Application: Kazuki Makabe

[lifesein]

⌈ PLAYER SECTION ⌉
Player: Akai
Contact: fontech, fontechie @ gmail
Age: 33
Current Characters: N/A


⌈ CHARACTER SECTION ⌉
Character: Kazuki Makabe
Age: 19
Canon: Fafner in the Azure
Canon Point: Exodus episode 10 (end)

Background:
Kazuki was raised on Tatsumiya, an isolated Japanese island hidden from the rest of the world by a reflective shield. Until age 14 he believed the world was at peace but had never left the island, until an attack from an alien known as Festum dragged out the truth. Turns out most of the world has been decimated by these aliens, including the entirety of Japan, and the only effective way of fighting them is via the mecha Fafners, which due to genetic coding and long-term negative effects can only be piloted by the younger generation. When the Fafner's last remaining pilot is killed in an attack, Kazuki, the next in line with the highest synchronization level, is called on to become the new pilot. From the very start he is thrust into battle with no experience or time to prepare, and it's only through luck and raw talent that he's able to survive at all. From that day on, his life is in near-constant peril.

Alongside Kazuki many of his classmates are pulled in to also become Fafner pilots. Several of them die in battle as a result, and others suffer from the assimilation effect, where their bodies degrade due to the strain on the pilot from the mech. Kazuki himself struggles with the side effects as well as injuries sustained in battle, but they have no choice but to keep fighting or be destroyed by the invading aliens. Because the children of the island are essentially used as "batteries" to fuel the mechs that keep everyone else safe, they start to lose heart in whether or not they have value otherwise. When Kazuki questions Soushi (his childhood friend and their battle tactician) whether they or the Fafners are more important, and Soushi tells him "Fafner", Kazuki allows himself to be convinced by a spy of the Neo United Nations (NUN) to leave the island, taking his Fafner with him. He is then captured by NUN, learns about the rest of the world, and experiences life outside of the island, with other surviving humans. He isn't satisfied with how they live, either, and escapes back to the island with a newfound perspective on the reality of his world. During this process he is given a new Fafner, Mark Sein, which possesses an assimilation ability similar to the Festum. He also regains an important memory of his childhood: he and Soushi as small children found and fixed a radio, and it picked up the voice of the Festum which caused an assimilation effect in Soushi who threatened Kazuki. In response Kazuki attacked and injured Soushi's eye, which halted the assimilation but left his eye useless. Afraid of what happened, Kazuki fled, and due to Soushi never telling anyone the cause of the injury, he was never punished, and isolated himself out of guilt. Upon his return to the island, he's able to resolve things with Soushi at last and return to the battlefield with his friends.

As the series progresses the battles grow more difficult; the Festum learn how to hate from the NUN army and become more dangerous, nearly overwhelming the Fafners, and capture Soushi and their Siegfried system (which they use to communicate between the Fafners). The group launches a desperate final battle against the Festum, and while they successfully win and rescue Soushi, he doesn't survive the journey back, fading away with a promise to return to Kazuki one day.

During the movie, Heaven and Earth, peace has been restored to the island for two years, and Kazuki has retired as a pilot and is working at a cafe as a chef, as his sight is nearly gone and the assimilation of his Fafner makes it dangerous to continue using it. When a near-empty ship suddenly arrives at the island, pursued by Festum, he chooses to return to his Fafner and fight again. The ship's only occupant is a human-Festum hybrid who shares a similar body to Soushi, who gave himself the name Misao. The island is once again invaded by Festum, forcing the pilots once back into a war. Kazuki tries to convince Misao to tell his Festum family to leave, that they don't have to fight, but when that fails Kazuki returns to Mark Sein and the two do battle, until Misao, desperate not to lose anyone else, finally sacrifices himself to end the battle. Kazuki's eyesight is returned to him (as a parting gift), Misao is reborn as the baby core of the Festum's floating island, and Soushi comes back- alive, thanks to Misao, and now a human-Festum hybrid himself. Peace returns to the island.

A few years later, in the Exodus series, Kazuki has gone back to retirement, supporting the next generation of pilots, but a part of him knows it's inevitable that he'll have to return to the battlefield regardless of the danger posed by piloting Mark Sein, and his condition (which is hinted to be terminal degradation, giving him only a few years left to live). The Festum have only just begun to reappear, having been dragged back into war in retaliation for the human army bombing them in an attempt to annihilate their kind despite their attempt to live in peace. At his canon point, the island's core, Orihime, has asked Kazuki and Soushi to leave the island with Mark Sein and Mark Nicht and join up with an expedition force that had left the island some time prior, in order to protect them and, as they say, their hope for peace.

Personality:
For the most part Kazuki is kind of a quiet, polite guy. For years he had difficulty connecting with people on a deeper level than just casual friends and classmates, with few exceptions, and the war with the Festum forcibly pushed him out of that behaviour and taught him how to rely on his friends. Unfortunately this also caused him to push himself and take on a lot of responsibility, far more than should be expected of a literal teenager. His quietness stemmed from a guilt complex he carried since he attacked Soushi as a young child and got away with what he viewed to be a terrible assault and betrayal, without being punished for it. Once he remembered the full truth of what had happened, and was able to repair his broken friendship with Soushi, he was able to open up over time and grow more comfortable with his friends, forming stronger bonds with them than before and learning to trust in them, rather than going it alone all the time. By the time the fighting ended, however, his quiet nature returned because of everything he'd lost over the course of the war. Often he's a silent observer of the antics of his friends, but his lighter personality can be dragged out in the right situations. He has no qualms about teasing or being casually playful with those he's close to, especially Maya and Soushi, though it is by no means limited to just those two. Like most people, he is more willing to open up and be himself with those he knows well enough.

Kazuki has varying degrees of social anxiety and awkwardness. It used to be much worse, and even now he tends to be bad at knowing what is acceptable or right to say in a given situation. He's had to be told how someone is feeling by others often, or told when he needs to apologize, or scolded for being too honest; he's also been known to sulk when being teased or called out on his behaviour rather than take it in stride. Despite his own anxiety he is bad at recognizing other people who feel the same way; in the novel, when Shouko, a girl who likes him, refuses to return his greeting, he assumes she doesn't like him when in fact she's merely too shy.

Despite being Alvis's "ace pilot" and arguably one of the best fighters on the island, he's a very poor soldier. He often disobeys orders, rebels against the rules if they conflict with his moral code, and when he's told to give a pep talk to the new generation of pilots, he shamelessly tells them, "If you don't like the order, you don't have to listen," even though one of his closest and most trusted friends (Soushi) and his own father are often the ones giving those orders. He's also very much a reluctant hero; he charges into battle not for glory or power but because he thinks of himself as the only one who should, that if anyone has to die it ought to be him. It's not so much suicidal (as he's also demonstrated repeatedly to be someone who wants to live and throughout the entire series just stubbornly refuses to die at every turn) but a willing sacrifice if one is absolutely necessary. He walks a tight balance between the two, and it frequently earns him both the ire and the concern of the people around him who know he's a poor judge of his own limitations.

Kazuki doesn't like to be viewed or lauded as a hero by others, actively sulking about it- he gripes about it with Maya on a few occasions, and will leave the area when such talk is going on around him and he can't tolerate it anymore- even when the source is people genuinely thanking him for what they perceive him to have done for them. He doesn't view his "heroic" past as anything but a dark experience that no one else should envy or try to emulate. He would rather be the only one to suffer the consequences rather than let others drag themselves to his level. He's incredibly stubborn about this; in non-emergency situations he can easily be coaxed and prodded and forced to sit back and watch for his own safety, but when he feels that there's something only he can do to help others, not a soul in the universe can stop him from doing that- even the assimilation of his own body is stubbornly resisted one way or another.

As noted above he can be self-sacrificial, to the point of worrying or annoying the people around him. Often he is scolded for taking too much on his shoulders- when he goes to visit his old Fafner in the early episode of Exodus, Canon finds him and yells at him for even considering getting back in, as it is too volatile for anyone to survive piloting it. He takes her scolding in stride; that's sort of his style these days, when people disagree with him- if the argument is for his sake, he'll smile and dismiss or disagree, or distract from the subject if possible. If the argument is for the sake of someone else, however, he will fight back with all his heart. She meets with him again later on when he makes the decision to pilot his Fafner for real, trying to convince him not to go, and even Soushi tells him he can still turn back if he wants. His response to both is more or less the same: "I've always thought about how I wanted to live out my end." / "I've thought about it a lot. Today, I was taught how I can use my life." He recognizes that something's been missing in his peaceful existence, and that the idea of slowly degrading and dying would be a waste when his life can be used it help the world this way, instead, and he believes that his duty to protect people is the reason he's still alive.

Kazuki has a darker side to his personality that comes out when he is in battle, owed to the fact that the Fafner system is designed to increase aggression and violent instinct; in the novel he finds some joy and success in destroying the enemy during his early days as a pilot, overcoming the pain he experiences during a fight, and resisting the enemy's mind controlling ability to suppress his rage. Early on in the 1st series he expresses his worry to Maya that he'll get used to fighting and change as a person. This ultimately is one of the reasons he leaves the island with the NUN spy- he tells her, "I felt like I was going to lose myself if I stayed there". That fear is not entirely unfounded, either. Over time as the many battles weighed on him, and he's become quiet, somber, and self-sacrificial as noted above. He learned to view the Festum as more than just monstrous human killers, and at this point he's become something of a silent harbinger of their destruction- when properly controlled, Mark Sein is an incredibly powerful weapon, but as its pilot Kazuki does no boasting or bantering with his opponents. More often than not he can recognize when trying to speak with the enemy would be pointless, instead charging in and trying to end the fight as swiftly as possible, killing many of the Festum that attack the island.

He is strictly against killing humans, however, and will resist any orders that push him in that direction. When it comes to his own kind (and, ultimately, to beings he can peacefully converse with such as the Festum-human hybrids and cores) he will try repeatedly to talk them out of fighting rather than kill them outright. This typically involves a whole lot of yelling and baring his heart. When someone else's life is on the line, his normally quiet nature is thrown to the wayside and he becomes loud and opinionated, fearless about how his words and actions will impact others. He prioritizes things differently from most people around him, in part because he's young, but also because he lacks the soldier mentality that is expected of him. When told to stop an enemy mech from self destructing to cause massive damage, instead of destroying it he talks the pilot down and convinces her to go against orders and choose to live, criticizing her inability to think for herself. In Exodus, when meeting with the child who acts as the core protecting the island, he's the first to ask her for her name rather than assuming she's the same as Tsubaki, the identical core who came before her. In many ways he thinks differently from the adults trying to guide him and is resistant to the idea of changing, afraid of becoming someone other than who he is.

Abilities:
Kazuki is just a normal human at this point, aside from the implantation of Festum genetics that all Tatsumiya children possess, so he has no fancy supernatural abilities. Some of his actual skills include:
-he's athletic; he excels at all sports he attempts and was basically the top of all classes in school back in the day (although his body is not in as good a state anymore due to assimilation degradation)
-he knows aikijujutsu martial arts and has had some kendo training
-he's a pilot; back home he's known as a "super ace pilot" of the Fafner mech and is practically legendary at it. His experience is limited to mechs, however, and is never shown to fly a normal plane.
-he's a chef; he's grown up as the primary cook in his home, often cooks at friends' homes, and currently works as the head chef at a cafe on the island where he lives.
-due to spending two years mostly blind, he's pretty adept at getting himself around in bad light, identifying items by touch. He's had his sight back for two years now and these skills are by no means superhuman, but it could be useful in the right situation.

Alignment:
Peromei: despair and hope

I chose this for Kazuki because holding on to hope in the face of despair is a defining character trait for him. Multiple times he's faced with a desperate situation and on the edge of death is still pushing for others to live, to fight, to survive. And through their strength he survives, too. He's also not immune to despair, either- when it comes to himself, he's prone to anxiety and self-sacrifice, ready to give up everything for the sake of others if it comes to that.

Other:
Regarding Kazuki's health, the degradation caused by piloting the Fafners is long-term, and he's been given an estimate of 3 years to live. He's also been undergoing treatments for this disability. Canon is somewhat unclear on what this entails, but there is mention of an assimilation blocker called Activion that the pilots take. I assume he gets some kind of similar medication made for non-active pilots. In the interest of keeping him alive, I'll be following the "Character/Species/Canon specific characteristics" section of the FAQ and let emotions replace his canonical treatments.


⌈ SAMPLE SECTION ⌉

General Sample: Test Drive Thread

Emotion Sample: broken crystals and broken lights

Questions: Nadda!