Otono-Tachibana Makie (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
therewerefifty) wrote2013-04-24 09:33 pm
therewerefifty) wrote2013-04-24 09:33 pm
Entry tags:
Application
PLAYER
Name: KJ
Journal Username:whiteadelphi
E-mail: kjgreenham@gmail.com
AIM/PLURK: Damn Fangirls/Kayjayyy (respectively)
Current Characters at Luceti: N/A
CHARACTER
Name: Otono-Tachibana Makie
Canon: Blade of the Immortal
Gender: Female
Age: 24
Wing Color: A deep red, deepening to near black near the tips.
Canon Point:
A few days after the events of the Dreamsong storyline, graphic novel volume 3.
Canon Point Explanation:
Makie’s state of mind at this point is near its lowest, and it’s a quiet part of the story before she truly gets embroiled in the main plot. Luceti will be quietly accepted and she’ll find a place for herself. (She’s depressed enough without adding to it, really.)
History:
Any link to an official site comes up woefully short when going into detail about Makie, so I’ll just write it up from scratch.
Makie was born into a samurai family famed for its talent in swordsmanship in approximately 1768, the second child after a brother five years older than she was. Her father was Yoshiaki Harukawa and her mother was Fuki. When she was ten years old, her 15 year old brother and heir to the family dojo (unnamed), urged into it as a prank by his peers, challenged her to a duel. It wasn’t serious—more just teenage boys having some fun. But that didn’t stop Makie from defeating him three times in a row, without him ever landing a strike. Humiliated, her brother committed seppuku rather than live with the shame that he had been beaten by a girl; that the daughter in the family had inherited the family’s famed talent. This was the middle of the Tokugawa era, and for a girl to have such talent over those allowed to be warriors was shameful. In rage, Harukawa disowned Makie—and his own wife, when Fuki attempted to defend her daughter—casting them out onto the street. Fuki was forced to find work in a pleasure house to support them both, and Makie was left with a great anger for her father for doing this to her mother, and anger to her mother for just accepting it—but also an overwhelming shame and sadness at both their situation and her role in society, where the fact of her skill meant that her existence was the greatest shame any family had to endure.
A lot of her years after that are never gone into, but I can surmise that as the child of a whore, Makie spent a lot of time either keeping out of the way or wandering the streets (it’s clear at least that she doesn’t become a prostitute herself until much later.) She continues to practice with the sword despite the stigma it brings, her goal to one day return to her old home and her father to kill him for the dishonour done to her mother. After that, she fully intends to kill herself, too. Makie is… not a happy child.
At some point early on, she meets Anotsu Kagehisa in the wastelands for the first time. Both of them children, she saves him from the attack of a wild dog, and he praised her skill in awe. It was the first time she’d ever heard praise for being able to use a sword, and he asked her at that point to teach him; that he stay by her side always, and learn from her. She agrees, but her only request is that some day he become stronger than she is, because at least one man should be stronger than she is. (This is never borne out in the series – Anotsu never becomes stronger than Makie. But as she’s completely in love with him throughout their adult lives, it’s only a source of joy for her because it means that she has a reason to stay by his side.)
It’s while they’re talking that Anotsu’s grandfather comes across them and, realising that his grandson was saved by a girl, flies into a rage and beats both children bloody. He intends to kill Makie to preserve the honour of Anotsu, and then recognises her at the last moment… and instead beats her near half to death and leaves both her and her weapon on a tree branch in the field, saying the blood would draw every wild dog for miles, and that Makie’s fate was now in the hands of the gods. Apparently, this is the grandfather’s way of confirming if she is who he thinks she is. (What a nice man he is. Really.)
Anotsu returns to the field the next day to find the corpses of fifty wild dogs strewn across the field and no Makie. When he reports this to his grandfather, the man laughs, claims he was right, and tells Anotsu the story of who Makie is. This incident goes at least partway to helping Anotsu define what he wants out of his own life, which is creating his own no-holds-barred sword school, where there is no shame to be found in what weapon you use or what gender you are; only that you are strong and you can fight.
What happens in the next years until 1782 is very vaguely defined. Makie and Anotsu do see each other again, at least enough for them to grow to know each other, for Anotsu to learn from her, for Makie to fall in love with him. But they obviously lose track of each other somewhere along the way; most likely near the point that Makie’s mother Fuki, suffering from tuberculosis, passes away. Fuki spent the last of her days in the pleasure houses, and Makie is ashamed of that life for her, still intending to go back to avenge Fuki’s disgrace some day… but Fuki is against Makie’s vendetta, and tells Makie instead (on her deathbed?) that if she wanted to be a swordsman, to “become a whore instead”.
So she does. One assumes possibly she is honouring her mother’s wishes, or that there is debt for her mother’s medical treatment that needs to be repaid; these are likely both reasons. But another is that Makie is a deeply sad and confused woman, always swinging from one goal to another and unsure what she should do with her life… perhaps all of these things are behind her decision to follow in her mother’s footsteps and become a prostitute. What else can such a woman do?
It’s there that Anotsu finds her again, in 1782, where he hires her for the evening without sex, and instead tells her the tale of how he was rescued from a wild dog by a young girl with skin corpse-pale and “her eyes, so sad.” He buys out the last of her contract from the brothel, setting her free on the streets again, and tells her of his own situation: that he has formed his new school, the Itto-Ryu, but there is a swordsman by the name of Manji who is intent on murdering them all due to a vendetta of revenge. By pledge of honour, Makie becomes a swordswoman of the Itto-Ryu. She also becomes a geisha at about the same time (again, very vague in the story) in order to make the money to pay Anotsu back for the money he’s spent on her behalf, despite Anotsu saying with irritation that he never asked for such a thing.
Soon after, things happen in quick succession. She finds Manji in the street and approaches him under the guise of a streetwalking prostitute, luring him into the back alleys with intent to kill him, because that’s what Anotsu wants. They have their first fight, but Makie’s heart is not in it—she loses. Manji, believing she’s an amateur, delivers a lecture and walks off, leaving her alive. Anotsu finds her a few days later to question both how the fight went and why she’s working in such a place as a geisha. He refuses to believe she could have genuinely lost to Manji, because she is the only swordsman alive capable of beating him. Makie says:
“My mother said something to me once. I just remembered it the other day. If I wanted to live by killing people, to be a swordfighter, then to become a whore instead. That’s what she said. So go ahead-- laugh at me. This pathetic person…who doesn’t have it in her to be either one.”
Anotsu then claims that one day, he will make her his woman. Makie cries, believing he’s only after her skill with a sword—she could be so happy otherwise. He kisses her, then tells her he won’t have her wasting her talent, and leaves her alone on the bridge. It’s while she’s there composing herself that three thugs arrive to state they were there to take her back to her original brothel, because the manager was happy to get so much money for her, but was sure he’d go out of business without his “best show piece”.
Makie quietly says she understands—- and cuts her hair off. Then slaughters all three of them on the bridge in a matter of seconds. And the following day, she tells Anotsu that she will be his when she brings him back Manji’s head. Cue her second fight with Manji, much more vicious this time, where it’s clear that Manji doesn’t have a chance against her—but she still loses her nerve midfight, and is encouraged by Manji of all people, saying that if he was going to be offed in the street, at least let it be in a way he didn’t regret; for Makie to remember the reason she took up the sword in the first place, cling to it, and fight.
She thanks him for it, they resume their fight, and Makie wins. Before she can deliver the final blow, however, Manji’s travelling partner, a young girl called Rin, intervenes to protect him (despite all of Manji’s complaints)—and Makie eventually decides this is not what she wants to do, turning her back on Manji—and thus Anotsu—and instead making the choice to return home to her father to finally avenge her mother’s treatment at his hands. It's a long journey home. She'll arrive in Luceti somewhere about halfway.
Personality:
As is probably evident from the above history, Makie is not a strong-willed person and is actually quite fragile in personality and ego. TV Tropes describes her as a broken bird, and that’s very accurate; she is always melancholic, her life has been very sad, and she’s grown up with the knowledge that according to Edo society her very existence is the greatest shame a family could bear. Killing people brings her no joy. Being a geisha brings her no joy. Being a whore certainly doesn’t. But despite the perceived shame of her existence, she doesn’t give up the sword.
There’s a certain duality to near everything that Makie does—before she leaves Edo, she admits that she used to be ashamed of her mother’s lifestyle, but now she understands and is so proud of Fuki, who encouraged Makie to give up her vendetta, who instead of living in resentment chose to forgive her husband and spend the rest of her life giving comfort to people. But despite this acknowledgment, she still goes home with the intent to kill her father, and only attempts to give up her sword (and everything else) when her only reason for continuing on with it is now gone. She can’t commit to any one road in life, lacking “the nerve for either one”, and a woman with impressive sword skills has no place in the strict society of mid-Tokugawa. Makie has grown up feeling strongly that she has no place, no roots, that she shouldn’t exist, and it shows in how conflicted and sad she is in just about everything. It certainly doesn’t take much for Makie to break down in tears. She believes she is a fallen woman who can’t have dreams like other people.
That doesn’t mean, however, that Makie spends all her time moping about and crying; her capacity for empathy and compassion is quite high, likely as a result of all she’s been through, and she smiles and talks to children on the street (notably girls, mind), encouraging them and comforting them. As a geisha she is self deprecating yet capable of good conversation, both playful and more softly serious. She comes across as kind and gentle and sometimes a teasing woman, and is often quite candid about what she’s thinking or feeling in various situations. (But not always. There are at least two occasions in the manga where she deliberately manipulates someone into a vulnerable position for a fight.) She does often come across as melancholy – I mean, the very first description we get of her in the manga from Anotsu’s point of view is “Skin blue-white like someone dead…and those eyes. So sad, so very sad.”
There are possibly two things that instil any kind of peace or positive emotion in Makie. One is her shamisen, which, while it does double as a place to conceal her weapon of choice, is nevertheless an instrument she’s shown to play on many occasions, creating her own music and songs, and she is shown on two occasions to be alone and playing without an audience. While it’s a skill she likely picked up somewhere between the brothel and the geisha house, it’s clear that it gives her a moment of peace.
The other is Anotsu Kagehisa. The first person to ever praise her swordsmanship, the only student she’s ever had, the only man to hold her in respect through her early years. She loves him, and cannot bear to shame him. She insists on paying him for his freeing her from the brothel, she would kill for him, she will protect him at cost of her own life; the only exception to this would be when he's in a one on one fight of his own choosing. (And then heaven help anyone who tries to interfere.) She’s convinced he only loves her for her sword (but as later events in the manga will show, this isn’t so.) This fact also shows Makie has low self esteem and little respect for herself (she refers to her own songs as amateur, she can’t see why a man would love her or even like her for who she is-- sex or her swordsmanship, she’s not a person to them, she is a figure of shame or someone exotic, depending on their point of view.) The promise she made Anotsu give her when they were young is not one she expects him to keep; rather, she takes joy from the fact that she can defeat him, because it means she has a reason to stay by his side. She’s needed. (Well, all that and she still bows out of killing Manji against Anotsu’s wishes, despite her love for him. But that shows at least that even though her love for him is strong, Makie still thinks—and makes decisions-- for herself. ) It’s Anotsu that pulls her out of her depression and eventually gives her drive to go on, but that’s history for another time.
All in all, Makie is a complicated individual who has been through a lot and would have been a lot happier if she’d been born in a different century. She’s indecisive, flawed, compassionate, sad, and self-destructive and she sees no joy in living on— but she does, for the sake of avenging her mother. On the other hand, when she fights, she’s a different person. She’s a dancer, she’s canny, instinctive, cunning, and moves so fast she’s yet to be in a fight where she gets a single drop of blood on her despite the slaughter around her—and she has killed a lot of people. She is both terrifying and awesome to behold, her face blank and serene, and Anotsu has a habit of just watching in fascination when he sees her fight (and kind of poking other people nearby to go “See? SEE? That’s what I can never be. Perfection”) and she develops a terrifying reputation by the end of the manga—but despite all that, break her concentration and she often loses her nerve.
Unless Anotsu’s life is on the line. Then heaven help everyone involved.
Strengths
Physical:
Makie’s skill as a swordsman is both terrifying and unparalleled in the world of Blade of the Immortal; while she’s not very strong, her speed is incredible and she uses it to her advantage with her weapon of choice (a double-bladed chain staff), swinging it around and dealing death like nobody’s business. (That doesn’t mean she’s no good at other weapons, however; far from it. She steals one from Manji and uses it against him in their second fight.) She is undisputedly the best fighter in the series, better both than Anotsu (the main “villain” – it’s complicated) and Manji (about as much the “hero” as Anotsu is the villain, really—it’s complicated) and throughout the entire run of the series, she never loses a fight. Or gets her clothes dirty. To put it into perspective, one of the best warriors in the story and his six elite fighters come across Makie while she’s sick, and his only thought is, “If I do anything wrong here, the seven of us are all dead.” To get on Makie’s bad side is to have a severely shortened life span. For cross-canon purposes, she’s probably about equal to Himura Kenshin’s skill and speed, and could likely give Zoro from One Piece a run for his money. (Zoro’d win in the end.)
Hand in hand with her swordsmanship comes a level of speed, dexterity, and grace that is enviable, and her balance is pretty much perfect. Case in point.
Mental:
She’s a quick thinker in a combat setting, taking full advantage of her surroundings on the fly. Her training as a geisha gives her tact and diplomacy when dealing with men, and she’s creative enough to come up with songs on her shamisen that “tear at the heart”, according to the mistress of the geisha house she stays in for a while. She’s also a consummate actress when the situation calls for it: both in her first approaching Manji as a street whore (“You look bored, big boy.”) and the events shortly thereafter, and much later on in the manga when she fakes an attack of bloody coughing to lure someone into her range, believing her to be vulnerable.
Emotional:
Here is where she really lacks in the strength department, but if I give her anything, it’s this: she has a great deal of determination and ruthless willpower when it comes to anything she properly sets her mind to. It’s just… hard for her to properly set her mind to anything. Anotsu usually has to be involved; for example, there is no limit to what she will put herself through in order to protect him. The aforementioned attack of bloody coughing comes about because she bites off the tip of her own tongue to provide the blood.
That being said, she also has a large amount of empathy and compassion. Whether that extends to anyone beyond girls that may remind Makie of herself is another story… and certainly, there’s a time and place for both these things.
Weaknesses
Physical:
Although she is incredibly fast, as Manji put it: “Girl, you may be fast, but you’ve got no muscle!” She isn’t weak, by any means, but against male swordsmen, for example, she’ll always lose out in a contest of strength. Luckily, with her speed and skill, she generally doesn’t have to get into such contests.
More importantly, however… though she doesn’t know it yet at this point in her canon, Makie develops tuberculosis herself in the next few months. Her parents both had it, and it’s passed on to her. If she’s in Luceti long enough for the illness to develop symptoms, Makie will discover this and all the complications that go with it. With modern medicine available in Luceti, at least it likely won’t kill her, but it will certainly not be all that great for her health and stamina.
Mental:
If her heart’s not in it or her concentration breaks in battle, Makie admits that she will suddenly be terrified by what she’s done. This causes hesitation, doubt, indecision, and all in all a general drop in skill on the battlefield. She loses her first fight to Manji with swordsmanship that’s practically laughable, because she really doesn’t want to kill him at this point in her life. It’s the first time, I believe, that she’s actually set out to kill someone. At someone else’s request, no less. The second time she comes back after having made her decision on the bridge, she’s a lot more lethal.
Emotional:
Hoo boy. Makie is self-deprecating, self-hating, feels she is unworthy and a failure and has absolutely no will to keep on living. She won’t kill herself – she hasn’t earned that right, to her mind – but to say that her ego is fragile is putting it lightly. The girl is depressed. As a result, she has little presence or desire to do anything and is very indecisive and has no nerve for anything at all. This is something that may (hopefully) improve in Luceti, with the sort of environment she finds there which is, ironically, less toxic than the one she’s come from, but when she arrives she is more or less a broken woman.
Anything else?: Makie has a named weapon called Haru-no-Okina (Old Man of Spring) which is a double-bladed three section staff of eight feet long. She folds it up and conceals it in her shamisen. …just how her shamisen still manages to be played properly with a weapon folded up inside is beyond me, but shh. Manga and all.
It’s also worth noting that despite Blade of the Immortal being set in the 1780s, the language used is often modern, mixed with a more old-fashioned way of speaking. Depending on who’s speaking. Makie often speaks more formally and can be quite poetic and old-fashioned in her speech, but one of her first lines to Manji is “You seem bored, big boy,” when impersonating a streetwalker. Therefore speech and colloquialisms are… interesting and not exactly historically accurate.
SAMPLES (ALL SAMPLES MUST BE SET IN THE LUCETIVERSE)
First Person: Her Training Wings post. Which largely showcases how she deals with strangers, really. If this doesn’t suffice, I’m happy to take a Q&A.
Third Person:
To say Makie found the elevator unnerving would be an understatement. The only reason she’d ridden in one at all was because another resident had taken it upon themselves to educate her, ushering her in as she stared curiously at the doors (and then blinked as they slid open)and then babbling an explanation while pushing buttons, and the yawning feeling in her stomach as it lurched upward was unlike anything she’d ever experienced. She’d nearly dropped her shamisen.
She liked where the elevator had taken her, however. Perhaps one day, she would get used to it. But for now, Makie climbed the stairs most days, all the way to the roof of this strange warren of apartments, and enjoyed the view over the village to the forests and beyond. There were others who came to the rooftops, and she didn’t want to intrude, so she timed her visits there carefully to times when she was reasonably sure she would be alone.
So high up, here. Peaceful, and relaxing. If nothing else, Luceti was at least a place in which there were no expectations put on her; a place she could live out the last of her days in obscurity. She had no desire at all to return home, though there was certainly a deep and melancholic longing for the one person that she missed. She wondered, distantly, if Anotsu would ever try seeking her out again. If he didn’t, she certainly couldn’t blame him. Better that way, she thinks.
She smiles a little at the wistful indulgence behind that thought; that he would forever wonder where she had gone. Such thoughts were laughable.
But it doesn’t stop her, when she finally bends her head to her playing, from experimenting with strings on the shamisen, trying to find the right notes to translate that wistfulness into music.
Name: KJ
Journal Username:
whiteadelphiE-mail: kjgreenham@gmail.com
AIM/PLURK: Damn Fangirls/Kayjayyy (respectively)
Current Characters at Luceti: N/A
CHARACTER
Name: Otono-Tachibana Makie
Canon: Blade of the Immortal
Gender: Female
Age: 24
Wing Color: A deep red, deepening to near black near the tips.
Canon Point:
A few days after the events of the Dreamsong storyline, graphic novel volume 3.
Canon Point Explanation:
Makie’s state of mind at this point is near its lowest, and it’s a quiet part of the story before she truly gets embroiled in the main plot. Luceti will be quietly accepted and she’ll find a place for herself. (She’s depressed enough without adding to it, really.)
History:
Any link to an official site comes up woefully short when going into detail about Makie, so I’ll just write it up from scratch.
Makie was born into a samurai family famed for its talent in swordsmanship in approximately 1768, the second child after a brother five years older than she was. Her father was Yoshiaki Harukawa and her mother was Fuki. When she was ten years old, her 15 year old brother and heir to the family dojo (unnamed), urged into it as a prank by his peers, challenged her to a duel. It wasn’t serious—more just teenage boys having some fun. But that didn’t stop Makie from defeating him three times in a row, without him ever landing a strike. Humiliated, her brother committed seppuku rather than live with the shame that he had been beaten by a girl; that the daughter in the family had inherited the family’s famed talent. This was the middle of the Tokugawa era, and for a girl to have such talent over those allowed to be warriors was shameful. In rage, Harukawa disowned Makie—and his own wife, when Fuki attempted to defend her daughter—casting them out onto the street. Fuki was forced to find work in a pleasure house to support them both, and Makie was left with a great anger for her father for doing this to her mother, and anger to her mother for just accepting it—but also an overwhelming shame and sadness at both their situation and her role in society, where the fact of her skill meant that her existence was the greatest shame any family had to endure.
A lot of her years after that are never gone into, but I can surmise that as the child of a whore, Makie spent a lot of time either keeping out of the way or wandering the streets (it’s clear at least that she doesn’t become a prostitute herself until much later.) She continues to practice with the sword despite the stigma it brings, her goal to one day return to her old home and her father to kill him for the dishonour done to her mother. After that, she fully intends to kill herself, too. Makie is… not a happy child.
At some point early on, she meets Anotsu Kagehisa in the wastelands for the first time. Both of them children, she saves him from the attack of a wild dog, and he praised her skill in awe. It was the first time she’d ever heard praise for being able to use a sword, and he asked her at that point to teach him; that he stay by her side always, and learn from her. She agrees, but her only request is that some day he become stronger than she is, because at least one man should be stronger than she is. (This is never borne out in the series – Anotsu never becomes stronger than Makie. But as she’s completely in love with him throughout their adult lives, it’s only a source of joy for her because it means that she has a reason to stay by his side.)
It’s while they’re talking that Anotsu’s grandfather comes across them and, realising that his grandson was saved by a girl, flies into a rage and beats both children bloody. He intends to kill Makie to preserve the honour of Anotsu, and then recognises her at the last moment… and instead beats her near half to death and leaves both her and her weapon on a tree branch in the field, saying the blood would draw every wild dog for miles, and that Makie’s fate was now in the hands of the gods. Apparently, this is the grandfather’s way of confirming if she is who he thinks she is. (What a nice man he is. Really.)
Anotsu returns to the field the next day to find the corpses of fifty wild dogs strewn across the field and no Makie. When he reports this to his grandfather, the man laughs, claims he was right, and tells Anotsu the story of who Makie is. This incident goes at least partway to helping Anotsu define what he wants out of his own life, which is creating his own no-holds-barred sword school, where there is no shame to be found in what weapon you use or what gender you are; only that you are strong and you can fight.
What happens in the next years until 1782 is very vaguely defined. Makie and Anotsu do see each other again, at least enough for them to grow to know each other, for Anotsu to learn from her, for Makie to fall in love with him. But they obviously lose track of each other somewhere along the way; most likely near the point that Makie’s mother Fuki, suffering from tuberculosis, passes away. Fuki spent the last of her days in the pleasure houses, and Makie is ashamed of that life for her, still intending to go back to avenge Fuki’s disgrace some day… but Fuki is against Makie’s vendetta, and tells Makie instead (on her deathbed?) that if she wanted to be a swordsman, to “become a whore instead”.
So she does. One assumes possibly she is honouring her mother’s wishes, or that there is debt for her mother’s medical treatment that needs to be repaid; these are likely both reasons. But another is that Makie is a deeply sad and confused woman, always swinging from one goal to another and unsure what she should do with her life… perhaps all of these things are behind her decision to follow in her mother’s footsteps and become a prostitute. What else can such a woman do?
It’s there that Anotsu finds her again, in 1782, where he hires her for the evening without sex, and instead tells her the tale of how he was rescued from a wild dog by a young girl with skin corpse-pale and “her eyes, so sad.” He buys out the last of her contract from the brothel, setting her free on the streets again, and tells her of his own situation: that he has formed his new school, the Itto-Ryu, but there is a swordsman by the name of Manji who is intent on murdering them all due to a vendetta of revenge. By pledge of honour, Makie becomes a swordswoman of the Itto-Ryu. She also becomes a geisha at about the same time (again, very vague in the story) in order to make the money to pay Anotsu back for the money he’s spent on her behalf, despite Anotsu saying with irritation that he never asked for such a thing.
Soon after, things happen in quick succession. She finds Manji in the street and approaches him under the guise of a streetwalking prostitute, luring him into the back alleys with intent to kill him, because that’s what Anotsu wants. They have their first fight, but Makie’s heart is not in it—she loses. Manji, believing she’s an amateur, delivers a lecture and walks off, leaving her alive. Anotsu finds her a few days later to question both how the fight went and why she’s working in such a place as a geisha. He refuses to believe she could have genuinely lost to Manji, because she is the only swordsman alive capable of beating him. Makie says:
“My mother said something to me once. I just remembered it the other day. If I wanted to live by killing people, to be a swordfighter, then to become a whore instead. That’s what she said. So go ahead-- laugh at me. This pathetic person…who doesn’t have it in her to be either one.”
Anotsu then claims that one day, he will make her his woman. Makie cries, believing he’s only after her skill with a sword—she could be so happy otherwise. He kisses her, then tells her he won’t have her wasting her talent, and leaves her alone on the bridge. It’s while she’s there composing herself that three thugs arrive to state they were there to take her back to her original brothel, because the manager was happy to get so much money for her, but was sure he’d go out of business without his “best show piece”.
Makie quietly says she understands—- and cuts her hair off. Then slaughters all three of them on the bridge in a matter of seconds. And the following day, she tells Anotsu that she will be his when she brings him back Manji’s head. Cue her second fight with Manji, much more vicious this time, where it’s clear that Manji doesn’t have a chance against her—but she still loses her nerve midfight, and is encouraged by Manji of all people, saying that if he was going to be offed in the street, at least let it be in a way he didn’t regret; for Makie to remember the reason she took up the sword in the first place, cling to it, and fight.
She thanks him for it, they resume their fight, and Makie wins. Before she can deliver the final blow, however, Manji’s travelling partner, a young girl called Rin, intervenes to protect him (despite all of Manji’s complaints)—and Makie eventually decides this is not what she wants to do, turning her back on Manji—and thus Anotsu—and instead making the choice to return home to her father to finally avenge her mother’s treatment at his hands. It's a long journey home. She'll arrive in Luceti somewhere about halfway.
Personality:
As is probably evident from the above history, Makie is not a strong-willed person and is actually quite fragile in personality and ego. TV Tropes describes her as a broken bird, and that’s very accurate; she is always melancholic, her life has been very sad, and she’s grown up with the knowledge that according to Edo society her very existence is the greatest shame a family could bear. Killing people brings her no joy. Being a geisha brings her no joy. Being a whore certainly doesn’t. But despite the perceived shame of her existence, she doesn’t give up the sword.
There’s a certain duality to near everything that Makie does—before she leaves Edo, she admits that she used to be ashamed of her mother’s lifestyle, but now she understands and is so proud of Fuki, who encouraged Makie to give up her vendetta, who instead of living in resentment chose to forgive her husband and spend the rest of her life giving comfort to people. But despite this acknowledgment, she still goes home with the intent to kill her father, and only attempts to give up her sword (and everything else) when her only reason for continuing on with it is now gone. She can’t commit to any one road in life, lacking “the nerve for either one”, and a woman with impressive sword skills has no place in the strict society of mid-Tokugawa. Makie has grown up feeling strongly that she has no place, no roots, that she shouldn’t exist, and it shows in how conflicted and sad she is in just about everything. It certainly doesn’t take much for Makie to break down in tears. She believes she is a fallen woman who can’t have dreams like other people.
That doesn’t mean, however, that Makie spends all her time moping about and crying; her capacity for empathy and compassion is quite high, likely as a result of all she’s been through, and she smiles and talks to children on the street (notably girls, mind), encouraging them and comforting them. As a geisha she is self deprecating yet capable of good conversation, both playful and more softly serious. She comes across as kind and gentle and sometimes a teasing woman, and is often quite candid about what she’s thinking or feeling in various situations. (But not always. There are at least two occasions in the manga where she deliberately manipulates someone into a vulnerable position for a fight.) She does often come across as melancholy – I mean, the very first description we get of her in the manga from Anotsu’s point of view is “Skin blue-white like someone dead…and those eyes. So sad, so very sad.”
There are possibly two things that instil any kind of peace or positive emotion in Makie. One is her shamisen, which, while it does double as a place to conceal her weapon of choice, is nevertheless an instrument she’s shown to play on many occasions, creating her own music and songs, and she is shown on two occasions to be alone and playing without an audience. While it’s a skill she likely picked up somewhere between the brothel and the geisha house, it’s clear that it gives her a moment of peace.
The other is Anotsu Kagehisa. The first person to ever praise her swordsmanship, the only student she’s ever had, the only man to hold her in respect through her early years. She loves him, and cannot bear to shame him. She insists on paying him for his freeing her from the brothel, she would kill for him, she will protect him at cost of her own life; the only exception to this would be when he's in a one on one fight of his own choosing. (And then heaven help anyone who tries to interfere.) She’s convinced he only loves her for her sword (but as later events in the manga will show, this isn’t so.) This fact also shows Makie has low self esteem and little respect for herself (she refers to her own songs as amateur, she can’t see why a man would love her or even like her for who she is-- sex or her swordsmanship, she’s not a person to them, she is a figure of shame or someone exotic, depending on their point of view.) The promise she made Anotsu give her when they were young is not one she expects him to keep; rather, she takes joy from the fact that she can defeat him, because it means she has a reason to stay by his side. She’s needed. (Well, all that and she still bows out of killing Manji against Anotsu’s wishes, despite her love for him. But that shows at least that even though her love for him is strong, Makie still thinks—and makes decisions-- for herself. ) It’s Anotsu that pulls her out of her depression and eventually gives her drive to go on, but that’s history for another time.
All in all, Makie is a complicated individual who has been through a lot and would have been a lot happier if she’d been born in a different century. She’s indecisive, flawed, compassionate, sad, and self-destructive and she sees no joy in living on— but she does, for the sake of avenging her mother. On the other hand, when she fights, she’s a different person. She’s a dancer, she’s canny, instinctive, cunning, and moves so fast she’s yet to be in a fight where she gets a single drop of blood on her despite the slaughter around her—and she has killed a lot of people. She is both terrifying and awesome to behold, her face blank and serene, and Anotsu has a habit of just watching in fascination when he sees her fight (and kind of poking other people nearby to go “See? SEE? That’s what I can never be. Perfection”) and she develops a terrifying reputation by the end of the manga—but despite all that, break her concentration and she often loses her nerve.
Unless Anotsu’s life is on the line. Then heaven help everyone involved.
Strengths
Makie’s skill as a swordsman is both terrifying and unparalleled in the world of Blade of the Immortal; while she’s not very strong, her speed is incredible and she uses it to her advantage with her weapon of choice (a double-bladed chain staff), swinging it around and dealing death like nobody’s business. (That doesn’t mean she’s no good at other weapons, however; far from it. She steals one from Manji and uses it against him in their second fight.) She is undisputedly the best fighter in the series, better both than Anotsu (the main “villain” – it’s complicated) and Manji (about as much the “hero” as Anotsu is the villain, really—it’s complicated) and throughout the entire run of the series, she never loses a fight. Or gets her clothes dirty. To put it into perspective, one of the best warriors in the story and his six elite fighters come across Makie while she’s sick, and his only thought is, “If I do anything wrong here, the seven of us are all dead.” To get on Makie’s bad side is to have a severely shortened life span. For cross-canon purposes, she’s probably about equal to Himura Kenshin’s skill and speed, and could likely give Zoro from One Piece a run for his money. (Zoro’d win in the end.)
Hand in hand with her swordsmanship comes a level of speed, dexterity, and grace that is enviable, and her balance is pretty much perfect. Case in point.
Mental:
She’s a quick thinker in a combat setting, taking full advantage of her surroundings on the fly. Her training as a geisha gives her tact and diplomacy when dealing with men, and she’s creative enough to come up with songs on her shamisen that “tear at the heart”, according to the mistress of the geisha house she stays in for a while. She’s also a consummate actress when the situation calls for it: both in her first approaching Manji as a street whore (“You look bored, big boy.”) and the events shortly thereafter, and much later on in the manga when she fakes an attack of bloody coughing to lure someone into her range, believing her to be vulnerable.
Emotional:
Here is where she really lacks in the strength department, but if I give her anything, it’s this: she has a great deal of determination and ruthless willpower when it comes to anything she properly sets her mind to. It’s just… hard for her to properly set her mind to anything. Anotsu usually has to be involved; for example, there is no limit to what she will put herself through in order to protect him. The aforementioned attack of bloody coughing comes about because she bites off the tip of her own tongue to provide the blood.
That being said, she also has a large amount of empathy and compassion. Whether that extends to anyone beyond girls that may remind Makie of herself is another story… and certainly, there’s a time and place for both these things.
Weaknesses
Although she is incredibly fast, as Manji put it: “Girl, you may be fast, but you’ve got no muscle!” She isn’t weak, by any means, but against male swordsmen, for example, she’ll always lose out in a contest of strength. Luckily, with her speed and skill, she generally doesn’t have to get into such contests.
More importantly, however… though she doesn’t know it yet at this point in her canon, Makie develops tuberculosis herself in the next few months. Her parents both had it, and it’s passed on to her. If she’s in Luceti long enough for the illness to develop symptoms, Makie will discover this and all the complications that go with it. With modern medicine available in Luceti, at least it likely won’t kill her, but it will certainly not be all that great for her health and stamina.
Mental:
If her heart’s not in it or her concentration breaks in battle, Makie admits that she will suddenly be terrified by what she’s done. This causes hesitation, doubt, indecision, and all in all a general drop in skill on the battlefield. She loses her first fight to Manji with swordsmanship that’s practically laughable, because she really doesn’t want to kill him at this point in her life. It’s the first time, I believe, that she’s actually set out to kill someone. At someone else’s request, no less. The second time she comes back after having made her decision on the bridge, she’s a lot more lethal.
Emotional:
Hoo boy. Makie is self-deprecating, self-hating, feels she is unworthy and a failure and has absolutely no will to keep on living. She won’t kill herself – she hasn’t earned that right, to her mind – but to say that her ego is fragile is putting it lightly. The girl is depressed. As a result, she has little presence or desire to do anything and is very indecisive and has no nerve for anything at all. This is something that may (hopefully) improve in Luceti, with the sort of environment she finds there which is, ironically, less toxic than the one she’s come from, but when she arrives she is more or less a broken woman.
Anything else?: Makie has a named weapon called Haru-no-Okina (Old Man of Spring) which is a double-bladed three section staff of eight feet long. She folds it up and conceals it in her shamisen. …just how her shamisen still manages to be played properly with a weapon folded up inside is beyond me, but shh. Manga and all.
It’s also worth noting that despite Blade of the Immortal being set in the 1780s, the language used is often modern, mixed with a more old-fashioned way of speaking. Depending on who’s speaking. Makie often speaks more formally and can be quite poetic and old-fashioned in her speech, but one of her first lines to Manji is “You seem bored, big boy,” when impersonating a streetwalker. Therefore speech and colloquialisms are… interesting and not exactly historically accurate.
SAMPLES (ALL SAMPLES MUST BE SET IN THE LUCETIVERSE)
First Person: Her Training Wings post. Which largely showcases how she deals with strangers, really. If this doesn’t suffice, I’m happy to take a Q&A.
Third Person:
To say Makie found the elevator unnerving would be an understatement. The only reason she’d ridden in one at all was because another resident had taken it upon themselves to educate her, ushering her in as she stared curiously at the doors (and then blinked as they slid open)and then babbling an explanation while pushing buttons, and the yawning feeling in her stomach as it lurched upward was unlike anything she’d ever experienced. She’d nearly dropped her shamisen.
She liked where the elevator had taken her, however. Perhaps one day, she would get used to it. But for now, Makie climbed the stairs most days, all the way to the roof of this strange warren of apartments, and enjoyed the view over the village to the forests and beyond. There were others who came to the rooftops, and she didn’t want to intrude, so she timed her visits there carefully to times when she was reasonably sure she would be alone.
So high up, here. Peaceful, and relaxing. If nothing else, Luceti was at least a place in which there were no expectations put on her; a place she could live out the last of her days in obscurity. She had no desire at all to return home, though there was certainly a deep and melancholic longing for the one person that she missed. She wondered, distantly, if Anotsu would ever try seeking her out again. If he didn’t, she certainly couldn’t blame him. Better that way, she thinks.
She smiles a little at the wistful indulgence behind that thought; that he would forever wonder where she had gone. Such thoughts were laughable.
But it doesn’t stop her, when she finally bends her head to her playing, from experimenting with strings on the shamisen, trying to find the right notes to translate that wistfulness into music.