Difference between revisions of "Sumiko Kakihara"

Offline, she is Sumiko Kakihara, a withdrawn elementary school student attending Ohtori. Online, she is KanaChan123, an active member of a small group of fanfiction communities. She does well in class, heavily encouraged by her parents to work hard. She's afraid her parents will stop her writing if they found out her dream, to become a best-selling author. From this dream was born Moji, a Shugo Chara. In Chara Change, Sumiko is more laid back, more social and a better writer. Their partnership is still fresh, but doubtlessly many good things are to come.

Sumiko's parents are hard-working middle class folk who want their only child to be more than they are. They especially want her to be more than Sumiko's paternal uncle, a poor layabout claiming to be an author yet who never seems to sell any of his writing. While generally they don't discuss him much, when she was very young, Sumiko's mother was complaining loudly about 'that useless author brother of yours' to Sumiko's father and Sumiko overheard. The memory stuck.

A few months later, Sumiko overheard her parents discussing moving, and her mother being adamant that they couldn't if they wanted to get Sumiko into a good school. That she deserves to be in a good school because wealth is important, and Sumiko deserves to be wealthy when she's done with school, that Sumiko doesn't deserve to be punished for having parents that don't have as much money as many others.

This is why they live in a tiny home and use the majority of their income to pay for Sumiko's tuition fees. It's why Sumiko's mother works overtime to pay all the bills and give Sumiko the best future possible. Teaching Sumiko to work for what you want by example. Sumiko's father generally follows the lead of his wife when it comes to Sumiko, even though he has some rather different ideas on childrearing. He tries to keep their disagreements hidden from Sumiko, but Sumiko noticed she's more likely to get things from her father than her mother fairly early.

While her parents don't approve of her uncle, Sumiko loves him. As a way of promoting Sumiko to do well in school, they have agreed with her uncle that him coming over for dinner is a reward for her hard work, and Sumiko took to it well. By making it her responsibility, Sumiko is being taught she needs to work for things she wants, and the work she does tends to help her in class.

Whenever her uncle comes over, he brings a light novel for Sumiko. It's somewhat varied, but it tends to be fantasy or science fiction. One of the fantasy series in particular is one she likes. When looking it up online, she ran into a fanfic community for works by that author, and started tentatively writing some of her own fanfic.

Sumiko is a bright girl, and so does well in class, but her reluctance to take classmates home and general sense of not being quite as rich as her classmates has resulted in Sumiko having few friends. It's not that she is shy, she's just afraid of what they'll think of her if they knew quite how little money she has. Her only friends are some of the other girls in Gymnastics Club, and even then the friendships are superficial. She got into gymnastics clubs because her mother insisted she join a club, but Sumiko has found she rather likes it.

Sumiko makes up for it online, where she is active in a little fanfic community as KanaChan123. The name was chosen mostly on a whim, she wanted something writing related since she obviously isn't allowed to use her real name online and picked Kana, then tacked on Chan and some numbers. Though her parents would never approve of it, this is where Yomiki's dream to become a best-selling author was born. She put the work ethic her parents taught her to her writing, but she still has a long way to go, and there's no way she could tell her parents about her goals in live.

So Sumiko wished one night, around one week ago, to know how she could make her dream come true, and Moji's egg came out of her heart. A few days later, Moji's egg opened. At the same day, Tsubasa noticed Sumiko and Moji, and asked her to join the Guardians starting in the new year as the Chair of Ten. Sumiko agreed.

Sumiko is driven, she's been taught all her life to work for what she wants. Whether it's treats or something bigger, and these lessons stuck. As a result, she's doing well in school, but also takes a bit of a dim view of people who seem to care little about their own future. She knows that if you want something in life, you have to work for it from the earliest time possible. She does well in school, and thinks it important. Her best subjects are related to language, but she's getting good results all across the board.

And Sumiko knows what she wants, she wants to become a best-selling author, and she's taking every opportunity she can to practice. She puts extra effort into any writing assignment from class, hides her attempts at writing something for herself from her parents, and tries to get people online to give feedback on her work. Unfortunately, she's terrified her parents will forbid it if they find out, and that's why she hasn't told anyone in real life what her dreams are. Because she's working so hard to hide what she's doing, it's causing stress and this makes it even harder.

Now that Moji is here, the Chara tries to encourage her to take things a little easier, and to worry less about her parents reaction about her dreams. Moji is there not just to help Sumiko become a better writer, but to remind Sumiko why she wanted to become a better writer to begin with. As it stands, Sumiko is very much at risk of losing sight of what truly matters, happiness, in exchange for obsessing about a dream that she only has because writing made her happy.

Moji has explained the basics of a heart's egg and how they can go bad to Sumiko, but they haven't had any practical experience with the topic yet, and in-depth explanations are beyond Moji's own understanding. Sumiko knows how important her dream is to her, and so she understands that these eggs going bad is something to prevent, or if possible, revert. She's still unsure about what this all means, but if she encounters a bad egg, she'll try to fix it, and with more information she'll try even harder.

Sumiko spends a lot of time online, writing and reading other people's writing, sharing ideas and commenting. She really likes this, it's a lot of fun to her, and it's also where she has her closest friends. Other online people who share her passion for writing. In real life, she's far more withdrawn, and the few friends she has don't know her all that well. Sumiko kind of likes it that way, because she's scared they wouldn't like her anymore if they did know her well.

When she compares herself to her classmates, Sumiko knows she's poorer. She's been told by her mother that wealth is important, and these two combined with a school of which the climate at times reinforces that idea make it hard for Sumiko to open up. It's not that she doesn't want friends, she's just afraid they'll only like her until they realize she's not as rich as the other kids. Hopefully joining the Guardians will help in making her more social, as it can be an instant boost to popularity.

Moji encourages Sumiko to be more social, to have fun and to be less afraid of the consequences of doing something. This doesn't always go without struggle, and in chara change or character transformation, Sumiko tends to be a lot more social. /Especially/ if it's an involuntary one, which seems to occur whenever people try to talk to Sumiko and she starts to come up with a reason to avoid conversation.

At least one advantage of being withdrawn but no pushover is that Sumiko doesn't really have any enemies. Bullies found themselves with a target that wasn't fun to tease and no other reasons to hate her have come up. Yet. Eventually she will run into people she'll oppose if she works hard as a magical girl, which she now is, and she's going to be very focused on stopping them.

While it may be nice to redeem them if possible, Sumiko was raised with a very goal-oriented approach to life, and if people are in danger her goal is to help them, that's what she's a magical girl for, to protect innocent people and their dreams. It's not to help the person attacking them or their dreams overcome whatever personal issues they have. If they seem like they want to redeem, she'll give them the chance, but she's not going to assume they want to unless she believes there's some actual corruption going on.

This touches on another problem Sumiko has. She knows magic exists now, but she doesn't know a lot about it. She really wants to learn more, but she has no clue where to start looking. Hopefully she'll run into someone who can teach her what she wants to know. Someone who won't use her for ore nefarious purposes.