Naoko Tanaka

Important Info for Commissions

HEIGHT: 5'7"
BUILD: Slim
ETHNICITY: 3/4 Japanese, 1/4 English
APPARENT AGE: 17
HAIR: Very dark blonde, bordering on a light brunette, exact color varies depending on length due to dyeing. Hair is kept short at the front and pulled up in a bun at the back. Exact style of bun varies from day to day
EYES: Very light brown, honey colored
SCARS: None
OTHER IMPORTANT TRAITS: Perpetual frown, serious case of resting bitch face even when happy
PERSONALITY: Generally fairly nice, comes across as overbearing and motherly. Convinced she's mature for her age. Extremely hard working academically. Strong dislike for Japanese culture, and a huge appreciation for American pop culture

Appearance

Naoko's most noticeable feature is her unfortunate case of resting bitchface. If she's happy, she looks pissed off. If she's neutral, she looks pissed off. If she's angry, she looks pissed off. The only time her expression changes to anything pleasant is if she's really happy, and then it turns out she has a genuinely pleasant smile.

Naoko stands at 5'7", roughly in the middle of her parents heights. She has an average build, and doesn't have much muscle. She's an avid practitioner of judo, which is the only reason she has any at all.

Naoko herself is three-quarters Japanese, with her mother being half-Japanese, half-American. Even so, Naoko tends to take more after her mother. She has her mother's lighter eyes--a light brown that borders on honey colored--and her mother's lighter hair. Naturally, it's a light brown, but Naoko dyes it to a dark blonde. She keeps her hair medium length, but pulls most of it up in a bun at the back of her head.

Considering how much time Naoko spends on campus, she's most commonly found in the high school uniform. She does have clothes aside from it, but during the week she tends to wear her uniform from the time she wakes up to the time she goes to bed.

Personality

Despite her perpetually irritated expression, Naoko is actually a pretty nice person to be around. A lifetime of feeling like the odd man out means she's the first person to put her foot forward in any social situations, greeting people and handling introductions herself. She's not a queen bee, but tends to be connected to a lot of different social circles just because she's been there so long. So many of the Academy's students are just arriving, so it makes it fairly easy for her to make quick friends--she's the girl who has been there forever and is willing to show them around.

As far as academics goes, Naoko is firmly of average intelligence. Even so, she still gets excellent grades due to her work ethic. Naoko isn't the student who is leaving things to the last minute--she's the student that's getting things done the day it's assigned, heading to office hours to check her work, and then spending the rest of the assigned period relaxing. She prefers to get things done as soon as possible, and does very poorly when she's forced to do things last minute. Pop quizzes are her own personal nightmare, so she spends a good deal of time studying for all her classes just in case.

Naoko can come across as a bit motherly, and doesn't have a great set of boundaries when it comes to acting like someone's big sister. She has a tendency to stick her nose in other people's business and try to help 'fix' things, and she always wants to be the shoulder you can cry on. For the most part, it's well meaning, and after getting burned more than once she's trying to focus her energy on improving this part of herself, suggesting people use the resources that the Academy provides rather than dumping their problems on her emotionally. Despite her attempts, she almost always is willing to hop in and 'rescue' people, and it's unlikely to change in the near future.

Naoko has a few very specific things that bother her, largely due to her upbringing. She doesn't like anyone poking fun or teasing her about how close she is to her parents. She also doesn't like when people complain about their powers. As someone entirely powerless who grew up surrounded by people with powers, she's very jealous of those who have them. If you're going to complain about how your super cool powers are a 'curse', they better be really bad, or else she'll just assume you're an insensitive asshole.

She's also bothered by (although not quite angry at) any sort of assumption that she likes Japanese things. She speaks Japanese and grew up fairly immersed in Japanese culture at home, but she dislikes doing anything that could be construed as supporting modern day Japan. She (mostly unfairly) blames Japan for what happened to her father, and goes out of her way to avoid any sort of Japanese culture. She doesn't want to listen to jpop, she doesn't want to watch anime, and she doesn't want to play Japanese games. She tends to overcompensate for this by being very into American culture, and is always up to date on the hottest new songs, movies, and TV shows.

Powers

Naoko possesses no powers of her own.

Biography

Naoko's own story doesn't quite start with her, but instead with her parents. While Naoko and her mother are both ordinary humans, completely without powers, her father was a metahuman who was capable of regeneration, even after having died. When he died for the first time, the Japanese government stepped in to 'protect' him, covering the entire situation up. Rather than providing help and support for the extremely alarmed young man in their custody, they instead investigated the nature of his powers, experimenting and torturing him for years.

While Naoko firmly places the blame on the whole of Japan, the truth is a lot more murky. Only a small portion of the Japanese government even knew that he existed, let alone what was being done to him. When it became apparent that whatever made him immortal couldn't be replicated or explained, that section became increasingly corrupt, offering him up for human testing to a variety of companies in exchange for large amounts of money.

It was at one of those companies that Naoko's father met her mother, although it was far from the happy first meeting that many couples experienced. Plagued by guilt at her involvement, Naoko's mother stole him away, fleeing into the countryside and doing her best to hide.

It was in the country, on the run from the government, that Naoko's mother encountered a Starlight Academy scout, who put in an emergency request and helped them flee from the country.

Life on Manta Carlos was like heaven on earth, and the pair settled in comfortably. Naoko's father sought mental health treatment, recovering as much as could be expected from the trauma he'd endured. Naoko's mother set out to do her best to ensure that no one else would suffer the same fate, working for the part of the Manta Carlos government that deals with refugees and outreach.

It was to the surprise of absolutely no one when Naoko's mother announced that she was pregnant. Naoko's parents got married, and six months later, Naoko was born.

Naoko was raised (and spoiled) by both her parents, although her father was the stay at home parent. His difficulty adjusting to Manta Carlos made the majority of jobs unsuitable, so in the end he took up a job that more particularly suited his own powers. Once every two weeks he'd return to the hospital, spending several hours under sedation as his organs were repeatedly collected for donation. Since his organs made no attempt to return to his body and were perfectly healthy, they were in high demand, helping to drop the waiting list for organ donors down to a fraction of its original length.

When Naoko was five she was sent off to Starlight Academy for Kindergarten, starting out with a rather tiny class of those who had been born on the island. The older she got, the larger her class size grew, and Naoko found herself the odd man out in many situations. When the other students went off to power classes, Naoko simply had a spare period. While the possibility existed that she had taken after her father, there was no way to test short of killing her, and all signs indicated she was simply an ordinary human.

About to start her 11th year, Naoko finds herself once more surrounded by new students, and still feeling ever so slightly out of place. She started the Starlight Academy Film Club in hopes of finding new friends who might, if she's lucky, stick around.

Extra Info

Naoko speaks English and Japanese fluently, and doesn't have much of an accent in either.