[Character Application]
Character Name: Yako Katsuragi
Fandom: Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro, manga.
Gender: Female.
Age: 16/17 [I'm going with the logic that if Valentine's was mentioned recently, it's probably rolled around to March 10th as well, which is her birthday, hence the 17.]
Sexuality (if applicable): N/A.
Original or Anomaly?: Original.
Appearance:
Personality:
Yako could predominantly fit the image of a normal, well rounded highschool girl. She attends school in uniform, doesn't seek to cause trouble, and then - at one point - went home and did homework, ate, and fell asleep.
Being exposed to Neuro has, however, made apparent Yako's true depth as a human being. She's almost absurdly calm, yet in the next moment bizarrely reactive. She doesn't understand evil, and doesn't like true evil when she's encountered it, but she does like figuring out motivation. She's inquisitive and intelligent, and nowhere near a genius. She continues to work with a demon who abuses her on a daily basis - really, there's only so much that can be said there. Yako has patience in some forms, no patience for people abusing others emotionally, a grasp of sarcasm (if very stunted use of that sarcasm), a sense of humor, and ability to forgive, and an ever present sense of empathy that keeps her identifying with person after person they encounter. She's cheerful, serious, reserved, and thoughtful in turns - and in the end, she's just that normal, well rounded highschool girl, because isn't normal relative to where you stand?
Let's start by understanding Yako and her sense of empathy with the world. She tries to understand people. She really does. She can connect the dots to understand what motivates someone, from an emotional standpoint. She doesn't understand the "why," in the end, because she can be emotionally sensitive. Why people are motivated to do wrong, to hurt others, to create "crime" and "hate" and "murder" - she can see the factors, but not understand why those choices had to be made.
Yako's curious. Sometimes she's curious about the world at large; other times it might be the nature of evil, or the nature of crime. She's curious about the nature of Nuero, and the nature of humanity.
She's patient. Not always - she's been angry before, or wanted to move more quickly than was advised, but she has learned patience all her life. When she's worked up, and being particularly emotional - or when she's standing across from a perp - that patience does tend to fly out the window.
Yako's hungry. Maybe it helps her identify with Neuro; canonly, it's proven she simply doesn't need to consume as much as she consumes. Perhaps it's a manifestation of her wish to know, that she didn't even know of before Neuro - Yako devours amounts of foods on the level of preposterous. Food is wonderful to her, for her, and by god, with her.
Yako is also, in turns, silly, serious, sarcastic, caring, and thoughtful. The fact she cares for Neuro, her sadistic demonic "boss," in any way, shape or form shows how far her sympathy, empathy, and caring extends. She cares about her friends, and worries about them, while trusting those who are older than her to be able to better handle themselves. She gets outraged on the behalf of others, and this gets her into trouble (particularly if Neuro is involved). Yet she also makes everyone valentine's chocolates because people need a break.
Yako's a whole lot of things. In the end, anyone will notice that. In the beginning, they'll only see the absurd calm, the absurd appetite, and the absurd wish to stay out of the spotlight Neuro forced her into. Then they might start seeing the rest - her emotional reactions to the crimes, the criminals, and the victims. Her respect, fear, admiration, and whatever else for her "assistant." Her admiration and respect for the people around her in life. Her wish to save lives, even when a detriment to her own. Yako is, simply, a good person... if a little twisted.
History: (I realized that the history information was lacking on ready sources, and so will do my best summary here. Hoyshitte. Warning: There are spoilers.)
The series might not be named after Yako, but she's the person most everything is happening to or around, by merit of being chosen by Nougami Neuro.
Once upon a time, there lived a highschool student with her father, mother, and a decent sized house in a fairly good neighborhood. Then one day, her father was murdered, and life started to get depressing. There were no leads, and no way of definitively pointing that the death wasn't a suicide (despite the ridiculous manner in which her father was killed begging suicide IMPOSSIBLE) and a smiling, frightening face encountered Yako's and made a deal.
I'll solve your father's case, if you'll be my cover-girl.
Maybe yes wasn't the answer she should have given, but before Yako knew it, she was being lauded as the brilliant highschool female detective, and Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro was playacting as the doting, rather odd assistant.
The cases they encountered were largely murders; it seemed like everyone was always wanting to kill someone else, and always making a mess of the situation. Neuro had a habit of finding out the tasty mysteries and showing up as the police did, or even before. His machinations ended up working Yako into the somewhat stabled favor of Sasazuka, a detective with the local police force. That connection ends up being useful as the series continues, allowing Yako access to information and areas otherwise off-limits to the public.
The cases began getting darker when the dynamic detective duo encountered a criminal known as Kaito Sai - or X. Sai was the first time Yako ever encountered an evil that wasn't directly motivated by outside circumstances - Sai killed to try and figure out who Sai was. Sai's actions were nonsensical at times; Sai became obsessed with Neuro as a possible explanation for who Sai was, and was the first person to seriously injure Neuro.
Life became more serious. Yako wasn't tripping up on the details as often as she had at the start; she was starting to put pieces of the puzzle together before Neuro had to explain them. Sai remained at large, and a threat, when one of the most obviously influential arcs hit the series.
A series of criminals started appearing who lacked the motivation for crime - just the latent thought of doing something against the law brought to the forefront and abused. The culprit was using the internet to brainwash citizens into breaking down and enjoying the chaos they might secretly have wished to participate in before. The cause of this virus was discovered - but too late. The Virtual Culprit was already preparing its move, to complete the one objective that was absolutely impossible for it to complete. By the time it had escalated into a world-wide shock event, Yako and a much depleted Neuro had one last chance to stop HAL. In the end, their combined efforts saved the world.
Yako cried, when she fulfilled HAL's last wish and hit the delete button. It was the first time she ever openly struck Neuro - it's perhaps the only time he allowed it to pass. If there was any more obvious glaring difference in the strength between the two, it was in Yako's empathy with the human heart that made her care, while Neuro simply consumed and expressed his own sadistic glee.
Soon after, the encounters with Sai escalated, until the point where Sai managed to kidnap Yako, planning on using her as part of a ruse to - again - attempt to dissect Neuro. Yako was brainwashed with a watered-down version of the same program that HAL had created, which was when it was noted her appetite was controllable. During her kidnapping period, she survives perfectly fine on a normal sized meal plan, Sai's conditioning having taken away the driving hunger. (Her metabolism, by the way, must be God.)
Neuro tracked Sai and Yako down, underneath the police station. Sai, who was able to take on the form of any person Sai wished, mimicked Yako and had her attack Neuro in tandem with Sai. (As it turns out, if Yako were completely unaware that she had imitations, she'd be a pretty interesting fighter. Unfortunately, once Sai's influence bled out, her awareness of limitations bled back in.) Neuro managed to determine which Yako was real, and had severely injured Sai. In Sai's attempt to escape, Sai's closest person, Ai, was shot through the head by the first truly, thoroughly evil character in the series: Sicks/Six.
Sicks is the head of a sort of "superhuman" race that has evolved over the years. His goal, and the goal of his organization, is to eliminate the inferior part of the human race, which is, consequentially, most the world. Neuro and Sicks only come to a disagreement because it's in Neuro's best appetite interests to keep humans alive and creating mysteries (since he devours mysteries), and Yako, who can empathize to a degree with Neuro, is just sickened and frightened beyond belief by Sicks. There is nothing, nothing in him that she can empathize with.
The Fingers of Sick's organization began targeting Yako's city, hoping to either eliminate Neuro or simply inconvenience him such that he would no longer be a threat. Neuro has systematically been taking down these Fingers as they appear, which has (true to Yako's form) left the young woman frightened - not just for the people in danger and dying, and not just for herself, but for Neuro. The first time she ever saw him truly angry was in relation to one of the Finger's - and she really can't keep up with the side of evil that Neuro can. By now, her role is one that has to be working intimately with the people and police, because people are who she can influence and connect with, and possibly are the ones she can save. She knows it's the only place where she has strengths, even if she wishes she could help out in a greater way.
Right before Crucible, Sasazuka, the police detective, goes missing, and Yako is confronted with another reality she hadn't found before: she didn't know the true Sasazuka, and that was a failing on both her and Neuro's part. Moving toward a more final confrontation with Sicks, and trying to get to Sasazuka before Sasazuka ends up dead (or worse, somehow), Yako finds herself on the Crucible.
Strengths:
Yako seems to "get" human psychology. She can understand emotions, motivations, and critique them - but she does tend to get a bit emotional herself in those situations. (Not always, but it does happen.)
Her caring. Her ability to not get injured DESPITE WHATEVER IS BEING DONE TO HER. OMFG.
Weaknesses:
The awareness of human psychology, and her own emotions, when she gets worked up. She cares. She uh. Eats too much. Kind of gets bullied by a demon. Too high a tolerance for the strange, macabre, and sadism against herself. (If mostly only from Neuro.)
First Person Sample:
[ Yako is looking at the sphere sheepishly. ]
I don't want to be a bother, but I have a question...
[ Her stomach growls audibly. ]
Ah-ha-ha-ha. Sorry about that. Does anyone have a kitchen I could borrow for a while? I can cook pretty well, and I'm starting to starve here. These just aren't cutting it for me. [ she holds up an empty box of energy bars. ] I promise I won't eat everything that I make! Just most of it...
Third Person Sample:
The flicker of the lights made Yako wary, on principle. She'd been in large structures filled with faulty electrical systems before - they had a habit of exploding, collapsing, or otherwise damaging themselves around her. The ship - a space ship - was weird enough already that any extra caution the teen could summon only added to what she already felt.
Still, this was the level that had the grocery stores, and the most likely place for Yako to find a meal. She tried to push the sound of her own lonely footsteps out of her mind to concentrate on the idea of eating soon. What could be better than that?
Company, she admitted to herself. The other passengers didn't seem all that bad. Some of them were fairly nice! If she hadn't been feeling so hungry...
There was no point in lamenting what was already a moot point. Yako supposed she should at least be grateful that she was here without Neuro. If that meant he was left taking care of Sicks and Sasazuka back home, so be it; it also meant he wouldn't face the possibility of starving in space.
Yako walked through a door into a store that, for all the strangeness of it's surroundings, could have been taken out of her hometown. A half-aware drone manned the counter, a sort of eerie reminder of how few people were really around. She tugged down her sleeve, turning back to the task at hand. She didn't have a kitchen, so either she was going to have to do some pleading (not like she couldn't handle that) or she needed to plan on cold meals.
"The first time instant ramen won't be of any use. Unless I can find an electric kettle or skittle around here..." Brightening up at the prospect of expanding her menu's horizons, Yako took up her search with a vengeance. If she couldn't do anything about the people who were back home at the moment, she could at least see that she took care of herself until she got back to them.
Fandom: Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro, manga.
Gender: Female.
Age: 16/17 [I'm going with the logic that if Valentine's was mentioned recently, it's probably rolled around to March 10th as well, which is her birthday, hence the 17.]
Sexuality (if applicable): N/A.
Original or Anomaly?: Original.
Appearance:
Personality:
Yako could predominantly fit the image of a normal, well rounded highschool girl. She attends school in uniform, doesn't seek to cause trouble, and then - at one point - went home and did homework, ate, and fell asleep.
Being exposed to Neuro has, however, made apparent Yako's true depth as a human being. She's almost absurdly calm, yet in the next moment bizarrely reactive. She doesn't understand evil, and doesn't like true evil when she's encountered it, but she does like figuring out motivation. She's inquisitive and intelligent, and nowhere near a genius. She continues to work with a demon who abuses her on a daily basis - really, there's only so much that can be said there. Yako has patience in some forms, no patience for people abusing others emotionally, a grasp of sarcasm (if very stunted use of that sarcasm), a sense of humor, and ability to forgive, and an ever present sense of empathy that keeps her identifying with person after person they encounter. She's cheerful, serious, reserved, and thoughtful in turns - and in the end, she's just that normal, well rounded highschool girl, because isn't normal relative to where you stand?
Let's start by understanding Yako and her sense of empathy with the world. She tries to understand people. She really does. She can connect the dots to understand what motivates someone, from an emotional standpoint. She doesn't understand the "why," in the end, because she can be emotionally sensitive. Why people are motivated to do wrong, to hurt others, to create "crime" and "hate" and "murder" - she can see the factors, but not understand why those choices had to be made.
Yako's curious. Sometimes she's curious about the world at large; other times it might be the nature of evil, or the nature of crime. She's curious about the nature of Nuero, and the nature of humanity.
She's patient. Not always - she's been angry before, or wanted to move more quickly than was advised, but she has learned patience all her life. When she's worked up, and being particularly emotional - or when she's standing across from a perp - that patience does tend to fly out the window.
Yako's hungry. Maybe it helps her identify with Neuro; canonly, it's proven she simply doesn't need to consume as much as she consumes. Perhaps it's a manifestation of her wish to know, that she didn't even know of before Neuro - Yako devours amounts of foods on the level of preposterous. Food is wonderful to her, for her, and by god, with her.
Yako is also, in turns, silly, serious, sarcastic, caring, and thoughtful. The fact she cares for Neuro, her sadistic demonic "boss," in any way, shape or form shows how far her sympathy, empathy, and caring extends. She cares about her friends, and worries about them, while trusting those who are older than her to be able to better handle themselves. She gets outraged on the behalf of others, and this gets her into trouble (particularly if Neuro is involved). Yet she also makes everyone valentine's chocolates because people need a break.
Yako's a whole lot of things. In the end, anyone will notice that. In the beginning, they'll only see the absurd calm, the absurd appetite, and the absurd wish to stay out of the spotlight Neuro forced her into. Then they might start seeing the rest - her emotional reactions to the crimes, the criminals, and the victims. Her respect, fear, admiration, and whatever else for her "assistant." Her admiration and respect for the people around her in life. Her wish to save lives, even when a detriment to her own. Yako is, simply, a good person... if a little twisted.
History: (I realized that the history information was lacking on ready sources, and so will do my best summary here. Hoyshitte. Warning: There are spoilers.)
The series might not be named after Yako, but she's the person most everything is happening to or around, by merit of being chosen by Nougami Neuro.
Once upon a time, there lived a highschool student with her father, mother, and a decent sized house in a fairly good neighborhood. Then one day, her father was murdered, and life started to get depressing. There were no leads, and no way of definitively pointing that the death wasn't a suicide (despite the ridiculous manner in which her father was killed begging suicide IMPOSSIBLE) and a smiling, frightening face encountered Yako's and made a deal.
I'll solve your father's case, if you'll be my cover-girl.
Maybe yes wasn't the answer she should have given, but before Yako knew it, she was being lauded as the brilliant highschool female detective, and Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro was playacting as the doting, rather odd assistant.
The cases they encountered were largely murders; it seemed like everyone was always wanting to kill someone else, and always making a mess of the situation. Neuro had a habit of finding out the tasty mysteries and showing up as the police did, or even before. His machinations ended up working Yako into the somewhat stabled favor of Sasazuka, a detective with the local police force. That connection ends up being useful as the series continues, allowing Yako access to information and areas otherwise off-limits to the public.
The cases began getting darker when the dynamic detective duo encountered a criminal known as Kaito Sai - or X. Sai was the first time Yako ever encountered an evil that wasn't directly motivated by outside circumstances - Sai killed to try and figure out who Sai was. Sai's actions were nonsensical at times; Sai became obsessed with Neuro as a possible explanation for who Sai was, and was the first person to seriously injure Neuro.
Life became more serious. Yako wasn't tripping up on the details as often as she had at the start; she was starting to put pieces of the puzzle together before Neuro had to explain them. Sai remained at large, and a threat, when one of the most obviously influential arcs hit the series.
A series of criminals started appearing who lacked the motivation for crime - just the latent thought of doing something against the law brought to the forefront and abused. The culprit was using the internet to brainwash citizens into breaking down and enjoying the chaos they might secretly have wished to participate in before. The cause of this virus was discovered - but too late. The Virtual Culprit was already preparing its move, to complete the one objective that was absolutely impossible for it to complete. By the time it had escalated into a world-wide shock event, Yako and a much depleted Neuro had one last chance to stop HAL. In the end, their combined efforts saved the world.
Yako cried, when she fulfilled HAL's last wish and hit the delete button. It was the first time she ever openly struck Neuro - it's perhaps the only time he allowed it to pass. If there was any more obvious glaring difference in the strength between the two, it was in Yako's empathy with the human heart that made her care, while Neuro simply consumed and expressed his own sadistic glee.
Soon after, the encounters with Sai escalated, until the point where Sai managed to kidnap Yako, planning on using her as part of a ruse to - again - attempt to dissect Neuro. Yako was brainwashed with a watered-down version of the same program that HAL had created, which was when it was noted her appetite was controllable. During her kidnapping period, she survives perfectly fine on a normal sized meal plan, Sai's conditioning having taken away the driving hunger. (Her metabolism, by the way, must be God.)
Neuro tracked Sai and Yako down, underneath the police station. Sai, who was able to take on the form of any person Sai wished, mimicked Yako and had her attack Neuro in tandem with Sai. (As it turns out, if Yako were completely unaware that she had imitations, she'd be a pretty interesting fighter. Unfortunately, once Sai's influence bled out, her awareness of limitations bled back in.) Neuro managed to determine which Yako was real, and had severely injured Sai. In Sai's attempt to escape, Sai's closest person, Ai, was shot through the head by the first truly, thoroughly evil character in the series: Sicks/Six.
Sicks is the head of a sort of "superhuman" race that has evolved over the years. His goal, and the goal of his organization, is to eliminate the inferior part of the human race, which is, consequentially, most the world. Neuro and Sicks only come to a disagreement because it's in Neuro's best appetite interests to keep humans alive and creating mysteries (since he devours mysteries), and Yako, who can empathize to a degree with Neuro, is just sickened and frightened beyond belief by Sicks. There is nothing, nothing in him that she can empathize with.
The Fingers of Sick's organization began targeting Yako's city, hoping to either eliminate Neuro or simply inconvenience him such that he would no longer be a threat. Neuro has systematically been taking down these Fingers as they appear, which has (true to Yako's form) left the young woman frightened - not just for the people in danger and dying, and not just for herself, but for Neuro. The first time she ever saw him truly angry was in relation to one of the Finger's - and she really can't keep up with the side of evil that Neuro can. By now, her role is one that has to be working intimately with the people and police, because people are who she can influence and connect with, and possibly are the ones she can save. She knows it's the only place where she has strengths, even if she wishes she could help out in a greater way.
Right before Crucible, Sasazuka, the police detective, goes missing, and Yako is confronted with another reality she hadn't found before: she didn't know the true Sasazuka, and that was a failing on both her and Neuro's part. Moving toward a more final confrontation with Sicks, and trying to get to Sasazuka before Sasazuka ends up dead (or worse, somehow), Yako finds herself on the Crucible.
Strengths:
Yako seems to "get" human psychology. She can understand emotions, motivations, and critique them - but she does tend to get a bit emotional herself in those situations. (Not always, but it does happen.)
Her caring. Her ability to not get injured DESPITE WHATEVER IS BEING DONE TO HER. OMFG.
Weaknesses:
The awareness of human psychology, and her own emotions, when she gets worked up. She cares. She uh. Eats too much. Kind of gets bullied by a demon. Too high a tolerance for the strange, macabre, and sadism against herself. (If mostly only from Neuro.)
First Person Sample:
[ Yako is looking at the sphere sheepishly. ]
I don't want to be a bother, but I have a question...
[ Her stomach growls audibly. ]
Ah-ha-ha-ha. Sorry about that. Does anyone have a kitchen I could borrow for a while? I can cook pretty well, and I'm starting to starve here. These just aren't cutting it for me. [ she holds up an empty box of energy bars. ] I promise I won't eat everything that I make! Just most of it...
Third Person Sample:
The flicker of the lights made Yako wary, on principle. She'd been in large structures filled with faulty electrical systems before - they had a habit of exploding, collapsing, or otherwise damaging themselves around her. The ship - a space ship - was weird enough already that any extra caution the teen could summon only added to what she already felt.
Still, this was the level that had the grocery stores, and the most likely place for Yako to find a meal. She tried to push the sound of her own lonely footsteps out of her mind to concentrate on the idea of eating soon. What could be better than that?
Company, she admitted to herself. The other passengers didn't seem all that bad. Some of them were fairly nice! If she hadn't been feeling so hungry...
There was no point in lamenting what was already a moot point. Yako supposed she should at least be grateful that she was here without Neuro. If that meant he was left taking care of Sicks and Sasazuka back home, so be it; it also meant he wouldn't face the possibility of starving in space.
Yako walked through a door into a store that, for all the strangeness of it's surroundings, could have been taken out of her hometown. A half-aware drone manned the counter, a sort of eerie reminder of how few people were really around. She tugged down her sleeve, turning back to the task at hand. She didn't have a kitchen, so either she was going to have to do some pleading (not like she couldn't handle that) or she needed to plan on cold meals.
"The first time instant ramen won't be of any use. Unless I can find an electric kettle or skittle around here..." Brightening up at the prospect of expanding her menu's horizons, Yako took up her search with a vengeance. If she couldn't do anything about the people who were back home at the moment, she could at least see that she took care of herself until she got back to them.