Kiriko George ☣ Black Jack ☣ Application for Niteo Nix

[and_above_all]

☣ Player

Name: World

Contact: AIM: afourthworld MSN: the.second.advent@hotmail.com (preferred)

Personal LJ: Worldrescue

☣ Character

Name: Kiriko [first name] George [surname].

Series: Black Jack

Canon: AU. I'm really sorry for this complicated explanation that follows:

There are dozens of different versions and formats of this 40-year-old fandom. The manga series by Osamu Tezuka began in 1973 and finished print in 1983, but never had an ending. Since then, many authors including Osamu Dezaki, Makoto Tezuka, Kentaro Otani, Iwaaki Hitoshi and more have attempted to write an epilogue for the series, all of them considered their own 'canon' but every single one of them contradicting one another in some way (including an actual canon AU universe!). I wish to play the villain of this series, Dr. Kiriko, during the war he fought in, which is extensively discussed in various canons and shown through a couple flashbacks but never completely explained. In 2005, a budding Manga-ka named Kiri Kaworu wrote a 7-volume 500+ page biographical manga Black Jack: Agent Orange about Kiriko's fight in the war and what happened after based on canon facts, however since it contains graphic material and she did not pay royalties to Tezuka Productions, it is considered doujinshi. Since I cannot draw on one single canon to complete his story entirely, I will be connecting the dots between all the versions and making my own inferences about what happened, as well. His background will be taken from the anime Black Jack 21, the timeline will be taken from Dezaki's OVAs, his personality and character will be taken from the original manga and his icons and small non-critical details (such as the names of his friends who are shown in the original manga but never given names) will be taken from Agent Orange. Because of this shuffling around and lack of clear-cut facts, and since he generally appears as an adult through most of the series and I am aging him down to the flashback scenes, he will be considered AU.

Age: 21. Timeline: During the war, a day before he lost his eye.

History: As this is the most obscure canon of canons, I'll try to be as thorough as possible.

Kiriko lives in a world where back-alley surgeons hold great power in their own underworld, and famous Doctors are household names. His father, Dr. Edward George, is one such world-renown doctor; the founder of a serum of immortality called the "Blood of Phoenix". Another such Doctor is the titular Black Jack, a notorious back-alley surgeon who charges hundreds of thousands of dollars per operation, but can cure any illness or ailment without fail. Kiriko himself later becomes the back-alley doctor "Dr. Kiriko", a legendary euthanasiast who lives on the run but excells in painless and untracable deaths.

Even though I'm playing him at age 21, it's important to talk about Kiriko's background in the manga too (when he's 40), since it's still relevant to his personality.

Adult Dr. Kiriko of the Black Jack manga is, in short, a hitman, a self-proclaimed "killer-for-hire". He goes by many different names: The Angel of Death, The Living Reaper, Death Incarnate, the Shinigami no Kenshin - but no matter what you call him, his methods are the same: Anyone wishing to commit suicide leaves him their name, their location, and how much they are willing to leave him post-mortem, and he comes to give them a painless, euphoric, and untraceable death. There are many reasons you might want to hire the Doctor - if you're suffering of an incurable illness, if you don't want a loved one to blame themselves, to have a beautiful death, to avoid the law taking away life insurance from your family because it was proven you killed yourself, etc, etc.

[The following background is taken from Black Jack 21 until otherwise specified]

But Kiriko wasn't always like that - only twenty years ago, he was a good-natured, docile boy. Growing up in a mountain house near Banff, Alberta, Canada [dead serious] to a Japanese immigrant and a Canadian Doctor, Kiriko was a young genius. Though his father, Dr. George, was a very busy man who worked long hours, it didn't stop them from being a very tightly-knit family. His little sister, Yuri, was born when he was about ten years old, and the two of them became inseparable. As both of them were raised almost in isolation from the rest of the modern world, their family was all they had, and they were all very close. Kiriko especially admired his father, and decided from a young age he wanted to become a Doctor just like him.

Some time before Yuri's birth, Dr. George had made a world-changing discovery that had brought the family much fame; while on a hike in the mountain range around their home, he stumbled across a large colony of a strange organic matter. Taking samples, he soon discovered that these organisms were actually hosts to a powerful undiscovered virus that was able to generate an efficient power source, like a self-powered battery. After studying and mutating this virus for years, he realized that this virus also permanently stopped its host from aging, therefore making them immortal. Developing it into a "safe" serum that he could distribute around the world, Dr. George named his discovery the "Blood of Phoenix," and founded an organization known as the "Noir Project" with Chinese entrepreneur Zen Mantoku in order to research its effects. Dr. George was the first human being to receive this injection, and therefore became the first immortal man on earth.

Kiriko grew up living in his father's newly-found wealth and became somewhat of a spoiled child. While not a brat, he was definitely naïve and sheltered from the rest of the world, knowing little more than the rich but simple life his family shared in the mountain cabin. In his preteen and teenage years he worked hard to get through school quickly to succeed his father, and spent every moment at his father's side in study. In his late teenage years, he finally accepted an offer from his father to travel to New York, where Dr. George had been meeting up with several VIP Doctors from around the world to skyrocket the Noir Project into history. Some of these Doctors included pivotal characters to the plot of the series: Black Jack's father Dr. Hazama, Black Jack's stepfather Zen Mantoku, nobel prize winner Dr. Kreutzer, and Black Jack's mentor, Dr. Honma. (This project is an irremovable element of the story: essentially, Dr. George's discovery was the antecedent action that sparked the entire chain of events that is the main plot of Black Jack. If the Noir Project had never been created, Dr. Hazama would have never arrived in New York, Black Jack's parents would never have met, Black Jack would never have been born, his father would have never ran away, Black Jack's mother would never have been murdered by Zen Mantoku, Dr. Honma would never have saved Black Jack's life, Black Jack would never have sworn a vendetta and become a back-alley surgeon, Kiriko would never have been forced to go to war, and Black Jack and Kiriko would never have become enemies - and the entire story of the series would never have begun.)

Over Kiriko’s years living in New York, however, Dr. George's Noir Project began to fall apart. Artificial organs that had been made with the energy of the virus were beginning to kill the transplant patients without warning. Strange hematomas began to develop in the injected's bodies and destroyed their hearts. Organs mysteriously began to fail, host's immune systems were shutting down, and those who were injected with immortality became much weaker and more ill with every day that passed, despite not being able to age. The virus turned out to be a magnet for carcinogens and disease.

On top of that, America was at war with another country (this world is slightly different from our own, so it's never canonly said what country it was - it could be a war that is absent from our history. In some versions it‘s hinted at being Vietnam, in Agent Orange it is Vietnam, but in other versions this would retcon the timeline. For simplicity’s sake, the war will remain nameless). Dr. George's reputation was already at stake, and with his only son still following him around like a lost puppy while the other boys his age in the country went to war, things were not good for him.
Though it's never exactly said that this is the specific reason why Kiriko enlisted in the war instead of staying in New York with his father (he could have also been conscripted or volunteered), it can be assumed Kiriko enlisted to save Dr. George's fading reputation from scorn. Regardless of the reason, Kiriko was sent to war as a combat medic.

From the start, the war was not easy on him. Kiriko wasn’t much of a worldly person at that time, and had little understanding or concern for the politics of what was going on. Never having a conviction to fight, his kind and gentle personality did not take the gruesomeness of the war well, as violence was not in his nature. [Headcanon/AU/AO Extrapolations begin here] Thankfully, Kiriko’s unit became a sort of surrogate family for him. As he was more of a kind and understanding soul than the other brutish soldiers, his unit very quickly befriended their new Doc. (In AO, for example, it shows him bonding quickly to one particular reclusive soldier named Alan, who was much the same as him: a passive individual, half Japanese, a strong dislike of violence and war, and at conflict with their father and their future. Though Alan is much of a shut-in, Kiriko's kindness to him gives him strength during hard times and allows him to open up somewhat.) Being a part of this group was what saved Kiriko from losing his grasp on reality, and saved his sanity... at least for a little while. [End of headcanon/AU/AO extrapolation]

And then there was an accident.

The details behind this tragedy are never consistent in any version. Agent Orange shows that, like his nemesis Black Jack, he was caught in a terrorist bombing (in which he was forced to watch his best friend Alan die a slow death in front of him) - while other canons hint that Kiriko’s unit had been violently ambushed and left for dead or taken prisoner. What all versions agree on is that Kiriko’s right eye had been gouged out as a result, and that the torture he and his unit were forced to endure was incredibly horrific. Trapped in an area where rescue was uncertain and supplies were scarce, when the soldiers begged Kiriko to ease their pain, he so did the only thing he could think to do: mercy killed them. However, for whatever reason he could not bring himself to meet the same end. Upon their rescue, Kiriko ended up being the only survivor.

[The following is background from the original manga.]

As the boy recovered, he lost control of himself for some time. The hellish atmosphere of war had broken him and ruined his innocence. Destroyed by what he had seen and from losing those he cared so much about, Kiriko was miserable. On top of that, he was confined to a military hospital during his recovery, where the less-than-sterile conditions in which he was treated only made his suffering worse. He once begged another Doctor to kill him, but they refused, leaving him in intense pain. Eventually he recovered from his amputation and was well enough to be sent back to the front, but he couldn’t see his job as a medic the same way. When his fellow soldiers begged him to end their pain, instead of giving them encouragement or treating them, he took their words at face value and killed them. There was an incident where he slaughtered every soldier in the entire hospital, and after this, he was given a dishonourable discharge and sent back home.

[Black Jack 21 history:]

When Kiriko returned, things fell apart for him. Upon his discharge, Kiriko and Dr. George's once loving relationship became very strained. When Kiriko arrived home to continue his study, he began to realize how futile his father's work was. Even if they developed a serum of immortality that could cease aging, they couldn't put an end to the suffering the virus perpetuated. Every endeavour Kiriko and his father had tried to conquer resulted in the deaths of innocent people. Because of this, Kiriko turned against his father and began to mock him, insisting it would be more humane of him as a Doctor to work in euthanasia than to continue to work with the Blood of Phoenix. Dr. George did not take this accusation lightly - his only male heir that he had trained for nearly a decade was threatening to leave. Their entire family fell apart - Kiriko and his father had driven a wedge so far into their family's connection that none of them were ever close again. Even the unbreakable relationship between Yuri and Kiriko had begun to sour. Kiriko and his father had many bitter and even violent arguments, until one day, Kiriko's mother was found dead. It was never proven who or what had killed her, but Dr. George had had enough. He excommunicated Kiriko from the family forever, and Kiriko was thrown out into the world without a home, without a name, without money, and without a job.

This was the final nail in the coffin that caused Kiriko to rebel against his father - becoming a world famous Doctor who took as many lives as he could instead of saving them.

Though this is far as I'll go with him (I‘m taking him from the middle of the war, before the accident, and I may canon update him to right after the war at some point), Kiriko's story doesn't end there - this is his beginning as the main villain of the plot. He eventually goes on to become "the Angel of Death," kill thousands of men, torture the leaders of a military operation, fall in love with a porn star, murder his father, contract a syphilis-like disease (but not from the porn star...), lose half his liver, and give birth to a mutant alien jellyfish, depending on the canon you read. But that's a story for a different app...

Personality: First, there's something important to draw attention to. Even as an adult, where he's an indiscriminate hired killer, Kiriko is still the same man in terms of personality when compared to when he was young. He’s very kind, has a strong sense of justice, and is never slow to show generosity. He shows true sympathy to his patients, and never imposes himself upon them (their family, however, is another story… he tends to get quite mean with clingy family members that annoy him) - he only comes to their aid upon their personal request. He is Dr. Black Jack's contrast: while Black Jack is regarded as a legendary man who does very kind things in the name of saving lives, Black Jack himself is a wicked person who only uses the patients to get what he wants: revenge upon the men who murdered his mother. Kiriko, on the other hand, is regarded as a worthless criminal and does very "wicked" things for a living, but only in the name of mercy and compassion. He is a good man, capable of utmost selflessness despite his calling. For example, in the 1990 OVAs, Kiriko finds a woman half-dead in the wreckage of an abandoned car, rescues her, makes camp near the area and nurses her back to health until she has the strength to return. It turns out, she was actually a patient's of Black Jack's (who had taken every penny from her) and she was searching for Dr. Kiriko - she wanted to die because Black Jack was moving too slow in saving her, and she was suffering. Instead of revealing his identity, Kiriko instead tried to help her recover, played her music he wrote, lifted her spirits, brought her flowers, encouraged her, and eventually found the cure for her illness, for no charge and entirely out of the kindness of his heart. Even after she begged him with tears in her eyes to surrender her to "Dr. Kiriko," he refused. This is just one of the many acts of kindness Kiriko has made throughout the plot, also including but not limited to helping prisoners of war escape their captivity, saving the life of a dying single mother who ingested a lethal dose of poison, and in the 21 timeline even taking a bullet intended for Black Jack, the man he hates more than anyone else… therefore saving the life of his enemy by sacrificing his own.

But simply because Black Jack is the main character, and Kiriko is his sworn enemy, Kiriko is still considered the "villain" of the story. But as I said, don’t let his ’role’ deter you from understanding his real character - being the antagonist does not make him a bad man.

This selfless personality is still definitely present with Kiriko in the war - despite the fact that he's forced to become a trained-to-kill soldier, he is still very much a gentleman who wants to do what he believes is right. In a non-canon example, there’s a scene in Agent Orange where Kiriko’s unit escapes to a nearby rural town to recover from their wounds. When Kiriko goes off on his own, he runs across a seven-year-old Vietnamese girl who has cut her leg open with a tin can, and he takes care of her and gives her a tetanus shot. The two of them get acquainted, and he allows himself to trust her.

When that same girl uses this trust to her advantage to plant a grenade in their tent, and Kiriko and his unit are given orders to kill her, but none of them can bring themselves to do it and agree to set her free. But this doesn’t stop Kiriko’s best friend Alan from approaching her and shooting her at point blank range - and Kiriko is absolutely appalled at him.

Even as a more “experienced” soldier after he loses his eye, Kiriko is still somewhat of a tenderheart. Many times in the manga can he be found warning children, of all people, about the terrors of war, and how it is the most wicked tragedy man has ever imposed upon themselves. In Agent Orange, after his discharge, we see him spending time with the other veterans who survived to make sure they’re doing okay. He visits his friend’s families and helps them all recover from the effects of the war. It's said in Black Jack 21 that it’s not his personality that changes entirely after the war, but his ambitions and opinion of the world - he is cruel when the world is cruel, and kind when the world is kind. Even after an accident late in the series in which Kiriko is responsible for the death of his father, his sister Yuri stands up for him, saying Kiriko is actually very kind hearted and would only ever do what he thought was right.

While Kiriko is inherently a good person, he does have his flaws, most of them stemming from his spoiled upbringing. He is very moody, and his anger can become violent very quickly - for as simple a reason as he didn‘t get what he wanted. In an example, later in the series when Dr. George is on his death bed, Kiriko bursts in uninvited and tries to kill his father with a shotgun instead of being forced to watch him suffer. …But when his father tells him he wants to die, Kiriko stops what he is doing and starts screaming insults at him, telling him he’s a pathetic man for giving up.

He is also prone to unnecessary pettiness, and sometimes, even tantrums. While he may start out with good intentions, if a person he dislikes becomes involved (such as Black Jack), he will push the issue as far as he can just to spite them. For example, in the final chapter he's seen in in the manga, Kiriko has one last conversation with Black Jack. He asks the Doctor if he will continue to extort people unnecessarily. When Black Jack answers that he won’t stop, Kiriko presents to Black Jack a relatively healthy 180 year old man. The old man has undergone every surgery imaginable in order to achieve immortality, and since Black Jack can do nothing to make him live forever, Kiriko drags the patient off to kill him just so he can make Black Jack angry. Also, in a chapter where Kiriko contracts a highly contagious Amazonian parasite, he begins with good intentions: he tries to kill himself so he will not become Japan's Patient Zero and no one else will die because of him. When his sister catches him attempting suicide and runs for help, Kiriko isn’t all that angry… until he finds out she ran to get Black Jack. He completely snaps and tries to kill himself and his sister in a fit of insanity, setting a bomb to detonate in three minutes and threatening her with it. Even when he collapses on the ground from pain, he starts swearing at Black Jack when the Doctor tries to alleviate his suffering. When he wakes up to discover he’s been cured, he’s completely indifferent, and thanks no one for their aid in saving his life. Instead, he ridicules them, saying that he will continue to commit murder after murder just because they let him live, out of pure pettiness. Kiriko himself is hardly a violent person, but after being put through such an unnatural experience, when pushed to a certain limit he has the tendency to crack or completely overreact in ways that include frustration, anger, violence, hysteria, and sometimes even sorrow. This will be an element I will incorporate into his character in Niteo Nix. One could also connect this pettiness to his crimes of war - Kiriko himself begged to be killed, and when the other Doctors didn’t kill him, he retaliated by murdering all the patients in the military hospital.

Since I will be playing as Kiriko fresh into the war, he'll be familiar with his boot camp training and what war is really like, but under his tough facade he's still a spoiled Daddy's boy ; that is, until development allows him to find his feet. He’ll probably start off as a bit of a whiny ‘priss’ since he’s been put into an unfamiliar territory with unfamiliar faces again, but eventually he’ll go back to his natural self - or even grow into the soldier dedicated to death he was meant to become.

Abilities / Additional Notes: Being your average human, Kiriko doesn't have any sort of 'power.' Unlike his father, he is not immortal. As a young Doctor, however, he has a thorough knowledge of medicine and science. Since he's a genius, he's very intelligent, but his lack of street smarts and social skill leaves something to be desired. So while he can explain in great detail the best places for a killshot or perfectly patch up a gunshot wound, he'd have a lot of difficulty, say, trying to fit in to a new social situation.

As a soldier, he's no pushover, either. He's been well-trained in combat and has a high stamina, but because of his thin frame he can't handle brute force as well as his brothers. Kiriko would prefer to outsmart his enemies with logic and his training as a Doctor than to go into hand-to-hand combat.

As for his other talents, Kiriko is very good at taking things apart and salvaging them. Later on in his canon, he makes his metal suitcase into an intricate death machine out of spare parts - presumably several times, since his machine gets destroyed in an explosion and by an angry patient. He’s great with electronics and machinery, as well as with explosives - as I said earlier, later in the original manga, Kiriko creates and wires bombs beneath his bed so he can save Japan from an incurable airborne parasite he has contracted.

He's also musically talented, which I have attributed to his mother being a musician. In the OVAs, he writes music when he’s not busy with patients. If there was an instrument he found and didn't know how to play, chances are he could master it in a week or so.

As an additional note, I'll also write a little blurb on his appearance, since that also varies between canons. Kiriko is of mixed blood, half Asian and half Caucasian. He's very tall (about six feet), has soft blue eyes, pale blonde hair, and a pronounced caucasian nose - but also asian features such as high jutting cheekbones, a thin frame, and narrow almond-shaped eyes [yay, anime genetics]. His 'upkeep' of himself is very indicative of his sanity. Before the war begins, Kiriko is very tidy and proper. But as he grows more and more cynical, he slowly becomes more and more skeletal and gholish, and carries a dark and "removed" aura about him.

☣ Samples

Third-Person Sample:

On the other side of the river he could see a city so unlike the one behind him. Full of life, bustling with activity - and completely allergic to his prescence, it seemed. Kiriko George watched it curiously from the shore, wondering if it had been his uniform that had startled them. He didn't yet know where exactly he had ended up, but it was clear to him that as a man of another country's army, it made sense the citizens would behold him with caution.

Still he absolutely refused to spend a single night in that dilapidated hell behind him. Though his olive drab seemed to betray this truth, he did not belong there; the Doctor had had enough of battlefields and the remnants of war. He could try to convince someone he meant no harm, that all he wanted was to buy a change of clothes and get some rest so he could begin his trek home by morning...
And as if on cue, off in the distance on the other side in the river approached a little girl, no older than six. Perhaps she had gotten lost on her way home or wished to find a secret place to play - she carried a children's school satchel. Just big enough, Kiriko thought, to conceal and carry him over a set of men's clothes. If he was careful, this could be his ticket out...
It appeared she hadn't noticed him yet. This was his only chance. A bit shaky on his feet, at first, Kiriko slowly tried to stand - raising his hand to draw her attention and calling out with the kindest smile he could manage.

"Excuse me, miss-!"

The child turned her head for only a moment, dropped her belongings, and shot back into the city.

"Hey, wait-"

Within seconds the riverbank was empty again. Confused and dejected, the soldier sat himself back down on the edge, a pensive glare into the black-blue water. From within his pocket he slowly produced a cigarette, which he put to the flame of his lighter and took a puff. As he did, he quietly watched the ash tumble into the water and disappear, carried off by the stream...

With a frustrated growl he tossed his cigarette in with it, not in the mood for a smoke after all. This was great. Just fucking great. What in the hell was he supposed to do now?!

First-Person Sample:

[Video feed begins with a close-up on the face of a rather exasperated young man crouching down in front of his PDA. Decked in an olive military uniform, his youthful face hardly seems old - or mature - enough to be donning such responsibility. The blond quietly clears his throat, his voice is muted as if afraid he'll be found by someone nearby, but firm enough to assure he means to be taken seriously.]

Hey. Whoever you all are out there...

[He runs a hand through his hair, a bit panicked. Something's off, why would his 'captor' give him a communication machine?]

...Shit, I don't remember being captured, but whoever did it seems to be gone now. Damn cowards.

But the good news is, [He displays his hands proudly with a bit of a relieved smile] I'm not restrained, so I'm- we all are- getting out of here. It'd be nice to know where we are so we can start heading back. Anyone have an idea? Who's with me?!
[He seems to be absolutely convinced his base is somewhere just off in the distance.]