Player Name: Matcha. Age: 25. Contact:rsvp, heatandclockwork. Other characters: N/A.
Character Name: Shiro. Series: The tankouban, not the Shounen Sunday serials. There are significant differences between the two despite the fact that they're both manga. Canon Point: End of volume 5, after Icoro has gone missing and Shiro joins Yona.
Summary: The 'world' is a miserable, dying kingdom—a frozen wasteland surrounded on all sides by unscalable Walls, trapped in a state of perpetual night, and doomed by an unending snowstorm that threatens to bury existence as we know it. Houses must be rebuilt atop themselves annually in order to stay above the continuously rising snow, and technological advances that once provided warmth and comfort now rot away into scrap metal. The people are heavily segregated into tribes and forbidden to leave their parts of the dying world, toiling their miserably short lives away until they dig their own snowy graves. The only gift parents can give their children is cyanide pills; the only thing children can do is take up arms against the tribes that oppress their parents and die early deaths. The Sun—a great ball of light and warmth that could melt the snow, save the country, and bring happiness to everyone—is nothing more than a legend.
So, at first, Shiro doesn't seem to fit into the dreary setting of his own home world. He is simple-minded, honest, and happy—blissfully, hyperactively happy. He is quick to laugh and quicker to smile; his attention span is nigh non-existent. He is friendly and approachable, talkative and curious. Abstract concepts are almost impossible for him to grasp, but that doesn't bother him—in fact, it's hard to gauge if anything ever bothers him. Shiro's childlike innocence walks a fine line between naiveté and stupidity and usually jumps enthusiastically over to the 'stupidity' side thanks to his amazing ability to forget his own name on a regular basis.
But that's the thing: see, Shiro's forgetfulness isn't normal amnesia, nor is it a coping mechanism to deal with the hopelessness of the world around him. Shiro forgets all kinds of things: personal experiences, people he once knew, definitions of words. The only things he seems unable to forget include certain motor skills, specific phrases that he repeats over and over again like mantras, and that he should be searching for something—anything, regardless of what that something is—in order to not forget why he's alive in the first place. When he has something to search for or something to protect, even when he forgets everything else, he remembers little bits and pieces of what matter most... but only the most general aspects. For example, Shiro knows how to eat, but not that you can eat food. He knows that his 'grampa' taught him to protect his friends and kill his foes, but he doesn't remember who his 'grampa' is, how to protect, or how to kill. He remembers that he is searching for a 'hitogata', but he has no idea what one is. He remembers that he made a promise, but not what that promise was or even who he made it to. Shiro lives in a world in which the important things and the unimportant things all disappear, because Shiro isn't human. Long before the world became the snowy wasteland it is today, Shiro was manufactured as a weapon of mass destruction, a drop of the Sun itself harnessed and turned into a relentless killing machine. "Hitogata", they were called: man/rabbit-shaped murder-dolls programmed to identify friend and foe, protect allies, slaughter enemies. They took on the sins of their masters and bloodied their hands for the sake of those they fought for, and all the while, they would absorb whatever bits of Sun were contained in the dolls they slaughtered, slowly monopolizing the Sun as the ultimate power source. Shiro's inability to remember anything important to him is because according to his internal programming, nothing is important. Not even the fact that he is one of the few keys left to reactivating the Sun.
Whenever Shiro forgets things, he starts off like a blank slate. He is a quick learner when rote memorization is involved; for example, he can recite his multiplication tables after going over them once, but he doesn't actually understand what multiplying is. He talks to himself as if there are people around to hear; he talks to others without suspecting them of any foul play. In fact, just like a child, he'll believe anything you tell him. If you tell his name is Shiro, he'll believe you. If you tell him he's your bodyguard, he'll believe you. If you tell him who is friend and who is foe, he'll protect or kill accordingly. Suffice it to say, in this state, one should hope Shiro doesn't fall into the wrong hands.
In truth, as a hitogata, Shiro completely lacks one of the four main human emotions: 'joy, anger, pathos, and humor'. In Shiro's case, he lacks 'pathos'. Shiro cannot feel physical pain, cannot empathize with the pain of others, and is physically incapable of shedding tears. However, this doesn't mean he's completely numb to sadness—he can feel it, somewhere inside—but he is incapable of expressing it or even recognizing it as 'sadness'. In volume 6, when trying to mourn a friend who sacrificed herself for his sake, Shiro is only able to express his grief by smiling even more than usual and showing how happy is he that he didn't forget all his friends and commenting on how beautiful and sparkly everyone else's tears are, and how can he make those things? Can you tell him? In volume 7, further attempts to mourn fallen friends or to even die with his friends result in Shiro lashing out in anger as opposed to sadness, until Icoro convinces Shiro to just smile, smile and smile and mourn in the only way he knows, while she cries in his stead.
Shiro does, however, know 'fear', and he knows it quite well. Once he learns what it means to repeatedly forget everything he holds dear, he becomes afraid of forgetting, of 'being empty', of fighting, and of dying. Whenever the words 'death', 'destruction', and the like are mentioned around him, he seems to go into a trance. He doesn't know why—and it's sometimes questionable as to whether or not he even knows what the words mean—but they appeal to his programming and to his less than human side, and for that reason alone, they are capable of striking fear in him.
And about that less than human side... Shiro does not remember that he is not human, that he is a war machine, programmed to destroy. When he holds a weapon, particularly a sword or anything with a blade, Shiro's happy smile becomes something more sinister. More sadistic. He might not remember how to fight, but his abnormally heavy body can deal considerable damage simply by stomping on your toes. He can bite through swords, copy your swordplay until he matches your level—he can even cut through air and make it burn inextinguishable flames. Unable to feel pain or empathize with that of others, Shiro becomes a killing machine that can take heavy damage without relenting and that just keeps fighting until anyone who previously identified themselves as a 'foe' is dead. Or until you disarm him, at which point, he'll forget why he was fighting, where he is, who he was fighting, how to fight, and—oh hey! are you 'friend'? or 'foe'?
Activating Shiro's programming is what resets his entire world. And then there's nothing left but for him to rinse and repeat.
Things change for Shiro when an old bandit and his gang of thieves attack a train, inadvertently making themselves enemies of the hitogata inside. Shiro attacks, and though his entire band of friends is slaughtered, the old man manages to survive. Once defeated, he tells Shiro that he is no longer an enemy and is instead Shiro's 'grampa'. This confuses Shiro's programming—since 'grampa' isn't an option Shiro is prepared to deal with—and that resets him from war mode into… confused kid who has no idea what his name is mode. The old man takes this opportunity to teach Shiro several tenets that eventually become a code the human side of Shiro strives to live by: he should not kill the weak, the wounded, the sick, or the young. He should never leave his wounded behind. He must search for something—and here, his grampa suggests he search for a hitogata—in order to have a purpose in life. Shiro takes these teachings on as new programming and eventually wanders off into the world again after fighting someone else and forgetting who his so-called 'grampa' is. Whoops.
Then Shiro runs into the Warmonger tribe who are also searching for a 'hitogata', though they also have no idea what one is, and they accidentally wind up identifying themselves as foes, so Shiro basically eats through their tank, forgets he's fighting them, and then breaks into the shack of the royal family while following the scent of their dinner.
Princess Kamui Chise Poro Icoro is also a hitogata, not in the sense that she is secretly a rabbit-shaped war machine, but in the sense that she entirely lacks the capacity for joy. Not once in her life has she smiled or laughed, and when she feels any emotion too strongly, the only way she can express it is by crying. The Warmongers attack her home in pursuit of him, and in order to protect her blind younger brother, Icoro lies to Shiro, saying the Warmongers are 'foes', and she is his 'friend'. Icoro also lies to the Warmongers and claims that she has the hitogata they are searching for in order to force them into following her and leaving her blind brother alone. Now that Icoro is his 'friend', Shiro protects her accordingly—claiming she is the first to ever answer his customary question with 'friend'—and promises to help her find a Sun, not knowing that Shiro himself is what they're searching for. Thus, the two go on their first and final journey to find the legendary Sun, and as their first big step into said journey, they dive headfirst off a cliff to what could be their impending doom. Hey, it's not that hard to do in their world: when the entire world is coated in white, even a fatal drop-off looks just like a snow-covered field.
...Luckily, and despite all odds, diving headfirst off the cliff turns out to not be their impending doom, but the two are still being chased after by the Warmongers. Having fallen from the Upper World, where the Royal Family and Politicians reside, they find themselves in the Lower World, where the commoners, the warriors, and most importantly, the Warmongers live.
Shiro and Icoro accidentally take shelter in a temple housing the Spirit, a ball of warmth and light—a small portion of the Sun in its raw form—that is protected by the Resistance, a group of warrior children sworn to kill all who come near the Spirit. During the ensuing battle, the Warmongers attack and steal the Spirit, thinking it is the 'hitogata' they were searching for, while Icoro is taken prisoner by the Resistance. Feel free to assume from this point on that whenever they encounter the Warmongers, Shiro forgets everything all over again and only rejoins the story by following 'the smell of a good friend' unless otherwise specified.
The Warmongers steal the Spirit to use it as an energy source for a giant flying catfish (re: an ancient spaceship). Icoro, Shiro, and Yona, a girl from the Resistance, sneak aboard in order to steal back the Spirit, which Icoro mistakenly thinks is the Sun. They discover that the Politick tribe is working with the Warmongers in order to breach the Walls and see for themselves whether or not a world outside exists, but the catfish is breaking down from the strain of the flight, and they are more likely to crash before they manage to reach the height of the walls. Upon reaching the Spirit, they also discover that the catfish's power source is running out.
And then they are attacked by the Walls as punishment for reviving ancient flying technology.
The catfish is overrun by rabbits, the weaponized form of a hitogata. Shiro fights off the hitogata in order to protect his friends; Icoro saves both Yona and the Warmongers by loading them onto an escape pod. The catfish explodes.
Shiro survives the explosion and joins Yona in a quest to find Icoro, who has gone missing. The Warmongers take over after the Princess goes missing and the Politick tribe is crippled by the shame of their experiment going wrong. Under Warmonger rule, crime and hunger grow even more rampant than before. Despite this, Shiro is able to make friends with the Warmongers who had previously been chasing them, Beth and her two henchmen, thanks to Icoro saving their lives.
As Shiro and Yona travel together, they gather children orphaned by war and disease and become expert scammers: they find inns that are under attack by Warmongers and offer them protection in exchange for free food and lodge. Sure, every time they do this, Shiro loses all his memories again, but Yona always reminds him of who he is (her servant) and what he needs to do (protect her and the other kids). However, he seems to remember something else! He knows the name 'Icoro', though he doesn't know who she is.
And here be Shiro's entry to the game.
Powers: For the purpose of this game, Shiro will be incapable of turning into/reactivating the Sun. However, passive abilities that come with being a 'hitogata'—his inability to feel pain, his inhuman strength and weight, his ability to breathe normally at ridiculously high altitudes, his imperviousness to biological weapons and poisons, his ability to bite through steel, his uncannily acute sense of smell—remain active.
If given a sword, Shiro's programming will activate as normal, but unless a swordsman he can copy swordplay from is nearby, he will have absolutely no technique or finesse with the weapon. He'll just flail about and stuff. His ability to cut air and create inextinguishable flames will be limited to three times a day... not that he even remembers he can do that anyway.
Entry: Day 58. Shiro basically wanders the Skyway admiring the Sun and having absolutely no idea where all the snow went. Probably needs to be found by someone else, possibly might find Bastion on his own by sheer virtue of smelling food.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2013-04-23 04:17 pm (UTC)Age: 25.
Contact:
Other characters: N/A.
Character Name: Shiro.
Series: The tankouban, not the Shounen Sunday serials. There are significant differences between the two despite the fact that they're both manga.
Canon Point: End of volume 5, after Icoro has gone missing and Shiro joins Yona.
Summary:
The 'world' is a miserable, dying kingdom—a frozen wasteland surrounded on all sides by unscalable Walls, trapped in a state of perpetual night, and doomed by an unending snowstorm that threatens to bury existence as we know it. Houses must be rebuilt atop themselves annually in order to stay above the continuously rising snow, and technological advances that once provided warmth and comfort now rot away into scrap metal. The people are heavily segregated into tribes and forbidden to leave their parts of the dying world, toiling their miserably short lives away until they dig their own snowy graves. The only gift parents can give their children is cyanide pills; the only thing children can do is take up arms against the tribes that oppress their parents and die early deaths. The Sun—a great ball of light and warmth that could melt the snow, save the country, and bring happiness to everyone—is nothing more than a legend.
So, at first, Shiro doesn't seem to fit into the dreary setting of his own home world. He is simple-minded, honest, and happy—blissfully, hyperactively happy. He is quick to laugh and quicker to smile; his attention span is nigh non-existent. He is friendly and approachable, talkative and curious. Abstract concepts are almost impossible for him to grasp, but that doesn't bother him—in fact, it's hard to gauge if anything ever bothers him. Shiro's childlike innocence walks a fine line between naiveté and stupidity and usually jumps enthusiastically over to the 'stupidity' side thanks to his amazing ability to forget his own name on a regular basis.
But that's the thing: see, Shiro's forgetfulness isn't normal amnesia, nor is it a coping mechanism to deal with the hopelessness of the world around him. Shiro forgets all kinds of things: personal experiences, people he once knew, definitions of words. The only things he seems unable to forget include certain motor skills, specific phrases that he repeats over and over again like mantras, and that he should be searching for something—anything, regardless of what that something is—in order to not forget why he's alive in the first place. When he has something to search for or something to protect, even when he forgets everything else, he remembers little bits and pieces of what matter most... but only the most general aspects. For example, Shiro knows how to eat, but not that you can eat food. He knows that his 'grampa' taught him to protect his friends and kill his foes, but he doesn't remember who his 'grampa' is, how to protect, or how to kill. He remembers that he is searching for a 'hitogata', but he has no idea what one is. He remembers that he made a promise, but not what that promise was or even who he made it to. Shiro lives in a world in which the important things and the unimportant things all disappear, because Shiro isn't human. Long before the world became the snowy wasteland it is today, Shiro was manufactured as a weapon of mass destruction, a drop of the Sun itself harnessed and turned into a relentless killing machine. "Hitogata", they were called: man/rabbit-shaped murder-dolls programmed to identify friend and foe, protect allies, slaughter enemies. They took on the sins of their masters and bloodied their hands for the sake of those they fought for, and all the while, they would absorb whatever bits of Sun were contained in the dolls they slaughtered, slowly monopolizing the Sun as the ultimate power source. Shiro's inability to remember anything important to him is because according to his internal programming, nothing is important. Not even the fact that he is one of the few keys left to reactivating the Sun.
Whenever Shiro forgets things, he starts off like a blank slate. He is a quick learner when rote memorization is involved; for example, he can recite his multiplication tables after going over them once, but he doesn't actually understand what multiplying is. He talks to himself as if there are people around to hear; he talks to others without suspecting them of any foul play. In fact, just like a child, he'll believe anything you tell him. If you tell his name is Shiro, he'll believe you. If you tell him he's your bodyguard, he'll believe you. If you tell him who is friend and who is foe, he'll protect or kill accordingly. Suffice it to say, in this state, one should hope Shiro doesn't fall into the wrong hands.
In truth, as a hitogata, Shiro completely lacks one of the four main human emotions: 'joy, anger, pathos, and humor'. In Shiro's case, he lacks 'pathos'. Shiro cannot feel physical pain, cannot empathize with the pain of others, and is physically incapable of shedding tears. However, this doesn't mean he's completely numb to sadness—he can feel it, somewhere inside—but he is incapable of expressing it or even recognizing it as 'sadness'. In volume 6, when trying to mourn a friend who sacrificed herself for his sake, Shiro is only able to express his grief by smiling even more than usual and showing how happy is he that he didn't forget all his friends and commenting on how beautiful and sparkly everyone else's tears are, and how can he make those things? Can you tell him? In volume 7, further attempts to mourn fallen friends or to even die with his friends result in Shiro lashing out in anger as opposed to sadness, until Icoro convinces Shiro to just smile, smile and smile and mourn in the only way he knows, while she cries in his stead.
Shiro does, however, know 'fear', and he knows it quite well. Once he learns what it means to repeatedly forget everything he holds dear, he becomes afraid of forgetting, of 'being empty', of fighting, and of dying. Whenever the words 'death', 'destruction', and the like are mentioned around him, he seems to go into a trance. He doesn't know why—and it's sometimes questionable as to whether or not he even knows what the words mean—but they appeal to his programming and to his less than human side, and for that reason alone, they are capable of striking fear in him.
And about that less than human side... Shiro does not remember that he is not human, that he is a war machine, programmed to destroy. When he holds a weapon, particularly a sword or anything with a blade, Shiro's happy smile becomes something more sinister. More sadistic. He might not remember how to fight, but his abnormally heavy body can deal considerable damage simply by stomping on your toes. He can bite through swords, copy your swordplay until he matches your level—he can even cut through air and make it burn inextinguishable flames. Unable to feel pain or empathize with that of others, Shiro becomes a killing machine that can take heavy damage without relenting and that just keeps fighting until anyone who previously identified themselves as a 'foe' is dead. Or until you disarm him, at which point, he'll forget why he was fighting, where he is, who he was fighting, how to fight, and—oh hey! are you 'friend'? or 'foe'?
Activating Shiro's programming is what resets his entire world. And then there's nothing left but for him to rinse and repeat.
Things change for Shiro when an old bandit and his gang of thieves attack a train, inadvertently making themselves enemies of the hitogata inside. Shiro attacks, and though his entire band of friends is slaughtered, the old man manages to survive. Once defeated, he tells Shiro that he is no longer an enemy and is instead Shiro's 'grampa'. This confuses Shiro's programming—since 'grampa' isn't an option Shiro is prepared to deal with—and that resets him from war mode into… confused kid who has no idea what his name is mode. The old man takes this opportunity to teach Shiro several tenets that eventually become a code the human side of Shiro strives to live by: he should not kill the weak, the wounded, the sick, or the young. He should never leave his wounded behind. He must search for something—and here, his grampa suggests he search for a hitogata—in order to have a purpose in life. Shiro takes these teachings on as new programming and eventually wanders off into the world again after fighting someone else and forgetting who his so-called 'grampa' is. Whoops.
Then Shiro runs into the Warmonger tribe who are also searching for a 'hitogata', though they also have no idea what one is, and they accidentally wind up identifying themselves as foes, so Shiro basically eats through their tank, forgets he's fighting them, and then breaks into the shack of the royal family while following the scent of their dinner.
Princess Kamui Chise Poro Icoro is also a hitogata, not in the sense that she is secretly a rabbit-shaped war machine, but in the sense that she entirely lacks the capacity for joy. Not once in her life has she smiled or laughed, and when she feels any emotion too strongly, the only way she can express it is by crying. The Warmongers attack her home in pursuit of him, and in order to protect her blind younger brother, Icoro lies to Shiro, saying the Warmongers are 'foes', and she is his 'friend'. Icoro also lies to the Warmongers and claims that she has the hitogata they are searching for in order to force them into following her and leaving her blind brother alone. Now that Icoro is his 'friend', Shiro protects her accordingly—claiming she is the first to ever answer his customary question with 'friend'—and promises to help her find a Sun, not knowing that Shiro himself is what they're searching for. Thus, the two go on their first and final journey to find the legendary Sun, and as their first big step into said journey, they dive headfirst off a cliff to what could be their impending doom. Hey, it's not that hard to do in their world: when the entire world is coated in white, even a fatal drop-off looks just like a snow-covered field.
...Luckily, and despite all odds, diving headfirst off the cliff turns out to not be their impending doom, but the two are still being chased after by the Warmongers. Having fallen from the Upper World, where the Royal Family and Politicians reside, they find themselves in the Lower World, where the commoners, the warriors, and most importantly, the Warmongers live.
Shiro and Icoro accidentally take shelter in a temple housing the Spirit, a ball of warmth and light—a small portion of the Sun in its raw form—that is protected by the Resistance, a group of warrior children sworn to kill all who come near the Spirit. During the ensuing battle, the Warmongers attack and steal the Spirit, thinking it is the 'hitogata' they were searching for, while Icoro is taken prisoner by the Resistance. Feel free to assume from this point on that whenever they encounter the Warmongers, Shiro forgets everything all over again and only rejoins the story by following 'the smell of a good friend' unless otherwise specified.
The Warmongers steal the Spirit to use it as an energy source for a giant flying catfish (re: an ancient spaceship). Icoro, Shiro, and Yona, a girl from the Resistance, sneak aboard in order to steal back the Spirit, which Icoro mistakenly thinks is the Sun. They discover that the Politick tribe is working with the Warmongers in order to breach the Walls and see for themselves whether or not a world outside exists, but the catfish is breaking down from the strain of the flight, and they are more likely to crash before they manage to reach the height of the walls. Upon reaching the Spirit, they also discover that the catfish's power source is running out.
And then they are attacked by the Walls as punishment for reviving ancient flying technology.
The catfish is overrun by rabbits, the weaponized form of a hitogata. Shiro fights off the hitogata in order to protect his friends; Icoro saves both Yona and the Warmongers by loading them onto an escape pod. The catfish explodes.
Shiro survives the explosion and joins Yona in a quest to find Icoro, who has gone missing. The Warmongers take over after the Princess goes missing and the Politick tribe is crippled by the shame of their experiment going wrong. Under Warmonger rule, crime and hunger grow even more rampant than before. Despite this, Shiro is able to make friends with the Warmongers who had previously been chasing them, Beth and her two henchmen, thanks to Icoro saving their lives.
As Shiro and Yona travel together, they gather children orphaned by war and disease and become expert scammers: they find inns that are under attack by Warmongers and offer them protection in exchange for free food and lodge. Sure, every time they do this, Shiro loses all his memories again, but Yona always reminds him of who he is (her servant) and what he needs to do (protect her and the other kids). However, he seems to remember something else! He knows the name 'Icoro', though he doesn't know who she is.
And here be Shiro's entry to the game.
Powers:
For the purpose of this game, Shiro will be incapable of turning into/reactivating the Sun. However, passive abilities that come with being a 'hitogata'—his inability to feel pain, his inhuman strength and weight, his ability to breathe normally at ridiculously high altitudes, his imperviousness to biological weapons and poisons, his ability to bite through steel, his uncannily acute sense of smell—remain active.
If given a sword, Shiro's programming will activate as normal, but unless a swordsman he can copy swordplay from is nearby, he will have absolutely no technique or finesse with the weapon. He'll just flail about and stuff. His ability to cut air and create inextinguishable flames will be limited to three times a day... not that he even remembers he can do that anyway.
Entry: Day 58. Shiro basically wanders the Skyway admiring the Sun and having absolutely no idea where all the snow went. Probably needs to be found by someone else, possibly might find Bastion on his own by sheer virtue of smelling food.