Azai Nagamasa

Asai Nagamasa (浅井 長政) is the daimyo of the Oumi province. It is said that in order to reach Kyoto, one must deal with her, which makes her a slight obstacle for Oda Nobuna's plans. She is Yoshiharu Sagara's main rival throughout the series, and the two are shown to have much disdain for each other. She is introduced when she tries to make Nobuna her wife (note that at this point in the story, she is thought to be a man), not out of love, but to further her own plans for power. After being refused by the Oda clan she constantly tries to find ways to join forces and ends up married to Nobuna's sister Oichi (who funny enough is actually Nobukatsu in drag). She is based on the real-life historical figure Azai Nagamasa. In episode 10, it is revealed that she is actually a woman, after being discovered at a woman's bathing area by Nobukatsu. Initially a pure antagonist in the story, it is later revealed that she has a rather difficult past and tragic circumstances to deal with and ends up becoming more of an Anti-Villain or heroic antagonist who oposes Nobuna purely because of these circombstances. After her defeat, the death of Azai Nagamasa is made infamous by Nobuna turning her skull into a cup, when in reality, this was a cruel stunt Nobuna used to hide the fact that she had survived and adopted the name Oichi and become Nobukatsu's wife. Her seiyuu is Saiga Mitsuki.Nagamasa has blue hair and, with some effort, can also mask herself as a man, However, beneath her disguise, she is actually quite boxum. She is taller than Yoshiharu and for that matter most girls her age.In the beginning, Azai Nagamasa strives for more power and control, and doesn't seem to pay attention to other pursuits. Like Nobuna, she seemed ambitious, except her motivations are more out of self-interest. Later on, to her father, she acknowledges that Nobuna will be the one to lead Japan, suggesting she is actually more considerate of those around her. Although she tells Nobuna that love just "gets in the way of things," she ends up accepting Nobutsumi as her husband rather easily, and longs for genuine affection from someone. It stands to reason she is just trying to convince herself that a female Daimyo needs to forgo her own happiness, partly due to her upbringing, and that in reality she is deeply conflicted because of it. She would typically display a calm, manipulative exterior, and seemed to enjoy manipulating and using women, but she reveals later to Nobutsumi that it was purely a facade, and she did that so she would seem like a "real man." She's shown to strongly regret those attitudes. It was often exaggerated that Nagamasa "abandon females after he is done using them." However this rumor was made based on simply how Nagamasa "can do nothing but walk away silently" from women who wish to have sex with her. She has hinted many times that, inspite claiming she does not care either way, that she strongly dislikes the idea of war, and would much rather have peace. She resorts to begging when she finds Nobuna will go to war with her in provoked, and later pleads Azai Hisamasa to not betray the Oda clan and go to war, which gets her imprisoned. Furthermore, after marrying "Oichi" Nagamasa began to recognise Nobuna's talents and grew to admire her "sister" quite greatly, enough to consider killing her before she fell into the hands of Asakura Yoshikage, a fate presumably worse than dying. Even though she and Yoshiharu are initially rivals, she hints that he has some respect for Yoshiharu, when she says that Yoshiharu will probably think of an unusual and creative plan.After escaping from their prison via Goemon's aid, Nagamasa realises that the Azai clan is now on the border of annihilation and is forced to return to it as an ally of the Asakura; effectively, she betrays Nobukatsu unwillingly and fights against the Oda clan from then on out. During this time, she was torn between her loyalty to her father and clan, and her own feelings towards Nobukatsu, which are resprisented by the identities of Azai Nagamasa and Oichi respectively. She is also seen to still care for her "enemies" as she intends to kill Nobuna in order to spare her the demeaning fate that would follow should Asakura Yoshikage get his hands on her and she is disturbed upon hearing that the man in question even recklessly abandoned his own men to sneak into Nobuna's camp and attempt to abduct her. She has also expressed to herself the need to fight against Nobukatsu, eventually realising she must, and believing herself able to, kill him and throw aside her Oichi persona, but falters thanks to Yoshiharu's interferance. When the Azai-Asakura Alliance was brought to ruin and Nobuna destroyed Asakura Yoshikage's palace, she was confronted once more by Nobukatsu. She welcomed her death by his hand but Yoshiharu again interfered. Hearing her father had committed seppuku and that his final words were to let "Azai Nagamasa" die here so that Oichi could live on, she finally lets go of her Nagamasa personality. Her death is faked, with only Yoshiharu, Nobukatsu, and those closest to them, such as Nobuna, knowing the truth; Nobukatsu did not even inform his own mother of this fact. She permanently adopts to persona of Oichi and is later happily welcomed into the Oda clan as Nobukatsu's wife by Nobuna.