Nano Shinonome

Nano Shinonome

Image Gallery

Nano Shinonome
Character Model Uchuujin Anime Manga
Information
Japanese Name:	東雲なの
Romanized Name:	Shinonome Nano
English Name:	Nano Shinonome
First Appearance:	"Nichijou Episode 0" "Nichijou Manga Volume 1"
Age:	2
Birthday:	March 7
Occupation:	Caretaker Student
Affiliated:	Hakase (creator) Sakamoto (pet) Yuuko Aioi (friend) Mio Naganohara (friend) Mai Minakami (friend)
Alignment:	Good
Japanese VA:	Shizuka Furuya
English VA:	Monica Rial

Nano Shinonome (東雲 なの, Shinonome Nano) is a humanoid android created by Professor Shinonome (or simply Hakase), who lives with her and Sakamoto and manages the Shinonome household. She is constantly being upgraded by Hakase without prior knowledge or approval, which is a running gag. This leads to strange situations, that Nano worries might reveal her identity as a robot to others, particularly her classmates. She lives in the Shinonome Lab.

Appearance

Although she is canonically only 2 years-old, Nano has the build and height of an average teenage girl. Her hair and eyes are black, her haircut being a bob cut which reaches the end of her neck, with a fringe. Nano's most distinctive feature is a key that juts out from her back at the insistence of Hakase, who argues it's 'cute'.

Nano Outfits

See: Nano's Image Gallery

She is usually seen in a bright red pullover with blue trousers when going casual, or a lavender T-shirt, a light blue dress and wooden sandals when doing household chores. When attending school, she wears the standard school uniform, though her particular uniform is tailor-made so as to allow her to put it on without removing the key on her back.

Nano and her mostly useless key

Background

Nano is a robot created by Hakase, an 8-year-old professor. She is 1 year old at the start of Nichijou but has the appearance and intelligence of an average teenage girl. Nano lives with Hakase and Sakamoto at the Shinonome Lab, being Hakase's primary caretaker. She usually does all of the household chores like cleaning, laundry, and cooking, and buys food for Hakase and Sakamoto.

Nano's key despite its prominence, is mostly useless, and often spins randomly for no reason or when she is embarrassed or elated. When the key is turned manually however, it launches her big toe into the air. Nano's key can be physically removed by anybody except Nano herself.

In the 2nd half of season, Nano starts to attend Tokisadame Highschool with the rest of the Nichijou cast (In the manga, she attends the school beginning with the first chapter, with a flashback about starting school happening later). While technically never born, her 'birthday' is March 7th.

Personality

Nano mistakenly believes Nakamura is romantically interested in her and panics.

Nano is initially an incredibly conflicted character: She wants to be seen as 'normal' and due to being relatively young, alongside having only lived with Hakase for her whole life, she can be seen as quite naive and innocent: She desperately wants to be seen as an ordinary girl and live an ordinary school life, though her idea of what is normal can be quite confusing, and this can sometimes lead to her panicking when confronted with something she views as abnormal, even though it might be harmless. She can also be quite clumsy, such as in Volume 10 where she repeatedly missed the timing to hold up a 'prank successful' sign.Nano also seems to have an ingrained sense of responsibility, refusing to buy Hakase sweets on occasion, and often lecturing her for her antics.

Nano is a reserved, shy, teenager with insecurities about being a robot and a great desire to be a normal girl and be accepted by others. Nano acts like a parent to Hakase and Sakamoto, so her personality around them is very maternal and contrasts how she acts when in school: she takes care of Hakase, including washing with her and putting up with her pranks. Although Nano can occasionally become frustrated with Hakase, she seems to deeply care for her and becomes elated upon being told she can go to school, often being very open with her emotions and how she feels. Nano is a kind and sweet individual, who enjoys others company and going to school, but her insecurities about being a robot occasionally leads to her lying about herself (although usually the excuses she comes up with are incredibly obvious). She initially disliked the key in her back not only because it was inconvenient, but also because it is a dead giveaway to the fact that she is a robot. However, in the final episode, when Hakase offers to remove her key, she realizes that her key is part of what makes her who she is, so she decides to keep it. While she occasionally becomes upset or overwhelmed when things fall apart, such as when she was late for school, she often has a positive attitude towards life, and enjoys the simple things that come with living in Tokisadame.

Nano, after the timeskip

Her development throughout the show mainly comes through her interactions with the Trio Sucharaka: Nano greatly enjoys her friendship with Mio, Yuuko and Mai, and is frequently seen with them, although she becomes increasingly anxious at the idea of them finding out she's a robot, possibly fearing she might be rejected (even though it's insanely obvious she is). Although later in the show and manga, her outlook significantly changes and she becomes more relaxed, and even later chooses to keep her key, the lasting friendships she's built at Tokisadame showing her that she doesn't have to pretend to be something she isn't, as being Nano is simply enough. Thus, she learns to accept herself and the fact she is a robot, realising it doesn't make her any less human.

Despite being a robot, Nano acts completely oblivious to her built-in capabilities, and will frequently approach things as a normal girl would, either out of ignorance of her construction or her desire to be viewed as a human.

Abilities

Warning: The following Section contains spoilers.

Nano learns for the first time she can dispense roll cake

Hakase gave Nano many hidden abilities, but Nano herself is typically unaware of them. Her limbs can also come off at random, to her great surprise every single time that it happens. Nano is usually unappreciative and embarrassed by these since functionally, they're mostly useless except as a source of amusement for Hakase. Some examples of functions seen so far:

• In Nichijou Episode 1 after she tripped and collided with someone it caused a massive explosion, the blast being so powerful it was visible from a large way away, and it led to flying objects being scattered in the air. Fortunately, the person she bumped into, and Nano survived the explosion, but some of Nano's parts went missing due to the blast— I.E.: her arm, her other slipper, and her chopsticks.
• A rollcake dispenser is present in her left arm. This was later modified into a fish cake dispenser.
• A sweet bun dispenser is installed in her forehead. This can be manually triggered only by Hakase.
• Removable toes. Her toes come off easily, and she has a USB flash drive concealed inside (its storage is 1GB). Her big toe, in particular, can be launched like a rocket when the key on her back is turned manually (This is actually the key's only purpose).
• A digital watch built into her right arm; unlike her other functions, which are only activated by the Professor or by accident, Nano actually uses her (literal) wristwatch somewhat regularly. This is arguably the only useful function she has.
• A built-in cuckoo clock. When the clock rings, the cuckoo springs out of her forehead.
• A toaster (with bread) on her head
• A machine gun installed in her hand, which fires soybeans instead of bullets.
• A rocket-propelled right hand. It usually flies off at random. It can fly for a very long time and can travel very long distances: this was best shown when the fist was accidentally launched and flew around the town for a rather long time, only stopping after it hit Misato Tachibana on the head.
• Super-strength and reflexes. This was shown in Episode 7 when she threw a ball at outstanding speed.
• Flight via rockets built into her feet. This was shown in Episode 15 when Hakase installs some "reaction function", and later she can control it by herself in Volume 10 chapter 178.

Outside of these, Nano seems to possess the intelligence and capabilities of a normal highschooler. She seems to possess no special abilities intellectually, as she had to pull out an abacus to solve a maths problem much to the disdain of Yuuko and Mio.

Relationships

Hakase

Nano was created by Hakase (right), an 8-year-old scientist.

Although Nano is Hakase's creation and only 1 year old, Nano and Hakase have a mother/caretaker relationship. Hakase's usual child-like behavior has Nano acting like a mother to her and scolding her often. Nano is also easily frequently irritated by Hakase's never-fulfilled promise of removing the key from Nano's back. For example, Hakase will promise to remove the key for an exchange of snacks, but Hakase usually finds a way out of her promise. A running gag is Hakase installing various 'upgrades' into Nano that are solely for her amusement. Despite all this however, they both hate seeing the other upset.

Sakamoto

Nano usually treats Sakamoto as an elder, but she occasionally treats him as an ordinary housecat, much to his annoyance. Though, like Hakase did, she initially found him cute, after he gained the ability to talk this was somewhat diminished.

Yuuko Aioi

Yuuko's curiosity about Nano being a robot is intimidating for her at first, but when Yuuko tells her that "Nano is Nano" (implying that she likes her as an individual regardless of her artificial nature), Nano is relieved and positively surprised. At that point, Nano invites Yuuko to visit the Shinonome Laboratory along with her friends whenever they want to, her fear of discovery gone. Thereafter, even when confronted with clear evidence that Nano is a robot, Yuuko is indifferent to it and simply wants to include her in whatever mischief is happening. This is eventually instrumental in Nano coming to terms with herself. Although early on Yuuko seems to want to catch Nano out as a robot, giving her a deliberately difficult maths problem in Chapter 2 to see how she'd solve it, and watching Mai give her oil.

Mio Naganohara

Despite being suspicious of Nano being a robot, Mio treats Nano like a normal person. At one point, Nano tried to help Mio with her work, only for her to overheat after seeing the manga Mio had drawn. She also tries to help Yuuko prank Mio in Volume 10, to limited success They both seem to be good friends, regularly eating together, although Mio became jealous of Nano after she mistakenly believed she was dating Sasahara.

Mai Minakami

Mai also knows Nano is a robot, but she doesn't tell anyone to keep her secret safe. At one point, she delivered one of Nano's screws to her house. She frequently plays pranks on the rest of the group which Nano occasionally gets caught up in.

Kana Nakamura

Nakamura immediately deduced that Nano was a robot upon seeing her and conducts a series of increasingly bizarre schemes to try and study Nano, her initial plan being to utilise Mr Short Circuit to knock her out, although this and her plan to drug her both fail. She's also incredibly curious why Hakase sent Nano to school, and later in Volume 9 is seen in the Shinonome household, presumably so she can figure out how she works, staying there without paying rent. Despite this Nano seems to have no idea about her intentions, and interacts generally positively with Nakamura, much to her confusion.

Character songs

• "Nano no Neji Mawashi Rhapsody"
• "Nano no Ohirune Osentaku"
• "Shinonome Kenkyuusho no, Kyou mo Heiwa Desu"
• "Kikyuu ni Notte Dokomade mo"
• "Tabidachi no Hi ni"

Etymology

• The name Nano (5) is written in hiragana (なの), which has no special meaning. However, when written in kanji (菜, 菜音, 菜乃 or 菜望), it could possibly mean:
  • 菜 - "vegetables, greens".
  • 菜音 - "vegetables, greens" (菜) (na) and "sound" (音) (no).
  • 菜乃 - "vegetables, greens" (菜) (na) and "from" (乃) (no).
  • 菜望 - "vegetables, greens" (菜) (na) and "wish, desire, hope" (望) (no).
• Nano's surname Shinonome means "dawn, daybreak, sunrise, dayspring, aurora, cockcrow" (東雲).

Trivia

• In the manga, Nano attended school from the beginning of the series as opposed to the anime where she enrolls halfway into the series.
• Despite being an android, Nano has a bellybutton.
• Aside from her fears of it exposing her identity as a robot, Nano's key causes frequent physical trouble for her as well. She has gone on record mentioning it causes issues with her wearing certain clothes, as well as inhibiting her ability to move or lay on her back.
• In the time skip episodes she is still depicted as being Hakase's caretaker and being in charge of doing house chores.
• Due to being a robot, Nano cannot get cavities, although she seems upset at this fact.
• She seems blissfully unaware of Nakamura's attempts to study her.
• In the dub, her line saying that girls shouldn't date other girls was changed, possibly due to potential controversy.
• She shares the same name with Principal Shinonome. It is unknown if this is deliberate.
• She once had four tea stalks float upright at once (a lucky omen) when no one was around

Quotes

• "They're gonna figure out that I'm a robot...."
• "I hope my everyday life continues to be just as fun in the future"
• "This... well...It got stuck on me on my way here!!!"