Ann • "Panther"

Ann Takamaki is a playable character from Persona 5. She is a student at Shujin Academy who lives a double life as a Phantom Thief.

After being ridden with guilt over her helplessness to protect others and herself, which led to her letting her best friend Shiho Suzui fall victim to Suguru Kamoshida, she would sacrifice herself to support her friends while facing, overcoming, and promising not to return back to her old self. Ann has wavy platinum blonde hair that is styled in bushy pigtails with parted side bangs on the right side of her face, where she accessorizes with a single yellow hair clip above her left ear as well as small circular earrings on both ears and bright blue eyes. She is of mixed ethnicity: her surname is Japanese, and her profile mentions she is 1/4 American. She is a relatively tall young woman, standing taller than both Haru Okumura and Makoto Niijima, who are both a full year older than her. For Persona 5 Royal, Ann has two new outfits. For school she keeps her winter outfit the same but now wears the standard Shujin turtleneck with a black bow, in addition to a cream and brown varsity overcoat with multiple pins and patches and a black hood. For her days off, she wears a black leather jacket over an orange and purple plaid shirt, faded ripped jeans with a heart patch on the left pocket, and red ankle boots. When she is outside, she wears a red scarf and earmuffs. Her Phantom Thief outfit consists of a skin-tight red latex catsuit with a cleavage cutout and zippers, a matching red panther mask, pink gloves, dark red thigh-high boots, and a clip-on tail on the back of her catsuit. Her cognitive copy in Kamoshida's Palace appears as a scantily clad version of her in a provocative, fuchsia bikini with panther-like patterns on it and wears high heels and wears a pair of cat ears and a gold crown with fuchsia jewels on top of her head.

Ann is a very kind and compassionate girl, enough for it to be noted by both Morgana and Sojiro Sakura. Years of isolation due to her looks have left her very withdrawn, with the belief that she's lost her place in the world, but this hasn't stopped her from opening up to the people close to her and having fun. She's able to press on without caring about the opinions of others due to her friendship with Shiho Suzui, who was her first real friend in Japan before joining the Phantom Thieves. She is shown to be a good judge of character, as she was the first person able to look past the rumors of the protagonist and see him for who he really is. Her good judgement of others is also shown by her willingness to forgive Makoto after learning her side of the story in the incident with Suguru Kamoshida, namely that she wanted to do something but felt powerless to stop him, having realized it wasn't too different from her own situation. Before this, she also comforts Makoto when she calls herself "scum of the Earth" due to her failure to help Kamoshida's victims, saying that if she really was scum, she wouldn't call herself such. Although Ann is outwardly good and kind-hearted, and she genuinely wishes to help people in need, it comes at the cost of opening up her heart to inherent wrongness, evil, and unforgiveness, all at the ultimate result of making things better for others. She doesn't lose sight of this worldview for the sake of petty vengeance, especially against Suguru Kamoshida, a terrible man that would try to hide in shallow honor and goodwill, even trying to offer his life to save himself. She does forgive the other students who ended up falling for rumors towards her, but she is especially hard on her closest friends when they instead engage in cowardly or self-destructive behavior, which includes Shiho and Alice Hiiragi. The common theme is that these people allowed their lives to be controlled by an outside source, such as Kamoshida or Hiiragi's bullies, as neither realized that they don't need their permission to live their lives. Again, she does so with sympathy towards their situations and the end result of helping them. In Ann's case, she disliked being someone who could only look on while other people suffered instead of stepping in: she explicitly did not want to return to the coward she used to be.

As a Phantom Thief, Ann becomes far more lively and energetic, with a strong will to never be abused or let abuses run unchecked. She agrees with Ryuji's desire to help those in need because she believes that if she doesn't, she'll go back to being the same as she was before. Although she understands that Kamoshida is ultimately the one at fault for what happened to Shiho, she can't help but feel partially responsible as well, due to frequently pushing Shiho to keep up with the volleyball team despite the effect it was having on her. She also believes that she should have dared Kamoshida to take Shiho off the team when he threatened, as he wouldn't have done anything that would risk costing him games, but ultimately feels that she didn't believe in Shiho's ability. She reacts better to being told that she may be right rather than that she can't blame herself, implying that she prefers people to be honest rather than sympathetic. Her Confidant deals largely with Ann's attempt to become a stronger person and come to terms with her guilt.