Application;
PLAYER:
Name & DW Journal: Kia (
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
starswing)Birthdate & Age: January 22; 25
Characters played in Zodion: N/A
✖ CHARACTER:
Name: Rise Kujikawa
Canon: Persona 4
PB/Image: Here she is!
Info links: Rise & Persona 4
Canon Point: Post-True End
Gender: Female
Age: 16
Birthdate/Sign: June 1st/Gemini (canon)
Tattoo: 1.5” in diameter, located on the lower left side of her neck
Suitability:
Rise, as much as she winces every time that it comes up, is arguably the one with the most sexual Shadow of them all. When her inner darkness takes the form of a STRIPPER who demands that the world see all of her, well. The thing is that she’s far from the most innocent, knowing full well that she was being made into a sexualized object by her agency—admitting that they made her lie about her bust size. Perhaps it’s because of her job and the way she traipsed around in bikinis, flaunting her stuff, but she’s also very matter-of-fact about her body and can calmly talk about things like her chest to total strangers. She’s certainly been exposed to a more adult world, thanks to her work, and is the first one to explain to the team during their field trip that they just so happen to be in the Red Light District. She gets about ten times more touchy-feely when drunk off the atmosphere, where she displays no qualms about resting her head on Souji’s lap. She’ll even teasingly ask Souji where he keeps his porn (though she’ll fluster if he asks if she wants to see it). Additionally, if you’re dating Rise and you choose to spend Christmas Eve with her, it’s heavily implied that the two of you become intimate. She’s definitely familiar with sex after all the situations she’s had to deal with it, though she’d prefer any sort of intimacy with someone she knows and trusts. In terms of survival and adaptation skills, well. Much like the rest of her teammates, Rise was involved in a murder case and put into danger herself. Without knowing much about what was going on, she was the only person on the team who managed to jump straight into the fray after getting her Persona. She can get rather uncomfortable with a situation and protest it heatedly, but when she realizes how serious things are, Rise becomes just as serious. It’s why, despite realizing how dangerous it is, she’s the one to bring up officially joining the Investigation Team before Souji can even ask her. Despite her obvious discomfort with the sexual theme of her dungeon, she never once balks when it comes to taking the team there to train, and the idol herself is adaptable enough to make the most out of a situation. This IS the girl who fought to change her personality from shy to bubbly and outgoing, just to make friends, after all. She’s capable of adjusting to get by, and her work experience and knowledge of the more adult things out there give her an extra edge.
Power: Her Persona Kanzeon, possessing the skill Full Analysis; Rise is not a physical fighter, acting as support for the team by providing information on the enemy. This particular skill lets her see an enemy’s moves, as well as how strong it is, and what will work and what won’t. If that’s too much, it can be scaled down so she can only see one aspect of an opponent, such as a skill or power, or a single weakness.
Personality:
Rise in a nutshell is... impossible to confine to a single category, and that she can admit as much is testament to how much she's grown over a year. Reaching back to the shy, subdued girl she used to be, there are times when Rise falls back into familiarity; when she first meets the Investigation Team, they're surprised to find that the peppy-seeming idol is, in truth, a quiet and tired girl, gloomy from the stress of work. Her grandmother also mentions that Rise tends to wander off on her own from time to time; she's not always the little socialite when she needs time to get her thoughts together.
But there's that side of Rise that she strove to become in order to change herself completely. The bright, energetic idol who can rouse a crowd within seconds, who takes every step with confidence, and who flirts with her audience with a wink and a cute wave. She has no problem with the team knowing her measurements and even helpfully adds that her agency made her add an extra two cm to her bust size, and right from the start, she's so flirty and forward with Souji that Chie marks her as dangerous. This is a girl who knows what she has and knows how to use it, and when she knows what she wants, well. Let’s just say that Souji is well aware of how much Rise loves him, be it platonically or not. She’s not shy about singing his praises.
But wait! We can't forget Homicide Detective Rise! The one who supports her team via scanning and analysis, who guides them safely through the dungeons, who can and will force herself almost beyond her limits in order to help where she can, and who knows when to take things seriously and fight for the truth.
So where is the real Rise in all of this?
Simply put, as stated earlier, Rise is a mixture of all the above. You see her enthusiasm and bright attitude with her friends, where she's comfortably flustering Yosuke and going along wholeheartedly with participating in a beauty pageant while the other girls are still stuck on being dismayed. You see her quiet side during her heart-to-hearts with Souji, where she confesses that she's rarely ever 'alone', due to her idol status, but when she is alone, she truly is alone. You see her serious, determined side when she staggers to her feet after receiving her Persona and is the only member of the Investigation Team who joins the fight right after her own personal fight is concluded (despite how weak and exhausted she is). All of the sides she originally only displayed one at a time have come together to form a complete person-- and it's something Rise still struggles with, being scared to show her fans - the world - every single side of her, rather than the ditzy airhead they'd come to expect, but she's since gained the courage and resolve to let herself be seen for who she is.
Originally, as she confides in their leader, she didn't even want to be an idol, but due to a set of circumstances, she found herself being offered the opportunity most girls would kill for. And she accepted, for one reason only: because the shy girl who couldn't even look up from her shoes, the one who was bullied... wanted friends, and the last option was to appear on TV. Which worked, for a time, except that what she got was people wanting to befriend her on the basis of her glamorous idol self and her celebrity status. Additionally, while she decided to change herself for the better, she was soon made to portray herself as some kind of vague, fake perky object of desire. And having to smile her way through everything, even when she disliked it, was enough to fuel her Shadow. In 2011, Rise Kujikawa was running away from a self she didn't believe was real. She wanted to show the world who she was, in all her entirety, and she wanted to be accepted for it. It's part of the reason why she values friendship so highly, because the Investigation Team were the first people to see so many different (some ugly) sides of her and to accept her completely. And those bonds are why she devotes herself to helping them and how, even though she teases and occasionally hurts feelings, she is absolutely loyal to her teammates and is the first one to break down in tears when Teddie returns to them. She admits enjoyment in even the simplest act of eating out with their leader, because she never had the opportunity to do so before, having strict parents and no real friends to speak of.
Rise as a teenage girl is like a lot of teenage girls, in that she likes to flirt (often without meaning anything by it, since when she does get serious, returned flirting will fluster her) and tease (especially Kanji), she's nosy (checking her teammates' measurements, asking her upperclassmen who they're making chocolate for, asking the team leader what type of girl he likes almost right off the bat), she enjoys shopping, and she dislikes studying. In her opinion, if it isn't something you can use later, there's no point in ever learning it enough to commit it to memory. Her excuse when it comes to English is that she can just ask for a translator, and yet if you bring up tofu, Rise can rattle off big scientific words about the coagulants in tofu and come off as perfectly knowledgeable about it, as seen in her official profile when she starts talking about how Junes tofu probably has magnesium chloride in it, rather than bittern. If it's stuff like math, though, expect her to drag her feet and groan about how she's no good at puzzles.
And oh can she pout. Except to call it pouting would be like calling the Titanic a rubber ducky. It doesn't matter whether she's in the wrong or the right (and it's mostly the nearly-killed-someone-with-her-spicy-cooking wrong), when Rise wants to make you feel bad, she turns on the waterworks. She's quick to tear up, though they usually tend to be the loud, dramatic tears, and the more quiet, frustrated tears come during such occasions when she loses someone important to her.
This is, of course, only one way Rise deals with unhappiness. Sometimes she'll snap back, like when Naoto accuses them of treating the murders like a game and Rise promptly retorts that the detective doesn't know a thing about them and is, in actuality, the one treating this like a game. It's a turn-the-table sort of reaction, and she also does this with Kanji when he tells her not to call her by his name and, after a remark about his rudeness, she very smoothly transitions to how he developed a nosebleed upon seeing their senpai in bathing suits. It's worth noting that Rise is very, very adept at turning the situation in her favor. It comes in handy at times, like in one of the drama CDs, when she uses her idol status and marketing expertise to help Kanji sell plushies as well as sell more electronics at Junes, and she even manages to convince Naoto to don a skirt, but it can also lead to some suffering for her friends. Chie's appalled when Rise's crocodile tears get Souji's little cousin to call her omelet good, for example. Once Rise puts her mind to something, she does not back down and charges full speed ahead. This includes matchmaking attempts, much to Kanji's chagrin.
So does this energetic little idol have any weak spots? Plenty of 'em. I've already said Rise can be a force to be reckoned with once she decides on what to do, but the path to reaching that final conclusion isn't always easy. Despite quitting her career as an idol, she comes to question this decision, displaying jealousy towards her successor, and faltering when it feels she’s been replaced entirely. It’s only through a lot of indecision, soul-searching and Protagonist Power that she realizes that she actually really loves her job and that being Risette did make a difference to someone-- most notably, a girl who wrote her letters after Rise did a campaign to stamp out bullying (which was actually something the idol herself felt very strongly about instead of something the agency wanted her to do for additional publicity). Seeing that Risette meant something to somebody, even after her 'hiatus', gave her some comfort, where thinking that people viewed her as false and inconsequential ruined her mood rather quickly. In short, Rise tends to second-guess herself at times, and can get discouraged when she can't be of use to the people around-- like she can't validate herself as a person if she can't do what she's needed for. Half of the time when she realizes she’s getting too down about something, she renews her attitude by reminding herself that “there are still people who need me, right?” Though she scolds Naoto for attempting to do too much on her own – “Don't think that doing everything on your own is the ‘adult’ thing to do!” – she too has several instances of pushing herself much too hard; she breaks down in frustration when the fog in the TV World makes her collapse while trying to hunt down the culprit, and she can barely stand after joining the fight with her newly-acquired Persona. She very nearly loses heart when Nanako is hospitalized, blaming herself for not getting her out of that world sooner. The relationships she has and still hopes to form mean the world to her, and if she can’t do her best to prove herself worthy of the people around her, if there isn’t something she can do, it’s the most discouraging thing of all.
She also doesn't always resort to subtlety. While Rise in general is a very perceptive girl who can read people and the atmosphere like a book and respond accordingly, she still does mess up when she speaks her mind. Hence why she (with all the good intentions) tells Chie she has the tenacity of a weed in one of the Drama CDs and she originally calls Kanji's plushie-sewing habit 'creepy'. Now that she no longer has to speak or act in a certain way, it’s almost no-holds-barred, and she doesn’t always catch on to the fact that voicing her thoughts can sometimes end miserably for someone else.
Other things include somehow becoming drunk off of non-alcoholic beverages, not actually being able to defend herself in a fight (as she's support), being unable to make a decent meal without spicing it up to magma proportions, and being more street-smart than book-smart. She may not be able to solve math problems, but her experiences in the realm of showbiz gave her some extra insight into the case-- particularly with Morooka's death, when she pointed out that the killer probably wasn't targeting people because of a grudge-- people tended to hate those they didn't even know at times, after all, so seeking out that sort of motive was pointless. She's also prepared when the team shows up to warn her about being the next kidnapping victim, informing them that she'd already watched the Midnight Channel and immediately noticed the difference between herself and her Shadow, enough to insist that the figure hadn't been her. Street smarts? A+. Book smarts?
"Duh, I knew it couldn't have been vinegar!"
... Not so much.
Her good points are her strength as support (she constantly cheers on her team during their battles, as well as provides information on the enemy), her determination to keep going even when she's scared or injured, her adaptability, her observation, her acting skills, and all those things necessary for being an idol, a detective, and a good friend. She's a cheerful girl who can be as subtle or as straightforward as she feels like being, but she's no ditz and when it comes down to it, there's hardly anyone who's as loyal as Rise once she comes to like you.
To sum it up in the wise words of her grandmother, a woman Rise greatly admires and seems closer to than her own parents, she's like tofu. "Tofu looks weak and fragile, but it's actually pretty resilient. Even though it stands out because it's not like any other food, it can be mixed in with any recipe or flavor." She may look like a tiny, frail thing, but much like tofu, her resilience keeps her coming back from nearly every situation with either a smile or a determined expression. And when it comes to aforementioned situation, Rise's right there adapting almost immediately. It’s just how she is.