Akechi Mitsuhide

Mitsuhide Akechi (明智光秀) is a young samurai and second-in-command to Dousan Saitou who is described as a "young genius" and her mastered fields include literature, and combat. She is Dousan Saitou's main adviser and military strategist. When Nobuna Oda and Dousan form an alliance, she continues as a strategist, and often works alongside Yoshiharu Sagara.

In the anime, she is voiced by Sayuri Yahagi.

Appearance/Atributes
Juubei is a young girl around Yoshiharu's age with knee-length violet hair that has thigh-length strands in the front with a yellow ribbon tied in the back, large violet eyes and a very faded light blush on her cheeks.

Hinting her high status, she dresses in a vibrant blue kimono with a large bow in front. She wears a set of brown, heeled boots, in contrast to the zouri which many other characters wear. She has a katana at her side, showing her status as a samurai.

Personality
As a talented young girl with skills in literature, and warfare (note: during this time, much of Japan was illiterate, and being able to read fluently was a great skill), Mitsuhide is confident in her abilities, and often has a condescending attitude towards others for not having skills up to her standards. She is extremely dedicated to her goals, and will stop at nothing to prove her own superiority. This self-centred attitude has lead her to clash with occasionally with Yoshiharu, who often sacrifices himself for the sake of others. She often tries to take on difficult tasks, in order to accomplish them and gain more exposure for her own talents. As a strategist she is quite cunning, and capable of being quite cruel; shown when she plots to assassinate Nobuna at the beginning of the series. She somewhat abandons these selfish views later on, and becomes more concerned with serving her fellow Oda clan members, and not only herself.

Being ignored by almost everyone except her mother as a child, Mitsuhide became mostly distant from others, and never made any attempt to have a relationship with someone. When she understands how Nobuna values her clan as family, Mitsuhide is inspired, and becomes closer with her allies; notably with Yoshiharu, who she's very cold towards through much of the series, due to seeing him as a rival. later on during the last few episodes it is even implied that she's developed romantic feelings towards him; for example, she is shown giving him a protective charm and later screams in rage when he is seemingly killed in an explosion, latter revealed to be a ruse to help him escape alive. After realising his survival and finding him unconscious she sheltered, treated and protected him from the cold, with her own body, until the search party found them. She is later shown to flaunt this "skinship" as a means of bragging about how close they have become during the end credits, but withdraws when she is asked the details.

In the Light Novels, Mitsuhide's personality remains much the same, except she is depicted more as someone slightly more airheaded who can't read the atmosphere rather than someone who is intentionally driven by her ambitions to be unempathic or hostile, though she still is to some degree. An example of this is when she unfairly defeated Yoshiharu during the cooking trial. while the anime depicts her lacking any sense of shame for the act the LN depicts her instead as simply not knowing how it affected other's around her. Yoshiharu also believes she's simply incapable of doubting other people's true intentions as well as understanding when she's being used. The sole exception to this rests with her ability to notice the blooming love between Yoshiharu and Nobuna, to which she is so keen that the duo developed feelings of caution around her.

After rescuing and caring for the nearly dead Yoshiharu she came to recognise the fact that he comes from a peaceful future and was thrown into their warring world. Because of this she becomes quite protective and caring towards him. Likewise, as he is always saddened whenever he's thinking about her future she comes to believe that he's trying to save her from a tragic fate, thus she develops feelings of admiration towards him as well. After that experience, she came to love Yoshiharu quite deeply, though does not admit it, and, under the mistaken idea that Nobuna herself permitted it, she even tries to marry him persistently. After learning of Nobuna's own feelings for Yoshiharu she shows a deep level of emotional concern. Even then, she cannot outright admit her own feelings and uses the excuse that Nobuna's position is simply too high to wed a mere retainer and that she would be a more suitable "sacrifice" to marry Yoshiharu. Like Nobuna, she has a tenancy to become extremely hostile towards Yoshiharu for his lechery or his "plots to make a harem", the two have even teamed up against Yoshiharu at times because of this, once threatening to burn down an entire temple he was inside of and later pursuing him with swords.

She constantly has a habit of hyping herself in her speech, often referring to herself in the third person as "the/this great Juubei-sama."

Background
She is a descendant of the first Himiko, thus nobility amongst nobility, however, her father died when she was young in battle and her mother struggled to get her an education in her younger years. She developed dreams of restoring her clan, to which end she chose to serve both Saitou Dousan and later Oda Nobuna.

Arrival in the Sengoku Period Arc
She is present during the meeting between Nobuna and her own lord Saitou Dousan.

Invasion of Mino Arc
She reappears at the very end of the arc to join Nobuna's cause and reveals the Ashikage Shogunate has been expelled from the capital by the Miyoshi Three. She then reveals her plan to place Imagawa Yoshimoto as a puppet Shogun and allow Nobuna to rise to power in Kyoto.

Kyoto Arc

 * Main Article: Kyoto Arc

Skills and Abilities
She is an adept leader, more so than even most of Nobuna's other generals, in some ways even Yoshiharu and Katsuie, however she has a major flaw when it comes to her social skills which tends to hinder her ability to co-operate, once she sets her sights upon a certain goal she loses any and all ability to see anything else, including how her actions affect others around her. She is a capable swordswoman using the Kamisha Shinto style of swordsmanship, in fact she's so proficient that Danjou admitted that if Mitsuhide hadn't told her her fighting style right before using it her head would've come off. She also knows how to treat the wounded, as was the case with Yoshiharu, where she alone, surrounded by enemies, managed to find him, keep him safe and nurse him back to health. She also wields a tanegashima.

Trivia

 * Her nickname is Juubei.
 * Juubei is based on the Oda general of the same name who was also given the nickname of Juubei. As noted by Yoshiharu during the series, her real life counterpart later betrayed Oda Nobunaga and caused the Incident at Honno-ji, wherein Nobunaga died. the exact reason for his betrayal is a mystery but is given multiple theories based on ambition, revenge, and even the suggested idea that Nobunaga had once asked Mitsuhide to kill him should he become too cruel. Regardless of his reasons, he was then pursued for thirteen days by Hideyoshi and Ieyasu, both eager to take over Nobunaga's legacy, and was finally killed by Hideyoshi at the Battle of Yamazaki.