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  Ah, Jun. I am very fond of Jun, obviously, but that's not the reason his profile is so long. It's so long because to talk about his history, you have to basically relate the entire plot of Tsumi! He has two different histories depending on the game you're discussing, so I'll mention Eternal Punishment first and work my way backwards. Spoilers for Innocent Sin will definitely follow, so don't read if you want to play the game and find out for yourself. Consider yourself warned if you've only played Batsu. (A lot of the details of his backstory come from the game guide and the conversations between Kaneko Kazuma and Satomi Tadashi, if you're wondering.) PERSONALITY Kashihara Jun is a senior in Kasugayama High School who Maya meets in the Air Museum, and he seems to be a quiet, polite, friendly, oddly familiar boy. (But he's a juvenile delinquent...he maimed people for calling him a prettyboy. o.o; ) When the building is set on fire, he takes charge of the rescue effort, finding the teachers and determining how many children are still trapped in the building. So what do we have so far - quiet, polite, friendly, competent, and trustworthy? Sounds like a Boy Scout, doesn't he? However, if you contact the demons for rumors, they're confused. They make the curious suggestion that the "boy in blue" had been their master in the past. And to add to the confusion, Sudou Tatsuya seems to know Jun quite well, and keeps calling him "the chosen one." Jun is confused and frightened, but when Sudou threatens to kill Maya and Tatsuya, Jun suddenly loses it and shoves Sudou into a pit. (Looks like girly-boy forgot to suppress his violent tendencies again...) He's a nice guy, yeah, but he's such a minor character that one wonders why he's the very last person to be saved at the end of the game, and why Tatsuya reacts so oddly to him (admit it, he does. What's with the blimp, eh?) Jun is the most pivotal character in Innocent Sin, that's why! He appears in the first ten minutes of gameplay, but he only joins your party about 30-40 hours into the game. Since he's such a nonentity in Batsu, I'll deal with Jun from Tsumi. In Tsumi, Jun is a cold, calculating person, who knows how beautiful he is and manipulates people with it. He's idealistic, and wants to help people achieve their dreams, but his means of doing so are questionable at best. He likes humanity in general, but not people in particular; he's antisocial and introverted, and reacts violently when threatened. So, I guess he's sort of a cold, aloof person. At the same, he's gentle and kind to his friends, and very protective of his surrogate mother-figure, Maya-nee and his doppelganger, Tatsuya. When the Nazis invade Sumaru City, he orders his Masquerade cultists, who upto this point had presumably been stealing Ideal Energy from the citizens, to fight the Nazis and protect the defenseless people of Sumaru. I guess the moral of this story is to make sure that you're on Jun's good side. You know how Katsuya is total fangirl bait in Batsu, since he's a sweet kind house-husband/officer friendly? Jun is the fangirl bait for the truly messed-up fangirls, the ones who think "gay + psychotic + dangerous + loveable = <3 <3 <3". If you look at Jun, it's terribly obvious how girly he is. He looks like a girl, cooks, cleans, invents orthopedic slippers, and is prettier than his female friends if he's forced into makeup. Another big thing is his love of flower language and fortune-telling. In Japan - and in the US, really - fortune-telling and horoscopes and astrology are incredibly feminine things to do. Think of Batsu; who are the fortune-telling freaks? Ulala and Eriko! He is nutty yaoi fangirl bait in its purest form. But at the same time, he has a deep voice (don't talk to me about his English voice...it pains me too much. If you've seen the show Outlawstar, Jun is voiced by the voice actor for Gene Starwind. Yeah, that's how deep his voice is in Japanese) and is actually kind of a dangerous person to piss off. (He'll either call his cultists to deal with you, or he'll maim you himself with his persona.) He's a weird mess of contradictions...girly, dangerous, kind, cruel, protective, heartless... Maya likes to call Jun and Tatsuya doppelgangers. She explains that although they don't look alike, but their differences draw them together irrevocably, like a person and their shadow. They certainly have some kind of close relationship; Jun can even sense how Tatsuya's persona is feeling, not just his own. (And that's very unusual.) Actually, if you think about it, Jun and Tatsuya are pretty similar in personality, once you strip away the girly-girly femme things that Jun does. They're both quiet and introverted and detached and cool towards most people. The difference, I think, is that Jun actually is concerned with what people think of him; he's worried that people will hate him for what he did as the Joker. Tatsuya doesn't seem to care one way or the other. Those two share a kind of wordless understanding of each other; Tatsuya can go "......" and Jun will say, "Of course, I know." The demons seem to find this interesting, especially the beast ones. "Mysterious, mysterious! The big one says nothing, and the little one understands. Humans are interesting!" HISTORY massive spoilers follow. got that? good. Heh heh. As a kid, Jun's parents were fighting all the time, so he spent a lot of his free time at the Araya Shrine, where he met Tatsuya. Later on he met Eikichi and Lisa and Maya, and together they played a game called "Phoenix Corps Featherman" (I don't make this stuff up, I'm afraid) in which they wore bird masks. Jun was the Black Falcon, and seemed to actually have been the leader of the little group, which he dubbed "the Masquerade." His best friend was Tatsuya, and they hung out together a lot outside of the shrine. At one point, they exchange mementos; Tatsuya gave Jun his father's watch, and Jun gave Tatsuya his father's Zippo lighter, which was inscribed with the charming engrish proverb "Being the most important can't be seen in the eyes." (What that means is really "The most important things can't be seen with the eyes." That's a quote from Jun's favorite book, "The Little Prince." Jun got the book from his father.) The two of them have kept those keepsakes to this very day; Tatsuya's always flicking that damn lighter, and if you look at Jun's character design, you can obviously see the watch he's wearing. As Jun's homelife got worse and worse, he started lying to the other kids about his father, since everyone had heard the rumor (from Junko) that Mr. Kashihara was a lazy no-good bum, and Jun didn't want his friends to make fun of him for having a "loser dad." He was torn between his love for his gentle, weird father and the urge to impress his friends, so he'd tell them that his dad was really cool and smart, but wouldn't let them meet his father. When Mr. Kashihara finally came to pick Jun up one day, Maya asked if that was Jun's father, and Jun lied and said that Mr. Kashihara was his uncle. Jun also hated his mother, and said that he wished Maya-nee was his mother. Jun has one hell of an Oedipal complex *laugh* At some point, Jun's father dies (suicide? accident? or was he murdered? Hmmm....>D) by being crushed in the clock gears in the Sevens clock tower. From then on, Nyarlathotep - in the form of Mr. Kashihara - comes to pick up Jun from Araya. Everyone thought that Jun's papa was so cool now, and he WAS - because Nyarly was taking the form of the ideal father that Jun had wished for. It's sort of a case of rumors/dreams becoming reality, as is the norm in Sumaru City. >_> After Araya Shrine was burned down, Jun's persona power was awakened (Maya-nee had taught all the kids how to play the game "Persona-sama") and he became tortured with guilt over his "role" in "Maya-nee's death." He helped Lisa and Eikichi hide the masks in Mt. Iwato and forced himself to forget about what had happened. Moving on. Junko basically abandoned him after Kashihara's death and chased after a bunch of younger boyfriends, so Jun became a complete latchkey kid. At school, kids would try to pick on him for being so pretty and feminine, and Jun would retaliate with his Persona, badly injuring the bullies. Because of this, he was sent to Kasugayama High School, which is a school for delinquent boys. But even so, he had such a bad reputation that even the juvenile delinquents were scared when he arrived! But the Shinigami Banchou, Eikichi, checked Jun out, determined he was "harmless," and promised to "protect him." (ha!) Jun, however, is always skipping school to run his own little cult, so in the game, you hear about the "mysterious new student" from the KasuKou students. He also runs away from home (where does he live? Caracol? Maybe...) and starts sending postcards to radio shows to spread rumors (in advice programs, the DJs read the postcards out loud). That's when he becomes the Joker - the Joker is like a persona; he can summon his costume, instead of having to duck into a bathroom and change. >D Jun enters KasuKou about three months before the game starts, and became the Joker only a few weeks before. Jun is being manipulated by Nyarly into fulfilling the prophecies laid out in the book In Laqetti . Jun wants to make people's dreams (their "ideals") come true, and according to the book, the way to do that was to lead people to the utopia called "Idealian." To reach Idealian, he had to collect "Ideal Energy" - the energy of people who have hopes or dreams - and use it to raise the alien mothership under Sumaru City. This alien mothership was known as Xibalba, and the ones aboard Sumaru are the "chosen ones." (Yes, this really is the plot. Remember that Jun was insane at the time, so this plan made sense to him.) The appearance of the Last Battalion and Hitler was also predicted in In-Laqetti as a sign that the rising of the Xibalba was near. So Jun spread the rumor that by dialing your own cellphone number, you'd be able to summon "Joker-sama," who would make your dreams come true. This was a convenient way to target people with Ideal Energy, right? When he was summoned, he stole the caller's Ideal Energy with a crystal skull, turning them into a Shadow Person. When he was summoned by Lisa and Gas Chamber, he recognized Eikichi, Lisa, and Tatsuya as the rest of the Masquerade that he'd played with as a child - and his memories were so twisted that he believed them responsible for Maya-nee's death. He got confused about the past, and decided to kill them for killing Maya-nee. Jun was trying to recreate his childhood Masquerade group in the new Masquerade in a couple of different ways:
2. Male musician = Prince Taurus 3. High school girl = Lady Scorpion 4. Lighter-flicking "Tatsuya" = King Leo or, another set of parallels: 1. Kurosu Junko = Kurosu Jun, both Aquarius 2. Yoshizaka Anna = Mishina Eikichi, both Scorpio ("Yoshizaka" is just the kanji for "Eikichi" reversed) 3. Sasaki Ginji = Lisa Silverman/Ginko, both Taurus ("Gin" means "silver" in both names) 4. Sudou Tatsuya = Suou Tatsuya, both Leo (their names aren't written alike at all, but there's an obvious similarity). The Nazis stole the five crystal skulls, and the Joker turned his attention towards battling Tatsuya and his friends, who had come to rescue him. Being the Joker and Nyarlathotep's pawn had erased most of his memories, and twisted the ones that remained, so he drew upon Nyarlathotep for the hatred and anger necessary to defeat his friends. But, of course, Jun finally regained his memories and was reunited with Maya-nee and Tatsuya. ("That lighter...you kept it all this time?" "Of course." Heh heh.) Nyarlathotep appeared in the form of Mr. Kashihara to try to regain control of Jun, but Jun told him to piss off, and Nyarly stripped away Jun's Joker persona and disappeared. Now Jun rejoined the rest of the childhood Masquerade, gaining Yukino's ability to summon Persona. Of course, now he's feeling really guilty, and most of the rest of the game is reassuring him that he's not a horrible person, just, er, misguided. He still carries around his own bucketful of Issues, which become extremely apparent in Xibalba, where your nightmares come true. He's guilty, afraid of his mother, loves his parents, hates his parents, thinks it might be better if he just disappeared...Maya has to basically coach him through his problems, usually by appealing to his feelings for Tatsuya: "If you disappeared, you'd leave Tatsuya all alone!" "....okay...." ".....*flicks lighter*" "Tatsuya..." Finally he confronts his past, admits that Kashihara Akinari was his father, and tries to convince Okamura Maya not to carry out the full prophecy in In-Laqetti. The crazy bitch doesn't listen to him, of course, and his Maya-nee is killed in the final battle with Nyarly-papa as a human sacrifice. Afterwards...well, who knows? On the Other Side, Jun has no family left, and the world outside of Sumaru City is destroyed... |