❀ APPLICATION; {publicly relevant parts, anyway}
~
Name/Handle: Alory, or Al.
Age: 25.
Gender: Female.
Timezone: EST.
Personal LJ: alory_shannon.
E-Mail: frecklefacefangirl [at] gmail [dot] com.
AIM/other: AIM: captmoralfag (I don't sign on to AIM very regularly these days, but I am more than willing to 'put in an appearance' if/when it's requested of me.)
Series: D.Gray-Man.
Series' Medium: Manga first, then anime. There are also some light novels that haven’t been translated into English. I will be taking Kanda from the manga version of the series.
Character: Kanda Yuu. (…Technically "Yū," but that’s just being nitpicky, and it's a pain in the ass for EVERYONE INVOLVED to have to dig a symbol like that out of Word all the time, so "Yuu" it is.)
Age: Biologically 19 in current canon; 19 at Landel's as well.
Sex/Gender: As D.Gray-Man's mangaka Hoshino Katsura says in a side-note, "Very obviously a man."
Canon Role: Kanda is one of the protagonists…though with his attitude, he's admittedly more anti-hero than hero (which is especially obvious when compared to the main character’s extreme idealism and Hero Complex). In TV Tropes terms, Kanda is best classified as The Lancer, as well as a Knight In Sour Armour. ...And also a Jerkass.
"Real" Name: Katou Kiyomasa.
Please give us a personal history of your character's life and explain to us in detail how they grow and develop over the course of their canon:
…Wiki has a decent basic summary of the series here, but here it goes anyway.
The world of D.Gray-Man is one very like our own in many ways, albeit with some significant changes to their history; the current storyline is set at the end of that world’s nineteenth century. It is a time of darkness and war, with someone named the Millennium Earl creating monster-like weapons called Akuma from an unholy union of machines and human souls, with the intent of destroying humanity. Fighting at his side are a group of humans with special powers who call themselves the Noah. Opposing them is the Black Order, a branch of the Church, which searches for and uses a 'divine substance' called Innocence to fight the Akuma. Those few specifically chosen by the Innocence are called Exorcists, and can use the Innocence as a weapon to destroy the Akuma and free the imprisoned and enslaved souls trapped inside. There are 109 pieces of Innocence, which were scattered throughout the world by the Great Flood long ago; one piece, referred to as the ‘Heart’ will ensure the Order’s victory should they find and use it properly, though if it is destroyed, all the Innocence will be destroyed along with it. Thus it’s something of a race in the middle of a war, with the Earl trying to destroy the Innocence and the ‘Heart’ while the Order rushes to gather and protect it.
Now, on to Kanda and his role in all this.
The first time we see Kanda is in chapter five. In it, he and the main character Allen Walker start things off on the wrong foot, and just sort of…head off down the road without ever really getting onto the right one. While trying to visit/join up with the Black Order’s European Headquarters, Allen fails the robotic gatekeeper’s examination; as a result, Kanda, an experienced Exorcist, attacks him with Mugen, Kanda's Innocence (which takes the form of a sword) and ends up holding him at sword point. Another Exorcist, a girl named Lenalee Lee, shows up to break up their not-quite-fight, telling them that it’s all a misunderstanding (and establishing herself as one of the few people Kanda will take crap from-she smacks him over the head with a clipboard, and he just takes it without a word); Allen is admitted into the Order, though Kanda still dislikes him, a feeling that is mutual.
Rather predictably, Allen and Kanda end up being paired together for the next mission, and though at first there’s considerable friction between them, by the end…there’s still almost the same amount of friction, actually, but they’ve gotten more used to each other, even if they still don’t particularly like the other’s ways of doing things. In this arc, Kanda is established as a strong, albeit cynical, veteran soldier, a contrast to Allen’s openhearted innocence and inexperience in combat. At this point, it’s easy to take Kanda at face value, and assume that he’s just an arrogant jerkass for no real reason; he appears confident and utterly competent, settled in his ways and the ways of the Order. If there’s something deeper, it’s hidden beneath layers of icy disregard and seeming apathy, and the only hint that there’s something more to him is his adamant refusal to die until he finds an unknown someone he simply refers to as “that person”.
So Allen and Kanda take each others’ measure, neither particularly likes what they find, but though the tension and mutual standoffishness remains, they seem to have come away with…not quite respect, but maybe at least some regard for the other Exorcist’s abilities.
Then the series focuses on Allen and certain other characters, and Kanda all but vanishes. For a pretty considerable amount of time. Apparently he’s off in, like…Spain or somewhere, where he and his Exorcist team are guarding one of the Generals, one Froi Tiedoll. We get a few scenes and some chapter-page-art with him on-location there once or twice, but other than that, he is pretty well MIA for about fifty chapters.
He finally shows up again once the main party reaches Edo and the crap starts hitting the fan--Kanda’s team arrives out of nowhere and helps the main party fight the Earl and his Akuma army. Shortly after the battle (which isn’t a total loss, but isn’t quite a victory either), a small group of Exorcists, including Kanda, are pulled into something called “the Ark”, which is a complicated (and HUGE) technological device of sorts the Earl and the Noah created which allows instantaneous travel to locations all over the world; inside, it looks rather like a city, and all the doors in it open to places around the globe. Kanda, Allen, Lenalee, and three others end up trapped inside, and have to fight their way out, each fighting a Noah for one of the keys they need to open the doors that will let them escape. Kanda insists on taking the first Noah they encounter, a hulking monster named Skin Boric, and also insists on fighting alone, saying that this is his battle, since this Noah had been hounding his team for quite a while. When the others start to protest, saying what the heck, of course they’ll fight together!, Kanda grimly tells them to get going or he’ll kill them, and proceeds to attack them; they find this extremely insulting, getting comically huffy over it, and are angry enough at his 'bad attitude' that they willingly leave him behind. …Except for Lenalee, who seems to see through what is pretty clearly at least something of an act, since Kanda didn’t seriously injure any of them when he ‘attacked’ them. Kanda knows they only have a couple hours to escape from the Ark before it collapses in on itself (the Earl is making a new Ark, and is ‘downloading the information’ from the current one, which causes the ‘downloaded’ parts of the current one to vanish), so Kanda’s pushing the group ahead while he holds off the Noah, willing to sacrifice himself if it means the others can stop the Earl’s plan and keep the Ark from crumbling completely. Lenalee calls back to him, and yells at him until Kanda promises her that he’ll catch up with them once he’s finished killing Skin.
The fight with Skin takes somewhat longer than Kanda had expected, and Mugen is shattered during it, but Kanda still manages to kill the Noah (the first and only time we’ve seen any character pull off that particular feat so far); however, the battle pushes Kanda to his limits, and afterward, he collapses from exhaustion as the section of the Ark he’s in falls to pieces, leaving him unable to keep his promise to Lenalee.
Almost. In the end, Allen is found to have some sort of important tie to the 14th Noah, who had taken control of the Ark many years ago before his death, preventing the Earl from making proper use of it; due to this, Allen is able to restore all the Ark to its original state, restoring the people who had been lost in its collapse as well, Kanda among them. Kanda seems surprised to still be alive, and perhaps a little confused as well, but otherwise unruffled. Whether this indicates that he’d had faith in the others’ abilities, or that he was simply willing to die in the line of duty isn’t entirely certain as we aren't privy to his thoughts on the matter; it’s probably some of both.
In the aftermath of this, the Black Order now has the Ark, and thus the ability to travel between places a lot more quickly…as well as a VERY important piece of technology required for creating Akuma, which was also contained within the Ark. Another Noah, a shape-shifter named Lulubell, attacks the Order’s European HQ with another army of Akuma, intent on taking back this vital piece of technology; although Mugen is still in pieces and therefore completely unusable, Kanda still fights the Akuma anyway, focusing on defending their Branch’s Head, Komui Lee (Lenalee’s older brother). Kanda does this without really complaining and without the slightest hint of having any second thoughts, though the battle is obviously rather hard on him without Mugen. He simply takes it in stride and does what he can anyway, regardless of the numerous disadvantages stacked against them.
All the main protagonists come out of the attack all right, though the Headquarters are in shambles, necessitating a move (to London). During this time, the rest of the Order learns of Allen’s ties to the 14th Noah, who had chosen Allen as his successor (which basically equates to 'new host body'), and most do not react particularly well. Kanda seems to be among these: at first he seems even colder towards Allen--Allen even goes so far to take specific notice of it. But as usual, Kanda doesn’t let his personal feelings get in the way of doing his duty, since he and Allen seem to end up working together fairly often, and fairly well, since they don’t die in the process. This coldness doesn’t seem to be pervasive, however, since Kanda displays some very real anger and concern when Allen nearly kills himself in a particularly difficult fight with some Akuma. He even goes against their orders, which are to kill Allen if it looks like he’s being taken over by the will of the 14th Noah, choosing to yell at him and insult him to snap him back to normal instead; however, he very nearly stabs Allen through the throat as he does this, Mugen’s blade embedding itself deeply in the stone wall behind Allen, mere inches to the side of his neck, indicating that perhaps it was a more difficult decision than it seemed. Still, this seems important to note, since it reveals a significant change in Kanda. Previously, Kanda was the perpetually negative veteran soldier who carried out orders and did whatever was necessary to bring things closer to ending the war and defeating the Earl and the Noah, regardless of what that was; here, he doesn’t take the easiest route and simply kill Allen--someone who will, according to everything they’ve learned, eventually be overtaken by the memories of the 14th Noah, and will turn on the Order. It’s a small change, but for someone as resolute and immovable as Kanda has been up until this point, even a small change is glaringly obvious. (And while there’s always the ‘Kanda just wants to keep Allen around because he’s useful’ argument, at this point the possible danger Allen presents outweighs his usefulness; emotional attachment-friendship, grudging though it still is-is really the only reason that fits.)
The actual war with the Earl seems to have intensified after this, and the Exorcists are specifically pinpointed for attack by the Noah while out on missions; Kanda is of particular interest to them, and the Noah capture him alive, transporting him to the North American Headquarters of the Black Order, which they and their Akuma have all but demolished. Here, it is revealed that the Order has been doing experiments on someone named Alma Karma, another Second Exorcist like Kanda, who lies in stasis beneath a glass floor, surrounded by lotus blossoms...
Allen arrives to try to save the day, but instead ends up getting caught with one of the Noah’s special abilities and sucked into Kanda’s memories, which the Noah are using to try to awaken Alma.
…And then we hit a metric ass-ton of Kanda Backstory. The rest of what we’ve seen Kanda go through so far pales in comparison to what we learn about his past. It seems Alma and Kanda were both a part of something called the Synthetic Disciple Project, which the Order (or the Vatican, rather) forced onto the Chang and Epstein families, the ultimate goal of which was to create something called ‘Second Exorcists’. This project entailed taking the brains from deceased Exorcists and transplanting them in new (artificially engineered and thus considerably stronger) bodies, in the hopes that the Innocence would still recognize the Exorcist and the Order wouldn’t lose said Exorcist’s fighting abilities. Alma was the first to be 'reborn,' and Kanda is the second; they are both biologically nine years old, presumably since children would be easier to restrain while conducting experiments on. Though Kanda is standoffish at first, he and Alma eventually become very close, and despite all the horrible experiments they’re put through, Kanda actually seems a little happy for a time. But when memories from his former life start to plague him, Kanda is written off as another failed experiment and slated to be terminated. Alma learns of this, and manages to help Kanda escape by re-synchronizing with his old Innocence; Kanda is recaptured, and Alma ends up learning the truth about the Second Exorcists’ existence, absolutely snapping and totally slaughtering all the scientists involved. Alma loses it so completely that when Kanda arrives on the scene, Alma attacks him, having decided to kill him, too, wanting them both to die together…but Kanda says he doesn’t want to die, and kills Alma instead (something of an interesting choice, since we saw him spare Allen just a few chapters ago).
Or so he’d thought. Turns out, the Order had put Alma back together and kept him in stasis, and then experimented on him using the technology for creating Akuma they got from the Ark, creating something called ‘Third Exorcists’, who are part-Akuma. Allen decides that he's had enough of seeing Kanda's past and breaks out of the Noah's special ability, yelling at Kanda for letting the Noah get inside his head and not getting angry about it like he should, and then punching Kanda in the face with his Innocence. Although this does succeed in snapping Kanda back to reality, unfortunately, it's still too late. The memories the Noah had dragged out of Kanda are enough to awaken Alma, and because of all that experimentation that's been done on him, he promptly turns into an Akuma…and once again, he’s determined to kill Kanda, who he felt betrayed him by choosing to live without him instead of dying together with him. On seeing that Alma is still alive and still out for his blood, Kanda kicks into a murderous rage, activating his Innocence and growing more and more angry and using more and more power as they fight, neither holding back in the least, both equally determined to destroy each other. Allen tries to get between them, wanting them to reconcile rather than fight, but the saying ‘blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall take flak from both sides’ is proved very true as they both tear into him whenever he tries to stop one from injuring the other. At one point during all this, Kanda verbally rips into Allen, saying that it’s his fault that Alma’s like this, isn’t it, since he’s a Noah, too; he blames everything that’s happened, everything he had to do to Alma, on the Noah, thinking ‘If only you didn’t exist!’ Allen rips into Kanda right back, saying that destroying Alma isn’t going to solve anything; as he says this, Kanda stabs Allen, who laughs even as he coughs up blood, telling Kanda to look at Alma’s face, because he doesn’t understand--he has no idea why Alma’s making that face. Somehow this is finally enough to break through to Kanda, who stares in shock as Allen collapses to the ground, his body changing to look like one of the Noah…and leaving Kanda standing face to face with an openly crying but still-tensed-for-battle Alma.
What point in time are you taking your character from when he/she appears at Landel's and why?:
I'll be taking Kanda from chapter 187--right after he's been kidnapped by the Noah, but before he learns that Alma didn't really die after all and fights him again. It'll provide a semi-smooth segue, and it's as up-to-date with canon as I feel comfortable taking him from, since the manga is in the middle of this "MYSTERY OF KANDA" arc and there will doubtless be some sort of character development for Kanda due to…having his past literally thrown in his face for EVERYONE (particularly Allen, who will presumably have SOMETHING Very Important And Life-Changing to say about it all, since...he ALWAYS does...though maybe that punch in the face and the SNAP OUT OF IT WTFH HAPPENED TO YOUR QUICK TEMPER counts...sorta...) to see.
Please give us a detailed description of your character's personality:
Kanda is a huge jerk. No, really. He’s standoffish, stoic, and generally grumpy, his emotions tending to range from apathetic (at best) to angry (at…sorta worst). He has a hair-trigger temper that he typically does little to control, and the only times we’ve ever really seen him smile (save a few moments in flashbacks to his childhood)…have been in battle, and that’s not a smile anyone would be particularly glad to see. While he doesn’t go out of his way to be rude to people, and is shown to be fairly well-mannered towards random NPC civilians in several instances, if someone is getting on his nerves or in the way of his mission, he’s more than willing to let them have it, verbally or otherwise. He’s also pretty arrogant, both of his marital arts skills and his status as an Exorcist, and seems utterly unrepentant about looking down on people he sees as less important than himself, going so far as to call some of the Order’s support staff cannon fodder right to their faces.
And yet for all his claims not to care about people, saying that that Exorcists are destroyers not saviours, and telling others that he won’t step in to save them…he does. Time and again, when it really matters, Kanda steps in to protect people--though of course, he still denies it afterward, making up an obvious excuse like I was only doing my job or I just happened to be nearby, or on occasion using it as justification to chew out whoever he’s saved. And for all his gruffness and blunt way of dealing with both people and situations, he does tend to be at least somewhat perceptive of others’ feelings and/or internal motivations; more than once, we see him lash out at people to get through to them or to make them do something that is in their best interest (like when he attacks the group when they’re all in the Ark, making them angry enough that they’re willing to leave him behind to fight Skin Boric alone, while they move on and get closer to escaping; when they finally leave in a huff, he gives what looks suspiciously like a small but visible sigh of relief). …But then again, knowing how people feel, and caring how people are two very different things…
So while people honestly do annoy him 97% percent of the time, there’s still that 3%...where he’s indifferent or at least not THAT annoyed by them, and maybe sort of really does honestly care for and appreciate them deep down, even if he won’t admit as much.
In all honesty, Kanda’s behaviour can’t simply be blamed on a crappy childhood and his past as a human test subject--he’s shown to be ill-tempered and unfriendly even as a kid, and nothing much has really changed since then. Nonetheless, you can’t really just write him off as a jerk and be done with it, because he does have brief (VERY brief) moments of almost-softness and the occasional surprising amount of consideration.
These semi-soft moments are most often seen in his dealings with fellow Exorcist Lenalee Lee. She was also put through some nasty experiments as a child, and whenever the man in charge of those experiments comes to visit their Headquarters, she “always seem[s] to run over to [his] place”, meaning she sort of hides behind Kanda, knowing that he won’t simply stand by and let them do whatever they want to her when he’s around. In the instance of this that we’re shown, Kanda goes even so far as to compliment and encourage her (albeit rather tersely), telling her that he thinks of her as a strong person, which is more kindness than we’ve seen him show anyone else...but it is kindness, rough around the edges though it is.
We also get to see a few softer moments in a flashback to Kanda’s childhood, when he thinks of his best friend Alma, though said flashback ends rather badly, as Kanda is forced to kill the crazed Alma in order to save his own life, something he obviously still carries some serious guilt (and anger) over, judging by his reaction on first hearing Alma’s name. Much as he tries to focus on the present, the past still haunts him, and in more ways than one: memories of Alma and memories of Kanda’s own previous life where a woman promised to wait for him forever are bound tightly together, and the illusion of lotus blossoms that reminds him of both has only grown stronger over the past nine years. These memories and the fact that the emotions attached to them are still so strong (his thoughts describe it as a “feeling of longing”) that they cause him a great deal of emotional pain, which he counteracts with meditation, physical training, and simple denial coupled with sheer force of will; he has no patience for other peoples’ touchy-feely thoughts and feelings because he has no patience for his own. (…And in Chapter 197, Allen accuses Kanda of being “afraid” to face his past and that inner pain…but that’s neither here nor there, really, as Kanda’s answer was more along the lines of YOU DON’T KNOW ME STFU…and while he didn’t deny it and that sort of vehement reaction often indicates a bull’s-eye on particularly sensitive topics…y’all want insight and analysis here, not speculation.)
Regardless of his personal issues and his past, outwardly Kanda really seems to have things together, and is intensely dedicated to “doing his job”--fighting and defeating Akuma. He doesn’t seem to be particularly loyal to the Order, though, saying that he doesn’t really care what happens to it; his motivations are far more personal. He wants to put an end to the war--to destroy the Earl, the Noah, and the Akuma for causing him (and Alma, and countless others) to have to go through so much pain--and he's determined not to die until he finds “that person”-the woman from his memories of his previous life.
Allen Walker (DGM’s lovely Big Damn Hero protag) is the person who tends to annoy Kanda most of all--very possibly because he sees Allen as what he could have been, or perhaps what a part of him wishes he could be--and I bring Allen up in this section because he’s something of a foil to Kanda. Allen is always determined to save everyone, to do what he feels is The Right Thing, even if it makes extra trouble for him and things get more difficult than they have to be because of it; Kanda, in contrast, does things cleanly and efficiently, Point A to Point B, mission completed, The End. Despite this noteworthy difference in attitude and the way they do things, Noise Marie (a secondary-ish character who is about the closest thing to an ‘old friend’ that Kanda has in the Order) tells Allen that Kanda and Allen are in fact a lot alike, saying that “the darkness surrounding each of [them] is so deep, [he] can’t see how to pull [them] out of it.” Allen seems baffled, and comically super-offended by this comparison (“YOU’VE GOT TO BE KIDDING! DON’T PUT ME TOGETHER WITH A TOTAL IDIOT LIKE HIM!”), but in actuality, Marie is right: each cared about someone dearly when he was young, and then lost that person by his own hand, an act that shaped how they saw the world and what path they chose to take through life. After roughly nine years of constantly fighting Akuma, Kanda is simply a lot more worn down and less naïve than Allen, and has learned to accept that what is necessary is sometimes neither pretty nor pleasant. (For example, when he and Allen are sent on their first mission together, Kanda wants to take the Innocence out of the “living doll” that they find it in right away, so that they can protect it more easily and simply run back to Headquarters instead of staying to fight the Akuma who are also trying to obtain the Innocence; he even apologises to the doll and its human companion, but states that they really have no choice, later saying that “[t]here are sacrifices that must be made.”)
And yet, when Allen is willing to sacrifice himself for the admittedly rather whimsical wish of “some pitiful strangers,” Kanda gets angry and punches him in the face, shouting, “Isn’t anything important to you?”-proof that he does, in fact, care about what happens to Allen…or at least that he hates to see a fellow Exorcist just throw away his life when there’s a war on. But the former seems to be more likely, since at the end of Chapter 182, we see evidence of this concern again, stronger than ever despite what the Order has learned about Allen’s relationship with the Noah. Allen stabs himself along with a Level 4 Akuma with his Sword of Exorcism and is wounded horribly because of it, and starts to “lose himself” somewhat; almost INSTANTLY, Kanda is there and up in his face, impaling the not-quite-dead-yet Level 4 with Mugen and very literally yelling in Allen’s face for doing something so stupid and dangerous, which is enough to snap Allen back to normal. The fact that Kanda didn’t simply kill Allen, as the Exorcists had been told they were supposed to if it looked like the 14th Noah was going to take over Allen’s body for good, is proof that Allen’s way of thinking is rubbing off on those around him a little bit, and that even someone like Kanda is not immune.
As an ending side-note, I think it’s somewhat important to acknowledge the possibility that Kanda’s arrogance could very well be a front that he puts up, and that he might actually loathe himself somewhat and consider himself “less than human”; however, if this is the case, we’ve yet to see much (if any) real evidence of that in canon. That sort of viewpoint does seem to be a fairly common one in characters of this type, but so far, Kanda’s seemed to play it fairly straight; he is what he is, and he’ll take advantage of what he is to do whatever he has to do to get where he wants to go, and that’s the end of it. He’s much more a man of actions than words, though words certainly do have their place.
Please give us a physical description of your character:
Height: 5'9 (177 cm)
Weight: 130 lbs. (59 kg)
Blood Type: AB
Ethnicity: Japanese
Kanda has dark eyes and long, black hair with a straight-cut fringe; he generally keeps it tied back in a single high ponytail and it ends up coming out of said ponytail in just about every battle, too, lmao. The mangaka says on his info page that "it's hard to draw good-looking people," and a few characters in his canon do goggle over him a bit, so it's safe to say he's pretty handsome. His most common facial expressions are impassive, annoyed, angry, and suspicious, though sometimes surprise or confusion sneak in there too. His body is slim but muscular, and he has a tattoo on the left side of his chest that spreads as the intensity of the abilities he's using rises. Other than that tattoo, there are no visible signs of the fact that he isn't a normal human.
He will not be changing his appearance in any way while at Landel's. And there will be hell to pay if anything happens to his hair.
Name/Handle: Alory, or Al.
Age: 25.
Gender: Female.
Timezone: EST.
Personal LJ: alory_shannon.
E-Mail: frecklefacefangirl [at] gmail [dot] com.
AIM/other: AIM: captmoralfag (I don't sign on to AIM very regularly these days, but I am more than willing to 'put in an appearance' if/when it's requested of me.)
Series: D.Gray-Man.
Series' Medium: Manga first, then anime. There are also some light novels that haven’t been translated into English. I will be taking Kanda from the manga version of the series.
Character: Kanda Yuu. (…Technically "Yū," but that’s just being nitpicky, and it's a pain in the ass for EVERYONE INVOLVED to have to dig a symbol like that out of Word all the time, so "Yuu" it is.)
Age: Biologically 19 in current canon; 19 at Landel's as well.
Sex/Gender: As D.Gray-Man's mangaka Hoshino Katsura says in a side-note, "Very obviously a man."
Canon Role: Kanda is one of the protagonists…though with his attitude, he's admittedly more anti-hero than hero (which is especially obvious when compared to the main character’s extreme idealism and Hero Complex). In TV Tropes terms, Kanda is best classified as The Lancer, as well as a Knight In Sour Armour. ...And also a Jerkass.
"Real" Name: Katou Kiyomasa.
Please give us a personal history of your character's life and explain to us in detail how they grow and develop over the course of their canon:
…Wiki has a decent basic summary of the series here, but here it goes anyway.
The world of D.Gray-Man is one very like our own in many ways, albeit with some significant changes to their history; the current storyline is set at the end of that world’s nineteenth century. It is a time of darkness and war, with someone named the Millennium Earl creating monster-like weapons called Akuma from an unholy union of machines and human souls, with the intent of destroying humanity. Fighting at his side are a group of humans with special powers who call themselves the Noah. Opposing them is the Black Order, a branch of the Church, which searches for and uses a 'divine substance' called Innocence to fight the Akuma. Those few specifically chosen by the Innocence are called Exorcists, and can use the Innocence as a weapon to destroy the Akuma and free the imprisoned and enslaved souls trapped inside. There are 109 pieces of Innocence, which were scattered throughout the world by the Great Flood long ago; one piece, referred to as the ‘Heart’ will ensure the Order’s victory should they find and use it properly, though if it is destroyed, all the Innocence will be destroyed along with it. Thus it’s something of a race in the middle of a war, with the Earl trying to destroy the Innocence and the ‘Heart’ while the Order rushes to gather and protect it.
Now, on to Kanda and his role in all this.
The first time we see Kanda is in chapter five. In it, he and the main character Allen Walker start things off on the wrong foot, and just sort of…head off down the road without ever really getting onto the right one. While trying to visit/join up with the Black Order’s European Headquarters, Allen fails the robotic gatekeeper’s examination; as a result, Kanda, an experienced Exorcist, attacks him with Mugen, Kanda's Innocence (which takes the form of a sword) and ends up holding him at sword point. Another Exorcist, a girl named Lenalee Lee, shows up to break up their not-quite-fight, telling them that it’s all a misunderstanding (and establishing herself as one of the few people Kanda will take crap from-she smacks him over the head with a clipboard, and he just takes it without a word); Allen is admitted into the Order, though Kanda still dislikes him, a feeling that is mutual.
Rather predictably, Allen and Kanda end up being paired together for the next mission, and though at first there’s considerable friction between them, by the end…there’s still almost the same amount of friction, actually, but they’ve gotten more used to each other, even if they still don’t particularly like the other’s ways of doing things. In this arc, Kanda is established as a strong, albeit cynical, veteran soldier, a contrast to Allen’s openhearted innocence and inexperience in combat. At this point, it’s easy to take Kanda at face value, and assume that he’s just an arrogant jerkass for no real reason; he appears confident and utterly competent, settled in his ways and the ways of the Order. If there’s something deeper, it’s hidden beneath layers of icy disregard and seeming apathy, and the only hint that there’s something more to him is his adamant refusal to die until he finds an unknown someone he simply refers to as “that person”.
So Allen and Kanda take each others’ measure, neither particularly likes what they find, but though the tension and mutual standoffishness remains, they seem to have come away with…not quite respect, but maybe at least some regard for the other Exorcist’s abilities.
Then the series focuses on Allen and certain other characters, and Kanda all but vanishes. For a pretty considerable amount of time. Apparently he’s off in, like…Spain or somewhere, where he and his Exorcist team are guarding one of the Generals, one Froi Tiedoll. We get a few scenes and some chapter-page-art with him on-location there once or twice, but other than that, he is pretty well MIA for about fifty chapters.
He finally shows up again once the main party reaches Edo and the crap starts hitting the fan--Kanda’s team arrives out of nowhere and helps the main party fight the Earl and his Akuma army. Shortly after the battle (which isn’t a total loss, but isn’t quite a victory either), a small group of Exorcists, including Kanda, are pulled into something called “the Ark”, which is a complicated (and HUGE) technological device of sorts the Earl and the Noah created which allows instantaneous travel to locations all over the world; inside, it looks rather like a city, and all the doors in it open to places around the globe. Kanda, Allen, Lenalee, and three others end up trapped inside, and have to fight their way out, each fighting a Noah for one of the keys they need to open the doors that will let them escape. Kanda insists on taking the first Noah they encounter, a hulking monster named Skin Boric, and also insists on fighting alone, saying that this is his battle, since this Noah had been hounding his team for quite a while. When the others start to protest, saying what the heck, of course they’ll fight together!, Kanda grimly tells them to get going or he’ll kill them, and proceeds to attack them; they find this extremely insulting, getting comically huffy over it, and are angry enough at his 'bad attitude' that they willingly leave him behind. …Except for Lenalee, who seems to see through what is pretty clearly at least something of an act, since Kanda didn’t seriously injure any of them when he ‘attacked’ them. Kanda knows they only have a couple hours to escape from the Ark before it collapses in on itself (the Earl is making a new Ark, and is ‘downloading the information’ from the current one, which causes the ‘downloaded’ parts of the current one to vanish), so Kanda’s pushing the group ahead while he holds off the Noah, willing to sacrifice himself if it means the others can stop the Earl’s plan and keep the Ark from crumbling completely. Lenalee calls back to him, and yells at him until Kanda promises her that he’ll catch up with them once he’s finished killing Skin.
The fight with Skin takes somewhat longer than Kanda had expected, and Mugen is shattered during it, but Kanda still manages to kill the Noah (the first and only time we’ve seen any character pull off that particular feat so far); however, the battle pushes Kanda to his limits, and afterward, he collapses from exhaustion as the section of the Ark he’s in falls to pieces, leaving him unable to keep his promise to Lenalee.
Almost. In the end, Allen is found to have some sort of important tie to the 14th Noah, who had taken control of the Ark many years ago before his death, preventing the Earl from making proper use of it; due to this, Allen is able to restore all the Ark to its original state, restoring the people who had been lost in its collapse as well, Kanda among them. Kanda seems surprised to still be alive, and perhaps a little confused as well, but otherwise unruffled. Whether this indicates that he’d had faith in the others’ abilities, or that he was simply willing to die in the line of duty isn’t entirely certain as we aren't privy to his thoughts on the matter; it’s probably some of both.
In the aftermath of this, the Black Order now has the Ark, and thus the ability to travel between places a lot more quickly…as well as a VERY important piece of technology required for creating Akuma, which was also contained within the Ark. Another Noah, a shape-shifter named Lulubell, attacks the Order’s European HQ with another army of Akuma, intent on taking back this vital piece of technology; although Mugen is still in pieces and therefore completely unusable, Kanda still fights the Akuma anyway, focusing on defending their Branch’s Head, Komui Lee (Lenalee’s older brother). Kanda does this without really complaining and without the slightest hint of having any second thoughts, though the battle is obviously rather hard on him without Mugen. He simply takes it in stride and does what he can anyway, regardless of the numerous disadvantages stacked against them.
All the main protagonists come out of the attack all right, though the Headquarters are in shambles, necessitating a move (to London). During this time, the rest of the Order learns of Allen’s ties to the 14th Noah, who had chosen Allen as his successor (which basically equates to 'new host body'), and most do not react particularly well. Kanda seems to be among these: at first he seems even colder towards Allen--Allen even goes so far to take specific notice of it. But as usual, Kanda doesn’t let his personal feelings get in the way of doing his duty, since he and Allen seem to end up working together fairly often, and fairly well, since they don’t die in the process. This coldness doesn’t seem to be pervasive, however, since Kanda displays some very real anger and concern when Allen nearly kills himself in a particularly difficult fight with some Akuma. He even goes against their orders, which are to kill Allen if it looks like he’s being taken over by the will of the 14th Noah, choosing to yell at him and insult him to snap him back to normal instead; however, he very nearly stabs Allen through the throat as he does this, Mugen’s blade embedding itself deeply in the stone wall behind Allen, mere inches to the side of his neck, indicating that perhaps it was a more difficult decision than it seemed. Still, this seems important to note, since it reveals a significant change in Kanda. Previously, Kanda was the perpetually negative veteran soldier who carried out orders and did whatever was necessary to bring things closer to ending the war and defeating the Earl and the Noah, regardless of what that was; here, he doesn’t take the easiest route and simply kill Allen--someone who will, according to everything they’ve learned, eventually be overtaken by the memories of the 14th Noah, and will turn on the Order. It’s a small change, but for someone as resolute and immovable as Kanda has been up until this point, even a small change is glaringly obvious. (And while there’s always the ‘Kanda just wants to keep Allen around because he’s useful’ argument, at this point the possible danger Allen presents outweighs his usefulness; emotional attachment-friendship, grudging though it still is-is really the only reason that fits.)
The actual war with the Earl seems to have intensified after this, and the Exorcists are specifically pinpointed for attack by the Noah while out on missions; Kanda is of particular interest to them, and the Noah capture him alive, transporting him to the North American Headquarters of the Black Order, which they and their Akuma have all but demolished. Here, it is revealed that the Order has been doing experiments on someone named Alma Karma, another Second Exorcist like Kanda, who lies in stasis beneath a glass floor, surrounded by lotus blossoms...
Allen arrives to try to save the day, but instead ends up getting caught with one of the Noah’s special abilities and sucked into Kanda’s memories, which the Noah are using to try to awaken Alma.
…And then we hit a metric ass-ton of Kanda Backstory. The rest of what we’ve seen Kanda go through so far pales in comparison to what we learn about his past. It seems Alma and Kanda were both a part of something called the Synthetic Disciple Project, which the Order (or the Vatican, rather) forced onto the Chang and Epstein families, the ultimate goal of which was to create something called ‘Second Exorcists’. This project entailed taking the brains from deceased Exorcists and transplanting them in new (artificially engineered and thus considerably stronger) bodies, in the hopes that the Innocence would still recognize the Exorcist and the Order wouldn’t lose said Exorcist’s fighting abilities. Alma was the first to be 'reborn,' and Kanda is the second; they are both biologically nine years old, presumably since children would be easier to restrain while conducting experiments on. Though Kanda is standoffish at first, he and Alma eventually become very close, and despite all the horrible experiments they’re put through, Kanda actually seems a little happy for a time. But when memories from his former life start to plague him, Kanda is written off as another failed experiment and slated to be terminated. Alma learns of this, and manages to help Kanda escape by re-synchronizing with his old Innocence; Kanda is recaptured, and Alma ends up learning the truth about the Second Exorcists’ existence, absolutely snapping and totally slaughtering all the scientists involved. Alma loses it so completely that when Kanda arrives on the scene, Alma attacks him, having decided to kill him, too, wanting them both to die together…but Kanda says he doesn’t want to die, and kills Alma instead (something of an interesting choice, since we saw him spare Allen just a few chapters ago).
Or so he’d thought. Turns out, the Order had put Alma back together and kept him in stasis, and then experimented on him using the technology for creating Akuma they got from the Ark, creating something called ‘Third Exorcists’, who are part-Akuma. Allen decides that he's had enough of seeing Kanda's past and breaks out of the Noah's special ability, yelling at Kanda for letting the Noah get inside his head and not getting angry about it like he should, and then punching Kanda in the face with his Innocence. Although this does succeed in snapping Kanda back to reality, unfortunately, it's still too late. The memories the Noah had dragged out of Kanda are enough to awaken Alma, and because of all that experimentation that's been done on him, he promptly turns into an Akuma…and once again, he’s determined to kill Kanda, who he felt betrayed him by choosing to live without him instead of dying together with him. On seeing that Alma is still alive and still out for his blood, Kanda kicks into a murderous rage, activating his Innocence and growing more and more angry and using more and more power as they fight, neither holding back in the least, both equally determined to destroy each other. Allen tries to get between them, wanting them to reconcile rather than fight, but the saying ‘blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall take flak from both sides’ is proved very true as they both tear into him whenever he tries to stop one from injuring the other. At one point during all this, Kanda verbally rips into Allen, saying that it’s his fault that Alma’s like this, isn’t it, since he’s a Noah, too; he blames everything that’s happened, everything he had to do to Alma, on the Noah, thinking ‘If only you didn’t exist!’ Allen rips into Kanda right back, saying that destroying Alma isn’t going to solve anything; as he says this, Kanda stabs Allen, who laughs even as he coughs up blood, telling Kanda to look at Alma’s face, because he doesn’t understand--he has no idea why Alma’s making that face. Somehow this is finally enough to break through to Kanda, who stares in shock as Allen collapses to the ground, his body changing to look like one of the Noah…and leaving Kanda standing face to face with an openly crying but still-tensed-for-battle Alma.
What point in time are you taking your character from when he/she appears at Landel's and why?:
I'll be taking Kanda from chapter 187--right after he's been kidnapped by the Noah, but before he learns that Alma didn't really die after all and fights him again. It'll provide a semi-smooth segue, and it's as up-to-date with canon as I feel comfortable taking him from, since the manga is in the middle of this "MYSTERY OF KANDA" arc and there will doubtless be some sort of character development for Kanda due to…having his past literally thrown in his face for EVERYONE (particularly Allen, who will presumably have SOMETHING Very Important And Life-Changing to say about it all, since...he ALWAYS does...though maybe that punch in the face and the SNAP OUT OF IT WTFH HAPPENED TO YOUR QUICK TEMPER counts...sorta...) to see.
Please give us a detailed description of your character's personality:
Kanda is a huge jerk. No, really. He’s standoffish, stoic, and generally grumpy, his emotions tending to range from apathetic (at best) to angry (at…sorta worst). He has a hair-trigger temper that he typically does little to control, and the only times we’ve ever really seen him smile (save a few moments in flashbacks to his childhood)…have been in battle, and that’s not a smile anyone would be particularly glad to see. While he doesn’t go out of his way to be rude to people, and is shown to be fairly well-mannered towards random NPC civilians in several instances, if someone is getting on his nerves or in the way of his mission, he’s more than willing to let them have it, verbally or otherwise. He’s also pretty arrogant, both of his marital arts skills and his status as an Exorcist, and seems utterly unrepentant about looking down on people he sees as less important than himself, going so far as to call some of the Order’s support staff cannon fodder right to their faces.
And yet for all his claims not to care about people, saying that that Exorcists are destroyers not saviours, and telling others that he won’t step in to save them…he does. Time and again, when it really matters, Kanda steps in to protect people--though of course, he still denies it afterward, making up an obvious excuse like I was only doing my job or I just happened to be nearby, or on occasion using it as justification to chew out whoever he’s saved. And for all his gruffness and blunt way of dealing with both people and situations, he does tend to be at least somewhat perceptive of others’ feelings and/or internal motivations; more than once, we see him lash out at people to get through to them or to make them do something that is in their best interest (like when he attacks the group when they’re all in the Ark, making them angry enough that they’re willing to leave him behind to fight Skin Boric alone, while they move on and get closer to escaping; when they finally leave in a huff, he gives what looks suspiciously like a small but visible sigh of relief). …But then again, knowing how people feel, and caring how people are two very different things…
So while people honestly do annoy him 97% percent of the time, there’s still that 3%...where he’s indifferent or at least not THAT annoyed by them, and maybe sort of really does honestly care for and appreciate them deep down, even if he won’t admit as much.
In all honesty, Kanda’s behaviour can’t simply be blamed on a crappy childhood and his past as a human test subject--he’s shown to be ill-tempered and unfriendly even as a kid, and nothing much has really changed since then. Nonetheless, you can’t really just write him off as a jerk and be done with it, because he does have brief (VERY brief) moments of almost-softness and the occasional surprising amount of consideration.
These semi-soft moments are most often seen in his dealings with fellow Exorcist Lenalee Lee. She was also put through some nasty experiments as a child, and whenever the man in charge of those experiments comes to visit their Headquarters, she “always seem[s] to run over to [his] place”, meaning she sort of hides behind Kanda, knowing that he won’t simply stand by and let them do whatever they want to her when he’s around. In the instance of this that we’re shown, Kanda goes even so far as to compliment and encourage her (albeit rather tersely), telling her that he thinks of her as a strong person, which is more kindness than we’ve seen him show anyone else...but it is kindness, rough around the edges though it is.
We also get to see a few softer moments in a flashback to Kanda’s childhood, when he thinks of his best friend Alma, though said flashback ends rather badly, as Kanda is forced to kill the crazed Alma in order to save his own life, something he obviously still carries some serious guilt (and anger) over, judging by his reaction on first hearing Alma’s name. Much as he tries to focus on the present, the past still haunts him, and in more ways than one: memories of Alma and memories of Kanda’s own previous life where a woman promised to wait for him forever are bound tightly together, and the illusion of lotus blossoms that reminds him of both has only grown stronger over the past nine years. These memories and the fact that the emotions attached to them are still so strong (his thoughts describe it as a “feeling of longing”) that they cause him a great deal of emotional pain, which he counteracts with meditation, physical training, and simple denial coupled with sheer force of will; he has no patience for other peoples’ touchy-feely thoughts and feelings because he has no patience for his own. (…And in Chapter 197, Allen accuses Kanda of being “afraid” to face his past and that inner pain…but that’s neither here nor there, really, as Kanda’s answer was more along the lines of YOU DON’T KNOW ME STFU…and while he didn’t deny it and that sort of vehement reaction often indicates a bull’s-eye on particularly sensitive topics…y’all want insight and analysis here, not speculation.)
Regardless of his personal issues and his past, outwardly Kanda really seems to have things together, and is intensely dedicated to “doing his job”--fighting and defeating Akuma. He doesn’t seem to be particularly loyal to the Order, though, saying that he doesn’t really care what happens to it; his motivations are far more personal. He wants to put an end to the war--to destroy the Earl, the Noah, and the Akuma for causing him (and Alma, and countless others) to have to go through so much pain--and he's determined not to die until he finds “that person”-the woman from his memories of his previous life.
Allen Walker (DGM’s lovely Big Damn Hero protag) is the person who tends to annoy Kanda most of all--very possibly because he sees Allen as what he could have been, or perhaps what a part of him wishes he could be--and I bring Allen up in this section because he’s something of a foil to Kanda. Allen is always determined to save everyone, to do what he feels is The Right Thing, even if it makes extra trouble for him and things get more difficult than they have to be because of it; Kanda, in contrast, does things cleanly and efficiently, Point A to Point B, mission completed, The End. Despite this noteworthy difference in attitude and the way they do things, Noise Marie (a secondary-ish character who is about the closest thing to an ‘old friend’ that Kanda has in the Order) tells Allen that Kanda and Allen are in fact a lot alike, saying that “the darkness surrounding each of [them] is so deep, [he] can’t see how to pull [them] out of it.” Allen seems baffled, and comically super-offended by this comparison (“YOU’VE GOT TO BE KIDDING! DON’T PUT ME TOGETHER WITH A TOTAL IDIOT LIKE HIM!”), but in actuality, Marie is right: each cared about someone dearly when he was young, and then lost that person by his own hand, an act that shaped how they saw the world and what path they chose to take through life. After roughly nine years of constantly fighting Akuma, Kanda is simply a lot more worn down and less naïve than Allen, and has learned to accept that what is necessary is sometimes neither pretty nor pleasant. (For example, when he and Allen are sent on their first mission together, Kanda wants to take the Innocence out of the “living doll” that they find it in right away, so that they can protect it more easily and simply run back to Headquarters instead of staying to fight the Akuma who are also trying to obtain the Innocence; he even apologises to the doll and its human companion, but states that they really have no choice, later saying that “[t]here are sacrifices that must be made.”)
And yet, when Allen is willing to sacrifice himself for the admittedly rather whimsical wish of “some pitiful strangers,” Kanda gets angry and punches him in the face, shouting, “Isn’t anything important to you?”-proof that he does, in fact, care about what happens to Allen…or at least that he hates to see a fellow Exorcist just throw away his life when there’s a war on. But the former seems to be more likely, since at the end of Chapter 182, we see evidence of this concern again, stronger than ever despite what the Order has learned about Allen’s relationship with the Noah. Allen stabs himself along with a Level 4 Akuma with his Sword of Exorcism and is wounded horribly because of it, and starts to “lose himself” somewhat; almost INSTANTLY, Kanda is there and up in his face, impaling the not-quite-dead-yet Level 4 with Mugen and very literally yelling in Allen’s face for doing something so stupid and dangerous, which is enough to snap Allen back to normal. The fact that Kanda didn’t simply kill Allen, as the Exorcists had been told they were supposed to if it looked like the 14th Noah was going to take over Allen’s body for good, is proof that Allen’s way of thinking is rubbing off on those around him a little bit, and that even someone like Kanda is not immune.
As an ending side-note, I think it’s somewhat important to acknowledge the possibility that Kanda’s arrogance could very well be a front that he puts up, and that he might actually loathe himself somewhat and consider himself “less than human”; however, if this is the case, we’ve yet to see much (if any) real evidence of that in canon. That sort of viewpoint does seem to be a fairly common one in characters of this type, but so far, Kanda’s seemed to play it fairly straight; he is what he is, and he’ll take advantage of what he is to do whatever he has to do to get where he wants to go, and that’s the end of it. He’s much more a man of actions than words, though words certainly do have their place.
Please give us a physical description of your character:
Height: 5'9 (177 cm)
Weight: 130 lbs. (59 kg)
Blood Type: AB
Ethnicity: Japanese
Kanda has dark eyes and long, black hair with a straight-cut fringe; he generally keeps it tied back in a single high ponytail and it ends up coming out of said ponytail in just about every battle, too, lmao. The mangaka says on his info page that "it's hard to draw good-looking people," and a few characters in his canon do goggle over him a bit, so it's safe to say he's pretty handsome. His most common facial expressions are impassive, annoyed, angry, and suspicious, though sometimes surprise or confusion sneak in there too. His body is slim but muscular, and he has a tattoo on the left side of his chest that spreads as the intensity of the abilities he's using rises. Other than that tattoo, there are no visible signs of the fact that he isn't a normal human.
He will not be changing his appearance in any way while at Landel's. And there will be hell to pay if anything happens to his hair.