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Kenshin Arima
Topic Started: Oct 8 2016, 10:23 AM (204 Views)
moshisushi

Name: Kenshin ARIMA
Gender: Male
Age: 17

Class: 3-4

Clubs/Occupation: Chess and Kendo clubs, part-time handyman

Personality:

Snide, harsh and careless, whoever Kenshin views as a peer must first weather the dry sarcasm and dismissive patronising that he is wont to put up—lest it is someone he views as worth his while—borne from the severity of his younger days. It is, fortunately, an instinct that has mellowed as he has matured. The sharp tongue and aloof arrogance has been tempered and harnessed into a socially acceptable coolness which can often be mischaracterised as confidence and suaveness to his advantage. It is, of course, a facade that the more discerning can see through, although ultimately one would be hard pressed to find Kenshin to be too bothered by how his peers perceive him regardless of the fact that he is often clearly aware of where things stand. His academics was excellent, his participation in afterschool activities consistent, and his disciplinary record unblemished. His reputation among the teachers was solid, and though he was hardly model student material, Kenshin was savvy enough to recognise who it was that would get him ahead in school.

This change for those he perceives as superior or elder to him extends beyond school, where Kenshin completely casts aside the deliberate tactlessness. In its place is a soft-spoken humility and and modesty that cynical folk would say is shamelessly ingratiating. To the neighbourhood folk who watched Kenshin grow up, he has been nothing but a well-mannered boy who was brought up the right way.

Brush past it all, and one would find at the heart of the boy an utterly cold detachment. It is this ruthlessly calculative streak that powers Kenshin, leading to the disparate masks he wears, masks that change with the same fluidity as the corresponding social scenarios he finds himself living through do. Every action and every person could be assigned a value, and could be planned and forecasted like pieces on a chessboard. Mankind and his interactions were no more unsolvable puzzles than his favoured V-Cube 6; the only difficulty lay in discerning the variables to complete his computations.

There is no clearer manifestation of this most consistent of themes for the boy than the calm demeanour with which he carries himself. Kenshin has a presence of mind that belies his relatively young age, keeping his cool when lesser men would have long lost their heads and enabling him to, when he deems it necessary or beneficial, take charge.

History:

Kenshin was born to a typical working class family that resided in the rougher parts of Nagashima's inner city, where his father worked as an electrician and had a stake in a small partnership that provided plumbing and electrical services, and where his mother worked as a waitress in one of the many run-of-the-mill eateries that catered to the mass of factory workers. Fortunately, both Kenshin's father and his associates had the sensibility to deal only with respectable clients, and so the Arima family never got embroiled in the gang politics that often plagued the residents of the inner city.

Unfortunately, some of Kenshin's closest childhood friends who he grew up with found themselves dragged into the vortex through their families or other friends, and so Kenshin often found himself inevitably exposed to and sometimes even involved in the shenanigans of many a juvenile delinquent looking to prove their street cred to the junior members of their favoured gang. Their trials and tribulations opened the eyes of the hitherto naive boy, who steeled himself by nurturing a pragmatic cynicism as he witnessed the unending tide of dealings and double crossings. The world was all about survival and self-benefit, and one needed to be strong enough to first survive the competition, and then smart enough to stand above it. Thus from a young age Kenshin knew to pick his battles wisely, and learned to be stingier with the friends he picked. He was not about to risk himself like the rest of the mindless fools who swarmed in packs around the back streets of the inner city, clinging to the flimsy camaraderie that they believed bound them together as much to the their shared blind hatred of enemy gangs.

Then, came change. Through sheer dumb luck, Kenshin's father won the national lottery. The Arimas could afford to move to uptown Nagashima and were just in time enroll their son in Taiyoutono as a first year high school student, a school that was more deserving of their son's bright potential than the other inner city options.

However, this turned out to be nothing but a temporary reprieve.

Money. The root of all evil. Or at the very least, a great source of temptation and a spectacular tool for addling one's good judgment and conscience. Especially when there is a woman to further befuddle and bamboozle. The full story continues to elude Kenshin, but it appeared that merely a single year after winning the lottery, his father was swindled of his fortune by a woman who he later admitted to also cheating on his mother with.

In one fell swoop, Kenshin's life was once again turned on its head; worse still, the family itself had disintegrated. Within the year, Kenshin's mother had filed for divorce, though instead of suffering the indignity of a potentially protracted fight over custodial rights, she was prepared to concede Kenshin to his father, confident in the fact that her son would not allow something as trite as divorce and separation to stop him from visiting. Knowing his duty and the role he should play, Kenshin went one step further. Whereas his father was able to retreat to his old business partners and find gainful employment as well as lodging, his mother was forced to return to their old cramped townhouse in the inner city (which was awarded to her given his father's access to alternative accommodation) and struggle to find work again. Given the circumstances, Kenshin felt he had no choice but to opt to stay with his mother, leveraging this apparent sacrifice by forcing his father to employ him part-time (though his father was quite happy to pick up the extra labour anyway, given Kenshin had already picked up much of the trade from the many days of his youth spent at his father's workplace) to ensure he was not a financial burden. To the family's acquaintances, this was an act of utmost filial piety, cementing their impeccable impression that Kenshin had meticulously developed. It was the least he stood to gain, having been forced to return to where it all started. The family court, in turn, was not about to overrule the desires of the child when the parents had already come to a consensus, especially not when said child was about to turn 18 very soon anyway.

This is his struggle, though Kenshin is confident that he is surviving well enough. To him, he is merely biding his time as he waits for the right moment and opportunity to seize that which would propel him to stand above the rest.

Appearance:

A face that had once possessed great youthful beauty has given way to a much more chiseled, masculine mien. A pair of dark amber eyes serve as a final reminder of his past youth; eyes that once shined with innocent childish curiosity have hardened. A set of subtle lips that regularly flashed radiant beams are now more frequently pursed and relegated to the odd lopsided smirk. It is only in the hair department where there is unequivocal improvement: with age came an ever-increasing sense of self-awareness, and where once the child Kenshin would be completely careless of how his naturally black (and untainted by dyes and highlights) hair was worn, it is now a carefully manicured mane, often worn in a short ponytail with an astutely parted fringe, though it is often trimmed in the summer to shorter styles.

Lithe and slender, Kenshin is taller and lankier than he is stout and broad, though he only stands at less than 180cm, which apparently is nothing extraordinary by Nagashima standards. Rigorous physical training from both kendo and his part-time job has made Kenshin more robust, and the potential is there for a bulkier figure (though that is a reality that decidedly exists only in his imagination and not in his mirror).

Current Weapon/Combat Skill: A pair of bokken, one katana-sized and the other wakizashi-sized to mimic a samurai's daisho. Although he is relatively competent at kendo, all of his experience has been in the controlled environment of organised sport. Who knows how he will fare in the mayhem of real-life combat, where survival is often at stake?
Mask: A blazing red mempo, samurai facial armour, that bears great resemblance with that of Kenshin's Persona, Tenkai.

Persona: A Japanese Buddhist monk who lived during the Azuchi-Momoyama and Edo periods and acted as a consultant and aide to Tokugawa Ieyasu and several of his successors.

Unashamedly ripped official art pic

~Name: Tenkai
~Arcana: Hanged Man
~Drain:
~Weak: Force, Nuclear, Light
~Null:
~Reflect:
~Resist: Physical, Ice, Electric
~Skills: Rakunda, Pulinpa, Analysis


Have you read all the stickies? Sir, yes sir!

Not sure if there's too many scanners and not enough of a particular other type of build that the powers that be prefer to see more of, but I'm willing to fill any niche that needs filling!
Edited by moshisushi, Oct 8 2016, 06:57 PM.
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Nonsequitur
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Yellow Bubblegum
Hello, and welcome to the site.

It looks like you put a lot of work and thought into this character, and that's good! I do till have a couple of comments that I'd like addressed to satisfaction before we can move ahead:


  • Exactly how old were his friends when they got involved with crime? And to what extent? Street gangs seems the most likely at that level.

  • I do not think the concept of joint custody is really a thing in Japanese divorce court. At least not as people from America or most of the western world would understand it. He would have been awarded sole custody to one parent as a default anyways.
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moshisushi

Thanks for the feedback. The necessary changes have been made. Specifically:


  • Changed the corresponding paragraph to more accurately reflect that Kenshin's crowd was more or less his age, and that nothing truly serious happened.

  • The family thing was tweaked, which incidentally makes things more organic, I feel. Also a quick Google search was enough to verify that Japanese family law generally doesn't allow for joint custody indeed. Should've been more thorough.


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Nonsequitur
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Yellow Bubblegum
Alright

Approved.
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