Noboru is a character who has lived a very charmed life due to his natural gifts. He is a super strong special snowflake who is good at everything and has a powerful Quirk and is respected by his classmates and is never challenged to succeed. And the point of his character arc is to show that such a thing cannot and should not exist - a deconstruction of the “natural-born ace” archetype seen in many shounen works.

This is why Noboru begins the roleplay with his worldview shaken and his pride irreparably damaged by a very public failure at the U.A. High School entrance examination, followed by forced enrollment into Ishin Academy, a hero school that is “only” one of Japan’s best. He is the genius who has encountered the power of hard work... and the strength of the genius that works hard. Yet despite being made fully aware of his flawed approach, he is still stubbornly clinging to his old ways and putting up the front of a cool and pompous ace. It’s not that Noboru doesn’t know what he has to do; he’s just too frustrated with not knowing how to work hard that he defaults on his standard coping mechanisms.

Beyond the aforementioned character conflict, Noboru must also address the friction between his personality and his motivation, a friction which is bolstered by the new challenges he is encountering and will continue to encounter as a student of Ishin Academy. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he aspires not to become the strongest of heroes, the most celebrated of heroes, or even the most well-paid of heroes, but rather the most heroic of heroes. However, his personality clashes with this goal in a myriad of ways. But other than the obvious issues that come with having a socially-problematic personality and a predisposition to aggression, the most important reason is that he isn’t being a hero for its own sake, but he’s being a hero for the sake of being seen as a hero - a fact which should be challenged time and time again in a prestigious hero school like Ishin Academy.

Among suggestions for augmenting his character arc, I would like to see a confrontation or series of confrontations with an individual from his middle school who has successfully made it into U.A. despite being inferior to the naturally talented Noboru. This can either be an amicable childhood friend/rival he underestimated, a nobody from middle school who looked up to him, or something else entirely so long as they can act as a thematic foil to Noboru. Whether he would win or lose is largely irrelevant; either option has significant implications for his character arc.

With that said I hope to have created a versatile framework by which to mold Noboru and his actions from these foundation blocks. While I cannot predict how exactly he will end up as a character, the intent of Noboru’s arc is to tear him apart and build him back up into a much more grown-up Noboru, who has learned to understand himself, the world, and what it means to be a hero through his comrades and the trials they face.

The impetus for Noboru’s personality was a joke about making a “salty U.A. reject” and extrapolating details implied by an attitude like that. As a result, he bears a very volatile personality and an equally large ego - a far cry from the genuinely heroic characters of Ishin Academy’s first year class, and one that definitely needs some working on if he’s to become the most world’s most heroic hero. Of course, his personality is not without his merits, but it is just approachable enough to make the bad parts that much more off-putting.

Beyond taking a joke way too seriously, the goal for Noboru’s personality is to fill an underrepresented personality archetype, and through that archetype open up opportunities for mutual character growth. More specifically, Noboru’s assertive and cavalier nature is likely to be beneficial in facilitating others’ growth, as it allows him to function as a rival to surpass, a source of unexpected inspiration, or a much needed kick in the butt. At the same time, the externalization of his ego provides the motivation for people to challenge his preconceptions about the world around him. Another important contribution to character development via interaction lies in the more subdued aspects of his personality, and the way others can draw out the parts of him that he’d like to keep under wraps - whether they be good aspects, like a staunch dedication to his friends (he doesn’t have any :C), or bad aspects, like his underlying envy over his “inferiors’“ qualities.

On a less serious note, Noboru is also capable of acting as perfectly serviceable comic relief. There is, of course, the comedy that can be derived from his disgruntledness at not being accepted by U.A. and the shortness of his height, but his personality also lends well to snarky banter and egotistic rambling.

The design philosophy behind the Forcefield Quirk is to use a multifaceted power with a few immediately obvious applications in order to create a thematic tie to Noboru’s arc, namely his overreliance on the capabilities immediately available to him rather than expanding his versatility with a given degree of effort. Through this connection, it is my hope that the growth of his Quirk will reflect his growth as a character, as opposed to the two being largely unrelated existences.

Insofar as actual improvable aspects of the Quirk itself, there are three key parameters to address: the first is the capacity of his fields, which governs not only how much force or weight they can sustain before they fall apart, but also the total surface area that Noboru can manifest during a given period of time; the second is his control over his fields, which includes his ability to move them faster, shape them more elaborately, and regulate their filtering capabilities to create esoteric effects; and the third is his range of jurisdiction, which would determine how far from his body he can control and sustain their existence.

Although general improvements to all of these aspects are to be expected given the framework of the roleplay and setting, I intend for the particular permutations of these improvements and the ways he utilizes them to be an extension of his character dynamics and other significant milestones in character development. A rudimentary example of this would be working to expand his range based on newfound relationships with others; a slightly more nuanced one would be adopting Quick-compatible tactics used by his mentor.