Futaba Sakura

* Futaba Sakura
* Oracle

“*I'm going to trust my own eyes and my own heart to distinguish the truth from the lies.*”
―Futaba Sakura
**Futaba Sakura** (codenamed **Oracle**) is one of the main characters in *Persona 5*. She is different from the main crew of the Phantom Thieves because she is a shut-in who does not attend school and rarely, if ever, leaves her house.

## Appearance

Futaba is a young, bespectacled girl with hip length black hair dyed bright orange with straight-cut bangs and two long strands in the front along with a single small, thin ahoge strand at the top. Her brown eyes also seem to have some faint purple tones in them, appearing mauve. She wears large black circular glasses, and she is always seen wearing a set of AKG K845BT headphones with red earpads. She seems to be very short, even compared to other girls.

Her casual winter outfit consists of multiple layers; she wears an off-shoulder white top with a red splatter-like pattern on her chest with five white asterisks (\*\*\*\*\*) which are reminiscent of a passport input system in the red splatter, a black tank top underneath that, a dark green jacket with a faux fur trimmed hood, black short shorts, a studded black belt in a slanted position, black thigh highs socks and black knee-high boots with buckles and studs at the top. The green jacket has A.F.K. on the back (for "away from keyboard"), although it is difficult to see because of Futaba's long hair.

Her Metaverse costume consists of a skintight black bodysuit with fluorescent neon green glowing strips and matching black boots with neon green soles. Her mask is a pair of big black goggles with orange lenses.

## Personality

With a case of social anxiety bordering on agoraphobia, combined with the trauma of losing her mother Wakaba Isshiki, Futaba is strongly discomfited by going outside. When first introduced, she is a hikikomori who does not attend school and almost never leaves her room. She communicates with the world remotely via the Internet, and her adoptive father Sojiro enables her lifestyle out of guilt that he could not protect her from trauma. Having disconnected herself from humanity and the world beyond her apartment, Futaba is lonely, lives without passion and enthusiasm, suffers from suicidal depression, and questions the point in her living. When first encountered, Futaba is so consumed with self-loathing that she suppresses her desire to live, causing her Shadow Self to represent her *positive* thoughts rather than her negative ones. When she first leaves her room after her change of heart, she tends to hide behind the protagonist so that she won't be seen in public, or wears masks which make it impossible to identify her. Her room acts as a sanctuary and a refuge from the chaos and noise of the outside world. Her Arcana is the Hermit, which fits with her desire for isolation and instinctive need to push people away from her.

Futaba begins to change after meeting the protagonist and the other Phantom Thieves, opening up to them more and becoming more relaxed around them. Once she's truly comfortable around others, she shows her childish side and likes teasing her friends, particularly Ryuji, Yusuke and Morgana, and sometimes Makoto as well. Although she still has occasional anxiety and odd habits, she comes off as bright, playful and cheerful when with her newfound friends. However, due to being socially inept, Futaba is often extremely blunt, to the point that she seems to have no concept of tactfulness. An example of this is when she insults Mishima by calling him an "NPC" due to his "overwhelming forgettable appearance" and "generic speech style," and says that it would be worse to lie about what he is. She also has a rather ruthless side to her; not only does she have zero qualms with hacking, to the point of bugging the protagonist's phone so she can keep an eye on them during their trip to Hawaii but she cares little for the group's main goal of reforming society; she only wants to find out the truth behind her mother's death, and get revenge on the ones responsible, which she admits is an extremely personal reason. Makoto even states at one point that she's glad she's on their side, with fear of what she'd do if she was their enemy.

Even before her mother's death, Futaba was quite a lonely child growing up. Part of this was due to her isolation for being a genius, with other students thinking she was a freak due to her eidetic memory (things she's reminded of when she's given a tour of Shujin), while the other part was due to her mother working long hours to support her, meaning the two hardly ever got to spend time together. It got to the point where Futaba would sometimes think her mother cared more about her research than she did about her, an insecurity that only worsened when her mother died, and she was read the fake suicide note. Because of her desire for her mother to be alive again, and the belief that she deserves to die, Futaba ended up creating a Palace where her mother wants her dead. With the help of the Phantom Thieves, however, she realizes that the suicide note was forged and manages to remember the real Wakaba. Futaba is also very fond of sushi and Sojiro's curry, both of which were meals she shared with her mother.

Despite being easily the least physically fit member of the Phantom Thieves, to the point that she often sleeps for days at a time, Futaba is also, by a wide margin, the least stereotypically feminine of the female members; she almost always dresses in boy's clothes, seems to have zero domestic skills (judging by her extremely messy room and her frequently eating instant noodles), is obsessed with computers (if the protagonist claims he built his own PC, she asks for details on the GPU, CPU, RAM, etc.), often plays video games, which she sees as a form of escapism, is into sci-fi, as shown by her Phantom Thief suit and her Persona being a UFO, and shows a very perverted side at times, commenting on the other girls' thief suits and the size of Ann's breasts. She is also shown to be heavily reliant on the Internet; she doesn't see the point in going shopping since you can buy anything online and even claims that she can use the Internet as a substitute for going to school. Her lack of refinement is evident in the fact that she addresses Sojiro by his given name, which is considered very impolite in Japan even in the case of adoptive paternal figures. This is probably due to the fact that she has known him her entire life as her mother's close friend, or simply due to her lack of social skills. Sojiro refers to himself as her father, and while he never insists on her calling him "Dad," he becomes very pleased when she begins too occasionally.

Futaba also has a soft spot for cats, a trait she shares with Sojiro, and when she realizes Morgana is a part of the Phantom Thieves, she begins teasing him regularly. She is a fan of the show *Phoenix Ranger Featherman R* as evidenced by her posters and figurine collection and is quite upset when they are fiddled with without her permission, as Yusuke discovers when allowed into her room during the Thieves' attempts to get around her social anxiety. While the resultant argument ends happily, this does cause Yusuke and her to get off on the wrong foot, and she is easily irritated by him. Likewise, Yusuke makes several disses at Futaba. As a result of their constant bickering, Futaba usually calls him "Inari". Nevertheless, they are very close friends, with Yusuke being very considerate regarding her slow growth. Makoto also notes that Futaba has little problem talking to people as long as the subject interests her; the reason she couldn't talk to her normally at first is because she brought up mundane topics like food and the weather, the latter of which means nothing to Futaba since she had been a shut-in for the past few months.

## Trivia

* Futaba (from *Persona 5*) and Barbara (from *DC Comics*) share the same codename "Oracle".