Folkmore

★ Character Information ★

Character Name: Ichimonji Hayato
Character Age: 22
Character Species: Altered Human/Cyborg
Current Health: Recovering from a near-fatal injury.
Outfit: This one!

I would like to point out that this stupid, incomprehensible jumpsuit is in a fucking museum where it belongs and I think that's great.

Character Canon: Kamen Rider Spirits/Kamen Rider (1971)
Link to History: Kamen Rider Spirits and Hayato himself. The wikis are. Okay. Let me know if you need more.
Canon Point: The end of the Flashback chapters in Spirits. This puts him right before the start of the original Kamen Rider series, making him "Pre-Canon".
Canon Iteration: Kamen Rider Spirits manga
Canon Iteration Explanation:

Kamen Rider Spirits is a spin-off Manga about the first ten Kamen Riders and takes place after most of their respective series. For Hayato specifically, this means that the original 1971 tv show that he's from is treated as canon, as well as any cameos he made up until the year the manga takes place, and then it goes off on its own.

Because he is specifically manga canon, any diversions from the original series it makes, as well as any details it extrapolates on will be what I lean into. The Manga is also where I will be pulling almost all of his personality from, too. The tv show doesn't directly contradict anything, but the Manga really lets him shine as a character as well as developed a lot of his relationships.

★ Folkmore Roles & Attributes ★

Skills:

- Photography (this includes developing his own film and setting up a darkroom)
- Investigative Journalism (He can weaponize being a busybody for information gathering. This also makes him good at reading people and harder to lie to.)
- Writing (He has written articles that have been praised as cutting and immersive)
- Martial Arts (He is a 5th degree black belt in Karate and a 6th degree in Judo)

Canon Abilities:

Hayato has been augmented heavily with cybernetics. He is roughly 90% machine and has lots of batshit superpowers as a result.

- Super Strength (Can punch tank ammunition as its being fired like it's nothing and also can just deadlift the entire fucking tank)
- Extremely sharp hearing and eyesight (including night vision)
- Resistant to poison and can also recycle air in his lungs for up to two hours. However he can still suffocate if he's caught off guard.
- He can JUMP. The man is grasshopper themed so, unsurprisingly he can leap several stories into the air. He can also jump fast and can rocket himself around a fight this way without actually possessing super speed.
- Super human durability (Extremely hard to kill. Can survive having buildings dropped on him and getting thrown off cliffs.)
- Enhanced healing. (His body can heal itself pretty well on it's own, and he can recover from bad injuries within a day. Anything extensive requires active repairs, and he cannot regrow a limb if it gets ripped off, it has to be reattached. On the bright side a lot of his injuries can be solved with duck tape!)

- Transformation (Hayato can transform into Kamen Rider, which basically means all his listed above abilities get huge buff. I am locking him out of this ability for the next foreseeable future. I figured it would be fun if he had to buy it back with spoons.)


Role: Legend
Role Qualities/Attributes:

He's getting wings similar to the red-winged giant grasshopper.

His eyes will also shift colors:

Brown - Neutral, normal
Red - Angry, which will also herald his scars showing up on his face. When they do you know he is turbopissed
Gold - Extremely Interested in Something (re also: about to get up to shit).
Hazel/green - When he is vibing with his Legend role
Grey - Despair, sadness.

The halo is only going to show up when he is making an impassioned speech about justice- okay no. It'll be there in intense moments of him being sure of himself and properly embodying Kamen Rider. It won't look like a traditional halo but it might be kind of reminiscent of this. (There is a lot of Shinto symbolism in Spirits that seems relevant to the plot but there's a lot we don't quite know re: where it's going. I might make some changes later if canon tosses me something more interesting.)

Role Reasoning:

He is literally a Legend, or he will be one day. Kamen Rider as a concept has been a symbol of hope and justice for fifty years. It's something so ingrained in Japanese pop culture that you can find a reference to it, and sometimes to Hayato specifically, in almost every form of Japanese media. You can find statues built of him and his partner in several places across the country. Hayato specifically is often regarded as the Hero of Children, someone whose stories were not just about protecting kids, but listening to them as well.

So, that is why I think it would be a lot of fun to take him from so early in his journey where he has no idea what he is doing, and make him work towards unlocking the potential that will eventually make him the embodiment of hope, while giving him a chance to figure out what that really means for him.

While his own ideals are very strong, it would also be very good for him to be exposed to a lot of different kinds of people in different roles to really expand his way of thinking. Give him the opportunity to make choices in a way he will never get to have back home.

★ Personality ★

Please choose one of the follow options for your personality section. Please clarify which option you have picked and, if option 2, which questions you are answering:

OPTION 2 QUESTIONS (PICK 4-5) 100-300 WORD LIMIT EACH:

What was the most traumatic experience your character endured? How did this change them?

Being strapped down to a table and getting taken apart by an evil terrorist organization, so they could turn him into a cyborg and brainwash him into being a weapon for subjugating humanity, is probably at the top of the trauma list for Hayato. Not only does that just genuinely suck on its own, but it's heavily implied he was awake for the procedure! Awesome! Luckily, he was yanked off the operating table before he lost his mind, but for his body, the damage had been done.

Other than the extremely obvious trauma that comes from something like this, this also marks the loss of a great deal of agency for him, and it slaps him into a body that is both alien and unfeeling. Hayato's constant struggles with his humanity and what that means for him will be something he will question for the rest of his life, and his disconnect with his body causes him a lot of grief.

What experience challenged your character's core beliefs? How did they handle this or change from it?

So, as it turns out, a lot happens on the day Hayato becomes a cyborg. After being freed from the table, he winds up in a brutal fight for his life, and something extremely important happens here. This fight put him and Hongo Takeshi against about eight or so brainwashed cyborgs that were all remodeled very similarly to Hayato. Cyborgs that, had Hayato not been rescued when he was, would have made him among their numbers. This fight was when Hayato realized he could no longer be a pacifist. It became extremely clear that, despite the tragedy of these other cyborgs having started out as just people like him, their minds were gone, warped into something obedient and sinister, and if any of them escaped, they would go on to kill and hurt who knows how many people.

Hayato was once a man who claimed that even if he had his skills in martial arts, the only thing that kind of strength was good for was beating up thugs. The real evil was hidden in society, and so he dedicated himself to journalism and photography. He was a man who believed the pen was mightier than the sword and that he could fight for a world without conflict or strife.

In this fight, he gives it all up, confronting the other cyborgs saying "With an evil like Shocker, the only thing you can do is destroy it." That fight marks the first time he's ever had to kill.

What is the most important and defining relationship(s) in your character's life and why?

It's funny how you can go from trying to expose a man as an evil monster, to becoming his lifelong partner as a vigilante superhero, but that's kind of what happened with him and Hongo Takeshi. Hongo is a man who is both kind and stalwart. He is gentle at his core, and yet haunted by his duty as someone who fights from the shadows to keep people from ending up with the same fate as him. He is someone who in Hayato's darkest moments gives him hope to carry on, and in return, Hayato has dedicated himself to standing at his side as his partner.

They are two people who understand each other in a way no one else would ever be able to, and Hayato will make it his personal goal to be there to remind Hongo of his humanity, should he ever need it in his own dark moments. Hayato would die for this man, to put it very bluntly, and while his canon point puts him at a point where that bond is very fresh, he still feels very strongly about the kind of strength Hongo has inspired in him.

What is a headcanon (or two) you feel strongly about and that you prefer playing your character with? How is this supported in canon and why do you think it benefits the character's story?

I play Hayato as gay. This is a headcanon and not more because his canon is from the early 70's and was written by a man where it was super unlikely this was the intention. However, there's a lot of instances in the show I can point to and say "This comes off as queer coded". Hayato's run in the original Kamen Rider as the main character was because Hongo Takeshi's actor had suffered an injury that kept him out of the show for almost a year. Hongo was written in with a love interest, who then also left the show when Hongo did. When Hayato arrived, his supporting cast included three separate pretty girls and the first thing out of his mouth when asking about his photography was "I don't work with women." That he was explicitly not that kind of photographer. He spends that whole arc dodging their advances in the most disinterested way possible and then the first chance he gets, he goes to a wrestling match and blows through a ton of film, excitedly taking pictures of half naked men. I'm just saying.

There are other instances, and I could write you essays on Hayato's close male relationships as well as being queer in Japan in that era, but that's one of the biggest ones I like to point to as "Probably not the intention, but that is pretty dang gay."

As far as how this works with his character in general, I feel like the narrative of being Other while desperately trying to keep up a facade of normalcy, and the fear of being outed and branded a monster, while struggling with that self image is not dissimilar from a queer experience. To me it makes sense and it's something I'm interested in exploring with him in a game like FM.

★ Player Information ★

Player Name: Jami
Pronouns: They/them
Are you over 18?: Yes
Contact(s): takatorabatta
Who Invited You?: Here!
Current Characters: na
Permissions: Here
Writing Samples: TDM
Deer Country Post that details the operation. Mind the CWs at the top when reading.