Application | rubycity_rp

[roseblooms]

PLAYER
Name: Alex
Age: 18+
Personal Journal: alexclusive
E-mail:gloriousrikkaidai (at) hotmail (dot) com
AIM/etc: AIM: GloriousRikkaidai

CHARACTER
Name: Kurama
Canon: Yu Yu Hakusho
Age: Technically, he's lived over a thousand years as a demon; in his human form at this canonpoint he's around fifteen or sixteen.
Timeline: End of Episode 25
Items with character at canon point: The clothes on his back and the seeds he carries with him, the scope of which are mostly covered in the abilities section but the short version is that Kurama uses plants as weapons and so he carries his arsenal of those plants as seeds in his hair, which he then activates with his personal spiritual energy.
If playing another character from the same canon, how will you deal with this?: Not applicable!


Personality:
At first glance, Shuichi Minamino is the very model of what a Japanese student and son should be. He's in his mid-teens, respectful and mild-mannered, at the top of his class in all his subjects, and gives off the impression that not only would he never hurt a fly, but that he'd personally carry it outside and set it down on some nice plant in the backyard if he were ever to find one buzzing around the house.

At first glance, that's pretty much exactly the impression that Kurama — the centuries-old demon who's been hiding himself under the alias of Shuichi Minamino in the human realm for the past fifteen years — would want you to come away with.

Kurama's personality is one of dual and sometimes competing natures. In his present form, he is technically a half-demon — a status that has no actual reflection on his morality, as in the world of Yu Yu Hakusho, "demon" is a general term for various supernatural species that inhabit different dimensions of existence. As a fox demon, Kurama was born and spent the first several centuries of his life living in Demon World (or Makai, as it's sometimes referred to), where he ultimately cultivated a reputation as a notorious master thief. However, this notoriety also earned him his fair share of enemies, and following one particular ill-fated encounter with a set of them, a badly-wounded Kurama chose to evade capture and possible execution by crossing the realms and hiding himself in the Human World, where he fused his spirit with that of an unborn human baby. Thus, he is now a creature of two natures, human and demon, with the attributes and tendencies of both.

However, this is not to suggest that these different sides of Kurama are separate or individual entities in their own right, or that the human Shuichi Minamino is somehow being possessed by the fox demon Kurama. Rather, Kurama's personal story revolves more around that of a demon who receives a massive dose of human priorities without really expecting to, and thus ends up having to both explore the attributes of humanity that are in some ways inherently foreign to its kind, and to attempt to reconcile those new feelings and considerations with its already-formed identity as it had existed in the past.

And indeed, when we first meet Kurama, he's...actually doing the "human" thing rather badly. After his mother falls terminally ill, Kurama steals a supernatural artifact from Spirit World with the power to grant him the wish of his heart's desire, which he intends to use as a means of curing his human mother of her illness. However, it's difficult to read this course of action as one born of empathy — or even of altruism. Throughout the process, Kurama's perspective is still revealingly self-centered even in his most self-sacrificing moments; he refers to his mother as "the woman" almost as much as he does any other term, and he confesses that it's personal guilt that's driving him to make the decisions he's making, as much as it is any particular empathy for his mother's obvious suffering. Kurama fully intends to use the artifact in question to cure his mother, even knowing that in order to make it function he'll have to trade his own life to do it. However, until it's explicitly pointed out to him by a third party, it never seems to occur to him that his mother might be distraught and inconsolable at the realization that her teenage son had sacrificed his own life for hers. It's as though Kurama expects his mother to behave in the way that presumably a demon would — prioritizing self-interest before all else — and thus that her reaction would be purely that of gratitude and satisfaction to still be alive, rather than horror and despair at the exchange of her only son's life for hers.

Kurama's mission to save his mother therefore serves as a perfect case study of the problem that Kurama must grapple with over the course of the series: learning how to take the personality and priorities that he'd had as a demon and incorporate his newfound humanity into them.

As a fighter, Kurama is cautious, strategic, and above all, ruthless. At a time in the series when his fellow demon, Hiei, has been portrayed as one of the most powerful and dangerous foes the protagonist has yet come up against in his career as the Spirit Detective, Hiei himself remarks that he explicitly chose Kurama to be his partner in crime "to avoid fighting him". In short, a demon as fearsome as Hiei decided that it was better all around for him to stay on Kurama's good side and ally with him, rather than running the risk of having Kurama as an enemy. Not only is Kurama a brilliant tactical fighter and a powerful supernatural entity in his own right, but what perhaps makes him most dangerous of all is the fact that he will prioritize winning over everything else, including his own well-being and even sometimes human conventions of morality. In most of his fights, he ends up injured in some way — not because his enemy is stronger than he is, but rather because Kurama deliberately waits out his foes and learns their attacks before retaliating, so as to better respond to and overcome them. In a sense, he's perfectly willing to use himself as bait to draw out information on his opponent's attacking capability, and once he learns that, then he's ruthlessly effective in using that information to his own fullest advantage.

In battle, Kurama's ability to control and sometimes disregard human empathy also proves itself an asset. When the situation calls for it, he's perfectly willing to set aside questions of whether the ends justify the means and simply achieve the ends by whatever means he deems necessary. This is demonstrated to chilling effect during the Chapter Black arc, when one of the enemies that the team faces is a prepubescent child whose role in the big bad's overall scheme is to be used purely as a stalling tactic for the protagonists. The child in question, Amanuma, challenges the various protagonists to a series of games in which the penalty for losing is to restart the game from the beginning — but the "penalty" for winning is that by video game logic, achieving victory over Amanuma will also cause his death. Fully aware of this, Kurama not only chooses to seek victory over Amanuma but explicitly makes him aware of his imminent death as a means of rattling him and hastening his defeat from carelessness in playing the game. Immediately thereafter, in his fury over being manipulated into causing Amanuma's death in order to proceed with their mission to save the world, Kurama demonstrates the epitome of his killing ability: relying purely on instinct (and presumably, muscle memory), Kurama beheads a telepathic miniboss with his mind a complete and unreadable blank slate. To stress — he didn't shield his thoughts from being read or conceal them from the enemy telepath somehow; he quite simply just murdered a guy without ever once having a conscious thought about it in the first place.

Ruthless though it may be, this method of fighting is still indicative of a fusion of Kurama's demon side and his human one. As a fully-fledged demon, we are shown that Kurama possessed a cruel and even somewhat sadistic streak, with tendencies more closely akin to a predator who likes to toy with his prey. In his present half-human state, those tendencies come tempered by a willingness to participate in team efforts and work toward greater, mutually-beneficial ideals. As a full demon, Kurama's interests were always largely self-serving and social relationships held very little stock with him, as in the case when he abandoned his bandit partner Kuronue to death after a job went bad, or when he actively contracted a hitman to blind and otherwise wound his subordinate Yomi when Yomi's recklessness began to outweigh his usefulness. Currently, though, Kurama functions as a dependable and capable member of Team Urameshi, perfectly willing to prioritize the team effort over his personal well-being, and actively participating in attempts to preserve the human world from the supernatural threats that might endanger it.

And indeed, over the course of the series Kurama is shown to forge and maintain meaningful relationships with every member of Team Urameshi, as well as with many of their assistants and supports. He often seems to be the only member of the team that Hiei gets along with above and beyond grudging respect — no small feat when Hiei's personality tends toward the abrasive at best and the outright violent at worst. (In fact, in many instances he functions as Hiei's "interpreter" of sorts, supplying translations of Hiei's otherwise menacing — and frequently tsundere — remarks. He is also presented as the first demon that Yusuke doesn't simply see through a black-and-white lens; in their first real discussion, Yusuke asks Kurama why "a demon would care so much about a human", and Kurama's answer and subsequent actions lead Yusuke to empathize and ultimately forge a rapport with him, which rapidly evolves into understanding, friendliness, and mutual concern for the other's well-being. Furthermore, despite apparent contrasts in their roles as team smart guy and team oaf, respectively, Kurama and Kuwabara are shown to have a close friendship amongst themselves, with Kurama occasionally following Kuwabara's lead without protest on the rare occasion when he enacts a plan, or when Kuwabara is the member of the team shown to attend Kurama's mother's wedding as his guest. Additionally, he is polite and friendly with Spirit World agent Botan, shown to hold affection for Hiei's sister Yukina, gets along amicably with Kuwabara's sister Shizuru, and treats Yusuke's childhood friend Keiko with respect and consideration.

In downtime moments with his social network, the attributes of Kurama's human side come to the forefront more openly. He is both witty and sarcastic, perfectly willing to poke fun at any of his comrades if they create an opening for it, and equally willing to jump on the bandwagon and join in with teasing someone else if another member of the group is already doing it. He's incredibly intelligent, well-read, and insightful, but also enjoys card games and likes to play video games as one of his pastimes. Of all the assorted members of Team Urameshi, if someone is going to drop a tactical nuke of laser-guided shade, the likeliest suspect is Kurama. And in some ways, he's the character most willing to be the voice of the people and say what everyone is thinking — such as when Yusuke risks everyone's lives on a battle tactic that even he himself didn't know would work, and Kurama comments that "all this time [they'd] thought [he] was a brilliant strategist, when really [he was] just a lucky fool."

So, who is Kurama? He's a person of many facets — a human boy, a demon fox, a ruthless tactician, a deadpan snarker, a reliable teammate, a self-sacrificing idiot, a loyal friend, a dutiful son. He's what happens when you take someone who cared for no one but himself for a thousand years and then introduce him to a support network full of meaningful people to love. He's polite when it's advantageous, mild-mannered when it suits him, manipulative when he needs to be. He's the kind of fighter that even renowned fighters are wary of pissing off. He's the kind of friend who's going to find a way to come through for you whenever he's fighting for you.

If it means his own life, then so be it.

If it means someone else's, well. More's the pity for them.


Background:
▶ Kurama on the Yu Yu Hakusho Wiki
▶ Episode Summaries for Yu Yu Hakusho


Abilities:
The specific details of Kurama's various attacks are most easily summed up by just linking the Wiki — thanks, fighting anime, for that huge variety of needlessly specific named theme attacks — but the basic summary is this:

As an "A-Class ranked" fox demon, Kurama possesses a high amount of Demon Energy, which is basically a self-generated form of spiritual magic used to power and facilitate his attacks. Specifically, his attacks come in the form of plant manipulation; by using his Demon Energy, Kurama can do a number of things with plants, including but not limited to: accelerated growth, transforming reasonably benign plants into more aggressive or deadly ones, altering the form and nature of plants (as in the case of transforming a single rose into his trademark Rose Whip, which despite being comprised of plant matter is so strong that it can slice through solid stone without difficulty), and so on.

He also seems to possess some level of general psychic abilities. He is capable of perceiving supernatural energies on a sort of psychic radar and can make very general guesses about how powerful those energies are based on those perceptions. He is shown to be able to communicate telepathically with another spiritually-sensitive person at close range, though he is not capable of reading or influencing other people's thoughts, so this seems to be limited solely to communication and not alteration.

Even in his half-demon state, Kurama has an unusually powerful sense of smell and can track people over long distances by scent, as well as discerning between one person and another on the sole basis of smell. He is also capable of reading lips.

At a point in the series beyond Kurama's canonpoint in this app, it is also shown that it is possible for Kurama to revert forms out of his human body and back into the form he possessed as Youko Kurama, a full-fledged demon. In this form, his Demon Energy increases exponentially and more of his demonic personality traits come to the forefront, at least initially; the more Kurama adapts to the transitioning process, the more of his human side bleeds over as well, thus ultimately rendering the changes largely cosmetic in nature. Though this transition process would require a catalyst that Kurama does not currently possess, a regain such as the Idunn Box (which provides the catalyst in the series) or an aging event that allowed Kurama to de-age beyond his human lifespan would also bring this ability into play. As Youko Kurama, his powers don't explicitly change; he's simply more powerful and somewhat more animalistic in appearance, possessing ears and a fox tail in addition to a growth spurt and a palette swap.

On a more mundane level, Kurama is highly intelligent, excels in academics, and among other things is apparently very good at video games.


Network/Actionspam Sample:
Kurama on the Ruby City Test Drive Meme!


Prose Log Sample:
There are all manner of beasts in these woods, he muses as the city limits fade farther and farther into the distance. That's what the people who've lived here awhile will tell anyone who asks, at least — out of concern for an intrepid wanderer's safety, most likely. They'll catch word of someone's intentions to head out past the boundaries of the city proper, their aim of venturing into the dark and dangerous woods, and offer up words of warning and caution in return. Be careful out there, they'll say. There are dangerous creatures in the woods. Perhaps it'd be better not to go in the first place.

He has nothing to fear from these woods, he knows. Certainly there are creatures in it; he can smell them on the wind as he walks. And likely they are quite dangerous creatures, to human eyes. Wild animals so often are.

It's no surprise that he feels more at home here than he does in the city proper. By the definition provided — creatures wild and dangerous — he belongs in these woods, too.

And yet, even as he wanders out into the depths of the forest, off the beaten path to follow more rugged trails of entirely his own design, he finds that it's difficult to properly enjoy it. If he wanted, he could make himself the lord of these woods, he feels; what the residents here call "wargs" and "tsuchigumo" truly aren't that far off from the C-class demons of Makai, and it's been centuries since he first proved himself far superior to those. He could kill them, if he so desired. Maybe once he would've, whether for sport or for gain or simply to keep his own skills at killing in general honed and fresh.

But no. What he catches himself thinking about as he wanders into the woods isn't conquest, and it isn't personal gain.

It is, of all things, whether being forcibly snatched away to some pocket dimension beyond the scope of Spirit World's reach constitutes a violation of his parole — and, on a considerably less convivial note, whether anyone will think to make excuses to his mother about his abrupt and unexpected absence.

With any luck, the duty will fall to Yusuke. Hiei's been relegated to messenger status too many times already to be assigned this one, and surely not even Koenma could possibly think that dispatching Hiei on any sort of sensitive diplomatic mission to a human recipient could ever be a good idea. And Kuwabara — well. Kuwabara is Kuwabara, and he would do his best, but it wouldn't be good. It certainly wouldn't be tactful.

Yusuke, though. To first appearances, he doesn't seem as though he'd be that much more decorous than Kuwabara — and yet, Yusuke also has a way of surprising people when they least expect it. Moreover, Yusuke has a way of rising to whatever an occasion demands of him, and particularly so when it's some interest of a friend's at stake.

The unexpected ease of his own unconscious word choice brings a smile to his face. Friend. Yes...they are that, aren't they?

What an odd notion. He is a fox set free in a forest, and here he is thinking about his human friends.

It's many hours before he eventually wanders back to the city limits.

It's many hours before he stops thinking of home, too.