APP for zodion

[lovehurts]

✖ CHARACTER:
Name: Raikou Minamoto
Canon: Tactics
PB/Image: http://i.imgur.com/Qlhox.jpg isn't he cute in his bathtub oh my
Info links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactics_(manga) Wikipedia, and there's no other decent overall recourse. :(
Canon Point: post vol 8 of the manga
Gender: male
Age: 18 (probably 19 by the canon point)
Birthdate/Sign: August 3, Leo. Non-canon.

Raikou has no canon bithday. HOWEVER it is explicitly stated that he was born in the summer. Due to this I focused on the summer signs (Cancer, Leo, & Virgo) when choosing a sign for him and didn't really take any others into account. The reason I chose Leo is because it contains many of his both positive and negative traits. Raikou is, on the positive side, "gregarious", "enthusiastic", "authoritative", and (selectively) "hard-working". On the negative side, he is (selectively) "lazy", "smug", "willful", "arrogant", and "self-absorbed". He also suits a lot of the other traits listed, such as craving attention, recognition, and fun, being playful and childish, liking risks and being creative, as well as being physically attractive.

Tattoo: At his navel, with the big curve going over it! About 4-5 inches in diameter.
Suitability: N/A
Power: Zodion power: Fire element healing!

Personality: If one were to meet Raikou first in a casual situation, he would probably make a very charming first impression. On the outermost surface, Raikou is a cheerful young man, friendly and animated, who doesn't take things too seriously and who is open to talking to all sorts of people. He's relatively polite, if given to teasing, notably good-looking, and generally gives off the image of a young noble with an eccentric openness and a deep affection for his little sister.

Should you spend more time with him, however, perhaps as a member of his household, you'd begin to see the less pleasant side of the young master of the Minamoto clan. In ways, Raikou is innocent and childish -- he picks up hobbies only to dump them within moments of them becoming at all difficult, he fusses for the attention of his closest aids and eats too much sugar, and he likes to spend time rolling around on the floor or on his fancy Western furniture. He is bitingly sarcastic at times, but is also prone to childish laughter and skipping out on responsibilities to play around or spend time with his little sister Ayame. He demands to be taken care of, but often dismisses the worry others of his household have for him as a nuisance. He also spends the clan's money far too freely, and merely gets arrogantly indignant when nagged about it. All in all, he's definitely a spoiled brat.

But it's only those closest to him that get the see more than a glimpse of the true levels of frightening insanity that Raikou holds within him. At birth, the boy not yet titled Raikou (his real name isnt known in canon yet) was assigned a life-long retainer -- a boy 12 years his senior, as he was a candidate for being the lord of the clan when he grew up. As he got older, his prospects only got better, and he was fostered out from his side branch of the Minamoto family to the main house. There, he took on many of the pursuits a boy of his standing was expected to: swordsmanship, Noh theatre, literary learnings, etc. As a potential leader of a family famous for centuries of exorcism and demon-slaying, he was also taught the magic skill necessary for that job.

Only brief glances are given into his childhood, but it seems that Raikou was not a particularly happy child. When seen around adults, he's subdued and sad seeming, ignoring the young ladies discussing marriage for status even when he was ~12. He was already seen as attractive and talented, and a shoe-in for the position of lord. Still, the only happiness we see from him at that age is when he runs away from theatre practice to play with Ayame. Raikou lights up around his little sister, showing off nothing but innocent, childish mischief and smiles.

As an adult, that sadness is almost nowhere to be seen. Raikou is both head of the family and head of the imperial demon-slaying force, a sub-unit of the Imperial Guard. His rank is Admiral, and he answers only to the head of the Guard and those above him. He's perky most of the time, playful or bratty to a silly extent even in battle, and spends as much time being friendly with his "enemies" (the protagonists of the series) as he does antagonizing them. His plans for messing with them are sometimes cruel and sometimes just plain weird (including running a cafe in one drama CD). He whines when he doesn't get his way, seems on the verge of bratty tears when his retainer scolds him, etc. He also deals with stress in an odd way: by singing. His mother told him to sing when he was very tense, and he'll sing anything from Western nursery rhymes to made-up nonsense about the current situation.

It's not always cute, though. When under stress in a conflict situation, Raikou has the tendency to snap. He'll go berserk if he takes damage in a fight or if pushed too far otherwise, swinging his sword wildly and causing destruction and mayhem until he either calms down or Watanabe, the aforementioned retainer, knocks him unconscious. He'll do all this while laughing (and once while singing Longdon Bridge is Falling Down and breaking expensive things in retaliation for being scolded about his spending by an extended family member). That's the most raw form of tantrum he can throw, but there are many other cruelties about Raikou.

The most important thing is thus: he does not love human beings. While he holds no dislike for humans, and in fact is inclined to believe the best of them unless truly shown otherwise (he gets frustrated at the human MC because he doesn't understand why he's defying him and thus being a bad Japanese citizen, rather than just being hateful), it's demons and supernatural beings in general that he finds most interesting and worthy of his affection. But whether it's through his training to fight them, through a natural screw loose, or through some childhood unpleasantness of some sort, he doesn't know how to express that love. As far as he's concerned, humans and demons cannot coexist, nor love each other normally. Any friendship or romance between them is going to end in the suffering of one or both, usually the demon. Also, in his canon, a demon given a name by a human is bound to that human and loses a certain amount of power. Therefore, if the human that named them dies, they will live eternally with those limiters placed upon them, and potentially with some memory loss. If another contract is made with another human, the effect will compound. Therefore, Raikou sees a demon-human emotional bond as an inevitable torture of the demon. And thus he expresses his love by cutting to the chase. He will use, torment, and murder demons, all while professing his love for them. Isn't it better, he thinks, to remove the pointless sugar coating and show demons the core of love that is suffering? Isn't it better to accomplish things together with them for just a moment, then end their inevitable misery by killing them? From his twisted point of view, he's being truly loving and kind in doing what he does, and he simply doesn't understand why anyone disagrees with him. People that do, he thinks, are just delusional.

However, Raikou is capable of forming attachments, and seems to be as curious about the opposite stance as he is dismissive. This is why the protagonists of the story both irritate and fascinate him. Haruka is the oni-eating tengu, one of the most powerful supernatural entities in history, and one the Minamoto clan has failed and failed again to eliminate. Raikou wishes to be the one to destroy him, but as "Haruka" is the second name contract the tengu has been under, his power and wildness is severely diminished, and his memories of his life before being "Haruka" are all but gone, remaining only in small bits and fuzzy feelings. Kantarou is an experienced exorcist who always tries to solve things in a reasonable and friendly manner, and considers all youkai (the more earth spirity type of creatures, as opposed to the truly hellish demons that are "oni") his friends. Neither of them wishes for Haruka's contract to break, and Raikou is consistently frustrated at that fact. He doesn't understand why Haruka would choose a human companion over his true power and freedom, or why a human would choose to try and express human friendship towards demons despite the sadness it will inevitably bring. And yet he keeps toying with them, observing and then leaving, as if trying to find answers to his questions and perhaps an understanding.

Raikou also dislikes his superiors, and it's hinted at more than once that he is not the true "main antagonist" of the series. Raikou is innocent and sympathetic in ways, and actually gets along very well with the MCs, as do most of his major followers (retainer Suekichinobu Watanabe, foreign ally Edwards, and childhood friend Kimishige Sakata). After receiving calls from the head of the Imperial Guard, Raikou is highly on edge, angry, resentful and somewhat nervous. He considers the people above him to be manipulating him to their own ends, holding his rank and his heirloom sword hostage (they refused to let him have the sword until he proved loyalty be achieving that Admiral rank) in order to keep him in line. It appears that while fighting the oni-eating tengu is Raikou's own desire, that many of the other things he does are actually ordered by those above him. He also reacts violently to anyone who attempts to refer to him by his real/childhood given name. His discomfort with authority is another clue that his position as "villain" is shaky, though his violent "love" and other very negative traits don't change. He's a very messed-up young man, but he seems to hold the seeds of both good and bad within him, making him a versatile person whose future could go in any of a hundred directions.