OOC / application @ realityshifted.
Player Name: Matcha.
Player LJ: ochazuki.
Email and/or AIM: luke [dot] fon [dot] facepalm [at] gmail [dot] com/lukefonfacepalm.
Timezone: EST. GMT-5.
Other Characters: n/a.
Character: Shiro.
Series: Kimi no Kakera.
Deviance: D1.
Age: Appears 12-14, but his actual age is unspecified. He is assumed to be much, much older, yet still a child compared to other hitogata.
Gender: Physically male, but because Shiro has no concept of gender, he's more gender neutral.
Species: Hitogata.
Canon Used: I'm using the tankouban, not the Shounen Sunday serials. There are significant differences between the two.
Appearance: Shiro is a short boy with white hair and brown eyes. He normally wears a tattered blue sweater, brown pants, a faded black cape, and a pale purple hat that looks suspiciously like a rabbit. His wrists are bound by manacles, attached to one another by a four foot chain, though he sometimes forgets about them. He is almost always smiling. :)
But his eyes sometimes go icy blue. Also, he has very sharp teeth.
Sometimes he looks like an evil, mechanical rabbit, but this is very rare and usually only after his manacles have been removed.
Psychology: Shiro is a riot.
He is simple-minded, honest, and happy--blissfully, hyperactively happy. He is quick to laugh and quicker to smile, and his attention span lasts about as long as that of a kindergardener on a diet of pure sugar divided by that of a goldfish. He is friendly and approachable, talkative and curious. Abstract concepts are almost impossible for him to grasp, but that doesn't bother him! Shiro's childlike innocence walks a fine line between naivete and stupidity and usually jumps enthusiastically over to the 'stupidity' side thanks to his amazing ability to forget his own name on a regular basis. However, his forgetfulness isn't limited to just his name.
You see, Shiro's forgetfulness is not normal amnesia. He forgets all kinds of things: personal experiences, people he once knew, definitions of words. According to another character, Shiro lives in "a world in which the important things and the unimportant things all disappear." Upon his introduction, he asks what 'cliffs', 'crying', 'food', and 'thieves' are, to name a few examples. The only things he seems unable to forget include certain motor skills, specific phrases that he repeats over and over again like mantras, and that he should be searching for something--anything, regardless of what that something is--in order to not forget why he's alive in the first place. When he has something to search for or something to protect, even when he forgets everything else, he remembers little bits and pieces of what matter most... but only the most general aspects. For example, Shiro knows how to eat, but not that you can eat food. He knows that his grampa taught him to protect his friends and kill his foes, but he doesn't remember who his grampa is, how to protect, or how to kill. He remembers that he is searching for a hitogata, but he has no idea what one is. He remembers that he made a promise, but not what that promise was or even who he made it to.
Whenever Shiro forgets things, he starts off like a blank slate. He is a quick learner when rote memorization is involved; for example, he can recite his multiplication tables after going over them once, but he doesn't actually understand what multiplying is. He talks to himself as if there are people around to hear; he talks to others without suspecting them of any foul play. In fact, just like a child, he'll believe anything you tell him. If you tell his name is Shiro, he'll believe you. If you tell him he's your bodyguard, he'll believe you. If you tell him who is friend and who is foe, he'll protect or kill accordingly. Suffice it to say, in this state, one should hope Shiro doesn't fall into the wrong hands.
In truth, Shiro completely lacks one of the four main human emotions--'joy, anger, pathos, and humor'--and this effectively makes him a 'hitogata' (not that he isn't a hitogata proper, but I'll explain this more later). In his case, he lacks 'pathos'. Shiro cannot feel physical pain, cannot empathize with the pain of others, and is physically incapable of shedding tears. However, this doesn't mean he's completely numb to sadness--he can feel it, somewhere inside--but he is incapable of expressing it or even recognizing it as 'sadness'. In volume 6, when trying to mourn a friend who sacrificed herself for his sake, Shiro is only able to express his grief by smiling even more than usual and showing how happy is he that he didn't forget all his friends and commenting on how beautiful and sparkly everyone else's tears are, and how can he make those things? Can you tell him? In volume 7, further attempts to mourn fallen friends and his inability to die end up with Shiro lashing out in anger as opposed to sadness, until Icoro convinces Shiro to just smile, smile and smile and mourn in the only way he knows, while she cries in his stead.
Shiro does, however, know 'fear', and he knows it quite well. Once he learns what it means to repeatedly forget everything he holds dear, he becomes afraid of forgetting, of 'being empty', of fighting, and of dying--whenever the words 'death', 'destruction', and the like are mentioned around him, he seems to go into a trance. He doesn't know why--and it's sometimes questionable as to whether or not he even knows what the words mean--but they appeal to his programming and to his less than human side, and for that reason alone, they are capable of striking fear in him.
And about that less than human side... Shiro doesn't remember, but he is not human. He is a war machine, programmed to destroy. When he holds a weapon, particularly a sword or anything with a blade, Shiro's happy smile becomes something more sinister. More sadistic. He might not remember how to fight, but his abnormally heavy body can deal considerable damage simply by stomping on your toes. He can bite through swords, copy your swordplay until he matches your level--he can even cut through air and make it burn inextinguishable flames. Unable to feel pain or empathize with that of others, Shiro becomes a killing machine that can take heavy damage without relenting and that just keeps fighting until anyone who previously identified themselves as a 'foe' is dead. Or until you disarm him, at which point, he'll forget why he was even fighting, where he is, who he was fighting, how to fight, and--oh hey! are you 'friend'? or 'foe'? It is worth noting that even in this mode, Shiro avoids attacking the young and the weak.
Activating Shiro's programming is what resets his entire world. And then there's nothing left but for him to rinse and repeat.
Shiro is a riot.
Other Skills/Abilities:
Other Weaknesses:
History:
It is said that long ago, people believed "the world repeated itself." As the grass and flowers bloom anew every year, as the night turns into morning, as civilizations crumble and rise from their own ashes. But the "world" will not repeat itself again. This tiny world will end before we grow up.
The 'world' is a miserable, dying kingdom--a frozen wasteland surrounded on all sides by unscalable Walls, trapped in a state of perpetual night, and doomed by an unending snowstorm that threatens to bury existence as we know it. The Sun--a great ball of light and warmth that could melt the snow, save the country, and bring happiness to everyone--is nothing more than a legend. Everyone lives their miserable lives, heavily segregated into tribes and forbidden to leave their own parts of the dying world, toiling away until their extinction. Some tribes oppress and manipulate those weaker than them; sometimes those oppressed rebel and fight back. But it's all the same: in the end, all are victims, and all are sentenced to die.
However, the 'world' was not always like this.* Long ago, there were no Walls, and people lived throughout the wide, wide world. But even then, war terrorized the people, and there was no peace. With the advancement of science, new weapons were developed, and having gained control over a great energy source, mankind ruled the land. In order to avoid getting their own hands dirty with the sins they committed, humans created weapons in the shape of men: 'hitogata'. The humanoid weapons would take on the sins and guilt of their human commanders and would fight wars in their steads. However, it only took a single war for that great power to turn against man and poison the land, making it uninhabitable. Just breathing in the air was enough to kill a man. As a last ditch attempt to survive, mankind built the Walls of its own volition in order to escape the poison and survive in a prison of its own creation.
In order to build those Walls, they had to bring the cursed fruits of science into the Walls with them. Each tribe--or race, at that time--had promised to abandon the technology once the Walls were completed. However, even after the Walls were fully built, humans could not let go of that power--they were afraid of how inconvenient and miserable life would be without their great energy source. In time, disputes over control of that energy source led once more to wars between the different peoples until the technology itself was destroyed.
Many of the hitogata--each containing a 'piece' of the energy source--were considered 'living dolls' that fought relentlessly amongst themselves. They had very simple programs: they would protect their friends and kill their foes; they would fight each other to the death; they would become one with the energy source and bring it under the rule of the men who controlled them. The dolls absorbed the energy source and kept fighting and fighting until all that remained of them were mountains of their corpses. Finally, once again facing their end, mankind truly abandoned the cursed energy source. They sealed away its last flames, and in doing so, the snowstorm and endless night began. The story has all been forgotten: all the people of today know is that they have inherited a world of nothingness, and they live only to die.
The energy source that marked the end of mankind was none other than the Sun itself, and one of the last of the active 'living dolls' is Shiro. 'Hitogata' is a word whose origins--much like the origins of the snowstorm and the Walls themselves--has been forgotten. Its current uses are to describe dolls shaped in human likeness or things that are missing pieces of themselves, but most often, it is used to describe children missing one of the core human emotions: joy, anger, pathos and humor. The origin of the word was to describe things like Shiro--weapons shaped like humans evil rabbits from hell, containing a piece of the Sun, existing only to fight.
Over time, Shiro no longer had a reason to fight. There were no other dolls to kill--no wars to fight--after humanity sealed away the Sun, resigned itself to its destruction, and began to bury its sins and its shame in the ever-piling snow. His base programming remained the same, but no other memory was stored. It was simply unimportant. With time, Shiro forgot that he wasn't human, forgot that he was a weapon, forgot... everything. His weapon form was sealed away by manacles, and thus, he began to wander the world as a human child, always learning but never remembering, and so begins the story proper. [[ Note: Most of the above, from the asterisk on, is revealed in the last couple of volumes and has not been translated into English. The Politick version of the story in chapter 8 which has been translated is not the actual origin of the world. ]]
Shiro is eventually found in this state by an old bandit who lives in the mountains. As he and his men attack a train, they inadvertently make themselves enemies of the hitogata inside. Shiro attacks, and though his entire band of bandits is slaughtered, the old man manages to survive. Once defeated, he tells Shiro that he is no longer his enemy and is instead his 'grampa'. This reset Shiro's programming, and the old man took the reset hitogata under his wing to teach him certain tenets that would later rule his life: that he should not kill the weak or the wounded, that he should never leave his wounded behind, that he should run instead of fight when outnumbered, and that he should search for something--anything--in order to have a purpose in life. Shiro manages to take these teachings on as new programming and eventually wanders off into the world again after fighting someone else and forgetting who his so-called 'grampa' is. Oops.
Meanwhile, the Warmonger tribe--a tribe of people who live to fight, obviously--begins the search for a 'hitogata', though they didn't know what one is exactly. As noted earlier, the word refers to several things in current usage, but the original definition was forgotten: all they knew was that a hitogata was required to change the world and stop the destruction of mankind. Having destroyed one of their tanks after they identified themselves as 'foes', Shiro is running away from them when he accidentally takes shelter in the home shack of the Princess, Kamui Poro Chise Icoro. He is mostly lured in by the smell of the food she'd cooked for herself and her blind brother, Mataku, but in doing so, Shiro's life changed. Icoro is also a 'hitogata'--she lacks the emotion 'joy'. She has never smiled in her entire life and can only express herself through crying.
The Warmongers attack her home in pursuit of him, and in order to protect her blind younger brother, Icoro lies to Shiro, saying the Warmongers are 'foes', and she is his 'friend'. Icoro also lies to the Warmongers and claims that she has the hitogata in order to force them into following her. Now that Icoro is his 'friend', Shiro protects her accordingly--claiming she is the first to ever answer his customary question with 'friend'--and promises to help her find a Sun. Thus, the two go on their first and final journey to find the legendary Sun, and as their first big step into said journey, they dive headfirst off a cliff to what could be their impending doom.
...Luckily, and despite all odds, diving headfirst off the cliff turns out to not be their impending doom, but the two are still being chased after by the Warmongers. Having fallen from the Upper World, where the Royal Family and Politicians reside, they find themselves in the Lower World, where the commoners, the warriors, and most importantly, the Warmongers live.
Shiro and Icoro accidentally take shelter in a temple housing the Spirit, a ball of warmth and light, that is protected by the Resistance, a group of warrior children sworn to kill all who come near the it. During the ensuing battle, the Warmongers attack and steal the Spirit, while Icoro is taken by the Resistance. Feel free to assume from this point on that whenever they encounter the Warmongers, Shiro forgets everything all over again and only rejoins the story by following 'the smell of a good friend' unless otherwise specified.
The Warmongers stole the Spirit to use it as an energy source for a giant flying catfish (re: an ancient spaceship). Icoro, Shiro, and Yona, a girl from the Resistance, sneak aboard in order to steal back the Spirit, which Icoro mistakenly thinks is the Sun. They discover that the Politick tribe is working with the Warmongers in order to breach the Walls and see for themselves whether or not a world outside exists, but the catfish is breaking down from the strain of the flight, and they are more likely to crash before they manage to reach the height of the walls. Upon reaching the Spirit, they also discover that the catfish's power source is running out.
And then they are attacked by the Walls as punishment for reviving ancient flying technology.
The catfish is overrun by rabbits, the weaponized form of a hitogata. Shiro fights off the hitogata in order to protect his friends; Icoro saves both Yona and the Warmongers by loading them onto an escape pod. The catfish explodes.
Shiro survives the explosion and joins Yona in a quest to find Icoro, who has gone missing. The Warmongers take over after the Princess goes missing and the Politick tribe is crippled by the shame of their experiment going wrong. Under Warmonger rule, crime and hunger grow even more rampant than before. Despite this, Shiro is able to make friends with the Warmongers who had previously been chasing them, Beth and her two henchmen, thanks to Icoro saving their lives.
As Shiro and Yona travel together, they gather children orphaned by war and disease and become expert scammers: they find inns that are under attack by Warmongers and offer them protection in exchange for free food and lodge. Sure, every time they do this, Shiro loses all his memories again, but Yona always reminds him of who he is (her servant) and what he needs to do (protect her and the other kids). However, he seems to remember something else! He knows the name 'Icoro', though he doesn't know who she is.
Just once, Shiro manages to fend off the Warmongers without picking up a sword by asking them creepy questions regarding mortality. He manages to keep all the kids fed without forgetting them, and as they joke about how he usually forgets them all, Shiro realizes just how frightening it is to live without memories: because living without memories is living alone, even if you're surrounded by people. He resolves to never fight again, and when they are attacked by the Warmongers, his resolution to not fight forces one of the refugees, referred to only as Coroli, among them to sacrifice herself in his stead.
Canon Point: Volume 6, end of the Coroli intermission.
Reality Description: Mostly covered in the history, but here are some other interesting things.
The Walls surrounding the world extend high into the atmosphere and are unscalable unless a person uses a ship of some sort. They are mostly indestructible unless A) spaceships collide with them and cause huge explosions, B) kept under constant fire for days/weeks at a time. In the case of spaceships flying too high and too close to the Walls, the Walls themselves will open fire upon the spaceship and cause it to come crashing back down, and the snow storm will cease for days, filling the air with the scent of blood, to show how unhappy the Walls are with the people.
In truth, the Walls are hollow inside. They contain passages, walkways, entire cities that are inhabited by the Watchers--a tribe whose job is to keep men from wandering outside the wall. On the western Wall, visible from the Upper and Lower Worlds, is the Western Kamui, a giant statue watching over the people. Some fear it, some revere it, but most people consider it dead. Actually, it is a giant deactivated Hitogata. It can be activated again.
The world outside the Walls is lush and green. Flowers and trees grow, and it continues on as far as the eye can see. The problem with it is that the air itself is a poison that burns through the lungs of normal people, and thus, the land is uninhabitable.
Within the Walls, because of the unending snowstorm, houses must be continuously rebuilt on top of themselves in order to stay atop the mounting snow. Technology such as tanks and guns are still in use, but things like stoves and heaters are rare. Watches, clocks, or timepieces of any kind are a sign of royalty. All races have 'pieces'--decorative pendants--that signify their rank and tribe. Losing one's piece is akin to losing the right to be considered human.
A few important NPCs include...
Kamui Poro Chise Icoro: The Princess. She, like Shiro, is short and tiny. She runs around carrying a bag that has everything she could ever need to survive in it. She is also a hitogata who is incapable of smiling. Icoro is strong of heart and empathetic. She always feels the need to help all of her subjects when she can.
Yona: The girl from the Resistance. Yona wears a cape and carries a sword. She can fight with it if necessary. She can also use guns proficiently and knows her 5x tables best--since her gun clips tend to go in multiples of five. She wears her hair in pigtails and strives to be more like Icoro.
Beth: The Warmonger Sergeant. Beth is uneducated and often silly, but her heart is in the right place. After chasing Icoro and Shiro down for most of the start of the series, she eventually grows fond of them, especially after Icoro aids in saving her life. She wants to make the world a better place but has no idea how to go about doing so.
Coroli: The Dancer. Coroli is among the refugees Yona and Shiro take in. She has undergone such horrific trauma that she can no longer speak. She used to be a dancer before she was captured by the Warmongers and sent to work in a brothel. She is, sadly, dead. Shiro came to think of her as a mother figure, and her death haunts him, though he doesn't understand that.
Grampa: Shiro doesn't remember Grampa, but the old man is still alive and kicking. He's a bandit, one of the best ever known, and can punch Shiro, despite that being the equivalent of punching a tank, without flinching. He is the one who modified Shiro's programming so that he doesn't kill the weak or the young.
Player LJ: ochazuki.
Email and/or AIM: luke [dot] fon [dot] facepalm [at] gmail [dot] com/lukefonfacepalm.
Timezone: EST. GMT-5.
Other Characters: n/a.
Character: Shiro.
Series: Kimi no Kakera.
Deviance: D1.
Age: Appears 12-14, but his actual age is unspecified. He is assumed to be much, much older, yet still a child compared to other hitogata.
Gender: Physically male, but because Shiro has no concept of gender, he's more gender neutral.
Species: Hitogata.
Canon Used: I'm using the tankouban, not the Shounen Sunday serials. There are significant differences between the two.
Appearance: Shiro is a short boy with white hair and brown eyes. He normally wears a tattered blue sweater, brown pants, a faded black cape, and a pale purple hat that looks suspiciously like a rabbit. His wrists are bound by manacles, attached to one another by a four foot chain, though he sometimes forgets about them. He is almost always smiling. :)
But his eyes sometimes go icy blue. Also, he has very sharp teeth.
Sometimes he looks like an evil, mechanical rabbit, but this is very rare and usually only after his manacles have been removed.
Psychology: Shiro is a riot.
He is simple-minded, honest, and happy--blissfully, hyperactively happy. He is quick to laugh and quicker to smile, and his attention span lasts about as long as that of a kindergardener on a diet of pure sugar divided by that of a goldfish. He is friendly and approachable, talkative and curious. Abstract concepts are almost impossible for him to grasp, but that doesn't bother him! Shiro's childlike innocence walks a fine line between naivete and stupidity and usually jumps enthusiastically over to the 'stupidity' side thanks to his amazing ability to forget his own name on a regular basis. However, his forgetfulness isn't limited to just his name.
You see, Shiro's forgetfulness is not normal amnesia. He forgets all kinds of things: personal experiences, people he once knew, definitions of words. According to another character, Shiro lives in "a world in which the important things and the unimportant things all disappear." Upon his introduction, he asks what 'cliffs', 'crying', 'food', and 'thieves' are, to name a few examples. The only things he seems unable to forget include certain motor skills, specific phrases that he repeats over and over again like mantras, and that he should be searching for something--anything, regardless of what that something is--in order to not forget why he's alive in the first place. When he has something to search for or something to protect, even when he forgets everything else, he remembers little bits and pieces of what matter most... but only the most general aspects. For example, Shiro knows how to eat, but not that you can eat food. He knows that his grampa taught him to protect his friends and kill his foes, but he doesn't remember who his grampa is, how to protect, or how to kill. He remembers that he is searching for a hitogata, but he has no idea what one is. He remembers that he made a promise, but not what that promise was or even who he made it to.
Whenever Shiro forgets things, he starts off like a blank slate. He is a quick learner when rote memorization is involved; for example, he can recite his multiplication tables after going over them once, but he doesn't actually understand what multiplying is. He talks to himself as if there are people around to hear; he talks to others without suspecting them of any foul play. In fact, just like a child, he'll believe anything you tell him. If you tell his name is Shiro, he'll believe you. If you tell him he's your bodyguard, he'll believe you. If you tell him who is friend and who is foe, he'll protect or kill accordingly. Suffice it to say, in this state, one should hope Shiro doesn't fall into the wrong hands.
In truth, Shiro completely lacks one of the four main human emotions--'joy, anger, pathos, and humor'--and this effectively makes him a 'hitogata' (not that he isn't a hitogata proper, but I'll explain this more later). In his case, he lacks 'pathos'. Shiro cannot feel physical pain, cannot empathize with the pain of others, and is physically incapable of shedding tears. However, this doesn't mean he's completely numb to sadness--he can feel it, somewhere inside--but he is incapable of expressing it or even recognizing it as 'sadness'. In volume 6, when trying to mourn a friend who sacrificed herself for his sake, Shiro is only able to express his grief by smiling even more than usual and showing how happy is he that he didn't forget all his friends and commenting on how beautiful and sparkly everyone else's tears are, and how can he make those things? Can you tell him? In volume 7, further attempts to mourn fallen friends and his inability to die end up with Shiro lashing out in anger as opposed to sadness, until Icoro convinces Shiro to just smile, smile and smile and mourn in the only way he knows, while she cries in his stead.
Shiro does, however, know 'fear', and he knows it quite well. Once he learns what it means to repeatedly forget everything he holds dear, he becomes afraid of forgetting, of 'being empty', of fighting, and of dying--whenever the words 'death', 'destruction', and the like are mentioned around him, he seems to go into a trance. He doesn't know why--and it's sometimes questionable as to whether or not he even knows what the words mean--but they appeal to his programming and to his less than human side, and for that reason alone, they are capable of striking fear in him.
And about that less than human side... Shiro doesn't remember, but he is not human. He is a war machine, programmed to destroy. When he holds a weapon, particularly a sword or anything with a blade, Shiro's happy smile becomes something more sinister. More sadistic. He might not remember how to fight, but his abnormally heavy body can deal considerable damage simply by stomping on your toes. He can bite through swords, copy your swordplay until he matches your level--he can even cut through air and make it burn inextinguishable flames. Unable to feel pain or empathize with that of others, Shiro becomes a killing machine that can take heavy damage without relenting and that just keeps fighting until anyone who previously identified themselves as a 'foe' is dead. Or until you disarm him, at which point, he'll forget why he was even fighting, where he is, who he was fighting, how to fight, and--oh hey! are you 'friend'? or 'foe'? It is worth noting that even in this mode, Shiro avoids attacking the young and the weak.
Activating Shiro's programming is what resets his entire world. And then there's nothing left but for him to rinse and repeat.
Shiro is a riot.
Other Skills/Abilities:
- Despite being a mechanical war bunny, Shiro can bleed. He also can eat food, though whether he would be affected by not eating is uncertain.
- Can bite through steel, e.g. swords.
- Cannot feel physical pain. Can fight relentlessly without yielding to injury or exhaustion.
- Can fall from ridiculously high heights without dying. Can breathe normally at ridiculously high altitudes.
- Is unaffected by biological weapons and airborne poisons.
- Has a very sensitive sense of smell which can be used to track down friends and food.
- Can 'cut the air' with inextinguishable flames.
- Can turn into the sun, if the need arises?
Other Weaknesses:
- Can actually burn himself with his own inextinguishable flame and suffer damage as a result.
- Dislikes water and bathing. Avoids submerging himself when possible.
- Is very ticklish to the point that, if you tickle him during battle, you can actually disarm him and end the fight.
- Gets drunk off soy sauce.
History:
It is said that long ago, people believed "the world repeated itself." As the grass and flowers bloom anew every year, as the night turns into morning, as civilizations crumble and rise from their own ashes. But the "world" will not repeat itself again. This tiny world will end before we grow up.
The 'world' is a miserable, dying kingdom--a frozen wasteland surrounded on all sides by unscalable Walls, trapped in a state of perpetual night, and doomed by an unending snowstorm that threatens to bury existence as we know it. The Sun--a great ball of light and warmth that could melt the snow, save the country, and bring happiness to everyone--is nothing more than a legend. Everyone lives their miserable lives, heavily segregated into tribes and forbidden to leave their own parts of the dying world, toiling away until their extinction. Some tribes oppress and manipulate those weaker than them; sometimes those oppressed rebel and fight back. But it's all the same: in the end, all are victims, and all are sentenced to die.
However, the 'world' was not always like this.* Long ago, there were no Walls, and people lived throughout the wide, wide world. But even then, war terrorized the people, and there was no peace. With the advancement of science, new weapons were developed, and having gained control over a great energy source, mankind ruled the land. In order to avoid getting their own hands dirty with the sins they committed, humans created weapons in the shape of men: 'hitogata'. The humanoid weapons would take on the sins and guilt of their human commanders and would fight wars in their steads. However, it only took a single war for that great power to turn against man and poison the land, making it uninhabitable. Just breathing in the air was enough to kill a man. As a last ditch attempt to survive, mankind built the Walls of its own volition in order to escape the poison and survive in a prison of its own creation.
In order to build those Walls, they had to bring the cursed fruits of science into the Walls with them. Each tribe--or race, at that time--had promised to abandon the technology once the Walls were completed. However, even after the Walls were fully built, humans could not let go of that power--they were afraid of how inconvenient and miserable life would be without their great energy source. In time, disputes over control of that energy source led once more to wars between the different peoples until the technology itself was destroyed.
Many of the hitogata--each containing a 'piece' of the energy source--were considered 'living dolls' that fought relentlessly amongst themselves. They had very simple programs: they would protect their friends and kill their foes; they would fight each other to the death; they would become one with the energy source and bring it under the rule of the men who controlled them. The dolls absorbed the energy source and kept fighting and fighting until all that remained of them were mountains of their corpses. Finally, once again facing their end, mankind truly abandoned the cursed energy source. They sealed away its last flames, and in doing so, the snowstorm and endless night began. The story has all been forgotten: all the people of today know is that they have inherited a world of nothingness, and they live only to die.
The energy source that marked the end of mankind was none other than the Sun itself, and one of the last of the active 'living dolls' is Shiro. 'Hitogata' is a word whose origins--much like the origins of the snowstorm and the Walls themselves--has been forgotten. Its current uses are to describe dolls shaped in human likeness or things that are missing pieces of themselves, but most often, it is used to describe children missing one of the core human emotions: joy, anger, pathos and humor. The origin of the word was to describe things like Shiro--weapons shaped like humans evil rabbits from hell, containing a piece of the Sun, existing only to fight.
Over time, Shiro no longer had a reason to fight. There were no other dolls to kill--no wars to fight--after humanity sealed away the Sun, resigned itself to its destruction, and began to bury its sins and its shame in the ever-piling snow. His base programming remained the same, but no other memory was stored. It was simply unimportant. With time, Shiro forgot that he wasn't human, forgot that he was a weapon, forgot... everything. His weapon form was sealed away by manacles, and thus, he began to wander the world as a human child, always learning but never remembering, and so begins the story proper. [[ Note: Most of the above, from the asterisk on, is revealed in the last couple of volumes and has not been translated into English. The Politick version of the story in chapter 8 which has been translated is not the actual origin of the world. ]]
Shiro is eventually found in this state by an old bandit who lives in the mountains. As he and his men attack a train, they inadvertently make themselves enemies of the hitogata inside. Shiro attacks, and though his entire band of bandits is slaughtered, the old man manages to survive. Once defeated, he tells Shiro that he is no longer his enemy and is instead his 'grampa'. This reset Shiro's programming, and the old man took the reset hitogata under his wing to teach him certain tenets that would later rule his life: that he should not kill the weak or the wounded, that he should never leave his wounded behind, that he should run instead of fight when outnumbered, and that he should search for something--anything--in order to have a purpose in life. Shiro manages to take these teachings on as new programming and eventually wanders off into the world again after fighting someone else and forgetting who his so-called 'grampa' is. Oops.
Meanwhile, the Warmonger tribe--a tribe of people who live to fight, obviously--begins the search for a 'hitogata', though they didn't know what one is exactly. As noted earlier, the word refers to several things in current usage, but the original definition was forgotten: all they knew was that a hitogata was required to change the world and stop the destruction of mankind. Having destroyed one of their tanks after they identified themselves as 'foes', Shiro is running away from them when he accidentally takes shelter in the home shack of the Princess, Kamui Poro Chise Icoro. He is mostly lured in by the smell of the food she'd cooked for herself and her blind brother, Mataku, but in doing so, Shiro's life changed. Icoro is also a 'hitogata'--she lacks the emotion 'joy'. She has never smiled in her entire life and can only express herself through crying.
The Warmongers attack her home in pursuit of him, and in order to protect her blind younger brother, Icoro lies to Shiro, saying the Warmongers are 'foes', and she is his 'friend'. Icoro also lies to the Warmongers and claims that she has the hitogata in order to force them into following her. Now that Icoro is his 'friend', Shiro protects her accordingly--claiming she is the first to ever answer his customary question with 'friend'--and promises to help her find a Sun. Thus, the two go on their first and final journey to find the legendary Sun, and as their first big step into said journey, they dive headfirst off a cliff to what could be their impending doom.
...Luckily, and despite all odds, diving headfirst off the cliff turns out to not be their impending doom, but the two are still being chased after by the Warmongers. Having fallen from the Upper World, where the Royal Family and Politicians reside, they find themselves in the Lower World, where the commoners, the warriors, and most importantly, the Warmongers live.
Shiro and Icoro accidentally take shelter in a temple housing the Spirit, a ball of warmth and light, that is protected by the Resistance, a group of warrior children sworn to kill all who come near the it. During the ensuing battle, the Warmongers attack and steal the Spirit, while Icoro is taken by the Resistance. Feel free to assume from this point on that whenever they encounter the Warmongers, Shiro forgets everything all over again and only rejoins the story by following 'the smell of a good friend' unless otherwise specified.
The Warmongers stole the Spirit to use it as an energy source for a giant flying catfish (re: an ancient spaceship). Icoro, Shiro, and Yona, a girl from the Resistance, sneak aboard in order to steal back the Spirit, which Icoro mistakenly thinks is the Sun. They discover that the Politick tribe is working with the Warmongers in order to breach the Walls and see for themselves whether or not a world outside exists, but the catfish is breaking down from the strain of the flight, and they are more likely to crash before they manage to reach the height of the walls. Upon reaching the Spirit, they also discover that the catfish's power source is running out.
And then they are attacked by the Walls as punishment for reviving ancient flying technology.
The catfish is overrun by rabbits, the weaponized form of a hitogata. Shiro fights off the hitogata in order to protect his friends; Icoro saves both Yona and the Warmongers by loading them onto an escape pod. The catfish explodes.
Shiro survives the explosion and joins Yona in a quest to find Icoro, who has gone missing. The Warmongers take over after the Princess goes missing and the Politick tribe is crippled by the shame of their experiment going wrong. Under Warmonger rule, crime and hunger grow even more rampant than before. Despite this, Shiro is able to make friends with the Warmongers who had previously been chasing them, Beth and her two henchmen, thanks to Icoro saving their lives.
As Shiro and Yona travel together, they gather children orphaned by war and disease and become expert scammers: they find inns that are under attack by Warmongers and offer them protection in exchange for free food and lodge. Sure, every time they do this, Shiro loses all his memories again, but Yona always reminds him of who he is (her servant) and what he needs to do (protect her and the other kids). However, he seems to remember something else! He knows the name 'Icoro', though he doesn't know who she is.
Just once, Shiro manages to fend off the Warmongers without picking up a sword by asking them creepy questions regarding mortality. He manages to keep all the kids fed without forgetting them, and as they joke about how he usually forgets them all, Shiro realizes just how frightening it is to live without memories: because living without memories is living alone, even if you're surrounded by people. He resolves to never fight again, and when they are attacked by the Warmongers, his resolution to not fight forces one of the refugees, referred to only as Coroli, among them to sacrifice herself in his stead.
Canon Point: Volume 6, end of the Coroli intermission.
Reality Description: Mostly covered in the history, but here are some other interesting things.
The Walls surrounding the world extend high into the atmosphere and are unscalable unless a person uses a ship of some sort. They are mostly indestructible unless A) spaceships collide with them and cause huge explosions, B) kept under constant fire for days/weeks at a time. In the case of spaceships flying too high and too close to the Walls, the Walls themselves will open fire upon the spaceship and cause it to come crashing back down, and the snow storm will cease for days, filling the air with the scent of blood, to show how unhappy the Walls are with the people.
In truth, the Walls are hollow inside. They contain passages, walkways, entire cities that are inhabited by the Watchers--a tribe whose job is to keep men from wandering outside the wall. On the western Wall, visible from the Upper and Lower Worlds, is the Western Kamui, a giant statue watching over the people. Some fear it, some revere it, but most people consider it dead. Actually, it is a giant deactivated Hitogata. It can be activated again.
The world outside the Walls is lush and green. Flowers and trees grow, and it continues on as far as the eye can see. The problem with it is that the air itself is a poison that burns through the lungs of normal people, and thus, the land is uninhabitable.
Within the Walls, because of the unending snowstorm, houses must be continuously rebuilt on top of themselves in order to stay atop the mounting snow. Technology such as tanks and guns are still in use, but things like stoves and heaters are rare. Watches, clocks, or timepieces of any kind are a sign of royalty. All races have 'pieces'--decorative pendants--that signify their rank and tribe. Losing one's piece is akin to losing the right to be considered human.
A few important NPCs include...
Kamui Poro Chise Icoro: The Princess. She, like Shiro, is short and tiny. She runs around carrying a bag that has everything she could ever need to survive in it. She is also a hitogata who is incapable of smiling. Icoro is strong of heart and empathetic. She always feels the need to help all of her subjects when she can.
Yona: The girl from the Resistance. Yona wears a cape and carries a sword. She can fight with it if necessary. She can also use guns proficiently and knows her 5x tables best--since her gun clips tend to go in multiples of five. She wears her hair in pigtails and strives to be more like Icoro.
Beth: The Warmonger Sergeant. Beth is uneducated and often silly, but her heart is in the right place. After chasing Icoro and Shiro down for most of the start of the series, she eventually grows fond of them, especially after Icoro aids in saving her life. She wants to make the world a better place but has no idea how to go about doing so.
Coroli: The Dancer. Coroli is among the refugees Yona and Shiro take in. She has undergone such horrific trauma that she can no longer speak. She used to be a dancer before she was captured by the Warmongers and sent to work in a brothel. She is, sadly, dead. Shiro came to think of her as a mother figure, and her death haunts him, though he doesn't understand that.
Grampa: Shiro doesn't remember Grampa, but the old man is still alive and kicking. He's a bandit, one of the best ever known, and can punch Shiro, despite that being the equivalent of punching a tank, without flinching. He is the one who modified Shiro's programming so that he doesn't kill the weak or the young.