[OOC: Kannagara Application]
PLAYER INFO
Name/Nickname: Val
Age: 22
Journal: lanoyee
AIM/MSN/IM: Kikoujutsuka
Email: yumejin@gmx.net
CHARACTER INFO
Character Name: Asano Rin
Canon: Blade of the Immortal
Point taken from canon: Volume 18, while walking home from the shore she and Dōa washed up on.
Age: 16
Gender: Female
Preferred Village: Raisato
Appearance: Rin is quite short, standing at maybe 155 cm, or around 5'. She is also incredibly skinny, thus not weighing very much. Her body's development is probably average, as relative to her place and time, though she certainly looks feminine. Her femininity is also reflected in her choice of dress and style: she is usually seen wearing a women's kimono (though with only slightly elongated sleeves, as this is her everyday clothing) which is red in color and sports a prominent flame pattern in light blue around the hems, accompanied by a yellow obi. Most of the time, she styles her hair (which is black, straight, has a fringe and reaches down her back) into two braids, at the end of which two rings are fastened. These rings both contains small pellets; a homemade Chinese medicine, the recipe of which she knows from her mother in one, hemlock poison in the other. Occasionally, she may also be seen with a bun that is tied by a white piece of cloth. She wears wood or straw sandals and tabi in the colder season.
Beneath her clothes, she carries around twenty-four small daggers, which she calls ōgonchū or Golden Wasps. She also usually has a tantō somewhere in there and carries around a sword, usually in a strap that doubles as a handbag, a small trick since women in her time aren't generally allowed to carry swords.
Her face is slim with round cheeks and big, brown eyes. It is also very expressive, seeing as Rin is an open book, so she has a great range of facial expressions which often fluctuate rapidly. She can go from cheerful to angry to annoyed to embarassed in a matter of seconds. Additionally, she often gesticulates quite vividly. One should note, however, that she is capable of lying with a mostly straight face if the situation calls for it.
Rin generally has a good posture and is capable of polite Japanese mannerisms, as she is an upper-class girl. This shows in her language, too: she uses polite pronouns (and if she doesn't, that's how you know she's really pissed; her arch enemy, for example, usually gets an anta and rarely an omae) and assigns honorifics to most people older than her - not usually to those younger than her, though.
Background: Wiki knows all.
The setting is Edo (modern Tōkyō), Japan, late 18th century. Originally, Rin comes from a pretty well-established samurai family, her father having been the head of a sword school, the Muten-ichi-ryū. This comfortable life, however, ended on the night of her fourteenth birthday, when Anotsu Kagehisa and his gang, the Ittō-ryū, showed up at their doorstep and, after already having killed all students of the school, had her father killed and her mother brutally raped, all in Rin’s presence. The reason for this was an old feud between their grandfathers as well as Anotsu’s goal of reviving his idea of a true warrior’s spirit by forcefully taking over other dōjōs. Rin herself got away physically unharmed, but her psychological wounds were deep and she swore revenge on Anotsu Kagehisa.
Two years later, she meets an old nun who recommends her to hire Manji, an immortal rōnin, as a bodyguard, which Rin manages to do, after some initial troubles with Manji. From then on, the unlikely pair repeatedly runs into Ittō-ryū fighters, among them the man who killed Rin’s father, a young man named Magatsu Taito who’d been present at Rin’s unusual birthday party and carries a sword that belonged to Rin’s father, an immortal like Manji, a female sword fighter named Makie who is close to Anotsu, and the man who raped Rin’s mother. They kill all of them except for Magatsu, from whom they get the sword back, which will from now on be Rin’s weapon; and Makie, who would have killed Manji if not for Rin’s intervention.
After that, they get an offer from Mugai-ryū, a mysterious organization with ties to the government, for teamwork in finding Anotsu Kagehisa. They accept reluctantly and are told by the Mugai-ryū that Anotsu will be leaving Edo for the Kaga province soon - in the disguise of a woman, no less. Seeing as Anotsu, according to their information, is sending out several decoys as bait, the group splits up, hoping to catch the real deal that way. Rin is paired up with Shira, whose true nature she has to find out the hard way when he tortures the decoy troupe they’d been following and nearly rapes the woman who impersonates Anotsu. The woman is saved from that by the arrival of Manji, who cuts Shira’s arm off. All of them are discovered by passersby, at which point Shira flees.
Not much later, Rin decides to go to Kaga by herself, as Manji, being a wanted criminal, cannot leave Edo. On the way, she quickly finds out that she is wanted now, too - someone had reported her and Manji for the murder of two merchants, probably Shira. Subsequently, Rin pleads with a woman working at the inn they’d been staying at and gets herself a disguise. From then on, she begins the trip to Kaga. At the Kobotoke turnpike, she has to take the high risk of disguising herself as a local inn owner’s relative - as a wanted criminal, she can’t get a permission to pass the turnpike, and if she is found out, it will cost her her head. She manages to get through and continues on her journey, being robbed due to naivete in the process. Eventually, she makes it, but collapses in the forest, and is found by none other than Anotsu Kagehisa himself.
She decides to follow him and they spend a time traveling together, trying to escape Anotsu’s followers all the while, as he has been betrayed by the government and the sword school which he’d made a pact with. Rin is hoping to kill him while he’s asleep or otherwise off guard, but instead ends up carrying him around when he falls ill with tetanus. When caught by his followers, she surrenders, not wanting to be tortured for her enemy’s sake, and leads them to his hiding place. A grand showdown follows, including Manji, who’d followed Rin and finally caught up. It ends with Anotsu winning, his followers destroyed, and Rin giving him a promise that one day, she’ll come to kill him.
Back in Edo, life goes on peacefully until Manji has an interlude, first with Giichi, then with some Ittō-ryū, among them Magatsu. It ends well, though, with Manji, Giichi and Magatsu all alive.
After that, however, Manji is invited to the house of Habaki Kagimura, leader of the nigh disbanded Mugai-ryū and also the government official invested in the pursuit of Anotsu Kagehisa. He does not return from this visit, and Rin worries. She moves from the hut they’d been living in back to her home dōjo, thinking it will be safer there. The night she moves in, she gets a visit from two Ittō-ryū fighters, Dōa and Isaku, who’d been hoping for a place to spend the night. After a short scuffle, she grants them shelter, and they life at her place for a while. When they have a run-in with the police due to some trouble Dōa caused earlier, Isaku is taken away, too, and the girls team up to find their men.
Personality: At heart, Rin really is a normal teenager, and she does a lot of teenage things - worrying about her looks, about growing up, falling in love. She often insists that she is “not a kid anymore” and wants to be taken seriously, by allies and enemies alike.
In many respects, she still is very young; she's still in the process of figuring life out. She's learned of her own weakness aplenty up to now, and at the point I'm taking her from, she's also going to learn a lot about her strengths. Being left without Manji and with the younger, impulsive and affection-starved Dōa to take care of will force her to grow up fast.
Her developmental curve over the six months of in-story time that Blade of the Immortal spans up to then has been pretty steep all in all. She started out as a brash, headstrong girl who didn't really know much of the world and was physically and mentally rather weak - to the point of almost letting an enemy talk her into letting him kill her, if he promised to follow her in death. While she's always been a keen observer with a sharp mind, her impulsiveness often got the better of her. For the first few volumes, she developped in small ways; such as the Renzō incident, in which she shows that she can think beyond her own immediate needs by her wish to protect the son of the man who raped her mother. Then she improves leaps and bounds during the Kaga arc, when she leaves her bodyguard behind to follow Anotsu Kagehisa. She has to look out for herself and fails a lot, but also comes surprisingly far all on her own, even going so far as to risk her life during the whole enterprise, yet gets away unscathed. Travelling with Anotsu forces her to readjust a good part of her mentality up to now; her view of Anotsu and also her view of herself and her goals - she's forced to both broaden her horizons (seeing his human side, saving his life) and become a little firmer in the pursuit of her own ends (following him, her statement at their parting that she'll come to kill him one day). Now, in the prison arc, she's once more left on her own, this time not by her own choice, and also has a girl no older than fourteen to take care of.
Except for select instances in which lying is an important aspect of survival, Rin is absolutely honest, and, as mentioned earlier, kind of an open book. She cries very easily and is generally on the emotional side and no small bit impulsive, herself, though she is also very much a thinking person, who constantly questions if what she is doing is really the right thing to do. It is kind of a dilemma for her - she is fundamentally against killing, yet that is exactly what she is trying to do. Her whole story arc is, after all, built on her desire for revenge.
While she is insecure about them at first, Rin does very much have her own opinions on things, and she comes more and more into her own and learns to stand up for her beliefs as the series progresses. In fact, one of her major characteristics is development.
Though she might sometimes give off the impression, Rin is by no means naïve. Or, well, she is, but not the doe-eyed, sees no evil level of naïve. The girl's seen some pretty gruesome things in her life, including maiming, murder, rape (well... technically she heard it, but same difference) and other such niceties. In spite of that, she's not desensitized to these things - in fact, she'll react very violently to gruesome sights, like throwing up when getting a nice view of a mountain of corpses. Her physical reactions are generally intense; for example, she may also get height sick.
No matter the horrors she's witnessed, and despite experiencing a lot of negative emotions from sadness to anger to bitterness, Rin also manages to retain her positivity and cheerfulness. She is also always thoroughly, utterly nice. The kind of person who throws herself in front of a stranger to protect them. Who will pass up an opportunity to kill her worst enemy because he's sick, and, well, you just don't kill sick people! This is a girl who sticks to her principles.
Furthermore, she is incredibly determined, going to a lot of lengths to achieve her goals when she's really into it. “Giving up” is hardly part of her vocabulary. She will scheme and keep trying and sometimes fail until she reaches a satisfactory resolution.
In the vein of the previous two paragraphs: while Rin is nice, she isn't saintly. She can be very selfish, and she is even capable of doing things of questionable morality - like, oh, hanging with a whole bunch of killers. Because, really, she doesn't mind if her friends are people who have killed and still do kill - as long as they don't get off to torturing their victims, because that's just crossing the line. She makes mistakes and does wrong things, sometimes.
Abilities/Strengths: On the physical side of things, Rin has learned a few kata with the sword and is capable of cutting a branch falling from a tree into six pieces before it hits the ground. She also has her “standard attack”, Flight of the Golden Wasps, which usually is of... debatable effectiveness, but works as a distraction.
She is surprisingly effective with her fists; girl's got a mean punch. Can kick a man across the room, if duly provoked - so she has more physical strength than one would guess for a girl of her size.
However, her main strength really lies in the mental area. She makes plans and figures stuff out and puts two and two together. If the situation calls for it, she can get quite... creative. She's intelligent and capable to look past her own concerns at the bigger picture, as well as clever and able to think outside the box.
Another thing that works to her advantage is her sheer boldness and the aforementioned determination, which, frankly, sometimes borders on the insane. We're talking about having her belly slit to illegally pass a checkpoint or dislocating her own thumb to escape being tied up.
She can also be a good actor, again if the situation calls for it.
Weaknesses: Okay, let's ignore what I said up there for a moment and face the fact that Rin fails at fighting. Seriously, she does. While she isn't exactly clumsy with her sword, she probably never had anyone to train with before meeting Manji, so she was basically just dry-practicing her kata. Another factor is that all of the other fighters of this series just happen to be pros and lightyears ahead of her, so, while she's probably better than the average woman of her time, that isn't exactly of much use to her.
Her Flight of the Golden Wasps attack is really a hit-and-miss thing. She doesn't even look where she's throwing the things, so her aim is less than stellar. On a meta level, the move basically exists to spoof the “Rule of Cool” that is prevalent in so many manga - i.e., show that stuff that looks cool would often be horribly ineffective in real life.
On the personality side, her cleverness is often hampered by her impulsiveness. Sometimes, she just acts and reacts without thinking very much, and it gets her into trouble.
I already mentioned her selfishness, and sometimes, she also has an air of self-righteousness about her, which is most apparent in her discussions with Dōa, and several meet-ups with her enemies; and some of her decisions, while she often obviously means well, are just morally uncomfortable - such as deciding to fake her bodyguard's death to a kid whose father and only living relative was just killed by said bodyguard. Of course she recognizes that the path of revenge is not exactly a good one, and it's understandable that she wants to prevent another kid from walking the same path, but it is a choice that is awfully convenient for her.
She's also kind of failing at this whole revenge thing, at least when it comes to Anotsu.
Defining Quote(s): “If you want to tear down the sword school walls... just try and do it! Keep dreaming... your dreams of war! Like this! For now, I'll wait. And see how far you go! Maybe the Ittō-ryū wins! But when I know for sure... I'll come to kill you! Without fail!“ - Rin, BotI chapter 94
„He said 'don't let them fool ya'
He means the one who rules ya
I say you gotta seize /
the power to be free'
And I don't mean the money
And I don't mean control
But I mean the power over our heads and our souls“ - lyrics taken from Hame Baham by Laleh
“Time flies, make a statement, take a stand” - lyrics from Come Along by Titiyo
Other: Now, here go a few theories I have on her character. Meaning that they're never stated as fact and I'm really just speculating.
In canon, we never really see her doing much outside of her revenge. Since she is basically the main POV character, I infer of this that she is so focused on her quest that little thought is spent on things outside of it, or what might come after it.
Additional, very recent events (in the Japanese chapters) have led me to believe that she may not even necessarily be counting on there being an “after” - that at least part of her is prepared to not surive the whole thing. This is really only a vague hint and thus an equally vague hunch, but I thought I'd mention it.
Then, regarding Anotsu, I sort of have the theory that part of her doesn't even want to kill him, that indeed, part of her needs him to stay alive. He's kind of a fixture, a symbol for her healing process. He's the one she can point at and say: "He did it, and I hate him for it." He's the catalyst. As long as he's around, she can keep being the way she is. As long as he's around, she won't have to let go and let that chapter of her life come to a close just yet. As long as he's around, she can stall on a final decision. And if he dies before she's arrived at the end of her coping process, she might be left without closure. This theory is mainly spurred by the battle at Lake Suwa (culmination of the Kaga arc, in which Anotsu faces off against his followers) in which Rin tells Manji to kill Anotsu's followers, thereby effectively saving his life, then wonders to herself why she isn't feeling more ecstatic at the prospect of Anotsu's imminent death and finding no answer, and finally quite simply letting Anotsu go. Basically, I guess what I'm saying is that him being around keeps her from having to make probably make the hardest decisions and steps yet - she will lose any valid reason to keep Manji around (and she's kinda in love with the man), and it will also probably mark her passage into adulthood.
Action Writing Sample:
Uh, wait... something is weird here.
Dōa, did you notice -
[By this point, she's turned around, just in time to notice the empty space behind her.]
Dōa? Dōa, where are you?
[She looks around; left, right, left right - and desperation quickly appears on her face as she realizes that the person she's calling is not here.]
I don't get it. Why does this have to happen to me?
[For a while, she just stands there with her head lowered and looks at the ground, so similar to the ground she knows, yet, as a sinking feeling tells her - not to mention the scenery - not located anywhere near Edo. Her arms close around her torso and she shivers; she is still wet all over.
But then she takes a deep breath, straightens her posture.]
No time for whining, Rin! Let's have a look around first.
[Nodding to herself fiercely and raising a fist for emphasis, Rin takes a brief look around and, since she is in the middle of wilderness, just starts walking in a direction. Surely, she's got to meet people eventually, if she just walks long enough.]
Third Person Writing Sample:
Once again, Rin was down on her luck. She was beginning to think fate really had it in for her. And this time was probably worse than everything previous, too. True, she wasn't broke and starving and travelling alongside her worst enemy, nor was she as clueless as she'd been two years ago, but once again she found herself alone. Manji gone without a trace. Well, okay, there was a trace, but the people involved seemed to do everything in their might to wipe it away. Thus, going to Habaki's house again would make little sense; the answer would remain the same. But where else was she supposed to look? By now, she felt like she'd walked all the streets of Edo in her attempt to cover all the places he possibly might be - he or Hyakurin, for Hyakurin might now something. She did work for Habaki, after all.
A small break was in order; and so Rin sat down on the low wall that seamed the banks of Sumida river. For a moment, she allowed herself to let go - put her head in her hands, elbows propped up on her knees, and heaved a very heartfelt sigh. Damn it, Rin, she mentally chided herself, what's this even supposed to accomplish?
Manji wasn't just magically going to appear somewhere on the streets, no matter if she walked until she wore her sandals down. Neither was Hyakurin, of course. But at least, Rin had a better idea where she might be found. Probably at Chokichi's or some dingy backyard inn. Rin would go there tomorrow, after her feet were rested; for she didn't feel like she could walk another step, even if her mind nagged her on to go, to go find Manji, as soon as possible.
He hadn't returned to the hut, either, where she'd looked first. Not that he was likely to return there and neglect to follow her to the dōjō as soon as he saw her note. He took his job very seriously. Rin smiled ruefully at the dusty street, heart aching for him. She'd gotten so very used to having him around, and even a day's absence made her miss him dearly. Well, the fact that his fate was so uncertain contributed to it. And it wasn't that she felt helpless without him - though he did feel her a lot more secure, she couldn't deny that. She'd moved on from the stage where she was ignorant of her own weaknesses. In fact, being with Manji was what had taught her to recognize and accept them. That, and its inevitable consequences. Briefly, she thought of Renzō and winced.
But Asano Rin was getting quite adept at mental organization, and so she put those thoughts away to a corner of her mind and focused on the task at hand. Which was going home. Her feet still ached, the short rest hadn't been enough to relieve them. It was still a good while to the Asano dōjō from here on out. Briefly, she toyed with the idea of hiring a palanquin, and unconsciously, an expression of longing spread on her face - but no. Too expensive, and she didn't have a steady income, so walking it was. She gathered her momentum and stood up swiftly, and soon only her footprints in the dust beneath the low wall stood witness that she'd ever been there.
Name/Nickname: Val
Age: 22
Journal: lanoyee
AIM/MSN/IM: Kikoujutsuka
Email: yumejin@gmx.net
CHARACTER INFO
Character Name: Asano Rin
Canon: Blade of the Immortal
Point taken from canon: Volume 18, while walking home from the shore she and Dōa washed up on.
Age: 16
Gender: Female
Preferred Village: Raisato
Appearance: Rin is quite short, standing at maybe 155 cm, or around 5'. She is also incredibly skinny, thus not weighing very much. Her body's development is probably average, as relative to her place and time, though she certainly looks feminine. Her femininity is also reflected in her choice of dress and style: she is usually seen wearing a women's kimono (though with only slightly elongated sleeves, as this is her everyday clothing) which is red in color and sports a prominent flame pattern in light blue around the hems, accompanied by a yellow obi. Most of the time, she styles her hair (which is black, straight, has a fringe and reaches down her back) into two braids, at the end of which two rings are fastened. These rings both contains small pellets; a homemade Chinese medicine, the recipe of which she knows from her mother in one, hemlock poison in the other. Occasionally, she may also be seen with a bun that is tied by a white piece of cloth. She wears wood or straw sandals and tabi in the colder season.
Beneath her clothes, she carries around twenty-four small daggers, which she calls ōgonchū or Golden Wasps. She also usually has a tantō somewhere in there and carries around a sword, usually in a strap that doubles as a handbag, a small trick since women in her time aren't generally allowed to carry swords.
Her face is slim with round cheeks and big, brown eyes. It is also very expressive, seeing as Rin is an open book, so she has a great range of facial expressions which often fluctuate rapidly. She can go from cheerful to angry to annoyed to embarassed in a matter of seconds. Additionally, she often gesticulates quite vividly. One should note, however, that she is capable of lying with a mostly straight face if the situation calls for it.
Rin generally has a good posture and is capable of polite Japanese mannerisms, as she is an upper-class girl. This shows in her language, too: she uses polite pronouns (and if she doesn't, that's how you know she's really pissed; her arch enemy, for example, usually gets an anta and rarely an omae) and assigns honorifics to most people older than her - not usually to those younger than her, though.
Background: Wiki knows all.
The setting is Edo (modern Tōkyō), Japan, late 18th century. Originally, Rin comes from a pretty well-established samurai family, her father having been the head of a sword school, the Muten-ichi-ryū. This comfortable life, however, ended on the night of her fourteenth birthday, when Anotsu Kagehisa and his gang, the Ittō-ryū, showed up at their doorstep and, after already having killed all students of the school, had her father killed and her mother brutally raped, all in Rin’s presence. The reason for this was an old feud between their grandfathers as well as Anotsu’s goal of reviving his idea of a true warrior’s spirit by forcefully taking over other dōjōs. Rin herself got away physically unharmed, but her psychological wounds were deep and she swore revenge on Anotsu Kagehisa.
Two years later, she meets an old nun who recommends her to hire Manji, an immortal rōnin, as a bodyguard, which Rin manages to do, after some initial troubles with Manji. From then on, the unlikely pair repeatedly runs into Ittō-ryū fighters, among them the man who killed Rin’s father, a young man named Magatsu Taito who’d been present at Rin’s unusual birthday party and carries a sword that belonged to Rin’s father, an immortal like Manji, a female sword fighter named Makie who is close to Anotsu, and the man who raped Rin’s mother. They kill all of them except for Magatsu, from whom they get the sword back, which will from now on be Rin’s weapon; and Makie, who would have killed Manji if not for Rin’s intervention.
After that, they get an offer from Mugai-ryū, a mysterious organization with ties to the government, for teamwork in finding Anotsu Kagehisa. They accept reluctantly and are told by the Mugai-ryū that Anotsu will be leaving Edo for the Kaga province soon - in the disguise of a woman, no less. Seeing as Anotsu, according to their information, is sending out several decoys as bait, the group splits up, hoping to catch the real deal that way. Rin is paired up with Shira, whose true nature she has to find out the hard way when he tortures the decoy troupe they’d been following and nearly rapes the woman who impersonates Anotsu. The woman is saved from that by the arrival of Manji, who cuts Shira’s arm off. All of them are discovered by passersby, at which point Shira flees.
Not much later, Rin decides to go to Kaga by herself, as Manji, being a wanted criminal, cannot leave Edo. On the way, she quickly finds out that she is wanted now, too - someone had reported her and Manji for the murder of two merchants, probably Shira. Subsequently, Rin pleads with a woman working at the inn they’d been staying at and gets herself a disguise. From then on, she begins the trip to Kaga. At the Kobotoke turnpike, she has to take the high risk of disguising herself as a local inn owner’s relative - as a wanted criminal, she can’t get a permission to pass the turnpike, and if she is found out, it will cost her her head. She manages to get through and continues on her journey, being robbed due to naivete in the process. Eventually, she makes it, but collapses in the forest, and is found by none other than Anotsu Kagehisa himself.
She decides to follow him and they spend a time traveling together, trying to escape Anotsu’s followers all the while, as he has been betrayed by the government and the sword school which he’d made a pact with. Rin is hoping to kill him while he’s asleep or otherwise off guard, but instead ends up carrying him around when he falls ill with tetanus. When caught by his followers, she surrenders, not wanting to be tortured for her enemy’s sake, and leads them to his hiding place. A grand showdown follows, including Manji, who’d followed Rin and finally caught up. It ends with Anotsu winning, his followers destroyed, and Rin giving him a promise that one day, she’ll come to kill him.
Back in Edo, life goes on peacefully until Manji has an interlude, first with Giichi, then with some Ittō-ryū, among them Magatsu. It ends well, though, with Manji, Giichi and Magatsu all alive.
After that, however, Manji is invited to the house of Habaki Kagimura, leader of the nigh disbanded Mugai-ryū and also the government official invested in the pursuit of Anotsu Kagehisa. He does not return from this visit, and Rin worries. She moves from the hut they’d been living in back to her home dōjo, thinking it will be safer there. The night she moves in, she gets a visit from two Ittō-ryū fighters, Dōa and Isaku, who’d been hoping for a place to spend the night. After a short scuffle, she grants them shelter, and they life at her place for a while. When they have a run-in with the police due to some trouble Dōa caused earlier, Isaku is taken away, too, and the girls team up to find their men.
Personality: At heart, Rin really is a normal teenager, and she does a lot of teenage things - worrying about her looks, about growing up, falling in love. She often insists that she is “not a kid anymore” and wants to be taken seriously, by allies and enemies alike.
In many respects, she still is very young; she's still in the process of figuring life out. She's learned of her own weakness aplenty up to now, and at the point I'm taking her from, she's also going to learn a lot about her strengths. Being left without Manji and with the younger, impulsive and affection-starved Dōa to take care of will force her to grow up fast.
Her developmental curve over the six months of in-story time that Blade of the Immortal spans up to then has been pretty steep all in all. She started out as a brash, headstrong girl who didn't really know much of the world and was physically and mentally rather weak - to the point of almost letting an enemy talk her into letting him kill her, if he promised to follow her in death. While she's always been a keen observer with a sharp mind, her impulsiveness often got the better of her. For the first few volumes, she developped in small ways; such as the Renzō incident, in which she shows that she can think beyond her own immediate needs by her wish to protect the son of the man who raped her mother. Then she improves leaps and bounds during the Kaga arc, when she leaves her bodyguard behind to follow Anotsu Kagehisa. She has to look out for herself and fails a lot, but also comes surprisingly far all on her own, even going so far as to risk her life during the whole enterprise, yet gets away unscathed. Travelling with Anotsu forces her to readjust a good part of her mentality up to now; her view of Anotsu and also her view of herself and her goals - she's forced to both broaden her horizons (seeing his human side, saving his life) and become a little firmer in the pursuit of her own ends (following him, her statement at their parting that she'll come to kill him one day). Now, in the prison arc, she's once more left on her own, this time not by her own choice, and also has a girl no older than fourteen to take care of.
Except for select instances in which lying is an important aspect of survival, Rin is absolutely honest, and, as mentioned earlier, kind of an open book. She cries very easily and is generally on the emotional side and no small bit impulsive, herself, though she is also very much a thinking person, who constantly questions if what she is doing is really the right thing to do. It is kind of a dilemma for her - she is fundamentally against killing, yet that is exactly what she is trying to do. Her whole story arc is, after all, built on her desire for revenge.
While she is insecure about them at first, Rin does very much have her own opinions on things, and she comes more and more into her own and learns to stand up for her beliefs as the series progresses. In fact, one of her major characteristics is development.
Though she might sometimes give off the impression, Rin is by no means naïve. Or, well, she is, but not the doe-eyed, sees no evil level of naïve. The girl's seen some pretty gruesome things in her life, including maiming, murder, rape (well... technically she heard it, but same difference) and other such niceties. In spite of that, she's not desensitized to these things - in fact, she'll react very violently to gruesome sights, like throwing up when getting a nice view of a mountain of corpses. Her physical reactions are generally intense; for example, she may also get height sick.
No matter the horrors she's witnessed, and despite experiencing a lot of negative emotions from sadness to anger to bitterness, Rin also manages to retain her positivity and cheerfulness. She is also always thoroughly, utterly nice. The kind of person who throws herself in front of a stranger to protect them. Who will pass up an opportunity to kill her worst enemy because he's sick, and, well, you just don't kill sick people! This is a girl who sticks to her principles.
Furthermore, she is incredibly determined, going to a lot of lengths to achieve her goals when she's really into it. “Giving up” is hardly part of her vocabulary. She will scheme and keep trying and sometimes fail until she reaches a satisfactory resolution.
In the vein of the previous two paragraphs: while Rin is nice, she isn't saintly. She can be very selfish, and she is even capable of doing things of questionable morality - like, oh, hanging with a whole bunch of killers. Because, really, she doesn't mind if her friends are people who have killed and still do kill - as long as they don't get off to torturing their victims, because that's just crossing the line. She makes mistakes and does wrong things, sometimes.
Abilities/Strengths: On the physical side of things, Rin has learned a few kata with the sword and is capable of cutting a branch falling from a tree into six pieces before it hits the ground. She also has her “standard attack”, Flight of the Golden Wasps, which usually is of... debatable effectiveness, but works as a distraction.
She is surprisingly effective with her fists; girl's got a mean punch. Can kick a man across the room, if duly provoked - so she has more physical strength than one would guess for a girl of her size.
However, her main strength really lies in the mental area. She makes plans and figures stuff out and puts two and two together. If the situation calls for it, she can get quite... creative. She's intelligent and capable to look past her own concerns at the bigger picture, as well as clever and able to think outside the box.
Another thing that works to her advantage is her sheer boldness and the aforementioned determination, which, frankly, sometimes borders on the insane. We're talking about having her belly slit to illegally pass a checkpoint or dislocating her own thumb to escape being tied up.
She can also be a good actor, again if the situation calls for it.
Weaknesses: Okay, let's ignore what I said up there for a moment and face the fact that Rin fails at fighting. Seriously, she does. While she isn't exactly clumsy with her sword, she probably never had anyone to train with before meeting Manji, so she was basically just dry-practicing her kata. Another factor is that all of the other fighters of this series just happen to be pros and lightyears ahead of her, so, while she's probably better than the average woman of her time, that isn't exactly of much use to her.
Her Flight of the Golden Wasps attack is really a hit-and-miss thing. She doesn't even look where she's throwing the things, so her aim is less than stellar. On a meta level, the move basically exists to spoof the “Rule of Cool” that is prevalent in so many manga - i.e., show that stuff that looks cool would often be horribly ineffective in real life.
On the personality side, her cleverness is often hampered by her impulsiveness. Sometimes, she just acts and reacts without thinking very much, and it gets her into trouble.
I already mentioned her selfishness, and sometimes, she also has an air of self-righteousness about her, which is most apparent in her discussions with Dōa, and several meet-ups with her enemies; and some of her decisions, while she often obviously means well, are just morally uncomfortable - such as deciding to fake her bodyguard's death to a kid whose father and only living relative was just killed by said bodyguard. Of course she recognizes that the path of revenge is not exactly a good one, and it's understandable that she wants to prevent another kid from walking the same path, but it is a choice that is awfully convenient for her.
She's also kind of failing at this whole revenge thing, at least when it comes to Anotsu.
Defining Quote(s): “If you want to tear down the sword school walls... just try and do it! Keep dreaming... your dreams of war! Like this! For now, I'll wait. And see how far you go! Maybe the Ittō-ryū wins! But when I know for sure... I'll come to kill you! Without fail!“ - Rin, BotI chapter 94
„He said 'don't let them fool ya'
He means the one who rules ya
I say you gotta seize /
the power to be free'
And I don't mean the money
And I don't mean control
But I mean the power over our heads and our souls“ - lyrics taken from Hame Baham by Laleh
“Time flies, make a statement, take a stand” - lyrics from Come Along by Titiyo
Other: Now, here go a few theories I have on her character. Meaning that they're never stated as fact and I'm really just speculating.
In canon, we never really see her doing much outside of her revenge. Since she is basically the main POV character, I infer of this that she is so focused on her quest that little thought is spent on things outside of it, or what might come after it.
Additional, very recent events (in the Japanese chapters) have led me to believe that she may not even necessarily be counting on there being an “after” - that at least part of her is prepared to not surive the whole thing. This is really only a vague hint and thus an equally vague hunch, but I thought I'd mention it.
Then, regarding Anotsu, I sort of have the theory that part of her doesn't even want to kill him, that indeed, part of her needs him to stay alive. He's kind of a fixture, a symbol for her healing process. He's the one she can point at and say: "He did it, and I hate him for it." He's the catalyst. As long as he's around, she can keep being the way she is. As long as he's around, she won't have to let go and let that chapter of her life come to a close just yet. As long as he's around, she can stall on a final decision. And if he dies before she's arrived at the end of her coping process, she might be left without closure. This theory is mainly spurred by the battle at Lake Suwa (culmination of the Kaga arc, in which Anotsu faces off against his followers) in which Rin tells Manji to kill Anotsu's followers, thereby effectively saving his life, then wonders to herself why she isn't feeling more ecstatic at the prospect of Anotsu's imminent death and finding no answer, and finally quite simply letting Anotsu go. Basically, I guess what I'm saying is that him being around keeps her from having to make probably make the hardest decisions and steps yet - she will lose any valid reason to keep Manji around (and she's kinda in love with the man), and it will also probably mark her passage into adulthood.
Action Writing Sample:
Uh, wait... something is weird here.
Dōa, did you notice -
[By this point, she's turned around, just in time to notice the empty space behind her.]
Dōa? Dōa, where are you?
[She looks around; left, right, left right - and desperation quickly appears on her face as she realizes that the person she's calling is not here.]
I don't get it. Why does this have to happen to me?
[For a while, she just stands there with her head lowered and looks at the ground, so similar to the ground she knows, yet, as a sinking feeling tells her - not to mention the scenery - not located anywhere near Edo. Her arms close around her torso and she shivers; she is still wet all over.
But then she takes a deep breath, straightens her posture.]
No time for whining, Rin! Let's have a look around first.
[Nodding to herself fiercely and raising a fist for emphasis, Rin takes a brief look around and, since she is in the middle of wilderness, just starts walking in a direction. Surely, she's got to meet people eventually, if she just walks long enough.]
Third Person Writing Sample:
Once again, Rin was down on her luck. She was beginning to think fate really had it in for her. And this time was probably worse than everything previous, too. True, she wasn't broke and starving and travelling alongside her worst enemy, nor was she as clueless as she'd been two years ago, but once again she found herself alone. Manji gone without a trace. Well, okay, there was a trace, but the people involved seemed to do everything in their might to wipe it away. Thus, going to Habaki's house again would make little sense; the answer would remain the same. But where else was she supposed to look? By now, she felt like she'd walked all the streets of Edo in her attempt to cover all the places he possibly might be - he or Hyakurin, for Hyakurin might now something. She did work for Habaki, after all.
A small break was in order; and so Rin sat down on the low wall that seamed the banks of Sumida river. For a moment, she allowed herself to let go - put her head in her hands, elbows propped up on her knees, and heaved a very heartfelt sigh. Damn it, Rin, she mentally chided herself, what's this even supposed to accomplish?
Manji wasn't just magically going to appear somewhere on the streets, no matter if she walked until she wore her sandals down. Neither was Hyakurin, of course. But at least, Rin had a better idea where she might be found. Probably at Chokichi's or some dingy backyard inn. Rin would go there tomorrow, after her feet were rested; for she didn't feel like she could walk another step, even if her mind nagged her on to go, to go find Manji, as soon as possible.
He hadn't returned to the hut, either, where she'd looked first. Not that he was likely to return there and neglect to follow her to the dōjō as soon as he saw her note. He took his job very seriously. Rin smiled ruefully at the dusty street, heart aching for him. She'd gotten so very used to having him around, and even a day's absence made her miss him dearly. Well, the fact that his fate was so uncertain contributed to it. And it wasn't that she felt helpless without him - though he did feel her a lot more secure, she couldn't deny that. She'd moved on from the stage where she was ignorant of her own weaknesses. In fact, being with Manji was what had taught her to recognize and accept them. That, and its inevitable consequences. Briefly, she thought of Renzō and winced.
But Asano Rin was getting quite adept at mental organization, and so she put those thoughts away to a corner of her mind and focused on the task at hand. Which was going home. Her feet still ached, the short rest hadn't been enough to relieve them. It was still a good while to the Asano dōjō from here on out. Briefly, she toyed with the idea of hiring a palanquin, and unconsciously, an expression of longing spread on her face - but no. Too expensive, and she didn't have a steady income, so walking it was. She gathered her momentum and stood up swiftly, and soon only her footprints in the dust beneath the low wall stood witness that she'd ever been there.