松 application for lifeaftr (2)

[ichininyaanshi]

Player Information
Name: Angel
Age: Over 18
Contact: throesofangels
Current characters: N/A

Character Information
Name: Ichimatsu Matsuno
Series: Osomatsu-san
Appearance:

pre-la: yo
current: that muppet sound like goofy*

Age: Unclear except that he's in his twenties, so let's go with vague mid-twenties.
Canon Point: Post-Episode 24, Season 1.
Transferring From: His previous stint at LifeAftr!

*istg he will not be shirtless by default ever at all or i will slay him myself in accordance with the laws of this land

Canon History: Itchy on the wicky. And since it's pretty barebones in actually making sense of this landfill of an anime:

The world of Osomatsu-san takes place in an approximation of modern Japanese society. "Approximation" being the operative word, because at best, the world itself can present itself as rather... turbulent.

As Osomatsu-san is primarily a skit/gag anime, the setting has a tendency to hard-reset at the end of every episode, changing the world back to the way it had been before the episode took place. Giant robot destroyed the city? It's entirely back to normal by next week. An episode that is quite literally an AU spin-off of Mad Max, complete with desolated, post-apocalyptic wastelands? All back to a circa-2016 metropolis by the next.

As such, it's difficult to define a setting for Osomatsu-san, let alone a history, but it isn't impossible. Despite Osomatsu-san's weekly format, it manages to grasp a threadbare sense of continuity; characters and plotlines are sometimes referenced again in later episodes, and on occasion an episode will pick up directly from where the previous left off. This establishes a very basic "canon" timeline, although a weak one. Generally, the guideline seems to be that any episode taking place within the home city of the Matsunos is generally viable as canon, while the many skits that take them out of that setting are non-canon AUs.

Born in what had at the time been rural Japan, the Matsuno sextuplets enjoyed childhoods full of the whimsical, good-hearted adventures to be found in their small-town neighborhood. As they aged, however, their hometown rapidly aged around them - by the time they reached their early twenties, it had become a bustling city, and they remained as adults living at home on the generosity of their parents.

While the overlying "goal" of the Matsuno sextuplets appeared to be to get jobs and become self-sufficient, rarely did they pursue this; only the third-born son, Choromatsu, ever displayed anything close to a true intention towards becoming employed. Rather, the sextuplets treated their day-to-day lives with the same carefree whimsy and impulsiveness that dictated their childhoods -- only with the irresponsible flair of adulthood vices. Days spent mischievously pranking friends and neighbors as children evolved into days spent fishing, gambling, and drinking their lives away as adults.

So committed were the sextuplets to maintaining their lifestyle that they often turned down any opportunity to change it for the better. Although something would occasionally happen in their lives to upset their unambitious routine - a chance at a job, a girl in their lives - almost without fail, they would return to their peaceful status quo. For some brothers, like Choromatsu and Todomatsu, this was at least equally frustrating as it was desirable. For Osomatsu, the eldest, it was something to be kept up for as long as humanly possible. And as a group, the sextuplets were extraordinary at doing absolutely nothing with their lives.

Until Choromatsu finally found employment, and moved out.

This marked the biggest change in any of their lives, and each of the Matsunos coped with varying levels of success. While Choromatsu's parting was relatively amiable, the resulting subsequent departures of each brother grew bleaker and less well-received by Osomatsu. Only when Ichimatsu himself departed, the last brother to leave home, were the sextuplets entirely separated.

No brother seems to have been in contact since.

Canon Personality:

Ichimatsu is, in a word, pessimistic.

From his introduction, little is left to the imagination regarding Ichimatsu's general attitude. Even his appearance gives him away: compared to his identical brothers, who only have small variations in looks, Ichimatsu sets himself miles apart with his unkempt hair, heavily lidded eyes, and slouched, unfriendly posture. The scowl that often accompanies all of the above more or less sets the tone for the kind of person Ichimatsu is.

In a family of sextuplets bursting with individual personalities, Ichimatsu is the "joker", as designated by his immediate older brother... and not the funny kind. His dark and morose nature is punctuated by an inclination towards unpredictability -- even his family finds him difficult to read, and his talent for uttering creepy, morbid phrases makes him a popular choice when the sextuplets want to intimidate someone. While he tends to bark more often than bite, Ichimatsu isn't above using violence both directly and indirectly to back up his threats or exact vengeance on others. Ichimatsu's dark nature tends to unsettle even his own brothers, a fact that doesn't go unnoticed by him.

In fact, Ichimatsu sees himself as the black sheep of his already very eccentric family. In Ichimatsu's own words, he is "unburnable trash with no will to live"; his opinion of himself is extremely low, and he regards the rest of his brothers in an only marginally better light. Ichimatsu's excessive comments to the same effect highlight his low self-esteem and lack of faith in himself or his brothers to escape their current lifestyle. However, while Ichimatsu truly seems to be dissatisfied with his life, he's never shown much initiative towards changing his situation. This lack of drive is likely resulted from a mixture of apathy, resignation, and an unwillingness to stray from the brothers he's been with since birth. Even in a period of the sextuplets' lives when they began to separate from each other, Ichimatsu was the last among them to leave home, and did so only in the heavily-hanging shadow of his brothers' absence.

While Ichimatsu's darker facet isn't exactly an act, it is very much a surface layer of protective armor to his more sensitive nature. Ichimatsu has shown great insecurities in his inability to express himself, in his loneliness and his fear of getting hurt by others. Ichimatsu's fear of judgment and rejection is powerful to the point that he greatly prefers the company of cats to human beings, finding them easier to please and having less capacity to be hurtful. At the same time, Ichimatsu does crave human companionship: a desire he often finds satisfactorily fulfilled by his brothers. However poorly they all get along at times, Ichimatsu greatly values his siblings and seeks their love and approval.

When he isn't in control of a situation, Ichimatsu's dark, sinister cunning often gives way to something more timid and anxious. Although one of the more sensible Matsunos, an inability to perform well under pressure makes Ichimatsu a poor choice for a leadership position; when pressured too far, he tends to explode from his calm demeanor into outbursts that range from loud and violent to just trying to defecate on a table, I guess. The sole exception seems to be when his three older brothers are absent, leaving him as the eldest and thus (surprisingly capable) de facto leader of his remaining siblings.

Ultimately, despite the doom and gloom of his overall demeanor, Ichimatsu is indeed able to embrace the occasional bout of positivity. He is shown to genuinely enjoy some of the activities he does with his brothers, particularly anything he does with Jyushimatsu; furthermore, he displays a candid passion for things that interest him such as the cats he cares for and (to a lesser extent) art and theater. Ichimatsu even knows when he's gone too far and an apology is appropriate - though whether he can swallow his stubbornness enough to cough one up is another matter.

While Ichimatsu can truly be petty, vindictive, self-loathing, and nihilistic, he's also capable of compassion, generosity, and creativity. It's getting through the outer shell that proves to be the challenge - not at all in small part due to Ichimatsu's awareness that the shell exists, and his every effort to make it as impenetrable as possible.

Personality Shifts:

Ichimatsu is still very much the same person... but a little bit better.

At his core, Ichimatsu Matsuno has always been a sensitive, kind man; a personality trait that he's possessed since he was a child, and only in adulthood did he begin armoring himself. A big part of that seems to have been his complacency in having his brothers to fall back on as safety nets; he never truly struck out on his own and learned how to develop meaningful relationships with people, having always relied on his family as emotional crutches, so to speak.

A lot of that changed with LifeAftr.

Though Ichimatsu had first arrived with Osomatsu and Karamatsu, he was on good terms with neither of them at the time, and that was stage one: Ichimatsu first had to cross the hurdle of resolving his problems with his "default" relationships before anything else. Thanks to both brothers reaching out to him and and making mutual efforts to reconcile, this wasn't too difficult - Ichimatsu quickly learned to get along with them again, and as the dangers of the island became increasingly obvious, he even began to appreciate their efforts. Gone were the easy days of being NEETS with their parents providing for them: they were immediately on their own, and Ichimatsu, as one of the more sensible brothers, recognized this instantly. What he didn't expect was both Osomatsu and Karamatsu stepping up to the plate, learning how to fend for themselves and even putting extra emphasis on helping Ichimatsu return to better health than he'd arrived in. Though he didn't admit as much to their faces, this forced Ichimatsu to re-evaluate his opinion of his family - if his brothers were able to rise to the challenge and be responsible when forced to, what did that mean for him? Ichimatsu saw Osomatsu and Karamatsu - the two brothers that, among his family, were generally considered to be the most hopeless - in a situation that seemed to bring out their best qualities. All in all, his brothers' efforts to take care of him and themselves opened the first door to re-shaping Ichimatsu's abysmal opinion of his own prospects and abilities.

When both brothers disappeared, leaving Ichimatsu alone, the next lesson became much harsher. Suddenly deprived of his two deepest relationships, the already-lonely Ichimatsu no longer had any connections with people who would innately see past and thus tolerate his bad attitude. In other words: rather than relying on others to understand him and give him a free pass, he had to actually start putting in the effort to communicate his emotions properly. And yeah, yikes.

Fortunately, however, by that point Ichimatsu had already begun forming some friendships outside his family; usually by proxy of them having known his brothers. While Ichimatsu had initially written off most of these people the way he usually did - as strangers who would move on once they realized what a waste of time his family was - suddenly being starved for companionship pushed Ichimatsu towards them once again. And now, with his new, elevated opinion of his brothers, it was much easier for him to understand what these people saw in them.

Not so much what they might see in him, but the loneliness was the main driving force there anyway.

Ichimatsu's journey from that point on was slow, but steady; and though not linear, certainly in a primary direction. Rather than giving up, he slowly began learning to rebuild the way he interacted with others and viewed his own ability to form bonds. Some of this was a conscious effort, such as when a girl named Ren became attached to him; seeing much of himself in her, and determined not to be a bad influence, Ichimatsu tried to be the best possible person he could be while in her presence. Another huge influence in his life on the archipelago was a blue-skinned nomad who went by the "Drifter"; who, through their non-judgmental kindness, acceptance of his uglier layers of mental health, and even their tendency to draw out his honesty, became one of his most trusted friends.

Though Ichimatsu hasn't particularly grown in regards to having any positivity for himself, he's made strides in the way he perceives others - where before, he would see everyone around him as immediate threats to his pride, he's become able to see genuine kindness in others and accept it without open suspicion. To call him an overall more "positive" person now wouldn't quite be accurate, but Ichimatsu has undoubtedly become someone who is capable of interacting with others without a cloud of doubt coloring everything he sees. More than that, Ichimatsu is open to these connections, no longer paralyzed by his terror of even the slightest socialization. He may still very much fear rejection and judgment, but through his observations of his brothers and the anecdotal evidence he's gathered from making his own friends, Ichimatsu now realizes that not many people are as above him as he thinks they are - or at least, they don't think they are.

Abilities:

lmao can i die instead

• transformation ➠ Ichimatsu can seemingly transform into a hybrid cat-man, which gives him increased speed and agility equal to a cat's. Also, he gets claws. There doesn't seem to be a set method for doing this, but given that the first time he's shown doing it is after touching a cat, let's.... go with... that as the requirement. I propose the standard 30 minutes/3x per day caveat!
• felid instincts ➠ Even when not transformed, Ichimatsu commonly shows cat-like traits that match a real feline's. When startled, Ichimatsu can spring to heights unreachable by normal human standards, and has the tendency to hiss or raise his hackles at things he may perceive as a threat. He may "sprout" catlike ears and/or a tail in these instances, though not always. He can also seem to do this at will, though it's never permanent.
• crafstmanship/art ➠ Ichimatsu displays a curious talent for craftsmanship; he has rapidly built miniature sculptures from small items such as mahjong tiles, and he once created a stuffed animal from scratch (which was fugly but that's besides the point). Although he isn't an expert by any means, this inclination towards handiness has shown itself more than once. He also seems to be fairly skilled artistically, and seems to be at least somewhat musically inclined, as implied by various official material.
• survival skills ➠ Ichimatsu's first stint in LA forced him to develop a basic wilderness skillset: he can fish, grow crops, and even hunt a bit, though the lattermost relies more on his catlike abilities than anything. He's also gotten more skilled at practical applications to his craftsmanship.
• fighting ➠ He grew up with five brothers and seems to know some like... actual wrestling moves or smth. Also I guess he can use his cat bullshit to pull off things like this??? it's from season 2 but time is fake in this stupid-ass show so ymmv
  
• rule of funny ➠ This is the weird one. Which... says something yes. As mentioned, Osomatsu-san is a gag anime, meaning that it really only sticks to one hard and fast rule: if it's for a laugh, it can be done. Usually Jyushimatsu is the one following this rule with his reality-warping shenanigans, but all of the brothers do it to an extent, whether it's being literally dead onscreen one second and perfectly fine the next, or turning into some kind of minor god as a punchline. Obviously I'm just gonna nerf most to all of this, but I'd like to keep some of his slapstick resistance - being able to play out some typical slapstick humor without treating it seriously, in tonally appropriate threads. I realize that this is potentially kind of subjective though, so we can just throw all that out too! If He Dies, He Dies 🤷

Inventory:

Ichimatsu is being imported straight from his last stint at LA, which means that he's got what he had on his person when he left:

• clothes ➠ purple cat hoodie w/ pet pouch on front, undershirt, track pants, hygiene mask, sneakers (once made a meowing sound but the batteries are dead now)
• backpack ➠ standard game-issued backpack that most of this crap is stored in
• gloves
• hunting knife
• lighter
• canteen
• rope ➠ four feet of silk rope.
• 3 glass jars
• portable metal pot
• flare gun ➠ contains two rounds; everything suffered water damage.
• fishing equipment ➠ 3 fishing lines, 5 hooks
• blanket
  
  He also had both of his companion slots filled, with a domesticated cat and a tiger lily respectively - theoretically they're still on the island for him to recollect, though, so I won't list them here!
  
  Sample
  
  Thread Sample: Most recent TDM; the threads are a little short, so I can provide more if necessary!