Anko Mitarashi

- Anko as a genin. - Anko's appearance in Parts I and II. 1/2 Anko is an average-sized, young woman who was of slender frame. She has light brown, pupil-less eyes. Her hair - black with a blue tint in the manga and violet in the anime - is styled in a short, spiky, fanned-out ponytail. She usually wears a custom-made outfit that is crafted of thin metal mesh to fit the lines of her body, that covers her from neck to thigh. Over this, she typically wears a tan overcoat with a purple in-seam and a pocket on each side, a dark orange mini-skirt, a dark blue belt, and pale grey shin guards. In addition to the typical forehead protector, she also wears a small pendant that looks like a snake fang. As a child, Anko wore a sleeveless chainmail mesh shirt, chainmail armbands that reached to her elbows, dark shorts, and knee-length boots. Though during her time as a preteen when following Orochimaru in the anime, she instead wears a brown-red t-shirt with bracelets, white shorts and chainmail leggings. Years after the Fourth Shinobi World War, she puts on weight and starts wearing red lipstick. Her chainmail bodysuit is replaced with an orange blouse with a white coat cape over it.

When she was a genin, Anko was on a team led by Orochimaru. Their team took part in the Chūnin Exams; during the second round, they confronted a team consisting of Hayate Gekkō, Ibiki Morino, and Tokara. Orochimaru took a strong interest in Anko, teaching her several of his signature jutsu and, in the anime, what he'd learned about immortality. Orochimaru eventually used Anko as a test subject for his Cursed Seal of Heaven. Of the ten subjects, Anko was the only survivor. In the anime, Anko refused to continue following Orochimaru after she received her Cursed Seal of Heaven. Unwilling to kill her because she was so valuable as a research subject, Orochimaru erased Anko's memory, making her wonder if she'd been abandoned for lacking the ideal drive to fuel the cursed seal, rather than her choosing to reject him in the face of his evil experiments. An amnesiac Anko was found in the Land of the Sea by Konoha's Anbu and brought back in hopes of giving the village information regarding Orochimaru, but because of her tampered memory, nothing could be recovered. Distraught at being abandoned and having no memory, Anko was comforted by the Third Hokage. Ever since then, Anko held a grudge against Orochimaru for what he did and believed it was her responsibility, as his former student, to stop his criminal actions.