sonata_in_c | EMPATHEIAS APPLICATION

⌈ PLAYER SECTION ⌉

Player: Annie
Contact: Plurk: blueseawich Discord: memedoka#9972
Age: 18
Current Characters: n/a

⌈ CHARACTER SECTION ⌉

Character: Kaede Akamatsu
Age: 17
Canon: Dangan Ronpa V3
Canon Point: End of chapter 1. (However due to the trauma of her death she cannot recall anything after the first few nights, including her murder of Rantaro.)

Background: "I guess I should start by introducing myself. My name is Kaede Akamatsu. My last name roughly means, "passionate red maple tree." It doesn't really fit me, but... I still like my last name."

Personality:

Kaede Akamatsu is a cheerful good natured girl whose greatest passion is playing the piano. From a young age friends and family alike tried and failed to drag her away to no avail. Eventually her talent with the piano grew so vast she earned the title of Ultime Pianist. Kaede has traveled worldwide playing everywhere from schools to royalty.

Her experiences playing music around the world have greatly impacted her worldview. Kaede is a strong believer that music expresses the feelings of the heart, and that through music, people can understand each other. She is very trusting and encouraging, quick to try and unite others under the banner of friendship. She is quick to flirt (especially with other girls) and even quicker to make friends. All Kaede wants in life is simply to play piano and see others smile, with that, she could be happy forever.

Her outward personality is a bit childish and silly. Kaede is prone to taking impulsive actions and this sometimes makes her come off a bit trackless. She She always means well in the end, and is usually unable to suspect or insult people to their faces. However, this does not make her a pushover, and she will snap back when pushed, though she will usually apologize later if she feels the other person didn’t deserve it.

Kaede has a dependable and strong will, and she is willing to shoulder burdens and take a leading role with her friends. Even the news that she has been enrolled in a killing game, with her classmates out to get her did very little to stem her optimism. Her actions after the first murder and its investigation show she can remain positive even in traumatizing circumstances; choosing to solve problems rather then lingering on the negatives in her life. Some might view her as meddlesome, but Kaede believes in pushing people along with enough enthusiastic cheer that they’ll get across the finish line by themselves. In her Love Hotel event with Saihara, she states quite clearly that she is attracted to more passive people, and seems to thrive in taking charge and leading. This however, does not mean Kaede is a tactful person. When she and her classmates discover the Death Road of Despair, a difficult path filled with traps that Monokuma claims will lead to the outside world, Kaede is successful in rallying her classmates to attempt it and then subsequently pushes them beyond their limits trying to get free. In her passion to bring people together, Kaede can be bossy and tactless.

This bossy nature is what of course, leads her to join up with Saihara in order to investigate the school and its mysteries. The two of them get along well, and compliment each others respective flaws. Unlike Saihara, Kaede has a poor eye for detective work and takes his words and observations at face value. She is very good at interrogating others and getting them to work with her, but placed in a situation where details are key and the people she trust will manipulate her, Kaede is rather hapless and must rely entirely on her friends for better or worse.

While Kaede has high self esteem, she still often puts the group before her own needs. Kaede is incredibly loyal to those she believes she needs to protect, easily risking herself for a calculated greater good or lying when she believes it's necessary to protect the people around her.

And despite her warm, kind and determined personality, these traits are what lead to Kaedes downfall. Her self confidence in herself and in what actions she must take for greater good can turn dangerous when she is placed in stressful situations. While she was especially eager to assist Saihara in his investigation, when it was revealed there may be a mastermind among her new friends, Kaede snapped. In her own determination to help others, Kaede isolated herself in her belief of what she must do. Instead of deciding to trust her friends and fight against Monokumas killing game and enforced time limit, Kaede took impulsive and disastrous measures in order to try and kill the mastermind. In her plan to destroy the mastermind, Kaede demonstrates a a unforeseen cold calculating mindset, setting up a trap that to kill with minimal effort. The determination she displays to kill someone she believes will cause suffering for others is called out by her classmate Ouma Kokichi, who states Kaede was willing to "open her heart to murder". She never denies this, only that she thought if she could get the mastermind, it would be worth it.

During the class trial it is revealed Kaede killed the wrong person, and that her attempts to save others only succeeded in starting the killing game and killing someone she had considered a friend. Despite this, Kaede felt it was her duty to use this trial to investigate the mastermind but even that ultimately failed. Not once however, does she give up until it is clear that fighting any further will lead to Saihara being convicted as the culprit. When faced with her own death, Kaede did not falter or run away and made only paltry attempts to defend herself as one last "wish" towards her friend Saihara.

Abilities: As the Ultimate Pianist, Kaede has incredible talent with music and above average hearing.

Alignment: Piphron: Kaede is a strong driven individual who believes in always looking on the bright side and believing in others. She puts up a strong front and tries to unite people through her faith in the power of music to reach people's hearts. Yet at the same time, her ultimate downfall comes from her own paranoia and self reliance, an isolating determination that spells doom for herself and her friends.

Other: Kaede herself is unaware of this fact, but her entire personality is simple a construction from the “Real Fiction” that overwrote the person she used to be. The original “Kaede Akamatsu” seemed to be a harsher, more nihilistic girl who professed she was perfect for a killing game because she didn’t believe in anyone. While the implications of this quote are unclear, the original “Kaede” seemed to have signed up for the killing game from suicidal tendencies, which may have been reflected in her execution, which features hanging. Kaede herself, is unaware of this fact, having died in canon long before any major secrets were uncovered.

Samples: Test Drive Thread

Emotion Sample:

A young girl sits before a piano, her fingers drifting effortlessly above the keys. Kaede hmphs and ahhs at the musical selection she has found her in her new home, Beethoven, Chopin, Debussy, all her favorites are here along with some pieces that must be native to this world. She lets her fingers dance over the keys, going through the scales, once, again, a repetitive calming measure before she begins to play, barely glancing at the music sheets before her. Danse Macabre
by Camille Saint-Saens was a hard one, but she craved the challenge of the energy of that piece.

It started slowly, as Kaede plucked her way through the strong opening chords of the piece, she could feel her heart rate rising. She prided herself in pouring her entire heart into her music, and as her fingers danced across the keys she felt the fevered determination of the music sink into her own heart. She thought about the killing game she had escaped without her friends, she thought about her own mislead plans, her failures, her determination to succeed in protecting those she held dear, she poured it all out into the music, begging the world to hear.

And the world did.

The windows of the room opened in a gust of strong wind, the grass outside twisting into strange unearthly patterns, even the piano beneath her seemed to shake, its colors brightening, its sound sharpening. The keys under her fingers seemed to more with her, bending to her whims as she bared her heart to the world.

And then, like that, the song ended. The world snapped back into place, colors reverting, and Kaede looked up, wiping the sweat from her brow as she returned.

She shot a curious glance at the window. She wondered, whatever on earth could have opened it?