No Evoking In The War Room
I felt like this was as good a time as any to go over how my character's grown up since he went into play, because looking back on it from his apping, he's changed a lot.
Ultimately, Isao's originally shaped by a couple key events. The first being his parents. When he was eight, Isao's dad died, and his mother, not able to deal with it (or, as his yet-to-be-apped half-sister's bio implies, because she'd done it before) left him with his grandparents. He spent a lot of time being shuffled around between aunts and uncles. This wasn't a malicious act, as he often treated it; they just simply didn't know how to handle him, or didn't have the money or time to raise a kid. Ultimately, this left him with a couple integral parts of his character - the compulsive desire to "be a real man" like his dad was, and a need for approval from those he cared about.
His arrival in Itwatodai left him being something of a punk. He mainly was interested, even as a SEES member, in just hanging around the others. He was surrounded by hot girls, and he had enough of a badass image from being a biker that he could use that to get a lot of what he wanted. His fledgling relationship with Yukiko was basically him being intrigued that there was someone who didn't buy into his hype, even when he did. Touta and he mirriored eachother; where his friend was morose yet, at his core, serious, Isao was a lot of storm und drang. His inital hatred of Minato was more out of envy - he didn't get how someone who was his age could have their shit together enough to lead a bunch of other teenagers and young adults to fight against the end of the world. A lot of that manifested itself as him lashing out at the leader, and even when they saw eye to eye, to a certain extent, he still envied him and as such was a bit of a jerk.
Minato's death was ironically not the event that put a lot of this in motion, but the forgetting and subsequent rememberance a bit too late. Because of the fact that Isao had always been surrounded by people who were as tough as he was, he never had to back up a lot of his talk about being a man. In his mind, the strong were always in the right, and those weaker were, well, weaker. Watching someone who was, without a doubt, stronger than him or the others make a sacrifice like that really shook him up - it was a first-hand, objective lesson in what he'd always wanted to be. And then he forgot, and almost didn't remember until it was too late. It was a betrayal of everything he'd wanted to be; instead of being a hero, he'd had to be saved, and then wasn't even grateful for it.
The interim between the Iwatodai and the Vortex World was basically him mentally recoiling from that. He knew what being a real badass was, and he knew that he hadn't been it. He was basically convinced on some level all he was good at was talking about it. He'd essentially mentally resigned himself to being a mentor, as he had realized that as long as he talked a good game, he'd never have to back it up.
And then the world ended.
Dealing with the group he was with left actually gave Isao the largest potential for growth. Ageha was basically the damsel in distress that a real man was supposed to protect. Naoki reminded him a lot of some of the others he'd known in SEES, which put him in the right mindset to be of any help at all. And Rui, despite initially getting immediately on his bad side for being a little know-it-all, actually resonated with him on a core level, as they both had that complusive need to be needed.
The first day was basically him fronting, still. He could walk the walk on the outside, but in reality he had expected the others to save him. Then came the hard lessons of the next two days. The realization that, sometimes the good guys failed. And more importantly, sometimes he could do the right thing and still be wrong, or, worse set, actively make his situation worse. It cracked him a little, because it was his ultimate proof that if he wanted to be anything, he still needed other people, even if he never had felt like he could trust them before.
The fourth day and his speech marked the new beginning for him. In reality, it was as much to himself as it was to Rui. He'd been entirely too willing to accept easy answers, to put in the minimum effort to get by. In reality, it'd almost been too late. He wasn't happy with his life back in the real world, and when the situation forced him to accept a more active role in the world. His rejection of Rui's Reason was also him coming to terms with what he had been versus what he'd thought he'd been. His helping him was, in it's own way, the first time he'd bothered coming to terms with a lot of his own issues. Which is why, by the time he entered the Amala Network, he was bizarrely suicidal - realizing he'd lost his chance at protecting the others, he felt the only course left to him was to die on his own terms. Hence his terrified reaction at Gekkou making the sacrifice: in Isao's mind, it really should have been him.
And that's the lesson he took away from his "nightmare". He wasn't without flaws - he, now more than ever, needed people for his own validation. But he wasn't using them anymore, in his mind, to feel cool. He legitimately had a vested interest in the world again, and, the nightmare had been the wake up call he needed. It was a kick-in-the-ass reminder that he was only alive because someone had seen to it that he and everyone else got that chance. And, when push came to shove, he could be the hero he'd wanted to be then, so why wait for circumstances to get so dire? Rui wasn't entirely wrong; it was a fucked up place to live. The world needed more good people.
Of course, the coming realization that it wasn't just a nightmare like he thought is only going to lead to some further, interesting development...