Komamisa — Roleplayer Guild

[All Illustrations Pending, I need to find time to sit down and just draw up the character, her persona and her shadow. Especially her Persona(e) and Shadow, since I can’t find anything satisfactory.]

Name:
Arika Kitakami (北上在処 Kitakami Arika)
Age:
18
Gender:
Female
Birthday/Birthplace/Nationality:
June 21/Kin, Okinawa, Japan/Half-American●Half-Japanese

Clubs/Extracurricular activities:
Kyudo (Archery) Club — Sub-Captain
Occupation:
Cafe Waitress
Weapon:
Yumi (Japanese Bow)

Appearance:
[Temporary Picture. Original credit to Aosaki Yukina]

Arika is a young woman with a rosy complexion and emerald green eyes, hinting at her half-foreign ethnic background. Her dark brown hair is fairly long and often worn in a high ponytail. Her hair is cut into three lengths with eyebrow length fringe, shoulder blade length sidelocks and midback length rear. She is notably taller than the average Japanese schoolgirl at 175cm, about 5' 9", and has a somewhat feminine figure with even proportions, light muscle tone, and a barely more than modest bust.

A person of few smiles, she gives off a somewhat unfriendly or aloof impression to the casual observer, often found frowning or looking to be in some state of displeasure. Her most outstanding traits are her long, shiny black/dark brown hair, long legs (the source of her height) and her green eyes.

Arika tends toward a conservative sense of fashion, along the lines of Japanese Fall and Winter fashions. Her fashion sense is not without appeal, modest enough not to illicit unwanted gazes but not enough to seem prude, just enough to accentuate her feminine traits without grabbing unnecessary and unwanted attention. She's fond of blue and green, as well as certain shades of red. She wears her school uniform without any modifications and entirely as outlined in the student guidebook, a choice that makes her appear studious, if not a bit austere.

Oddly, Arika has a particularly low tolerance for cold weather, and often wears a pair of gloves indoors and outdoors, the only exception given to when she's in her Kyudo uniform. Otherwise, other notable accessories include a few pairs of earrings, several hair ribbons, and a strange barrette that she often wears in her hair, resembling the Chinese Trigram for Water (☵).

Personality:
Withdrawn and quiet, Arika’s first instinct is to always see life through cautious and doubtful eyes. Trust does not come easily to her, and indeed takes some time to build. However, those she does trust in, she places an almost indomitable sense of faith and a willingness to confide in them while also acting as a confidant herself.

Arika presents an image of a private and nigh unflappable girl that is challenging to get to know; though not necessarily hard to like or unapproachable, she does seem to be cool to the point of being icy. She prefers one-on-one friendships to crowds, and those that she does count as friends know her to be quiet, especially in regards to her own feelings. She is not one to dally on superficial relationships or large crowds, and almost never shares details on her personal life or her innermost thoughts and emotions except with those closest to her, seeming almost two dimensional to people that don't know her very well, and surprising even her friends whenever she presents some new facet to her personality.

An unbiased observer would note her as a serious person that only speaks about relevant topics and tends to be formal in even the most casual situations. A more positive light would show that she's one to keep her head cool under pressure, a highly diligent worker, and that Arika is a person capable of managing deep interpersonal relationships on a level that more popular students wouldn't be able to. Her detractors would take it as being wholly unfriendly, stiff, awkward and entirely without meritable traits to warrant talking to.

Ultimately, each angle of observation presents its own truth, but the core truth is that Arika is a person that is deeply sentimental and of such unusually rich and complicated emotions that she doesn't know what to do with them, a true introvert that appears calmer outside than she truly is within. She carries an exceptionally strong desire to contribute to the welfare of those she thinks of as friends, particularly in regards to her best friend, of whom she holds on a pedestal as the 'perfect person'. Perhaps due to this, her friends know her as a calm and kind person that represents a strong source of stability and devotion in their lives; an almost maternal (or at least older sister-like) figure that is always willing to lend a hand. Indeed, Arika values her integrity a huge deal, but has a great deal of trouble displaying emotions when they sometimes confuse even her, a distinct contrast in comparison to her fine tuned ability to read the emotions of others.

She is quickly tired by places with complex yet fake personalities, and large crowds where she can't find time to think and reflect. Much in part due to her deftness at reading other’s emotions, superficial and overly ambitious people tend to disgust her, and her clear dislike for people she finds fake can become a problem when it comes to her place in school. It should also be noted that she appears to have some slight aversion to the male gender, though she doesn't seem to fear them or dislike them, and merely treats most men with an oblique sort of irreverence beyond her already distrustful nature of outsiders. Arika is prone to acting passive-aggressively or indirectly when she's in conflict with someone, as she's sentimental she clings to the past and seems to have a hard time letting go of things. When flustered, she will sometimes go meek, but more often struggles getting the correct words out, beginning sentences, stopping, then switching to a different wording.

With the exception of the outdoor kyudo range, Arika also prefers to stay indoors and at home rather than going out, sometimes inviting friends over to eat at her place and do things in there. Complementing her preference for indoors, she is fond of painting and working on model toys. Though she never applies it, she’s implied to be a decent shogi player as well. Academically, she is known to be quite adept at secretarial work as well as creative literature with an excellent eye for detail and organization, but she is terrible at math.

Arika is the type that strongly values harmony, a trait that manifests in everything from her schoolwork, to her organization at home, to her groupings at the kyudo range. Her desire for balance also works against her. She doesn't take too much criticism and strong negativity too well, and can quickly become unhappy or even physically ill if subjected to a hostile enough environment. Such events don't affect much change to how she presents and poses herself to most others, but the inner turmoil is tremendous. In times like these, Arika has a sort of mental “hiding place” that she likes to escape to, where she seems even colder than usual.

As was mentioned earlier, Arika is deeply sentimental and always thinking about her friends. Her sentimental nature also ensures she is diligent about record keeping. She is the type to keep newspaper clippings involving her friends, and take plenty of pictures of others—though rarely any pictures of herself.

It should also be noted that Arika is a homosexual. While she wishes it were something that was less known, it is a point of contention in her school life that gets her ostracized at the worst of times, and hurts the image a few people have of her. What people don’t know, however, is that she’s very much in love with her best friend.

Backstory:
The only child of Masani Kitakami (北上方), Arika is the 18 year old senior year sub-captain of Satoru High School Kyudo Club.

Arika was born in the Okinawan city of Kin. Kin is one of the most militarized parts of Okinawa and the city in Japan with the largest percentage owned (49%) by the US Military. The nearby Camp Hansen is known for a its controversies involving sexual assault from its servicemen. Arika's mother was the victim of one such assault, and brought her case to trial/court marshal on the soldier. For reasons undisclosed, the trial was an utter sham and was turned on her. As a result, she was ostracized and marked as false witness, and as the case was public, she lost face and popularity within the town, being called a false witness and a bother (Japanese concept of Meiwaku) for her highly "unnecessary" actions.

Dissatisfied with her situation and not wanting to raise a child in a city that was proving increasingly unkind, Masani took the then newborn Arika (as it had taken nine months just to get to trial) and moved to Hirameki, having heard it was a peaceful metropolis with a low crime rate and friendly people.

For Masani, life in Hirameki as a single-mother with slight androphobic tendencies was still less than ideal. A low wage salary-woman in Japan's typical career environment, she had little time to raise Arika, little money to support herself or her child, and proved not to be the most fit mother. For the most part, Masani was a distant parent who focused primarily on being able to enable her child a respectable education and on the ability to put food on the table. As Arika would later recount, it was a "house without much love, a building that one lived in but couldn't call a home".

Often left alone in the house, Arika remembers her early days as being rather lonely. With Arika already fighting a complex array of developing and existing emotions, Masani compounded upon her daughter's problems when she did her best to instill within her daughter a rather deep-set distrust of men. Masani's teachings proved rather successful, and for most of Arika's early life she was quite afraid of the opposite gender, even developing a budding preference toward other girls. Her acquired, borderline phobic distrust in a male-dominated Japanese society severely hurt Arika's school life. Her awkwardly quiet nature and irreverence toward male authority got her bullied and outcast, and her developing feelings toward the other gender further caused her to be ostracized by her peers.

Feeling alienated and that she needed to change if she was to survive in the school environment, the dejected, frustrated and lonely Arika withdrew herself and consciously decided that it would be best if she displayed as little of her personal feelings as possible. She applied herself to her studies, took up hobbies to distract herself, and otherwise isolated herself from heavily social activities, steeling herself and trying her best to control her environment so she wouldn't get hurt.

Though despite how she had been treated, as opposed to feeling resentful or spiteful, Arika maintained a distinctly hopeful, positive outlook in regards to her peers, even if she didn't actively display those inner feelings and hopes. As years went on, her initial "weirdness" and "rebelliousness" was forgotten by most and she was just known as the quiet girl at the back of the class that sometimes shared notes if one asked politely. The only "fault" that people seemed to remember was her romantic preference, which most have seemed to ignore after a point.

It was her stoic but kind nature that would attract her best friend, Agano Fujisaki (藤崎阿賀乃). The two met in their Junior High School Kyudo Club, which had only recently opened as Japanese laws had changed in regards to the minimum age for archery. Arika had joined after hearing that kyudo was a rather meditative sport, and Agano joined because she admired how cool Kyudo practitioners looked, while the former developed an almost natural talent for the sport, the latter was rather terrible at it. Agano quickly noted her peer's skill and sought out instruction from the "super cool girl", even deferring to her before the actual instructors.

Initially, Arika was discomforted by the other girl, being extroverted, sometimes a little spoiled, and in some respects a polar opposite of her. This discomfort led her to coldly reject Agano for some time, but persistent effort eventually led her to cave and Arika gave the instruction that Agano wanted. Somewhere along the line the two became more than just club acquaintances and grew to be best friends, maintaining a very close and personal relationship up to present day. It is also with the assistance of her friendship with Agano that Arika has opened up in recent years.

Now in high school. Arika is rather deeply in love with her best friend, but afraid to talk about it with her even if many people already know and occasionally ostracize her for being a lesbian. She simply doesn't want to ruin their friendship that way. At home, she and her mother continue to live in quite poor living conditions as Masani can't seem to hold a job anymore, and Arika works as a cafe waitress to help pay for her tuition and her own food. Her mother is distant, even abusive as she takes out her frustrations on her child.

Likes:

Model Toy Assembly/Painting
Oil Painting
Kyudo
Agano Fujisaki
The colors red, blue and green
Warm weather
Tortoises
Good books
Most anime and manga

Dislikes:

Cold weather
People who are unnecessarily critical
Unorganized environments
Spicy food
Strangers
Revealing anything about her personal life
Cold weather.
Running
Math

Persona:

Baba Yaga [+]

Arcana:
Magician
Skills:
Zio, Bash, Soul Break
Strengths/Weaknesses:
Resists Electricity, Immune to Dark, Weak to Wind

Random Notes: Stuff I couldn’t fit anywhere else on the profile

Arika means "Hidden Place", sort of indirectly referring to her really hidden feelings for her best friend, and her hidden sexuality
Kitakami means “Going North”, the Chinese element of Water is associated with Electricity and Storms, and is represented by the direction “North”.
Sticking to the Chinese element of Water, the symbolic animal for the element is the Tortoise, which is Arika’s favorite animal. Tortoises represent defensiveness, stored energy, and yearning for a life-long partner (tortoises often outlive their first owners). Tortoises are also symbolic of her general "shell" of a personality, as well as the fact that tortoises hibernate in the Autumn Arika doesn't like cold weather, and actually feels cold pretty often, so she almost always wears gloves. (I totally did that just to give her an excuse to do that glove pull pose)
Arika is aware of who her father is, and has an utter hatred for him, which is uncharacteristic of her as she is usually quick to forgive and somewhat incapable of spite.
Born June 21, Arika’s birthday corresponds with the “Cancer” sign in the horoscope, which is also represented by Water and has a personality profile very similar to hers.
In the Persona series, a notable trait of members of the Magician Arcana is their association with tragic love. Take that as foreshadowing.
At least one of Arika’s male acquaintances refers to her as “Nee-san”. She doesn’t find this too weird.

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