Gargleblasted application
OOC:
Name: Raziel
Are you over 16?: Yes
Personal LJ: orochi_raziel
Email: orochi_raziel@yahoo.com
Timezone: GMT -8
Other contact: AIM: chaosseer
Characters already in the game: None
How did you find us?: mentioned by a friend, long ago
IC:
Character name: Katsuragi Keima
Fandom: The World God Only Knows
Timeline: Right before the sports festival
Age: 17
~*Magical*~ abilities and strengths: He has nothing magical, but Keima does have his unbelievable gaming prowess. After understanding the mechanics of a game, he masters it(as long as it wasn't too physical). By mastering it, I mean getting the max scores and beating opponents who have dedicated their lives to their game.(The only times he has lost in the manga were against a shogi genius he trained and a goddess) He is also great at strategy and manipulation, when he translates "mechanics of the real world" into game mechanics he is familiar with.
Capturing god mode: This is a state he enters to be able to play 6 games at once. His hands at this state is said to be fast enough to look like he was using 6 arms. His intellectual capacities and concentration are pushed, allowing him to regard each game and react to them individually as he plays. It's as if he can handle 6 thought processes at once while at that mode. Since it also eats his stamina quickly, he can feel incredibly drained after staying in capturing god mode for a few hours. Staying in that mode after 20 hours may be his limit, as he becomes delusional and nearly dies when he tried it(maybe).
How would they use their abilities?: He normally doesn't take advantage of his abilities when he doesn't have to. The only exception is mercilessly beating anyone who challenges him to a game. He only bothers to control a situation with his techniques if the situation is hindering him from playing his games. As for the Capturing God Mode, he never used it outside of playing games despite the advantages it may give if he used it for other things.
Appearance:
Full Body
Keima is a skinny and really weak looking guy. Anyone can pin him as a nerd at a glance. The only thing that doesn't pin him as insecure and weak is his eyes. The way he wears them give people the feeling as if he was observing from another world. His eyes showed awareness of what he sees but no expectations from reality. His default outfit is his school's winter uniform, as pictured. He has guillotine collar around his neck at all times because of the contract with demons he made. The guillotine collar is a simple black ring around his neck; possibly metal.
Background(focusing on impact on Keima's personality):
[Bolded items are the important parts of the main plot. Everything else is what develops Keima's character. They discuss the main plot without the tl;dr on how everything that happens affects Keima.]
Keima Katsuragi was a 7 year old boy that kept playing video games and ignoring the happenings of the real world. Back then, he'd was content with any game genre. His preferred handheld console was the Gameboy. During an elementary school summer camp, he and his class went to Maijima Seaside Park. He was content with playing his games in the beach at first, but his teacher's constant pestering got him to stow away on a nearby docked ship to be left alone.
An earthquake shook. The ship drifted away from the beach into a nearby island. Rather than panicking, Keima wondered how his predicament happened. It was then that he noticed a girl his age was on the ship with him. Together, they looked for a way back to the island. They found a cave under where the ship crashed and decided to explore it. At that age, Keima was already shown to be reliable. His Gameboys were used for light. Because of the settings in some of his games, he had helpful facts about caves that helped them. Already then, he claimed to be satisfied without food as long as he had games to play. Still, they were just kids wandering around lost in a cave. They wouldn't have made any progress if it wasn't for the next event.
Suddenly, the power of Keima's Gameboys died and another earthquake hit. They ran, but Keima got knocked unconscious by falling debris. The girl just sat there, trying to wake Keima up. That's when she saw a horde of spirits coming out of a tunnel. When they saw the girl, they swarmed her; hoping to enter the gap of her heart if she had any. Among the spirits, there was one different from the rest. She offered to help the girl, but the girl will have to take the other spirit within her. The girl agreed. The spirit possessed her and bust her and Keima out of that cave. The other end led to some theater within their town.
10 years later, the real story began.
Keima was now 17 years old. At high school, he was called "otamegane"(short nickname for glasses otaku). He was always on his PFP, staying as detached from the real world as possible. He called himself a resident of the game world. At some point in life, he started to focus on "gal games"(visual novels/dating sims). His goal now was to bring every game heroine to their happiest ending, thus "capturing" them. He called himself the "Capturing god". He was well known to the gaming community and often answered letters from them. Among one of the letters was a strange one asking for help to capture some girls. It seemed like a taunt to Keima; saying that he absolutely shouldn't press the reply button if it was impossible to help. Of course he pressed the button.
A demon named Elsee fell from the sky, grabbed him and said they should collect spirits. He wanted to refuse, but Elsee pointed out the guillotine collar around his neck. Should they fail to collect runaway spirits, the collars would cut off both Keima's and Elsee's heads.Keima had no choice but to go along with the demon.
The runaway spirits they were after are the spirits of evil people that escaped from hell. They search for gaps in the hearts of women and hide within them. If the spirits stay within a girl's heart long enough, they will gain more power and become more corporeal. They get to finally reincarnate after spending enough time and growing in someone. The gaps in the heart are caused by feelings of great dissatisfaction. They can be filled if the host of the heart feels fulfilled. The best way to close the gaps in hearts is love, according to Elsee. By closing the gaps, they force the spirit out of its host making it possible for Elsee to capture them.
The first spirit they encountered was in a track and field girl, Ayumi Takahara. At first, Keima wasn't confident at using his usual gaming methods in the real world. The entire time during the capture, he stressed on whether it was really working or not. He found results of his attempts ambiguous, but he had no other weapon than his gaming knowledge to capture the heart of a girl. He pushed through with great uncertainty, and succeeded. His demon partner, Elsee got to capture her first spirit. Ayumi had her memory erased after the runaway spirit was captured, something that would happen to all the future runaway spirit hosts as well. Keima felt a little bit of regret for her forgetting about him, but reasoned to himself that it was for the best. He wouldn't have to deal with her anymore and he was satisfied enough with his games.
Keima thought it was all over until he realized he still had the guillotine collar and Elsee appeared the next day in his class as a transfer student. One wasn't enough for the contract, he had to collect more spirits. Elsee insisted on sticking by him, being a transfer student in his class and pretending to be his little sister at home. He tried to reject her attempts to be a little sister because she didn't have the same setup as a little sister in a game. In the end, he resigned to her sticking by him anyway. From his second capture onwards, he decided to believe in his gaming tactics as they were his only weapon for capturing spirits. He quickly captured the heart of his second target, Mio Aoyama. He was able to figure out what he had to do for the capture once he truly understood her character. As he kept capturing runaway spirits, he got better at dealing with the real world each time.
Kanon Nakagawa's capture is the first time Keima and Elsee seeing a girl display an external effect to having an runaway spirit. Whenever Kanon would be insecure of her popularity, she would go invisible. It only gets worse the longer the runaway spirit stays within her. This was also Keima's first encounter with a target actively trying to get close to him. He learned how to use techniques from yandere girl routes to keep a distance until the right time to get close. Keima's neglect of Elsee led her into trying to impress him with her cooking skill. When everything went wrong and she got depressed, Keima for the first time did something he didn't have to outside a capture operation. He ate Elsee's failure of a cake despite hating sweets.
The next runaway spirit was in Shiori Shiomiya, a meek librarian who doesn't speak her mind at his school. His usual technique for dealing with such quiet girls is to read their inner thoughts in dialogue boxes, something that can only be done in games. After enough encounters, he began to understand her unspoken words through her expression. He got to know the real life equivalent of reading someone's inner thoughts. The next target was Kusunoki Kasuga. Kusunoki's runaway spirit was strong enough to manifest itself physically, but it was still influenced by its host's personality. It acted as Kusunoki's repressed feelings instead of being aware of itself.
An runaway spirit ran from another demon and escaped to Keima's school. This triggered Keima's first meeting with Hakua, the first devil he meets besides Elsee. Unlike Elsee, she was competent and understood the status of hell and how these captures work. While helping Hakua find the runaway spirit, Keima milked as much information about hell from her as he can. The runaway spirits were actually demons too, from old hell. Elsee and Hakua are part of the new demons that reformed hell. To prevent hell from reverting back to how it was, the new demons try to prevent the runaway spirits from reviving. They eventually find the demon, but the demon jumped into the gap of Hakua's heart and took control of her. Since Keima was held hostage by Hakua, it was up to Elsee to fill the gap in her heart. Elsee and Hakua then teamed up to capture the spirit.
A day later, Hakua visited the Katsuragi household to ask for help on her report. To keep Keima cooperative, she promised to answer more of his questions about capturing spirits. She said that the contract will end for all the buddies when all the runaway spirits are captured. At the time, there were still about 60,000 spirits left.She also vaguely hinted that there's another method besides love for filling the gaps of hearts. From then on, she'd visit the Katsuragi household from time to time.
The next target was Chihiro Kosaka. Unlike the previous captures, she wasn't a stereotype at all. She had no strong characteristics or character quirks. She was just an average girl. In Keima's words, she's one of those girls in the background that the protagonist doesn't bother with at all. They also figure out she falls for good looking boys and confesses to them fairly often. She is also the first one to shoot back all of Keima's insults back at him. Off his high horse, he just sulked and ignored reality more than usual. He couldn't believe that he was arguing at an equal level with someone from reality. He would have kept it up and ignored the runaway spirit if it wasn't for Ayumi cheering him up. It was also from his talk with Ayumi that he realized that the memories of the girls he worked with before haven't been completely erased. Chihiro was also the first capture where Keima accidentally stumbled into the route to make her fall for him instead of planning for it. In the end, he considered the difficulty of all his captures and seriously thought about real humans for the first time.
A new substitute teacher, Jun Nagase, came to the school with a runaway spirit. As a teacher, she chased after Keima to get closer to him as student and teacher. Keima had to play keep away so the relationship doesn't settle on just teacher and student. When it came to gathering info, his homeroom teacher, Nikaido, found it strange that he was suddenly interested in Jun. Around this period, Elsee has been getting more and more recognition from the higher ups in hell for having caught so many runaway spirits in such a small amount of time. Elsee found another spirit in Tsukiyo Kujou. Early on, she shrunk to a doll's size because of the runaway spirit within her. For once, she caught on to Keima trying to trick her during the capture. Since he planned for her to realize eventually anyway, he just rushed to the conclusion. Something unexpected during the climax, though. Tsukiyo lost her balance and fell from the edge of the roof. Without thinking nor any prepared reassurance, Keima jumped after her to catch her. Thankfully, Elsee found them in time and caught them before they reached the ground.
This was another one of those times when Hakua visits the Katsuragi household. She challenged Keima to a game, so why not extract more information about hell from her? Besides love, anything that makes a person feel fulfilled is used to get runaway spirits from their hosts. Elsee told Keima to use love because it's one of the quickest ways to do it. It's not often used because love isn't a very reliable method, but Keima seems to have pulled it off somehow. When Hakua was leaving, Keima followed her outside and saw her buddy, Yukie Watanabe, for the first time. He was curious how Hakua's buddy deals with capturing runaway spirits, so he followed them to their home. During his visit, he figured out more mechanics about how hell works. In the end, he decided to stick to his usual style.
Minami Ikoma, a middle school student, was the next to have a spirit. Since he got the role of a senpai for this one, he hardly had any trouble. Keima got a bit sentimental in the end, feeling a bit forlorn about the end of the summer festival. One reason or another, Elsee somehow convinced Keima to tutor 3 of his previous targets how to perfect a test. Throughout the lessons, there were signs of the girls remembering a bit about Keima. Thanks to him, they got to make a light music club.
At the start of summer vacation, an old neighbor of his, the Ayukawas, visited his home. Though they were childhood friends, Keima barely remembered Tenri Ayukawa. Another devil was after her, so she wanted to get help from Keima. She had a split personality that tried not getting him involved though. Because of a misunderstanding, the other devil, Nora, thought that making Keima suffer would fill the gap in Tenri's heart. Nora's plan failed, and Keima's eccentricity scared her off. Tenri's other personality then enlisted Keima's help. Keima and Elsee thought the split personality was the runaway spirit, but she was a bit different. The split personality seemed to be looking after Tenri's well-being. They had to run away the next day, because Nora decided to kill Keima. They ran through a mysterious tunnel under a nearby theater. Keima discovered that Tenri was the girl he was with 10 years ago. At the end of the tunnel, they found the same beach and ship they were on 10 years ago. Keima and Tenri staged a spirit spirit capture on the ship to get Nora to stop chasing them. Being a fake capture, Keima felt guilt about having to kiss Tenri like that. She would be the first one to remember Keima's kiss. A few days after, Tenri's family moved next door. The split personality was named Diana, and she revealed that she was a goddess that sealed up Old Hell. The seal was somehow removed that day, 10 years ago. The goddesses are powered by love, so if Keima were to show more love to Tenri, Diana would go closer to her full power. Having gotten such information, Keima got more confident in being able to fulfill the contract someday.
During the Obon festival, Keima's family went to visit Keima's grandparents in the countryside. When they found a runaway spirit on the loose at night, they went after it. After investigation, it turned out the runaway spirit belonged to Rieko Hinaga, the grandmother of the creepy kid, Airi. Since it was impossible for the runaway spirit to revive, Elsee was in charge of convincing the spirit to come out while Keima distracted the ghost and learned of her worries. After the capture, Keima gained a newfound respect for elders. The way they could live on with the deep loneliness of seeing everyone they know die ahead of them was admirable to him.
The next girl with a spirit they would meet is Sumire Uemoto. For once, everything went well for Keima. On the last day of summer vacation, Keima's plans of playing games all day long by Tenri, Hakua and Nora visiting him. From previous encounters, Keima has grown to trust Hakua when it comes to information. He told Hakua about goddesses, and they all decided to keep it a secret among them. Nora became the district chief demon of Keima's town thanks to a personnel shift. From the commotion, Keima grew to be thankful for Elsee's incompetence(since he could play his games with her around).
Nanaka Haibara was the next one they'd meet. It's during her capture where it's first shown that Keima would put aside his capture plans for the sake of winning a serious challenge in a game. It's also during her capture where Keima first feels defeat in a game, twice. He asked Tenri why the real is so insistent on staying unsatisfied. For Keima, it's a large step in caring for the real. It's also the first sign of him questioning if he really is satisfied with himself. He also got carried away in the end, cheering for Nanaka to win even though he'd get the desired result whether she won or not.
That night, Diana took over Tenri's body while she was asleep and went to Keima's. She discussed about the goddesses and how the whole situation with Old Hell came about. Diana and her sisters were the ones to make the seal for Old Hell. They had to because Old Hell planned on disrupting the cycle of souls between the three realms and monopolize the souls all for themselves. Old Hell split into old and new factions, with the new devils being against the idea of monopolizing the souls. The new devils teamed up with the goddesses of Heaven to seal Old Hell. Diana explained all she knew to convince Keima to look for her sisters. Keima would be able to locate them if he finds that one of the girls he worked with before still remembers him. Keima refused the task at first because he already had trouble from just capturing runaway spirits. There is no way to reliably tell if there's a goddess. The only reason why he was slowly considering it is because he can get the goddesses to just seal up old hell again if he finds them all.
Keima and Elsee then finds that Yui Godou has the next runaway spirit. Everything was going as planned until the runaway spirit's power activated, switching Yui's and Keima's bodies. Keima was slowly getting influenced by the body. He began playing "otome games", dating sims for girls, and reacted more than usual to getting touched by a boy. Getting affected by something that much put him in yet another existential crisis. He wasn't supposed to be affected by anything of the real, and yet he was getting too easily influenced by the body switch. He went to depression again until he met Mio by coincidence. Talking to Mio set him back on his feet and he was ready to capture Yui's heart as a girl. The runaway spirit that came out was the first level 4 spirit they encountered. Elsee failed to capture it, and it ran away. Soon after, it was found caught in a strange containment unit. No one knew who captured it.
Hinoki Kasuga, Kusunoki's older sister, came next. This capture was the first time Keima really felt guilty because of a mistake. She was already a giant because of the runaway spirit getting stronger, and he left her alone to get Kusunoki for the sake of his plan. She suddenly got much worse and Keima thought himself responsible for letting things go that badly. Keima gets a bit more serious in his capture operations in the future. He also realized that he couldn't capture her with love. He had to rely on Kusunoki to resolve Hinoki's problems. It was revealed that one of the new demons disguised herself as Kusunoki and made Hinoki feel worse while Keima was away. The spirit that came out was too much for even 4 demons to handle. The one that caught Yui's spirit before had to secretly help them. She was revealed to be Nikaido, Keima's homeroom teacher. Elsee and Hakua began feeling inadequate about their abilities since then.
The development Keima went through in his escapades began to produce results. He got bothered by Elsee's depression and went out of his way to try cheering her up. During his attempt, it is shown that he really doesn't know how to deal with people unless he treats them as a game character like he does during his captures. He refused to use the same methods, not wanting Elsee to misunderstand and change his current platonic relationship with her. Afterward, Keima got another chance to meet with Hakua and Diana. After sorting out enough information, he declared he will find the goddesses in one go during the school dance festival.
Personality:
Katsuragi Keima is known as "Otamegane" for a good reason. He never lets go of that PFP of his. In class, in sports, walking around, he's always playing some game or another. Nothing seems to bother him. He's too absorbed by the screen of that PFP of his.
This is because to him, nothing in the real world matters. The real world is incomprehensible. Unreasonable. Bothersome. It is but a mere obstacle from staying in the game world. He has great disdain for real girls, and reality in general. For someone who plays as much as he does, it's the game world he lives in. He only visits the real world temporarily. It's not much of an exaggeration to say that games are his lifeblood. When kept away from games for too long, he looks as if he was suffering from malnutrition. On the other hand, he can ignore things like hunger and illness as long as he's playing games. It only registers to him when the symptoms get serious enough.
Keima isn't insecure. He's not trying to escape the pressures of the real world at all. He truly does prefer being engrossed in the game world. The game world is his ideal, and he will do anything to keep living it. He isn't delusional either. He understands the line between reality and the game world. He understands his capabilities and how things are in the game world are different in the real world. He still follows the minimum norms needed to live in society, if only so no one will bother to take his games away from him. Keima is dutiful and responsible. He'd rather not have to do anything in the real world, but if he gets forced into something, he does it well. If he says he'll get a perfect grade on every test, he will get a perfect grade in every test. If he says he'll help someone out with something, he goes all-out. He sees and realizes what is happening in the real world while he plays. It's just that he has no expectations from it. What happens in the real world are insignificant compared to what he is doing in his games(unless it's hindering him from going back to his games, at least).
Though he takes great pride in capturing the hearts of every single game heroine, he doesn't think of them as objects at all. He's not in it for the fan service nor for amassing an imaginary harem. He truly wants every game girl to be happy. He captures their hearts for them to reach the endings of their stories where they are left the happiest they can be. Even if it's a horrible and unpopular game, he would still play it to make the game heroines happy. If he follows everyone by not playing the game, then who will save the heroines in it? This is what he asks himself to convince himself to endure through a game for a heroine's happiness. He doesn't do the same in the real world because he feels it's hopeless to try. Real people wouldn't be satisfied with the best ending like game characters would. He doesn't have confidence he can make a significant change in the real world at all.
Keima is what the likes of Lelouch and Light would be like if they gave up on the world and stuck to playing games all day long. He is observant and cunning. He can deduce people's behaviors from their actions and trigger any response he wants from them on purpose... if he bothered to do so. He was able to determine which questions will come up in all his tests just from what he knows of the lesson scope and the personality of the teacher. He can take things happening in the game world, analyze them with game logic and come up with an effective strategy to reach his goal... if he ever bothered to. It's because of those that he can keep teachers at bay and get away with playing games in school the whole day. When he doesn't use game logic and acts naturally, he is an idiot. He could tell if a silent girl fell in love with him from just the way she nods if he was treating her as a game heroine, but wouldn't understand anything from obvious tsundere behavior if he just saw the girl as another real person.
Keima always maintains a distance away from everything in the real world. He might have favorite food scenes in the game world, but he shows no favoritism in food of the real world. There are many times when he starts feeling true affection for the girls he interacts with, but he never acknowledges it. The way he keeps from getting closer to real people is like a main character with a canon partner never hooking up with another person no matter how well they go together. The main character is already happy with the partner, and that partner will always be the character's preferred choice, so they never pursue love with anyone else. The same is with Keima and games. He may find himself closer to a real girl, but he remembers his faithfulness to game girls. Because he is already living his ideal with games, he keeps others from getting too close to him. He feels he doesn't need them.
Why should that character be in this game: Not Applicable
Why do you want to continue their history here: Not Applicable
For applicants considering an alternate version of a character already in game, please use this as your chance to explain the key differences between your character and the one already in play: Not Applicable
Have you read up on how the game works?: Anyone can use the FlamingFerret to communicate with everyone. Money can be gained by blackmailing signing up for missions, begging leeching off others, or starting up a vending machine scam permanent business.
1st person sample:
[The feed starts with an overhead view of Keima lying on the floor of the library, exhausted. This one isn't the usual library most refugees go to, it's much more spacious. Much, much more spacious. It was the library for larger alien races, with books as large as 1/2 illustration boards.]
I [wheeze] thought that working [wheeze] as a librarian wouldn't [wheeze] involve much physical strain. [wheeze, catches breath] The job descriptions were too lacking! Shouldn't they have put warnings or a required parameters list on jobs like these? Or at least a 1 to 5 star rating on physical difficulty!
[tries to get up, then points the guide at a thick dictionary] Could anyone help me out with this? I can't carry it on my own.
3rd person sample:
If anyone were to check any of the many game shops in the ship, they would probably find Keima browsing the visual novels section. He just got paid and it's about time he began his games collection here. Being in such an advanced and multi-cultural ship, the selection was much, much wider than Keima was used to. Besides all of the games from his old collection, there were entirely new genres and features explored.
Keima was not used to seeing a full shelf of games he never played before. He was always up to date and only hunted games released on the day itself. All this felt like both heaven and hell to him. ...Or it would have, if he didn't have such a limited budget. Now it just felt like hell. He barely had enough for a single game, and that was only if he decided not to bother with lunch for a whole month. Should he start by recollecting his old games? Should he get one of the normal games that weren't made yet at his time? Should he save up for that futuristic handheld that connects with your nerves? Or should he...
Keima picked up a box. The cover art had a close up of a blue spider-bear with watery bug eyes and a proboscis shyly bent inward. It was jarring to say the least, but it made Keima somewhat curious. He never tried capturing a girl(?) from a true alien perspective before. Who knows? The story could be surprisingly touching. Keima was never one to discriminate due to bad graphics so this shouldn't be any different.
Questions?: This is just for the intro post I'm planning, but how much do the vogons force new arrivals to finish their paperwork? Will they go after you if some forms aren't filled after a certain deadline, or can people delay finishing some forms until the end of time?
Also, Keima will be suspicious of the announcement of his world being blown up because the collar around his neck hasn't killed him yet. Is that fine? I have a plausible reason in mind of how the world can be blown up without the collar killing him if needed.
Did you put your characters name and fandom in the subject: Yes
Name: Raziel
Are you over 16?: Yes
Personal LJ: orochi_raziel
Email: orochi_raziel@yahoo.com
Timezone: GMT -8
Other contact: AIM: chaosseer
Characters already in the game: None
How did you find us?: mentioned by a friend, long ago
IC:
Character name: Katsuragi Keima
Fandom: The World God Only Knows
Timeline: Right before the sports festival
Age: 17
~*Magical*~ abilities and strengths: He has nothing magical, but Keima does have his unbelievable gaming prowess. After understanding the mechanics of a game, he masters it(as long as it wasn't too physical). By mastering it, I mean getting the max scores and beating opponents who have dedicated their lives to their game.(The only times he has lost in the manga were against a shogi genius he trained and a goddess) He is also great at strategy and manipulation, when he translates "mechanics of the real world" into game mechanics he is familiar with.
Capturing god mode: This is a state he enters to be able to play 6 games at once. His hands at this state is said to be fast enough to look like he was using 6 arms. His intellectual capacities and concentration are pushed, allowing him to regard each game and react to them individually as he plays. It's as if he can handle 6 thought processes at once while at that mode. Since it also eats his stamina quickly, he can feel incredibly drained after staying in capturing god mode for a few hours. Staying in that mode after 20 hours may be his limit, as he becomes delusional and nearly dies when he tried it(maybe).
How would they use their abilities?: He normally doesn't take advantage of his abilities when he doesn't have to. The only exception is mercilessly beating anyone who challenges him to a game. He only bothers to control a situation with his techniques if the situation is hindering him from playing his games. As for the Capturing God Mode, he never used it outside of playing games despite the advantages it may give if he used it for other things.
Appearance:
Full Body
Keima is a skinny and really weak looking guy. Anyone can pin him as a nerd at a glance. The only thing that doesn't pin him as insecure and weak is his eyes. The way he wears them give people the feeling as if he was observing from another world. His eyes showed awareness of what he sees but no expectations from reality. His default outfit is his school's winter uniform, as pictured. He has guillotine collar around his neck at all times because of the contract with demons he made. The guillotine collar is a simple black ring around his neck; possibly metal.
Background(focusing on impact on Keima's personality):
[Bolded items are the important parts of the main plot. Everything else is what develops Keima's character. They discuss the main plot without the tl;dr on how everything that happens affects Keima.]
Keima Katsuragi was a 7 year old boy that kept playing video games and ignoring the happenings of the real world. Back then, he'd was content with any game genre. His preferred handheld console was the Gameboy. During an elementary school summer camp, he and his class went to Maijima Seaside Park. He was content with playing his games in the beach at first, but his teacher's constant pestering got him to stow away on a nearby docked ship to be left alone.
An earthquake shook. The ship drifted away from the beach into a nearby island. Rather than panicking, Keima wondered how his predicament happened. It was then that he noticed a girl his age was on the ship with him. Together, they looked for a way back to the island. They found a cave under where the ship crashed and decided to explore it. At that age, Keima was already shown to be reliable. His Gameboys were used for light. Because of the settings in some of his games, he had helpful facts about caves that helped them. Already then, he claimed to be satisfied without food as long as he had games to play. Still, they were just kids wandering around lost in a cave. They wouldn't have made any progress if it wasn't for the next event.
Suddenly, the power of Keima's Gameboys died and another earthquake hit. They ran, but Keima got knocked unconscious by falling debris. The girl just sat there, trying to wake Keima up. That's when she saw a horde of spirits coming out of a tunnel. When they saw the girl, they swarmed her; hoping to enter the gap of her heart if she had any. Among the spirits, there was one different from the rest. She offered to help the girl, but the girl will have to take the other spirit within her. The girl agreed. The spirit possessed her and bust her and Keima out of that cave. The other end led to some theater within their town.
10 years later, the real story began.
Keima was now 17 years old. At high school, he was called "otamegane"(short nickname for glasses otaku). He was always on his PFP, staying as detached from the real world as possible. He called himself a resident of the game world. At some point in life, he started to focus on "gal games"(visual novels/dating sims). His goal now was to bring every game heroine to their happiest ending, thus "capturing" them. He called himself the "Capturing god". He was well known to the gaming community and often answered letters from them. Among one of the letters was a strange one asking for help to capture some girls. It seemed like a taunt to Keima; saying that he absolutely shouldn't press the reply button if it was impossible to help. Of course he pressed the button.
A demon named Elsee fell from the sky, grabbed him and said they should collect spirits. He wanted to refuse, but Elsee pointed out the guillotine collar around his neck. Should they fail to collect runaway spirits, the collars would cut off both Keima's and Elsee's heads.Keima had no choice but to go along with the demon.
The runaway spirits they were after are the spirits of evil people that escaped from hell. They search for gaps in the hearts of women and hide within them. If the spirits stay within a girl's heart long enough, they will gain more power and become more corporeal. They get to finally reincarnate after spending enough time and growing in someone. The gaps in the heart are caused by feelings of great dissatisfaction. They can be filled if the host of the heart feels fulfilled. The best way to close the gaps in hearts is love, according to Elsee. By closing the gaps, they force the spirit out of its host making it possible for Elsee to capture them.
The first spirit they encountered was in a track and field girl, Ayumi Takahara. At first, Keima wasn't confident at using his usual gaming methods in the real world. The entire time during the capture, he stressed on whether it was really working or not. He found results of his attempts ambiguous, but he had no other weapon than his gaming knowledge to capture the heart of a girl. He pushed through with great uncertainty, and succeeded. His demon partner, Elsee got to capture her first spirit. Ayumi had her memory erased after the runaway spirit was captured, something that would happen to all the future runaway spirit hosts as well. Keima felt a little bit of regret for her forgetting about him, but reasoned to himself that it was for the best. He wouldn't have to deal with her anymore and he was satisfied enough with his games.
Keima thought it was all over until he realized he still had the guillotine collar and Elsee appeared the next day in his class as a transfer student. One wasn't enough for the contract, he had to collect more spirits. Elsee insisted on sticking by him, being a transfer student in his class and pretending to be his little sister at home. He tried to reject her attempts to be a little sister because she didn't have the same setup as a little sister in a game. In the end, he resigned to her sticking by him anyway. From his second capture onwards, he decided to believe in his gaming tactics as they were his only weapon for capturing spirits. He quickly captured the heart of his second target, Mio Aoyama. He was able to figure out what he had to do for the capture once he truly understood her character. As he kept capturing runaway spirits, he got better at dealing with the real world each time.
Kanon Nakagawa's capture is the first time Keima and Elsee seeing a girl display an external effect to having an runaway spirit. Whenever Kanon would be insecure of her popularity, she would go invisible. It only gets worse the longer the runaway spirit stays within her. This was also Keima's first encounter with a target actively trying to get close to him. He learned how to use techniques from yandere girl routes to keep a distance until the right time to get close. Keima's neglect of Elsee led her into trying to impress him with her cooking skill. When everything went wrong and she got depressed, Keima for the first time did something he didn't have to outside a capture operation. He ate Elsee's failure of a cake despite hating sweets.
The next runaway spirit was in Shiori Shiomiya, a meek librarian who doesn't speak her mind at his school. His usual technique for dealing with such quiet girls is to read their inner thoughts in dialogue boxes, something that can only be done in games. After enough encounters, he began to understand her unspoken words through her expression. He got to know the real life equivalent of reading someone's inner thoughts. The next target was Kusunoki Kasuga. Kusunoki's runaway spirit was strong enough to manifest itself physically, but it was still influenced by its host's personality. It acted as Kusunoki's repressed feelings instead of being aware of itself.
An runaway spirit ran from another demon and escaped to Keima's school. This triggered Keima's first meeting with Hakua, the first devil he meets besides Elsee. Unlike Elsee, she was competent and understood the status of hell and how these captures work. While helping Hakua find the runaway spirit, Keima milked as much information about hell from her as he can. The runaway spirits were actually demons too, from old hell. Elsee and Hakua are part of the new demons that reformed hell. To prevent hell from reverting back to how it was, the new demons try to prevent the runaway spirits from reviving. They eventually find the demon, but the demon jumped into the gap of Hakua's heart and took control of her. Since Keima was held hostage by Hakua, it was up to Elsee to fill the gap in her heart. Elsee and Hakua then teamed up to capture the spirit.
A day later, Hakua visited the Katsuragi household to ask for help on her report. To keep Keima cooperative, she promised to answer more of his questions about capturing spirits. She said that the contract will end for all the buddies when all the runaway spirits are captured. At the time, there were still about 60,000 spirits left.She also vaguely hinted that there's another method besides love for filling the gaps of hearts. From then on, she'd visit the Katsuragi household from time to time.
The next target was Chihiro Kosaka. Unlike the previous captures, she wasn't a stereotype at all. She had no strong characteristics or character quirks. She was just an average girl. In Keima's words, she's one of those girls in the background that the protagonist doesn't bother with at all. They also figure out she falls for good looking boys and confesses to them fairly often. She is also the first one to shoot back all of Keima's insults back at him. Off his high horse, he just sulked and ignored reality more than usual. He couldn't believe that he was arguing at an equal level with someone from reality. He would have kept it up and ignored the runaway spirit if it wasn't for Ayumi cheering him up. It was also from his talk with Ayumi that he realized that the memories of the girls he worked with before haven't been completely erased. Chihiro was also the first capture where Keima accidentally stumbled into the route to make her fall for him instead of planning for it. In the end, he considered the difficulty of all his captures and seriously thought about real humans for the first time.
A new substitute teacher, Jun Nagase, came to the school with a runaway spirit. As a teacher, she chased after Keima to get closer to him as student and teacher. Keima had to play keep away so the relationship doesn't settle on just teacher and student. When it came to gathering info, his homeroom teacher, Nikaido, found it strange that he was suddenly interested in Jun. Around this period, Elsee has been getting more and more recognition from the higher ups in hell for having caught so many runaway spirits in such a small amount of time. Elsee found another spirit in Tsukiyo Kujou. Early on, she shrunk to a doll's size because of the runaway spirit within her. For once, she caught on to Keima trying to trick her during the capture. Since he planned for her to realize eventually anyway, he just rushed to the conclusion. Something unexpected during the climax, though. Tsukiyo lost her balance and fell from the edge of the roof. Without thinking nor any prepared reassurance, Keima jumped after her to catch her. Thankfully, Elsee found them in time and caught them before they reached the ground.
This was another one of those times when Hakua visits the Katsuragi household. She challenged Keima to a game, so why not extract more information about hell from her? Besides love, anything that makes a person feel fulfilled is used to get runaway spirits from their hosts. Elsee told Keima to use love because it's one of the quickest ways to do it. It's not often used because love isn't a very reliable method, but Keima seems to have pulled it off somehow. When Hakua was leaving, Keima followed her outside and saw her buddy, Yukie Watanabe, for the first time. He was curious how Hakua's buddy deals with capturing runaway spirits, so he followed them to their home. During his visit, he figured out more mechanics about how hell works. In the end, he decided to stick to his usual style.
Minami Ikoma, a middle school student, was the next to have a spirit. Since he got the role of a senpai for this one, he hardly had any trouble. Keima got a bit sentimental in the end, feeling a bit forlorn about the end of the summer festival. One reason or another, Elsee somehow convinced Keima to tutor 3 of his previous targets how to perfect a test. Throughout the lessons, there were signs of the girls remembering a bit about Keima. Thanks to him, they got to make a light music club.
At the start of summer vacation, an old neighbor of his, the Ayukawas, visited his home. Though they were childhood friends, Keima barely remembered Tenri Ayukawa. Another devil was after her, so she wanted to get help from Keima. She had a split personality that tried not getting him involved though. Because of a misunderstanding, the other devil, Nora, thought that making Keima suffer would fill the gap in Tenri's heart. Nora's plan failed, and Keima's eccentricity scared her off. Tenri's other personality then enlisted Keima's help. Keima and Elsee thought the split personality was the runaway spirit, but she was a bit different. The split personality seemed to be looking after Tenri's well-being. They had to run away the next day, because Nora decided to kill Keima. They ran through a mysterious tunnel under a nearby theater. Keima discovered that Tenri was the girl he was with 10 years ago. At the end of the tunnel, they found the same beach and ship they were on 10 years ago. Keima and Tenri staged a spirit spirit capture on the ship to get Nora to stop chasing them. Being a fake capture, Keima felt guilt about having to kiss Tenri like that. She would be the first one to remember Keima's kiss. A few days after, Tenri's family moved next door. The split personality was named Diana, and she revealed that she was a goddess that sealed up Old Hell. The seal was somehow removed that day, 10 years ago. The goddesses are powered by love, so if Keima were to show more love to Tenri, Diana would go closer to her full power. Having gotten such information, Keima got more confident in being able to fulfill the contract someday.
During the Obon festival, Keima's family went to visit Keima's grandparents in the countryside. When they found a runaway spirit on the loose at night, they went after it. After investigation, it turned out the runaway spirit belonged to Rieko Hinaga, the grandmother of the creepy kid, Airi. Since it was impossible for the runaway spirit to revive, Elsee was in charge of convincing the spirit to come out while Keima distracted the ghost and learned of her worries. After the capture, Keima gained a newfound respect for elders. The way they could live on with the deep loneliness of seeing everyone they know die ahead of them was admirable to him.
The next girl with a spirit they would meet is Sumire Uemoto. For once, everything went well for Keima. On the last day of summer vacation, Keima's plans of playing games all day long by Tenri, Hakua and Nora visiting him. From previous encounters, Keima has grown to trust Hakua when it comes to information. He told Hakua about goddesses, and they all decided to keep it a secret among them. Nora became the district chief demon of Keima's town thanks to a personnel shift. From the commotion, Keima grew to be thankful for Elsee's incompetence(since he could play his games with her around).
Nanaka Haibara was the next one they'd meet. It's during her capture where it's first shown that Keima would put aside his capture plans for the sake of winning a serious challenge in a game. It's also during her capture where Keima first feels defeat in a game, twice. He asked Tenri why the real is so insistent on staying unsatisfied. For Keima, it's a large step in caring for the real. It's also the first sign of him questioning if he really is satisfied with himself. He also got carried away in the end, cheering for Nanaka to win even though he'd get the desired result whether she won or not.
That night, Diana took over Tenri's body while she was asleep and went to Keima's. She discussed about the goddesses and how the whole situation with Old Hell came about. Diana and her sisters were the ones to make the seal for Old Hell. They had to because Old Hell planned on disrupting the cycle of souls between the three realms and monopolize the souls all for themselves. Old Hell split into old and new factions, with the new devils being against the idea of monopolizing the souls. The new devils teamed up with the goddesses of Heaven to seal Old Hell. Diana explained all she knew to convince Keima to look for her sisters. Keima would be able to locate them if he finds that one of the girls he worked with before still remembers him. Keima refused the task at first because he already had trouble from just capturing runaway spirits. There is no way to reliably tell if there's a goddess. The only reason why he was slowly considering it is because he can get the goddesses to just seal up old hell again if he finds them all.
Keima and Elsee then finds that Yui Godou has the next runaway spirit. Everything was going as planned until the runaway spirit's power activated, switching Yui's and Keima's bodies. Keima was slowly getting influenced by the body. He began playing "otome games", dating sims for girls, and reacted more than usual to getting touched by a boy. Getting affected by something that much put him in yet another existential crisis. He wasn't supposed to be affected by anything of the real, and yet he was getting too easily influenced by the body switch. He went to depression again until he met Mio by coincidence. Talking to Mio set him back on his feet and he was ready to capture Yui's heart as a girl. The runaway spirit that came out was the first level 4 spirit they encountered. Elsee failed to capture it, and it ran away. Soon after, it was found caught in a strange containment unit. No one knew who captured it.
Hinoki Kasuga, Kusunoki's older sister, came next. This capture was the first time Keima really felt guilty because of a mistake. She was already a giant because of the runaway spirit getting stronger, and he left her alone to get Kusunoki for the sake of his plan. She suddenly got much worse and Keima thought himself responsible for letting things go that badly. Keima gets a bit more serious in his capture operations in the future. He also realized that he couldn't capture her with love. He had to rely on Kusunoki to resolve Hinoki's problems. It was revealed that one of the new demons disguised herself as Kusunoki and made Hinoki feel worse while Keima was away. The spirit that came out was too much for even 4 demons to handle. The one that caught Yui's spirit before had to secretly help them. She was revealed to be Nikaido, Keima's homeroom teacher. Elsee and Hakua began feeling inadequate about their abilities since then.
The development Keima went through in his escapades began to produce results. He got bothered by Elsee's depression and went out of his way to try cheering her up. During his attempt, it is shown that he really doesn't know how to deal with people unless he treats them as a game character like he does during his captures. He refused to use the same methods, not wanting Elsee to misunderstand and change his current platonic relationship with her. Afterward, Keima got another chance to meet with Hakua and Diana. After sorting out enough information, he declared he will find the goddesses in one go during the school dance festival.
Personality:
Katsuragi Keima is known as "Otamegane" for a good reason. He never lets go of that PFP of his. In class, in sports, walking around, he's always playing some game or another. Nothing seems to bother him. He's too absorbed by the screen of that PFP of his.
This is because to him, nothing in the real world matters. The real world is incomprehensible. Unreasonable. Bothersome. It is but a mere obstacle from staying in the game world. He has great disdain for real girls, and reality in general. For someone who plays as much as he does, it's the game world he lives in. He only visits the real world temporarily. It's not much of an exaggeration to say that games are his lifeblood. When kept away from games for too long, he looks as if he was suffering from malnutrition. On the other hand, he can ignore things like hunger and illness as long as he's playing games. It only registers to him when the symptoms get serious enough.
Keima isn't insecure. He's not trying to escape the pressures of the real world at all. He truly does prefer being engrossed in the game world. The game world is his ideal, and he will do anything to keep living it. He isn't delusional either. He understands the line between reality and the game world. He understands his capabilities and how things are in the game world are different in the real world. He still follows the minimum norms needed to live in society, if only so no one will bother to take his games away from him. Keima is dutiful and responsible. He'd rather not have to do anything in the real world, but if he gets forced into something, he does it well. If he says he'll get a perfect grade on every test, he will get a perfect grade in every test. If he says he'll help someone out with something, he goes all-out. He sees and realizes what is happening in the real world while he plays. It's just that he has no expectations from it. What happens in the real world are insignificant compared to what he is doing in his games(unless it's hindering him from going back to his games, at least).
Though he takes great pride in capturing the hearts of every single game heroine, he doesn't think of them as objects at all. He's not in it for the fan service nor for amassing an imaginary harem. He truly wants every game girl to be happy. He captures their hearts for them to reach the endings of their stories where they are left the happiest they can be. Even if it's a horrible and unpopular game, he would still play it to make the game heroines happy. If he follows everyone by not playing the game, then who will save the heroines in it? This is what he asks himself to convince himself to endure through a game for a heroine's happiness. He doesn't do the same in the real world because he feels it's hopeless to try. Real people wouldn't be satisfied with the best ending like game characters would. He doesn't have confidence he can make a significant change in the real world at all.
Keima is what the likes of Lelouch and Light would be like if they gave up on the world and stuck to playing games all day long. He is observant and cunning. He can deduce people's behaviors from their actions and trigger any response he wants from them on purpose... if he bothered to do so. He was able to determine which questions will come up in all his tests just from what he knows of the lesson scope and the personality of the teacher. He can take things happening in the game world, analyze them with game logic and come up with an effective strategy to reach his goal... if he ever bothered to. It's because of those that he can keep teachers at bay and get away with playing games in school the whole day. When he doesn't use game logic and acts naturally, he is an idiot. He could tell if a silent girl fell in love with him from just the way she nods if he was treating her as a game heroine, but wouldn't understand anything from obvious tsundere behavior if he just saw the girl as another real person.
Keima always maintains a distance away from everything in the real world. He might have favorite food scenes in the game world, but he shows no favoritism in food of the real world. There are many times when he starts feeling true affection for the girls he interacts with, but he never acknowledges it. The way he keeps from getting closer to real people is like a main character with a canon partner never hooking up with another person no matter how well they go together. The main character is already happy with the partner, and that partner will always be the character's preferred choice, so they never pursue love with anyone else. The same is with Keima and games. He may find himself closer to a real girl, but he remembers his faithfulness to game girls. Because he is already living his ideal with games, he keeps others from getting too close to him. He feels he doesn't need them.
Why should that character be in this game: Not Applicable
Why do you want to continue their history here: Not Applicable
For applicants considering an alternate version of a character already in game, please use this as your chance to explain the key differences between your character and the one already in play: Not Applicable
Have you read up on how the game works?: Anyone can use the FlamingFerret to communicate with everyone. Money can be gained by blackmailing signing up for missions, begging leeching off others, or starting up a vending machine scam permanent business.
1st person sample:
[The feed starts with an overhead view of Keima lying on the floor of the library, exhausted. This one isn't the usual library most refugees go to, it's much more spacious. Much, much more spacious. It was the library for larger alien races, with books as large as 1/2 illustration boards.]
I [wheeze] thought that working [wheeze] as a librarian wouldn't [wheeze] involve much physical strain. [wheeze, catches breath] The job descriptions were too lacking! Shouldn't they have put warnings or a required parameters list on jobs like these? Or at least a 1 to 5 star rating on physical difficulty!
[tries to get up, then points the guide at a thick dictionary] Could anyone help me out with this? I can't carry it on my own.
3rd person sample:
If anyone were to check any of the many game shops in the ship, they would probably find Keima browsing the visual novels section. He just got paid and it's about time he began his games collection here. Being in such an advanced and multi-cultural ship, the selection was much, much wider than Keima was used to. Besides all of the games from his old collection, there were entirely new genres and features explored.
Keima was not used to seeing a full shelf of games he never played before. He was always up to date and only hunted games released on the day itself. All this felt like both heaven and hell to him. ...Or it would have, if he didn't have such a limited budget. Now it just felt like hell. He barely had enough for a single game, and that was only if he decided not to bother with lunch for a whole month. Should he start by recollecting his old games? Should he get one of the normal games that weren't made yet at his time? Should he save up for that futuristic handheld that connects with your nerves? Or should he...
Keima picked up a box. The cover art had a close up of a blue spider-bear with watery bug eyes and a proboscis shyly bent inward. It was jarring to say the least, but it made Keima somewhat curious. He never tried capturing a girl(?) from a true alien perspective before. Who knows? The story could be surprisingly touching. Keima was never one to discriminate due to bad graphics so this shouldn't be any different.
Questions?: This is just for the intro post I'm planning, but how much do the vogons force new arrivals to finish their paperwork? Will they go after you if some forms aren't filled after a certain deadline, or can people delay finishing some forms until the end of time?
Also, Keima will be suspicious of the announcement of his world being blown up because the collar around his neck hasn't killed him yet. Is that fine? I have a plausible reason in mind of how the world can be blown up without the collar killing him if needed.
Did you put your characters name and fandom in the subject: Yes