Animus Application
Player Information
Name: Chirs
Personal LJ: illuminatesound
Age: 24
Contact Info: AIM and Plurk: illuminatesound
Other Characters Played: unexculpable & cacophonicsoul
Character Information
Character Name: Naoto Shirogane
Character Series: Persona 4
Character Age: 16
Character Gender: Female
Original Canon
Canon Point: Post-True End
Former Game: anteceded
Canon Background Link: Enjoy your wiki links! :D
This first link will give you the basic story and some brief information about… everything else. I’d just look at the story section, the rest is just a bunch of stuff that you really don’t need to read. UNLESS YOU WANT TO THEN GO AHEAD?:
P4 Story
And this link will give you specifics on just Naoto’s part of the story -
everything from her first appearance in the game up until the end of her dungeon. It also will give you all the information about her Social Link if you’re curious about it!:
Naoto’s History
Game Background: Naoto was among the first to arrive at Sphere and during the first two months she learned very little about the situation. She only the the basics: why they were supposedly here, what happened to their worlds, and various other bits of useful information about the virus and Sphere itself.
After the initial shock wore off she quickly went about setting up a temporary sort of judicial system -- the JLE (Judicial Law Enforcement) to give structure to the post-apocalyptic world she found herself in as well as give the residents of Sphere some sense of normality and safety. Dylan Frost and the other scientists didn’t seem to mind the addition of law enforcement, in fact they welcomed it, but the same did not hold true for fellow residents. In fact, many found her efforts unnecessary, but her motives were not as cut and dry as they seemed to be. She did want to help keep the residents of Sphere safe, but she didn’t trust the scientists or the group itself. Not. One. Bit.
The JLE was established to not only keep order, but to give her access to information she would not have otherwise. She gained the trust of the scientists, she had their attention as well as everyone else’s. She made herself known and in doing so it allowed others to gather information without drawing suspicion. Namely people like Mikoshiba Shouta.
Shouta and Naoto allied together out of necessity and their relationship was tenuous at best. She had been hiding her gender and it wasn’t until Shouta figured it out that the two truly began to trust one another. He never brought it up, but he didn’t need to. Naoto knew that he knew. More importantly, he treated her exactly the same as he did before he discovered her true gender. At first she didn’t know what to think. Even the investigation team back home treated her a bit differently after the learned that she was a girl. Shouta never did and it made it much easier to open up to him and others. She finally felt comfortable enough to cease actively pretending to be a boy. Not so much as outright declaring it -- if people assumed she was female she would not tell them otherwise.
Things proceeded as expected -- Dylan and the other scientists placed more trust in her, going so far as to give her security robots to assist the JLE. Then she ran into a problem, one she couldn’t avoid -- Naoto was getting sick. To make matters worse after she took a trip back to Inaba to see the destruction there firsthand, her beacon, the object that made transportation like this possible, malfunctioned and she found herself unable to return to Sphere. She was stuck there for two months before she was able to get back and during that time her health continued to decline and she was placed in a stasis chamber shortly before arriving in the tower.
Personality: Naoto’s line of work as a detective has helped shape nearly every facet of her personality. She is incredibly mature for her age, refusing to let her status as a teenager have a negative effect on her work. Even though behaving as she does is as natural to her as walking, the extremes to which she goes to make sure she is taken seriously is almost comical. She tries very hard to prove that she is every bit as good, if not better, at her job as those she works with and to many adults (as well as her peers in school) she comes off as pompous, pretentious, and even a bit bratty. As such she doesn’t make friends very easily.
Nonetheless, she is very calm and reserved, refusing to let her emotions get the better of her. Truly upsetting Naoto is a daunting task and it takes quite a lot to get her to raise her voice. Even if one does succeed, she speaks so formally, using a plethora of words not found in everyday conversation, that it may be difficult to realize that she is upset. Truth be told, she has a visual emotional range of a teaspoon and to most people she comes off as cold, callus, and very anti-social.
The girl is incredibly serious and she works hard to maintain her reputation as well as her family’s - feeling that because of her gender, her age and her line of work she must be professional at all times if she’s ever going to be taken seriously. She is very devoted to her job and calling her a workaholic is a bit of an understatement. Sometimes Naoto takes her job to the extreme and honestly, she can get a bit obsessive when it comes to a case that needs to be solved. She is not above putting herself in danger to lure a suspect out of hiding.
She looks at things logically and uses deductive reasoning to her advantage. She’s good at what she does and she is able to decipher motives, behaviors, and characteristics of people she’s around by simply observing and taking careful consideration of her surroundings. She’s a naturally curious person which helps her quite a bit in her line of work, but can also land her in quite a bit of trouble. Naoto is very intelligent and it she is rarely wrong about anything. Her mind is her greatest resource.
Naoto tries to keep things as formal as possible and because of it she ends up pushing people away, but if someone is able to get past her cold exterior, they’ll come to find that Naoto is truly just a very shy person. She keeps to herself and doesn’t enjoy talking about herself, her life, or her problems to anyone. General social situations make her nervous and it isn’t hard to make her uncomfortable. She doesn’t like it, but she gets flustered very easily - causing her to stammer and stutter her way out of embarrassing situations she’d rather not be in.
Now for the big one: HER GENDER.
Gender is a touchy subject with Naoto. Her feelings on her gender, and the roles society expects her to adopt because of it, are a huge underlying factor to most, if not all, of her actions. Until she was outed by her Shadow, Naoto had purposely been passing herself as a male. Waking up with a closet full of poodle skirts is going to make that difficult for her to keep up, at least until she gets a pair of pants from somewhere.
Naoto strongly believes that her age and gender are holding her back from accomplishing her goals. She genuinely loves her job, she has wanted to be a detective since before she could read and she’s damn good at it, but being good wasn’t enough. She wants the respect, and, above all else, the acceptance of her peers. While her age does pose difficulties, she knows that even though it’s a hindrance now, she’ll still grow up. Her gender was another problem entirely. The most famous fictional detectives are male, practically the entire police force is male, and Naoto... she is certainly not a man.
She resents her age, her gender and her position in life. If she was older, if she was boy, she might actually get the respect she deserved and then maybe, just maybe, people wouldn’t look down on her. They wouldn’t treat her like a child or a helpless woman. But even when people started to believe she was a boy, it was clear that her peers still resented her, both in school and at work. To them, she was a boy, but that didn’t matter. She’s certain that the treatment she receives will only get worse if they were to find out that she was a girl.
During her stay at Sphere she started to become more comfortable with herself. She was slowly beginning to accept who and what she was. After waking up in the tower, she is likely to regress back to the person she once was -- falling back into old habits and comfortable patterns.
Abilities:
Crazy Super Human Magic Powers aka NAOTO’S PERSONA AND THE THINGS IT DOES:
Ok, the second wiki has a list of all of her abilities, but for convenience I’ll put the list and limitations here too.
Since I’m taking Naoto from the end of the game, but WITHOUT having gone through any of her Social Link, her persona will be Sukuna Hikona (which looks like this). It’s an itty bitty bug thing.
She’s level 85, so her HP is at 485 and her SP is at 416 (I’ll be happy to keep track of all of this in game as well! : D)
Here’s the arsenal:
Attack - Effect - Cost
Deathbound - Inflicts heavy damage upon all enemies - 20% total health Mind Charge - Raises potential damage of offensive spells the next time used - No cost Mudo Boost - Raises success rate of Mudo spells - No cost Hama Boost - Raises success rate of Hama spells - No cost Mamudoon - Destroys all enemies with power of dark (med-odds) - 34 SP Mahamaon - Destroys all enemies with power of light (med-odds) - 34 SP Vorpal Blade - Inflicts heavy physical damage 2x-4x upon all enemies - 22% total health Megidolaon - Inflicts severe Almighty damage upon all enemies - 60 SP
Non-superhuman special abilities of note:
- Mad shooting things up skill: She’s a detective, she carries a revolver with her everywhere ever and it is legal, and most importantly she knows how to use it. Naoto is an EXCELLENT shot, not perfect, but pretty damn close. She has not shot anyone with said gun, and doesn’t really enjoy the thought of needing to, but she can.
- Itty bitty handyman: She tinkers a lot. When she was little she would make all these super-secret-awesome detective/spy gadgets. All of them were childish and kind of silly (things like a pen flashlight, a pair of watches that could tell you how far away you were from the other), but they work. As such she’s very handy and can fix most things that get thrown her way. As for things on the ship, she’ll have to learn the technology, but once she figures out how it works she’ll be good to go.
- PERCEPTIVE GENIUS: Once more. D. E. T. E. C. T. I. V. E. She is 16, she is known throughout Japan and most of the world as one of THE BEST in the business and has been called “The Detective Prince” since she started working publicly. She knows her stuff and she can figure out pretty much anything with careful observation.
- SOCIALLY AWKWARD: This normally would not be considered an ability, but with Naoto I would like to note this particular trait. She is horrendous with people. Completely awful. Like seriously. In canon it is actually stated by one of her friends that she has the emotional range of a teaspoon and a tin ear to other people’s feelings. She doesn’t mean to offend or to hurt anyone, but she does. It happens. And it happens a lot. She is terrible with people and terrible in social situations. For example if she was at a party: She does not want to be at the party, she does not want to be a wallflower at the party, she does not want to be within fifty feet of the party, she wants to be in another country where no one has ever heard of the party. She just doesn’t do it, ok, but she’ll go because she feels obligated, to keep up appearances for whatever their worth (depends on the people and where she is and if it has anything to do with work), but… that’s about it.
- Trap extraordinaire: Even though Naoto has been outed as a girl in her canon, the fact that she is here in an entirely new place will give her the ability to start anew and pose a boy again. Which she will. And she is good at it. She’s been cross-dressing since before she knew what the word meant (so probably like… five. Ok, maybe not five, maybe like… seven. whatever, it’s been A REALLY LONG TIME) so she knows how to present herself to appear as such without raising any suspicion. In canon she’s voiced by Paku Romi who does male voices for every anime ever, and she sounds like a boy. She lowers her voice and in Japanese uses pronouns reserved for boys (like referring to herself as ‘boku’ instead of ‘watashi’ or ‘wakashi’ or…. idk pick one. :|). IT IS SUPER DIFFICULT TO CALL HER OUT ON THIS. The only reason she gets called out in canon is because her shadow shows up and is all “LOL YOU ARE SO SILLY GIRL, WHY DO YOU PRETEND TO BE A BOY WHEN YOU’RE NOT” and this is shown on every television in Inaba and most likely the surrounding area. So, yeah. Unless they are VERY PERCEPTIVE, good luck finding out this little factoid.
On a side note: obviously she will be outed eventually - by her own doing, by someone else’s doing, by some other factor/situation that is not either one of those. If anyone wants their character to figure this out, I’m totally down with that, but I’d like to discuss the particulars with them first. And UNTIL she is found out, I’ll be using male pronouns for her so if someone is unfamiliar with her canon, they won’t refer to her as a girl simply because I use female pronouns in my posts. I’ll use female pronouns with her canonmates and with whoever has figured out/knows that she’s a girl. IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS ABOUT THIS OR ABOUT THE WAY I HANDLE HER GENDER IDENTITY CRISIS ETC. PLEASE LET ME KNOW. It was an issue in another game way back when and I don’t want to start unnecessary drama because I use male pronouns for her. :c
Sample Entries:
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