Izanami

Player Information

Name: Ana
Personal Journal: crownofguilt
Age: 21
Contact Info: anakhathesilver @ AIM, anakha @ plurk
Other Characters Played: AU!Sora and Vanika Conchita
Do you need an invite? No

Character Information

Character Name: Izanami
Character Series: Shin Megami Tensie, specifically the Persona line, specifically Persona 4
Character Age: She is older than the world (as she helped create it in her story), though typically appears in her mid-twenties
Character Gender: Izanami is a woman
Original Canon
Canon Point: Post-true ending
Background Link: This is her game-specific history, and the version of the myth they used is detailed here
Personality: To start with, Izanami is actually the true antagonist of the game. However, this doesn’t mean anything in the way of her being evil. She means well, despite outward appearances. The problem is she doesn’t often interact with humans, and so she doesn’t really understand them well. So she devised a way to see what they wanted most and then give it to them. Unfortunately, because she went with a brief glance, she decided they wanted what was essentially oblivion.

Her limited knowledge of humanity shows well when she is disguised as the gas station attendant. For one, she comes across as overeager in her attempts to seem friendly. As well, she begins to lose her patience when she doesn’t know how to get Yu, the protagonist, to stop pestering her, even though, as a gas station attendant, she should be used to people pestering her and asking stupid questions. Instead, she becomes easily annoyed, eventually revealing that she greeted Adachi and Namatame in the same way she greeted Yu—she had completely dropped the façade at that time because Yu had actually figured things out. In fact, she is openly excited about Yu’s conclusion that she’s the one responsible. She does seem somewhat annoyed that he didn’t just accept the events of the Good Ending with Adachi and her avatar, but is genuinely overjoyed and excited that Yu reached her.

While she chose Yu for his potential, she herself states she underestimated those she chose to stimulate Inaba. Not only did they call the fog from the other world, in the end, they lifted it—and Yu even acted “outside of his part.” She doesn’t understand why, however, he would do this, as all of her observations of humanity show them as simply content to drift along, only ever making half-hearted reaches for the truth. She sees the team’s continuous attempts to find the truth greedy, because the comparisons she has didn’t care about the truth.

On another hand, Izanami is extremely confident in her abilities, perhaps even haughty. However, this is because she is, really, a goddess and maintains an air of superiority—much like a queen over her subjects. She even goes so far as to call the strength of the team feeble during their battle. This does not mean, however, she doesn’t compliment the team when they do well. She also willingly gives information, remaining polite while doing so despite her position as being above them. She details that humans are the ones who choose what appears on the Midnight Channel, citing that their hearts reveal their true curiosities—showing that she does have at least some understanding of how humanity works. She is indeed correct that most humans desire to lay out their inner thoughts and feelings, while being curious about others, but that most are too cowardly to do so. This is why she believes humanity would be better off as Shadows—which are, by definition, a person’s inner thoughts and feelings. Her hand in things with the Midnight Channel was to grant exactly what humanity wanted: “the want to show and the want to see,” as she puts it.

Despite being the antagonist of the game, Izanami does very little in the grand scheme of things. She gives the initial sparks—the Personas and power to enter the TV—to Yu, Namatame and Adachi, then created the Midnight Channel as a window and began the initial rumors of it. Then, she simply sat back and watched things unfold, allowing humanity to decide its own fate. She has a very hands-off approach to things, merely starting them and observing to discern what it is humanity truly wants. And she truly does care what humanity wants, as when she sees how the strong emotions and bonds of a few overpower the apathy of many, she gladly turns the world over to humanity, no longer interfering. She even states outright: “Everything was for your sake… To create the world mankind so wanted.” So basically, underneath a haughty exterior, she is a caring woman who simply wants the best for humanity, even if she’s so detached as to not understand how to actually discern what they truly want.

She wrongly interprets humanity’s anxiety and need to compare oneself to another as a desire for the world to be enshrouded in fog—something that obscures the truth. However, what she doesn’t consider is that these attempts to define oneself with other people is a struggle to uncover the truth about oneself and thus dispel the fog. She even goes so far as to think the team is “drunk on the truth” and exceeding their role, when in fact she herself did not account for the unpredictability of mankind. She toys with them in the battle, trying to convince them for awhile of their folly before her true appearance is shown. She also calls the team foolish, stating they have stepped into the realm of the gods—as humanity had not yet earned the ability to decide fate for themselves. She does, eventually, grow tired of this, and simply uses Thousand Curses—a spell that drags the person inflicted with it into the Underworld.

Finally, she shows how little she understands humans upon her defeat, wondering aloud if wrapping oneself in blissful ignorance, as she calls it, is true peace for humans. She understands how hard it is for humans to grow, but she doesn’t understand why they would continuously hurt themselves to do so. She finally accepts this fact, even if she doesn’t and maybe will never understand it or humanity’s insistence on taking the harder path. In the end, she congratulates them and tells them that they are in charge now, telling them, “Well done” in a decidedly proud and rather happy tone. She is content with how things turned out.

It can be speculated, also, that Izanami is a very lonely person, even if she herself doesn’t realize it. Her choices reflect this, as all three of those she gave sparks to were lonely themselves. Adachi was lonely because of his own actions as well as his being, well, a complete douche with entitlement issues. Namatame was isolated because of the fallout of his affair, not even being able to see the woman he loved at the time. Yu was lonely because it is heavily implied he’d been shoved around from person to person all of his life. While Inaba is small and not exactly a tourist hotspot, the fact they have a famous inn means they get enough traffic that Izanami’s gravitation towards lonely people can be significantly telling about her.
Abilities: Here are her battle stats and all of the moves (both of the charts), as well as her ability to take various forms and she split off an avatar of herself. She also is shown as being able to float.
Sample Entry: Flowers in springtime. It had been long since she had been allowed to peaceably enjoy simple things such as this. Much too long, she feels, as she kneels down to gently cup one of the flowers between pale fingers. How fragile life is, she momentarily observes as she plucks a single flower from its bed, stem between two fingers.

“Life is such a fragile thing, and how simple it is to end it. Like picking a flower—humans hardly ever think anything of this. And yet they grow angered when another comes along to pick them off like they do to flowers. How strange they are!” she marvels to herself, slowly closing her fingers over the petals, crushing the bloom and releasing the aftermath. It falls to the ground and she observes, tilting her head only slightly.

“The end of a life begets new life. Is this not true? I suppose even my defeat at their hands counts as such…” she muses to herself, slowly turning back towards the stairs. She doesn’t care that she crushes the flowers under foot. That is, after all, simply the way of things, is it not?