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[ramengroupie]

Player Information

Name: Mari
Age: 18+
Contact details: ghoulfriend
Other characters: The Scuff On The Engine Left By ~*~SHIKYOIN HIBIKI~*~

Character Information

Name: Ken Ichijouji
Canon: Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna
Canon Point: Post-movie
OU/AU/CRAU/OC: OU
Age: 19

World Information:

Ken comes from Basically Just Earth, year 2010, except tech is slightly more advanced and there's a series of parallel dimensions with ties to either our digital networks and/or human souls, emotions, and beliefs out there. Sometimes these parallel worlds suck children into them. Said children end up "partnered" with Digimon, creatures that adore them, complement them, and grow into bigger monsters to protect them when the kids overcome important emotional hurdles (or when the plot demands they do).

When Ken first visited the Digital World and met his partner, Digimon weren't common knowledge worldwide. As of his canonpoint, the number of people with partners has increased and society is slowly learning how to handle the occasional presence of adorable and/or property-wrecking dragon dinosaurs from a digital dimension, etc. Ken thus feels no need to hide Wormmon, who tends to cling to him 24/7.

Literally.

Personal History:

[[ CW: sibling death, animal abuse, mental health issues embodied physically for the enlightenment of small children watching a talking monster cartoon ]]

Ken grew up overshadowed by his talented older brother Osamu. He loved Osamu and vice versa, but Osamu didn't know how to express affection and Ken's parents didn't realize they mostly praised their elder son, so Ken grew to resent him. He suppressed these feelings, not knowing how to deal with them.

One day, a mysterious device popped out of Osamu's computer, but didn't react when Osamu touched it. Osamu cautioned Ken to leave it alone, but Ken felt drawn to the "Digivice" - which in turn drew him into the computer and a parallel, Digital World. He met his "partner Digimon", Wormmon, and they went on adventures together that culminated in Ken injuring his neck when he pushed a companion out of harm's way.

After his recovery, Ken returned to the real world - only to be scolded and called "the worst kind of person" by Osamu. Ken felt overwhelmed by conflicting emotions and, because anger was the easiest one to feel, wished to himself that his brother would disppear.

Then Osamu died in an accident. Ken, having a child's understanding of cause and effect, blamed himself.

At his brother's funeral, a coworker of Ken's father, Yukio Oikawa, saw the boy. Because Oikawa himself was an unwitting victim of digital villain parasite nonsense (he had a vampire living in his head, don't ask) he recognized instantly that Ken had a Digimon partner and that Ken's neck injury had embedded a "Dark Seed", data that feeds off negative human emotion, within him.

Oikawa sent Ken an email that gaslit him under the pretense of sympathy: Ken wanted to believe this anonymous stranger saying that his brother's death wasn't his fault, that now he had to take his brother's place, that the world in which he lived was "boring" and that he was Special, and therefore better-suited to another world.

Swayed by Oikawa's words, Ken used the Digivice in Osamu's drawer. This time it took him to a world that manifests dark human emotions. The Dark Seed activated, making Ken smarter than his brother and better at sports - but also twisting his worldview. Because he couldn't accept the kind of person he actually was, he became the sort of person he thought he was supposed to be but also started looking down on everyone but himself. He felt he had to be the only perfect genius. He deliberately isolated himself.

He also started dressing up in a really stupid outfit, traveling to the Digital World, and attempting to take it over by enslaving and torturing the Digimon there as the "Digimon Kaiser", because no one ever says kids given chuuni by vampires do things halfway.

Ken wreaked havoc in the Digital World. Wormmon watched, waiting for the kind Ken he knew to return. A group of other children showed up in the Digital World to stand against Ken, disrupting his "game" - after all, this was just digital data; it wasn't like Ken was hurting living creatures, right? The other kids and Ken clashed over and over, with Ken alternating between being amused anyone would dare try to be his opponent and personally offended he wasn't the only human who could travel to the Digital World.

Sick of the real world, Ken traveled to the Digital World to become the Digimon Kaiser full-time. Believing Wormmon was an unsuitable partner for him, he created his own Digimon, Kimeramon, by mixing and matching data from other monsters - and also drawing too heavily on the powers of darkness from that negative world, which started really messing with a mind already hopped up on villain influence. Kimeramon couldn't be controlled, and Wormmon realized that Ken was slipping away from him. So he helped the other children defeat Kimeramon for Ken's sake, but used up all his strength in the process.

Kimeramon's defeat helped snap Ken out of his delusions; he realized Digimon were living beings and that he'd been committing abominations. He stopped being the Digimon Kaiser - just in time for Wormmon to die in his arms. Ken returned home to his worried parents and immediately zonked out. He needed to figure out exactly who the heck he was, and how he related to the other people in his life.

Ken's introspection led him back to the Digital World, where Wormmon was reborn when Ken vowed to move forward accepting all of himself. He realized his parents had loved him all this time, and the Dark Seed stopped growing. The Ichijouji family started over, but Ken couldn't leave the Digital World alone. He wanted to atone and undo what he'd done. By himself. So as not to endanger or trouble the other children.

The other children were having none of this self-sacfificing loner bullshit. When their leader, Daisuke, helped Ken realize he needed to look after himself both for his own sake and for other people's, and Ken was able to be honest with Daisuke, their Digimon combined into a more powerful Digimon. Ken was uncomfortable with this at first, still unused to navigating being around other people (especially people he'd inconvenienced so much), but with time and the others' acceptance he slowly became part of the group. He worked hard to change his life, and it paid off.

So of course the last arc of his spotlight season was all about Oikawa and his parasite vampire pain in the ass coming back to mess with Ken again.

It turned out that everything that happened the entire series was just a ploy by Oikawa's parasite, Vamdemon, to get back into the Digital World - he'd been defeated in the real world by an earlier group of children and hosted in Oikawa since his data couldn't reform IRL. Vamdemon revived himself by using Oikawa to kidnap Ken and implant other self-loathing children with copies of the Dark Seed, whose negative energy he absorbed (and whose plight Ken blamed himself for, since they'd been lured with the promise of "getting to be like boy genius Ken Ichijouji").

A mind-gamer to the end, "BelialVamdemon" tried to trap Ken and his friends in illusions of their perfect worlds. Ken's was one where the Digimon Kaiser was put to death for his crimes but then he could be with his brother again, a world where everything was "over". When he remembered he still had things to do moving forward, however, Ken took the final steps towards looking towards tomorrow instead of being stuck in the past. He and his friends defeated BelialVamdemon with the power of their belief in the future - did you know that if enough kids have dreams they want to make reality, you can generate a giant vampire-zapping laser cannon? - and Ken ends the season in a very different place where he started it. Not completely healed, but still growing.

And he continues to grow. Ken isn't featured much in the next installment of his canon, as he and his team are wiped out and imprisoned by a bad guy thirty seconds into the first movie. So that happened. Fast forward to 2010.

By the time Ken is a college freshman, he's decided to major in psychology, still gets together with his friends & their Digimon, and doesn't hesitate to get involved in Digimon-related incidents. Over summer break he's invited to travel the world eating ramen with Daisuke, who intends to become a pro ramen vendor. Their first stop is New York City, but their tour is interrupted by a mutual friend calling to involve them in the plot.

Ken and his friends team up to investigate a pair of suspicious American researchers, one of whom Ken recognizes because she too was a child prodigy. They confirm something's up, let their friends in Japan know, and are still in New York when manmade Digimon called "Eosmon" attack all children with Digimon. Ken helps hold the New York Eosmon at bay until the actual main characters of the movie can defeat the antagonist, causing all Eosmon to disappear. He'll be pulled from after this battle, expecting to travel back to Japan by means of a gate to the Digital World....

...and instead end up staring at a train.

Personality:

The boy who couldn't accept himself has grown up into a straightforward young man. Although Ken remains a stiff, serious overthinker, he's much more confident at 19 than he was at 11. He converses with strangers without hesitation - hypersensitive child Ken sucked at smalltalk - and seems comfortable with the fact that he takes up space in the world. He smiles more, is OK enough with being himself in public that he laughs and runs like an ABSOLUTE DORK, and has even gained some hobbies, which is a real sign of growth in a boy who used to think only activities with "meaning" were worth his time. (Because Ken is rather introspective for his age, however, his interests....are stereotypical "old Japanese man" pursuits. He remains detail-oriented in his hobbies, too, and focuses on activities that help people relax, refresh, and live in the moment. Do NOT ask him about hot springs.)

A more confident Ken has an easier time letting his kind, gentle true self show, as well. He's always fed his Digimon first when they go out to eat and looked out for others in battle, but he's now more capable of being a part of the group, smiling along with everyone, letting himself be swept up in his friends' more lackadaisical pace instead of being on the outside looking in. (We don't see him with his parents, but I bet he's still ridiculously, unself-consciously sappy with them, too - Ken lived too long not realizing how loved he is to ever overlook that love again.) He dotes on Wormmon whether what Wormmon wants makes any sense or not. Ken used to feel a strong sense of distance between himself and other humans, whether that was as a little boy undervaluing his own worth or the Digimon Kaiser undervaluing everyone else's. Ken belongs now. And he's happy.

This happiness implies he's not as haunted by the shadow of the Digimon Kaiser. There aren't any references to Ken's past in his limited movie screentime, which is notable considering how constantly Ken brooded as a child. He's matured by focusing on the things he'd vowed to do at the end of his original canon: to concentrate on "what he has to do now", to "stop thinking about the things I can't do...because there are surely many things I can do". To be sure, he's still a thinker - Ken is someone who is always asking "Why?", always looking for the deeper significance of actions, especially how they relate to his own situation - but his world is now larger than his own misery. Although he'll never be able to undo or fix the crimes he's committed, Ken is moving towards the future instead of dwelling on the past.

Just because Ken's mature doesn't mean he's perfect, however. As mentioned, Ken is a detail-oriented person who sometimes overcomplicates things; he may be better at seeing the forest now, but that doesn't mean he can't get distracted by particularly intriguing - or discouraging - trees. He feels a too-strong sense of responsibility towards others and remains a serious person. His speaking style has gotten more tactful, but he still peppers his speech with caveats like "it seems" and other polite qualifiers, implying his sense of security in his own skin isn't 100% there yet. Most obvious is his temper: Ken doesn't get angry with people over little things, but villainy? He flips out. In a noble, heroic way, but you can Not mess with the powers of darkness and expect Ken Ichijouji to do nothing but watch.

This unwavering commitment to justice is his most notable trait as a 19-year-old, at least in the scenes we're given of him. Ken has grown up to be someone who doesn't begrudge juggling his normal life with the duties of a child partnered with a Digimon; on the contrary, he's 100% there, ready to solve the case and keep others from hurting people or being hurt the way a little boy was once upon a time. He also doesn't like it when mysteries are left hanging; he'll keep digging for an answer until he's satisfied. We know from the series epilogue that Ken grows up to be a police detective, and...

A cerebral, deductive reasoner who, while a sweetheart, doesn't shy away from throwing himself into situations where he can stop the bad guys. Yeah. That scans.

Key themes:

Kindness - Ken's defining trait, as explicitly stated by canon. The Japanese word for "kindness" also encompasses the ideas of "gentleness" and "consideration", so Ken is polite, tactful, and tends to put others before himself. Not causing trouble for others matters a lot to him as a child, though we see him only in full-steam-ahead justice-hero mode in the Kizuna movie so it seems he doesn't get in his own way as much any more. He's also a really sweet, sentimental guy, known for dropping extremely sappy non-sequiturs out of nowhere because they make sense as the conclusion to whatever sort of overthinking he's done, and he dotes on Wormmon (and vice versa).

Basically: beautiful cinnamon roll too good for this world, too pure.

Strength - A trait Ken had to develop, because being a super-thoughtful scared confused kid who still also feels things like "loneliness" and "jealousy" makes one vulnerable to manipulation. Although Wormmon can evolve into a powerful fighting Digimon, much of the strength Ken develops is internal: he's learning to not be overwhelmed by his own selflessness, to gain perspective and a forward-thinking attitude. Ken's strength comes from having gone through hell and emerged from it able to accept himself; he mentions liking the Japanese wabi-sabi aesthetic, beauty in transient imperfection - yet also in what happens when something broken is made whole again. Ken has learned resilience. I'm very proud of him.

Combined, his kindness and strength show themselves as a bold, selfless devotion to justice. Most of Ken's scenes in the Kizuna movie are of him focused on Digimon-related tasks, throwing himself into the heroic role without hesitation. He looks out for others in battle and is determined to fight until the end.

Main Motivation: To move towards the future while embracing the present, standing up against darkness and living true to himself.

Skills:

Though no longer a genius, Ken's intelligent, with a gift for extrapolating significance from actions (sometimes where...there isn't any). He likes to ask "why". He's also a soccer player and multilingual; he speaks at least a little Spanish, and must have a good memory for trivia because he sure does know a lot of it.

When with Wormmon and in possession of his Digivice (which now has two forms, the original Digivice he's always had and a smartphone version developed by a computer-geek friend), Ken is able to "evolve" Wormmon into a more powerful Digimon, Stingmon.

On the other hand, when Wormmon runs out of energy he'll revert to being Minomon or, when REALLY drained, Leafmon.

Leafmon and Minomon both attack by blowing bubbles (this is not scary). Minomon can dangle from Ken's arm for convenient travel. Wormmon can fire webbing from his mouth and uses this webbing for a special attack called "Sticky Net", which does exactly what you think it does. Other than that he's a really wimpy Digimon.

Stingmon, on the other hand, is a super-speed badass who can fly, fight in hand-to-hand combat, and impale enemies with laser swords from his gauntlets in his "Spiking Finish" attack.

Item: ....Wormmon. Just. Wormmon. Whose personality can be summed up as "Ken-centric." Wormmon by himself is a weak, scared Digimon, but for the sake of his beloved and admired partner Ken-chan, Wormmon shows bravery and strength. While not the brightest Digimon, he can be wise, and he and Ken trust and care for each other like only two utter saps who've been through hell together can.

Although Ken's happiness is his happiness, however, Wormmon's neediness can make him clingy. Wormmon's thrilled that Ken has made friends, but Ken being flirted with? And being nice to the person flirting with him? Wormmon turns into a jealous, needy baby. You have all been warned.

It is also word of god canon that Wormmon's hobby is playing romance video games.

Sample: TDM!

Notes:

The real sign of growth is that Ken, who has this symbolic do-I-or-don't-I-eat-Mama's-cooking thing going on in the TV show, can now slurp a noodle.