WMG / Haruhi Suzumiya Yuki Nagato

Yuki's parents became Humanoid Interfaces when Haruhi changed the universe.

Because erasing someone from existence is equal to murder, and Haruhi would never do such a thing.

• it seems more likely that Yuki didn't exist before Haruhi changed the universe and never had parents.

Originally, it was Nagato who was the "back-up" while Asakura was the original Agent assigned to observe Haruhi.

Hence her having the emotions and actually in a position to observe Haruhi, while Nagato was in stand-by in the Book Club Room. But Haruhi, being Haruhi, chose Nagato. The Integrated Data Entity switched Nagato's and Asakura's roles, something Asakura and her Sponsor didn't accept. This is only borderline WMG as it's fairly well supported.

• Asakura fits the stereotype of a girl all the girls would wants to be friends with. She's nice, good looking, popular without being stuck up, etc. Haruhi doesn't fall for it, but it's pretty well established that the Data Entity doesn't understand humans that well. Kyon actually mentions this in book 1.
• Asakura tries to befriend Haruhi early on. When that doesn't work, she even tries to draft Kyon as a Haruhi-interface("If we need to tell her anything, we'll just tell you.") Kyon is snarky, but doesn't totally refuse and the SOS brigade forms before it comes up again.
• When Nagato deletes her she says "This is a shame, I guess I really was just a backup."
• Asakura being the original primary would explain why she figured she could beat Nagato, as well as her greater willingness to take independent action.
• Adding revenge as additional motive does make Asakura's logic path of "Must-make-something-happen" to "Kill-Kyon" make more sense.
• Nagato also fits the stereotype of a backup. She's practically invisible by default. And it would explain why the Data Overmind didn't bother giving her a personality. She's a humanoid interface that...is terrible at interfacing with humans.
• In short, it would make alot more sense for the primary to be a friendly girl in Haruhi's class while her backup is tucked away in an obscure club room and different class.
• Implicitly disproved in Disappearance (at least in the novel, can't remember if the adaptation had the line too), where Kyon tells three years ago Nagato to "Sit tight in the literary club until Haruhi and I show up". Therefore Nagato knows that she will have a direct line to Suzumiya if she only waits in the right place, whilst Asakura would therefore be a scout of sorts, trying to gauge how close Haruhi is to moving into the clubroom.

I agree that Ryoko was clearly intended to be the one having contact with Haruhi, but I disagree that Ryoko was necessarily the original interface in charge, with Yuki as backup. Considering that Yuki is a member of the majority faction, the majority would likely want one of their own in charge of such an important operation (and would be able to achieve that), but still may have considered a member of the radical faction the best for making direct contact with Haruhi because of her much more active involvement. Nevertheless, even so, Ryoko needed to obey Yuki and not take actions beyond what was authorized. As for being the backup, I took that to mean in extreme situations where, perhaps, rapid decision-making was required, that is, more "emergency"-type situations rather than just the normal roles fulfilled by the agents, and would only make her own decisions if Yuki was unable to; otherwise, Ryoko would simply need to take the actions that are within Nagato's intended framework. As she explained in Surprise, Ryoko was there to back Yuki up when action was needed and Yuki could not act. Of course, by Surprise, because of Ryoko's predilection for extreme and unauthorized actions (such as by killing Kyon), Emiri was placed as a standby to ensure that Ryoko did not take certain unacceptable actions, but she did seem to exercise her own decision-making while protecting Kyon (if you could call it that) from Kuyo (within that broad mandate).

When Ryoko tried to kill Kyon, that was outside of her mandate and her authorization. Such questions needed to at the very least be deferred to Yuki, unless Yuki was put out of commission, but Ryoko clearly did it on her own, concealing her plan from Yuki. When Yuki became aware of what Ryoko was doing, naturally she acted to prevent the unauthorized action from occurring (and she had her own motives).

Basically, at the start, in Haruhi's 1st year in high school, Ryoko was assigned to be the interface who would have primary contact with Haruhi, but Yuki remained the brains of the operation and the agent in charge.

Nagato must obey Kyon's every command

In the episode with the missing computer club guy, Nagato freezes halfway through pointing at something when Kyon says "Hold it." I cannot remember if it is the case in the anime but in the book it is explicitly stated that she stays perfectly still despite the oncoming giant insect until Kyon says "you can move again." If you combine this with the fact that only Kyon's orders could make her open the door in the island mystery one I think this conclusion seems fairly reasonable.

• In the animated version of Sigh(but not in the book), Kyon tells Nagato "Get off of her." when Nagato attack Asahina in the eye-beam incident, and she does.
  • She had finished removing the contact at that point, so this isn't really evidence that she has to listen to him
  • In the same scene, she also gets permission from Kyon before showing her laser scarred hand in the same scene.
• But why? Because Kyon has subconsciously chosen her as his follower, the way the Espers are divided betweeen Haruhi and Sasaki. This is also why she was able to hijack Haruhi's power, a feat noone else in the Integrated Data Entity can do. Kyon is also subconsciously preventing them from wondering how she did that.
  • It's like that in the anime, too, although if you're not paying attention, you can easily miss it completely.
  • More evidence for this theory in the Rampage of Haruhi Suzumiya which is what the episode with the computer game is based on Nagato must wait for Kyon's permission to alter the game, she even says "The one who placed a limit on my data manipulation abilities is you." Why does Kyon have the power to limit her abilities? She also waits for Kyon's permission before joining the Computer Club.
    • This is also the counter to "she HAS to listen to Kyon". She basically ignores him asking her not to cheat.
    • Kyon likely doesn't have the actual power to limit her abilities. She's restricting herself in accordance to his wishes, since he said that he didn't want her to cheat by using her "magic". Considering that she then starts doing things outside human capabilities, like micromanaging a fleet of 20 scouts, and typing at superhuman speeds, she's more than able to disregard his requests/orders if she likes. She just defers to him out of respect, most of the time.
  • More "Yuki is Kyon's follower" examples. After the Cave Cricket incident, Kyon muses that Yuki had set it up so that Haruhi wouldn't be bored. There's a major flaw in this reasoning. At the time, not only was Haruhi in a good mood, but it was Kyon who was bored. Also, Haruhi quickly lost interest in the case of the missing Computer Club president, leaving Kyon to see the "case" through. If Yuki had come up with the scenario, it was for Kyon; not Haruhi.
• Countered, from SOS-dan: Nagato's actions are always subtle, and Someday in the Rain shows the slight variance in her responses to different people. For example, in 16:00, Nagato indicated to Tsuruya where Mikuru was, but in 17:45, Nagato did not tell Kyon where Haruhi was.
  • There is a difference between asking a question, and telling someone to tell them something.
• Of course, it could be just that Yuki is in love with Kyon. This is hinted with the Closed Space incident, where she messages Kyon that "Another trip to the library would be...". Kyon getting her a library card could have been the most romantic gesture she could think of.
  • And she does say "I personally want you to return."
  • Arguably, her growing feelings for Kyon are what drive her off the deep end (for a Data Entity Interface, anyway) and rewriting the universe with herself a "normal" schoolgirl and Haruhi and Koizumi no longer students at North High. Of course, this makes the escape program an example of I Want My Beloved to Be Happy.
• Going along with the above, you could interpret what Nagato did as her wanting to spend time with Kyon, who isn't around for most of the episode. Think about it: when Tsuruya barged in and asked where Mikuru was, she immediately pointed out her general direction. What does she do when Kyon finally comes back and asks her where the rest of the SOS-dan are? She simply stares at him, then nods.
• When Yuki uses strangely off-topic responses like "Axiomatic set theory" she is not answering Kyon's questions, without lying to him. This is her version of "classified information". She is warning Kyon off and he usually gets the hint.
• In summary, it's pretty obvious Yuki respect Kyon and trusts him more than anyone else. She also seems to look to him when she is unsure. It's not clear she HAS to obey though, it could just be a manifestation of her feelings(she's happy to take orders from someone she cares about). As mentioned in Disappearance, she seems to trust his judgement in some cases. It's not clear if she listens because she wants to, or she actually has to. She talks Kyon out of having the baseball game rained out, so she can disagree, but it's not a direct disobedience.
  • Given that Kyon tries not to rely on her as much, it seems unlikely that Kyon would give a direct command that Yuki would disobey, so this probably never gets tested.
• This is disproven at least in the novels and manga. Yuki does NOT. I think that there is an understanding between Kyon and Yuki in that Kyon can help "interpret" for Yuki, because of her tendency to take directives literally: Kyon helps guide her toward a correct understanding of the meaning behind the directive. She will not go along with Kyon all the time, however.
• Yuki might not have to obey Kyon's every command, but considering her more robotic nature, she is probably more prone to taking orders more literally than a regular human. Since Kyon is the one giving her orders most of the time, and doesn't have an established conflict of interest, like her other peers in the SOS Brigade, she simply defers to him, especially with him being the Only Sane Man of the group.

Alter-Ryoko was Yuki's subconscious desire to stay human.

No form of Yuki would want to hurt Kyon, but the fact that Alter-Ryoko knew Kyon was trying to change things back when even Human Yuki didn't suggests she was created differently from everyone else in the Alternate Universe. Some small part in the back of Yuki's mind gave herself a companion in the new world that would defend it. Add a dallop of guilt for original Ryoko's erasure, mix in Ryoko's normal psychopathy, and stir.

• Alternate Interpretation: Alternate!Ryoko is a Psycho Lesbian Stalker with a Crush on Alternate!Yuki. Why else, in the parallel continuity that Yuki had just created, was she hanging around the school at 4 am? Watching Yuki? With a knife?!
  • Why was Ryoko made like this in the parallel universe? It's clear that Yuki did not alter personalities, only altered events and removed the supernatural. In the case of herself and Ryoko, they wound up with personalities closest to how they acted as aliens: Shrinking Violet...and Stepford Smiler.
  • The troper writing this secondary theory has considered this interpretation canonical for a while (to the point of mentioning it on the Cast Page), but it's left ambiguous enough by the narrator (who had more important things to worry about, like bleeding to death) that it probably belongs here.
  • There's a doujin that I believe is entitled All-Purpose Cultural Yuki Nagato based on this idea, with the twist that Ryoko is actually in love with Yuki (in her psychotic way), and also explains why the alternate Yuki still wears glasses when Kyon has told her she looks better without them (Ryoko thinks she doesn't). It's a bit explicit, though.
• Alternately, Alter-Ryoko appeared because Yuki STILL HAD Haruhi's powers, and summoned her when Kyon TRIED TO SHOOT HER WITH A GUN! Yuki however didn't know she have been granted those power.
• Alternatively, Alter-Ryoko helped Yuki change the world, and was near her when it happened. Retaining her own memories, Ryoko was there to protect Yuki because Yuki would no longer be able to protect herself. She was an ordinary human now. It was only natural that Ryoko attacked Kyon when he pointed at Yuki with a gun. In the first chapter of the 7th novel, Ryoko asks the future Yuki (who saved Kyon from Ryoko): "Why? Wasn't this what you wanted?"
  • Alter-Ryoko couldn't be her subconscious desire since Yuki was conscious of that desire, but it was her defense mechanism to try to preserve her life of normalcy with Kyon. The gun was possibly a symbolic choice on Yuki's part, since it would kill off not just the Alter-Yuki she wanted to be, but would leave Yuki vulnerable to termination by the IDSE for reality-warping in the first place.
• It's possible that when Yuki recreated Ryoko, she didn't think to alter her personality like she did her own, so even though Ryoko was now human, she was still acting as Yuki's "back-up unit".

Nagato could hijack Haruhi powers because Kyon transfered them to her

Nagato was able to use Haruhi powers to alter reality in Vol.4 only because Kyon - probably subconsciously - transfered Haruhi power, or allowed them to be transfered. Tachibana Kyoko thinks that Kyon can transfer Haruhi power to Sasaki - or at least is crucial in doing so. Some dialogs in Asahina Mikuru's Adventure suggest that Kyon is somehow 'key' to Haruhi power. Of all people in the world, who Kyon trust most and wouldn't mind if they were holders of supernatural powers? Nagato.

Kyon is unconsciously a genie, and grants the wishes of those closest to him

Several of the above WMGs relate to this, but this is different in an important way: Kyon grants wishes, but not his own. At least not directly. Nagato, a sci-fi bookworm wanted to know everything and be an alien. So she's turned into an Integrated Thought Sentient Entity interface, which knows pretty much everything AND is an alien. Koizumi is classy, and given his bootlicking personality he wants to be high up in some organization. So, he's given the most important job an esper can have, and Haruhi considers him her second in command. Asahina's motives are unclear. (And this troper personally believes the WMG that she's only helpless to get close to Haruhi and Kyon) Since she's very secretive, I suppose her wish would be that she gets to be "in the loop". Notice that she also refuses to tell people things that she knows they already know. Either that or she wants to know her current problems will get better in the future, which she knows becuase she has seen her future self. Lastly Haruhi, who just wants to be special. If Kyon really does care about Haruhi, then he's made her the most important person in the world, with more than three organizations all wanting to know more about her, yet all subservient to her wishes. Now Kyon never gets his wishes unless someone else helps him out. The only problem is that other people that are somewhat close to him don't get any abilities, or else Taniguchi would be the most popular guy in school. It also seems that Kyon's sister doesn't have any wishes. On the other hand, Kyon's sister gets a magical cat in the books and is allowed on the island in the anime. Another problem is that Ryoko Asakura got a wish granted, and she definitely doesn't seem to be a special person of Kyon's, unless Nagato wished to save Kyon.

• Kyon equals Ayu, uguu? My mind is shattered!

Yuki doesn't really want to be normal.

Kyon thought he did, but realized he was wrong when he actually had the choice. Alternate-universe Yuki didn't have the chance to properly consider it, since she didn't know what her alien self had done to change things. For all we know, she would have come to the same realization as Kyon. (I don't expect this guess to be popular, since it makes her much less The Woobie.)

• I can agree with her not wanting to be normal. Isn't the implication that she just wants to get away from Haruhi who is annoying the hell out of her? She can't even express her annoyance properly to anyone but Kyon! Remember, this is mostly before Haruhi's character development where she's dragging everyone around, dressing them up, groping them and generally making life very difficult for someone who would like to just sit around and read without being interrupted. She wants to be special in more normal circumstances (read: an off switch for when it gets to be too much. Alternate reality Yuki had some overlap in personality and interests, but she wasn't the same and probably really would have just preferred normalcy.
• I read this differently; Errant Nagato does want to me normal, desperately. She does everything within her power to ensure her past self can't interfere. (The sync-preventing barrier, making Asakura essentially her bodyguard, etc.) This turns the events of the book into something of a giant chess match between Past Nagato and Errant Nagato. Kyon assumes his awareness of the change and the hints along the way are Nagato wanting him to be the one to make the final decision, but I think they were the direct result of Past Nagato's tinkering, and she didn't give a damn what he thought, she just wanted out.
• The question isn't "does she want to be normal", but "does she want to be one of those weird alien creatures on the planet she's investigating."

Yuki is the real/original reality bender.

It's clear that Yuki has the most power out of the three helpers, and she apparently steals Haruhi's powers once. As a sci-fi aficionado, she always wanted to be an alien, and the Integrated Data Sentient Entity isn't very stock as aliens go, it's quite well thought out. She probably lost control of her powers once before, so she buried her emotion with her powers. It's possible the relationship with her Nakama is her way of making sure it doesn't happen again, so that she can restore her own emotions. Asakura was shocked with her coding ability, - which is apparently above normal - to save Kyon, and of course, it was very dramatic. It may also be possible when Haruhi was destroying the world that it was Yuki's jealousy, since Haruhi doesn't go anywhere near as out of control when she's jealous of Yuki. Yuki constantly bails out Kyon of situations she creates because she wants to be useful. As for Asahina, she was probably created to give Kyon something to look at without objectifying herself. Itsuki was brought in because of his tendency to speculate and help Kyon figure things out, or to divert things.

Haruhi's presence could be a result of any number of things:

• An avatar through which to manipulate events and bring them together.
• A person to give the powers to, as something fun to do through conflict
• A curiousity endeavor, as in, how do people respond to omnipotence?

Kyon's presence is obvious. She found a normal person, for whom she will do anything. She grants his earlier wish to meet time travelers, espers and aliens. She's given him something to do, and she's made him rely on her. Yuki has been characterized as being burdened by the knowlege of what is to come, and that is to make sure she is not going to destroy everything.

Yuki is going to die in the tenth book.

Then, Haruhi will finally find out about the web of secrets around her. And then she shall bring down divine fury on the people who dared harm a Brigade Member. There are plenty of ways that she could find out, but the one I'd like the most: immediately after Yuki passes on, Kyon turns to Haruhi, plays his trump card, explains the situation, and sits back to watch the fireworks.

• I doubt Kyon would wait for Yuki to actually die. If it becomes clear that she's going to die and the rest of the Brigade has no solutions, he has every reason to play it preemptively.
  • Remember, the Trump Card is the Forbidden Chekhov's Gun. Basically if both Koizumi and Mikuru are ALSO neutralized, there would only be one person left for Kyon to call help from: Haruhi Suzumiya.
    • Neutralized or not, what could Koizumi or Mikuru possibly do to help against an enemy capable of neutralizing Yuki?
    • I don't quite get the 'trump card' thing. If Yuki can hijack Haruhi's power to make"Disappearance", it follows that her superiors can hijack them as well. So much for the 'trump card'.
    • Kyon never told any of the interfaces the nature of the trump card (it seems he's only thinking it when talking to Yuki), so for all they know he's bluffing. They're unlikely to want to hijack Haruhi's powers without a very good reason, which means that unless they have an interface eavesdropping when Kyon plays the card the first they'll know about it is when the fully aware Haruhi comes for them, by which point it will probably be way too late.
    • Just because the IDE created Yuki doesn't mean it has all her powers. For example: Humans have created machines that can travel thousands of kilometers per hour, but humans themselves can't. Yuki has practically killed the IDE in Disappearance without it being able to prevent it, so why wouldn't Haruhi be able to do it too?
    • However, Yuki is an observation/analysis interface. The Data Integration Thought Entity wouldn't unnecessarily outfit her with anything considered "unnecessary", any more than your car is equipped to do your homework. Seeing as it's implied that she stole Haruhi's powers to do it, Haruhi should be able to.
      We also know that the Data Overmind doesn't have the abilities of the interfaces, at least when it comes to communication. It's too alien, and can't communicate on a human level, hence the need for them in the first place. However, her larger-scale data manipulation abilities almost certainly come from the Data Entity, like her authorisation to breach Ryoko's data jurisdiction, and would be something the Integrated Thought Overmind has access to.
      It's also worth noting that the way we've seen interfaces be terminated is through nullification of the data link. Presumably, the data entity is still there, but it is simply unable to interact directly with the physical world like it would with an interface. If Yuki had stolen Haruhi's powers, she would be aware of this fact, and might have been able to either establish her own link to her biological interface, or remove the Integrated Entity's ability to act in that way. We also know the Thought Entity relies on some kind of consensus to operate, so if Yuki can act before consensus is reached, she could remove the Entity before it realised what was happening, and disconnected her.
• [[Jossed]]. She's alive and kicking through the eleventh.

Haruhi subconciously allowed Yuki to steal her power

It makes things more interesting, interesting enough for a movie. Thats why Kyon's trump card works-Haruhi will let her powers be used for things which are arguably 'fun', but removing one of her brigade members? No dice.

Haruhi is really Jesus' second human incarnation

She's testing if humanity is yet ready to go back to Eden now. By accepting someone as weird as the melancholical and bossy Haruhi, they would prove theirselfs to be worthy.

Yuki has thousands of masks and yukata hidden in a closet in her apartment.

It's possible that, since she remembers every summer in Endless Eight, that Yuki also kept all of the yukata Haruhi bought her and all of the masks Yuki bought herself. And, since each mask and yukata appear to be different, the time duplicate destruction is avoided.

• Why would she still have the yukata and masks if time had been undone? They would not disappear, but would they not have gone back to where she got them at the reset, and stayed there or been taken by another person when she got different ones? Otherwise, they are coming from nowhere. And most importantly, isn't it gross misconduct for Yuki to expand her closet just to have enough space for all those sets of robes?
  • Gross misconduct? Why would the Integrated Data Entity care how big Yuki's closet is?
• Unless she got her hands into TARDIS technology. Which is probable.
• Yuki is able to rewrite her own data to repair injuries. Presumably she could also do the same to alter her appearance, like how her own body was created, or how she forgot to remake her glasses.

Yuki does in fact have emotions, but only Kyon can see them.

I have not read the novels, but Yuki expresses emotion three times that I know of: happiness during the Day of Sagitarius, anger during the Ryouko fight, and boredom during Endless Eight. Mikuru and Itsuki know she's an alien so they don't bother to look for signs of emotion, and Haruhi is, of course, completely oblivious.

• I believe the way it works is that Kyon's the only one perceptive enough to notice. Her emotional signals are extremely minor compared to most people's, but Kyon's learned how to tell how she's feeling.
• I think he's wrong about half the emotions he reads from her. We simply accept what Kyon says she is feeling? Since when has his track record at reading people been any good?
• If you disregard his rather extreme Selective Obliviousness about Haruhi's feelings for him, since always.
  • According to him. Not to be get too geeky here, but uh you can think of it like Shamisen was saying. His interpretation of how Yuki etc. feel is simply a scenario that matches the evidence so far. Just like Koizumi and Mikuru's theories do, despite being completely contradictory. In fact, Kyon's perceptions drastically color ours. The most notable counterexample would be in his refusing to be suspicious of Mikuru, which was pointed out by Koizumi.
• Contradicted by "Snow Mountain Syndrome", where Haruhi's chat with Kyon shows she is perceptive of Yuki's emotions, too.

Nagato broke her directive of "observation" and hooked up with Kyon during one or more iterations of Endless Eight.

The "errors" accumulating due to uptime far longer than her original design specification, along with frustration at her powerlessness to end the endless summer, drive Nagato to act out by sleeping with Kyon. Kyon does not remember, but is aware of something "changed" in Yuki, while Yuki cannot forget, but also cannot do anything about her newfound feelings, as Haruhi's jealousy would cause The End of the World as We Know It. As a result, she creates an Alternate Universe where Haruhi is out of the picture, she can be a normal human free of the burden of her duty and memories, and she and Kyon can get to know each other and fall in love. The one memory she leaves herself of her old life is also the moment when she first became attracted to Kyon out of more than just intellectual curiosity (though she did not realize it until later): the episode at the library earlier that year.

Additionally, Nagato does not truly give Kyon an option out of I Want My Beloved to Be Happy; rather, she is thwarted only by the foresight of her earlier, coldly logical self, who does not understand the feelings that she will come to experience later on. This only adds to the angst that runs beneath her Emotionless Girl exterior.

Yuki was the one responsible for Endless Eight

It was a last ditch attempt to prevent Disappearance from happening.

• Or at the very least she took no action to prevent spending six centuries beside her love.

Haruhi subconsciously "remembers" Nagato taking her power, and recreated "The Vanishment of Nagato Yuki Chan" world for her AU self.

• Exibit A. She appears before Yuki-chan the same way John Smith did to her; to get her to join the Literary Club.
  • Actually, this is the Haruhi from that world (hence the hair-style and ribbons). After "our" Kyon left; the power flowed from that Nagato to her; and she had already been told about her alternate universe having those powers by "our" Kyon; so she acknowledged it immediately. First order of business was to clean things up.

Yuki didn't steal Haruhi's powers

I never really bought the whole stealing powers thing to begin with. It was left too vague and I think if she'd had that ability she'd have used it during the Endless Eight. Nevertheless I accepted it because we had nothing else to go on, until book nine. It showed the powers were transferable and the implication seemed to be that the powers currently reside in whoever Kyon wants to be with on a subconscious level. First it was Sasaki then Haruhi. The point at which Yuki "obtains" the powers is Disappearance, which also happens to be the point at which the narrative (written by Kyon) starts focusing on Yuki instead of Haruhi, coincidence? I reckon that this is the point at which Kyon shifts affections to Yuki and Yuki suddenly finds herself in possession of the powers. Being an alien she actually realises she's got them, unlike the previous two owners, and uses them. The question is, does she still have them?

• Don't forget, though - she didn't use her powers during Endless Eight because she was instructed only to observe. I don't doubt that she seriously wanted to jack Haruhi's powers and end her boredom, but that would go against her orders.
  • I get the feeling she didn't do anything there because, if you'll notice, nobody ever asked her to do anything. Not even remind them that they were in a loop. She rather seems to lack initiative. Until Disappearance, anyway. Also, the IDE has shown itself to be perfectly capable of 'data manipulation.' It's likely they only need Haruhi because of how chaotic she is: She does things they would never think of. Perhaps she just stopped following a sort of non-interference order and showed what she was really capable of.
• The Data Entity is a Reality Warper, yes. However, the reason it is watching over Haruhi is because it is limited by Equivalent Exchange. They can manipulate data all they want, but only Haruhi can create (and presumably destroy) data. Yuki mentions this in her first exposition.
  • Ok then, but if only Haruhi's power is capable of that, and Yuki can steal that power, why bother observing her? What Yuki did is right along the lines of what Haruhi was trying before Kyon possibly interrupted her. There's just too big a plot hole to say she stole the powers and leave it like that. If that were the case, the IDE would simply snatch the powers, withdraw Yuki etc. and go on their merry way. If they're still watching Haruhi, there has to be more to it than simply data creation.

Yuki gave Haruhi her powers three years ago on behalf of the IDE.

The IDE always had such reality warping powers and simply couldn't think of a way to use them to improve itself anymore. They decided to give someone else their abilities and see what they would do with them. So they picked a race they were interested in, humans, and then narrowed down the choice to Haruhi because A. she wants weird things, B. she's secretly rational and won't notice and threaten them and C. She's a decent person deep down and won't do anything too dangerous. Yuki could steal her powers because she gave them to Haruhi in the first place. It's why she was around three years ago. It's also why her abilities can involve reality warping as well, such as changing the baseball bat to always hit home runs. When she went on a rampage after stealing said powers, the IDE didn't punish her not because Kyon threatened them, but because they would lose Kyon's support and influence over Haruhi and therefore an external factor introducing major changes. She finally started doing weird stuff, after all. Finally, perhaps Haruhi isn't the only one with weird reality warping powers and this is all a giant experiment the IDE is carrying out. They grant these powers and take them away again if they're not learning anything from the wild chaotic humans, like Sasaki's insistence on normality.

Yuki was programmed to have an emotional bug

The IDE is a super intelligent entity with access to near unlimited computing power. It would not make an error of that magnitude in such an important program. The error was programmed in intentionally by either the IDE or Yuki herself as Xanatos Roulette of currently unknown purpose. Alternatively the emotional bug was the result of Yuki, tired of serving the IDE after the Endless Eight loop, was able to escape its control. They engaged in a data war similar to the one in Snow Mountain Syndrome, and the result was the alternate reality Kyon found himself in. The winner depended on whether Kyon succeeded at reversing the effect, although who actually won when he succeeded is unknown.

One or more characters is a Time Lord.

... is this just here to fulfill the 14th Example Law?

• No. Mikuru is a time lord by virtue of the fact that she's a time traveller, and as we know from reading the WMG pages, all time travellers are time lords.

Yuki ordered Ryoko to attack Kyon.

To be trusted by Kyon, Yuki told Asakura to atack Kyon so that Yuki could save him. If Asakura really was trying to kill someone, im pretty sure that there are better ways that trying to kill him with a knife.And this can be match with the "Kyon is god". Think about it, Asakura was trying to kill Kyon to watch what Haruhi do, but if Kyon REALLY is God, she attacks him to see what God can do. This would explain why she chose the Knife Nut option, to get the maximum emotional response. Yuki kept to her plan though.

• It might be that Ryoko wanted Kyon to understand the reason for his death and to accept it. If you recall "Adventures of Mikuru Asahina Episode 00" at one point Yuki says that in her culture, and here she was clearly drawing from her own experience as a humanoid interface, incomplete information is considered a serious flaw, something to that effect, which can explain why Ryoko felt a need for Kyon to understand her intentions. She likely expected him to eventually act the same way she did as she dissolved away, in complete acceptance and understanding of her fate.
• Also, Ryoko probably chose a knife then for the effect. Basically, it looked like she intended to leave Kyon's body in the classroom to be discovered in the morning, possibly by the students. With the stab wounds and blood all over, it likely would have had more of an effect than if he had just simply died without a mark or was disappeared. Now it's possible that someone does patrol the halls in school at night in Japan—in another anime, Chibi Maruko Chan, one episode showed a faculty member patrolling the school at night at her elementary school—, but she might have concealed the body in such a way that it would not be discovered until daylight again and when the students came into the classroom. Now, the whole knife thing afterward, I don't know. Maybe humanoid interfaces have a tendency to engage in perseveration or something.

The events of "Disappearance" are directly due to Yuki developing romantic feelings for Kyon.

The way her new, "normal" world was set up made things quite easy for her in that regard:

• Haruhi was at Kouyouen with Koizumi, who already had a crush on her - both placing her at a distance from Kyon, and giving him a viable rival for Haruhi's affections.
• Of all the former SOS Brigade members, Kyon could most easily establish contact with Yuki. Mikuru was an upperclassman with a protective best friend, Haruhi and Koizumi were students at another school, but Yuki was just a shy girl who was attracted to Kyon and wanted another member for her literature club. She also had the most positive (well, the least negative) initial reaction to him.
• Yuki let Kyon keep his memories and gave him the ability to change the world back. As much as she wanted the chance to have a normal relationship with him, she didn't want to do it against his will - she wanted him to be happy.
  • An alternate explanation for Kyon's memory continuity is that only Kyon can alter his own memories... because Kyon is God. All of the females pegged as Reality Warpers are, at the time, his object of affection, and he subconsciously wants to make their dreams come true.

In the 10th Novel, Yuki will catch Asakura's knife with her bare hand right as she trys to kill Kyon.

'Alpha' Yuki that is, sliding into the 'Beta' timeline with 'Alpha' Kyon. Because she's already done it twice, why not a 3rd time?

Yuki did not leave Kyon with his memories intact because She Wants Her Beloved To Be Happy

She did it because she knew that he was the only one capable of choosing the "strange" real world over the "normal" false one. Yuki does not exist in time and space the exact same way as we do. Because of the "synchronization" of her past and future selves she, like Dr. Manhatten, experiences her entire existence simultaneously. She knows exactly what she's going to do but is powerless to stop it, it will happen, because it must happen, because it has happened. Mikuru and Itsuki by admission and evidenced by their actions would prefer quiet ordinary lives, and Haruhi cannot carry it out because she is clueless to the situation (and might not even notice the change in the first place) and not focused enough to figure it out before the deadline anyway. Not only is Kyon the only one capable of choosing the old world knowing full well the responsibilities that come with it (having already done it once before in Melancholy), he's also the only one capable of taking the action necessary to see it through to the end, to the point of mobilizing the future versions of the himself and the SOS brigade to come back and save his own life when he's injured. He was not given a choice, he never had a choice because there was never any doubt which course he would take. He was given a job to do and he performed it. The moment he finds the bookmark there is absolutely no doubt about what will happen. Hell, in the movie version at least she comes right out and tells him this is why he was left with his memories intact, because he was the only one who could and would stop her.

• It doesn't disprove your explanation, but after Disappearance, Yuki starts refusing to do synchronization as she states. We first see it in Intrigues when it turns out to be Yuki who shoots the sci-fi gun to turn her Errant self back into an interface; the Disappearance Yuki requests synchronization, but the Intrigues synchronization refuses, saying she doesn't want to.

Nagato drugged the tea she gave Kyon the first time (storywise anyway) she invited him to her house.

All the weird backdrops are Kyon tripping the hell out.

Kyon’s mission to find the keys in the Disappearance arc was meant to be a lot harder.

Kyon learned which school Haruhi went from Taniguchi. Taniguchi is supposed to be absent like other former East Middle school students. Yuki didn’t consider the fact that Taniguchi’s father would force him to go to school with a high fever. Kyon is supposed to find Haruhi by himself.

Yuki is aware that the Five-Man Band will destroy the world.

She does the minimal possible in Disappearance to move all the members away from each other and is thwarted when the IDSE overrides her common sense to impose the "interesting" event that will doom the world. Mikuru is from the end of the world and has been sent back to mix things up in random ways (making her seem rather stupid) in a vain attempt to save the Earth from the coming doom.

Yuki Nagato is human.

Yuki was born to a Mr. and Mrs. Nagato and was attending North High until Haruhu jacked Kyon into the first data explosion. At that point the IDSE infected Yuki and froze her in place to await Haruhi's entry into that school. When Yuki blocked out data manipulation she didn't become human, she just became uninfected. Thus Ryoko's comment about Yuki's puppet master, etc.

Yuki didn't steal the power, she moved it.

The resolution at the end of The Disappearance was not complete because some of the power remained with Sasaki. Note how the anti-SOS pops up shortly afterwords and in a very immature condition, from which they rapidly evolve to be a match for the SOS brigade.

The series will end exactly like the first Star Trek movie.

Yuki and Haruhi merge.

Miss "Gate Length" is the result of Moore's Law gone wild.

Hence her family name. See: gate length defined.

708 is just as meaningful as 505.

Now, has this already happened, or will it happen?

• Flip it over and it becomes BOL or "Be On the Lookout".

Human Yuki is not powerless.

• Instead she's a Papermaster.

Yuki is the only person out of the three supernatural SOS members telling Kyon the complete truth.

Her organization are only observing for the time being, and as of yet don't see any reason not to tell Kyon the information he asks for - even moreso now they know that Kyon can easily give them a hard time if he needs to. Yuki only warned him about her perhaps lying to him incase her superiors ever change their mind.

Yuki shot first!

• The great Kuyou/Yuki war started at the same moment that Kuyou realized that she was going after the wrong boy? How about it started just before X-mass?
  • Kuyou: "Where is Kyon?"
  • Yuki: "See that boy right over there? He's your man."
  • Kuyou: "Thank you."
  • Yuki: "Now excuse me while I change the Universe."
• Kyon took the two-day limit the wrong way around. Yuki was asking for two days in order to totally throw Suou off, not limiting the change the two days.

Yuki is a tool left by Neglectful Precursors

How can a life form not evolve? The answer is that Yuki's patron is NOT a living being. It did not evolve over time. It was created in its current form by others some time ago. Yuki is a Berserker. She has forgotten her role in eliminating the previous civilization and is now looking for some goodlife on Eatth.

Yuki is using Kyon's brain.

• She said the cricket was using somebody's brain to increase it's probability of existence and that this was a related life form.
• She said that humans hold the key to the evolution of her kind.
• The interfaces have been very selective about lobotomizing espers, only taking out those who can't handle the truth.

Alt-Yuki was lying about not being a writer.

The files she deleted from her PC were the fanfics she had written about her being a Mary Sue alien engaged in fun adventures with the boy from the library. (Once he walked into her clubroom, these were no longer needed.)

• She hides her fanfic from Kyon until she's finished (Editor in Chief★Straight Ahead!). A callback?

Yuki wasn't given the ability to express emotions normally because she is the humanoid interface in charge of observing Haruhi

Haruhi is human so to properly understand her actions requires the ability to understand human emotions, so the interface in charge would need to have emotions to properly understand the thought process behind them. Yuki is the only humanoid interface with normal human emotions but she can't express them because normal human interaction would interfere with her objective. the other interfaces were not given actual emotions because they didn't need them but were given the ability to fake a normal human personality in order to be able to gather information in ways that Yuki would be unable to without being given the ability to express emotions.

Yuki is a Rei Ayanami clone who went rogue and went dimension-hopping.

She slightly changed her hair color to hide from NERV's agents and claims to be a robot to cover up the fact she came from another dimension. The Data Overmind is actually a series of subspace communications coming from the equally-rogue Shinji and Asuka, who seek to escape the EVA pilot life, save humanity from Instrumentality, and lead it to a new home. Of course, there are those seeking to stop them. Mikuru is also a dimension-hopper, and claims to be a time-traveller to hide the fact that she is one of Gendo's agents. Furthermore, the giant beasts that Haruhi tends to unknowingly create are actually Angels that are attempting to break into the dimension depicted in this series to foil the rebels' attempts at escaping their destiny.

Yuki hates Mikuru

The reason? She sees Mikuru as a rival for Kyon's love. The Other Wiki actually mentions this in Yuki's trivia section.

In Haruhi-Chan, Yuki was the one who revived Kyon after he exploded.

This is the real reason why she pressed the button too soon.

An alternate version of Yuki is the leader of the Data Overmind.

I mean, Itsuki is established as the actual head of his Organisation, and the older Asahina is likewise the leader of Asahina's organisation. It stands to reason that a different version of Yuki became the leader of the Data Overmind, one that never developed human emotions or if she did, chose to get the "bugs" eradicated rather than building off from them.

Yuki isn't in love with Kyon.

She instead chose to have her "Disappearance" self crush on Kyon because Kyon is the person she trusts the most, gets along best with, listens to, and feels both the most protective of and grateful to. All of these things together in fictionland tend to be given a romantic overtone (possibly getting a pass on the romance thing if both parties are girls and are sisters). Of course, Yuki imposes this by barely interacting with anyone besides Kyon. Yuki, who reads a lot and tends to be socially out of it, would be probably far more familiar with the fictional tropes than she would reality (and that trusting someone and being protective of them doesn't automatically mean romance). In short, it was chosen more as a correlation than out of an actual feeling.

Nagato serves as the Data Overmind's "router" for the other interfaces.

This neatly explains several points in the novels:

• She can override Asakura's 'lockout' on the classroom when Asakura tries to kill Kyon.
  • This is also why she can delete Asakura and restore her seemingly at will—Asakura is an app running on Nagato's CPU.
• The Data Overmind selects her to interface with the Heavenly Canopy Dominion.
  • She alone can process the additional bandwidth of communicating directly between the DITE and the HCD.
  • When she develops "fevers" and other problems doing so, it's because she's overheating from being severely overclocked to handle the extra data transfer.
• She can "borrow" Haruhi's powers during Disappearance.
  • She actually had the other interfaces network and massively parallel process the required data to generate an entirely new timeline, and merely claims to have borrowed Haruhi's power when in fact she temporarily duplicated it. (The DITE then placed a lockout on that ability so that she could never abuse that ability again—this is what she means at the end of Disappearance when she mentions that "punitive measures are being considered".)
• She lacks the ability to show emotions to the same degree as the other interface, even though she does feel emotion to some degree.
  • Most of her "CPU" and memory are allocated to transferring data between the other interfaces and the Data Overmind, leaving little to spare for showing emotion. Alternately, the Data Integration Thought Entity never intended Nagato to directly interface with humans (let alone Haruhi) any more than necessary, and so created her with limited emotional subroutines so as to reduce power requirements. (The reason why Nagato is a big eater is because she needs the extra energy to process emotional responses as well as fulfill her primary functions.)

The Data Overmind saw itself as benefiting from Kyon's threat

When at the end of Disappearance Kyon threatened the Data Overmind's existence if it deleted Yuki, the Data Overmind saw that the situation worked to its advantage. With Kyon, who was very close to Yuki's observation subject Haruhi, showing such fierce loyalty to Yuki, the Data Overmind understood that Yuki would remain a very useful humanoid interface when it came to observing Haruhi.

The Data Integration Thought Entity's humanoid interfaces are hybrid beings

To be clear, I am only talking about the humanoid interfaces created by the Data Integration Thought Entity, as the nature of the Heaven Canopy Domain's humanoid interface(s) is much less clear.

These humanoid interfaces are often said to be data organisms, but they seem to differ from other data organisms in important ways. Generally, data organisms don't really have a physical presence, though with the possible exception of the Entities/Domains it appears that they are localized within spacetime. They seem to interact with the physical world primarily through possession-like tactics, by possessing biological organisms. The biological organisms, however they are hijacked, nonetheless maintain their status as independent beings whose bodies are only being used by the data organisms, but don't belong to the data organisms.

The humanoid interfaces are different, and this might have been a necessity due to the need to interact with humans. Embodiment and the experience of inhabiting a lived body are fundamental aspects of human experience, among others, (see the writings of phenomenologists like Merleau-Ponty or those who cite him) and might have turned out to be critical to being able to communicate with humans on any meaningful level, so the Data Integration Thought Entity (DITE) needed to have the data organisms it sent as its operatives have their own bodies and to integrate with those bodies and experience them as their own, becoming embodied, allowing an experience of inhabiting a lived body to form, permitting them to understand humans to communicate with them while still maintaining a link with the DITE. Of course, this wasn't perfect as is clear from the behavior of these interfaces, but it was enough.

It appears, too, that in a way their bodies are important on some level, though the exact importance has not been made clear. Ryoko mentions not understanding biological organisms' concept of death, Yuki seemed quite willing to use her body as cannon fodder, and Ryoko continued to maintain her cheeriness even as she dissolved away. Even so, a sense of self-preservation does seem evident, however minimal it may be compared to typical humans, and their bodies are important. Ryoko, in her big fight with Yuki over killing Kyon, knew that the way to get Yuki out of the way was to destroy her body. When Yuki caused the knife to dissolve, Ryoko momentarily lost her cheeriness (in the anime). The dissolution of Ryoko's body and "nullification of [her] data link" stopped Ryoko's plan. Yuki does bring Ryoko back later on, and so does Emiri even later on. This makes the importance of their bodies unclear, but there seems to be some importance.

The edit lock is expiring, unfortunately. Peace out.

• "Ryoko, in her big fight with Yuki over killing Kyon, knew that the way to get Yuki out of the way was to destroy her body." To clarify, it appeared that Ryoko saw destroying Yuki's body as key to also getting rid of her ability to affect the physical world, even through data manipulation, and in the light novel and anime seemed to believe she was ending Yuki's "short 3-year life."

Yuki Nagato has moved on.

Yes, I am aware of the spinoff series and its what if? story, but this is not that series (it has its own page). When Ryoko Asakura became aware that Yuki had bested her, she had first expressed shock, briefly breaking out of her nearly incessant inappropriate cheerfulness, before returning to it. Why? It is because humanoid interfaces can accept things much more easily than typical humans.

Many have shipped Kyon and Yuki and perhaps Yuki was attracted to Kyon, in a kind of naive way by Kyon likely being the first being of any kind to do anything for her personally when he made her that library card. However, at the end of Disappearance it became clear to Yuki that such a relationship would not occur, were that a primary interest of hers in the first place. She accepted it and moved on. Kyonx Yuki is over.

Yuki is now working to follow her own conscience and to stake out a course for her own life. Getting the ability to synchronize removed was an important aspect of that. She continues to work for the DITE, but that's likely because she thinks it's the right thing to do and she follows her own belief systems in the pursuit of her job. It is not clear all that she is doing, but it is clear that she is trying to gain satisfaction from her life so that in the end when she's finally destroyed, deleted, dead, or whatever she could look back on her life and say "No regrets!"

In Disappearance, Ryoko Asakura is Yuki's guard dog

When I watched Disappearance, perhaps the thing I saw that made it hardest to maintain my suspension of belief was how, I guess, forgiving Yuki was right after Kyon had pushed her up against the wall. It seems this Disappearance Yuki was someone who would easily be taken advantage of. I guess when Yuki was about to surrender her powers, she realized just how vulnerable she would be in the remade world, so she brought back the confident, sociable Ryoko, someone who would likely be very difficult to take advantage of, to watch over her Disappearance self. The remade Yuki was still pretty impaired, but without the superpowers, so in case she came to any danger, Ryoko would be there for her, to fetch her out.

That's how Kyon ended up in a pool of his own blood...

If someone wants to get to know Yuki Nagato

They should look at what she's reading, and then pull up a chair and sit next to her, not across from her. Not too close, or nothing, but close enough to read what she's reading. It would be a plus if they were already familiar with what she's reading. They should then offer up comments about the book, particularly about the part she is currently reading. At first, don't do it too much, but show that you're trying to share HER object of interest, which is of course what she is reading. Do it for maybe 20 minutes at first, but don't be a stranger, and try doing this somewhat regularly. That way, you become a regular and trusted person in her life. At that point, she may open up more and even show interest in what you like.