Haru Okumura

* Civillian
* Noir

**Haru Okumura** (奥村 (おくむら)  春 (はる) , *Okumura Haru*) is a wealthy girl who attends Shujin Academy, and lives a double life as a Phantom Thief. She is the only (false) daughter of Kunikazu Okumura, the Thieves' fifth major target.

## Description

### Appearance

Haru is a beautiful young woman with chin-length curly light auburn hair and brown eyes. She is of average height, being taller than Futaba, but shorter than Ann and Makoto.

She wears her winter school's uniform modified to her taste: a pink turtleneck cardigan with short puffed sleeves and a long-sleeved white shirt underneath. The cardigan is zipped open up to her navel and has two large pockets on the front. She wears the standard black and red tartan skirt, white tights with a black flower pattern and black Mary Jane shoes.

Her summer school uniform retains her skirt and shoes, but she wears a light purple knitted sleeveless turtleneck sweater with a dark purple ribbon around her waist and white loose socks.

Her summer casual outfit is a transparent greenish white collared dress underneath a white tank top, white pantyhose and cream-colored pumps. Her winter outfit is a white dress shirt with a dark blue ribbon, pale green fluffy coat, pink skirt, white tights and brown shoes.

She acquires two more outfits for the third semester in *Persona 5 Royal*. At school she wears a purple pea coat over her school uniform. She now has a dark sleeved shirt underneath, wears black leggings, and trades out her Mary Jane shoes for lace-up wedge boots. When outside she wears fur lined mittens and pink earmuffs. On her days off in mid-winter, Haru wears a light pink, fur lined coat dress with a blue belt and translucent material below the skirt. She wears maroon leggings with a white polka dot pattern and heeled ankle shoes. She accessorizes with a light purple beret and tight brown gloves.

Her Thief outfit consists of a dark purple cavalier hat with a feather plume tucked into a royal purple hatband, a long-sleeved pale pink blouse with a white neck jabot (held there by a red gem pin), a black corset vest with gold buttons, bloomers that match her hatband, black pantyhose, a holster belt carrying ammo and lace-up pumps. Her mask and gloves are black and violet, respectively.

### Personality

Haru is generally very shy and reserved. At school, she is viewed as eccentric due to her tendency to keep to herself and avoid contact with others as much as possible. She has serious trust issues, finding it difficult to differentiate between who truly values her as a friend, and who merely wants to use her for her family's status. This is due to her past, where not only friends, but adults and teachers would be kind to her just to please her father and smile at her for their own personal gain. Despite this, Haru is an incredibly kind-hearted girl. She becomes fast friends with all of the Phantom Thieves, and is the only member of the group Ryuji Sakamoto doesn't argue with on a regular basis. She can also be very awkward, as shown when she first introduces herself to the others as "Beauty Thief," and forgets parts of the script she has rehearsed with Morgana, to the point of saying "We will take the Treasure!" twice in a row, much to Futaba Sakura's annoyance. She later explains that she was trying to be a "heroine of justice," having grown up admiring female superheroes she watched on TV. She loved them for always fighting to protect others and being happy, desiring to be just like them someday.

At first, Haru is reluctant to team up with the other Phantom Thieves, saying she can't cooperate with people who don't know what they want to do, and calls them out for turning their backs on their own teammate when their goal is supposed to be to help the weak. After her real desires are brought to light, however (namely, to get out of her arranged marriage with her abusive fiance), she changes her mind and decides to team up with the Thieves to change her father's heart. Despite this, she is initially still reluctant to oppose her father, and as a result hasn't fully awakened to her Persona, though this changes once she learns that her father has no illusions of the kind of man her fiance is, and declares that she is no longer his "subservient puppet." Afterwards, she decides on the codename "Noir" (the French word for "black"), to remind herself that she is operating on the darker side of the law despite her desire to be a heroine of justice. As such, she is rather surprised to discover that the others decided on their codenames based merely on how their outfits look, when she had created such an elaborate backstory for hers.

Initially, Haru behaves very formally towards the group, believing that it's her responsibility as the newest member of the team. After being told that whether or not she's new doesn't matter to them, however, she loosens up and becomes much more casual. She calls Makoto "Mako-chan," after declaring that she is the first friend of her own age she's ever had (initially catching Makoto off-guard, but soon considers it refreshing), and calls Morgana "Mona-chan," both in and out of the Metaverse. She also uses affectionate honorifics for everyone (-kun for boys and -chan for girls). This attitude goes both ways, as she dislikes the younger members of the group calling her "Senpai" and asks for them to just call her "Haru."

In her spare time, she enjoys tending to her own garden, as well as growing vegetables on the roof of the school. Besides gardening, she also enjoys horror movies. Because of her gentle personality, she is often underestimated, even by her teammates, however she admits she feels excited when Shadows beg for their lives, that cutting down enemies as they approach is a thrill, and that she sees combat as a form of stress relief, hinting that she is somewhat sadistic. Also, after a battle, Haru may say something along the lines of, "Phew, I need more of that!" and despite saying that she gets nervous before combat, she always wants to do it again afterwards. Her sadistic streak is enough to unnerve Makoto, who's well-known among the group for her vicious temper and tendency to take her anger out on Shadows. This sadistic side is further shown by the fact that if Ren cheats on her on Valentine's Day, she will express her anger with an eerie smile on her face, requesting that he take her chocolate before she crushes it, showing a passive-aggressive personality. It also seems to manifest when she is driving a vehicle; she is a maniacal driver capable of driving from Fukuoka to Kyoto, a trip that should take eight hours, in a single morning even with an accidental detour into Osaka, much to the chagrin of her nauseous and terrified passengers.

Regardless, Haru is mature, level-headed, and kind in almost every way. She is also described to be very feminine, as pointed out by Ann. She enjoys helping the Phantom Thieves, as she becomes delighted when she learns that her hobby of vegetable-growing can prove useful to the group's activities, and is excited when Makoto proposes a Showtime with her. This is because she wishes to be seen as dependable by them, but often worries that she may not be doing good enough, and can be fairly self-deprecating when she expresses that doubt (shown when she claims that gardening is the only thing she's honestly good at, and calling herself "weird" during her counseling session with Takuto Maruki). Haru is shown to be easygoing, being very polite to teachers and authorities, and often showing a friendly smile to her peers when talking. She also has a rather refined speaking pattern, which contrasts someone like Ryuji, who speaks in a very casual manner. Haru can sometimes be playful and teasing as well, but knows not to push limits and is never taken to a serious degree.

As someone raised under the teaching of "do as you're told," Haru is reserved and often lets other people decide for her, even describing herself as someone who's not adept at saying what's on her mind, yet she's aware that this isn't how she wants to live her life. Haru has grown to appreciate just about any freedom she can get, claiming that having the freedom to go out shopping, as opposed to just doing it online, is "a luxury in itself." Additionally, despite the fact that she has been forced to do whatever people wish of her, Haru is very empathetic and can easily see how easy her life is in comparison to the average person, and she really is luckier than everyone else to be born as rich as she is.

Haru never seems to bear resentment towards her father despite everything he has put her through. In fact, Haru reacts to the loss of her father with legitimate grief, implying that Okumura did use to genuinely care for his daughter's well being until he made a series of overambitious investments that led to him politically competing with Masayoshi Shido. When meeting her father's killer, she also reacts with anger on par with those of Futaba's. She also confesses to Maruki that if given the chance, she only would've wanted to spend more time with her family, presumably with a father who is more attentive, as she feels that he was only ever focused on work. This most likely resulted in Maruki rewriting history to manifest an ideal Okumura as told by Haru, when he became the new master of Mementos during the January of next year.

In *Dancing in Starlight*, Haru reveals that she was trained in ballet during her youth, after being drawn to it after seeing an exquisite painting of a ballet dancer in her home. Her father allowed her to take up the art, but only because he could boast about it to his peers. She eventually lost her passion for it when her father failed to show up to her recitals, eventually dropping it entirely. Haru also reveals that she is notably very bad with technology, even struggling with smartphones, and has broken every computer she's ever used. Haru originally attended Shujin at her father's request, and struggled to make friends because she was too guarded from others because of her father's status.

## Etymology

Haru may be a historical reference to Haru Hiratsuka (平塚 明), a Japanese feminist in the early 1910s. This is further supported by Haru's last name "Okumura" which is the same as Hiratsuka's artist lover, Hiroshi Okumura (奥村 博史). Her name also means "spring" in Japanese.

## Trivia

* Noir in the Japanese official site is given the title of "Phantom Thieves' Noble Daughter" (怪盗団の御令嬢, *Kaitō-dan no goreijō*).
* The deadline for reforming Okumura is before Haru's marriage. In the Japanese version, this is written as "X days before Haru's body is sold" (春の身売りまであとＸ日, *Haru no miuri made ato X bi*) which almost looks like "prostitution" (売春, *baishun*).
* Haru's English voice actress, Xanthe Huynh, cosplayed as Noir while attending Anime Expo 2017.
* Haru and Makoto share the same blood type.
* Haru was originally supposed to be fragile like her character design suggests, similar to Fuuka Yamagishi.
* The official Twitter account for the Persona series posted a "Happy Birthday" message for Haru on December 5, 2017 JST, just like with Makoto Niijima, Goro Akechi, Ryuji Sakamoto, and Ann Takamaki before that.
* Haru is left-handed.
	+ In combat, however, she uses her grenade launchers with a right-handed stance, and is seen using chopsticks in the like, implying a level of ambidexterity.
* In the *Sword Art Online: Memory Defrag* collaboration, Asuna Yuuki is dressed as Haru because they both share the same Japanese voice actress, Haruka Tomatsu.
* According to *Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight*, Haru has no idea how to operate a computer.
* According to the official interview from the *Persona 5 Royal Official Complete Guide*, Futaba and Haru were deliberately designed to distance themselves from directly interacting with Akechi during the third semester to display that they never forgave him.
	+ During a game of Tycoon in the Thieves Den, Akechi cannot be at the same table as Futaba or Haru.