Okiku

Despite her reputation as a legendary male samurai as one of the Scabbards, Kikunojo describes herself as being "a woman at heart", and thus lives and presents herself in a traditionally feminine manner.[5] She is a very upbeat and friendly person. To friends, she is helpful and nurturing, as seen when she treated Roronoa Zoro's injuries and tended to Tama when she was being healed of her poisoning.[1]

Kikunojo is shown to be a confident, hardened warrior whose friendly nature translates into a strong sense of justice and desire to protect those around her. This was first demonstrated when she served as an ally to Monkey D. Luffy in his mission to rescue Tama from the Beasts Pirates and she even went as far as to cut off Urashima's top-knot (a sign of great disrespect to someone of the samurai class) after hearing him use dehumanizing language toward a crowd of Bakura Town residents, regardless of the fact that just moments prior the same people had berated her due to low social standing.[11] When Kin'emon contemplated the possibility of one of the Nine Red Scabbards being a spy, Kikunojo rebuked him for being indecisive about the matter and told him that they should identify the spy immediately.[12] Kikunojo's desire to do right can sometimes result in her making rash actions, as she acknowledged when she inadvertently showed her samurai abilities in front of the Bakura Town citizens while living in hiding.[13] Afterwards, she showed more restraint about going to fight enemies, and had to be convinced by Zoro to use her abilities to help save Tama.[14]

Kikunojo typically becomes extremely emotional when she loses something dear to her as she quickly teared up and ran off to be alone after going to the ruins of Oden Castle for the first time ever since the deaths of Kozuki Oden and Kozuki Toki.[15] Additionally, she was very emotional when Kurozumi Kanjuro revealed himself to be working for Kurozumi Orochi [16] and when she reunited with Izou.[17] However, she did not lose any resolve when being grievously wounded herself, not showing any distress after having her left arm severed beyond an initially shocked look and a brief grunt of pain while having her wound cauterized by fire.[18]

Kikunojo takes pride in her role as a retainer of the Kozuki clan and occasionally refers to herself using sessha (拙者 or せっしゃ?), an archaic pronoun similar to "I" in the English language, which is used primarily by samurai (the Viz translation has her refer to herself as "this one"). When Kozuki Momonosuke used the word "Sunacchi", Kikunojo quickly rebuked him for doing so as she believes members of a noble family like the Kozuki should not use coarse words associated with commoners.