Naruto

Ino Yamanaka: My favorite female character

As a member of the Yamanaka clan, Ino works in her family's flower shop and has become particularly talented in ikebana. The anime's filler arcs show that she's been able to find other uses for her time in the shop and can tell a person's profession by simply glancing at the condition of their hands. Being a Yamanaka, she specializes in mind-altering jutsu. With the Mind Body Switch Technique, Ino can transfer to another's body (even animals as seen in Part II) and control it as her own for a short period of time. Despite the number of times she has used this ability, the slow speed and very nature of the jutsu has caused her to have little success when using it. Over the timeskip she acquires the ability to use medical jutsu. While this is not explained in the manga, the anime shows it to be a result of Ino finding herself to be of no use to her teammates in direct combat. As such, Ino becomes Tsunade's secondary apprentice in learning medical abilities, hoping to be more useful to her friends.

The hidden leaf vilage



The main characters of Team 7 (counterclockwise, from left): Sasuke Uchiha, Sakura Haruno, Naruto Uzumaki and team leader, Kakashi Hatake.

The students at the Ninja Academy, where the story begins, are split up into squads of three after their graduation and become Genin, rookie ninja. Each squad is assigned an experienced sensei. These core squads form a basis for the characters' interactions later in the series, where characters are chosen for missions for their team's strength and complementary skills; Naruto's squad 7 becomes the social frame where Naruto is acquainted with Sasuke Uchiha and Sakura Haruno, and their sensei Kakashi Hatake, forming the core of his world-in-the-making. The other three-man teams of his former classmates form another such layer, as Naruto connects with them to various degrees, learning of their motives, vulnerabilities, and aspirations, often relating them to his own. The groups of three are not limited to the comrades Naruto's age – groups in the story in general come in threes and multiples of three with very few exceptions.