Ai Nanasaki

PLAYER

Name: Theodore

Journal Username: Koiwamizuiro

E-mail: theodoricos@gmail.com

AIM: theodoricos@gmail.com

Current Characters at Luceti: Ai Nanasaki, Hector Barbossa

CHARACTER

Name: Ai Nanasaki

Canon: Amagami SS+

Gender: Female

Age: 17

Wing Color: Black at the center, fading to dark blue around the edges.

Canon Point: The very end of Kaoru’s character arc in Amagami SS+ (Episode 8), not her own one.

Canon Point Explanation: I am taking her from the very end of the anime of Amagami SS+ so as to have her around the age of 17, in the middle of her second year in high school, by which time she will have established herself as captain of a swimming team there. She will also have had time for her passion for swimming to grow even further, and that brings her a good deal of character development. I am not taking her from her own arc, however, so as not to deprive her of her relationship with Junichi and the romance that blossoms between them.

History: http://amagami.wikia.com/wiki/Ai_Nanasaki

Personality:

On the outside, Ai Nanasaki can strike a person as a calm, mysterious girl, one who largely keeps things to herself and is not too easy to approach or befriend. She can be described as reserved, and will probably keep her distance most of the time before she opens up to somebody who she feels a growing bond with. That is not to say that she is cold or rude – which she is not – but it will certainly take a while until she becomes more talkative.

Though initially distant, once Ai has started forming a relationship – be it friendship or romance – she values it greatly. It is an important thing for her and the fact that she has begun opening up to somebody means a great deal to her. She thinks before doing so, and considers whether she feels close enough to the people she interacts with and whether she would be able to share her most intimate thoughts with them. When that is the case, that shows that she genuinely trusts that person.

After she loosens up around somebody like that, Ai can be quite playful and teasing, which helps her become even more fun to be around after one gets to know her. She is also very kind, helpful, considerate and reliable. Part of her character is naturally inquisitive and curious as well, and there are definitely things that can spark her interest – sometimes enough so that she may be the one to approach people herself. Impressing her may or may not be difficult, but once something has gotten her attention, she will likely want to find out more.

That is all strongly tied to the awareness and cognizance that she has . She displays it as early as the actual beginning of her character arc, where she picks up on who Junichi’s sister is, having paid attention to what he has been saying to her and who he has been going to school with. Another example of that would be her seeing through the façade of her fellow classmate Tsukasa that the latter wears in school to hide her real self. She can certainly put two and two together, and a lot of such scenes in the anime show that. That makes Ai a very intelligent person, capable of reading between the lines and analyzing a person’s character well.

That is not to say that she is a bookworm, though – she is not necessarily a straight A student. She occasionally has trouble with her studies, especially math, and needs help with them, usually getting it from her friends and people that she has grown to trust.

Ai is also a very dedicated and ambitious girl. One of her greatest passions is swimming, and she devotes a lot of time training as part of her high school’s swimming team. It is clear that she values it a great deal, seeing as how much she wants to perform well. A great example of how important it is to her is the fact that she was so broken up when she learned that one of the other juniors was selected as the backstroker for the swim meet. It is misfortune that happens during her first grade in high school, which does not discourage her, but rather makes her even more determined to succeed. It is exactly that growing will and passion for the sport, however, that helps her become the swimming team captain the year after.

As a final note, Ai is also a relatively good cook. She is the one who runs the Oden stall for her school during Christmas, which is an activity that she volunteers for.

Strengths

Physical: Despite the fact that she is a little short, Ai is quite a fit girl, given that she regularly goes to swimming practice at her school. It is worth noting that throughout the course of the anime, she becomes even better at it – leading to her becoming a captain in Amagami SS+.

Mental: Ai is really clever and intelligent, and she also has a keen mind. Fooling her would not be easy, for she has been shown to pick up on things pretty early on. She was also able to sense that there was something off with Tsukasa in the second episode of her arc, who was not under suspicion by anybody else in her class at the time – and that says something about Ai. She has what it takes to be a swimming team captain too, which shows that she is capable of being a leader as well.

Emotional: Ai is a calm, even tempered girl who manages to keeps a cool head most of the time. Along with that, she has a lot of patience and is willing to listen and hear people out. She cares a great deal for her family – her interactions with her little brother in the anime being a testament to that – and truly values those she can call her friends and the ones she considers to be even more than that. Ai is the kind of person who would always be there for the ones she holds dear to her.

Weaknesses

Physical: Even though she is fit because of her regular swimming practice, Ai does not have any experience physically fighting anyone or even knowing how to fight in general. If she were faced with someone who does – someone who means her harm, that is – then she would be in serious trouble. Her only option would be to somehow outsmart whoever attacks her, leading her to most likely escaping from the encounter.

Mental: Ai is naturally reserved when she is not among people she has grown to know and form a relationship with, so getting her to open up would take some time. As a result of that, she is not one of the most outgoing girls in her high school class, and usually, she only hangs out with her two friends Sae and Mia.

Emotional: Given how much she wants to succeed in what she does, Ai does not handle her failings too well – as shown in the third episode of her arc particularly, which is where she breaks down because of not managing to improve her time by a large enough margin. When she and Junichi are separated during Christmas in the last couple of episodes of her arc in Amagami SS+, she becomes clearly emotionally affected as well, and the fact that she is without him gets to her. In other words, her particularly strong emotional attachment to things that are important to her can also be considered a weakness.

Anything else?: N/A

SAMPLES

First Person: http://trainingwings.dreamwidth.org/27592.html?thread=2647752#cmt2647752

Third Person:

After yet another morning of tiring swimming practice in the nearby mountain lake, a worn out Ai Nanasaki found herself taking a nice, long rest in the Luceti Hot Springs. As luck would have it, there wasn’t anybody around this time, and the only sounds came from the girl’s soft breathing and the small waterfall close by. Her body, clad in her bluish one-piece swimsuit, was pleasantly leaning against a smooth rock with her eyes closed, the sulfur smell of the hot spring surrounding her while she relaxed.

It was especially soothing that day after what had been a rather fun training session, which was the reason for Ai’s good mood.

At that moment, she couldn’t help but be reminded of the time she spent in her favorite hot spring back home – a natural and secluded one, which was located on a hill that belonged to her grandfather. It was only a short bus ride from her city, and she would often go there whenever her muscles ached from swimming practice. She liked to think of it as her own secret spot. And while this wasn’t exactly the same experience, the teenage girl was still glad that there was somewhere in Luceti she could go to at all – not to mention that the teleporter she used saved her the trouble of going there on foot.

Being here on that day, she recalled what it was really like back home, though, and made her all the more motivated to eventually get herself a private hot spring. With that, she would be able to relax aby herself for as long as she wanted to and wouldn’t need to wear this swimsuit, for she would finally have the privacy she wanted. From what she had heard, that goal was very much possible to accomplish, and it would most certainly be worth it by the end. If she had that, perhaps she’d grow even more accustomed to life in Luceti.

The village was a really odd, curious place to her that she kept on finding more and more about as time went by – though she felt like it would forever remain an enigma. It had its fair share of dangers that she would’ve liked to live without, and there were always recurring experiments that still frightened her. However, it was still somewhere to live – and she wanted it to feel like home as much as she could make it.

Apart from meeting its motley inhabitants, there was certainly another silver lining to living in Luceti for Ai – it was moments like this when she could simply rest in the pleasant, relaxing hot water, without a care in the world, after spending the morning doing what she loved to do. For as long as she was here, she would keep doing that.