| Minamo Takagawa
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| The Little Match Girl
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| Personal Information
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| Full Name |
高川 みなも (Takagawa Minamo)
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| Aliases |
Minamo, Nyamo
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| Arcana |
XIII - Death
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| Nature |
Persona-User
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| Sex |
Female
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| Height |
165 cm (5'5")
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| Date of Birth |
March 20, 1993
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| Age |
16
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| Blood Type |
AB
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| Persona |
זהריאל (Archangel Sariel)
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| Weapon |
Improvised Staves and Bludgeons
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| Job |
High School Student, Second Year
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| Faction |
Unaffiliated
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| Squad |
Gekkoukan High School
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| Rank |
Suddenly Popular (supposedly)
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| Voice Actor |
Ayumi Fujimura in one of her cute/bitchy roles like Azaka Koktou.
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| Social Stats
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| Expression |
2 - Shy But Trying Hard
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| Knowledge |
1 - Life Clueless
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| Academics |
5 - Mistress of Midterms
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| Courage |
2 - W-Who Me?
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| Her Own Life |
4 - The Is Bonus Time
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| Understanding |
3 - Overly Empathic
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| Love |
1 - What Is "Dating"?
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| Diligence |
3 - Untiring
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| Study Habits |
5 - Valedictorian
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| Trivia
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| I Can't Cook! Minamo can cook but getting her to admit it is difficult and will really bring out Minamo's tsun-tsun side. Being the daughter of two famous and skilled chefs, Minamo intensely dislikes being characterized as a "chef's child." It's easy to anger and depress her by suggesting that her cooking skills "run in the family" instead of the result of hard work like everyone else. She's also something of a neurotic perfectionist when it comes to cooking and is obsessed with capturing the "pure essence" of cuisine (unless it's just something she's throwing together).
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| Kaiseki Ryori Trained by her father to prepare kaiseki (会席) and cha-kaiseki (懐石) meals (traditional Japanese haute cuisine), specializing in Kyoto-area items, her presentation and preparation is practically flawless, though she's not at the master level. Critics would note her preparation is flawless, but presentation needs polish.
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| Haute Cuisine (or: "A blowtorch is too a kitchen utensil. Seriously.") While not actually taught like she was with kaiseki, Minamo's mother is the owner and chef of a Michellin guide listed French restaurant. Because Minamo has spent most of her life with her mother and indeed most of her waking non-school life in the back room of her mother's restaurant, she's picked up a lot about preparing French food. Her personal favorites to prepare are pastries and cakes. She dislikes using foie gras because she feels sorry for how the birds are treated.
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| Epicurean Because her parents are renowned chefs and never let her eat out, instead just bringing home whatever the cooks made to eat for themselves, Minamo has a fine understanding of what fine food is supposed to taste like. Her palette can differentiate qualities of ingredients, can spot food preparation shortcuts, and has an evil eye when it comes to unannounced ingredient substitutions. In short, she's a food snob, annoying in that lecturing way if she doesn't stop herself (and she doesn't always notice it). When it comes to Kansai traditional and French food, she's impossibly fussy. Her sheltered palette has also resulted in some odd behavior as well. Those people who only know Minamo by her weird food habits might be shocked to know she actually knows what good food is.
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| Hates Her First Name Minamo dislikes her given name. She wishes she had a pretty and traditional first name written in Kanji. That her mother prevailed over her paternal grandparents to give her a "modern" name as opposed to a more traditional name makes her hate it even more. This is a large reason why she prefers people to call her by a nickname.
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| That Video Yes, the rumored video of Minamo fighting another female student in the halls of her former High School is real. It's not on Nico Nico Douga but on YouTube. She's not identified by name and the cellphone camera is pretty bad, but those who know her will definitely recognize her. She's very definitely giving better than she gets, too.
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| Fascinated By Bad Food Minamo has a perverse (and quite possibly masochistic) fascination with the kind of over-processed food that seems to contain nothing that was grown or farmed - the dubious "food" found in fast food chains, convenience stores, and vending machines in other words. The garish synthetic flavors, the alien textures in the mouth, and unnatural aftertastes are too much fun to resist. Many assume she has bad taste in food. This isn't true. It's just she enjoys the surprise of expecting something then the actual food is nothing like what it says on the wrapper. The way she tries to resist looking at vending machines yet is fascinated by their contents is practically like how many people react to pornography. Note, she's not immune to stomachaches from this stuff, so sometimes her nerve will give out and even she'll resist trying something, but usually she's the type to take a sip of something, make a face, describe how awful it is in glowing language ... then take another sip.
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| Singing Minamo has a singer's voice. She pays for singing lessons three times a week - Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays in the evening to train her voice. She cherishes it as the only thing she can truly call her own as opposed to something her parents "forced" her to do.
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| SpicySpicySpicy! Minamo loves to eat hot food, especially because it makes mediocre food wonderful. It's her ketchup (for Americans) and soy sauce (for Japanese) rolled into one. It's something that she could never get from her parents food (since neither Kyoto or French cuisine is particularly spicy), and it's a craving now. She loves Indian food. She loves Thai food. She loves Korean food. The existence of chili peppers is proof of the existence of a benevolent God who apparently loved Mexico above all nations of the Earth. Contrary to what one might believe, she is aware that most people don't like spicy things as much as her, so if she thinks someone else might eat what she made (or she's making it for other people) one can eat whatever Minamo makes with confidence. Anyone who eats something that Minamo made just for herself, though, is playing Russian Roulette with their taste buds as she often likes to make things very spicy and is constantly experimenting.
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| School Uniforms Are Minamo's Black Minamo wears her school uniform a lot. In fact, anytime she has a valid excuse for wearing it, she'll be in it. Her mother found buying clothes for Minamo to be a bother and frivolous. Since primary school, she's attended schools where uniforms were required. That's all the clothes her mother pretty much ever bought her. While she finds the idea of wearing what she wants to fascinating, she's having a hard time shaking this old habit.
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| Clubs! Clubs! After a casual comment by Itsuka once, Minamo is a member of a variety of clubs. She's currently checking out:
・ Photography. Noted for her melancholy black and white photography. This is the club she attends the most often.
・ Literature. She's shown up once though she lurks on their internet board.
・ Calligraphy. Noted for her beautiful brushwork though she doesn't attend often.
・ Manga Club. She seems fascinated, though she has yet to actually attend, terrified by the otaku aura of it.
・ Home Economics. She's also known to cruise by the Home Economics kitchen to see if anyone is inside. Who knows what's going on there.
・ Tennis Club. While enthusiastic, she seems to lack the coordination to ever be that good.
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| Volunteer Work Minamo is dedicated to volunteer work. More than clubs, Minamo's volunteer work is probably the easiest way to meet her.
・ Volunteer Student Tutor. Tuesdays and Thursdays after school (other times available by request) for Gekkoukan students, though she can tutor right up to university-level Calculus and Physics courses.
・ Apathy Syndrome Aid. Gekkoukan's Health Committee and the local government have an organization that helps the authorities locate those stricken with Apathy Syndrome who often wander off. To keep them from dying from exposure or dehydration, volunteers comb the city's more obscure areas to find such persons aid and call the authorities for pickup. The more extreme the weather, the more likely they'll be out there. She does this irregularly but often once or twice a week, often on Saturday or Sunday during the day. Volunteers are required to wear an service armband as well as their school uniform to be easily identifiable to the community.
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| Profile
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| "The last scene's been cut. The heroine was me."
Minamo (Nyamo to most people) seems like the kind of popular girl you'd find in any Japanese High School. She gets great grades, she's kind and friendly, energetic, a volunteer tutor, selflessly volunteers for charity, and most importantly, she's pretty. Yet for all that, there's a sadness about her, she often sits alone, and is weirdly naive about things people should know about. She's also (in)famous for her Nyamo-isms, where she tunes out if she's bored and her imagination takes very strange and very vivid turns to the point that some believe she should be writing sci-fi or manga. She'll say the most bizarre things at those times. While none of these qualify her as crazy, it does mark her as eccentric. As a result a few boys in her class have spread rumors she's a yangire. This rumor isn't helped by the fact that she was all but expelled from her former Tokyo-area school for fighting (there's rumor that one of the fights she was in was filmed via cellphone and it lurks somewhere on YouTube).
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| Personality
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| "Life Is More Fun Lived With Other People!"
"Today I ate an orange,
but it was so sour I cried.
It reminded me of myself
and I couldn't throw it away,
so I ate it all."
Living On Borrowed Time - Minamo believes the years of her life she has left are very limited, perhaps a year or two. She wonders if she'll even live to see graduation and is fairly certain she won't live to see twenty. As might be assumed, she can become uncomfortable or sad when discussions about higher education, careers, or marriage come up. She's known to become extremely maudlin on viewing cherry blossoms as she sees herself in the falling petals. Minamo's surprised to have found this feeling of her impending end is mostly liberating instead of depressing. There's so many things she wants to experience before she dies, there's new people to meet, friends to make, places to see, (bad) food she'd like to taste, and things to try. She knows she won't be able to do most of the things she wants to do, but doing as much of it as she can is good enough for her.
Book Smart; Life Clueless - Most of Minamo's stories begin with "about a year ago." This is because until a year ago, Minamo was a friendless, intensely withdrawn, shy girl essentially forbidden most normal social contact by her mother mandated schedule. She's been trying to catch up and be normal for the last year, but if she sometimes acts like a robot parroting something she heard or read in a magazine, that's because she is. For instance, she knows how to groom and dress to attract the attention of boys; she has no idea what people really do on dates, though.
Borderline Monophobic - She has a paralyzing fear of being alone, being that was her mother was against spanking and similar physical punishment and couldn't get into yelling at her daughter, so her favorite punishment of the young Minamo was to simply lock Minamo into a storeroom alone (or a closet at home) for a while and ignore her. She can function alone as long as isn't in a position where she has to dwell on it or she's in a safe place (like her room). She's aware of this hang-up and understands it's not a rational fear, but it doesn't go away.
Cheerful But A Little Plastic - On the surface, Minamo is the very picture of the "genki girl" - cheerful, optimistic, and energetic. Even if she's hurting inside, around others she'll try and fake it. Because she's really bad at faking her emotions, she comes across as obviously faking it. She believes that nobody would like a down and sad Minamo. People like cheerful and happy girls. Sad and depressed girls are girls who live alone and have no friends, and nothing makes Minamo break out in a cold sweat faster than the thought of being left alone.
A Little Morbid - Minamo's happy genki-girl personality is often only skin deep. She has another side of her personality that's quiet and sad. Some might consider this to be the "real" Minamo. It is the one that tends to look at everything she's done in her life in a critical (negative) light and is fixated on the fact that she'll die soon and that it's also nobody's fault but her own and if she had "just been a better person..." However, her genki-girl side is a direct result of her resolution to be that better person she should have been all along. More importantly, this is the side of her that Death whispers its silent wisdom to, and it's this "voice" that she uses when she asks the problems of others.
Vengeful - Minamo has a hatred of people who pick on others because she has a history of being bullied (starting with her mother in her opinion). Her own hatred of them often goes too far, and she becomes a bully herself (which she justifies that stupid people need repeated, direct lessons to learn). While it comes out the most with bullying, Minamo definitely has a heart for revenge and holding grudges. She just finds it difficult to forget intentional slights done to her. She's aware of her temper and often tries taking deep breaths to calm herself down, but if it's physical threats or bullying, Minamo finds it next to impossible not to respond, especially as her temper is explosive and she shows little warning she's about to snap.
She's A Little Spacey - No She's A Lot Spacey - Despite her efforts to remake herself, from her lonely past, Minamo has a tends towards daydreaming to entertain herself when she's bored. The truth is that Minamo finds reality a little dull and thinks it could be a lot more interesting. Given that her imagination is ... inspired (to put it nicely) and just odd (to be blunt), her daydreams can be pretty weird. With her life having become a lot of interesting in the last year or so, she finds she has more on her mind and doesn't daydream as much, but there's a big difference "as much" and "never." When life gets boring, Minamo checks out and visits Wonderland. Occasionally, even if she's not bored she'll still go off on some tangent.
Academic Overachiever - Minamo gets fantastic grades. She's also pretty smart. She's still working out on how to balance having good grades and still having time to hang out and try and be a normal person every night. While it seems she effortlessly gets good grades, it's really that earlier schooling and years of cram school have prepared her well for classes and she has the proper academic mindset - she knows where to go and what to do in order to utilize her study-time efficiently and has an intuition of the kinds of material will be on tests that borders on uncanny.
Not Mom But Mother - Those speaking with Minamo will find she's unfailingly very formal when she mentions her mother and father. She's estranged from her parents and has a lot of rage towards them, yet feels she should be a properly respectful daughter. Her relationship with her father can be described as distant and resentful for not being there for her. For her mother she feels resentment bordering on hatred. She rarely mentions her newborn brother at all.
Teenager - Minamo is a teenager. Unlike a lot of child-adults, Minamo has a lot of the hangups that teenagers have (on top of her other problems). She has body image issues - she finds herself a little skinny and flat-chested and in that horrible height where she's too tall to be moe and too short to be a "cool" woman. She has confidence issues (who can blame her). She's frequently envious of traits in other girls she admires but doesn't feel she has herself. She's often more mature than she thinks but a lot less mature than she should be.
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| Combat Information
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| Genetically engineered in a secret base for combat, empowered as a princess of the moon, piloting mighty giant robots, and able to sing love songs that can bring empires to their knees ...
Minamo is none of these things.
She's simply a High School student. She's never had much interest in weapons or training herself to kill. However, it's going too far to say she isn't a violent person. She's had several experiences that have left her with undeniable proof that she her heart does harbor a violent streak that she struggles to control at times.
Special Ability: Acceptance
"If you are afraid to die, how can you truly live?"
All living beings hold a fear of change, no matter how much they deny it. The greatest change is death, the namesake of Minamo's Arcana, to pass beyond the veil to places which may or may not exist. However there are many other lesser fears that hold a person back from doing the things they desire to do in life. Death understands that the true enemy of life is not Death, but the fear of change that prevents one from living life to the fullest. To perceive this fear in others is one of the powers granted to Minamo - even if she cannot know the actual personal faces of someone's fears, she knows them by their presence.
When she uses her power, she first sights her targets and sees the sum of their fears, which appears to her as a roiling shadow that is the counterpart of every living thing. Then Minamo produces a tiny, flickering match-like flame in her hands, representing her life. While she may use a lighter or a match, in reality she needs no props. Like moths to a flame, the fear of her target is drawn to Minamo, who bargains with her target's fears with her life. Then Minamo simply blows the flame out, snuffing it. The fears of her target rush into her temporarily, this is the essence of Acceptance for Minamo.
Acceptance for the target is to be temporarily totally liberated from fear. It fills the target with a fearless spirit and unimaginable strength, all of which come from inside. The distance between desire and reality vanish to nothing. Victory is easy when you no longer fear harm, to fly is easy when you're no longer concerned with consequences. It is truly better to die knowing something than to live wondering about it. Yet, fear is also what preserves life, and to be totally liberated from fear also can result in a dangerous contempt for life and an inability to differentiate fantasy from reality, and so Minamo's gift can be a double-edged sword.
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| Persona and Resonance
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Persona - Archangel Sariel
I am you, and you are I.
You have called me, and I have come.
I will walk with you from this day until the moment you die.
Dry your eyes, you will never be alone again.
The Archangel Sariel (Aramaic: זהריאל, Greek: ‘Ατριήλ, 'Command of God') is one of the Archangels of the Earth. His name has variations in translation, most commonly Suriel, though others exist.
Like Raphael, Sariel is associated with healing and protection. Most importantly for Minamo, he is also a benevolent Angel of Death, and is considered to have taken the soul of Moses to heaven, as well as imparting wisdom to Moses. He is persistently associated with the angel Azrael in Islamic tradition by some translations. While generally regarded as an archangel, in some sources, he's also identified as a fallen angel.
As Minamo's Persona, Sariel appears as a very tall and physically perfect young Caucasian man possessed of silvery blond hair and hard blue eyes. His features are beautiful to the point of being androgynous. Four brilliant white feathered wings sprout from his back. He is never far from her, and even should she favor another Persona at the moment, those sensitive to Personas will feel him to be nearby (either to the right of her or behind her). He always is around Minamo so that when her day comes, she will not die alone.
He has something of a playful nature towards Minamo, affectionately referring to her as "little sister" (妹ちん - imouto-chan). Like an older brother, he's very protective of his younger sister but can be a bit condescending as well.
Resonance
The sadness is not within me, it is within you.
Minamo's resonance is a bittersweet feeling, sad and happy at the same time. The feeling is best described as akin to graduating school or moving to a new city for a job at the moment you realize you're truly leaving the familiar places and friends behind. The sadness is of losing something that cannot be taken back, the fondness is that of the memories that will remain, and finally the uncertain hope that is the future.
The intensity of Minamo's resonance varies hugely with the viewer, though the Resonance itself remains the same. The feeling resonates the most strongly in those who are facing some great change in their life, even if they do not recognize it. For most people, the resonance is like hearing a sentimental tune on the radio - pleasant but easily ignored. For those tired of their lives and seeking more, it awakens that deep dissatisfaction that makes one search for something more. For those fearful of the change they face, it offers the courage to accept it. For those hateful and denying of change, only the paralyzing terror of the inevitable. As an RP tool, none of these reactions are required but suggested as ideas.
Sound Resonance: A long-forgotten yet potently sentimental song is half-heared by the person who senses her. The memory is rarely enough to recall the song's title and very little of the melody, but the memories around the song will be quite vivid. A maudlin sense of loss, partings, and a time that is gone forever, yet the knowledge that something long forgotten was returned to listener.
Scent Resonance: A long-forgotten yet potently sentimental scent is half-smelled by the person. For instance, the scent of some favorite food prepared by a now deceased parent, or the scent of summer berries when you picked them with a now deceased grandmother. Otherwise similar as the "Sound" entry.
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