門有希)
- Namesake
- Possibly from snow falling shortly after her creation
- Species
- Humanoid interface (data organism)
- Gender
- Female
- Height
- 5' 0.5" (154 cm)
- Disposition
- Tired
- Percieved alignment
- Neutral Good
- Hobbies
- Reading, reading, reading, reading, reading, programming
- Goals
- Observe Haruhi, collect data, express herself, achieve self-actualization
What's so special about her?
It is difficult to convey in words. Discrepancies may arise during the transmission of data. Regardless, listen.
From the moment I saw the first episode (The Adventures of Mikuru Asahina Episode 00), I had two sneaking suspicions:
- The character playing the alien wasn't bad at acting; she genuinely had a flat emotional affect
- She was probably going to be an interesting character
Somehow, I was right on both counts. Before I knew it, without really understanding how or why, Yuki quickly became my favourite character in the series, then clawed her way into the ranks of my favourite characters of all time. To this day, I still don't fully understand how this happened, but there are a few things I do know:
- Despite appearances, Yuki is never, at any point in the series, emotionless.
However, she has difficulty expressing herself and suffers from some form of social anxiety, which causes her to struggle to relate to her peers
- Importantly, this is not a trait shared with other humanoid interfaces, who have varying levels of sociability. This implies that her issues stem from a disability rather than the fact that she's an alien.
- If you want to learn more, I've written an overwrought, meandering analysis of how she experiences emotion and anxiety
- Somewhat related: in The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, she acquires a tendency to fidget when nervous.
- Her obsession with books and computer programming is very relatable.
- I tore through books like nothing else when I was a kid, and even now, I constatly tear through technical literature online.
- She can even be a bit silly at times. In one scene, she picks up an optical mouse and starts waving it around. The reason for this is unclear, but she may have been playing with the mouse's laser.
Character songs
These are a handful of songs done by Yuki's Japanese voice actor, Minori Chihara, in character. All of them are stellar, but SELECT? might be my favourite.
