Akira Tadokoro 田所晃 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
psyker4649) wrote2023-11-29 01:20 pm
psyker4649) wrote2023-11-29 01:20 pm
history / canon overview
Content note: Suicide mention in Middle Ages section, minor body-horror and corrupt police force mention in Near Future.
An overview of Live A Live's plot.
tl;dr:
A psychic orphan discovers a military conspiracy to conduct a mass human sacrifice to summon a god. Also there's giant robots.
Also time and causality broke a little bit because this other guy hated the world and himself so much that he became a primordial demon emperor, but it's fine, it's fixed, it's fine,
The Middle Ages
Hundreds of years ago, in the kingdom of Lucrece, tragedy befell the young knight Oersted in his quest to slay the Lord of Dark. His best friend Streibough betrayed him, he was tricked into committing regicide, and his betrothed repudiated him and declared her love for Streibough before committing suicide. With the kingdom convinced that he was a kingslayer and demon, and with anyone who could have defended his innocence dead, Oersted fell into despair. He took upon the identity of the Lord of Dark, becoming the demon king Odio.
His influence reached across time and space, even to eras long before he was born. Manifestations of Odio's hatred for humanity appeared time and time again: Sometimes as a god worshipped by a cult, other times as a supernaturally-strong killer or a cruel leader of a martial arts sect, once even as an intelligent supercomputer. Seven times across history, Odio's wrath was defied. One of those times was:
Near Future (Akira's Chapter)
[Live a Live is divided into chapters for different eras of history. Its Present Day chapter is in the 1990s, the decade the original game was released, given the appearance of celebrities like Max Morgan/legally-distinct Hulk Hogan. In which case, Near Future is sometime in the 21st century. Akira and the other orphanage children watch a broadcast that appears to feature real-life wrestlers Mitsuharu Misawa and Keiji Muto, so you could say this either takes place before 2009 or in a world where Misawa didn't die young, but also, don't think about it too hard (especially considering this is also a timeline where Hulk Hogan was murdered circa ~1994 by a serial killer).]
Akira Tadokoro was the son of the riot police captain Tadashi Tadokoro. Akira grew up seeing his father as an upstanding man; in truth, Tadashi answered to the military officer General Yamazaki, who it is implied was allowing the crime in the streets to run rampant and even allowed military-grade weapons to be leaked to the populace. [In the manga adaptation of Near Future, penned by Akira's designer Kazuhiko Shimamoto, it's stated that the military conspiracy was already underway, and Tadashi's police actions were explicitly to take down any opposition to Dr. Livingstill's research.]
Tadashi was assigned to stop The Crusaders, an anarchist biker gang whose leader was struggling to keep the streets under control. In a confrontation at the docks, Tadashi drew his gun on the leader of the Crusaders, but the other man shot first, killing him. The man fled when a young Akira arrived on the scene; seeing the child's grief, he regretted his actions, stepping down from his role as gang leader and vanishing.
Akira and his younger sister Kaori were taken in by the Bright Sparks orphanage, under the care of the teacher Taeko and the orphanage matron. As he grew into adolescence, Akira began to develop strange psychic powers, being able to see people's thoughts or move things with his mind. The other children at the orphanage, far from being frightened, accepted Akira's strangeness as a part of him; in turn, Akira took on an older-brother role for the other children alongside his sister, although he often picked on one of the other kids (Watanabe) and rankled at being treated as a child himself.
[It is loosely implied that Kaori may have some psychic potential herself, as she can tell if Akira is hurt in potential game-overs, but this is pure conjecture. The only thing really known about Kaori is that she's ill and often bedridden.]
Akira and Kaori were also taken under the wing of Taeko's boyfriend, a taiyaki seller called Matsu or "Lawless". Akira idolized Matsu, copying a lot of the man's demeanour and helping him at his taiyaki stall, though as time wore on, Akira became worried by Matsu spending more and more time avoiding the orphanage and refusing to talk about what troubled him, even (according to Taeko's thoughts) avoiding his girlfriend.
One day, Akira was attacked by Crusaders in the local park. He learned from their thoughts they were kidnapping kids to fill a mysterious "quota"; when he's saved by Matsu, he relays this knowledge. From Matsu's thoughts, this confirmed a suspicion of his, but the man drove off rather than answer Akira's questions.
Later that day, he paid a visit to a local inventor (Doc Tobei, who had often repaired things for the orphanage for free) to ask him if he could save Kaori's sick pet turtle. Tobei instead used bizarre technology to liquefy the turtle and upload it into the super-fighting turtle robot Taroimo, much to Kaori's delight and Akira's chagrin. Akira would also discover that in the depths of Tobei's curiosity shop, the man had hidden an ancient giant robot, Buriki Daioh / the Steel Titan. Tobei described how the Steel Titan had been built in ancient Babylonia and only animated by powerful psychic forces; Akira volunteered to try and activate it, but was unsuccessful.
The Crusaders attempted to kidnap another orphan, and Akira learned that the gang's strange behaviour was connected to the Tsukuba Research Facility on the west side of town; in the absence of their leader, the gang had come under the military's control. The place was a military complex, staffed by scientists feverishly working towards a "secret project". Akira discovered rooms lined with "liquefaction tanks" of glowing fluid, each of them psionically crying out for help. He also found data files relating to his father Tadashi, as well as ones about the Crusaders' missing leader Kenichi Matsui, and another about a researcher named Kozo Watanabe, the missing father of one of Akira's fellow orphans.
Akira (after being scolded by Matsu for following him into the facility) confronted the three ringleaders of a military conspiracy: General Yamazaki who oversaw the secret project, the head researcher Dr. Livingstill, and Priest Unryu, from Odeo Temple in Nippori. The liquefaction tanks were the remains of countless humans, reduced into bodiless entities of pure psychic potential (created in the same way Tobei had made Taroimo, revealing that Tobei had defected from Tsukuba). Their goal was to sacrifice and liquefy two thousand humans, using their psychic emanations to call the god Odeo into the world, eventually liquefying all of humanity and causing "the convergence of mankind -- a melding of one and all. Our bodies, minds, and souls in joyous harmony. No more disparity. A world devoid of discord and strife."
Matsu and Akira were attacked by a robot powered by a liquefaction tank, one that they soon realized contained the remains of Kozo Watanabe. [The fate of Kozo Watanabe differs between the game and the manga adaptation. In the manga, the robot refuses to fire upon his son Watanabe and turns on General Yamazaki, who cuts him down. In the game, Akira can identify that the liquefaction tank on the robot's back is its weak spot, and destroy the tank to mercy-kill Kozo. For the purposes of RP, I will be sticking with the game's canon, and only using the manga for added context.]
They fled the facility alive, conferring with the others at the orphanage. Doc Tobei said that a single liquefacted human could harness enough psychic power to power the Steel Titan and stop the military. Kaori volunteered, out of a belief she would die of her illness soon anyway, though Akira quickly refused to let her do it. Matsu insisted he could pilot the robot on despite having no psychic ability; when he failed, he sunk into despair and disappeared into the local bar.
Soon after, the orphanage was burned to the ground by Crusaders. [In the manga, it is clarified that the orphanage was attacked and gunmen sent to kill any survivors, specifically on Yamazaki's orders to kill Matsu.] Akira ran inside to save Kaori, becoming trapped inside the building as it began to come down... until the Steel Titan rescued them from the fire. Matsu had taken lethal amounts of drugs to be able to animate the robot through sheer willpower -- tragically, soon after Akira and Kaori were saved, his body failed him. Before he died, Matsu spoke to Akira mind-to-mind, confessing that he was Kenichi Matsui, the erstwhile leader of the Crusaders and Tadashi's killer; he had never gotten over the guilt of orphaning Akira and Kaori, and dedicated his life to making it up to them.
Akira took control of the cockpit, channelling his anger into the robot and seemingly assisted by Matsu's spirit. [In the manga, the late Tadashi also assists Matsu and then Akira in powering the Steel Titan. Although in a GeGeGe no Kitaro crossover, only Matsu's spirit is present.]
The Steel Titan made its way to Odeo Temple, dispatching General Yamazaki's forces, but too late to prevent the complete sacrifice of two thousand humans: The will of Odeo was summoned into the world, animating the giant Inko Buddha statue at the temple. A fight ensued, leaving the Inko Buddha destroyed and the liquefacted humans draining out of the statue into the temple lake -- the lake then rose up, drowning Yamazaki, Livingstill, and Unryu in revenge.
In the credits, Akira is seen having taken over Matsu's taiyaki stand and inherited his motorcycle, seemingly having forgiven the man. He is also no longer capable of piloting the Steel Titan, implying that Matsu's spirit has passed on peacefully.
The Dominion of Hate
[As far as I know, there isn't a manga adaptation of the finale, leaving the wiki summary more or less okay. Essentially, Odio summons the protagonists into an apocalyptic hellscape made up of fragments of Lucrece and their various time periods, to prove to them that his nihilistic despair will win over in the end.]
[Akira is taken from the True Ending, after all seven protagonists meet to fight Odio together. Over the course of the battle, Oersted eventually frees himself from the manifestation of his accumulated sins, to strike himself down. Akira shows no sympathy to Oersted, accusing him of deflecting all blame for his life onto the sins of other people, and taking no responsibility for his actions. Oersted accepts his judgement, and sends the protagonists back to their proper times, warning them that with enough hatred, anyone could become another Lord of Dark.]
[Regarding player choices, in the event of canonmates: Besides the choice of ending, there is no major change as to which protagonist is chosen for the finale, besides "Oersted" or "anyone but Oersted"; True Ending is a non-Oersted ending. The most impactful player choice is in the Imperial China chapter that determines which student succeeds the master, and that choice doesn't affect Akira.]
An overview of Live A Live's plot.
tl;dr:
A psychic orphan discovers a military conspiracy to conduct a mass human sacrifice to summon a god. Also there's giant robots.
Also time and causality broke a little bit because this other guy hated the world and himself so much that he became a primordial demon emperor, but it's fine, it's fixed, it's fine,
The Middle Ages
Hundreds of years ago, in the kingdom of Lucrece, tragedy befell the young knight Oersted in his quest to slay the Lord of Dark. His best friend Streibough betrayed him, he was tricked into committing regicide, and his betrothed repudiated him and declared her love for Streibough before committing suicide. With the kingdom convinced that he was a kingslayer and demon, and with anyone who could have defended his innocence dead, Oersted fell into despair. He took upon the identity of the Lord of Dark, becoming the demon king Odio.
His influence reached across time and space, even to eras long before he was born. Manifestations of Odio's hatred for humanity appeared time and time again: Sometimes as a god worshipped by a cult, other times as a supernaturally-strong killer or a cruel leader of a martial arts sect, once even as an intelligent supercomputer. Seven times across history, Odio's wrath was defied. One of those times was:
Near Future (Akira's Chapter)
[Live a Live is divided into chapters for different eras of history. Its Present Day chapter is in the 1990s, the decade the original game was released, given the appearance of celebrities like Max Morgan/legally-distinct Hulk Hogan. In which case, Near Future is sometime in the 21st century. Akira and the other orphanage children watch a broadcast that appears to feature real-life wrestlers Mitsuharu Misawa and Keiji Muto, so you could say this either takes place before 2009 or in a world where Misawa didn't die young, but also, don't think about it too hard (especially considering this is also a timeline where Hulk Hogan was murdered circa ~1994 by a serial killer).]
Akira Tadokoro was the son of the riot police captain Tadashi Tadokoro. Akira grew up seeing his father as an upstanding man; in truth, Tadashi answered to the military officer General Yamazaki, who it is implied was allowing the crime in the streets to run rampant and even allowed military-grade weapons to be leaked to the populace. [In the manga adaptation of Near Future, penned by Akira's designer Kazuhiko Shimamoto, it's stated that the military conspiracy was already underway, and Tadashi's police actions were explicitly to take down any opposition to Dr. Livingstill's research.]
Tadashi was assigned to stop The Crusaders, an anarchist biker gang whose leader was struggling to keep the streets under control. In a confrontation at the docks, Tadashi drew his gun on the leader of the Crusaders, but the other man shot first, killing him. The man fled when a young Akira arrived on the scene; seeing the child's grief, he regretted his actions, stepping down from his role as gang leader and vanishing.
Akira and his younger sister Kaori were taken in by the Bright Sparks orphanage, under the care of the teacher Taeko and the orphanage matron. As he grew into adolescence, Akira began to develop strange psychic powers, being able to see people's thoughts or move things with his mind. The other children at the orphanage, far from being frightened, accepted Akira's strangeness as a part of him; in turn, Akira took on an older-brother role for the other children alongside his sister, although he often picked on one of the other kids (Watanabe) and rankled at being treated as a child himself.
[It is loosely implied that Kaori may have some psychic potential herself, as she can tell if Akira is hurt in potential game-overs, but this is pure conjecture. The only thing really known about Kaori is that she's ill and often bedridden.]
Akira and Kaori were also taken under the wing of Taeko's boyfriend, a taiyaki seller called Matsu or "Lawless". Akira idolized Matsu, copying a lot of the man's demeanour and helping him at his taiyaki stall, though as time wore on, Akira became worried by Matsu spending more and more time avoiding the orphanage and refusing to talk about what troubled him, even (according to Taeko's thoughts) avoiding his girlfriend.
One day, Akira was attacked by Crusaders in the local park. He learned from their thoughts they were kidnapping kids to fill a mysterious "quota"; when he's saved by Matsu, he relays this knowledge. From Matsu's thoughts, this confirmed a suspicion of his, but the man drove off rather than answer Akira's questions.
Later that day, he paid a visit to a local inventor (Doc Tobei, who had often repaired things for the orphanage for free) to ask him if he could save Kaori's sick pet turtle. Tobei instead used bizarre technology to liquefy the turtle and upload it into the super-fighting turtle robot Taroimo, much to Kaori's delight and Akira's chagrin. Akira would also discover that in the depths of Tobei's curiosity shop, the man had hidden an ancient giant robot, Buriki Daioh / the Steel Titan. Tobei described how the Steel Titan had been built in ancient Babylonia and only animated by powerful psychic forces; Akira volunteered to try and activate it, but was unsuccessful.
The Crusaders attempted to kidnap another orphan, and Akira learned that the gang's strange behaviour was connected to the Tsukuba Research Facility on the west side of town; in the absence of their leader, the gang had come under the military's control. The place was a military complex, staffed by scientists feverishly working towards a "secret project". Akira discovered rooms lined with "liquefaction tanks" of glowing fluid, each of them psionically crying out for help. He also found data files relating to his father Tadashi, as well as ones about the Crusaders' missing leader Kenichi Matsui, and another about a researcher named Kozo Watanabe, the missing father of one of Akira's fellow orphans.
Akira (after being scolded by Matsu for following him into the facility) confronted the three ringleaders of a military conspiracy: General Yamazaki who oversaw the secret project, the head researcher Dr. Livingstill, and Priest Unryu, from Odeo Temple in Nippori. The liquefaction tanks were the remains of countless humans, reduced into bodiless entities of pure psychic potential (created in the same way Tobei had made Taroimo, revealing that Tobei had defected from Tsukuba). Their goal was to sacrifice and liquefy two thousand humans, using their psychic emanations to call the god Odeo into the world, eventually liquefying all of humanity and causing "the convergence of mankind -- a melding of one and all. Our bodies, minds, and souls in joyous harmony. No more disparity. A world devoid of discord and strife."
Matsu and Akira were attacked by a robot powered by a liquefaction tank, one that they soon realized contained the remains of Kozo Watanabe. [The fate of Kozo Watanabe differs between the game and the manga adaptation. In the manga, the robot refuses to fire upon his son Watanabe and turns on General Yamazaki, who cuts him down. In the game, Akira can identify that the liquefaction tank on the robot's back is its weak spot, and destroy the tank to mercy-kill Kozo. For the purposes of RP, I will be sticking with the game's canon, and only using the manga for added context.]
They fled the facility alive, conferring with the others at the orphanage. Doc Tobei said that a single liquefacted human could harness enough psychic power to power the Steel Titan and stop the military. Kaori volunteered, out of a belief she would die of her illness soon anyway, though Akira quickly refused to let her do it. Matsu insisted he could pilot the robot on despite having no psychic ability; when he failed, he sunk into despair and disappeared into the local bar.
Soon after, the orphanage was burned to the ground by Crusaders. [In the manga, it is clarified that the orphanage was attacked and gunmen sent to kill any survivors, specifically on Yamazaki's orders to kill Matsu.] Akira ran inside to save Kaori, becoming trapped inside the building as it began to come down... until the Steel Titan rescued them from the fire. Matsu had taken lethal amounts of drugs to be able to animate the robot through sheer willpower -- tragically, soon after Akira and Kaori were saved, his body failed him. Before he died, Matsu spoke to Akira mind-to-mind, confessing that he was Kenichi Matsui, the erstwhile leader of the Crusaders and Tadashi's killer; he had never gotten over the guilt of orphaning Akira and Kaori, and dedicated his life to making it up to them.
Akira took control of the cockpit, channelling his anger into the robot and seemingly assisted by Matsu's spirit. [In the manga, the late Tadashi also assists Matsu and then Akira in powering the Steel Titan. Although in a GeGeGe no Kitaro crossover, only Matsu's spirit is present.]
The Steel Titan made its way to Odeo Temple, dispatching General Yamazaki's forces, but too late to prevent the complete sacrifice of two thousand humans: The will of Odeo was summoned into the world, animating the giant Inko Buddha statue at the temple. A fight ensued, leaving the Inko Buddha destroyed and the liquefacted humans draining out of the statue into the temple lake -- the lake then rose up, drowning Yamazaki, Livingstill, and Unryu in revenge.
In the credits, Akira is seen having taken over Matsu's taiyaki stand and inherited his motorcycle, seemingly having forgiven the man. He is also no longer capable of piloting the Steel Titan, implying that Matsu's spirit has passed on peacefully.
The Dominion of Hate
[As far as I know, there isn't a manga adaptation of the finale, leaving the wiki summary more or less okay. Essentially, Odio summons the protagonists into an apocalyptic hellscape made up of fragments of Lucrece and their various time periods, to prove to them that his nihilistic despair will win over in the end.]
[Akira is taken from the True Ending, after all seven protagonists meet to fight Odio together. Over the course of the battle, Oersted eventually frees himself from the manifestation of his accumulated sins, to strike himself down. Akira shows no sympathy to Oersted, accusing him of deflecting all blame for his life onto the sins of other people, and taking no responsibility for his actions. Oersted accepts his judgement, and sends the protagonists back to their proper times, warning them that with enough hatred, anyone could become another Lord of Dark.]
[Regarding player choices, in the event of canonmates: Besides the choice of ending, there is no major change as to which protagonist is chosen for the finale, besides "Oersted" or "anyone but Oersted"; True Ending is a non-Oersted ending. The most impactful player choice is in the Imperial China chapter that determines which student succeeds the master, and that choice doesn't affect Akira.]