SCOWLING AND SHOUTING, "SHALL WE DANCE?"

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aefenglom

[slushfund]

Player Information
Name: Froot.
Age: Twenty-eight.
Contact: frooting.
Other Characters: Jonas (coherer), Oxenfree.

Character Information
Name: Youichi Hiruma.
Canon: Eyeshield 21.
Canon Point: End of series.
Age: Nineteen.
History: Here.

Personality:

Hiruma is a bizarre person, full of purposeful contradictions which he demonstrates in almost every situation. He will intimidate others with his loud eccentricities and belligerent attitude, then promptly turn the other cheek and lend a compassionate hand to worthy underdogs (albeit with selfish desire and mind for personal gain). He chooses to approach his circumstances uniquely. From the way he copes with stress to how he teaches people lessons, he is shown to be an amoral, vulgar character. An “anti-hero” in the eyes of the Eyeshield 21 cast.

The quarterback is disreputable for being a foul-mouthed cretin whose violent behaviour terrifies everyone he meets, due to his deliberate ideal: “In American Football, you’ll win if you scare the opponents out of their wits!” He addresses most people with crude nicknames and anyone who disagrees with his derogatoriness is subject to his incessant mockery. He totes around guns, grenades, fireworks—seemingly everywhere he ventures. Hiruma’s influence, as sketchy as it is, reaches even the United States of America; the horror he induces, in his canon, is actually legendary, and people quake just at the mention of his name. You can tell why being thrown into cross-canon communities is a major ego-deflation, as he’s outmatched by anyone and everyone with above-average ability.

Well, that said, it never gets him down for too long. Being the excitable person that he is, when he’s faced with exciting situations he tends to go all out to the point of ludicrousness. He celebrates things like well-executed plays by his team, touch-downs and winning games with flashy reactions including setting off fireworks, confetti, spraying fire hoses at large crowds and shooting dangerous weaponry into the air (a very common reaction, whether something happens as planned or not). He’s prone to manic cackling during dubious activities when he’s particularly pleased, or when he is plotting something sinister... not to mention at the shallow, material misfortunes of the people around him.

Hiruma is easily entertained by such things as idiocy, overconfidence, and failures, while remaining extremely quick to anger. Just say something uncultured about American football, mess with him personally, or do something inexplicably stupid, and he will fly off the handle into a shouting rage. His short fuse is seen frequently, in one case when Monta, the team’s wide receiver, almost gets disqualified for fighting with a referee during one of their matches. Hiruma, hollering profanities, chased him down with guns blazing. Though, in reality, he holds no special regard for any authority (including law enforcement, the air force, even the army), his superiors, those he trains, or the rest of the general populace.

This is clear from the way he is constantly exploiting peoples’ weaknesses through blackmail, and where his infamous “Book of Threats” or the “Devil’s Handbook” comes into play, a notebook supposedly filled with dirt on everyone he meets (in the bonus pages of the manga, it is said that the notebook is actually empty; Hiruma commits everything he learns about everyone to memory). He has managed to get funding for the American football club from the principal of Deimon High with relative ease as he threatened to tell the man’s wife about an affair he was having. In the final chapter, he was noted by his former teammates to be running his university, Saikyodai, from the shadows. The extent of his manipulation is so notorious that his name is even known by police officers in America. When they travel there for training and the world tournament, they have no trouble getting into restricted places like casinos and out of dire trouble because of this extremely wide net of information.

Known previously as one of the “brainy three” on his old team, Hiruma is as intellectual as he is cunning. He makes up inventive ways of communicating to his teammates without the use of words to confuse their opponents, can see through enemy football teams’ plays with ease, and has an exceptional photographic memory. He can memorize an entire handbook of unique sign-language cues the club manager, Mamori, created in a matter of seconds. In Las Vegas at the end of the team’s Death March across America, Hiruma won ¥20 000 000 (around $255 232) playing Black Jack by “counting cards”. He kept a running tally of all high and low valued cards he saw, memorizing them and making decisions based on what cards were most likely to appear next—an extremely difficult mathematical approach to the card game.

Hiruma hates the idea of showing his feelings to others, because having feelings would ruin his image—the carefully built persona almost everyone but his friends see when they look at him. It would ruin his fright-factor, his element of surprise. He is verbally extroverted, but mentally introverted, so he tends to go home alone, sit on his own away from groups (like on the Devil Bats' Death March across America), and shrugs worrywarts off with a smile or smart remark, finding it extremely difficult, due to past transgressions against him (most notably his terrible relationship with his father), to trust and put faith in others. This is clear when members of his team, Musashi and Mamori, point out his struggles to him, and begin to find sympathy for him. He belittles the things they have to say, tells them it’s all in their heads, replies sardonically in order to deflect the conversation away from himself.

Hiruma does care a great deal for his friends and recognizes when they’re trying to help him, but while he appreciates it, he is goal-oriented—one of the main reasons he acts the way he does. He says, “You gotta’ become a badass in order to deal with the enemy!” Hiruma believes a lot of the game is about psyche-outs, tricks to confuse his opponents, taunts and intimidation, which he unfortunately carries over to his daily life. The writer of Eyeshield 21, Inagaki, stated that he intended to make a character “only concerned with winning” and who will do “whatever it takes to win”, so he has been designed to be unfalteringly stubborn, refusing to rest when he sees a goal is in sight. Even when he received a broken arm in a later chapter, he asked Mamori to hide it with bindings so he could support his teammates and play on.

He’s rarely ever seen slacking off or doing something that isn’t for his own benefit, or for the benefit of the his team. His incessant hard-work is an important staple in the development of his team, and he even trains his teammates in odd, roundabout ways by helping Musashi—a construction worker who later rejoins the team as their kicker—renovate and build parts of the football clubhouse. He’s selfish and exploits people to get whatever he wants whenever he wants, but at the same time he has a heart of gold. Hiruma cares, which is his greatest secret, held and defended viciously from outliers. He puts his friends and their physical needs first and he is shown on the Death March to have neglected even the health of his own legs while running in order to train his team’s rookie players.

It’s clear that while Hiruma actively pretends not to harbour a conscience of any kind, on occasion he is sympathetic and shows staggering compassion to his fellow teammates. When someone tries their hardest and maxes out on their efforts in hopes of achieving their dreams, he reaches out to assist them; to bring their hopes up and teach them how to be successful in their own unique way. When he made potential recruits for the American football team grab bags of ice, forcing them to climb the Tokyo tower before all of the ice had melted, Hiruma is seen assisting Yukimitsu—a cram school student with no talent at sports, whose struggles reminded him of his own—at the last second by dropping an ice cube into Yukimitsu’s bag, declaring that there was still one unmelted cube left. More than all of this, however, Hiruma is inspirational.

He may be loud, crude and mischievous on and off the field, but when a chance to teach valuable lessons to those who wish to listen appears, he seizes each and every one of those chances. Hiruma is a walking, talking pep-rally for his friends, encourages his players to give their all whatever their circumstances. A surprising amount of charisma is the trait of a leader, and he is most certainly that leader. He commands the respect and faith of everyone who wishes to follow him. Sometimes, all it takes for him to instil courage and the will to fight in others is an ear-grating huddle shout: “We’ll fucking kill them!”

Abilities & Skills:

OVERVIEW

∙ Has genius-level intellect, is highly perceptive, and is logical/rational to a fault
∙ Excellent right throwing arm; he’s a portable artillery cannon with high accuracy
∙ Has a photographic memory; recalls minute details, can memorize anything in seconds (especially writing/drawings)
∙ Tactical/strategical genius, exceptional at planning, adept with solving problems/puzzles
∙ A guru at card games and strategy games, i.e. blackjack, poker, shougi, and chess
∙ Is a great actor, using his skill in drama to confuse opponents
∙ Can blow super big gum bubbles
∙ 40 yard dash is 5.0 seconds
∙ Bench press is 165lbs (75kg)
∙ Can pull off dress shoes without socks

STRENGTHS

Hiruma’s a man of many talents, but has crippling weaknesses that make his story one to sing about. He’s an excellent quarterback; a strategical genius, a puzzle solver, a wizard at all things information and knowledge. With a mind like a steel-trap, Hiruma’s known well as one of the trickiest men in the series, and a devil to get to know, with all of his dramatics, eccentricities and surprisingly impressive acting and imitation. He’s hard to rattle, and hard to keep rattled; he’s logical in everything he does and feels, even if it is a harrowing scenario. He prides himself on being able to think up several different plans at any given time, even under colossal amounts of stress, and in some cases, pain.

He’s detached, keeps his emotions and his thoughts to himself unless he’s expressing an opinion, and is generally an enigma to most people he crosses. Not only is he as smart as a whip (bolstered by his photographic memory, he can recall the tiniest details, speed read, memorize written word in seconds, and burn sights into the backs of his eyes to dredge up later), he’s been named a "portable artillery cannon" by game announcers, he can throw well and throw hard. He can beam a football, or anything else he finds lying around, at a high speed with incredible aim—which was honed in order to make up for his debilitating stature, one not suited for the constant battle that is American football.

WEAKNESSES

Hiruma is average in every sense of the word. Despite his beautiful mind, of course, and the few other things that make him a worth adversary. He isn’t fast, he isn’t strong, he isn’t big enough to make an impact; he’s too thin, too wiry. Even though he is physically fit, has impressive stamina, and can hold his ground in even the most unlikely, dangerous situations, he’s all brains, no brawn. It’s a crippling disadvantage, especially in his position.

Not only is he gangly and unsuited for the physical aspect of battle, he’s far too perceptive for his own good. Memories and the things he sees will stay with him for a long time, and might eventually have an extremely negative impact on how he operates on the day to day. Hiruma’s prone, unfortunately, to harbouring pessimistic thoughts about himself and others; he has a low opinion of people until he’s proven wrong, and can’t find it in him to trust anyone until they’ve proven themselves to be worthy and useful. This keeps him away from heartache. The reason why he detaches himself like this and keeps others at arm’s length is because he feels too strongly for others. He actually does care a great deal for the people who’ve managed to throw down his barriers to get at his gooey centre; he’s only human.

He has a great sensitivity for people and the things they go through, whether it’s physical or mental injury, he simply hides this fact well. Rather, he’s more apathetic about himself, and would sooner put himself in harm’s way than risk the health of one of his comrades. He fears betrayal and loss more than anything else.

Inventory/Companions: A Colt R0977 M4 Carbine, one pack of sugarless mint gum, a set of keys, a black, dogeared notebook, and a cell phone.

Choice: Vampire.
Reason:

Hiruma's entire character is "bat-eared bastard" and was specifically designed to appear bat-like. His American football team in high school was "The Devil Bats," so it's thematically perfect for him. He's got the fangs and devil's charm, and going through the changes that inevitably bring death will be delightful to explore.

Sample: Here.