「浅野 凜」 Asano Rin (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
revengeisalie) wrote2008-12-15 01:20 pm
revengeisalie) wrote2008-12-15 01:20 pm
[OOC: Application]
[nick / name]: Val
[personal LJ name]:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lanoyee
[other characters currently played]: None!
[e-mail]: yumejin[at]gmx[dot]net
[AIM / messenger]: Kikoujutsuka [AIM]
[series]: Blade of the Immortal
[character]: Asano Rin
[character history / background]:
The setting is Edo (modern Tōkyō), Japan, late 18th century. Originally, Rin comes from a pretty well-established samurai family, her father having been the head of a sword school, the Muten-ichi-ryū. This comfortable life, however, ended on the night of her fourteenth birthday, when Anotsu Kagehisa and his gang, the Ittō-ryū, showed up at their doorstep and, after already having killed all students of the school, had her father killed and her mother brutally raped, all in Rin’s presence. The reason for this was an old feud between their grandfathers as well as Anotsu’s goal of reviving his idea of a true warrior’s spirit by forcefully taking over other dōjōs. Rin herself got away physically unharmed, but her psychological wounds were deep and she swore revenge on Anotsu Kagehisa.
Two years later, she meets an old nun who recommends her to hire Manji, an immortal rōnin, as a bodyguard, which Rin manages to do, after some initial troubles with Manji. From then on, the unlikely pair repeatedly runs into Ittō-ryū fighters, among them the man who killed Rin’s father, a young man named Magatsu Taito who’d been present at Rin’s unusual birthday party and carries a sword that belonged to Rin’s father, an immortal like Manji, a female sword fighter named Makie who is close to Anotsu, and the man who raped Rin’s mother. They kill all of them except for Magatsu, from whom they get the sword back, which will from now on be Rin’s weapon; and Makie, who would have killed Manji if not for Rin’s intervention.
After that, they get an offer from Mugai-ryū, a mysterious organization with ties to the government, for teamwork in finding Anotsu Kagehisa. They accept reluctantly and are told by the Mugai-ryū that Anotsu will be leaving Edo for the Kaga province soon - in the disguise of a woman, no less. Seeing as Anotsu, according to their information, is sending out several decoys as bait, the group splits up, hoping to catch the real deal that way. Rin is paired up with Shira, whose true nature she has to find out the hard way when he tortures the decoy troupe they’d been following and nearly rapes the woman who impersonates Anotsu. The woman is saved from that by the arrival of Manji, who cuts Shira’s arm off. All of them are discovered by passersby, at which point Shira flees.
Not much later, Rin decides to go to Kaga by herself, as Manji, being a wanted criminal, cannot leave Edo. On the way, she quickly finds out that she is wanted now, too - someone had reported her and Manji for the murder of two merchants, probably Shira. Subsequently, Rin pleads with a woman working at the inn they’d been staying at and gets herself a disguise. From then on, she begins the trip to Kaga. At the Kobotoke turnpike, she has to take the high risk of disguising herself as a local inn owner’s relative - as a wanted criminal, she can’t get a permission to pass the turnpike, and if she is found out, it will cost her her head. She manages to get through and continues on her journey, being robbed due to naivete in the process. Eventually, she makes it, but collapses in the forest, and is found by none other than Anotsu Kagehisa himself.
She decides to follow him and they spend a time traveling together, trying to escape Anotsu’s followers all the while, as he has been betrayed by the government and the sword school which he’d made a pact with. Rin is hoping to kill him while he’s asleep or otherwise off guard, but instead ends up carrying him around when he falls ill with tetanus. When caught by his followers, she surrenders, not wanting to be tortured for her enemy’s sake, and leads them to his hiding place. A grand showdown follows, including Manji, who’d followed Rin and finally caught up. It ends with Anotsu winning, his followers destroyed, and Rin giving him a promise that one day, she’ll come to kill him.
Back in Edo, life goes on peacefully until Manji has an interlude, first with Giichi, then with some Ittō-ryū, among them Magatsu. It ends well, though, with Manji, Giichi and Magatsu all alive.
After that, however, Manji is invited to the house of Habaki Kagimura, leader of the nigh disbanded Mugai-ryū and also the government official invested in the pursuit of Anotsu Kagehisa. He does not return from this visit, and Rin worries. She moves from the hut they’d been living in back to her home dōjo, thinking it will be safer there. The night she moves in, she gets a visit from two Ittō-ryū fighters, Dōa and Isaku, who’d been hoping for a place to spend the night. After a short scuffle, she grants them shelter, and they life at her place for a while. When they have a run-in with the police due to some trouble Dōa caused earlier, Isaku is taken away, too, and the girls team up to find their men. As it turns out, they both were taken to an underground prison beneath Edo Castle where experiments on immortality are secretly being conducted. After some planning, they set out together to invade the “badger hole”, a secret entry to the prison in a bamboo forest, and rescue Manji and Isaku.
[character abilities]:
Rin is a sword fighter! ... except she sort of fails at it. She’s probably more skilled than the average woman of her time, but when you’re in a manga full of tremendous badassses, that doesn’t say much. Thus, her intelligence and her courage probably come in more handy. She is perfectly capable of thinking logically, devising more or less elaborate plans and, to an extent, even manipulate people. Has perseverance aplenty and is quite enduring.
Can also kick a man across the room, if duly provoked.
[character personality]:
Rin is your average 17-year-old girl, really. She’s polite, has a giant sweet tooth and worries whether or not she is attractive or whether she comes off as mature. The latter is especially an issue for her - she is convinced that, after all she’s gone through, she is already an adult, but people around her keep telling her she is still a child. Mostly, she wants to be taken seriously. Her attractiveness also becomes an issue as she quickly develops a crush on Manji, her bodyguard, after meeting him.
Generally a smart girl, Rin nonetheless sometimes lets herself get carried away, acting immature or bratty when wanting to come off as mature or letting her emotions override her logical thought process. However, she is still very much a thinking person, continuously reflecting on the rightness or lack thereof of her actions and the path she’s chosen. She worries about becoming a hypocrite and often has to ask herself whether her desires are worth the consequences they bring. As such, she sometimes may be inclined to forgive someone who has been cruel to her or someone dear to her. She’s the kind of person who will throw herself in front of someone to save them, sometimes even if she doesn’t really know them.
Most of all, she believes killing is wrong and should be avoided when not strictly necessary. In some of the situations she inevitably finds herself in, this causes complications, as she has been responsible for deaths where they were, in her view, not necessary. Also, she doesn’t always seem to be quite sure about whether she really thinks revenge is the right thing to do at all, but it is her way of dealing with something she cannot let go.
Despite being generally prone to physical reactions - crying a lot (especially in things concerning her parents’s deaths, as she has not truly dealt with this yet), getting sick at gruesome sights and so on - she is also quite brave and willing to take risks when she thinks she has to.
In a difficult situation, she will try to keep a level head, but not always succeed at doing so. She’s creative and can come up with spontaneous ideas on how to solve something.
[point in timeline you're picking your character from]: Early volume 19, after parting with Dōa.
[journal post]:
[Accidental Voice Post]
... w-uwaahh...
AH!
[Loud person-crashing-into-ground sound, and then shuffling as Rin picks herself back up.]
Ow, ow, ow...
...
Haaaaah? What is... what did just?
...
THIS IS SO NOT HAPPENING.
[third person / log sample]:
Rin was readying her weapons.
Her sword lay already next to the open bags, tended to as best as she could. It wasn’t sharp, nothing like a samurai’s sword for sure, but it was good enough.
One of her ōgonchū was in her hands, waiting to be covered in grease. Amusing technique, Anotsu Kagehisa had called them. Well, that amusing technique might just be saving lives today.
Or, at least, it was a thought she fancied to hold. Realistically, she knew that much depended on Dōa, who was actually a skilled fighter. She’d never be able to do it alone (which probably would not keep her from trying, but that was a wholly different story). Still, the plan was hers. The responsibility was hers.
Her plan, Dōa’s strength. It could work.
Part of her was confident.
It was a feeling she was all too well-acquainted with. In the two years after the murder of her parents, she had trained with fierce anger and a certain self-assurance born from her pain and thirst for revenge. Still, the pain had been her constant companion, and still prickled at her consciousness every now and then - but not so sharply by far, she noted. Perhaps surprisingly - but she’d grown. That was what she’d like to think.
After meeting Manji, she’d soon begun to feel daunted. Her very own weakness had been forced into her recognition, and she had not been able to help the feeling of utter defenselessness at first. There’d been Manji, but she? But Rin? Asano Rin wasn’t capable of doing any bloody thing.
But she couldn’t live like that, and so she just didn’t. Maybe it was putting up a front, and that was what the world was telling her, but she couldn’t live any other way. She couldn’t just let go and move on, couldn’t just lie down and take it.
It would mean giving up herself. And so she did what she could, no matter how hopeless things seemed sometimes.
She was no child.
She had not been for two years, even though Manji said she was, even though that man called her one. But two years ago had been big. It was an incision. Cutting off her childhood. She felt that this was the truth.
She carefully put the ōgonchū in its sheath and picked up the next. Idly, she wondered if Anotsu called Dōa a child, too. Dōa was young, but she lived the life of an adult. Rin thought it all a little sad, but then she shook her head and reminded herself that it was Dōa’s choice alone.
Now, her readiness to kill, Rin felt she had a right to say something about. Maybe Dōa didn’t realize the extent of her deeds, or maybe she’d worn down her feelings about it, but - it wasn’t just. That was the one thing Rin knew.
Even if she had taken lives of her own. Not with her hand, but by her fault. Her weakness.
Maybe she had been wrong, but those men had been no innocents. She had to count on that.
She put the ōgonchū in the second sheath and picked up the next. Time to focus on something else. It was strange to think about these things, somehow, when she had only done so in passing for weeks. Ever since Manji vanished, that very fact had stood on the very forefront of her mind. She felt like all she’d even thought about during that time was Manji, Manji, Manji. Even though it wasn’t true. The whole issue was complex, and then Isaku and Dōa had entered her life, with Isaku leaving nearly as quickly.
The world worked in strange ways.
It brought her together with an Ittō-ryū fighter to rescue the men most important in their respective lives.
Because that was what Manji was. The most important person in her life. Giving him up was out of the question. He was her bodyguard - just her bodyguard, Hyakurin had said, but that wasn’t true anymore. Not in Rin’s view, and there not for a long time. So why should she not give her all to help him? He’d already done more for her than she could ever pay in money.
So it was only natural for her to be doing what she was about to do. She might die if she wasn’t careful, but she’d taken that risk for lesser things before.
Saving a life was a higher aim than destroying one.
Rin put the ōgonchū into its sheath and picked up the next.
[personal LJ name]:
lanoyee[other characters currently played]: None!
[e-mail]: yumejin[at]gmx[dot]net
[AIM / messenger]: Kikoujutsuka [AIM]
[series]: Blade of the Immortal
[character]: Asano Rin
[character history / background]:
The setting is Edo (modern Tōkyō), Japan, late 18th century. Originally, Rin comes from a pretty well-established samurai family, her father having been the head of a sword school, the Muten-ichi-ryū. This comfortable life, however, ended on the night of her fourteenth birthday, when Anotsu Kagehisa and his gang, the Ittō-ryū, showed up at their doorstep and, after already having killed all students of the school, had her father killed and her mother brutally raped, all in Rin’s presence. The reason for this was an old feud between their grandfathers as well as Anotsu’s goal of reviving his idea of a true warrior’s spirit by forcefully taking over other dōjōs. Rin herself got away physically unharmed, but her psychological wounds were deep and she swore revenge on Anotsu Kagehisa.
Two years later, she meets an old nun who recommends her to hire Manji, an immortal rōnin, as a bodyguard, which Rin manages to do, after some initial troubles with Manji. From then on, the unlikely pair repeatedly runs into Ittō-ryū fighters, among them the man who killed Rin’s father, a young man named Magatsu Taito who’d been present at Rin’s unusual birthday party and carries a sword that belonged to Rin’s father, an immortal like Manji, a female sword fighter named Makie who is close to Anotsu, and the man who raped Rin’s mother. They kill all of them except for Magatsu, from whom they get the sword back, which will from now on be Rin’s weapon; and Makie, who would have killed Manji if not for Rin’s intervention.
After that, they get an offer from Mugai-ryū, a mysterious organization with ties to the government, for teamwork in finding Anotsu Kagehisa. They accept reluctantly and are told by the Mugai-ryū that Anotsu will be leaving Edo for the Kaga province soon - in the disguise of a woman, no less. Seeing as Anotsu, according to their information, is sending out several decoys as bait, the group splits up, hoping to catch the real deal that way. Rin is paired up with Shira, whose true nature she has to find out the hard way when he tortures the decoy troupe they’d been following and nearly rapes the woman who impersonates Anotsu. The woman is saved from that by the arrival of Manji, who cuts Shira’s arm off. All of them are discovered by passersby, at which point Shira flees.
Not much later, Rin decides to go to Kaga by herself, as Manji, being a wanted criminal, cannot leave Edo. On the way, she quickly finds out that she is wanted now, too - someone had reported her and Manji for the murder of two merchants, probably Shira. Subsequently, Rin pleads with a woman working at the inn they’d been staying at and gets herself a disguise. From then on, she begins the trip to Kaga. At the Kobotoke turnpike, she has to take the high risk of disguising herself as a local inn owner’s relative - as a wanted criminal, she can’t get a permission to pass the turnpike, and if she is found out, it will cost her her head. She manages to get through and continues on her journey, being robbed due to naivete in the process. Eventually, she makes it, but collapses in the forest, and is found by none other than Anotsu Kagehisa himself.
She decides to follow him and they spend a time traveling together, trying to escape Anotsu’s followers all the while, as he has been betrayed by the government and the sword school which he’d made a pact with. Rin is hoping to kill him while he’s asleep or otherwise off guard, but instead ends up carrying him around when he falls ill with tetanus. When caught by his followers, she surrenders, not wanting to be tortured for her enemy’s sake, and leads them to his hiding place. A grand showdown follows, including Manji, who’d followed Rin and finally caught up. It ends with Anotsu winning, his followers destroyed, and Rin giving him a promise that one day, she’ll come to kill him.
Back in Edo, life goes on peacefully until Manji has an interlude, first with Giichi, then with some Ittō-ryū, among them Magatsu. It ends well, though, with Manji, Giichi and Magatsu all alive.
After that, however, Manji is invited to the house of Habaki Kagimura, leader of the nigh disbanded Mugai-ryū and also the government official invested in the pursuit of Anotsu Kagehisa. He does not return from this visit, and Rin worries. She moves from the hut they’d been living in back to her home dōjo, thinking it will be safer there. The night she moves in, she gets a visit from two Ittō-ryū fighters, Dōa and Isaku, who’d been hoping for a place to spend the night. After a short scuffle, she grants them shelter, and they life at her place for a while. When they have a run-in with the police due to some trouble Dōa caused earlier, Isaku is taken away, too, and the girls team up to find their men. As it turns out, they both were taken to an underground prison beneath Edo Castle where experiments on immortality are secretly being conducted. After some planning, they set out together to invade the “badger hole”, a secret entry to the prison in a bamboo forest, and rescue Manji and Isaku.
[character abilities]:
Rin is a sword fighter! ... except she sort of fails at it. She’s probably more skilled than the average woman of her time, but when you’re in a manga full of tremendous badassses, that doesn’t say much. Thus, her intelligence and her courage probably come in more handy. She is perfectly capable of thinking logically, devising more or less elaborate plans and, to an extent, even manipulate people. Has perseverance aplenty and is quite enduring.
Can also kick a man across the room, if duly provoked.
[character personality]:
Rin is your average 17-year-old girl, really. She’s polite, has a giant sweet tooth and worries whether or not she is attractive or whether she comes off as mature. The latter is especially an issue for her - she is convinced that, after all she’s gone through, she is already an adult, but people around her keep telling her she is still a child. Mostly, she wants to be taken seriously. Her attractiveness also becomes an issue as she quickly develops a crush on Manji, her bodyguard, after meeting him.
Generally a smart girl, Rin nonetheless sometimes lets herself get carried away, acting immature or bratty when wanting to come off as mature or letting her emotions override her logical thought process. However, she is still very much a thinking person, continuously reflecting on the rightness or lack thereof of her actions and the path she’s chosen. She worries about becoming a hypocrite and often has to ask herself whether her desires are worth the consequences they bring. As such, she sometimes may be inclined to forgive someone who has been cruel to her or someone dear to her. She’s the kind of person who will throw herself in front of someone to save them, sometimes even if she doesn’t really know them.
Most of all, she believes killing is wrong and should be avoided when not strictly necessary. In some of the situations she inevitably finds herself in, this causes complications, as she has been responsible for deaths where they were, in her view, not necessary. Also, she doesn’t always seem to be quite sure about whether she really thinks revenge is the right thing to do at all, but it is her way of dealing with something she cannot let go.
Despite being generally prone to physical reactions - crying a lot (especially in things concerning her parents’s deaths, as she has not truly dealt with this yet), getting sick at gruesome sights and so on - she is also quite brave and willing to take risks when she thinks she has to.
In a difficult situation, she will try to keep a level head, but not always succeed at doing so. She’s creative and can come up with spontaneous ideas on how to solve something.
[point in timeline you're picking your character from]: Early volume 19, after parting with Dōa.
[journal post]:
[Accidental Voice Post]
... w-uwaahh...
AH!
[Loud person-crashing-into-ground sound, and then shuffling as Rin picks herself back up.]
Ow, ow, ow...
...
Haaaaah? What is... what did just?
...
THIS IS SO NOT HAPPENING.
[third person / log sample]:
Rin was readying her weapons.
Her sword lay already next to the open bags, tended to as best as she could. It wasn’t sharp, nothing like a samurai’s sword for sure, but it was good enough.
One of her ōgonchū was in her hands, waiting to be covered in grease. Amusing technique, Anotsu Kagehisa had called them. Well, that amusing technique might just be saving lives today.
Or, at least, it was a thought she fancied to hold. Realistically, she knew that much depended on Dōa, who was actually a skilled fighter. She’d never be able to do it alone (which probably would not keep her from trying, but that was a wholly different story). Still, the plan was hers. The responsibility was hers.
Her plan, Dōa’s strength. It could work.
Part of her was confident.
It was a feeling she was all too well-acquainted with. In the two years after the murder of her parents, she had trained with fierce anger and a certain self-assurance born from her pain and thirst for revenge. Still, the pain had been her constant companion, and still prickled at her consciousness every now and then - but not so sharply by far, she noted. Perhaps surprisingly - but she’d grown. That was what she’d like to think.
After meeting Manji, she’d soon begun to feel daunted. Her very own weakness had been forced into her recognition, and she had not been able to help the feeling of utter defenselessness at first. There’d been Manji, but she? But Rin? Asano Rin wasn’t capable of doing any bloody thing.
But she couldn’t live like that, and so she just didn’t. Maybe it was putting up a front, and that was what the world was telling her, but she couldn’t live any other way. She couldn’t just let go and move on, couldn’t just lie down and take it.
It would mean giving up herself. And so she did what she could, no matter how hopeless things seemed sometimes.
She was no child.
She had not been for two years, even though Manji said she was, even though that man called her one. But two years ago had been big. It was an incision. Cutting off her childhood. She felt that this was the truth.
She carefully put the ōgonchū in its sheath and picked up the next. Idly, she wondered if Anotsu called Dōa a child, too. Dōa was young, but she lived the life of an adult. Rin thought it all a little sad, but then she shook her head and reminded herself that it was Dōa’s choice alone.
Now, her readiness to kill, Rin felt she had a right to say something about. Maybe Dōa didn’t realize the extent of her deeds, or maybe she’d worn down her feelings about it, but - it wasn’t just. That was the one thing Rin knew.
Even if she had taken lives of her own. Not with her hand, but by her fault. Her weakness.
Maybe she had been wrong, but those men had been no innocents. She had to count on that.
She put the ōgonchū in the second sheath and picked up the next. Time to focus on something else. It was strange to think about these things, somehow, when she had only done so in passing for weeks. Ever since Manji vanished, that very fact had stood on the very forefront of her mind. She felt like all she’d even thought about during that time was Manji, Manji, Manji. Even though it wasn’t true. The whole issue was complex, and then Isaku and Dōa had entered her life, with Isaku leaving nearly as quickly.
The world worked in strange ways.
It brought her together with an Ittō-ryū fighter to rescue the men most important in their respective lives.
Because that was what Manji was. The most important person in her life. Giving him up was out of the question. He was her bodyguard - just her bodyguard, Hyakurin had said, but that wasn’t true anymore. Not in Rin’s view, and there not for a long time. So why should she not give her all to help him? He’d already done more for her than she could ever pay in money.
So it was only natural for her to be doing what she was about to do. She might die if she wasn’t careful, but she’d taken that risk for lesser things before.
Saving a life was a higher aim than destroying one.
Rin put the ōgonchū into its sheath and picked up the next.
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