Luftherz Yukinami

*\*Japanese name, surname is Luftherz.*

**Luftherz Yukinami (ルフヘルゾ•雪涙)** is Suyukaz's third Art OC in priority, but fifth to be created. In the Dawn Diamond Party, she is the secretary. A warrior of Japan, she features in Suyukaz's arts regarding military affairs and sometimes Japanese culture.

Yuki's primary concept is a Japanese born feline girl who also practices Western arts. While trained with Japanese swordsmanship and adhered to the Bushido code, she also practices European swordsmanship and learns European chivalric code. However, most of the character personality that shows is Yuki's superior and work-oriented personality, maintaining high discipline and setting her course straight towards her missions.

## Luftherz Yukinami

### Aliases

Yuki (most common)
Nami (by Japanese acquaintances)
Kina (by teachers and superiors)

### Affiliation

Dawn Diamond PartyJapanese Air Force/Naval Air Arms

## Additional Information

### Rank

Secretary (Dawn Diamond Party)
Flight Leader (Japanese Air Force)
Flight Lieutenant (Diamond Air Wing)

### Specialty

Art Creativity
Aviation
Magical Eye
Tactical Intelligence

## Appearance

Character physical-wise, Yuki is originally a normal human, but cursed to turn into a catgirl, or nekomusume, after falling into a magical pond as a child. She has a fairly toned, slim body, but also a peculiarly wide waist. Just like most other Art OCs, Yuki has gold/yellow eyes. She is similar in height to Spook and Lily (somewhat in between). Her body appears slender, but is actually very strong thanks to combat and military training. Her hair is always short and usually cut to chin-length. Her right eye is cursed with magic, however gives dizziness and headaches if used for normal sight with both eyes, and is covered with an eyepatch.

Yuki's outfit stays fairly similar since the beginning. By default, her scholarly look features a school blazer outfit, consisting of a black blazer, white t-shirt, red tie and purplish-blue skirt. Her socks vary widely, sometimes below-knee socks or white/black pantyhose. She is usually depicted wearing black shoes. As of mid-2021, she wears a blue gem necklace, identical to Spook's.

WW2 lore, Yuki's combat outfit is somewhat a combination of Japanese WW2 infantry uniform and samurai/knight armor. She wears a military shirt and pants or shorts (complemented with tights), but also wears a metal chestplate, samurai spaulders (shoulder plates) and vambraces (forearm armor). She also wears dark brown boots. She is also characterized with a fox mast at the left of her head, possibly tied to her eyepatch.

An older version of her combat outfit consisted of her wearing a black bodysuit and covered with the same armor as the later version. She also retains her blue skirt. She wears white tights and dark grey (knight?) boots in this outfit. She also appeared to have a long polearm weapon, which was removed in the later combat version.

## Personality

Yuki represents learning, knowledge and wisdom, thus has a very scholarly personality. She fits very well as both teacher and student, being very knowledgeable of things around her, and catches and analyses information very easily. She is also very hardworking, being able to achieve many combat skills at a young age.

Just like Spook and Lily, her favorite drink is tea, and drinks them with Japanese etiquette. She also has a preference of fish over other seafood. She has a soft spot for German food cooked by her family, though the German meals she is familiar with is incomparable to those known by a German nationalist (Spuk), due to East Asian influence. She herself however is a terrible cook, and this is often taunted by Yoake.

## Lore

Yuki was born in Germany and her care and raising was assigned to the Luftherz family, a German family living in Japan. When still a infant, an unnamed caretaker brought her to Japan by ship in less than a year, upon arrival Yuki continued living in a Japanese town near the sea. When young, Yuki fell into a magical pond near a shrine. The pond's curse gave her feline ears and her right eye gained magical powers of sensing sources of energy, however gives dizziness and headaches if used for normal sight with both eyes.

Since young, Yuki was trained with swordsmanship,  and was taught both Japanese bushido code and Medieval European chivalric code. She would grow up to receive military training and practice even more weapons. Yuki had been a very responsible and smart student throughout her school years, being serious about education. This built her straightforward nature and made her a highly disciplined soldier.

### Yoake

One day in her school years, Yuki was visiting the shrine when she noticed Yoake was stalking her from a bush, which prompted Yuki to pull the hideous Yoake, whom began to panic. Yuki was still puzzled with Yoake's mysterious origins and distanced life from human society, and brought her to the family. Yoake lived with Yuki in the Luftherz family supposedly as an adoptive child, but lives more like Yuki's partner or friend, following her wherever she goes except to school, which Yoake chose to learn at home.

### WW2 lore

Yuki and Yoake both trained to be pilots of Imperial Japan, with Yoake actually just following Yuki around. Both flew the A6M Zero fighter and serve aboard the aircraft carrier Akagi until the middle of the war, and was involved in several naval actions such as the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Battle of Midway, in which the Akagi was sunk.

After flying another combat mission somewhere and their planes were shot down, Yuki and Yoake, were stationed in the Japanese-occupied Philippines where they repelled an American attempt to invade the island. They finally received the new A7M Reppu aircraft a few weeks later, and fought several more naval actions aboard the aircraft carrier Zuikaku until it was sunk in the battle of Leyte Gulf. With Yoake shot down and wounded during another air battle, both she and Yuki were sent to Japan, and later Yuki was stationed onboard a special operations carrier to fight the last air engagements of the war, including her own personal operation on defending the Japanese fleet during Operation Ten-Go and the defense of the Japanese mainland.

## Capabilities and Combat

### Infantry combat

While not her strongest combat capability, Yuki is a powerful soldier on foot. When not fighting in formation, she has a unique combat style: 'close or afar and no medium distance', as Yoake calls it, where she will use ranged weapons to attack enemies from afar, or make a chivalry charge into her enemies and fight a close quarters melee battle. Whenever she is in the so-called 'medium distance', she will either increase range from her enemies to snipe them, or close the gap rapidly to face them head-on.

### Katana

One of Yuki's signature weapons is her katana sword(s), which she gives names such as "Shinshin Maru". Though unusual for use in modern warfare (due to more common use of firearms), she makes great use of it, attacking her enemies whenever up-close. She is quick to close into potent enemies when the opportunity shines, and she swings her sword quick to kill her enemies as fast as possible to prevent too much struggle.

### Rifles

Another of Yuki's main weapons in foot soldier combat. She names her rifle(s) "Kaminari" ("雷", meaning thunder). Yuki is very efficient in using rifles for sniping enemies from a far distance. In WW2 lore, she carries the Type 38 Arisaka rifle, and sometimes use the bayonet to fight in short range.

### Aviation

Yuki's main combat strength comes to her fighter aircraft piloting skills. She is an outstanding fighter pilot, especially after knowing the nature of her aircraft (such as the A6M Zero's effectiveness in low altitude). She is also well-trained for aircraft carrier operations, allowing her to serve on several Japanese aircraft carriers. Yuki admits she would not resist making a suicide attack if needed or ordered to, however her powerful piloting skills meant that the higher command preferred her to be able to fight more missions as possible, always hoping for her to return  after each sortie.

### Magic Eye

Yuki's right eye is cursed to have magical powers that detect sources of energy such as thermal (heat) and kinetic (movement) and even gravitational potential energy (falling-possible objects in high places), but no good for normal vision with both eyes.

### Tactical Intelligence

While Spook uses his strategic intelligence to plan the big outcomes of the overall plan, Yuki is responsible for planning the smaller, specific actions, such as a military operation in war. Yuki is resourceful enough to use any information available and search for any missing information required.

## Relationships

* Spook, Nully and Lilynne - Yuki's brothers and sister. Yuki is the second child of the family. Yuki is very close with Spook despite his almost lifeless personality. Both trust each other in doing tasks and executing plans and appreciate each other's work-oriented manner. Spook's cold personality and his rare smile annoys (and entertains) Yuki, though she also gets easily surprised by his unpredictable decisions or reasons. Yuki is not very close with Nully, but can get along pretty well. Yuki's sibling relationship is closest to Lilynne, her younger sister. Despite having a large difference in culture as well as living on different sides of the world, they have good relationship with each other, playing games and exchanging cultural knowledge.
* Yoake -Technically Yuki's partner, student, apprentice and even servant. Though Yoake is adopted into Yuki's adoptive family, their relationship appears more to be in between sisters and best friends, though Yuki always appears superior, and properly a senior. Yuki is very prone to hitting Yoake for her clumsiness and naive character, though she feels that Yoake is more important to her than most other people she has met so far.

## Trivia

### Etymology

* Yuki's given name "Yukinami" is taken from the Yukinami-class destroyer, a fictional class of destroyers from the manga and anime Zipang. As a reference, Yuki makes many mentions of the "Future" (Mirai in Japanese) referencing the main warship of the anime, JDS Mirai, a Yukinami-class destroyer.
* Though the fact is not canon in all depicted lore, Yuki names her swords after Japanese aircraft, and this is only an in-lore fact in the 21st century lore. Such names are:
	+ "Shinshin Maru" (心神  まる), named after the experimental X-2 Shinshin fighter
	+ "Shinden Maru" (震電  まる), named after the J7W Shinden interceptor

### Other

* According to lore, it is very likely that the gems worn by Spook and Yuki are cremation gems or memorial diamonds made from the ashes of their parents.
* Yuki is created as an OC to represent scholarly personality and love for knowledge. She was originally designed with inspiration from the character Z23 from Azur Lane and shares many of the character's personality. The character is also designed to be Japanese as there wasn't a Japanese art OC before her (although she was designed to be half-German in the end). Adding more Japanese/anime culture into the character, Yuki's default outfit is a Japanese school blazer, and her main weapon is a katana.
* Suyukaz discovered his favourite anime, Girls' Last Tour, when searching for images of the Arisaka rifle in anime for designing Yuki's character. He liked the link between Yuki's design creation and his discovery for the anime, and so many of Yuki's elements are inspired by Girls' Last Tour. For example, her girl-pair relationship with Yoake is inspired by those of the two protagonists of the anime, Chito and Yuuri, her name is also often incorrectly spelled as Yuuki (reference to Yuuri) by Yoake, and she speaks many lines referencing the anime.
* While all Art OCs are depicted in high school year/late teen age, only Yuki is depicted as an actual student.