Name: Kazuko Okazaki
Gender: Female
Age: 15
Class: 1-1
Clubs: Pending
Personality: To put it simply, Kazuko is a work in progress, a mix of hard and soft, not up to her potential just yet. Then again, she is a teenager. She is also quite possibly the most mentally sound person in her family.
Her natural size has a large impact on her. On one hand, it has made very self concise about her appearance and femininity, making her feel like she stands out negatively; hard for her to reach the Japanese ideas of cuteness for little girls when she’s so tall. However, it is the cause of her getting into tennis in the first place, giving her a passion for sports, and thus an outlet, goals, and confidence. However, doesn’t reach into areas outside of athletics as you might think it would. This only adds to the kind of cool, intimidating, or unapproachable vibe it might send to people on first impression. It actually partly because of her shyness that she may find herself trying to emulate the sort of tough girl image she feels people expect from her, especially the parts she doesn’t necessarily view as bad.
A curious thing one might say about Kazuko is that she thrives when times are tough. She can keep a clear head when others may panic, excellent in crisis situations. Because of this, she might find the battlefield to be natural for her than she’ll expect. Mainly, she’s confident in doing what she feels she is needs or is obligated to do. Her family wants her to cook; does reasonable well on a test because she is expected to pass; will fight hard to survive; she originally got into golf because of her dad; her friends and school want her to do good in a tennis match, so she does extra well in that tennis match. Despite her normal lack of charisma, in these moments, her ability to hold her grip on the situation can pull her into leadership, be it unintentional simply because others see that she’s in control of herself, or feeling forced into it because nobody else in the group can collect their wits fast enough. Taking notice of when she feels she has to “do what needs to be done” isn’t hard: simply look at how she carries herself. In conversation, she’ll also be blunt, to the point, no nonsense, and giving no sugarcoating. Chasing after what she wants -such trying to become a professional athlete instead of taking over the family business- but feels like has a choice in can prove tougher. Very “power of friendship/family” type, obviously. In short, as an ally, look no further if need somebody who is reliable.
Kazuko isn’t somebody is terribly charismatic, but certainly feeds of the charisma of others. She may have some problems, but she is (at least currently) healthy socially. While approaching people can prove difficult, there’s far less to worry about once the ball actually gets rolling, though she very rarely the most boisterous of a group. Kazuko does feels pressure to act more maturely than others her age, and to restrain her emotions, but feels less of a need to the more comfortable she is around someone. And it isn’t hard to tell when she is interested in somebody because she likely be asking too many questions about them, be it that person personally, or others. While everyone has their mentors, they seem a bit more important to Kazuko; developing a dependency on someone may, sadly, be a possibility. Proving herself to someone she looks up to is certainly a common motivation for her in order to push herself.
One also might consider Kazuko to be a goody two shoes, or at least somebody very much wants to be one. She does strong sense of modestly, with a tendency of downplaying her own accomplishments. She sees it as important to have pride and loyalty to her school, country, and family- including her pet pig Danton (foreign languages = cool) and alleged aunts and uncles. Despite this (or because of it) to be especially careful not to judgment clouded, and not to hold a grudge. This is why she defends and maintains a healthy relationship with her aunt who is the black sheep to the rest of the Okazaki family. For example, Kazuko might be the one type who tries to persuade an enemy to join the party’s side after they beat him. On the other hand, she may be unnecessarily hard on herself if she begins to believe she hasn’t been living up to her ideals.
Kazuko also has a special relationship with food, of course. She has learned to cook from her folks, and although it is strictly a ramen place, she has expressed some interest foreign into food, especially loving gumbo. She knows, for example, that it was Westerners that introduced beef and milk to the Japanese (before getting their meat from pig and deer), and thus sees that exploring outside influences can help you innovate. She certainly does enjoy cooking for others, and especially being a hostess. Not in that way, you pervert; I saw you snicker! Anyway, a sign that something might be going on with her is if she’s just cooking too much of something, though over doing herself in her athletics training is common too. And when it comes to drinks, she has an addiction to an energy drink called Morning Rescue. One may see her drink one when nervous, when preparing for something big, or simply to get rescued in the morning. She will always, always, always, always have at least one bottle of Morning Rescue on her person at all times, pulling said bottles out of thin air, pockets in her clothing you didn’t know exist, or sometimes from space in between her mammaries.
Love is an odd topic for Kazuko. Because of the awkwardness, those of both genders have thought she had a crush on them, though she in reality has yet to fall in love. This is a big reason why she is starting to be unsure about her orientation, but the real reason is that it gives me as her player more flexibility and possibly more inner monologues to work with. And I less than three inner monologues!
Time for a few minor things. In terms of music, she swings towards instrumental, be it electronica, classical, or say, even surf rock. She feels that when a song is unambiguously about something, it is harder for it adapt to how you’re feeling, and thus you get bored of it more easily; also better for focusing on working out. With TV/comics, she likes dramas, magical girls (possibly how she was introduced to Morning Rescue), and of course, sports.
History: Due to no lack of trying, Minoru and Haruko Okazaki were only able to have one child, a daughter. Three guesses on whom that was. But enough about that gal for a moment, because one might call the couple a tad odd. The two owned ran a successful ramen restaurant that has recently become a small chain. However, neither had the most extensive culinary back ground. When they first met, Minoru was a very young and stupid bank teller, while Haruko was a very young and stupid robber. No matter how many times he tries to explain things, nobody will ever get a satisfactory explanation on how a man could fall for a woman that held a gun to his head, no matter how pretty she looked once her ski mask fell off. Let’s just say love is weird, Haruko’s lawyer was damned good, and Minoru has always been a very patient man. They eventually wanted to make a new life for themselves, found the right people who taught them the right things, and went into business.
Now, one might expect her childhood to be totally screwed up due to being raised by such an odd couple, but one would guess wrong. The Okazaki’s wanted to have a relatively normal life together, giving the same to their child. A particularly notable bit about her parental bonding is how she wouldn’t take no for answer when asking to come along with her dad for golfing, at that young age thinking golf was a kind of chocolaty treat; she was four. However, she stayed because she wanted to be with her father, get exposed to it enough that she actually started to want to play instead of just watching. And, of course, no family fun is more fun than when it involves food. However, the village might have done a smidgen more raising than usually. There are many people who Kazuko refers to as uncles and aunts. They are in fact just shop regulars. On the other hand, one of her actually aunts, Fumi, is only welcomed because Kazuko has taken a liking to her and can at least bear to listen to the woman and her, ahem, eccentric views. We’ll learn more about this lady some other times, boy and girls.
Despite all of that, Kazuko had always been a bit withdrawn. In her her second year of middle school, this was helped a bit. A few girls from different sports teams started approaching her, noticing she was growing quickly. Kazuko felt like she had to try at least one because of the pressure; tennis was chosen almost randomly. She didn’t inherently take a liking to it, but she did like the praise from others when it showed she had natural talent. Eventually, she got in an intense rivalry with another player named Kaori. At the end of the day, Kaori did always seem like the better player, and this led to Kazuko one day wishing Kaori would die. She did a week later, falling down the steps at her house; Kazuko wouldn’t come out of her rooms for a few days, filled with grief about it. To help her, her parents offered to buy her a pet, and Kazuko for some reason chose a pig. Ironically, this pig has had a habit of getting into mischief. Nonetheless, when Kazuko did come back to school, she performed better than she had before both athletically and academically. Kazuko soon became of the start athletes of the school.
By the time middle school began to end, the chains were just starting to get off the ground. And this means location, location, location. Now, they didn’t intend to move into Japanese red neck. They simply moved to a place that had a better mean distance to each of the restaurants. Kazuko had little say in this, but she understood the importance of the business and had to bid farewell to her friends. Regardless, she is the new girl in Adventure Town.
Appearance: On the scale of crazy anime character design shizz, Kazuko scores poorly; doesn’t even have blue hair or an eyepatch.
First off, Kazuko’s height far exceeds the average of her age (not going to give an exact height because I’m told that many players have had mix ups with the average height in Japan and those in Western countries), and a result is that she looks much older. Other students will likely think she is a senior, lot’s of “Ojou-san”s expected. Her uniform actually had to be specially ordered, lest the perverts be in for a treat.
And on to the not tallness! Her body itself is toned, and while she isn’t flat chest, she is somewhat lacking in curves. This is the curse of low body fat. Her skin a bit tan, and she has a mole on right cheek. Has almond eyes, and her black hair is usually out in a ponytail that goes down to her waist.
Out side of he school uniform, and the standard chef’s uniform she wears when working at the ramen shop, and the occasional snazzy sports outfit you could say she dresses modestly. Others might say boringly.