After facing her hidden feelings in the form of a "Shadow", Naoto obtains the power of a "Persona" which allows her to become a playable character alongside the rest of the cast.

Shigenori Soejima created Naoto under the direction of hiding her gender while also giving cues to the audience, lending a more feminine approach to her final design.

This design softened the character into a "small cute boy" and "a short and pretty young man", aiming to make them more harmless, while their appearance took on a slightly feminine nature.

[4] After the game's release and he felt players were more aware of her actual gender, he chose to draw her in a more feminine manner on subsequent media by emphasizing her breasts while focusing on her eyes, mouth and eyelashes.

[6] Standing 152 cm (5 ft) tall, Naoto is a thin detective with short blue hair, wearing a stylized police uniform and hat.

[2][10] Naoto's Shadow, an enemy representing a character's repressed feeling in the Persona setting that she must defeat to proceed, is a robotic version of her wielding ray guns, a jetpack and a glass hat revealing an electronic "brain".

Due to its appearance in the "Secret Laboratory" area of Persona 4, phrases such as "hidden base" and "surgical modification" were used as the basis for its design, while its robotic elements were intended as references to classic sentai shows and to give it an "old-school touch".

Seojima incorporated visual elements of related Fairy tale Issun-bōshi into the design, and gave it a short height to match Naoto's diminutive stature to represent that "size doesn't determine all".

Later on, her Persona transforms into Yamato Takeru, a reference to the historical figure of the same name due to the myth of him dressing as a housemaid to infiltrate an enemy encampment.

Yamato's design was originally intended to incorporate noble or royal attire, but Soejima instead chose to reference the manga The Rose of Versailles, tying it into Naoto's identity as a "pretty crossdressing girl".

Once Naoto comes to understand her feelings, her Shadow turns into the Persona Sukuna-Hikona [ja] (スクナヒコナ), a robotic humanoid wearing a blue suit jacket that has an insect-like head and butterfly-like wings.

Following Naoto's recovery from her time in the TV world, she joins the protagonists in finding the culprit, having gained clues about his method thanks to her kidnapping.

Her Persona then evolves into Yamato-Takeru (ヤマトタケル), a humanoid in a white and blue traditional armed forces dress uniform with a more bird-like appearance.

"[8] A swimsuit costume that Naoto wears in Dancing All Night was described as "conservative" by Matt Sainsbury of Digitally Downloaded, who felt it fit her character.

Vrai Kaiser of The Mary Sue was initially hoping to find a "kindred spirit" with Naoto, but grew upset when they discovered that this was not the case.

[32] Comic Book Resource author Noelle Corbett noted that Naoto has been interpreted by players as a trans man or non-binary, and in that case Persona 4 "falls short of actual queer representation."

She elaborated that this was due to Naoto's wish that she was a man so she could succeed as a detective contrasted real-world beliefs that that trans people transition to "benefit from the different expectations of the opposite sex.