Ren Akiyama (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
promisedknight) wrote2036-01-10 11:42 am
promisedknight) wrote2036-01-10 11:42 am
Entry tags:
DDD App
Player nickname: Akino
Player LJ:akinoame
Way to contact you:
Email: brittany [dot] akinoame [at] gmail [dot] com
AIM: Canta Akino
Other:
Are you at least 15?: Y
Current Characters: Aqua (Kingdom Hearts), Kendrix Morgan (Power Rangers), Miharu Minato (Kamen Rider OOO)
Character: Ren Akiyama (Kamen Rider Knight)
Fandom: Kamen Rider Ryuki
Character Notes: Canon is screwy due to abuse of time travel reset button. Ren dies at the end of canon and is revived due to time travel, but he forgets everything about his life as a Kamen Rider. Let's see if we can fix that.
History: The story actually begins with someone entirely different—a little girl named Yui Kanzaki and her older brother, Shiro. Their story wasn't a happy one: to put things lightly, they were treated horribly by their parents and locked away in their house all day, with only each other for company. They drew pictures of monsters and created their own little world, the Mirror World, where the monsters would protect them from all the bad people in the real world who would hurt them. Then one cold day, Yui collapsed and died, and nobody came to rescue them. Shiro begged and pleaded, and only a reflection of Yui in the mirror would answer his wish. She merged with the dead Yui and kept her alive, but it would only last until Yui's twentieth birthday, when she'd disappear forever. Her crossing caused a massive explosion that set fire to their house and killed their parents. Shiro survived and promised to always protect Yui, even though they were separated when they were taken in by different relatives.
Years passed. Ren Akiyama was a troublemaker, always getting into fights and generally making enemies. He drifted along in a dead-end life, with no future. But he was in a serious relationship with Eri Ogawa, a student at Seimeiin University. He brushed off her insistence that he should try to fix his personality, but in all honesty, she was the most important thing in the world to him, and he would have done anything for her. On her birthday, he came to pick her up early from the lab, where she was running an experiment with Professor Ejima and an upperclassman named Shiro Kanzaki. Something went wrong—or possibly, very, very right—and a Mirror Monster called Darkwing appeared and attacked Eri. She collapsed, falling into a coma. Kanzaki offered Ren an ultimatum: either Ren could act in rage against Kanzaki and thus let Eri die, or he could fight as a Kamen Rider in the hopes of saving her life. Ren chose the latter and took up an Advent Card deck, forming a contract on the spot with Darkwing and becoming Kamen Rider Knight.
Thirteen Kamen Riders fought against one another in the Mirror World for a single prize: the power to grant one wish, and each of them was desperate for a wish. Only the survivor could gain that power, and without battle, the Riders couldn't survive—they had to fight other Monsters in order to feed their Contract Monsters or else the Monsters would turn and eat them instead. In order to gain an edge over the other Riders, Ren found a young woman named Yui, Kanzaki's younger sister, and formed an alliance with her, in exchange for trying to help her find her long-lost brother. Eventually, the partnership became a friendship, and he began to protect her because she was someone he cared about, rather than a convenient ally and source of information.
Then one day, a cub reporter named Shinji Kido stumbled upon a card deck and became Kamen Rider Ryuki. Everything changed. Ren tried to fight him, naturally, but Yui wouldn't stand for it and threatened to leave him if he harmed Shinji. Despite Shinji's screw ups, Ren found himself becoming less annoyed by him as time went on and more invested in protecting him, much to his own confusion. He tried to run away from the budding friendship. As this was going on, another Rider named Miyuki Tezuka managed to learn about Eri and told everything to Shinji, and a Rider named Jun Shibaura exposed Ren's weakness of heart and inability to kill. He tried to betray Shinji, but the other Rider won him over by promising to fight him if he ever needed, and he began to respect him.
But Kanzaki was the one running the Rider War, and he needed them to fight in order to grant his own wish. He forced Ren's hand by threatening Eri's life. Torn between his friendships and his fiancée's life, he asked Shinji to make good on his promise. But he couldn't kill him. He ran away, tried to challenge other Riders, and finally came face-to-face with the final Rider, Odin. Odin was far stronger than he was, but in a desperate move of self-defense, Ren managed to kill him. It nearly broke him, but he kept going on automatic, trying to fight other Riders. It took Shinji and Yui to save him, with Shinji taking on the next Rider while Yui slapped some sense into Ren, telling him that Eri had woken up. Though he was scared to find out if he'd changed too much—particularly after having killed someone—Ren went to see her only to learn she still loved him just the same. But it was only temporary, and so he fought all he could so he could be sure he could wake her for real. She made him promise that if he was going to fight, he would do it for himself.
For the first time in a year, Ren had his head on straight. Unfortunately, his friends were in dire straits. Yui was disappearing, breaking down into particles. Another faction believed that by killing her, they could stop Kanzaki completely. They learned the truth about Yui's existence and that Kanzaki set up the Rider War in order to gain the wish to save her life. This time, Shinji betrayed Ren, desperate to save their friend. But Shinji couldn't kill Ren either, and Ren took care of both of his friends as much as he could. Even so, now that Yui knew of her past, she tried to control her fate. She pushed them away when they tried to save her and let herself disappear. Grieving, Ren promised to continue fighting, since it was all he could do. He and Shinji entered battle against hopeless odds as hordes of Monsters attacked the real world. One Monster got the better of Shinji. For the second time in three days, Ren lost a friend, this time as he bled to death in his arms. He almost gave up completely, but Kanzaki appeared before him and told him the impossible truth: he was the final Kamen Rider, and he would have to fight the new Odin. It was even more hopeless a battle, and Ren knew he had no chance of survival, but he fought with all he had. At the last second, Kanzaki realized that Yui wouldn't want him to resurrect her this way, and he forfeited, destroying Odin. The wish appeared before Ren. Though he hesitated a bit, remembering his friends' deaths, he wished to save Eri. He then forced himself to walk to her hospital room, and with the last of his strength, he returned her ring, which he'd kept as a reminder of his promise all this time, and put it on her finger. He died peacefully, finally having accomplished his goal.
Yui's spirit convinced Kanzaki to reset time, but this time, the two of them died as children, coexisting with their impossible adult selves in the Mirror World. In a brand new world, Ren was free from heartache and met Shinji for the first time outside the teahouse they'd once called home, but they didn't recognize each other, only feeling a vague sense of familiarity.
Personality: At first glance, Ren is very serious, with what I call an extremely low "bullshit tolerance"—if you're acting in the slightest bit silly or stupid, he's not going to put up with it. His reaction ranges from ignoring you, getting mad and confronting you, or (if you actually manage to get past his defenses) snarking at you if he does like you. He's got the emotional maturity of a teenager sometimes.
Yes, he is capable of liking people, even caring about them. But he's terrible at expressing it, and he'd rather deny it and pretend to be cool. Part of this is his own natural tendencies, and part of it is a response to the Rider War. He's not supposed to form deep, lasting relationships with anyone. The only person he's allowed to care about is the one person he has to sacrifice everything for, including his own happiness. Unfortunately, this mindset leads him to two terrible habits. The first is a tendency to run away from conflict, and god will he run. He'll try to ignore the problem, put it off, or suppress it, only for it to become a much bigger problem down the line, or he'll just drop everything and walk away from people, trying to avoid them so he doesn't have a problem. This, of course, makes matters even worse because of problem number two: He has a tendency to deny himself his own happiness. Again, a lot of this comes from the Rider War: He needs to save Eri. He needs to fight, to risk his life, to kill in order to save her. This leads to an all-consuming quest, where he really doesn't seem like his own person, just someone who exists for the sake of Eri. As Shinji and Yui began to become his friends, he started to realize that he was happy. He wasn't alone anymore, and he truly enjoyed spending time with them, getting on Yui's nerves, picking on Shinji, and such. But inevitably, it came down to his happiness and comfort with his friends or Eri's life, and he didn't know what to do. He chose Eri over himself. In his mind, it doesn't matter what happens to him—she's more important and always will be. He's self-defeating to the point that it's self-destructive, completely unable to see there may be another option.
On top of everything, he's introverted and tends to keep his emotions subtle. He's not the kind of person who easily shares what he's thinking or feeling, and he'll channel that emotion into running away, picking fights, or picking on people. Again, immature coping mechanisms. Only when he's alone will he let himself break down. But if confronted with something soul-shattering—such as the huge question over whether or not he's able to kill somebody—he can just break completely, having an intense burst of emotion before he shuts down completely.
His journey is a matter of discovering that he's a warmer, more caring individual than he ever thought he could be, and that it's okay. He struggles with these changes, tries to deny them, and tries to run away and act completely opposite, but eventually, he comes to accept that he's changed and that it might actually be for the better.
Other: Ren is able to transform into Kamen Rider Knight with his Advent Card deck, with a later upgrade to Knight Survive with the Survive card. His attacks are listed in the links below. He's got to fight Monsters regularly, or else Darkwing will eat him.
And something I glossed over in the history is something Ren is unaware of: His world is caught in a time loop. Kanzaki has been resetting time over and over in order to get the outcome he wants (his proxy, Odin, winning the Rider War and thus saving Yui's life). At some point, Ren's going to end up going through essentially a Groundhog Day moment, where the events of the past year repeat with little difference until it catches up to the cutoff point he started with. The end of canon, even if it goes decidedly different, is about trying to stop Kanzaki from resetting.
Additional Links:
Detailed analysis of the main characters of Ryuki, by the pathetic fan that is yours truly: http://akinoame.dreamwidth.org/550813.html
Reviews of the series, again by me: http://akinoame.dreamwidth.org/497259.html
Fan wiki: http://kamenrider.wikia.com/wiki/Ren_Akiyama
First Person (entry type):
I can't believe he did this. Kido's an idiot, but I never thought he'd be this stupid.
There are a couple of people who are trying to kill Yui. This started while I was busy with Eri, so I only just found out about it. Kido and I agreed we'd watch her at all times, so neither one of them could get to her. Right now, we don't know who we can trust.
So his brilliant idea is to find the Rider who's going around looking for anyone to hire him as an ally, and pays him to help protect Yui. We don't know anything about him other than he'll do anything for money.
I'm done. I already told him once that if he wants to be stupid enough to put his own life in danger, that's fine, but he's supposed to keep Yui and me out of it. I'm taking care of the problem myself.
Third Person:
If it were possible to be both tense and loosened up at the same time, Ren had managed it. It was only a couple of hours ago that Shinji had promised to fight him and when he decided that he didn't need that fight right then. Just the fact that Shinji had promised that was enough to make him feel better about the very slight possibility that they might be friends—or at the very least, that Ren might not hate him as much as he thought at first.
But it also led to a lot of awkwardness, with the fact that he had asked Asakura to kill Shinji for him. And the fact that he'd been running away for about a week or two. And the whole emotional breakdown a few days ago. On top of just generally being more moody and upset than usual, to the point that Yui was worried about him.
And he realized now, he didn't want either one of them worried about him. And that was a strange feeling.
But right now...
"Kido, put that coin down. Tezuka's annoying enough when he's trying to read me. I don't need you trying to predict anything either."
At least right now, some things didn't have to change.
Player LJ:
akinoameWay to contact you:
Email: brittany [dot] akinoame [at] gmail [dot] com
AIM: Canta Akino
Other:
Are you at least 15?: Y
Current Characters: Aqua (Kingdom Hearts), Kendrix Morgan (Power Rangers), Miharu Minato (Kamen Rider OOO)
Character: Ren Akiyama (Kamen Rider Knight)
Fandom: Kamen Rider Ryuki
Character Notes: Canon is screwy due to abuse of time travel reset button. Ren dies at the end of canon and is revived due to time travel, but he forgets everything about his life as a Kamen Rider. Let's see if we can fix that.
History: The story actually begins with someone entirely different—a little girl named Yui Kanzaki and her older brother, Shiro. Their story wasn't a happy one: to put things lightly, they were treated horribly by their parents and locked away in their house all day, with only each other for company. They drew pictures of monsters and created their own little world, the Mirror World, where the monsters would protect them from all the bad people in the real world who would hurt them. Then one cold day, Yui collapsed and died, and nobody came to rescue them. Shiro begged and pleaded, and only a reflection of Yui in the mirror would answer his wish. She merged with the dead Yui and kept her alive, but it would only last until Yui's twentieth birthday, when she'd disappear forever. Her crossing caused a massive explosion that set fire to their house and killed their parents. Shiro survived and promised to always protect Yui, even though they were separated when they were taken in by different relatives.
Years passed. Ren Akiyama was a troublemaker, always getting into fights and generally making enemies. He drifted along in a dead-end life, with no future. But he was in a serious relationship with Eri Ogawa, a student at Seimeiin University. He brushed off her insistence that he should try to fix his personality, but in all honesty, she was the most important thing in the world to him, and he would have done anything for her. On her birthday, he came to pick her up early from the lab, where she was running an experiment with Professor Ejima and an upperclassman named Shiro Kanzaki. Something went wrong—or possibly, very, very right—and a Mirror Monster called Darkwing appeared and attacked Eri. She collapsed, falling into a coma. Kanzaki offered Ren an ultimatum: either Ren could act in rage against Kanzaki and thus let Eri die, or he could fight as a Kamen Rider in the hopes of saving her life. Ren chose the latter and took up an Advent Card deck, forming a contract on the spot with Darkwing and becoming Kamen Rider Knight.
Thirteen Kamen Riders fought against one another in the Mirror World for a single prize: the power to grant one wish, and each of them was desperate for a wish. Only the survivor could gain that power, and without battle, the Riders couldn't survive—they had to fight other Monsters in order to feed their Contract Monsters or else the Monsters would turn and eat them instead. In order to gain an edge over the other Riders, Ren found a young woman named Yui, Kanzaki's younger sister, and formed an alliance with her, in exchange for trying to help her find her long-lost brother. Eventually, the partnership became a friendship, and he began to protect her because she was someone he cared about, rather than a convenient ally and source of information.
Then one day, a cub reporter named Shinji Kido stumbled upon a card deck and became Kamen Rider Ryuki. Everything changed. Ren tried to fight him, naturally, but Yui wouldn't stand for it and threatened to leave him if he harmed Shinji. Despite Shinji's screw ups, Ren found himself becoming less annoyed by him as time went on and more invested in protecting him, much to his own confusion. He tried to run away from the budding friendship. As this was going on, another Rider named Miyuki Tezuka managed to learn about Eri and told everything to Shinji, and a Rider named Jun Shibaura exposed Ren's weakness of heart and inability to kill. He tried to betray Shinji, but the other Rider won him over by promising to fight him if he ever needed, and he began to respect him.
But Kanzaki was the one running the Rider War, and he needed them to fight in order to grant his own wish. He forced Ren's hand by threatening Eri's life. Torn between his friendships and his fiancée's life, he asked Shinji to make good on his promise. But he couldn't kill him. He ran away, tried to challenge other Riders, and finally came face-to-face with the final Rider, Odin. Odin was far stronger than he was, but in a desperate move of self-defense, Ren managed to kill him. It nearly broke him, but he kept going on automatic, trying to fight other Riders. It took Shinji and Yui to save him, with Shinji taking on the next Rider while Yui slapped some sense into Ren, telling him that Eri had woken up. Though he was scared to find out if he'd changed too much—particularly after having killed someone—Ren went to see her only to learn she still loved him just the same. But it was only temporary, and so he fought all he could so he could be sure he could wake her for real. She made him promise that if he was going to fight, he would do it for himself.
For the first time in a year, Ren had his head on straight. Unfortunately, his friends were in dire straits. Yui was disappearing, breaking down into particles. Another faction believed that by killing her, they could stop Kanzaki completely. They learned the truth about Yui's existence and that Kanzaki set up the Rider War in order to gain the wish to save her life. This time, Shinji betrayed Ren, desperate to save their friend. But Shinji couldn't kill Ren either, and Ren took care of both of his friends as much as he could. Even so, now that Yui knew of her past, she tried to control her fate. She pushed them away when they tried to save her and let herself disappear. Grieving, Ren promised to continue fighting, since it was all he could do. He and Shinji entered battle against hopeless odds as hordes of Monsters attacked the real world. One Monster got the better of Shinji. For the second time in three days, Ren lost a friend, this time as he bled to death in his arms. He almost gave up completely, but Kanzaki appeared before him and told him the impossible truth: he was the final Kamen Rider, and he would have to fight the new Odin. It was even more hopeless a battle, and Ren knew he had no chance of survival, but he fought with all he had. At the last second, Kanzaki realized that Yui wouldn't want him to resurrect her this way, and he forfeited, destroying Odin. The wish appeared before Ren. Though he hesitated a bit, remembering his friends' deaths, he wished to save Eri. He then forced himself to walk to her hospital room, and with the last of his strength, he returned her ring, which he'd kept as a reminder of his promise all this time, and put it on her finger. He died peacefully, finally having accomplished his goal.
Yui's spirit convinced Kanzaki to reset time, but this time, the two of them died as children, coexisting with their impossible adult selves in the Mirror World. In a brand new world, Ren was free from heartache and met Shinji for the first time outside the teahouse they'd once called home, but they didn't recognize each other, only feeling a vague sense of familiarity.
Personality: At first glance, Ren is very serious, with what I call an extremely low "bullshit tolerance"—if you're acting in the slightest bit silly or stupid, he's not going to put up with it. His reaction ranges from ignoring you, getting mad and confronting you, or (if you actually manage to get past his defenses) snarking at you if he does like you. He's got the emotional maturity of a teenager sometimes.
Yes, he is capable of liking people, even caring about them. But he's terrible at expressing it, and he'd rather deny it and pretend to be cool. Part of this is his own natural tendencies, and part of it is a response to the Rider War. He's not supposed to form deep, lasting relationships with anyone. The only person he's allowed to care about is the one person he has to sacrifice everything for, including his own happiness. Unfortunately, this mindset leads him to two terrible habits. The first is a tendency to run away from conflict, and god will he run. He'll try to ignore the problem, put it off, or suppress it, only for it to become a much bigger problem down the line, or he'll just drop everything and walk away from people, trying to avoid them so he doesn't have a problem. This, of course, makes matters even worse because of problem number two: He has a tendency to deny himself his own happiness. Again, a lot of this comes from the Rider War: He needs to save Eri. He needs to fight, to risk his life, to kill in order to save her. This leads to an all-consuming quest, where he really doesn't seem like his own person, just someone who exists for the sake of Eri. As Shinji and Yui began to become his friends, he started to realize that he was happy. He wasn't alone anymore, and he truly enjoyed spending time with them, getting on Yui's nerves, picking on Shinji, and such. But inevitably, it came down to his happiness and comfort with his friends or Eri's life, and he didn't know what to do. He chose Eri over himself. In his mind, it doesn't matter what happens to him—she's more important and always will be. He's self-defeating to the point that it's self-destructive, completely unable to see there may be another option.
On top of everything, he's introverted and tends to keep his emotions subtle. He's not the kind of person who easily shares what he's thinking or feeling, and he'll channel that emotion into running away, picking fights, or picking on people. Again, immature coping mechanisms. Only when he's alone will he let himself break down. But if confronted with something soul-shattering—such as the huge question over whether or not he's able to kill somebody—he can just break completely, having an intense burst of emotion before he shuts down completely.
His journey is a matter of discovering that he's a warmer, more caring individual than he ever thought he could be, and that it's okay. He struggles with these changes, tries to deny them, and tries to run away and act completely opposite, but eventually, he comes to accept that he's changed and that it might actually be for the better.
Other: Ren is able to transform into Kamen Rider Knight with his Advent Card deck, with a later upgrade to Knight Survive with the Survive card. His attacks are listed in the links below. He's got to fight Monsters regularly, or else Darkwing will eat him.
And something I glossed over in the history is something Ren is unaware of: His world is caught in a time loop. Kanzaki has been resetting time over and over in order to get the outcome he wants (his proxy, Odin, winning the Rider War and thus saving Yui's life). At some point, Ren's going to end up going through essentially a Groundhog Day moment, where the events of the past year repeat with little difference until it catches up to the cutoff point he started with. The end of canon, even if it goes decidedly different, is about trying to stop Kanzaki from resetting.
Additional Links:
Detailed analysis of the main characters of Ryuki, by the pathetic fan that is yours truly: http://akinoame.dreamwidth.org/550813.html
Reviews of the series, again by me: http://akinoame.dreamwidth.org/497259.html
Fan wiki: http://kamenrider.wikia.com/wiki/Ren_Akiyama
First Person (entry type):
I can't believe he did this. Kido's an idiot, but I never thought he'd be this stupid.
There are a couple of people who are trying to kill Yui. This started while I was busy with Eri, so I only just found out about it. Kido and I agreed we'd watch her at all times, so neither one of them could get to her. Right now, we don't know who we can trust.
So his brilliant idea is to find the Rider who's going around looking for anyone to hire him as an ally, and pays him to help protect Yui. We don't know anything about him other than he'll do anything for money.
I'm done. I already told him once that if he wants to be stupid enough to put his own life in danger, that's fine, but he's supposed to keep Yui and me out of it. I'm taking care of the problem myself.
Third Person:
If it were possible to be both tense and loosened up at the same time, Ren had managed it. It was only a couple of hours ago that Shinji had promised to fight him and when he decided that he didn't need that fight right then. Just the fact that Shinji had promised that was enough to make him feel better about the very slight possibility that they might be friends—or at the very least, that Ren might not hate him as much as he thought at first.
But it also led to a lot of awkwardness, with the fact that he had asked Asakura to kill Shinji for him. And the fact that he'd been running away for about a week or two. And the whole emotional breakdown a few days ago. On top of just generally being more moody and upset than usual, to the point that Yui was worried about him.
And he realized now, he didn't want either one of them worried about him. And that was a strange feeling.
But right now...
"Kido, put that coin down. Tezuka's annoying enough when he's trying to read me. I don't need you trying to predict anything either."
At least right now, some things didn't have to change.