CANON PERSONALITY: Shin idealizes the concept of manliness, with all the good and bad that comes with it. He's a strong believer in independence and standing up for oneself, and automatically moves to help people he thinks are in trouble. this is also a major weakness for him: This also means that he actively refuses to ask for help even when he needs it, on the basis of it "not being manly", and he has a lot of trouble with problems that can't be solved by punching things: Probably the best example of that is his relationship with Mamoru, which is mostly so antagonistic because Shin thought he could beat Mamoru's problems out of him, which ultimately culminated in Mamoru killing him. Twice. And of course, when it comes to Blights, it's pretty frequent for him to panic because he simply cannot think of a way to fight many of them.
To most people, Shin tends towards acting rude and standoffish, and is known to curse frequently. Once again, this tends to tie to his ideal of manliness: A man doesn't bother with stupid rules! Even his hair reflects this, as dyeing one's hair in Japan is generally considered an act of rebellion. That being said, Shin only dyeing half of his hair is also rejecting the "rebellious" group as well. A man stands on his own! All of this combines to mean that most people's first impression of Shin is that of a punk or a wannabe gangster. Either way, he doesn't expect anyone to respond positively to him, and he doesn't care. Heck. if they want a fight, he'll give them a fight!
He tends to make a pretty big deal about fitness, as he's observed performing exercise and stretches regardless of the situation around him, and he makes a big deal about taking care of his body. While he's largely accepted that most people in the school look at him as expendable, he's definitely opposed to that sort of thing, nobody's messing up his body to test stuff out, that's just stupid. It's a different story if he's protecting someone, though -- he's realistic enough to know that he can take a blow that someone else would die from, and he's usually fit enough to push them out of the way, at least.
Probably the most important relationships to Shin are with Mamoru, and female classmate Eko: Shin and Mamoru had an especially complicated relationship, since the two completely misunderstood each other so much: From Shin's perspective, Mamoru was being an escapist coward who needed to be pushed to stand up for himself, while from Mamoru's perspective, Shin was just a bully picking on the weak for his own satisfaction. That relationship exploding violently showed off a lot about Shin's personality, to be honest: Someone tried to kill me? Punch them for it once I've recovered, and we're even! And even with someone who tried to kill him, he's still trying to push that person to help him help someone who's essentially a complete stranger. That honestly gives me the impression that he doesn't really carry grudges. To be honest, he doesn't seem to be able to even comprehend the idea of people killing each other, as revelaed by his reaction to Tomonaga's murdering spree, which seemed to consist of "why the hell would someone do that?! We'd better go sit on him or something until he calms down."
Eko is the person we see Shin interacting with the most, as the two often wound up as partners, paired up by others as "those two idiots". Beyond that however, Eko's someone that Shin's constantly trying to save -- most of the times he's trying to protect someone, it's Eko, and while he calls her an idiot who constantly gets him into trouble, he still seems to be relatively close to her, and the two are a surprisingly effective group when they're working together for once.
POINT OF DEPARTURE: Not Applicable. ABILITIES: So, technically, Shin has exactly one super-power: Word magic. To be precise, it's the ability to utilize a single word and all of its meanings as magic. Depending on one's creativity and understanding of the history and meaning of the word, that can actually do a lot. The Aphorism wiki has some basic analysis of Shin's character, so I've stolen their explanation for 蘇:
"The ancient form of 「蘇」 is 「穌」. 「魚」means fish and 「禾」 stands for plants of the monocotyledonous flowering plant family. Writing two incoherent things (fish and plant) together, it means "incoherent"/ "interrupted" and "dividing". The meaning "dividing" turned into "pushing things out of the way". When a person is about to suffocate, the only way to "revive" is to "push his airway free".
As long as one knows and understands them, one can make use of all meanings of the word, including the separate pieces to an extent, so theoretically he could have confusion-inducing spells (incoherent), spell-disrupting spells (interrupted), magically cut things (divide), or even just shooting a wall of force at people from a distance (pushing things out of the way). He also seems to have a passive resistance to fish and plants, so if he somehow ends up fighting a fish or a plant, they won't hurt him as much as they should. There's also no reason he can't apply his Revive abilities to someone else, if he could... Think of any of this.
Honestly speaking, "thinking of any of this" is his biggest limiter. Shin is neither creative, nor intelligent. He does not seem to be aware of its potential for bringing other people back to life, and someone else would have to point it out to him. The same applies for all the potential powers I listed as well: All of these powers depend on him actually knowing his word's history, and he is neither intelligent enough to know any of those potential meanings, nor creative enough to find alternate uses, while at the same time he's too stubborn to even think about asking others for help to look for other ways to use it. He only uses it as a passive ability to revive upon death.
The passive ability to revive upon death appears to operate on some sort of "reset", function: Reviving seems to recover all wounds, even ones unrelated to the killing blow, as he shows no signs of any scars in spite of some of the... rather horrific ways he's died. At the same time however, he maintains the scar he had on his face from before he gained the Revive power, which leads me to believe that whenever he revives, his body is reset to what it was when he first got the character. In the case of it being used on other people (if it goes that way), it would presumably reset their body to what it was at the start of the current world. The revives themselves also take time: Shin's reviving seems to go "at the speed of plot": He will generally revive within a few minutes of the situation that killed him ending. So if he was killed by someone going on a rampage, he would revive only when the rampage ends. If there's a gunfight or a monster attack, the same thing applies: He stays dead until it ends, but comes back to life a few minutes afterwards.
Aside from that, he's fairly athletic, and has some impressive street-fighting skills, and he likely knows a little bit of martial arts. Such skills have mostly only been used in pushing people out of the way of fatal attacks and occasionally holding someone down to stop them from murdering people, though.
INVENTORY; The Naraka summer school uniform. I'm pretty sure that's it, to be honest. He was kind of busy with trying not to be murdered at the time he was taken. ANYTHING ELSE WE SHOULD KNOW?
S A M P L E S; FIRST PERSON: Someone's going to be assassinated, and we have to stop it. I get that much. But... Why the hell is the plan "disguise yourself as the target and die in his place?!" What kind of bullshit plan is that?! You think it'll be fine if I just come back to life later, is that it? Just let me say right now: Dying sucks! It hurts like hell even if it all gets fixed after! Look, we just need to focus on keeping him safe, right? Being a bodyguard is fine, I can do that, but I'm drawing the line at being a sacrifice! I have to deal with that enough at home!
THIRD PERSON: Protecting people was an obvious thing to Shin. If someone's in trouble, of course you should help them. Even if one took an injury or even got killed, it would be a mark of honour to do so. That's what he thought normally, but protecting people and being hunted down and murdered to avoid a bad situation was a completely different matter. Seriously, who even does that? Still, being athletic meant he was already prepared for this kind of situation. By the time one of his classmates was knocking on his door, he already had a rope set up so he could escape out the window. By the time they broke through his door while carrying a bat, he was already in the woods nearby. They were probably already on his trail, though – the thing about a place like Naraka was that there was no shortage of people that could track you down, no matter where you were. And so, he kept moving in quick bursts, hiding himself in between them. Why did he have to be killed when there wasn't even anything dangerous happening yet? There was no way he was going to allow that.
no subject
To most people, Shin tends towards acting rude and standoffish, and is known to curse frequently. Once again, this tends to tie to his ideal of manliness: A man doesn't bother with stupid rules! Even his hair reflects this, as dyeing one's hair in Japan is generally considered an act of rebellion. That being said, Shin only dyeing half of his hair is also rejecting the "rebellious" group as well. A man stands on his own! All of this combines to mean that most people's first impression of Shin is that of a punk or a wannabe gangster. Either way, he doesn't expect anyone to respond positively to him, and he doesn't care. Heck. if they want a fight, he'll give them a fight!
He tends to make a pretty big deal about fitness, as he's observed performing exercise and stretches regardless of the situation around him, and he makes a big deal about taking care of his body. While he's largely accepted that most people in the school look at him as expendable, he's definitely opposed to that sort of thing, nobody's messing up his body to test stuff out, that's just stupid. It's a different story if he's protecting someone, though -- he's realistic enough to know that he can take a blow that someone else would die from, and he's usually fit enough to push them out of the way, at least.
Probably the most important relationships to Shin are with Mamoru, and female classmate Eko: Shin and Mamoru had an especially complicated relationship, since the two completely misunderstood each other so much: From Shin's perspective, Mamoru was being an escapist coward who needed to be pushed to stand up for himself, while from Mamoru's perspective, Shin was just a bully picking on the weak for his own satisfaction. That relationship exploding violently showed off a lot about Shin's personality, to be honest: Someone tried to kill me? Punch them for it once I've recovered, and we're even! And even with someone who tried to kill him, he's still trying to push that person to help him help someone who's essentially a complete stranger. That honestly gives me the impression that he doesn't really carry grudges. To be honest, he doesn't seem to be able to even comprehend the idea of people killing each other, as revelaed by his reaction to Tomonaga's murdering spree, which seemed to consist of "why the hell would someone do that?! We'd better go sit on him or something until he calms down."
Eko is the person we see Shin interacting with the most, as the two often wound up as partners, paired up by others as "those two idiots". Beyond that however, Eko's someone that Shin's constantly trying to save -- most of the times he's trying to protect someone, it's Eko, and while he calls her an idiot who constantly gets him into trouble, he still seems to be relatively close to her, and the two are a surprisingly effective group when they're working together for once.
POINT OF DEPARTURE: Not Applicable.
ABILITIES: So, technically, Shin has exactly one super-power: Word magic. To be precise, it's the ability to utilize a single word and all of its meanings as magic. Depending on one's creativity and understanding of the history and meaning of the word, that can actually do a lot. The Aphorism wiki has some basic analysis of Shin's character, so I've stolen their explanation for 蘇:
"The ancient form of 「蘇」 is 「穌」. 「魚」means fish and 「禾」 stands for plants of the monocotyledonous flowering plant family. Writing two incoherent things (fish and plant) together, it means "incoherent"/ "interrupted" and "dividing". The meaning "dividing" turned into "pushing things out of the way". When a person is about to suffocate, the only way to "revive" is to "push his airway free".
As long as one knows and understands them, one can make use of all meanings of the word, including the separate pieces to an extent, so theoretically he could have confusion-inducing spells (incoherent), spell-disrupting spells (interrupted), magically cut things (divide), or even just shooting a wall of force at people from a distance (pushing things out of the way). He also seems to have a passive resistance to fish and plants, so if he somehow ends up fighting a fish or a plant, they won't hurt him as much as they should. There's also no reason he can't apply his Revive abilities to someone else, if he could... Think of any of this.
Honestly speaking, "thinking of any of this" is his biggest limiter. Shin is neither creative, nor intelligent. He does not seem to be aware of its potential for bringing other people back to life, and someone else would have to point it out to him. The same applies for all the potential powers I listed as well: All of these powers depend on him actually knowing his word's history, and he is neither intelligent enough to know any of those potential meanings, nor creative enough to find alternate uses, while at the same time he's too stubborn to even think about asking others for help to look for other ways to use it. He only uses it as a passive ability to revive upon death.
The passive ability to revive upon death appears to operate on some sort of "reset", function: Reviving seems to recover all wounds, even ones unrelated to the killing blow, as he shows no signs of any scars in spite of some of the... rather horrific ways he's died. At the same time however, he maintains the scar he had on his face from before he gained the Revive power, which leads me to believe that whenever he revives, his body is reset to what it was when he first got the character. In the case of it being used on other people (if it goes that way), it would presumably reset their body to what it was at the start of the current world. The revives themselves also take time: Shin's reviving seems to go "at the speed of plot": He will generally revive within a few minutes of the situation that killed him ending. So if he was killed by someone going on a rampage, he would revive only when the rampage ends. If there's a gunfight or a monster attack, the same thing applies: He stays dead until it ends, but comes back to life a few minutes afterwards.
Aside from that, he's fairly athletic, and has some impressive street-fighting skills, and he likely knows a little bit of martial arts. Such skills have mostly only been used in pushing people out of the way of fatal attacks and occasionally holding someone down to stop them from murdering people, though.
INVENTORY; The Naraka summer school uniform. I'm pretty sure that's it, to be honest. He was kind of busy with trying not to be murdered at the time he was taken.
ANYTHING ELSE WE SHOULD KNOW?
S A M P L E S;
FIRST PERSON: Someone's going to be assassinated, and we have to stop it. I get that much. But... Why the hell is the plan "disguise yourself as the target and die in his place?!" What kind of bullshit plan is that?! You think it'll be fine if I just come back to life later, is that it? Just let me say right now: Dying sucks! It hurts like hell even if it all gets fixed after! Look, we just need to focus on keeping him safe, right? Being a bodyguard is fine, I can do that, but I'm drawing the line at being a sacrifice! I have to deal with that enough at home!
THIRD PERSON: Protecting people was an obvious thing to Shin. If someone's in trouble, of course you should help them. Even if one took an injury or even got killed, it would be a mark of honour to do so. That's what he thought normally, but protecting people and being hunted down and murdered to avoid a bad situation was a completely different matter. Seriously, who even does that? Still, being athletic meant he was already prepared for this kind of situation. By the time one of his classmates was knocking on his door, he already had a rope set up so he could escape out the window. By the time they broke through his door while carrying a bat, he was already in the woods nearby. They were probably already on his trail, though – the thing about a place like Naraka was that there was no shortage of people that could track you down, no matter where you were. And so, he kept moving in quick bursts, hiding himself in between them. Why did he have to be killed when there wasn't even anything dangerous happening yet? There was no way he was going to allow that.