鏑木・T・虎徹 ᴋᴏᴛᴇᴛsᴜ ᴛ. ᴋᴀʙᴜʀᴀɢɪ (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
earnedmystripes) wrote2014-01-30 01:53 am
earnedmystripes) wrote2014-01-30 01:53 am
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〈 PLAYER INFO 〉
NAME: Batty
AGE: 22
JOURNAL:batty_chan
IM / EMAIL: aim: oyajimoe email: battypichugirl@gmail.com
PLURK:![[plurk.com profile]](https://www.plurk.com/favicon.ico)
goodluckmodes
RETURNING: no
〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: Kotetsu T. Kaburagi (a.k.a. Wild Tiger)
CHARACTER AGE: 36
SERIES: Tiger and Bunny
CHRONOLOGY: Episode 25, about an hour after Maverick's arrest and just before the final timeskip
CLASS: Hero
HOUSING: As previously discussed with the mods, I'd like him to go back to house 14 in Heropa!
BACKGROUND: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_and_Bunny_episodes http://tigerbunny.wikia.com/wiki/Wild_Tiger
(T&B canon itself doesn’t provide an official “name” for the universe, but the producers have mentioned that Sternbild City is basically an analogue to Manhattan and fandom typically plays as if T&Bverse is an AU Earth/America where superpowers exist. Some of the below material is taken not from the series but from the first Drama CD which was also released by Sunrise as supplementary canon info)
Kotetsu grew up in a sleepy rural village called Oriental Town with his mother and elder brother. No father is ever referenced in any way throughout canon, but at start of canon, Kotetsu’s mother still wears her wedding ring, so I'm assuming he passed away when Kotetsu was very young.
He had a fairly normal and happy childhood up until the age of about nine, when his NEXT ability first began to manifest. The Hundred Power made him inhumanly strong, and like most new NEXTs, Kotetsu could not control his powers at first. This led to being feared and rejected by his classmates, even those formerly his friends, and he later recounts crying every day because of the bullying. Young Kotetsu feared that his family would reject him as well if they knew about his freaky abilities, so he did his best to hide them from his mother and brother. It even worked, for a time, up until he was ten and some point happened to be alone in a Sternbild bank during an attempted bank robbery. Mr. Legend, the first and most famous of the Heroes of Hero TV, burst onto the scene, and the robbers attempted to use Kotetsu as a hostage to avoid being arrested. In a panic, Kotetsu’s powers activated on their own, and the robber was flung into the opposite wall.
However, rather than being relieved and happy, Kotetsu was distraught that his powers could seemingly only cause destruction and hurt people, and told Legend not to approach, so that he didn’t get hurt too, to which Legend replied that he was wrong: his powers were meant to save people.
That would turn out to be a fateful meeting for Kotetsu, implanting the first seeds of hope that his powers were more than a curse, and setting in motion what would become a lifelong dream and a major part of his identity--becoming a Hero and saving people, just as Legend had.
In his high school years, Kotetsu is said to have garnered something of a reputation as a punk, having never lost a fight. Despite (or perhaps because of?) this, he came to be familiar with the class president, Tomoe Amamiya, with whom he bonded over a mutual love of Heroes and Hero TV, as well as his dream to become a Hero. Eventually, his reputation spread to the next town over, where then-gang leader Antonio Lopez (who would eventually become his best friend by the start of canon) wanted to challenge him to a fight. He apparently repeatedly refused up until two of Antonio’s gang members (without Antonio’s knowledge) kidnapped Tomoe to try to lure Kotetsu out to fight. Somewhere in the midst of the fight, Antonio found out that those men kidnapped Tomoe, and angrily chewed them out for it, claiming it was cowardly to do such a thing and demanding to know where they’d kept her. The warehouse the men pointed to then burst into flames, and Kotetsu used his powers to rescue her. When Antonio asked why he hadn’t used them before, Kotetsu answered that he only used his powers to save people. This seems to have inspired Antonio, who decided he would only use his powers for that purpose as well. After this, as Tomoe was thanking Kotetsu for saving her, the topic of Heroes came up again, wherein she suggested what he would eventually take for his hero name--Wild Tiger.
Flash forward to the beginning of canon: Kotetsu is now thirty-five, has been a Hero for ten years, and has a nine-year-old daughter named Kaede. He’d eventually gotten married to Tomoe, though she’d unfortunately passed away of an illness five years prior. By this point, Kotetsu is largely considered by the Hero business to be past his prime, consistently ranking low in points and causing too much damage to be profitable. In fact, had Apollon Media not been looking to market a Hero duo, he likely would have lost his job outright when Ben’s company was bought out.
The night of the King of Heroes crowning ceremony, the newest Hero is introduced--Barnaby Brooks Jr....the very same man who’d saved his life hours ago, complete with snark, of course. On top of that, it turns out Kotetsu’s new partner is in fact Barnaby. Right away, Kotetsu and Barnaby get along like a house on fire, their diametrically opposite views on being a Hero and approaches to fighting seeming neigh irreconcilable at first, nearly getting the duo killed in their first assignment as partners--stopping the giant iron statue that was being controlled by a NEXT so that it was rampaging around the city. The first “breakthrough” of sorts between them is when Barnaby saves Kotetsu’s daughter from being crushed by debris from the collapsing ceiling of an ice rink, despite the lack of any cameras (and subsequently, any means of winning points) in the vicinity, giving Kotetsu his first sign that Barnaby is not as cold and heartless as he seems.
Over the next several episodes, he and Barnaby begin to develop at least a functional working relationship, if not a particularly close one. The first major shift in their relationship comes in episode 8. At that point, a masked man who called himself Lunatic had appeared in the city, proclaiming himself to be a true arbiter of justice. At first his motivations are unclear, and the Heroes initially assume him to be working to silence members of Ouroboros, a crime syndicate with a distinctive snake-and-dagger symbol that had been tattooed onto the neck of one of Lunatic’s first victims. As it turns out, this symbol is connected to the murder of Barnaby’s parents when he was four years old, and he has been looking for the culprit for twenty years, with that symbol as his only lead. The situation with Lunatic is the first time Barnaby is seen to completely lose his calm and composed exterior, flying into violent, frustrated rages, first when the tattooed man is killed in episode 6, and again when Lunatic escapes the Heroes a second time in episode 7. Lunatic comes into confrontation with the Heroes again in episode 8, and Barnaby recklessly charges at the vigilante, prompting Kotetsu to rush in, taking the bolt of fire aimed for Barnaby and severely burning his shoulder. Barnaby is touched by the gesture, and he is seen later that night with the burnt sash that Kotetsu had been wearing, quietly wondering to himself why his partner bothers with him. In the next episode, Barnaby confides in Kotetsu about searching fruitlessly for his parents’ killer the last twenty years, expressing frustration that he can’t remember the murderer’s face. Kotetsu reassures him that he’ll remember eventually, and that the murderer will be caught, and they’re implied to have gotten thoroughly wasted together afterward (the next scene has them passed out on the floor with bottles and cans of alcohol strewn around everywhere).
Soon afterward, the Heroes are all to take a few days of vacation to avoid violating labor laws (which Kotetsu vehemently resists, at first). Barnaby takes the time researching, while Kotetsu decides to take the opportunity to visit his daughter. Before he leaves, Barnaby tells Kotetsu that he’s remembered the face of his parents’ killer--Jake Martinez, a known NEXT-supremacist and terrorist--and intends to visit him where he’s being kept in Abbas Prison to confirm it. All does not go according to plan, however. The bridge Kotetsu’s driving on to get home blows up, and his “vacation” is cut short as he’s forced to deal with the attacking powered exosuits. Kotetsu being in trouble eventually drives Barnaby to abandon his plan to see Jake in prison and come help his partner. The one orchestrating the attack, a woman named Kriem, reveals herself to be a member of Ouroboros, and that she has stationed these robots all over the city, poised to destroy its support pillars if the city does not meet her demands...
...Which just so happen to be the release of Jake Martinez. Barnaby is enraged by this new development, but Kotetsu manages to calm him down, and they confront the mayor (who has been waffling over the decision) together, arguing that the safety of the city comes first and the Heroes can deal with Jake later. Ivan, disguised as one of Jake’s henchmen who had come to bargain with them regarding Jake’s release earlier, sneaks into Jake’s hideout to try to learn how the powered exosuits work. Jake, who happens to have two powers instead of one, can read minds, and thus discovers Ivan’s true identity. The Heroes follow Ivan’s PDA signal to the hideout and Barnaby attempts to confront Jake there, but he manages to escape when Kotetsu interferes, worried his partner will fly off the handle again, and Barnaby is furious, telling him that he can’t be partners with someone who doesn’t trust him. Ivan is sent to the hospital for his injuries.
Jake is indeed released, but upon learning the city was being held hostage by the exosuits in exchange for his release...he decided he did not in fact want to release the city and challenged the Heroes to a “game” of sorts. He would fight each of the Heroes, one-on-one, and if any of them could beat him, he would release the city and leave. If he defeated all of them, though, he’d destroy the city’s support pillars and sink it.
With no other choice, they accept the challenge. The matches between the Heroes and Jake begin, and the first two--Sky High (Keith) and Rock Bison (Antonio) are defeated easily. Kotetsu is the third up, and he’s the first to land a blow on Jake...accidentally. This throws Jake into such a rage that Kotetsu needs to be rushed to the ICU by the end of the fight.
By this time, Ivan’s regained consciousness, and he relates to the other Heroes and Agnes (producer of Hero TV) what he learned about the exosuits, which is that Kriem is controlling them via a radio signal. Unfortunately, at this point, Jake has gotten bored and decides to heighten the stakes: he decides if Barnaby loses the next bout, he will sink half the city. Agnes manages to convince Jake to postpone the fight to the next day, buying the city some time to set up a jamming signal for the exosuits.
The fight with Barnaby begins before that can happen, however, and Agnes sends out the remaining able-bodied heroes to try fight the robots while the signal is being set up. Barnaby, like the others, is losing the fight, and as Kotetsu (who has by then regained consciousness) is watching the fight on television from his hospital room with the other Heroes, he figures out Jake’s second power is mind reading and leaves the hospital despite his injuries to go tell his partner. Finding Barnaby, he tells him a lie about the nature of Jake’s powers (that he has super “hearing”) to mislead Jake, and hands him a sound grenade to supposedly disable his hearing. However, it’s actually a stun grenade, which gives Barnaby a brief opening to defeat him. Barnaby almost kills Jake at this point, but decides not to, likely due to the influence Kotetsu’s had on him thus far. Kriem arrives in a helicopter to try to rescue Jake again, and Kotetsu catches him with his wire-watch. However, when Jake shoots his shields at Kotetsu, he misses and hits the helicopter instead, which crashes down on him, severing the wire connecting him to Kotetsu and sending Jake to his death. As they’re leaving, Barnaby finally calls Kotetsu by his first name--a huge moment for the pair, as he has only called Kotetsu “old man” since their first meeting.
There’s a timeskip after this, and Kotetsu and Barnaby are next seen ten months later in an interview. They have since become successful and popular as a Hero duo, with Barnaby winning King of Heroes and Kotetsu moving up to fourth place. Barnaby feels like he can finally move on with his life now, and his and Kotetsu’s relationship has grown much closer--a true partnership. Kotetsu has even managed to gain the respect of Lloyds, who thus far considered him expendable and often pushed him around with “if you don’t like it, you can quit”.
Later in the episode, they chase after a criminal who had broken into Blue Rose’s dressing room and stolen some of her things. Kotetsu activates his powers to find himself glowing orange instead of blue, his powers suddenly much stronger but fading out faster than usual. No one thinks much of the latter, as Kotetsu had previously (in ep 2) faked his powers fading out to help the young bullied NEXT boy find his confidence as Legend had helped Kotetsu find his, so everyone assumes he’d done so again so that Antonio could get the points and avoid being fired.
However, when he discusses the incident in an interview, thinking his powers might be evolving, Ben Jackson, his former boss, happens to be listening on the radio and realizes that Kotetsu is actually likely beginning to lose his powers. After an incident revolving a malfunctioning android called Cis that was developed by Rotwang, who’d worked with Barnaby’s parents, Ben contacts Kotetsu to tell him of his suspicions.
Some time later, Kotetsu meets with Ben again, who’s done further research on the matter and found some disconcerting news. Legend himself had suffered from the same power-loss toward the end of his career; he became an alcoholic as a result and Hero TV covered it up, getting other Heroes to corner criminals while allowing Legend to take the credit, and deleting/falsifying any arrest records that could make him look bad. Ben tries to advise Kotetsu to figure out what else he wants to do with his life before he ends up like Legend, but he won’t hear any of it and leaves. Later on, he encounters a criminal called Lady Killer and fights him, only to end up defeated and wake up later in a dumpster after Lunatic kills the man.
Kotetsu decides to take some time off to visit his family and sort out his head. His mother and brother easily pick up on something being wrong, but he refuses to acknowledge or talk about it, and Kaede gets frustrated with him for acting as if nothing has changed in his absence the past six years. Eventually, his brother does get him to talk about why he’s suddenly returned, and tells him that his life isn’t over if he loses his powers. Afterward, Kotetsu is shown watching Hero TV and thinking about the promise he made to his wife the last he saw her before her death, to always be a Hero. The next day, his mother strains her back, and Kaede gets angry at Kotetsu when he insists she go to school regardless, screaming at him that she hates him. Muramasa finds him at Tomoe’s gravesite later and explains how things have been for Kaede since her mother died, and why she overreacted that morning. Kaede doesn’t come home that evening, and it turns out she’s gotten trapped inside a shrine during a massive rainstorm. Kotetsu manages to find her using the heightened hearing of his Hundred Power, and they both apologize to each other as Kotetsu carries her safely home. This prompts him to go back to Sternbild early so he can resign and focus on his family for awhile--being a “Hero” for his daughter instead of the city. As Kaede sees him off, her NEXT powers express themselves for the first time.
However, because fate does not like to ever give Kotetsu a break, he doesn’t quite get the chance to tell Barnaby about his decision to retire. Kriem, who had fallen into a coma from the Jake incident, had regained consciousness, and Barnaby wanted to speak with her regarding Ouroboros and their motivations for murdering his parents.
...Only to discover that Jake had a pretty solid alibi for the night they were killed--on that night, he’d been kidnapping her. Rejected by her own parents, who refused to pay her ransom, Jake had felt pity for her and took her in, intending to make her a part of their new “utopian” society in which NEXTs were at the top of the food chain as God’s chosen people. With Jake dead, Kriem considers herself to have no further reason to live, and commits suicide in the hospital.
Somewhat understandably, Kotetsu can’t quite bring himself to tell his partner about his decision to retire yet. However, Barnaby is adamant that Kriem had been lying, right up until they find the security camera footage that showed that Jake did not in fact have the Ouroboros tattoo on his hand as did the murderer in his memories. Barnaby freaks out, this contradiction causing the murderer’s face in his memories to repeatedly shift, and he spends the rest of the episode and the next in a veritable existential crisis, deciding it might be for the best if he retired. (The irony gods do so enjoy Kotetsu’s suffering.)
Of course, the longer Kotetsu delays not retiring, the more frustrated Kaede gets, and Barnaby happens to catch Kaede yelling at him that she doesn’t even want him to retire and come home anymore, and is...rather justifiably angry at not being told, and at the fact that Kotetsu likely encouraged him not to retire because of his own intentions to do so. They get into an argument that culminates in Kotetsu slapping him, and Barnaby bursts out of the building using his Hundred Power. Unfortunately, the person Barnaby chooses to confide in is Maverick, who turns out to have been the murderer of Barnaby’s parents all this time. He further reveals that he is a NEXT, with the power to manipulate people’s memories, which he then uses on Barnaby again.
Barnaby falls out of communication for the next few days, much to Kotetsu’s alarm and distress. Maverick tries to alter Kotetsu’s memories as well, knowing him to be the only other aware of the contradiction, when they are interrupted by a phone call from Samantha, the Brookses’ old housekeeper, with a photograph she’d found regarding the night of the murder (that she’d shown Barnaby in a phone call while meeting with Maverick the previous night). Maverick intercepts her, setting up an explosion elsewhere in town as a distraction for Kotetsu while having her kidnapped and killed, then framing Kotetsu for her murder and erasing the other Heroes’ memories of Kotetsu being Wild Tiger.
Suddenly wanted for a crime he didn’t commit, Kotetsu is forced to evade his friends while trying to figure out what’s going on, and is assisted by none other than Lunatic (who has since been revealed to the audience as Yuri Petrov, the head of the Justice Department), who grows suspicious upon finding all data on Kotetsu deleted and the files on Wild Tiger inaccessible. Reuniting with Ben while on the run, he figures out it was Maverick who framed him, and he tries to figure out a plan to get the Heroes to remember him. It’s...actually a pretty shoddy plan, as it involves only dressing up in his old Hero suit (from when he worked with Ben) and spouting off a bunch of facts that he knows about the other Heroes from having worked with them so long. Predictably, none of them believes him, one of them saying he’s proved nothing except that he might be a stalker on top of being a murderer. Blue Rose is tempted to believe him (having previously developed a crush on him), but for the “Wild Tiger” android she’d seen earlier. The only thing that saves him from being arrested then and there is the fact that his mother had told Kaede the truth about him being Wild Tiger when the news report of “homicidal NEXT Kotetsu T. Kaburagi” appeared on television, and she’d run off on her own to save him, knowing her father to be innocent. Her own power is the ability to copy others’ NEXT abilities, and she’d had the fortune to run into Maverick earlier. A big burst of white light appears in the sky and all the Heroes present as well as anyone watching the broadcast is returned to normal. Barnaby arrives shortly afterward, but Kaede is unable to restore his memory because her copied memory power accidentally got replaced by being patted on the shoulder by Sky High/Keith.
The Heroes help Kotetsu escape Barnaby and he finds his way back to Apollon, getting his regular suit from Saito and going back after Barnaby to find some other way to restore his memories. In the meantime, Maverick sends the false “Wild Tiger” android after the other Heroes. The two of them fight, Kotetsu trying to somehow invoke his partner’s memories of him, but does not succeed and ultimately is defeated. Just as Barnaby is moving in for the finishing blow, Kotetsu quietly says “I guess this is it, Bunny-chan”. The nickname turns out to be the “contradiction” necessary to undo this layer of false memories, and Barnaby comes back to himself, wondering why he was on the bridge and what he’d been doing--and Kotetsu all but tackles him in an overjoyed and tearful embrace.
Afterward, as they’re returning to Apollon and trying to figure out what to do next, they get a communication from Maverick that he has the other Heroes and Kaede as hostages, and summons them to Justice Tower, where Rotwang reveals he’s been working with Maverick, who intends to replace the Heroes with H-01 androids like the false Wild Tiger. The pair struggle to fight against the android, but eventually Kotetsu manages to restrain H-01 so that Barnaby can shoot it with its own laser, telling him he’ll be able to dodge the blow with his powers. Unfortunately, his powers run out too soon, and he still receives some of the impact of the laser, enough to blast off the entire torso of the suit, along with the helmet. In a highly emotional conversation, Kotetsu reveals that his powers have been declining, and that he’d hidden the fact so that his partner wouldn’t worry. He thanks him for working with him the past two years and tells him he was so overjoyed when Barnaby called him by his name that he’d gone out drinking by himself to celebrate, and Barnaby, terrified to lose the only important person left in his life, yells at him to stop talking like he’s going to die, and that he’s been learning to make fried rice, so his partner has to be around to try it, before Kotetsu loses consciousness. Barnaby assumes him to have died and is seen sobbing brokenly over him as the other Heroes and Kaede escape from Rotwang to join them. Maverick reveals that they defeated only one H-01 android and sends several more after them, but eventually Saito manages to disable them using a safety protocol that had been installed by the Brookses before their death.
Maverick tells Rotwang that with the androids complete, he has no further use for him, and shoves him out the broken window in Justice Tower to his death. The other Heroes chase Maverick down where he’s attempting to reboot the system, but he boasts that even if they arrest him, he has too much power and influence for anyone to question him, along with his ability to manipulate memories--at which point Agnes reveals that she’s captured his entire confession on tape. He makes one last effort to resist capture by threatening Kaede with a gun, at which point Kotetsu, who hadn’t actually died, appears and punches him. Cornered and with no remaining options, Maverick uses his power to wipe his own mind, reducing himself to a vegetable-like state before being handed over to the authorities. Kotetsu announces his retirement at that point, and Barnaby chooses to retire as well, stating that there’s no point being a Hero without Kotetsu.
PERSONALITY: The first thing to know about Kotetsu is that he cares about you. He cares about your life, your health, your physical safety, your mental and emotional well-being. Whether he’s known you for years or only a week, it doesn’t matter--you’re still important. And you’re more important than him. Kotetsu is the very epitome of selflessness; he takes the creed of “Hero” to its very ultimate extreme, living every moment and aspect of his life for others. If he can take a moment or an hour or even a day out of his life to put a smile on your face, he’ll do it with a smile on his, as seen when he passes by a crying kid in a park and goes out of his way to get the boy’s balloon out of a tree.
But despite wanting to help people in any and every way he can, Kotetsu actually has a very healthy respect for boundaries. He understands full well that there are some things people would rather not talk about, and isn’t one to pry. He himself rarely talks about his wife’s illness or death (the one time it comes up, he cuts off the conversation saying that talking about such depressing things “makes him uncomfortable,” although it’s likely that part of it was that he knew it would make others uncomfortable), and when he learns that Barnaby’s parents were murdered in front of him when he was four, he responds that “everyone has their own burdens to bear,” not to be cold, but rather because he feels it’s not his business unless Barnaby chooses to talk to him about it.
This is all a very noble attitude, but it often gets him in trouble. His constant emphasis on everyone else above himself leads to him keeping secrets to prevent others worrying about him, and it almost never has positive results for him. He hides the fact that he is a Hero from his daughter so she won’t worry about the dangerous life he leads, which causes her to resent him for never being home. In the second half of the series, he doesn’t tell Barnaby that he’s losing his powers and keeps quiet about his decision to retire when the other is dealing with his own issues, and the latter reacts understandably poorly when he finds out. According to his elder brother, he even tried to hide the fact that he was developing NEXT powers from his family when he was a kid.
It’s a bad habit, and far from Kotetsu’s only one. As much as his goofy and quirky demeanor is genuine, he sometimes uses it to his advantage and plays the fool to distract others because they won’t expect that he’s faking it. For instance, at one point during the Jake incident (eps 10-13), Barnaby storms off in anger and the other heroes ask Kotetsu what he said to upset him like that, and he lies that he was explaining the origin of his hero name Wild Tiger (a move that would have been incredibly insensitive, given the context), because he didn’t want to put his partner’s emotional turmoil on display for the others. Only Nathan/Fire Emblem could tell he was lying; all the others were fooled.
He also tends to jump into making promises without being sure he can keep them, and disappoints people when he fails to. In the second half of the series, he struggles with the promise that was his wife’s dying wish--to always be a hero, no matter what--when he finds out he’s losing his powers. He promises his daughter to quit his job and be there for her more but fails to do so when Barnaby is having a veritable identity crisis and Kotetsu can’t bear to add to his burdens by announcing his retirement. Ultimately what is one of Kotetsu’s most admirable qualities is also perhaps his greatest flaw: he doesn’t have a distinct set of priorities; he wants to help everyone at the same time and sometimes that is just not possible.
These failures hurt him deeply, because as selfless as he is, Kotetsu is still human, and like everyone, he desires to be needed and wanted. We see this in both comedic and more painful contexts, from his arguing with a pair of children that didn’t want to buy his trading cards, to his disappointment when all the other heroes thank only Barnaby for saving the city from Ouroboros, despite them knowing full well that he wouldn’t have won if Kotetsu hadn’t figured out Jake’s second power and left the hospital while he could barely walk to tell Barnaby. (It’s worthy of note that this was another instance of him hiding things to keep others from worrying about him--he used his Hundred Power to speed up his healing rate and seal the most superficial of his wounds and pretended he was fully healed; this time, it was Antonio/Rock Bison, who’s known him since high school could tell he was faking it.)
This is not to say that Kotetsu does what he does for praise or recognition. In fact, nothing could be farther from the truth. In Sternbild City, being a hero has been commercialized into a veritable industry, with Agnes Joubert, the producer of Hero TV, willing to do just about anything for ratings (even put her own life in danger, as seen in the bomb scare episode), and heroes competing for “points” to get the coveted title of King of Heroes. Beyond that, heroes are hired by corporate sponsors, and pleasing them is what keeps one in the hero business. Kotetsu is one of the very few who couldn’t care less about points or publicity stunts, which we see from the very first episode--Agnes tells him to wait for a commercial break before attempting to stop the hijacked train, and he refuses, says that saving people can’t wait for a commercial. Kotetsu/Wild Tiger is in fact one of the least popular heroes at the beginning of the series, to the point where he buys his own trading cards when he discovers them at a merchandise stand, completely untouched where several of the others are sold out or significantly depleted, and for the first half of the series, after his original boss is bought out by another company, his new boss constantly pushes him around by saying “if you don’t like it, you can quit”, an ultimatum for which Kotetsu could never choose the latter. He also cares very little about property damage, and often has large fines taken out of his salary from damage incurred to buildings and other structures while protecting people.
Kotetsu takes all of this without the least (serious) word of complaint, however, and he goes into his job every day without resentment. This is because, as he tells Karina in episode 4 when she is frustrated with the thankless nature of being a hero and asks why he keeps up with it, he likes to save people, and that is all the reason he needs. It’s really this statement that is the best summary of Kotetsu; he has a deep love and respect for life (to the point where he’s distraught at being unable to resuscitate criminals burned to death by a vigilante) and it is everything he does and is to protect and preserve it.
Strengths:
As both a hero and a person, Kotetsu’s greatest strengths of character are in his compassion and determination. Kotetsu’s overriding care and concern for everyone extends even to the criminals he fights, and it ultimately wins the respect of his allies and foes alike. In the second episode, he manages to talk down a rampaging young NEXT boy who’d been bullied for his powers and convinces him to use his powers for good by relating his own story of how he’d faced the same as a child and how he’d been inspired to become a hero by Mr. Legend, the first of Sternbild’s heroes. His attitude is such that even Lunatic, a vigilante NEXT who believes in eye-for-an-eye justice (he only kills convicted murderers) and considers the Heroes’ notions of justice to be naive and ineffectual, considers Kotetsu a worthy adversary.
Even though he sometimes stumbles in knowing how to be a good father to his own daughter Kaede, Kotetsu is the sort of man who others can draw strength from, who inspires hope and loyalty and courage, and he is very good at offering advice when it is needed. Throughout the first half of the series, Kotetsu inspires Karina not to give up being a hero when she finds herself fed up with the nature of the career, helps Ivan find his confidence as a hero and gives him the courage to move out of the background and actually work toward protecting people, which he had been afraid to do since his failure to act years ago cost his best friend his chance to become a hero, and helps Pao-Lin understand and appreciate her parents better, and reaffirms that she is in fact loved when she was questioning it. And then there is Barnaby, for whom Kotetsu becomes the first person he has emotionally connected with in twenty years.
Kotetsu is a man that never gives up, no matter how high the odds are stacked against him. He always hopes for the best, always encourages those around him when circumstances are difficult. When Barnaby expresses his frustration with being unable to remember the face of his parents’ murderer, having hunted him for twenty years with only a single lead to go on, Kotetsu tells him that it’s not something he can force himself to remember, and he will definitely find the culprit someday. He later continues to reassure Barnaby when the city is taken hostage by Ouroboros and forced to release Jake Martinez (the man he thinks at that point is the murderer), and when the heroes are forced to fight against him or have the city sunk, Kotetsu continues to fight even after his powers run out, looking for some way to hit Jake as an ordinary human, even as he is knocked down time after time.
Weaknesses:
As mentioned before, Kotetsu takes the creed of "Hero" to extremes--so much so that his entire identity and sense of self-worth is wrapped around this singular concept. While this fuels Kotetsu's most admirable qualities--his bravery, his selflessness, his great determination and compassion--the vast majority of Kotetsu's flaws and bad habits come from this as well. As a child, he was demonized by his peers for his powers, to the point where he truly believed all he was capable of was hurting people. And then Mr. Legend told him his powers were meant to save people instead, and a young Kotetsu latched onto those words like a lifeline. It's most likely those words were his salvation in many ways, but an unfortunate side-effect was the development of the ideology that saving people is all he's good for. Indeed, there is evidence that this is how Legend thought about himself, given that when he lost his powers, he lapsed into alcoholism and abuse of his wife and child. Kotetsu came to embrace his powers for the good it could do for the world, and he genuinely wants that good for its own sake, but he never really learned to value himself as an individual. He consistently puts himself last, because so much of the way he thinks and acts is defined by his identity as a Hero, and a Hero exists for the sake of the people.
Thus, the numerous bad habits, such as the secret-keeping. This isn’t so much about not trusting others as that he cannot bear to see others suffer on his behalf, and he often fails to realize that such actions often hurt those he cares for more than whatever it is he is so afraid to tell them. One of his great flaws is that he’s always giving so much of himself being everyone else’s pillar of strength that he leaves little room for dealing with his own issues, which he'd rather bury in the sand and pretend don't exist. And his cheerful demeanor belies a whole host of personal problems that he just bottles up because it’s better for him to deal with it than burden anyone else with them. It’s a bit of a double standard he has--how willing he is to be a shoulder to lean on for anyone else, while usually keeping everyone at arm’s length from him.
Perhaps it follows from all of the above, then, that Kotetsu is incredibly reckless. He charges right into battles based on intuition above strategy, and he doesn’t think for a moment before rushing headlong into danger to protect others. The clearest example of that double standard is seen in the first confrontation with Lunatic, when he and Barnaby suspect he is silencing members of Ouroboros and Barnaby is blindly charging at him, enraged by the possibility. In this case he is the one who maintains a level head, and doesn’t hesitate to risk his life to protect his partner from the attack he wasn’t prepared for. It's not that Kotetsu wants to die, or anything of the sort, however. Why the apparent disregard for his own neck, then? It all wraps back around to the fact that saving people is absolutely tantamount in his life, and when it comes down to someone else in danger, the risk to himself just doesn't register, not even as a stray thought on the peripherals. As far as Kotetsu is concerned, if he'd wanted a safe job, he would've taken up a different line of work.
POWER: Kotetsu is a NEXT, one of a group of powered individuals that began appearing about 45 years ago in Sternbild City and has continued into the present. His ability is known as the “Hundred Power,” so named because it increases every physical factor hundredfold. The most obvious uses of this ability are for his strength and speed, but on two occasions, he’s used it for specialized purposes, such as for an improvised healing factor in episode 13 and to increase the sensitivity of his hearing in episode 17. The downside is that he can only use this power for five minutes, and then he needs to wait an hour before he can use it again.
Starting in episode 15, Kotetsu begins losing his powers, and as of his canonpoint, he is down to 3 minutes and 45 seconds. For the purposes of the game, I'd like to have his power loss frozen at this point.
He also has a mechanical power-suit which serves primarily as a means of protection, especially when Kotetsu’s powers are not activated or have run out. The suit is fireproof and can expand greatly without being compromised, as seen in tests performed by the mechanic who created it, Saito. The right arm of the suit also contains a larger-scale version of the grapple-watch he ordinarily wears, and the wires were shown to be strong enough not to be able to be cut by even a power-saw. The suit also has a “Good Luck Mode” which makes the arm bigger, but otherwise...has no function other than “looking cool.” Under the hero suits, the heroes wear a skintight black body suit.
At his canonpoint, the entire front of the armor covering torso has been obliterated and part of the fabric of the undersuit is singed, as seen here
〈 CHARACTER SAMPLES 〉
COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE:
A post from the game.
voice sample from original app:
['Sup, imPorts! There's a friendly, middle-aged man all up in your network feed this afternoon. He's hanging out in what's apparently a food court in some shopping center, sitting in the shade with a soda as he addresses the network.]
Everyone here's from all sorts of different places, right? [Worlds, even. Kotetsu's still not completely ready to accept that one.]
So I was wondering, what kinda holidays and celebrations and stuff do you have back home? It looks like this place has one'a the ones I had back home, called Valentine's Day.
[Based on...all the red and pink and white and the hearts and cupids making their presence known all about the shopping square.]
It's mostly a thing for couples, where you get like, flowers and candy and a card for your significant other, but people sometimes just get stuff for their friends an' family if they're not with anyone. Things get all decorated in red and pink and white, and usually there's a bunch of cheesy movies on TV, too.
...Been kinda awhile since I did anythi--
[He's interrupted by the approach of an employee from one of the shops, carrying a tray of some eye-searingly pink pastries and offering free samples to patrons. He thanks her, picking one up, and--...the look on his face is rather comical as he takes a bite. He sure doesn't look like he wants to swallow, at any rate. There's a strained sort of smile offered her, and she leaves with an apologetic one of her own before Kotetsu can turn his attention back to the network, sticking his tongue out with a distinctly 'yuck' expression.]
...Word of advice, don't take any Valentinesy-themed free samples from the food court in the Heropa Town Square. I'm not convinced those were actually meant to be edible, eugh.
LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE:
Log from the game
A second log from the game
FINAL NOTES: Kotetsu will be returning with all of his memories of his five months in game, from February through the first week of August. A complete timeline of events is available here for reference if necessary.
NAME: Batty
AGE: 22
JOURNAL:
batty_chanIM / EMAIL: aim: oyajimoe email: battypichugirl@gmail.com
PLURK:
RETURNING: no
〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: Kotetsu T. Kaburagi (a.k.a. Wild Tiger)
CHARACTER AGE: 36
SERIES: Tiger and Bunny
CHRONOLOGY: Episode 25, about an hour after Maverick's arrest and just before the final timeskip
CLASS: Hero
HOUSING: As previously discussed with the mods, I'd like him to go back to house 14 in Heropa!
BACKGROUND: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_and_Bunny_episodes http://tigerbunny.wikia.com/wiki/Wild_Tiger
(T&B canon itself doesn’t provide an official “name” for the universe, but the producers have mentioned that Sternbild City is basically an analogue to Manhattan and fandom typically plays as if T&Bverse is an AU Earth/America where superpowers exist. Some of the below material is taken not from the series but from the first Drama CD which was also released by Sunrise as supplementary canon info)
Kotetsu grew up in a sleepy rural village called Oriental Town with his mother and elder brother. No father is ever referenced in any way throughout canon, but at start of canon, Kotetsu’s mother still wears her wedding ring, so I'm assuming he passed away when Kotetsu was very young.
He had a fairly normal and happy childhood up until the age of about nine, when his NEXT ability first began to manifest. The Hundred Power made him inhumanly strong, and like most new NEXTs, Kotetsu could not control his powers at first. This led to being feared and rejected by his classmates, even those formerly his friends, and he later recounts crying every day because of the bullying. Young Kotetsu feared that his family would reject him as well if they knew about his freaky abilities, so he did his best to hide them from his mother and brother. It even worked, for a time, up until he was ten and some point happened to be alone in a Sternbild bank during an attempted bank robbery. Mr. Legend, the first and most famous of the Heroes of Hero TV, burst onto the scene, and the robbers attempted to use Kotetsu as a hostage to avoid being arrested. In a panic, Kotetsu’s powers activated on their own, and the robber was flung into the opposite wall.
However, rather than being relieved and happy, Kotetsu was distraught that his powers could seemingly only cause destruction and hurt people, and told Legend not to approach, so that he didn’t get hurt too, to which Legend replied that he was wrong: his powers were meant to save people.
That would turn out to be a fateful meeting for Kotetsu, implanting the first seeds of hope that his powers were more than a curse, and setting in motion what would become a lifelong dream and a major part of his identity--becoming a Hero and saving people, just as Legend had.
In his high school years, Kotetsu is said to have garnered something of a reputation as a punk, having never lost a fight. Despite (or perhaps because of?) this, he came to be familiar with the class president, Tomoe Amamiya, with whom he bonded over a mutual love of Heroes and Hero TV, as well as his dream to become a Hero. Eventually, his reputation spread to the next town over, where then-gang leader Antonio Lopez (who would eventually become his best friend by the start of canon) wanted to challenge him to a fight. He apparently repeatedly refused up until two of Antonio’s gang members (without Antonio’s knowledge) kidnapped Tomoe to try to lure Kotetsu out to fight. Somewhere in the midst of the fight, Antonio found out that those men kidnapped Tomoe, and angrily chewed them out for it, claiming it was cowardly to do such a thing and demanding to know where they’d kept her. The warehouse the men pointed to then burst into flames, and Kotetsu used his powers to rescue her. When Antonio asked why he hadn’t used them before, Kotetsu answered that he only used his powers to save people. This seems to have inspired Antonio, who decided he would only use his powers for that purpose as well. After this, as Tomoe was thanking Kotetsu for saving her, the topic of Heroes came up again, wherein she suggested what he would eventually take for his hero name--Wild Tiger.
Flash forward to the beginning of canon: Kotetsu is now thirty-five, has been a Hero for ten years, and has a nine-year-old daughter named Kaede. He’d eventually gotten married to Tomoe, though she’d unfortunately passed away of an illness five years prior. By this point, Kotetsu is largely considered by the Hero business to be past his prime, consistently ranking low in points and causing too much damage to be profitable. In fact, had Apollon Media not been looking to market a Hero duo, he likely would have lost his job outright when Ben’s company was bought out.
The night of the King of Heroes crowning ceremony, the newest Hero is introduced--Barnaby Brooks Jr....the very same man who’d saved his life hours ago, complete with snark, of course. On top of that, it turns out Kotetsu’s new partner is in fact Barnaby. Right away, Kotetsu and Barnaby get along like a house on fire, their diametrically opposite views on being a Hero and approaches to fighting seeming neigh irreconcilable at first, nearly getting the duo killed in their first assignment as partners--stopping the giant iron statue that was being controlled by a NEXT so that it was rampaging around the city. The first “breakthrough” of sorts between them is when Barnaby saves Kotetsu’s daughter from being crushed by debris from the collapsing ceiling of an ice rink, despite the lack of any cameras (and subsequently, any means of winning points) in the vicinity, giving Kotetsu his first sign that Barnaby is not as cold and heartless as he seems.
Over the next several episodes, he and Barnaby begin to develop at least a functional working relationship, if not a particularly close one. The first major shift in their relationship comes in episode 8. At that point, a masked man who called himself Lunatic had appeared in the city, proclaiming himself to be a true arbiter of justice. At first his motivations are unclear, and the Heroes initially assume him to be working to silence members of Ouroboros, a crime syndicate with a distinctive snake-and-dagger symbol that had been tattooed onto the neck of one of Lunatic’s first victims. As it turns out, this symbol is connected to the murder of Barnaby’s parents when he was four years old, and he has been looking for the culprit for twenty years, with that symbol as his only lead. The situation with Lunatic is the first time Barnaby is seen to completely lose his calm and composed exterior, flying into violent, frustrated rages, first when the tattooed man is killed in episode 6, and again when Lunatic escapes the Heroes a second time in episode 7. Lunatic comes into confrontation with the Heroes again in episode 8, and Barnaby recklessly charges at the vigilante, prompting Kotetsu to rush in, taking the bolt of fire aimed for Barnaby and severely burning his shoulder. Barnaby is touched by the gesture, and he is seen later that night with the burnt sash that Kotetsu had been wearing, quietly wondering to himself why his partner bothers with him. In the next episode, Barnaby confides in Kotetsu about searching fruitlessly for his parents’ killer the last twenty years, expressing frustration that he can’t remember the murderer’s face. Kotetsu reassures him that he’ll remember eventually, and that the murderer will be caught, and they’re implied to have gotten thoroughly wasted together afterward (the next scene has them passed out on the floor with bottles and cans of alcohol strewn around everywhere).
Soon afterward, the Heroes are all to take a few days of vacation to avoid violating labor laws (which Kotetsu vehemently resists, at first). Barnaby takes the time researching, while Kotetsu decides to take the opportunity to visit his daughter. Before he leaves, Barnaby tells Kotetsu that he’s remembered the face of his parents’ killer--Jake Martinez, a known NEXT-supremacist and terrorist--and intends to visit him where he’s being kept in Abbas Prison to confirm it. All does not go according to plan, however. The bridge Kotetsu’s driving on to get home blows up, and his “vacation” is cut short as he’s forced to deal with the attacking powered exosuits. Kotetsu being in trouble eventually drives Barnaby to abandon his plan to see Jake in prison and come help his partner. The one orchestrating the attack, a woman named Kriem, reveals herself to be a member of Ouroboros, and that she has stationed these robots all over the city, poised to destroy its support pillars if the city does not meet her demands...
...Which just so happen to be the release of Jake Martinez. Barnaby is enraged by this new development, but Kotetsu manages to calm him down, and they confront the mayor (who has been waffling over the decision) together, arguing that the safety of the city comes first and the Heroes can deal with Jake later. Ivan, disguised as one of Jake’s henchmen who had come to bargain with them regarding Jake’s release earlier, sneaks into Jake’s hideout to try to learn how the powered exosuits work. Jake, who happens to have two powers instead of one, can read minds, and thus discovers Ivan’s true identity. The Heroes follow Ivan’s PDA signal to the hideout and Barnaby attempts to confront Jake there, but he manages to escape when Kotetsu interferes, worried his partner will fly off the handle again, and Barnaby is furious, telling him that he can’t be partners with someone who doesn’t trust him. Ivan is sent to the hospital for his injuries.
Jake is indeed released, but upon learning the city was being held hostage by the exosuits in exchange for his release...he decided he did not in fact want to release the city and challenged the Heroes to a “game” of sorts. He would fight each of the Heroes, one-on-one, and if any of them could beat him, he would release the city and leave. If he defeated all of them, though, he’d destroy the city’s support pillars and sink it.
With no other choice, they accept the challenge. The matches between the Heroes and Jake begin, and the first two--Sky High (Keith) and Rock Bison (Antonio) are defeated easily. Kotetsu is the third up, and he’s the first to land a blow on Jake...accidentally. This throws Jake into such a rage that Kotetsu needs to be rushed to the ICU by the end of the fight.
By this time, Ivan’s regained consciousness, and he relates to the other Heroes and Agnes (producer of Hero TV) what he learned about the exosuits, which is that Kriem is controlling them via a radio signal. Unfortunately, at this point, Jake has gotten bored and decides to heighten the stakes: he decides if Barnaby loses the next bout, he will sink half the city. Agnes manages to convince Jake to postpone the fight to the next day, buying the city some time to set up a jamming signal for the exosuits.
The fight with Barnaby begins before that can happen, however, and Agnes sends out the remaining able-bodied heroes to try fight the robots while the signal is being set up. Barnaby, like the others, is losing the fight, and as Kotetsu (who has by then regained consciousness) is watching the fight on television from his hospital room with the other Heroes, he figures out Jake’s second power is mind reading and leaves the hospital despite his injuries to go tell his partner. Finding Barnaby, he tells him a lie about the nature of Jake’s powers (that he has super “hearing”) to mislead Jake, and hands him a sound grenade to supposedly disable his hearing. However, it’s actually a stun grenade, which gives Barnaby a brief opening to defeat him. Barnaby almost kills Jake at this point, but decides not to, likely due to the influence Kotetsu’s had on him thus far. Kriem arrives in a helicopter to try to rescue Jake again, and Kotetsu catches him with his wire-watch. However, when Jake shoots his shields at Kotetsu, he misses and hits the helicopter instead, which crashes down on him, severing the wire connecting him to Kotetsu and sending Jake to his death. As they’re leaving, Barnaby finally calls Kotetsu by his first name--a huge moment for the pair, as he has only called Kotetsu “old man” since their first meeting.
There’s a timeskip after this, and Kotetsu and Barnaby are next seen ten months later in an interview. They have since become successful and popular as a Hero duo, with Barnaby winning King of Heroes and Kotetsu moving up to fourth place. Barnaby feels like he can finally move on with his life now, and his and Kotetsu’s relationship has grown much closer--a true partnership. Kotetsu has even managed to gain the respect of Lloyds, who thus far considered him expendable and often pushed him around with “if you don’t like it, you can quit”.
Later in the episode, they chase after a criminal who had broken into Blue Rose’s dressing room and stolen some of her things. Kotetsu activates his powers to find himself glowing orange instead of blue, his powers suddenly much stronger but fading out faster than usual. No one thinks much of the latter, as Kotetsu had previously (in ep 2) faked his powers fading out to help the young bullied NEXT boy find his confidence as Legend had helped Kotetsu find his, so everyone assumes he’d done so again so that Antonio could get the points and avoid being fired.
However, when he discusses the incident in an interview, thinking his powers might be evolving, Ben Jackson, his former boss, happens to be listening on the radio and realizes that Kotetsu is actually likely beginning to lose his powers. After an incident revolving a malfunctioning android called Cis that was developed by Rotwang, who’d worked with Barnaby’s parents, Ben contacts Kotetsu to tell him of his suspicions.
Some time later, Kotetsu meets with Ben again, who’s done further research on the matter and found some disconcerting news. Legend himself had suffered from the same power-loss toward the end of his career; he became an alcoholic as a result and Hero TV covered it up, getting other Heroes to corner criminals while allowing Legend to take the credit, and deleting/falsifying any arrest records that could make him look bad. Ben tries to advise Kotetsu to figure out what else he wants to do with his life before he ends up like Legend, but he won’t hear any of it and leaves. Later on, he encounters a criminal called Lady Killer and fights him, only to end up defeated and wake up later in a dumpster after Lunatic kills the man.
Kotetsu decides to take some time off to visit his family and sort out his head. His mother and brother easily pick up on something being wrong, but he refuses to acknowledge or talk about it, and Kaede gets frustrated with him for acting as if nothing has changed in his absence the past six years. Eventually, his brother does get him to talk about why he’s suddenly returned, and tells him that his life isn’t over if he loses his powers. Afterward, Kotetsu is shown watching Hero TV and thinking about the promise he made to his wife the last he saw her before her death, to always be a Hero. The next day, his mother strains her back, and Kaede gets angry at Kotetsu when he insists she go to school regardless, screaming at him that she hates him. Muramasa finds him at Tomoe’s gravesite later and explains how things have been for Kaede since her mother died, and why she overreacted that morning. Kaede doesn’t come home that evening, and it turns out she’s gotten trapped inside a shrine during a massive rainstorm. Kotetsu manages to find her using the heightened hearing of his Hundred Power, and they both apologize to each other as Kotetsu carries her safely home. This prompts him to go back to Sternbild early so he can resign and focus on his family for awhile--being a “Hero” for his daughter instead of the city. As Kaede sees him off, her NEXT powers express themselves for the first time.
However, because fate does not like to ever give Kotetsu a break, he doesn’t quite get the chance to tell Barnaby about his decision to retire. Kriem, who had fallen into a coma from the Jake incident, had regained consciousness, and Barnaby wanted to speak with her regarding Ouroboros and their motivations for murdering his parents.
...Only to discover that Jake had a pretty solid alibi for the night they were killed--on that night, he’d been kidnapping her. Rejected by her own parents, who refused to pay her ransom, Jake had felt pity for her and took her in, intending to make her a part of their new “utopian” society in which NEXTs were at the top of the food chain as God’s chosen people. With Jake dead, Kriem considers herself to have no further reason to live, and commits suicide in the hospital.
Somewhat understandably, Kotetsu can’t quite bring himself to tell his partner about his decision to retire yet. However, Barnaby is adamant that Kriem had been lying, right up until they find the security camera footage that showed that Jake did not in fact have the Ouroboros tattoo on his hand as did the murderer in his memories. Barnaby freaks out, this contradiction causing the murderer’s face in his memories to repeatedly shift, and he spends the rest of the episode and the next in a veritable existential crisis, deciding it might be for the best if he retired. (The irony gods do so enjoy Kotetsu’s suffering.)
Of course, the longer Kotetsu delays not retiring, the more frustrated Kaede gets, and Barnaby happens to catch Kaede yelling at him that she doesn’t even want him to retire and come home anymore, and is...rather justifiably angry at not being told, and at the fact that Kotetsu likely encouraged him not to retire because of his own intentions to do so. They get into an argument that culminates in Kotetsu slapping him, and Barnaby bursts out of the building using his Hundred Power. Unfortunately, the person Barnaby chooses to confide in is Maverick, who turns out to have been the murderer of Barnaby’s parents all this time. He further reveals that he is a NEXT, with the power to manipulate people’s memories, which he then uses on Barnaby again.
Barnaby falls out of communication for the next few days, much to Kotetsu’s alarm and distress. Maverick tries to alter Kotetsu’s memories as well, knowing him to be the only other aware of the contradiction, when they are interrupted by a phone call from Samantha, the Brookses’ old housekeeper, with a photograph she’d found regarding the night of the murder (that she’d shown Barnaby in a phone call while meeting with Maverick the previous night). Maverick intercepts her, setting up an explosion elsewhere in town as a distraction for Kotetsu while having her kidnapped and killed, then framing Kotetsu for her murder and erasing the other Heroes’ memories of Kotetsu being Wild Tiger.
Suddenly wanted for a crime he didn’t commit, Kotetsu is forced to evade his friends while trying to figure out what’s going on, and is assisted by none other than Lunatic (who has since been revealed to the audience as Yuri Petrov, the head of the Justice Department), who grows suspicious upon finding all data on Kotetsu deleted and the files on Wild Tiger inaccessible. Reuniting with Ben while on the run, he figures out it was Maverick who framed him, and he tries to figure out a plan to get the Heroes to remember him. It’s...actually a pretty shoddy plan, as it involves only dressing up in his old Hero suit (from when he worked with Ben) and spouting off a bunch of facts that he knows about the other Heroes from having worked with them so long. Predictably, none of them believes him, one of them saying he’s proved nothing except that he might be a stalker on top of being a murderer. Blue Rose is tempted to believe him (having previously developed a crush on him), but for the “Wild Tiger” android she’d seen earlier. The only thing that saves him from being arrested then and there is the fact that his mother had told Kaede the truth about him being Wild Tiger when the news report of “homicidal NEXT Kotetsu T. Kaburagi” appeared on television, and she’d run off on her own to save him, knowing her father to be innocent. Her own power is the ability to copy others’ NEXT abilities, and she’d had the fortune to run into Maverick earlier. A big burst of white light appears in the sky and all the Heroes present as well as anyone watching the broadcast is returned to normal. Barnaby arrives shortly afterward, but Kaede is unable to restore his memory because her copied memory power accidentally got replaced by being patted on the shoulder by Sky High/Keith.
The Heroes help Kotetsu escape Barnaby and he finds his way back to Apollon, getting his regular suit from Saito and going back after Barnaby to find some other way to restore his memories. In the meantime, Maverick sends the false “Wild Tiger” android after the other Heroes. The two of them fight, Kotetsu trying to somehow invoke his partner’s memories of him, but does not succeed and ultimately is defeated. Just as Barnaby is moving in for the finishing blow, Kotetsu quietly says “I guess this is it, Bunny-chan”. The nickname turns out to be the “contradiction” necessary to undo this layer of false memories, and Barnaby comes back to himself, wondering why he was on the bridge and what he’d been doing--and Kotetsu all but tackles him in an overjoyed and tearful embrace.
Afterward, as they’re returning to Apollon and trying to figure out what to do next, they get a communication from Maverick that he has the other Heroes and Kaede as hostages, and summons them to Justice Tower, where Rotwang reveals he’s been working with Maverick, who intends to replace the Heroes with H-01 androids like the false Wild Tiger. The pair struggle to fight against the android, but eventually Kotetsu manages to restrain H-01 so that Barnaby can shoot it with its own laser, telling him he’ll be able to dodge the blow with his powers. Unfortunately, his powers run out too soon, and he still receives some of the impact of the laser, enough to blast off the entire torso of the suit, along with the helmet. In a highly emotional conversation, Kotetsu reveals that his powers have been declining, and that he’d hidden the fact so that his partner wouldn’t worry. He thanks him for working with him the past two years and tells him he was so overjoyed when Barnaby called him by his name that he’d gone out drinking by himself to celebrate, and Barnaby, terrified to lose the only important person left in his life, yells at him to stop talking like he’s going to die, and that he’s been learning to make fried rice, so his partner has to be around to try it, before Kotetsu loses consciousness. Barnaby assumes him to have died and is seen sobbing brokenly over him as the other Heroes and Kaede escape from Rotwang to join them. Maverick reveals that they defeated only one H-01 android and sends several more after them, but eventually Saito manages to disable them using a safety protocol that had been installed by the Brookses before their death.
Maverick tells Rotwang that with the androids complete, he has no further use for him, and shoves him out the broken window in Justice Tower to his death. The other Heroes chase Maverick down where he’s attempting to reboot the system, but he boasts that even if they arrest him, he has too much power and influence for anyone to question him, along with his ability to manipulate memories--at which point Agnes reveals that she’s captured his entire confession on tape. He makes one last effort to resist capture by threatening Kaede with a gun, at which point Kotetsu, who hadn’t actually died, appears and punches him. Cornered and with no remaining options, Maverick uses his power to wipe his own mind, reducing himself to a vegetable-like state before being handed over to the authorities. Kotetsu announces his retirement at that point, and Barnaby chooses to retire as well, stating that there’s no point being a Hero without Kotetsu.
PERSONALITY: The first thing to know about Kotetsu is that he cares about you. He cares about your life, your health, your physical safety, your mental and emotional well-being. Whether he’s known you for years or only a week, it doesn’t matter--you’re still important. And you’re more important than him. Kotetsu is the very epitome of selflessness; he takes the creed of “Hero” to its very ultimate extreme, living every moment and aspect of his life for others. If he can take a moment or an hour or even a day out of his life to put a smile on your face, he’ll do it with a smile on his, as seen when he passes by a crying kid in a park and goes out of his way to get the boy’s balloon out of a tree.
But despite wanting to help people in any and every way he can, Kotetsu actually has a very healthy respect for boundaries. He understands full well that there are some things people would rather not talk about, and isn’t one to pry. He himself rarely talks about his wife’s illness or death (the one time it comes up, he cuts off the conversation saying that talking about such depressing things “makes him uncomfortable,” although it’s likely that part of it was that he knew it would make others uncomfortable), and when he learns that Barnaby’s parents were murdered in front of him when he was four, he responds that “everyone has their own burdens to bear,” not to be cold, but rather because he feels it’s not his business unless Barnaby chooses to talk to him about it.
This is all a very noble attitude, but it often gets him in trouble. His constant emphasis on everyone else above himself leads to him keeping secrets to prevent others worrying about him, and it almost never has positive results for him. He hides the fact that he is a Hero from his daughter so she won’t worry about the dangerous life he leads, which causes her to resent him for never being home. In the second half of the series, he doesn’t tell Barnaby that he’s losing his powers and keeps quiet about his decision to retire when the other is dealing with his own issues, and the latter reacts understandably poorly when he finds out. According to his elder brother, he even tried to hide the fact that he was developing NEXT powers from his family when he was a kid.
It’s a bad habit, and far from Kotetsu’s only one. As much as his goofy and quirky demeanor is genuine, he sometimes uses it to his advantage and plays the fool to distract others because they won’t expect that he’s faking it. For instance, at one point during the Jake incident (eps 10-13), Barnaby storms off in anger and the other heroes ask Kotetsu what he said to upset him like that, and he lies that he was explaining the origin of his hero name Wild Tiger (a move that would have been incredibly insensitive, given the context), because he didn’t want to put his partner’s emotional turmoil on display for the others. Only Nathan/Fire Emblem could tell he was lying; all the others were fooled.
He also tends to jump into making promises without being sure he can keep them, and disappoints people when he fails to. In the second half of the series, he struggles with the promise that was his wife’s dying wish--to always be a hero, no matter what--when he finds out he’s losing his powers. He promises his daughter to quit his job and be there for her more but fails to do so when Barnaby is having a veritable identity crisis and Kotetsu can’t bear to add to his burdens by announcing his retirement. Ultimately what is one of Kotetsu’s most admirable qualities is also perhaps his greatest flaw: he doesn’t have a distinct set of priorities; he wants to help everyone at the same time and sometimes that is just not possible.
These failures hurt him deeply, because as selfless as he is, Kotetsu is still human, and like everyone, he desires to be needed and wanted. We see this in both comedic and more painful contexts, from his arguing with a pair of children that didn’t want to buy his trading cards, to his disappointment when all the other heroes thank only Barnaby for saving the city from Ouroboros, despite them knowing full well that he wouldn’t have won if Kotetsu hadn’t figured out Jake’s second power and left the hospital while he could barely walk to tell Barnaby. (It’s worthy of note that this was another instance of him hiding things to keep others from worrying about him--he used his Hundred Power to speed up his healing rate and seal the most superficial of his wounds and pretended he was fully healed; this time, it was Antonio/Rock Bison, who’s known him since high school could tell he was faking it.)
This is not to say that Kotetsu does what he does for praise or recognition. In fact, nothing could be farther from the truth. In Sternbild City, being a hero has been commercialized into a veritable industry, with Agnes Joubert, the producer of Hero TV, willing to do just about anything for ratings (even put her own life in danger, as seen in the bomb scare episode), and heroes competing for “points” to get the coveted title of King of Heroes. Beyond that, heroes are hired by corporate sponsors, and pleasing them is what keeps one in the hero business. Kotetsu is one of the very few who couldn’t care less about points or publicity stunts, which we see from the very first episode--Agnes tells him to wait for a commercial break before attempting to stop the hijacked train, and he refuses, says that saving people can’t wait for a commercial. Kotetsu/Wild Tiger is in fact one of the least popular heroes at the beginning of the series, to the point where he buys his own trading cards when he discovers them at a merchandise stand, completely untouched where several of the others are sold out or significantly depleted, and for the first half of the series, after his original boss is bought out by another company, his new boss constantly pushes him around by saying “if you don’t like it, you can quit”, an ultimatum for which Kotetsu could never choose the latter. He also cares very little about property damage, and often has large fines taken out of his salary from damage incurred to buildings and other structures while protecting people.
Kotetsu takes all of this without the least (serious) word of complaint, however, and he goes into his job every day without resentment. This is because, as he tells Karina in episode 4 when she is frustrated with the thankless nature of being a hero and asks why he keeps up with it, he likes to save people, and that is all the reason he needs. It’s really this statement that is the best summary of Kotetsu; he has a deep love and respect for life (to the point where he’s distraught at being unable to resuscitate criminals burned to death by a vigilante) and it is everything he does and is to protect and preserve it.
Strengths:
As both a hero and a person, Kotetsu’s greatest strengths of character are in his compassion and determination. Kotetsu’s overriding care and concern for everyone extends even to the criminals he fights, and it ultimately wins the respect of his allies and foes alike. In the second episode, he manages to talk down a rampaging young NEXT boy who’d been bullied for his powers and convinces him to use his powers for good by relating his own story of how he’d faced the same as a child and how he’d been inspired to become a hero by Mr. Legend, the first of Sternbild’s heroes. His attitude is such that even Lunatic, a vigilante NEXT who believes in eye-for-an-eye justice (he only kills convicted murderers) and considers the Heroes’ notions of justice to be naive and ineffectual, considers Kotetsu a worthy adversary.
Even though he sometimes stumbles in knowing how to be a good father to his own daughter Kaede, Kotetsu is the sort of man who others can draw strength from, who inspires hope and loyalty and courage, and he is very good at offering advice when it is needed. Throughout the first half of the series, Kotetsu inspires Karina not to give up being a hero when she finds herself fed up with the nature of the career, helps Ivan find his confidence as a hero and gives him the courage to move out of the background and actually work toward protecting people, which he had been afraid to do since his failure to act years ago cost his best friend his chance to become a hero, and helps Pao-Lin understand and appreciate her parents better, and reaffirms that she is in fact loved when she was questioning it. And then there is Barnaby, for whom Kotetsu becomes the first person he has emotionally connected with in twenty years.
Kotetsu is a man that never gives up, no matter how high the odds are stacked against him. He always hopes for the best, always encourages those around him when circumstances are difficult. When Barnaby expresses his frustration with being unable to remember the face of his parents’ murderer, having hunted him for twenty years with only a single lead to go on, Kotetsu tells him that it’s not something he can force himself to remember, and he will definitely find the culprit someday. He later continues to reassure Barnaby when the city is taken hostage by Ouroboros and forced to release Jake Martinez (the man he thinks at that point is the murderer), and when the heroes are forced to fight against him or have the city sunk, Kotetsu continues to fight even after his powers run out, looking for some way to hit Jake as an ordinary human, even as he is knocked down time after time.
Weaknesses:
As mentioned before, Kotetsu takes the creed of "Hero" to extremes--so much so that his entire identity and sense of self-worth is wrapped around this singular concept. While this fuels Kotetsu's most admirable qualities--his bravery, his selflessness, his great determination and compassion--the vast majority of Kotetsu's flaws and bad habits come from this as well. As a child, he was demonized by his peers for his powers, to the point where he truly believed all he was capable of was hurting people. And then Mr. Legend told him his powers were meant to save people instead, and a young Kotetsu latched onto those words like a lifeline. It's most likely those words were his salvation in many ways, but an unfortunate side-effect was the development of the ideology that saving people is all he's good for. Indeed, there is evidence that this is how Legend thought about himself, given that when he lost his powers, he lapsed into alcoholism and abuse of his wife and child. Kotetsu came to embrace his powers for the good it could do for the world, and he genuinely wants that good for its own sake, but he never really learned to value himself as an individual. He consistently puts himself last, because so much of the way he thinks and acts is defined by his identity as a Hero, and a Hero exists for the sake of the people.
Thus, the numerous bad habits, such as the secret-keeping. This isn’t so much about not trusting others as that he cannot bear to see others suffer on his behalf, and he often fails to realize that such actions often hurt those he cares for more than whatever it is he is so afraid to tell them. One of his great flaws is that he’s always giving so much of himself being everyone else’s pillar of strength that he leaves little room for dealing with his own issues, which he'd rather bury in the sand and pretend don't exist. And his cheerful demeanor belies a whole host of personal problems that he just bottles up because it’s better for him to deal with it than burden anyone else with them. It’s a bit of a double standard he has--how willing he is to be a shoulder to lean on for anyone else, while usually keeping everyone at arm’s length from him.
Perhaps it follows from all of the above, then, that Kotetsu is incredibly reckless. He charges right into battles based on intuition above strategy, and he doesn’t think for a moment before rushing headlong into danger to protect others. The clearest example of that double standard is seen in the first confrontation with Lunatic, when he and Barnaby suspect he is silencing members of Ouroboros and Barnaby is blindly charging at him, enraged by the possibility. In this case he is the one who maintains a level head, and doesn’t hesitate to risk his life to protect his partner from the attack he wasn’t prepared for. It's not that Kotetsu wants to die, or anything of the sort, however. Why the apparent disregard for his own neck, then? It all wraps back around to the fact that saving people is absolutely tantamount in his life, and when it comes down to someone else in danger, the risk to himself just doesn't register, not even as a stray thought on the peripherals. As far as Kotetsu is concerned, if he'd wanted a safe job, he would've taken up a different line of work.
POWER: Kotetsu is a NEXT, one of a group of powered individuals that began appearing about 45 years ago in Sternbild City and has continued into the present. His ability is known as the “Hundred Power,” so named because it increases every physical factor hundredfold. The most obvious uses of this ability are for his strength and speed, but on two occasions, he’s used it for specialized purposes, such as for an improvised healing factor in episode 13 and to increase the sensitivity of his hearing in episode 17. The downside is that he can only use this power for five minutes, and then he needs to wait an hour before he can use it again.
Starting in episode 15, Kotetsu begins losing his powers, and as of his canonpoint, he is down to 3 minutes and 45 seconds. For the purposes of the game, I'd like to have his power loss frozen at this point.
He also has a mechanical power-suit which serves primarily as a means of protection, especially when Kotetsu’s powers are not activated or have run out. The suit is fireproof and can expand greatly without being compromised, as seen in tests performed by the mechanic who created it, Saito. The right arm of the suit also contains a larger-scale version of the grapple-watch he ordinarily wears, and the wires were shown to be strong enough not to be able to be cut by even a power-saw. The suit also has a “Good Luck Mode” which makes the arm bigger, but otherwise...has no function other than “looking cool.” Under the hero suits, the heroes wear a skintight black body suit.
At his canonpoint, the entire front of the armor covering torso has been obliterated and part of the fabric of the undersuit is singed, as seen here
〈 CHARACTER SAMPLES 〉
COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE:
A post from the game.
voice sample from original app:
['Sup, imPorts! There's a friendly, middle-aged man all up in your network feed this afternoon. He's hanging out in what's apparently a food court in some shopping center, sitting in the shade with a soda as he addresses the network.]
Everyone here's from all sorts of different places, right? [Worlds, even. Kotetsu's still not completely ready to accept that one.]
So I was wondering, what kinda holidays and celebrations and stuff do you have back home? It looks like this place has one'a the ones I had back home, called Valentine's Day.
[Based on...all the red and pink and white and the hearts and cupids making their presence known all about the shopping square.]
It's mostly a thing for couples, where you get like, flowers and candy and a card for your significant other, but people sometimes just get stuff for their friends an' family if they're not with anyone. Things get all decorated in red and pink and white, and usually there's a bunch of cheesy movies on TV, too.
...Been kinda awhile since I did anythi--
[He's interrupted by the approach of an employee from one of the shops, carrying a tray of some eye-searingly pink pastries and offering free samples to patrons. He thanks her, picking one up, and--...the look on his face is rather comical as he takes a bite. He sure doesn't look like he wants to swallow, at any rate. There's a strained sort of smile offered her, and she leaves with an apologetic one of her own before Kotetsu can turn his attention back to the network, sticking his tongue out with a distinctly 'yuck' expression.]
...Word of advice, don't take any Valentinesy-themed free samples from the food court in the Heropa Town Square. I'm not convinced those were actually meant to be edible, eugh.
LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE:
Log from the game
A second log from the game
FINAL NOTES: Kotetsu will be returning with all of his memories of his five months in game, from February through the first week of August. A complete timeline of events is available here for reference if necessary.