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Helix, Senshi of Stone Name: TANAKA Minerou full webpage
Compared to most anime and rpg characters, Tanaka looks fairly boring. He has dark brown eyes and dark brown hair. Not the kind of brown that reflects pretty shiny golden tones, the kind of plain brown that reminds you of mud, or, at best, clay. He keeps his hair slicked back and runs his hands through it when he's nervous. Because of this, when he gets really agitated, his hair gets rather messy and falls into his eyes. Tanaka wears glasses almost all the time; he has a strong astigmatism and can't see very well without his glasses. He has thick, serious eyebrows that always seem to be scowling at his students. His face is oval, with a medium-strength jaw and chin. It's a little too round to be described as strong. He might be considered handsome, depending on your tastes. (I think he's very handsome, myself.) At 5' 4", Tanaka is hardly the most impressive head in the crowd, especially when you consider he's an inch shorter than the average Japanese male and on par with the average female. It's not immediately noticeable because he always stands up straight and his clothes fit nicely. He looks solid and well-fed, but not very strong. (That's a polite way of telling him he could afford to exercise more often -- OUCH! He just threw a math book at me!) He carries himself with obvious pride. Something about him makes you think twice about approaching, though. It might be the way he rarely smiles, or the commanding air he keeps about him. Whatever it is, he seems like the kind of person worthy of being an ally rather than a friend.
Tanaka is a fairly wretched guy. He is one of those people born into the equivalent of middle-class suburbanites: the sorry folk who grow up with no major catastrophes or horrors with which to gauge their life experiences. Life to him is a drab procession of boring, prescheduled days. It's also a set path: 1) go to school, 2) choose a profession, 3) enter that profession, 4) find a wife, 5) have two and a half kids, 6) die of arterial decay from bad diet and lack of exercise. Currently Tanaka's on step three, working on step four. It's all contingent upon settling for the status quo--no problem for Tanaka, whose life is a manifestation of the status quo. He just settles. He doesn't strive to be greater; he sits like dust in the corner of the room until someone brings a vacuum or feather duster and moves him. Tanaka battles with depression, fairly poorly. His misery manifests as anger and wallowing. He generally wallows in self-pity when smoking cigarettes or drinking, fairly frequent activities. He usually gets angry when he really has nothing better to do. Outside of that, the only thing that will drive him to anger is frustration arising from being a senshi. He really dislikes this whole magic crap. It doesn't match the mundane world he grew up with. When angry, he likes to throw glass objects against walls. Tanaka is horribly pathetic at articulating his emotions, in large part because he doesn't really understand them. Most of the time he's fairly quiet, halfway contemplative, maybe even a little bit wistful. He has a general depressive air about him. He seems to be one of those faceless characters you pass in the street, the kind animators stick in crowd scenes, people who don't really seem to have any story behind them and exist only to ignore the main character because their views are so narrow they can't see this interesting main character. And Tanaka does have a fairly narrow view of life. He sees only what's in front of him and approached problems in the most blunt, obvious ways. The man has no grasp of subtlety. If it seems like he's being subtle, chances are he's just confused. And he doesn't learn very quickly, either. He's fairly stubborn. It's not a stubbornness born of true unwillingness to change (like Poseidon), just the kind of stubbornness that results when a person doesn't know any better--ignorance of a kind. And he really doesn't know. He's clueless about life in so many respects. It would all be very different if Tanaka had any imagination. He doesn't. He's a real facts-and-figures, this-is-The-Way-Things-Are type of guy. He can't think outside the box. Maybe he can learn to: he possesses the capability to learn such things, it'll just take some good teachers and examples. At present, he doesn't have any. He's not particularly social; he's always been on the cusp of groups of friends, the guy you call when you need one more and no one else can come, but never really on the inside. Most things he does by himself. That makes it all the sadder, really: he's afraid of being alone. It's his one major phobia, and he's living it day in and day out. He started smoking for social reasons, but now it's turned into a comfort thing, e.g. his dependence on digs is more than chemical.
Tanaka was born in Tokyo, Japan. He had a normal childhood, nothing extraordinary. He was perhaps a tad bit less social than other children. In junior high he showed talent in math, and spent the rest of his intermediary school days labeled as a geek. He picked up smoking in high school. Then he went to college, had a failed romance, and became a math teacher. Life was going miserably fine until he ran into a talking animal
Civilian: In civilian form, he usually dresses in suits with ties. He hates bright or patterned ties and usually sticks to plain or dark colors. Much to the chagrin of his students, he has yet to take his coat off during class, regardless of how hot it gets. (The guy must not have sweat glands! Either that or he's naturally cool or has a really high heat tolerance. Shrug.) Tanaka wears a silver watch on his right wrist and polished black leather shoes. When in the safety of his home, he usually gets rid of the coat and tie. And that's about as casual as he goes. (Except sometimes when drinking he takes off his coat, but you can hardly expect his students to admit to knowing that.) He prefers blue collars to white, but will wear either. Senshi: Helix's "uniform" consists of a plain, golden brown tunic with a golden claw-like shoulderpad on his right shoulder. The sleeves are long and the collar is high and stiff. He has two loops of white cord and a banner of white cloth secured beneath the claw. The cloth rests against his back and is about a foot and a half long. The white cord encircles his arm. A gold belt secures the tunic around his waist. In addition, Helix wears white globes and white pants with a brown stripe matching the tunic down the sides. The pants end in gold knee-high boots. One of the most interesting things about his fuku is the fact that it
doesn't repair itself like most fuku do. When not in use, it resides in a
little pocket dimension, and Tanaka has to physically pull the uniform out
for cleaning.
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