Naoko Yanagisawa

Naoko Yanagisawa (柳沢 奈緒子 Yanagisawa Naoko) is a supporting character in CLAMP's anime and manga series Cardcaptor Sakura. She is one of Sakura Kinomoto's classmates in school. She, along with Rika Sasaki and Chiharu Mihara, often appear alongside Sakura at school and during school events. She is also on the school's cheerleading squad with Sakura and Chiharu, despite being rather bad at gymnastics.

Appearance

Naoko has brown eyes over which she wears round glasses, and brown chin-length hair.

Her winter school uniform is a black long-sleeved shirt with red and white sleeve cuffs, a white neckerchief with a red stripe, and a white pleated miniskirt with a frilly white knee-length petticoat. On particularly cold days, she wears a thick black coat with her school's insignia on the back. Her summer uniform is a white half-sleeved shirt with a red neckerchief and a black pleated miniskirt. All year round, a white sailor hat with a black trim is worn along with white socks and black mary jane shoes.

Personality

Naoko loves reading various types of stories, especially fantasy stories and ghost stories. While Sakura Kinomoto reacts to scary situations with utmost fear, Naoko reacts with fascination and a brave willingness to explore these mysterious situations further.

This love of stories also extends to books in general, as seen in Episode 31 where she enthusiastically runs into a used bookstore. Sakura even mentions that their literature teacher, Ms. Midori, praised Naoko's book report.

Plot

Clow Card Arc

Naoko is involved in the main plot in Episode 31 with her discovery of The Create card, a Clow Cards hiding as a book in an old bookstore. Naoko buys the book when she learns that it is a book that allows the reader to write whatever ending he or she chooses. The power of The Create is that whatever is written or described on its pages will come true.

Naoko writes a story about mystical creatures with swirls for eyes as well as other odd circumstances that completely confuse Sakura Kinomoto and company when they investigate the mysterious happenings. Naoko remains oblivious to The Create's power, as all her writings are brought to life relatively far from her bedroom. Naoko brings her story to a climax with the appearance of a fire-breathing dragon (which Sakura fights through the last few minutes of the episode), but she decides to go to bed before finishing it. She closes her book, which in turn halts The Create's power, and every magical being that was created disappears. Sakura takes this opportunity to capture The Create before all the creations completely fade away.

When Naoko wakes up the next morning to find her book suddenly missing, she believes she just had a supernatural experience.

Clear Card Arc

She reappears as a supporting character in Clear Card Arc, in the same class as Syaoran Li and Takashi Yamazaki. She gently teases Sakura and Syaoran sometimes, such as when Syaoran falls for Yamazaki's jokes, or when drawing Sakura holding hands with Syaoran in Sakura's textbook.

When Naoko writes the play The Two Alices, inspired by Sakura's resemblance to Akiho, the script turns out to describe many of the magical events that Sakura had been experiencing recently. This leads Kero to speculate that Naoko may possess magical power, while Spinel suggests that the most creative people tend to have a sixth sense that allows them to depict events from the past and future.^[1]

In Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle

Naoko appears in Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle as a reader in the Record Library.

Etymology

• The name Naoko means "apple tree" (奈) (na), "thread" (緒) (o) and "child" (子) (ko).
• Naoko's surname Yanagisawa means "willow" (柳) (yanagi) and "marsh" (沢) (sawa).

Trivia

• Naoko shows some art skills in doing so as her drawing mimicked the actual manga's style.
• According to an interview with CLAMP featured in CLAMP no Kiseki Volume 2, in a chapter that didn't make the final cut of the manga, Naoko is revealed to have a long-distance boyfriend.
• Naoko's profile states that her birthday is October 11th,^[2] placing her on the "older" end of Sakura Kinomoto's class.

References

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