Empatheias App

⌈ CHARACTER SECTION ⌉ Character: Sakura Sakurakouji
Age: 16
Canon: Code:Breaker
Canon Point: Chapter 143 (After Ogami's fight with Toki)

Background: Wiki article link

Personality: (Contains spoilers for the end of the series)

In many regards, Sakura is an admirable young woman: she's polite, disciplined, athletic and optimistic. She believes in seeing the good in everyone and takes this to a dangerous extreme when she decides to latch onto the Code:Breakers, a team of superpowered government-sanctioned assassins whose targets have slipped through the legal system's cracks. Determined to teach them the sanctity of life and convince them to quit killing altogether, she invites herself along on their missions in Japan's seedy underbelly. Even when faced with drug dealers, mob bosses and corrupt politicians who test the limits of her moral beliefs, she is still insistent on saving them from their deaths. To that end, she attempts to cut the Code:Breakers off at the pass and try to make the targets reconsider their errant ways through punching, justice speeches and hugs. She would sooner make herself a human shield and take a fist through her gut than let someone else get killed.

Unfortunately, her faith in the humanity makes her an easy hostage: more often than not, she has to be saved by the Code:Breakers, who maim or kill her captors in the process. Not to be discouraged by her own failures, she continues building relationships with the Code:Breakers and even rival groups of assassins. Some of these people who manage to survive their brushes with the Code:Breakers either become allies or fulfill Sakura's wishes for them to abandon killing. Her own adopted father was a powerful mafia boss who entered into a pact with her at the age of five, dismantling his organization so that he and his subordinates would never kill again.

At the heart of her rejection of murder is the deeply repressed memory of a massacre that happened right in front of her when she was a toddler. While the details of the incident were fuzzy, she could never forget the feeling of hundreds of corpses around her growing cold as their lives faded away, which steeled her resolve to never allow that to happen again. She is unwavering and inflexible in this respect and even seeing evil at work right in front of her doesn't change her belief that it's never too late for criminals to become "good" people, and thus, should be given the chance to live and atone for their sins. This becomes a point of frustration for the Code:Breakers, who initially try to kill her with their powers, only to realize that it won't work. In spite of this, she considers them to be her friends, and will fight to save them from death with the same determination she shows to others.

Beyond the ire that her unshakable ideals incite, it also makes her blind to possibilities beyond them. Instead of a morality spectrum in shades of gray, there's only black and white. People either value human life, or they're wrong. Those who are wrong need to be "fixed." She all but shoves her beliefs down others' throats and smothers those she wants to convert with equal parts of kindness and violence. This myopia is also directed inward: the only way she can think of saving lives is by stopping the Code:Breakers and convincing their targets to repent. It's only after she and the Code:Breakers part ways that she considers other methods to save lives, and throws her efforts into becoming a doctor.

This laser focus can also extend to her interpersonal relationships. Her single-minded determination to fix the Code:Breakers causes her to leave her relationship with her best friend Aoba essentially by the wayside. In spite of her ability to read minute changes in expression, with her focus on the Code:Breakers, she misses the jealousy Aoba feels over Sakura's growing relationship with Ogami, a Code:Breaker who poses as their classmate. Aoba also uses acting to conceal a deeper grudge against Ogami, so when her murderous nature and true intent are revealed, Sakura is completely blindsided.

For all of her booksmarts, she's ridiculously innocent. This was fostered by her extremely overprotective parents and their army of ex-yakuza who dote on her. Her character profile in the manga states that her birthday is celebrated on the third of every month, because she was adopted on the third, but the month was unknown. As such, she's accustomed to a large household, larger get-togethers and loads of physical affection. Friends, complete strangers and known criminals are pressed to her ample chest with the same pure affection and zero understanding that it could be interpreted as a romantic or sexual gesture. Sakura equates emotional closeness with "family," and she regards Ogami as such. She finds nothing untoward about hugging him, peeking into his room unannounced, sharing his bed or a bath and declaring her affection for him. Many of those in their circle and their classmates assume they're a couple and even when erotica that mirrors their situation with eerie similarity is read right in front of her (and, at one point, outside a kindergarten), she can't connect the dots and remains completely unaware of the pornographic nature of it. To make matters worse, she even volunteers her own body to gain understanding of these "strange stories," though this is thwarted by Ogami.

Abilities: Sakura is book smart and has a natural skill for identifying microexpressions. Much like an animal, she can identify people by their scent and body heat. The super powers in her world are life forced-based and Sakura has a passive ability them neutralize it through physical contact. People she touches will be unable to use their power and ranged attacks at her are reduced to only glancing blows. This, combined with beastly levels of physical strength and black belts in Aikido and Judo make her a tank in combat, although in situations when she can't dodge, physical attacks with conventional weapons can (and do) send her to the emergency room. In "Goddess of Destruction"-mode, her passive power neutralization becomes an active absorption of life force. Being exposed to this for an extended period of time will kill people.

Because of the nature of her power, there will be an opt-out list for anyone who doesn't want to play with this.

Alignment: She epitomizes hope and extreme despair is what changes her into the "goddess of destruction," so she's best aligned with Peromei.

Other: Her emotions are INTENSE. Her style of speech is also described in canon as stiff, like an old warrior's, but also misconstrued as polite. She incorporates old-fashioned phrases that don't have proper English equivalents, so to match with the spirit of that, I've removed contractions from her speech, even though the official translation doesn't do that. She also has a habit of making respectful but unusual strings of honorifics, such as "[Name]-senpai-dono," for the name of her friends upperclassman (hence, senpai), whom she deems worthy of respect (-dono is used as an honorific for one who is of higher status than oneself).


⌈ SAMPLE SECTION ⌉ Sample:
TDM Toplevel and Another tiny thread because I'm not sure if it's enough

Questions: Nope.