Naminé

Naminé is the Nobody of Kairi, and wields the power to manipulate the memories of Sora and those close to him. Her first appearance is in Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories. She also plays a minor role in Kingdom Hearts II and appears in some cutscenes in Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days. The first part of her name, nami means "wave" in Japanese, similar to Kairi's name, which is derived from the word for "sea".

Personality
Naminé was born without memories and without the knowledge that she had emotions, due to the unusual nature of her birth. Because of this, she had no basis of any acting upon her birth. She simply followed the orders of whoever was close to her because it was the only obvious guidance she had, effectively making her very quiet and fragile in personality. This led to her discovery of her ability to feel, as often times she found that blindly following her captors hurt others, something that made Naminé feel responsible and guilty.

Naminé often rebelled against her captors because of this guilt in favor of trying to redeem herself by helping someone. Rebelling and constantly switching sides caused Naminé's determination and drive to grow significantly from her first appearance. Her more driven personality was put to good use, often going about in a Corridor of Darkness to help the games' other protagonists. She is also apparently very talented with her drawing, as seen when she finished a complex drawing of Castle Oblivion in Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories.

Like Roxas, Naminé seems to possess true emotions, being a special and unusual Nobody. While most Nobodies pretend to have emotions by acting on the memories of their past lives in order to react to a specific situation, Roxas and Naminé had no memories of their past lives, and thus had no basis for any acting.

Examples of Naminé's emotional capacity are as follows:


 * She felt lonely, which eventually led her to attract Sora to Castle Oblivion.
 * She manipulated Sora's memories, possibly a fact that she was jealous of Kairi.
 * She feared for Sora's life when he was about to be killed by the Riku Replica, even going so far as to completely shatter the replica's false memories.
 * She willingly threw herself between Sora and Larxene to keep her from killing Sora.
 * She showed genuine remorse and guilt for what she had done to Sora, Donald, and Goofy.
 * She laughed in amusement at Donald and Goofy's teasing comments and jokes about how Sora always acts around girls.
 * She was surprised and frozen in fear when Marluxia used her as a shield against Axel.
 * She angrily refused to destroy Sora's heart even when threatened with death by Marluxia.
 * She was disappointed that Sora should forget her in order to become normal again.
 * She willingly accepted that Sora chose to forget her.
 * She began to cry after she put Sora into slumber in his memory pod.
 * She was willing to go against DiZ's orders to assist Roxas.
 * She happily smiled at Roxas, through Kairi, when Sora returned to the islands with Riku in the FMV ending of Kingdom Hearts II.

Memory Manipulation
Unlike other humanoid Nobodies, Naminé's talents do not lie in battle, but in the ability to control memories, making her a "witch". The ability comes from the fact that she is formed from Sora's soul and body, rather than Kairi's. Because of this connection, Naminé can move around the "links" of his memories that are located within his heart to her liking, as well as the ones of those who are connected to Sora. She can even sever them completely, turning the victim into little more than an empty shell.

In addition, she can create objects affected by the new memories, evidenced by turning a card into a good luck charm for the Riku Replica and altering the appearance of Kairi's Wayfinder to resemble that of a Paopu Fruit. It is noted in Kingdom Hearts II that everybody who Sora, Donald, and Goofy met and worked with in Kingdom Hearts had mostly forgotten about them until recently; this could mean that the Castle Oblivion incident also somehow caused the other characters to lose their memories of Sora, and they regained all of them when Sora awakened. She also displays the ability to "break" the Riku Replica's heart through her connection to him.

She can also cover up Sora's memory of Kairi with her own image, but as she is Kairi's Nobody, it is impossible for Naminé to completely snuff out Kairi from anyone's memories, as shown when he regained a small memory of her even though he couldn't think of her name. Conversely, those with the greatest connections to Sora cannot ever completely forget him, as evidenced by Kairi, who still slightly remembered Sora, but not his name, his face, or the sound of his voice, while all other citizens of the Destiny Islands (along with all the people in other worlds) had completely forgotten about Sora's existence.

Naminé also has another limitation to her power. When Naminé took on the task of re-chaining Sora's memories together so that he will remember everything he had forgotten, but lose his memories of Castle Oblivion, she was unable to make much progress. DiZ reasons that it must be because Sora's other half, Roxas, is missing, and in order to completely restore Sora, Roxas and Sora must join with one another. This is half-true; the main reason of this is because of Xion, a memory-based replica of Sora created by Xemnas and Vexen.

How Naminé actually manipulates memories is something to be noted. As she is always drawing pictures on her sketchpad, DiZ believes that she draws in order to capture the memories she needs to chain together. Because of this, the walls of her room are covered by pictures of events, places, and people that are in Sora's memory. Several of them are also of Roxas, implying her ability to fiddle with Roxas's memories as well.

Naminé can sew in the manga, as shown when she fixed up Axel's coat, though he remarks that she has no talent for it.

Darkness
Naminé, being a Nobody, can also access the Corridors of Darkness to her liking, but she only does so three times; once to communicate with Roxas and inform him that he will not cease to exist when he joins with Sora, once to help Kairi and Pluto escape from their prison cell, and then to return Sora and co. to Destiny Islands. She also seems to be able to use the power of darkness to change her physical appearance, as seen when she uses Kairi's form to help Riku; however, this could be because of her connection to Kairi.