Ino Yamanaka (Character)

Ino Yamanaka

CHARACTER

A member of the Yamanaka clan. She's a kunoichi from The Hidden Leaf Village and Sakura Haruno's biggest rival in any matter of subjects. She is also a member of Team Asuma and is part of the Ino-Shika-Chou Trio. She is also a Medical-Ninja and the Daughter of Inoichi Yamanaka.

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Overview

Originally a great rival to Sakura, Ino has had some fairly drastic character changes. She works in a flower shop with her parents, she's a Ninja, and she's blond. Aside from that she's taken a journey that has completely changed her personality.

In the beginning Ino was something of the Queen Bee in the School, very popular, pretty, and charismatic. She and Sakura were good friends right up until the time they started noticing Sasuke, and than they (like many other of the girls) started plotting to date him. Up until that point Ino was very encouraging to Sakura trying to break her out of her shell, but after that point focusing on sabotaging her.

They both were quick to insult each other and belittle the abilities of the other. This conflict didn't come to outright blows however. At least not until the Chunin tournament.

Ino in Action

At that point they both turned from generally nice girls who happened to have a crush on the same guy to outright warriors looking for blood. The fight was among the most violent up to that point, as they were both fueled by their respective loves for Sasuke. This was the real highlight for Ino so far, because she rarely fights. When it was over both were laying face first in the dirt. What's notable however is that this was the first fight Ino copied something Sakura did. Sakura cut her hair short so it would be less of a liability in combat. Ino did the same during this fight. As the time goes on Ino becomes a medical Ninja, which Sakura already had decided to do, and Ino's attitude became much more accepting of others, again like Sakura.

Ino really isn't a character who has her own style and that's why her time on-camera is fairly low. If she has any constant across the anime and manga it's becoming increasingly less aristocratic and more common.

Her power is unique, to leap into the mind of her enemy and control them, but aside from that her realtive unpopularity makes her a rare sight in the Naruto universe. She's taken interest in Sai, another relative newcomer, but nothing has yet developed between them.

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