application

[witchesbroom]

Character
Name: Aki Izayoi
Series: Yugioh 5Ds
Timeline: Episode 64, right before she summons the Black Rose Dragon
Canon Resource Links: https://yugioh.fandom.com/wiki/Akiza_Izinski

Personality:
At the point that I am taking her from in canon, Aki Izayoi is just completing some rapid character development. The first half of the series, up until literally about twenty episodes before her canon point, Aki had a split personality. The first one was a reserved, isolated, and moody teenage woman. She has no friends outside of Divine, a manipulative cult leader who wishes to use her psychic abilities to manifest Yu-Gi-Oh cards to lead an army of psychic warriors (no, I am not kidding). Upon meeting Yusei and seeing him possess a similar mark to the one she has, she tells him to leave him alone before disappearing into a dramatic explosion. When she sees her parents living a perfectly fine life without her, she destroys their house with her psychic powers and runs off. Her harsh, cold temperament has only led her to believe that Divine can help her get her powers under control, as her emotional state and psyche continuously materialize dueling monsters that she, as a child, proceeds to assault both family members and classmates with.

The other personality is one meant to deal with the guilt of inflicting so much pain by

being unable to control her abilities. This persona is called the “Black Rose Witch” and is an openly sadistic opponent who relishes in hurting others. The contrast between these two personalities is best seen in the Fortune Cup arc. Before dueling, Aki expresses worry that someone will be hurt with her dueling before Divine encourages her and says it is necessary for the Arcadia movement. Her opponent is a man who attempts to use her past against her by calling her a monster who was abandoned by her parents, which she retorts by blasting with a beam of psychic rose petals with no confirmation if he survives after.

Before her radical character development, Divine was really the only motivation and sense of support/stability she had. She’d take direction only from him - becoming catatonic and broadly homicidal after seeing him get blasted out a window and fall stories to his death. She attempts to duel Yusei saying she will “find a place for everyone”. It’s probably the same place she leaves other duelists: the hospital.

What changes this so quickly? What turns her from a deeply unstable teenaged menace to your standard plucky trading card game tv show’s protagonist?

The real-life answer is a lot. The Yu-Gi-Oh Movie was coming out, splitting the team, multiple rewrites were ordered to promote new cards, Aki’s voice actress requested time off her wedding, and, also, remember that cult plot line? The plotlines were shuffled, merged and dropped due to a controversy involving one of characters in that plot actually being in a real-life cult, causing even more rewrites. I am only adding this because, otherwise, there isn’t a lot of context to Aki suddenly going from someone who might have had an on-screen kill in a childhood’s television show to who she is after.

As far as canon goes, Yusei, like most Yu-Gi-Oh main characters, has the ability to just beat the good into you. Once your life points hit 0 from a Yu-Gi-Oh protagonist, so does your desire to commit evil. Aki nearly attacks him and her dad with one of her Psychic but Real Monsters™ but discovers how to control her monster at the last-minute while, to her knowledge, Divine is still dead and this helps her move forward. They also ended the cult plot unceremoniously by having Divine swallowed by a reptilian monster (also a Yu-Gi-Oh card) after being tricked into revealing to everyone that was monstrously evil (and also alive from his hundred foot fall) all along. Aki who is actually facing that Yu-Gi-Oh card/reptilian monster in a duel that determines the fate of humanity, seems completely unfazed by his death and does not spare it a second thought despite promising to kill everything in her path (as child appropriately as possible, given the fact this is still Yu-Gi-Oh) less than twenty episodes earlier.

Aki after this “defeat into friendship” from Yusei is much more of a standard protagonist. Her friends, including Yusei, have provided the real stability she always lacked. Her emotions are much more in control and she is more naturally empathetic. Upon both her and Misty, a woman who tried to take Aki’s life multiple times in vengeance for her brother, learning that Aki was not responsible for Misty’s brother’s death, Aki and Misty attempt to stop the duel only for Misty’s evil form to push her into continuing the duel. Afterwards, she mourns Misty’s disappearance. Her view on her powers and abilities changes too. She no longer views her abilities as a curse or a personal trigger and when her powers vanish (for reasons never explained) after her full personality reform (for reasons barely explained) she is distressed by their absence. She realizes that she’s able to still help people on her own without them, and then gets them back towards the end of the series, using her powers to protect her friends and her opponent (who was also trying to kill her) from falling debris.
She comes to the frequent aid of Rua and Ruka, two much younger friends, while they attend Duel Academy. Attempting to harm children, which was one a casual hobby for her, evokes her running towards the action to defend them. Her newfound sense of compassion inspires her to become a doctor at the series end.

Despite this, Aki is not really an animated individual at all outside of her presentation even after Yusei’s victory against her. She is staid in both speech and mannerisms, being able to keep her cool and strategize while both in dangerous situations (like facing villains in card games, and facing villains in card games on motorcycles aka turbo duels) and in situations that are more obnoxious than dangerous (as shown in the episode where she takes on a bunch of turbo duelists because they thought it was a male only sport). The only time she is truly outwardly passionate is when she is fretting and worrying over Yusei, either because he is in danger or receiving attention from another woman or friend. In both circumstances, her temper comes out and she’s not above threatening even other close allies. In some ways, Yusei provided her the dream she wanted when she was younger of being a normal girl. For the rest of the series after she starts to control her powers, her personality is a lot more in line with a mild-mannered teenaged girl instead of a homicidal maniac. She’s much more reserved, insecure, gentle and supportive of all the men around her who seem to end up with much more interesting plot lines, with Aki dueling maybe only 2-3 more times before the series is over.

Considering how I will be taking her from the canon point just after her miraculous recovery, I’d like to portray her as somewhere more towards who she is after befriending Yusei and learning how to control her powers. I think her choosing to focus on Misty over Divine does speak a lot to just how quickly she was able to process and re-examine things from another point of view. Carly’s presence and canon point can also facilitate a more grounding experience where it’s more realistic that she will be on this path more than the 16-year-old homicidal maniac with the secret sadistic split personality. If there was a manipulative enough villain with great branding for their cult, I think that would really be the only way for her to revert back where she was at the start of the series (outside of an event where these changes are possible).

Pokémon Information
Affiliation: Trainer
Starter: Budew
Password: Atomic Fireball

Samples
RP Sample: 
RP Sample: https://ohmyarceus.dreamwidth.org/19280.html?thread=4220752#cmt4220752

Victory Road Sample:
Aki’s eyes transfix on the field of play ahead of her. She’s pretty used to fighting with monsters, and, by the standards of her world, even has some experience fighting with real ones. However, unlike the days of the past where she could freely hurt as she wanted, she is on a very different path as of late.
After years of not being able to control her powers and causing multiple injuries to duelists in her home world, both intentional and accidental, Aki finally learned how to control and manifest her powers while making sure they could not injure an ally.

And then she woke up here. Not trusting the explanation (or mother) given, she headed down the only route available with her companion, Budew, before being accosted by another one of the <i>monsters</i> she’s heard about. With the awareness it, too, is living, Aki has been standing in place for the better chunk of two hours, still deciding upon her first move. She takes a leap of faith, hoping her monster does not obliterate what is standing before her like times previous.
“Budew. Use vine whip!”

The eight-inch Pokémon flies out two vines, slapping the Pidgey with the force of getting hit in the face by a balloon. Pidgey tilts its head in confusion, Budew develops a sweat drop, or possibly dew drop, at the anticlimactic result.
“Oh… that didn’t seem to do anything at all,” the complete failure brings Aki a sense of relief. Whether her powers have been weakened, rendering those around her safe, or whether her monster is truly that pathetic of a creature is not a question that has crossed her mind yet. Her revelation that these monsters are harmless causes her to take a miniature hop forward in excitement, basking in the thrill of the discovery. It’s a very short-lived moment, as the Pidgey proceeds to bat it away and into the air with a whirlwind.

"Bya-Dewww," The small bud of a Pokémon is ejected from the battlefield, as Aki quickly finds herself in the middle of Budew and the wild Pidgey.

"Oh... Wait! Budew!" Aki turns her back on the bird as she rushes back to Budew's location. The Pidgey seems content to just fly off. Never expecting to once in her life be defeated by a common bird of any kind, Aki helps her companion get back up.

"I guess if there's a nice part about being alone; it's that no one saw that," She might miss her brand new companions back in her home world, but she definitely would not miss the teasing that would brew from such a failure.