OOC: INFORMATION
[Character IC Information]
Character Name and Series/Original Character: Asano Keigo from BLEACH
Name in Role Play: Same as above.
Race/Ethnicity: Passive Magic User/Japanese
Age: 24
Gender: Male
Appearance:
Keigo is the type of person that most wouldn't give a second-glance if seen walking down the street. While he isn't ugly, he isn't a knock-out by most standards as he is pretty plain-looking. His face is narrow and sharp, and most of his features carry this theme. His nose is pointed and slightly upturned, his eyes are round and a dark brown, and his hair is a light brown, cut short at the front and layered, flipping outward at the back. His knuckles and other joints, such as his elbows, are easily visible and stick out considerably, as he lacks a great deal of muscle mass, and most areas on his body also show a lack in mass, especially around his hips and collar. While his body is slimmer than most men his age and height, it has a certain sleekness and natural look to it, proof that Keigo has finally grown out of puberty and filled out his own body properly. Even so, he doesn't look like anyone that would be capable of causing any form of trouble on the streets, much less hold his own in a physical fight.
In form of dress, Keigo tends to lean towards more retro styles, though he mostly wears button-down dress shirts and slacks for work. Most of the clothing he owns is a few sizes too big for himself, and usually types that he can wear in layers. He prefers to dress this way as he finds it much more comfortable, but also because it takes off the emphasis of him being so skinny.
His work, accompanied with his bad habit of smoking and staying up all night, has given Keigo a few stress wrinkles and dark circles under his eyes, most likely adding a few years onto his appearance, but probably not by much. It's still a constant concern of Keigo's, however, and is often the root of many complaints he has about the way he looks.
Personality:
In his younger years, Keigo's personality could be summed up as that of a typical teenager, obnoxious, loud, immature and outgoing. While this is all still very true at present, surprisingly enough, time has had its effect on him and in recent years, he has calmed down a bit.
Most of Keigo's personality is directly based on what kinds of people are around him and he can easily change how he acts to better fit into a situation, as all he really wants is to fit in and have as many friends as possible. However, more often than not, most people cannot overlook his more glaring qualities, making it difficult for Keigo to actually keep people's interest.
The most prominent feature seems to be his superficialness, which applies to just about every person he has ever come in contact with. Keigo is quick to judge those he does not know, which can be something of a bad quality to have. He mostly judges on a person's appearance and status to society, shying away from those he considers strange or questionable. He doesn't like to associate with nerds or social outcasts, as he feels it directly reflects on himself and his standards. Many times, he won't even bother giving these people the time of day, though if they manage to do something drastic or the utter opposite of what his stereotype of that person is set as, he will be all too willing to give them a second chance. When this happens, one can expect Keigo to become overbearing to the point of being clingy, trying to rope the poor soul into hanging out with him whenever possible.
Keigo is also rather anxious when it comes to his friends, becoming somewhat possessive of them and jealous when they ditch him for people he doesn't approve of. He worries about losing what friends he has, and will voice this concern openly and dramatically, often making accusations that are outright foolish and childish. He hates being ignored and often goes out of his way to be noticed and heard, usually by raising his voice or even become physical, in a touchy-feely sense.
His temper is also rather short and it doesn't take a lot to set it off, though the easiest way seems to be making fun of him directly, as Keigo tends to put on the air of being rather egotistical and confident in himself, even if this seems to be more or less a front in recent years. Another way would be to make fun of or berate those he cares about; Keigo is very overprotective of his friends and hates to see anyone put them down.
Keigo is very social, enjoying garnering attention--whether it be negative or not--from just about anyone, and he won't hesitate to start up a conversation with someone at random, provided they don't fall into his superficial category of "strange." He can talk at length about anything rather easily, to the point of babbling, making him very annoying to those who either have nothing to say to him or just hate talking in general. Keigo's usually all too happy to do all the talking, however, and just having a person around him to share company with is usually enough to appease him.
He hates being alone, which is probably obvious due to his overbearing and social nature, and if left alone, Keigo really doesn't know what to do with himself. He becomes depressed very easily and can hole himself up in his room or apartment in general for days if without human contact, unsure of how to remedy the situation. More often than not, Keigo will try to fill any lack of attention or company he has with seeking out companions in the bar scene, usually ending up in either total rejection or a meaningless one-night-stand, and both things leave Keigo feeling even more unfulfilled than before.
On this note, Keigo is a very flirtatious person. He can easily throw away his goofiness and immaturity in favor of a pretty face, putting on a more suave, accommodating personality. He is outgoing enough to pursue an attractive person, though more often than not, he is shot down or not taken seriously. Any time he does end up being lucky enough to gain the attention of someone, the situation rarely goes farther than a night and then Keigo usually won't hear from the person after the fact. Though, even after getting shot down time and time again, Keigo is able to pick himself back up enough to try again ( and again and again ), trying his best to remain optimistic about the situation.
In high school, Keigo was a grade-A slacker, never doing more than what was the minimum requirement for any class, and while he has gotten better about his responsibilities over the years, he still carries over the same laziness and lack of motivation to do work, often until the last minute. This may lead an outsider to believe that Keigo is stupid, but it is quite the opposite situation; Keigo is rather book-smart and is a very fast-learner, but he simply cannot bring himself to care about things that most people consider "important." Even now, he believes life is too short to worry about things like work and other responsibilities, and that is clearly seen in how eager he is to drop his work and go out to socialize.
Abilities/Weaponry:
As of now, Keigo is a Passive Magic user, meaning that he has some ability to tell the difference between species, though he doesn't realize what that means, outside of certain people giving him a weird vibe ( i.e .: if he was in the presence of a werewolf and a normal human, he could tell there was something strange or different about the werewolf in comparison to the human, but he wouldn't be able to outright say "hey, that guy is obviously a werewolf!" ). However, when it comes to ghosts and other spirits, Keigo can clearly see them and communicate with them, but telling that they were actually spirits would have to depend on the situation, such as a ghost touching him and feeling clammy or cold, or appearing with their death wounds, etc.
Outside of these abilities, Keigo has the typical strength of an adult human male, and having gotten into his share of ( mostly one-sided ) fights has gained him a slightly high reaction time when it comes to blocking punches or other types of basic attacks.
Going to a mental perspective, Keigo is quite intelligent and can retain new information quickly, though him actually using it to his advantage is not something one can expect of him. Keigo also has a very good grasp on English and is learning Italian quickly, making it relatively easy for him to integrate himself into the setting.
Weaknesses:
Despite his experience with getting his ass kicked, Keigo has little to no offensive ability outside of what a typical man would know how to do. He has had no formal training in fighting and lacks any real form of stamina to last very long in a fight. What little blocking he is able to do usually isn't nearly enough to get him out of a situation without several bruises or scrapes and he doesn't really have much motivation to learn how to remedy that. On top of this, even if with his reaction time being slightly heightened, he is far too scatterbrained and clumsy to actually put it to use, unless he is concentrating and without distraction.
Despite being smart, Keigo too often thinks things through with his heart rather than with his brain, making him appear far too idealistic ( which he is ) or even stupid. He is lazy, unmotivated and cowardly, often times making him more of a burden than an asset.
History:
Keigo was born in Narukishi, a suburb of Tokyo, Japan, and lived there for the majority of his life with his older sister Mizuho and his parents. He had been born with a level of innate magic ability, which his sister seemed to have lacked, leading to much confusion in his early life about seeing things that most other people could not. Aside from this, their family was average for the city, as far as income and all of that, and Keigo had a fairly good relationship with his sister, aside from the typical spats that a brother and sister might have. However, their parents were rarely around and Keigo never developed a close relationship with them. The lack of attention the both of them received led to each taking it a different way. Mizuho decided to put her energy into school, as if to prove herself to their parents, whereas Keigo allowed his lazier nature to take control, leading to him slacking off horrendously in his studies. Despite Mizuho's constant nagging to try and get Keigo more motivated, the most she accomplished was preventing her brother from failing the Karakura high school entrance exam and not dropping out entirely.
Upon arriving at his first day of high school, Keigo and his childhood friend Kojima Mizuiro were attacked by a group of bullies and just as things were looking bad, the two were saved by Kurosaki Ichigo and Sado Yasutora, two students that Keigo had previously assumed were also in the same group of delinquents, due to rumors he had heard circulating around town. He was pleasantly surprised when the two beat up the bullies and did not then turn on them afterward, and from that point on, Keigo was convinced they were good people and he would try to develop a friendship with them.
High school was going pretty well for Keigo, aside from his various encounters with spirits. Commuting between Narukishi and Karakura led Keigo to running into these stray spirits that peppered the area and many times, he would take time to actually speak to them, often not realizing that they were actually ghosts of people who had died and not just children or old people that were wandering around. At times, his classmates would spot him talking to things that weren't there, to which Keigo would simply tell them the truth as he saw it. Of course, Keigo being as goofy and flaky as he was, most didn't take him seriously and just brushed it off as the idiot being strange.
Things seemed to be going just fine for Keigo and his new friends in Ichigo and Chad and Keigo was perfectly fine with occasionally being called crazy or paranoid so long as he had people to bother. However, the situation seemed to take a turn for the worse around his 16th birthday. Ichigo turned up missing late one night and did not come back home or to school the next day. At first, Keigo hadn't though too much of it; perhaps Ichigo decided to play hooky for the day or something else had come up that prevented him from coming to class.
But, when his clothing had been found, along with blood at the scene, Keigo was a little more than just worried. People were starting to claim that he had been murdered or perhaps killed by something supernatural, especially due to the lack of a body that had been left behind. It wasn't long before a funeral service was held for Ichigo after the search parties had given up and just about everyone Keigo knew was accepting the situation to be tragic and gruesome, even though vastly unsolved. Keigo, however, was not one of these people. He just wasn't ready to accept that Ichigo had died when no one had found a body, and even less so due to his abilities to see ghosts; he was convinced that if Ichigo had died, his ghost would have appeared somewhere around the town, and Keigo had never seen any evidence of such.
He kept himself optimistic throughout the remainder of his years in high school, keeping an eye out for any sign of Ichigo, living or dead, in Karakura, even if his peers tried to convince him time and time again that Ichigo was not coming back.
Without Ichigo around to bother, Keigo was without a lot to do during the days at school and he eventually found himself focusing more on his studies than he had before. It wasn't hard by any means, but he didn't exactly enjoy it and it left his afternoons boring and pointless in his eyes. But Mizuiro was often too busy going on dates with his numerous girlfriends and everyone else was usually too eager to brush him off than to hang out with him, presumably due to how continuously open Keigo was about his optimism in Ichigo someday returning home. Soon, everyone was pretty much fed up with trying to shake Keigo out of his mindset and it was rarely brought up in conversation.
High school came and went and soon it was time for college. Keigo had done surprisingly well on his final grades and made it into a fairly good college. But even despite his change in grades, Keigo's lazy, unmotivated nature still stuck with him and he stumbled through his freshman year, uncertain of what he really wanted to pursue as far as a career was concerned. He took several classes that really didn't seem to help him and eventually, he got a part-time job to help pay for his tuition. The sudden shock of responsibility was hard on Keigo at first, but having nothing better to do with his time made him get used to it as best he could, even if he had to often force himself to do things most would find routine. The stress would get to him every now and then, however, and Keigo soon found himself picking up the bad habits of many of his peers, which included smoking and occasionally bar-hopping.
After realizing that his major was not one he found interesting or even useful to himself, Keigo switched it and enrolled into a program that would allow him to study abroad. The program offered an internship working at a rather well-known company that produced a magazine about the supernatural, something that was meant to shock and awe the populace with tales of the creatures that lived in the darkness alongside humans. The company was based in Italy, which seemed like an interesting and fun place to go and get away for a year or two, even if the idea of being so far away from home made him rather anxious.
After talking about it with his sister--who often took it upon herself to delegate how Keigo was to spend his time in college--he was soon off to Allupato. At the company, Keigo would get a job as a writer for a section of the magazine focusing on hauntings, his innate ability often coming into play and heavily influencing what he writes. He lives by himself in a studio apartment which is sparsely decorated and only with the bare minimum he needs to live, with a few things he brought with him from home.
Living in Italy had been difficult for Keigo at first due to the language barrier, but his knowledge of English helped him somewhat in translating certain things. However, his boss at the magazine company seemed to have a different idea about Keigo overcoming it and for the most part speaks only in Italian, forcing Keigo to teach himself the language.
Organization/Pack/Clan/Guild?: None as of yet.