naoto shirogane is the "detective prince" and the eighth and final member of the persona 4 golden investigation team. their gender is a hot topic for the fanbase due to naoto's dungeon being centered around their feelings of inferiority due to their assigned gender at birth + their presentation as male in public, but personally i hc naoto as genderfluid.

naoto is a first year at yasogami high school (15-16) and the fifth generation of the shirogane detectives. she originally arrived in inaba to investigate the murders occuring in the small town, being brought on to the investigation after the inaba detective force didn't have any leads on the case.
naoto is first seen investigating kanji after correctly deducting he would be the next victim. at this point in the game, naoto was still believed to be a boy, and thus played quite a part in kanji's own dungeon, because kanji had feelings for naoto that made him question his own identity. once kanji was saved, naoto's kidnapping followed.
naoto's dungeon, particularly the battle against her persona/shadow, is centered around her gender identity/presentation (persona is such a queer game #happypridemonth). he presents as masculine to be taken seriously within the workforce, but is still percieved as a child due to her height, age, and her workaholic tendencies that lead her to prefer to work and act alone.
following her joining the investigation team, she has a kind of romance with kanji (which i love) but the player can also choose to romance naoto. his social link follows odd letters he recieves from a "phantom thief" (persona 5 reference??), finding items she made as a child when she wanted to be a detective. it's a really sweet and interesting social link and i like how it's not as directly tied to their dungeon (like kanji's social link) and not tied to other characters (like yosuke's). she also wins the yasogami high beauty pageant, though i'm not sure if that's canon or because i voted for her LOL

when naoto was first introduced i admittedly hated her, but the best arc is enemies to lovers and that is certainly the arc we had. i found naoto to be really, really insufferable and wayyy too nonchalant but then i finished their dungeon and was like oh. okay. and then i got to the hot springs scene and was like yeah i get it now.
admittedly a lot of my love for naoto is superficial; i like masc women and that's what she is. but my appreciation for her character is a lot more than that. god knows i love a trans coded character (kazuichi..), and also her relationship with kanji is way too cute. i also tend to use her a lot ingame because they're way too fucking op and my strongest all-rounder tank.