PLAYER
Player name: Tee
Contact: terribletrivium
Characters currently in-game: N/A

CHARACTER
Character Name: Kanji Tatsumi
Character Age: 16
Canon: Persona 4
Canon Point: True End
History: Persona 4 | Kanji Tatsumi
Personality: Every high school has that kid. The one that's big. The one that's mean. The one nobody messes with. At Yasogami High School, Kanji Tatsumi is that kid. He's always the first the cops come looking for when they hear about a teen gone bad. Rumors about him have been circulating since middle school: he beat up a biker gang; he's in a biker gang; no, idiot, he's the ringleader of a group of bullies! He's the one that's been stealing other kids' lunch money! Really, up until high school, all anyone seems to be certain about is that he gets into fights and cuts class.

Some of those rumors are true, and he doesn't do much to disprove the false ones. They keep people at a distance and that suits Kanji just fine. And if the bad rep doesn't work, his short temper and gruff speech are sure to do the trick. Any passing comment that could be taken as an insult to his masculinity, his Ma, or—later—his friends is sure to tick him off, and when Kanji Tatsumi is ticked off you'd best start running. He's convinced that the manliest way to go about solving his problems is through aggression. He thinks with his fists, frequently getting into fights, and while some of his threats are empty it's better to take them at face value and duck than wait to see if he's going to throw a punch.

More often than not his fights are because of misunderstandings. For example, the biker gang. In middle school he crushed a gang that hung out near the family textile shop, just because they kept his mother up at night. This is illustrative of a greater pattern: Kanji tries to do good things, but he isn't very good at approaching them from a calm, logical direction.

The trouble is, no one is truly just a dark cloud of machismo and bad attitude. Not even Kanji Tatsumi. It's all a front to keep people from finding out who he really is—a kid that loves his Ma, crochet, and cute shit. Up until facing his shadow and joining the Investigation Team, he was absolutely terrified of being found out. He expected the ridicule he'd endured as a child for mending a girl's bag in class to be the norm. After a while, it all started to get under his skin and form some deep-seated insecurities about who he is, what it means to be a man, and what it might mean to like “girly” things over traditionally masculine ones. If anyone discovered his hobbies, no one would see him as a man. It'd all start over, and he couldn't handle that. Kanji's biggest fear is that he'll be rejected for who he is, so he hides that side of himself beneath the gruff, tough guy image he's built for himself over the years.

But wait, that doesn't fully explain his obsession with being manly, does it? Well, it all started when Kanji's dad died. One of the last things he said to his son was if you're a man, you have to become strong. Ever since, Kanji has been trying to live up to that—unfortunately, he didn't quite understand what that meant. His body was strong, but his heart was weak.

Which was precisely why his shadow unnerved him so much. With its flamboyant gestures and lilting lisp, it was the perfect image of a pop culture gay man. The kind that people make fun of and laugh at. The antithesis of manly, to Kanji's mind, and everything he feared he might actually be. Ultimately he comes to accept that he has a softer side and realizes that his shadow was born, not of a repressed sexuality, but of a fear of being rejected for his "feminine" talents and interests.

[[something here about Narukami helping him to understand that strength isn't just about physical strength and aggression; it's also having the confidence to be who you are, and to use your talents to help those around you.]]

[[paragraph or two about friendships and how they’ve helped him grow. Mention his focus on supporting them.]]

Kanji is still a punk, but he's beginning to grow and change. He sees now that there are other ways than violence, and the kind and gentle person he's always been deep down is beginning to come out, thanks to the Investigation Team.

[[nix this. Re-write and move up]] Speaking of the IT, Kanji is definitely the brawn of the group. Often slow on the uptake, he makes up for his lack of quick thinking with steady literal-mindedness. He's first to point out that the small details don't matter and that the big picture is what the team should be focusing on. More than that, he's the biggest proponent of being true to oneself that anyone could ever hope to meet, and he supports his friends in coming to terms with their true selves with everything he's got. After meeting and accepting his shadow and all that it represented, he promised himself that he would never lie to himself again—and he isn't going to let anyone he cares about lie to themselves, either.

Inventory:
» Yasogami High School uniform; personal effects: boots (brown), skull t-shirt (black)
» Bullet shell necklace
» Cell phone
» A pair of tinted glasses
» Emergency sewing kit
Abilities: In addition to his fighting skills, Kanji's talents include: tailoring, crochet, knitting, drawing, and cooking. He's an all around crafty person, and any project he takes on will be completed to the best of his abilities. The results are often ...very elaborate.

Kanji's persona is Take-Mikazuchi. It's a beast of a Persona with a high Strength attribute and high resistance to electricity. It gives Kanji access to the following abilities:

» Maziodyne - Large electricity damage to all foes.
» Ziodyne - Large electricity damage to one foe.
» Matarukaja - Increases attack for three turns. All allies.
» Kill Rush - Light physical damage (1-3 hits), one foe.
» Elec Amp (passive) - Increases Electricity damage output by 50%.
» Elec Break - Nullifies electricity resistance for three turns. One foe.
» Primal Force - Severe physical damage to one foe.
» Vile Assault - Large physical damage to one foe; bonus damage if foe is "down".

Without his persona Kanji is still a force to be reckoned with—if a very human one—he's strong for his age and has been known to wield everything from folding chairs to school desks as weapons. As if that weren't enough, years of using his fists to solve his problems has made him into a brawler as well as a decent grappler. Once he has a grip it's a fight to get loose again, although that depends entirely on if he can catch his opponent. Kanji is far from being the quickest among his friends, both in coming to the right conclusions and in combat. He needs a bit of a run-up to reach his top speed, and when fighting is more likely to take a hit than dodge it.
Flaws:
[[MORE HERE]]
His quick temper can get him into all kinds of trouble; even now, after everything he's learned from his friends and his own personal journey toward accepting himself, he's more likely to respond with his fists than his words. Words are hard, man.

SAMPLES
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