Nanase

"Alkaid may be good, but even I can do something like that!"

- Nanase

Nanase (七星) is the star of .hack//Alcor, a manga about her adventures in trying to win Silabus's love.

Appearance
Nanase is a young, black-haired girl dressed in a highly decorated fighting outfit. When fighting, she wields two knives as typical of her class. Her outfit is very similar to Alkaid's in form, but is different enough that the two characters are easily distinguishable from each other.

Personality
Though she is a very shy person Nanase is very determined in what she pursues. She can also be selfish and stubborn when she doesn't get what she wants. She is one of the other members of Canard, a guild whose members include Gaspard and her secret crush Silabus and also maintains a fierce one-sided rivalry with Alkaid who she has sworn to surpass. One of her biggest milestones is learning to never give up, even if she knows that she's going to lose.

Basic Info
In real life, Nanase's player attended the same Hokkaido high school as Chika Kuramoto. She aspires to be like Chika, changing from glasses to contacts, wearing the same hairdo, and putting the same accessories on her school bag, but despite this she looks nothing like her, and is told she was cuter with glasses, so she eventually goes back to wearing them. She does not know that Chika is the player behind Alkaid, but gets a hint when Alkaid suggests that they meet up together to go stargazing, something Chika originally suggested. She moves to another school after realizing her own strengths and later goes on to create the character Sophora.

.hack//Alcor
Nanase is a member of Canard, a Guild she joined in order to be close to Silabus who she secretly admires. However no matter what she does she finds herself in the shadow of Alkaid who she sees as a rival for Silabus's affection. Wanting to prove herself, Nanase swears to become stronger than Alkaid and win Silabus over.

However, being a former member of Kestrel, Bordeaux targets Nanase the punishment for defecting. However, the PK's attempts are thwarted by Kuhn, and Bordeaux pursues Silabus as an alternative. When Bordeaux PK's Silabus, she tells Alkaid that it was all a set-up by Nanase, and the arena champion declares that she would never forgive Nanase for it.

A somber Nanase hears of Endrance's rising fame in the battle arena, and hopes to gain Alkaid's trust by giving her rare knives in time for the title match. Afterwards, Nanase spends much of her time hunting down Lucky Animals for the rare equipment, and eventually gets help from Silabus and Gaspard. She gives Alkaid the rare knives, and the latter accepts them gratefully.

Later on, Alkaid suggests that they should meet up in real life and go stargazing together, which reminds Nanase of her real-life role model and classmate, Chika Kuramoto, who is coincidentally the player behind Alkaid. Having confidence in herself, Nanase's player, Yuasa decides to switch schools and create a new character named Sophora. The story ends with Sophora meeting Zelkova and Kaede of Moon Tree.

.hack//CELL
Nanase makes a short cameo at the start of the 8th chapter, that is part of the 2nd volume, where she was being beaten up by Bordeaux, then healed by Negimaru just to be continued getting beating up by Bordeaux. They eventually left her after spotting Midori in the same field, in hopes that Midori would prove to provide more excitement.

.hack//GU

 * See Sophora .

Trivia

 * In Japanese, her name means "seven stars." It is a Japanese name for the Big Dipper constellation (reflecting her interest in astronomy), which also contains a star named Alkaid.