Nakoruru is a good-hearted, young Ainu shrine maiden who loves nature and fights evil with the help of her hawk sidekick Mamahaha.

In the series, Nakoruru is a gentle and shy teenage girl serving Mother Nature as a shamanic priestess of the Ainu religion, born on Hokkaido island in 1771.

Despite her usually pacifistic ways, she became a Kamui warrior of her peaceful village Kamuikotan (神居古潭) after the death of her idolized father, and continues to fulfill this role throughout the series, fighting evil, often alongside the character Haohmaru.

In Samurai Shodown: Warriors Rage, the spirit of Nakoruru is an unplayable story mode character, but its PocketStation mini game is centered around her.

[27] Nakoruru has also made collaboration event appearances in many portable and mobile games, including AFK Arena, Dai Shingeki RPG!

[52] She has dozens[53] of figurines made in her image,[54][55][56][57][58] and even a life-size figure,[59] also being featured in various other merchandise[60] such as T-shirts,[61] and in an American collectible card game Universal Fighting System.

Keeping in key with her nature-loving persona, Nakoruru was used as a mascot for SNK's environmental awareness campaigns conducted together with city administrations in Mitaka and Kyoto in 1994.

[62] In 2007, SNK Playmore also created a social action program for children using Nakoruru and the Fatal Fury star Terry Bogard as their mascots.

[67] Her costume design was based on Ainu clothing (in two main versions depending on the length of her skirt) and she was supposed to mix a concept of a "petite girl with a lovely appearance and personality" with an "innovative" character performance of commanding a hawk companion in battle.

In the 1999 anime film Samurai Spirits 2: Asura Zanmaden, Rera tries to support her host in giving up fighting for a while, but eventually she understands Nakoruru in what has to be done to help Shiki.

In the fan service oriented fighting game SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy, Nakoruru appears as default in a "sexy vampire" costume with a bat as her animal,[71][72] while in The King of Fighters XIV she can be dressed up in a modern schoolgirl uniform of the "Kamuikotan Private High School".

Prior to Samurai Shodown V Special, Nakoruru and Rimururu have been the series' two characters notable for being immune to the Fatality-like bloody killing moves.

[95][63] Nakoruru's hawk, Mamahaha, was regarded as a "defining moment" of Samurai Shodown, with staff citing it as an early example of a "satellite character," which they considered innovative in fighting games.

They additionally criticized Nakoruru as an example of how the Ainu were characterized as "something permanently located in the past," as well as how she was repeatedly "fetishized" in multiple forms of media, such as doujinshi.

[97] "Christina M. Spiker, in the Journal of Anime and Manga Studies, analyzed Nakoruru's role in shaping the image of the Ainu people in popular culture.

Spiker also critiqued the character's fetishization in doujinshi productions, emphasizing that while Nakoruru introduced Ainu culture to a broader audience, her depiction reinforced harmful stereotypes.