Futaba Sakura

Futaba Sakura is the Navigator of the Phantom Thieves from Persona 5. She is different from the main crew of the Phantom Thieves, as prior to Persona 5 Strikers, she was a shut-in who does not attend school and rarely, if ever, leaves her house.

## Personality

With a case of social anxiety bordering on agoraphobia developed from the trauma of losing her mother Wakaba Isshiki, combined with her generally introverted personality, Futaba is strongly discomforted by going outside. When the protagonist first meets her, she is a shut-in 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 Sakura 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 suffers from suicidal depression, crippling bouts of anxiety and would freak out instantly when seeing unknown people inside Sojiro's house. When first encountered, Futaba is so consumed with self-loathing that she suppresses her desire to live, causing her Shadow Self to develop a much more helpful personality than average, one who only desires Futaba's happiness. Prior to her Change of Heart, she thinks that her room is the only place she actually feels safe to dwell within due to the frequent hallucinations she has about Wakaba bearing hatred on her.

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.

After her heart is changed and she begins to actively go out, Futaba still initially 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. Even during Strikers the anxiety issues do not completely go away, as, if the protagonist talks to her while investigating Alice Hiiragi in Shibuya, she will say that the heat and crowds of people during summer still makes her somehow uncomfortable.

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 Sakamoto, Yusuke Kitagawa and Morgana, and sometimes Makoto Niijima and Sojiro Sakura 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 moments after she rehabilitates, Futaba begins to comment on the spikes of Makoto's queen outfit when she began to talk harsh words on her, and shortly after this, Ryuji joins the conversation and she makes a "note" making fun of Ann's coldness to Ryuji, causing Ann slight discomfort. She also likes to poke fun on Yusuke every once a while, often by calling him "Inari." "Inari" is a word which means fox, but can mean tofu curd sushi due to tofu being offered near Inari Shrines, forming a pun which implies that Yusuke was a degenerate.

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, as well as hijacking the entire broadcasting system of Shibuya to announce the Thieves' grand return during Strikers, even if the target during that time amounts to nothing short of a glorified school bully. She also seems to not care much for the group's main goal of reforming society: she joins mainly to find out the truth behind her mother's death, and get revenge on the ones responsible. As she is actually the real Medjed, her hacking skills have been implied to be of worldwide fame. (In fact, she's shown to be capable of hijacking an entire city's broadcasting system, sometimes even nationwide all by herself within a few strokes of her keyboard) However, her identity remains anonymous to the public. Makoto even states right before the Shujin Hawaii trip that she's glad she's on their side, with fear of what she'd do if she was their enemy.

She appears to be the least physically fit member of the Phantom Thieves, to the point that she may end up sleeping for days at a time. Futaba 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 (such as commenting on/reacting to the other girls' phantom thief suits and commenting on/reacting to the size of Ann Takamaki's breasts). She is also shown to be heavily reliant on the internet as she doesn't see the point in going shopping since you can buy anything online and even claims that she can use it as a substitute for going to school. She addresses Sojiro by his given name instead of "dad," which is considered very impolite in Japan, even in the case of adoptive paternal figures. Sojiro refers to himself as her father, and while he never insists on her calling him "dad," he becomes very pleased when she begins to occasionally.

Futaba is shown to have 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 evidenced by her posters and figurine collection. Futaba has little problem talking to people as long as the subject interests her, since when Makoto was making Futaba open up, she couldn't at first when 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. Once Yusuke starts rearranging her Featherman figures, she becomes noticably annoyed, allowing Makoto to deduct that she's simply not interested in mundane topics.