an incomplete canon history
Twenty years prior to the beginning of the series, a group of young children are living in the Amamiya Medical Center. This group consists of Amamiya Kazuhiko, Kobuto Takeru, Koboyashi Yosuke, Murata Kiyoshi, and Kotone Sakurai, with the nurse Amamiya Minako, Kazuhiko's older sister, helping to oversee their care. The two known doctors in the facility are Dr. Amamiya, presumably Kazuhiko and Minako's father, and Dr. Nishizono. The pair are involved in Gakuso's 'Lucy Monostone' project, with the Medical Center and the children there as a focal point for steps in experimentation.
Gakuso is an international company with their fingers in medical and political endeavors. On the outside, one of their main projects is human cloning, in order to provide world figureheads with ideal spare parts and, in the worst case scenario, perfect replacements to assume their identity entirely. These clones are known as "spares". They have a sub-project within Japan that would allow Japanese governmental leaders to influence the actions of its population. Mainly, it would be in the direction of violence, so that those people would subsequently be locked away or put to death, removing them and their political or social threat at the leader's discretion. Though, of course, this is a front project.
The origins of the project date back to after the second World War, when America meant to occupy the defeated Japanese nation. America entrusted Gakuso with the handling of this two-part project. The first was to create and populate Japan with receptacles for artificial personalities that would, when activated, enthusiastically conform to the nation's leader's views. The second was to create the leader themselves. With the intent of being able to easily control Japan despite the state of the world, America refused to let Japan have part in creating this ideal leader. However, without the proper technology to put the plan into action, Gakuso was forced to postpone until enough advancement had been made. A compromise was made to keep the project from idling out completely in the way of utilizing Japan's Emperor as a stand-in for the leader-to-be despite his lack of a certain charisma that they sought. Finally, the project resurfaced with a new name, the "Lucy Monostone" project.
Lucy Monostone (as far as we know) was an American counter-culture musician from the 1960s and 70s, a cultural terrorist, cult leader, and serial killer when not in the spotlight. With his music and voice, he could influence the minds and feelings of people, effectively brainwashing or hypnotizing them. He died in a mass suicide with his cult after shooting himself in the head. Gakuso found the charisma that they wanted in this man, but without him living, so began the arduous journey to recreate that trait. That charisma would then be the basis of a programmed personality and from there, a piece of their perfect world leader.
The Amamiya Medical Center was one of the facilities involved in not only perfecting the personality overwriting program for the general public, but also for the trial runs of the charisma program itself. The children were a very small part of a pool of guinea pigs, known as "samples". The program itself takes the form of an altered eyeball, that, when connected to the brain and activated properly, engages a personality overwriting code. This then literally obliterates the naturally occurring personality and implants the formulated one stored in the eye. All of the eyes are barcoded and managed through the national eye bank for both sides of the project, the "spares" and the "samples".
Takeru was the only child that is stated to have one of the barcoded eyes implanted, but it's assumed that they others had them as well. The program implanted is one given the name Amamiya Kazuhiko (assumably named after Dr. Amamiya's son). Kazuhiko was the final product of the medical center's trials on the Lucy Monostone project, and was intended to merge with other parts of another program and serve as the charisma of Gakuso's ideal world leader. An unexpected twist came as the personality overwriting program malfunctioned, creating an artificially induced Dissociative Identity Disorder (or MPD) condition. Instead of the intended personality of Kazuhiko taking over, a new and much more violent one awakened.
It took immediate action by befriending the mentally retarded boy Kiyoshi under the nickname "Shin-chan". With this friendship, he manipulated Kiyoshi into not only allowing him to murder the other children, but also swears to secrecy and act as his scapegoat. With the other children brutally slaughtered, Shin-chan went after the doctors (though Dr. Nishizono is presumably the only one there at the time as he's the one who encounters this new personality). The personality proclaimed its name to be Nishizono Shinji, a name he gave himself using the doctor's surname, and murdered the doctor. Afterward, the entire building was set ablaze. Kiyoshi was allowed to escape and was taken into police custody, later to be tried and convicted for murder and arson though given a lesser sentence due to his lacking mental capacity. Shinji also escaped, but the combination of the already unstable program and the trauma of the vicious acts he committed, a more classic case of Multiple Personalities occurred. This created a personality for each of the people murdered that day including Kiyoshi, with the exception of the doctor. When firefighters rescued Shinji from the flames, he was no longer himself, instead, the personality of Koboyashi Yosuke had taken over. With the rest of the world and Yosuke himself unaware of his condition, he continued life as a normal child.
After an unspecified number of years, Yosuke graduated from the police academy of Tokyo and began work as an officer, later rising in rank to become a detective. During his years of being a police officer, Yosuke lived a double life without ever knowing it. The personality of Nishizono Shinji was still active and purposing his own goals. Those goals being to seek out and destroy as many of Gakuso's samples and spares as possible, keeping them from their final goal. Based on his character, I would assume that this genocide was powered mostly by his own personal hatred of Gakuso. Alongside him in this goal was a man named Ooe Kimihiko, and his sister Celsius, or just C. On the outside, Kimihiko was a young music technician and manager for his sister's singing career. However, underneath that was his relentless endeavors to battle against Gakuso's take over. He would relay targets to Shinji and a younger man named Shimazu Hisashi based on information hacked from Gakuso's computer systems and the national eye bank. There was also a mutual desire for "the end of the world" shared by Shinji and Kimihiko, however the specifics of why and how haven't been explained. Shinji is close to both Kimihiko and C, to the point that C tells her brother that Shinji is her favorite. When not chasing down targets for Kimihiko or unconscious while Yosuke furthered both his police career and his relationship with a woman named Chizuko, Shinji ran an on-the-side, under-the-table investigations group. Run out of a warehouse and kept in careful secrecy, the group consisted of Shinji himself, known as either the Multiple Personality Detective or Mirror Man Shinji, and a man called Bai-san.
Life was relatively normal until the day that Shinji and Kimihiko met to discuss a very peculiar case and the finding of a spare for Shimazu. Since the fire, Shinji's memories had been sealed as to what he really is and what happened to him in the past. Kimihiko offered him a cassette tape that he believed would reawaken those lost memories. Once alone, Shinji listened to it and everything from the past came to the surface. In the days after, after closing that peculiar case and thinking on what had been awoken in him, Shinji bought flowers to give to Kimihiko and C as their birthday present. When he arrived at Kimihiko's apartment, his friend was dead- murdered; C was soon to follow.
After the death of his friends, not much is known on what Shinji did with his life. It is known that another personality, one imprinted from the boy named Murata Kiyoshi, awoke and involved himself in the world of drugs. He befriended a man named Ueno Suguru and helped him escape police drug busts with the information overheard through Yosuke's job. Meanwhile, Yosuke continued down his career trek to earn the title of detective, and kept his long standing relationship with Chizuko. At some point in time, Shinji took in a man named Umemiya Akio and mentored him in the ways of serial murder. Akio became responsible for many grandiose displays of brutality while under Shinji's direction, and was eventually sentenced to 26 death penalties once apprehended. On the other hand, Shinji remained at large while evading the police with Yosuke as a cover. Later, he was responsible for a rash of murders where the body had been dismembered, while Yosuke's work caught the eye of Shimazu's spare through a television interview. In order to draw out Shinji, Shimazu attacked, raped, and dismembered Chizuko, Yosuke's girlfriend, and delivered her barely alive to the police station for him to see. Yosuke became devoted to finding the person who hurt Chizuko, who fell into a coma. The chase ended with Shimazu cornered on the roof of a building, bragging about what he'd done, with Yosuke and other members of the police surrounding him. With no where to go, Shimazu revealed to Yosuke the truth about his condition, about the dismembering murders, and that Chizuko had been killed as well while inside the hospital, that Shinji had taken over and pulled the plug on her life support. The shock broke Yosuke, essentially killing that personality off, and Shinji took control of the situation. In front of dozens of police witnesses, he shot and killed Shimazu without hesitation. Just as quickly as he appeared, he vanished while a new personality became conscious for the first time; that personality was Amamiya Kazuhiko.
[Please bear with me as I attempt to rewrite their character history due to new information and a need for chronology. Note that all names are in Japanese order.]
Gakuso is an international company with their fingers in medical and political endeavors. On the outside, one of their main projects is human cloning, in order to provide world figureheads with ideal spare parts and, in the worst case scenario, perfect replacements to assume their identity entirely. These clones are known as "spares". They have a sub-project within Japan that would allow Japanese governmental leaders to influence the actions of its population. Mainly, it would be in the direction of violence, so that those people would subsequently be locked away or put to death, removing them and their political or social threat at the leader's discretion. Though, of course, this is a front project.
The origins of the project date back to after the second World War, when America meant to occupy the defeated Japanese nation. America entrusted Gakuso with the handling of this two-part project. The first was to create and populate Japan with receptacles for artificial personalities that would, when activated, enthusiastically conform to the nation's leader's views. The second was to create the leader themselves. With the intent of being able to easily control Japan despite the state of the world, America refused to let Japan have part in creating this ideal leader. However, without the proper technology to put the plan into action, Gakuso was forced to postpone until enough advancement had been made. A compromise was made to keep the project from idling out completely in the way of utilizing Japan's Emperor as a stand-in for the leader-to-be despite his lack of a certain charisma that they sought. Finally, the project resurfaced with a new name, the "Lucy Monostone" project.
Lucy Monostone (as far as we know) was an American counter-culture musician from the 1960s and 70s, a cultural terrorist, cult leader, and serial killer when not in the spotlight. With his music and voice, he could influence the minds and feelings of people, effectively brainwashing or hypnotizing them. He died in a mass suicide with his cult after shooting himself in the head. Gakuso found the charisma that they wanted in this man, but without him living, so began the arduous journey to recreate that trait. That charisma would then be the basis of a programmed personality and from there, a piece of their perfect world leader.
The Amamiya Medical Center was one of the facilities involved in not only perfecting the personality overwriting program for the general public, but also for the trial runs of the charisma program itself. The children were a very small part of a pool of guinea pigs, known as "samples". The program itself takes the form of an altered eyeball, that, when connected to the brain and activated properly, engages a personality overwriting code. This then literally obliterates the naturally occurring personality and implants the formulated one stored in the eye. All of the eyes are barcoded and managed through the national eye bank for both sides of the project, the "spares" and the "samples".
Takeru was the only child that is stated to have one of the barcoded eyes implanted, but it's assumed that they others had them as well. The program implanted is one given the name Amamiya Kazuhiko (assumably named after Dr. Amamiya's son). Kazuhiko was the final product of the medical center's trials on the Lucy Monostone project, and was intended to merge with other parts of another program and serve as the charisma of Gakuso's ideal world leader. An unexpected twist came as the personality overwriting program malfunctioned, creating an artificially induced Dissociative Identity Disorder (or MPD) condition. Instead of the intended personality of Kazuhiko taking over, a new and much more violent one awakened.
It took immediate action by befriending the mentally retarded boy Kiyoshi under the nickname "Shin-chan". With this friendship, he manipulated Kiyoshi into not only allowing him to murder the other children, but also swears to secrecy and act as his scapegoat. With the other children brutally slaughtered, Shin-chan went after the doctors (though Dr. Nishizono is presumably the only one there at the time as he's the one who encounters this new personality). The personality proclaimed its name to be Nishizono Shinji, a name he gave himself using the doctor's surname, and murdered the doctor. Afterward, the entire building was set ablaze. Kiyoshi was allowed to escape and was taken into police custody, later to be tried and convicted for murder and arson though given a lesser sentence due to his lacking mental capacity. Shinji also escaped, but the combination of the already unstable program and the trauma of the vicious acts he committed, a more classic case of Multiple Personalities occurred. This created a personality for each of the people murdered that day including Kiyoshi, with the exception of the doctor. When firefighters rescued Shinji from the flames, he was no longer himself, instead, the personality of Koboyashi Yosuke had taken over. With the rest of the world and Yosuke himself unaware of his condition, he continued life as a normal child.
After an unspecified number of years, Yosuke graduated from the police academy of Tokyo and began work as an officer, later rising in rank to become a detective. During his years of being a police officer, Yosuke lived a double life without ever knowing it. The personality of Nishizono Shinji was still active and purposing his own goals. Those goals being to seek out and destroy as many of Gakuso's samples and spares as possible, keeping them from their final goal. Based on his character, I would assume that this genocide was powered mostly by his own personal hatred of Gakuso. Alongside him in this goal was a man named Ooe Kimihiko, and his sister Celsius, or just C. On the outside, Kimihiko was a young music technician and manager for his sister's singing career. However, underneath that was his relentless endeavors to battle against Gakuso's take over. He would relay targets to Shinji and a younger man named Shimazu Hisashi based on information hacked from Gakuso's computer systems and the national eye bank. There was also a mutual desire for "the end of the world" shared by Shinji and Kimihiko, however the specifics of why and how haven't been explained. Shinji is close to both Kimihiko and C, to the point that C tells her brother that Shinji is her favorite. When not chasing down targets for Kimihiko or unconscious while Yosuke furthered both his police career and his relationship with a woman named Chizuko, Shinji ran an on-the-side, under-the-table investigations group. Run out of a warehouse and kept in careful secrecy, the group consisted of Shinji himself, known as either the Multiple Personality Detective or Mirror Man Shinji, and a man called Bai-san.
Life was relatively normal until the day that Shinji and Kimihiko met to discuss a very peculiar case and the finding of a spare for Shimazu. Since the fire, Shinji's memories had been sealed as to what he really is and what happened to him in the past. Kimihiko offered him a cassette tape that he believed would reawaken those lost memories. Once alone, Shinji listened to it and everything from the past came to the surface. In the days after, after closing that peculiar case and thinking on what had been awoken in him, Shinji bought flowers to give to Kimihiko and C as their birthday present. When he arrived at Kimihiko's apartment, his friend was dead- murdered; C was soon to follow.
After the death of his friends, not much is known on what Shinji did with his life. It is known that another personality, one imprinted from the boy named Murata Kiyoshi, awoke and involved himself in the world of drugs. He befriended a man named Ueno Suguru and helped him escape police drug busts with the information overheard through Yosuke's job. Meanwhile, Yosuke continued down his career trek to earn the title of detective, and kept his long standing relationship with Chizuko. At some point in time, Shinji took in a man named Umemiya Akio and mentored him in the ways of serial murder. Akio became responsible for many grandiose displays of brutality while under Shinji's direction, and was eventually sentenced to 26 death penalties once apprehended. On the other hand, Shinji remained at large while evading the police with Yosuke as a cover. Later, he was responsible for a rash of murders where the body had been dismembered, while Yosuke's work caught the eye of Shimazu's spare through a television interview. In order to draw out Shinji, Shimazu attacked, raped, and dismembered Chizuko, Yosuke's girlfriend, and delivered her barely alive to the police station for him to see. Yosuke became devoted to finding the person who hurt Chizuko, who fell into a coma. The chase ended with Shimazu cornered on the roof of a building, bragging about what he'd done, with Yosuke and other members of the police surrounding him. With no where to go, Shimazu revealed to Yosuke the truth about his condition, about the dismembering murders, and that Chizuko had been killed as well while inside the hospital, that Shinji had taken over and pulled the plug on her life support. The shock broke Yosuke, essentially killing that personality off, and Shinji took control of the situation. In front of dozens of police witnesses, he shot and killed Shimazu without hesitation. Just as quickly as he appeared, he vanished while a new personality became conscious for the first time; that personality was Amamiya Kazuhiko.
[Please bear with me as I attempt to rewrite their character history due to new information and a need for chronology. Note that all names are in Japanese order.]