Kiznaiver: Noriko Sonozaki (ISTJ)

Due to the extremely unhealthy nature of Noriko, what we have produced is a best guess. She is never shown in a healthy, unmedicated state so the only thing to go off of is her broken, emotionally suppressed one (Note: we mean the medicine literally turns off her emotions not that she is merely devaluing her feeling function.) Furthermore, her appearances in the show are extremely limited which means there will probably be less evidence to support our points than we usually like. While we feel fairly confident we have the right function stack, it’s plausible in a healthy unmedicated state, the stack would be in a different order.

Si:

“The day will surely come when we can smile like we did back then.”

“I was taught to gratefully accept the kindness of others when it comes around.”

“Since you are all kiznaivers, you’ve already skipped about a hundred actually.”

Even in the brief moments we see of Noriko as a child before the experiments, she is depicted as being severely introverted. This points to her leading with an introverted function rather than an extraverted one. Later on, when we see her in present time, she seems to be leading with a perceiving function. She takes a very Si approach to observing the others as they go throughout their various tests.

When providing explanations to the group, Noriko is very detailed with the little information that she does provide. So much so, that she frequently includes irrelevant details, much to the group’s frustration. She is quick to correct the group when they say something that is factually inaccurate. One instance is captured in the quote above. Hajime states they had skipped like five steps in the process of building a friendship, to which she corrects him. She uses the same overly detailed method for describing the teachers when the group inquired about them. Much of the information she gave them was general and physical in nature and had nothing to do with the context of the conversation. Throughout much of the show, she is seen spouting of data essentially like a virtual assistant.

Another example of her Si is the way in which she expresses the desire for things to be fixed back to the way that they used to be in the past, when they were all happy. This is ultimately her goal throughout the whole show. The success of the Kizniver experiment is tied back to her believing its success will enable them to bring her friends back. She believes they will be able to make things go back to normal once they achieve the goal of the Kizna experiment. She adopts the goal of the experiment as her own in order to complete the goal that she truly desires, a goal based on her Si desire to make things as they once were.

Te:

“I’ll ensure that results are produced, sir.”

“Of course, Noriko isn’t aware that she doesn’t want to let go of all the wounds. But she’s obsessed with the idea that if she can raise the efficiency of the kizna system, if she can share all of the wounds that she’s locked up inside herself, then she may one day be able to save Oska and the others.”

“Moron. You don’t understand anything.”

“If we were able to know and share other people’s pain and suffering as our own, it would be logical to conclude that fighting would not occur.”

Noriko appears to have high use of her Te. She has a heavy focus on efficiency and results. She is bent on making the Kiznaiver program a success, so that program gets her entire focus. She works to make it as efficient as possible so that she can reach her goal. Of course, she is driven by this concrete goal, which speaks to the results-oriented nature of Te. Due to this desire, Noriko brings in unwilling participants for the Kiznaiver program, and deals with them in a rigid manner. Noriko appears to be following a clear plan for the experiment, and she gets upset when her superiors change the plan on her at the last minute.

Noriko speaks in very blunt or absolute terms. She lays out the rules for each test to the participants, and there is always a punishment for failure. She speaks in terms of what is logical, and is shown berating Katsuhira at one point for his failure to understand. Typically here is where we’d mention that she’s cold and emotionless, but unfortunately, that appears to be due to medication and thus cannot be used as evidence.

Fi:

“Were those days in the lab not happy ones for you, Katsuhira? It seemed like they were. Do you remember? I was very happy. When I was connected to you and the others, my heart was full like never before. Because we were connected through pain, someone always made us feel better. Because we were connected through pain, even if we fought…”

“It appears that the me inside you is not the true me after all. To be able to share absolute unwavering pain with everyone, I believe that is what happiness is.”

In spite of being emotionless, Noriko uses clear Fi terminology. At the beginning of the show, she talks to Katsuhira about his failure to connect with others, saying that it’s because they can’t find themselves within him. Everyone wants to find themselves within someone else. This speaks to the personal and subjective nature of Fi, like how Fi users are prone to projecting their personal feelings onto others. Noriko believes that they must all physically feel the same thing in order to understand one another. In addition, when speaking to Katsuhira later on in the show, she tells him that the version of her inside of him cannot be the true her. This phrasing is very Fi in nature, since Fi users are prone to defining their identity and then shifting it over time, to the point where they may look back on their past self and essentially disown who they once were.

Noriko is described as having been a lonely child who struggled to connect with others. She’s also described as having a hard time understanding the feelings of others. This suggests a low feeling function. This low feeling function could have been what drove her to subconsciously take such extreme measures to understand the feelings of others, rather than just learning to use her feeling function intelligently.

Ne:

“Did my actions burn your buns? …or are you angry at me?”

“Have a bun to calm your buns.”

Noriko’s Ne comes out in her light use of word play. We first see her do this when she is conversing with an upset mayor. She requests that he calm down and suggests that he “Have a bun to calm his buns.” This very simplistic pun seems to indicate a very limited use of Ne. She later uses another bun joke with Katsuhira in a deadpan attempt to lighten the mood when she could sense that he was upset with her. (Side note: The fact that she felt the need to clarify what she meant by burn your buns seems to further confirm high Si-Te use.)

Another example of Ne is her adopting and modifying the concept of the seven deadly sins. She claims that they were all chosen because they embodied what she considered to be her twist on the deadly sin. This contrast was rather weak, however, and the modifications barely line up with the actual sins that they were supposed to contrast with. (Katsuhira notes this and is confused by it.)