Shigemura Yuuna


 * Yuna redirects here. You may be looking for the AI idol.

Shigemura Yuuna (重村 悠那), known as Yuna (ユナ) in Sword Art Online, was one of the main characters of Ordinal Scale and the Ordinal Scale side story, Hopeful Chant. She was the daughter of Professor Shigemura Tetsuhiro, the childhood friend of Nochizawa Eiji (Nautilus, Eiji), and was one of the 10,000 players who were trapped in Sword Art Online, where she became known as the Song Enchanter (歌エンチャンター) or Utachan (歌チャン or ウタちゃん) due to singing in the Teleport Gate plazas of Aincrad's main towns, as well as having the Chant Extra Skill. She was killed in battle in a field dungeon on the 40th Floor of Aincrad by a group of tormentor-class minions of the Feral Warder Chief that she had drawn to herself to protect her party from being annihilated.

Real World / Sword Art Online
Yuuna had rather short hair, which she had dyed milk-tea-brown using a rare dye. When trying to stay inconspicuous in town in Sword Art Online, she wore a white hood with a plain, deep-red tunic. However, her main apparel was a vivid royal-blue one-piece dress with golden frills and buckle, indicating the rarity and high defence value of her cloth armour. Her outfit was supplemented with a pure white cape and lute, a pure white feathered hat on her head, and a dagger on her right waist, giving her the image of a troubadour.

Personality
Yuuna was an obedient, yet strong-willed girl. Despite her own desires, she did not openly oppose her father's wishes, such as sharing her interest in singing with him, yet continued developing her skills nonetheless. Yuna was also skilled at reading and improving the mood, such as easily noticing when Nautilus was depressed and helping him regain his good mood with candy and encouragement, or sensing when her party members were filled with doubt and restoring their resolution with one of her songs. According to Nautilus, her potential at encouraging others, give them hope, and lead them was on the same level or even higher than Asuna's. Additionally, Yuna had a strong resolution to help others, even at the cost of her life, such as when she went outside the safe zone to quickly raise her level in order to join the Clearers to assist in clearing the game, or when she instantly decided to sacrifice herself to save her party members from being annihilated.

Background
Ever since childhood, Yuuna had been learning to play the piano and classical guitar. Yuuna herself preferred singing, especially pop or anime songs, but she lacked the resolve to speak with her father about this preference, as he was strict and only allowed her to play classical music.

Yuuna went to the same kindergarten, elementary school, and middle school as Nochizawa Eiji, but then moved to an all-girls high school. During her high school years, Yuuna accepted Eiji's invitation to play Sword Art Online with him, showing interest in the musical skills present in Sword Art Online. Although the two did not manage to get a copy of Sword Art Online from the stores, they were provided two copies of the game by Yuuna's father, who used his connections with Kayaba Akihiko to obtain them.

On November 6, 2022, the day the official service of the game began, Yuna and Eiji logged into the game, only to discover that Kayaba Akihiko had turned it into a death game. At first, Yuna listened to Eiji's request to remain in town, where it was safe, but at some point, she acquired the Dagger skill and ventured into the Outer Field to earn experience and money. Her resolve to help clearing the game was so strong that she had soon reached a level close to that of the Clearers at the time, a feat that required a lot of effort.

Hopeful Chant
On October 15, 2023, Yuna came to Jaileum, the main town of the 40th Floor of Aincrad, to meet with Nautilus, who she had not seen in a few days. As Nautilus was depressed due to his failure that day, Yuna gave him a candy and attempted to brighten his mood. To this end, she took him to a nearby orchestra, where she began singing. Upon finishing her song and noticing all the players in the plaza having listened to it, Yuna immediately pulled Nautilus with her into an empty corner of the back lanes in the town due to feeling too much pressure from the attention. During a conversation with Nautilus that followed, Yuna revealed her desire to help the clearers on the front lines. Later that night, Yuna came to Nolfret, the main town of the 39th Floor of Aincrad, to practice her singing, where she was found by Asuna. Before Asuna could speak to her, Yuna immediately disappeared into the nearby Teleport Gate upon finishing her songs.

On October 18, 2023, as Nautilus had not been responding to her messages for a couple of days, Yuna found him wearing a disguise in Jaileum in a poor attempt to be unrecognised. Realising that Nautilus had not been allowed to the boss battle based on his appearance, she suggested going for a meal at a restaurant at town. At the restaurant, as they were talking about Yuna's desire to join the Clearers, they suddenly heard another player asking for help. Upon the player revealing that his party members were trapped in a field dungeon, a rescue party was formed, with Yuna, filled with resolution, deciding to join it.

At the field dungeon, the group found the endangered party members in a cell with infinitely respawning monsters attacking them, and the dungeon boss, the Feral Warder Chief, guarding the lever to open the cell. As activating the lever would require the players to come within the boss's range, thus causing it to engage them, while it was unlikely to get the entire group out of the room safely before the doors closed again, it was proposed to defeat the boss instead of retreating. While the other players wavered on the course of action, Yuna had the endangered players come close to the door to sing a song that would heal them. Yuna's song gave the players the strength to execute the plan, and thus the boss battle began.

During the battle, Yuna helped attack the boss from the sides while the highest-leveled players kept the attention of the boss on themselves. Although the battle proceeded smoothly for the next eight minutes, when the boss's Hit Point gauge was lowered to the red zone of its last bar, about fifteen extra minions descended on the boss room from holes in the walls, while the boss executed an usual area of effect attack while the players were distracted. Thus, the majority of players engaging the boss, while the players engaging the minions were soon overwhelmed. At that moment, Yuna, the only unparalysed damage dealer, sung a special song that drew the attention of all the minions onto her. By running around the room with the minions in pursuit, Yuna was able to give the others enough time to defeat the boss, but was killed by the minions the moment the boss was vanquished.

Cordial Chords
Nine days following the incident at the New National Stadium, on May 8, 2026, while Kirigaya Kazuto contemplating on his and Asuna's commutes to school, Kazuto returned home. There, Kazuto having equipped the Augma, the boy, just as he was about to format the Augma, noticed a push notification on the device's virtual desktop with a reference to Yuna. After tapping on the message by reflex, he discovered that it was an announcement for a new YUNA desktop mascot application for the Augma. Driven by the curiosity, the boy installed the application in order to say his farewells to Yuna. While the little YUNA mascot did not seem unusual at first, shortly after Kazuto gave it his in-game nickname, the mascot suddenly glitched, pleading for his assistance in a serious tone, before returning to normal just as abruptly.

Confounded, the boy pondered on the mysterious message. As YUNA was now the property of Kamura and her data had been reset, he concluded that only White Yuna could have sent the message, meaning that she could possibly still be found in the old SAO server. Due to not knowing Professor Shigemura's whereabouts, Kazuto decided to instead call Kikuoka Seijirou for information on the only other person whom he could question about Yuna and the SAO server.

After Kazuto greets Eiji, he informed Eiji of the existence of a YUNA desktop mascot, adding that Professor Shigemura had transferred the rights to YUNA to Kamura and a company named «Ario Room». Revealing that the mascot had pleaded for assistance, Kazuto requested Eiji's help in FullDiving into the Sword Art Online server to search Yuna.

As Eiji having logged in as Nautilus, Nautilus rushed to the Teleport Gate to travel to Jaileum on the 40th Floor in order to reach the field dungeon where Yuna had died in Sword Art Online, believing it to be the only logical place to find Yuna on the server. Fifteen minutes after reaching the dungeon and defeating the monsters blocking his way, Nautilus reached the dungeon's boss room.

After easily defeating the boss and its henchmen with one hit from the an enormous golden sword thrown by Kirito, Nautilus ran to the spot where Yuna had died. The moment he reached it, a glitched YUNA materialised on the spot, falling into Nautilus's hands. As Nautilus began panicking in confusion, Yui explained that YUNA had begun collapsing due to her programming being unable to bear the discovery that her management company had created copies of her. Just then, Yui noticed that a higher-ranked Artificial Intelligence module was stabilising YUNA's condition by using its own data. However, it could not complete the repairs due to lacking a memory core, a set of data representing YUNA's most precious memory.

Considering what could represent such a memory, Nautilus suddenly recalled YUNA's interest in a bottle of candy that he had given her. The moment Nautilus retrieved an identical bottle of candy that the real Yuna had left to him just before her death from his inventory and gave it to YUNA, the pieces of candy inside it began to glow and lodged themselves into the broken parts of YUNA's avatar. Just then, Nautilus witnessed how a white-hooded Yuna stroked YUNA's cheeks, thanking him for keeping the bottle with him for her, before disappearing entirely. Embracing the now fully-repaired YUNA, Nautilus began weeping like a child.

Gallery

 * See Shigemura Yuuna/Image Gallery

Trivia

 * Ever since childhood, Yuuna always carried some fruit-flavoured lozenges with her to care for her throat due to her interest in singing. Yuuna also had a habit of sharing her lozenges with Eiji whenever he was either angry or dejected to brighten his mood.
 * In Sword Art Online, Yuna had an unofficial fan club of players who put in great effort to find where she was secretly singing in town just to hear her songs.
 * The name "Yuna" originates from the Latin word "una", which is the feminine form of the Latin word for "one".