Anko Tokosumi

&nbsp Anko Tokosumi is a thirteen-year-old girl from the Shinagawa ward of Tokyo (year: 2050). She wanted nothing more than to be an idol singer when she grew up. When her parents began the process of divorce, Anko's mother blamed the divorce on Anko and began drinking, as well as physically abusing Anko. Anko tried everything in her power to get her parents back together, but ultimately accepted the reality of divorce, and went to live with her father, a man she loves more than anyone or anything.

That was before Anko found out that she is going to die.

age: 13

origins: Bokurano, [AU]

app link: Here!

hmd: Here!

played by: Mush (mushylin on LJ; rarararawr x3 on AIM)

Setting
Bokurano is Earth set a few decades in the future. Canonically, the year is 2050, and it shows--we have strange telephones that print out maps, television broadcasts over holograph display, and video games that are fully 3D and fully immersive. It is also an alternate Earth, wherein the Axis Powers won World War II, and Japan is the world's superpower. And, Bokurano runs off of the premise that there are infinite versions of reality...and you are living in each and every one of them. Who are you today? A politician? A doctor? Who will you be tomorrow? You are everything. You are without limits.

But how far are you willing to go to stay infinite? Will you willingly create more realities in which you can live, even if the price for creating a new reality is to lose your present one? If you want to protect your current reality, are you willing to die for that cause? Are the people in your reality expendable because they'll all be reborn in another place and time? If you're a physician in Reality A married to Person X and a teacher in Reality B married to Person Y, are you still the same person? Bokurano posits a hell of a lot of philosophical questions, the most important being, "If you knew you would die tomorrow, what would you do today?"

The story consists of an anime, a manga, and a novel, each one following a different reality, but all centering around the same core fifteen children, following them as they fight to defend their reality, or to create new ones. In each reality, these children are classmates, and function as a "team" as they take turns piloting Zearth to either defend their reality from destruction, or to create a new reality by destroying other realities. (Each reality gets represented by a different robot.) Furthermore, the payment for piloting Zearth is your own life. Each child is doomed to die at the end of his or her turn, and Bokurano often deals with the depressing aftermath of their friends and family trying to cope with the loss of the most recent child.

Personality
Anko is a very bubbly, friendly girl. In Bokurano, anime verse, she is the first person trying to make friends with all her new classmates, sometimes to the point of annoying others. Annoying or not, however, she only tries to befriend everyone because she genuinely cares for all people, even strangers, and wants to be able to extend kindness to them. In that vein, she is almost consummately polite to everyone she meets. But, hell, piss her off and you're not going to like it. Take the novel, for example, where her very first introduction was to punch Ushiro for bullying Kana--or the anime, another example, where she punches Machi (her best friend!) after they have a fight!

She is shown to care for small children, especially Kana Ushiro, whom she protects against bullying from older children--even Kana's older brother Ushiro. She is shown to be very unintelligent, or at least uninterested in academics, because when Dung Beetle ("Koemushi" in original source) tries to explain some of the physics of their universe, she (A) passes out from trying to understand him, (B) wakes up, and (C) promptly tunes out the rest of his lecture! And more than that, she often just points out the obvious in the middle of nowhere, which is sure to make her classmates groan whenever she does. Anko is sort of the "little sister" that everyone puts up with only because they have to.

But, in spite of all that, Anko is probably the bravest of the fifteen main characters. On Mitomo Island, there is a rickety bridge stretched across a crevasse, which all the other kids are afraid to pass over--but Anko is the first to charge across it. When it's her turn to fight in Zearth and die to save her reality, she is the only one who is not afraid, and in fact, remains spirited and accepting during her battle...even as acid from the enemy robot pours into the cockpit and melts her lower half.

She very much has a "Turn the other cheek" mentality. You could spit on this girl (literally) and she would still care about you. She often fails to stop violence against herself, and she will not raise a hand to strike the person who struck her first. Which, really, makes it ironic that she has to destroy a whole entire universe if she wants to preserve her own.

Can she do it? This is the big question for Anko, as well as many of the other children. (The answer is yes; she ultimately decides that the people she has to kill in her opponent's reality will get to live on in hers, and she is fighting for them as much as she is fighting for her friends.)

Anko is a vegetarian. She values all life, so actually, it's even a difficulty for her to eat vegetables; but she knows, realistically, that she has to eat something! She loves animals, her favorite animal being the frog. She can occasionally be a tease, or proves to be slightly more intelligent than she first appears. Ushiro once caught her looking at pornography on one of the school computers, which shocked everyone because she presents herself as being very naive and pure. Anko, however, showed a manipulative aspect of her personality during this event by trying to pretend that she had "No idea how that got on the screen." (It did not work.) She also shows some manipulative tendencies when she uses her sweet face and affability to guilt other characters in performing menial tasks for her. This is a trait she shares with her fellow classmate Moji.

Anko's childhood dream was to be an idol singer, a dream that was never realized. Her "grown up dream," a subconscious dream that she does not always admit to, is to grow up to be just like her father and become a reporter.

Abilities & Weaknesses
Her weaknesses are academics and cooking. Her strengths are sports, fashion, and investigative procedures. She is very daft, yet her bravery gives her the strength to do things the other children in Bokurano cannot do--like the ability to die gracefully and without fear. Other than this, she is your typical middle school girl. She is one of the chosen contractees to pilot Zearth, a 500-metre tall robot that destroys realities (and protects her own), but that will not apply to this game's universe, as I imagine Zearth is not accessible here!

Character Relationships
Takashi Waku is the leader of Anko's pilot team, and a boy Anko is very close to. She thinks of him as her big brother, and even refers to him as such. He is skilled at bringing the entire team together. He is their glue, and without him, they fall apart.

Yoko Machi is Waku's girlfriend, and Anko's best friend. She was the first friend Anko made in middle school. She is accustomed to hiding secrets because she has lived a life of persecution and fear.

Dung Beetle is an organic AI built in the image and memory of Yoko's deceased older brother, Shirou. Anko considers him the real Shirou. Though he treats the children unkindly, this facade hides how much he loves them and how upset he will be when they die. Anko considers him a teacher.

Free Space
Embed video? Quote song lyrics? Trivia section? Whatever!