One of the consequences of delaying a project, you tinker with it. Ideally, you tinker to make it closer to your vision, but sometimes you go too far.
Anyway, here is Motoko Shimazu, the final version of the Motoko Ishikawa character that is going to star in The Mind-Machine Problem (yes I’ve even tinkered with the title. Bite me).
So who is Motoko Shimazu? She is the second child of Rokuro Shimazu and Sakura Shimazu (nee Sho), born on April 5th, 2054 in Kagoshima City, the capital of the Kagoshima Prefecture on the island of Kyushu, Japan. As you can probably tell by the name, Motoko is the heir to two storied families: on her mother’s side, she is a direct descendent of the last Ryukyu dynasty and on her father’s side, a much-less-direct descendent of the famous Shimazu clan. This dual Yamato-Ryukyuan heritage weighs heavily on Motoko’s mind and she takes traditional Japanese culture seriously. Influenced by her traditionalist father, Motoko styles herself in the fashion of an old-school samurai. As a child, she learned kendo, karate, archery and the naginata.
As a child, she was routinely bullied for her height, often by other girls who couldn’t handle their jealousy and attraction to Motoko. The more things change, the more they stay the same, eh?
That was also partially in response to her older brother, Nemo Shimazu, being more of a modernist and refusing traditional Japanese cultural activities in favour of more modern and international ones.
At the age of twenty, Motoko volunteered for the United Nation’s Peacekeeping Forces, the global federal military of 2075. Though she excelled in her military training, both her superiors and fellow soldiers found her a prudish martinet and she made no friends among the Peacekeepers.
Motoko is a shy, reserved woman, and overly polite. She loves cute things, but is know for her ferocity and savagery in battle.
Motoko’s parents named her ‘Motoko’ because she looks exactly like her mother, shares her mother’s birthday, and was accidentally born in the middle of cherry blossom viewing session. Worried that the newly born would face extreme pressure to be exactly like her mother, Rokuro and Sakura decided to give her as different a name as humanly possible. Rapidly searching through a book of baby names, they opted for ‘Motoko’, using the hiragana for ‘resourceful child’. It proved an apt name: Motoko was well noted for her cleverness in school, excelling in both sports and academia.
Despite being a virtual clone of her mother, Motoko is daddy’s little girl through and through.
Nemo’s nickname for Motoko is ‘Mikan’ because he decided she looked like an orange when she was a baby. Despite wildly different temperaments and interests, Motoko and Nemo are very close. Motoko’s nickname for Nemo is ‘Baka-sama’, meaning, essentially, Lord Idiot.
- Height: 170 cm
- Body shape: Slim athletic
- Cup size: 75B
- Face shape: Hear shape
- Hair colour: Black
- Skin colour: Pale
- Eye colour: Gold
- Augments: full-body combat harness; cyberbrain; agentic augmentation; night-vision implants; built-in radio receiver
- Likes: cute things, especially women and cats; Hello Kitty; history; traditional Japanese weapons; traditional Japanese clothing; cherry blossoms; learning about other cultures and peoples; her Okinawan heritage; the colour pink; her father; her jerkface brother, dogu.
- Dislikes: rudeness; bigotry; anything dishonourable; rodents; heavy metal (except Babymetal)
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