NAME: Sarah
AGE: 24
CONTACT: thelightroyale / Sarah#1309 on discord!
CHARACTERS IN GAME: None


CHARACTER NAME: Arashi Narukami
AGE: 16
CANON: Ensemble Stars!
CANON POINT: Before Repayment Festival (March of Arashi's 2nd year at Yumenosaki)
HISTORY: Arashi on the Ensemble Stars! Wiki | Here's a list of her Mini Events, Intimate Events and translated canon appearances.

PERSONALITY: note: For consistency's sake and also due to recent canon information that has been made available regarding Arashi's gender identity, I will be using she/her pronouns for Arashi, as she herself has a tendency to use hyper feminine pronouns ("atashi" instead of something more masculine/gender neutral, referring to herself as "oneesan/neechan"). If you would like for me to use they/them pronouns, please let me know via her permissions post! Also, a slight content warning for suicide mentioned in the personality section below.

Like her name, Arashi Narukami is a goddamn force of nature - a storm that cannot be tamed.

On first impression, Arashi is a delight, friendly and cheerful and quick to smile, always having a kind word or greeting even to people who are complete strangers - her very first meeting with the protagonist character has her warning Anzu against being caught by the student council for sneaking into Yumenosaki's idol campus, only for Arashi to quickly warm up to her upon finding out that she is in the producer's course and taking her under her wing, naming herself the producer's onee-chan. She's intelligent, a quick learner and a sharp thinker, talented in many areas but not really a master in any of them, and has been stated to like hardworking and honest people because they possess traits that she doesn't really have. They're interesting, to her, and Arashi has always been fascinated by interesting people.

A narcissist at her best, Arashi knows that she's attractive and adores attention. Part of the reason why Arashi does so well at being a model is because she enjoys being watched and how being in front of a camera is able to bring out her natural beauty and radiance. Her narcissism skirts the line between self-confidence and outright arrogance, and self-love is one of her core philosophies (I wish I was making up that monologue but I am Not), so there's very little that ruffles her. Insults and instances of rejection from various people, including Izumi, Ritsu and Subaru, tend to roll off Arashi's back like water, and even when she's sulky (as described by Madara), it doesn't really take that long for Arashi to bounce back to her usual self, giving as good as she gets and hitting back at people with witty, snarky comebacks.

An affectionate person by nature, Arashi is quick to provide both physical and verbal affirmation - if she likes you, it's immediately apparent, considering that Mika complains about how Arashi has a "bad habit" of hugging people when they least expect it, and affectionate nicknames and suffixes attached to names are commonly and liberally used, even if it may not always be reciprocated. There's a playful streak that manifests in Arashi's interactions with most people, especially with people that she's at least comfortable with - teasing is generally how she expresses affection and also amusement, dramatic declarations and over the top actions usually used to playfully needle at people who will react to or be annoyed by her teasing, including Subaru and Izumi. Arashi also has a tendency to express protectiveness towards her juniors and spoils them quite a bit, including treating them to food and indulging them in some of their requests - for instance, agreeing to teach them how to make chocolates for Chocolat Fes, or agreeing to teach Tetora the secrets to being considered manly when he asks her (although that doesn't turn out quite how it should). She fancies herself a maiden in love and a champion of those suffering from unrequited love, especially since the object of her affections, Kunugi-sensei, has yet to return her declarations of love, one sided as they are.

At her core, Arashi is capable of caring very deeply - as an individual person with her philosophy of taking care of herself first and foremost, since no one can love her as much as she loves herself - but she also cares very deeply and fiercely about her friends. She has strong feelings about how friendships are supposed to work, and has stated that she believes that friendship is supposed to be a give and take situation between friends, however, she usually does not mind going out of her way to help others and derives much of her happiness from seeing that the people that she loves happy. While she's quick to declare herself to be the producer's onee-chan, she admits that she recognises that rather quickly, a lone girl in an all-boys school would be prone to suffocating without another female presence to ground her. She arranges for the second years to involve a classmate, Yuzuru, in conversation and organises activities like pillow fights during the 2nd year class trip to Kyoto to cheer Yuzuru up and take his mind off fretting over caring for his charge, Tori, while he's in another city, so that he can enjoy himself. She agrees, without hesitation, to help Mika out at his part-time job at a flower shop when they're short staffed because she can't imagine a situation where she abandons a beloved friend when they're in distress and need help. Arashi is selfless in that way, and is almost everything that you would expect form an actual knight - elegant, chivalrous and powerful. Tsukasa calls her one as such, during the Star Festival, stating that Arashi is righteous and kind, like an ideal knight. She wants to see the people that she cares for succeed, which is why she also goes out of her way during the Phantom Thieves vs. Detectives live to help Ra*bits with the clue for the Mystery Stage when Izumi's clues for the opposing team prove to be too difficult for Ra*bits to figure out on their own.

It's easy to stop there, but there's definitely more to Arashi than meets the eye, beyond the almost carelessly flippant persona that she tends to adopt on the surface.

Unexpectedly (or expectedly?), Arashi is an extremely introspective and sharp person, with a serious side to her that doesn't manifest exactly often. Some of Arashi's monologues are surprisingly deep and perceptive, and does give quite a fair bit of insight to her attitudes towards how she treats people and also how she feels about love and friendship, which are both things that she holds close to her heart. Consequently, it is because of her strong feelings towards these ideas and concepts that Arashi is someone who will step in and intervene if she feels that the people that she cares about are endangering everything that they've worked for or are putting themselves at stake. The clearest example is during Star Festival, which pretty much is the only one time where Arashi looks visibly distressed and upset about Mika's willingness to throw away the chances of Valkyrie performing on stage by attacking Nazuna because of Mika's stubbornness and refusal to allow Nazuna to stand in as a temporary member to allow Valkyrie to compete in the Star Festival when Shu is ill. Arashi has seen too many people destroyed during the idol war, broken by shattered dreams, to the point where she personally knew someone who actually committed suicide thanks to their broken dreams - so it makes sense that Arashi feels very strongly about such decisions and does not want things like that to happen to her close friends.

Speaking of Star Festival, we also learn during its events that despite Arashi's social butterfly tendencies and fairly positive relationship with most people, no one really knows about Arashi or who she really is. She's the kind of person that you could be talking with for ages and yet realise, once you've walked away from the conversation, that you know nothing about that person at all. Leo lampshades this, saying that he's not close with Arashi, and that Arashi doesn't tell her unit mates anything about herself. During Fortune Live, Ritsu expresses surprise when Arashi offhandedly mentions that she has a brother, not knowing about that despite having been unit mates for almost two full years. Arashi also has a tendency to lie constantly about small things that she thinks are inconsequential if it means that her unit mates will not worry about her, and has a tendency to also deflect personal questions unless she's literally cornered about it and has the information dragged out of her. That's honestly the only reason why and how Leo is the only person who knows about Arashi's friend committing suicide during the time of the idol wars, and why she makes a trip down to the cenotaph in winter to pray, while she outright lies to Tsukasa that she had no reason to be there, she was just doing a good deed to sweep snow away from the cenotaph to maintain it. It's not out of malice, though, Arashi admits to herself that she's not particularly ready for other people to find out about the less savoury parts of her backstory.

While we're on the topic of the less savoury parts of her backstory, Arashi wasn't always this selfless or kind - Izumi notes that Arashi was a pretty shitty person and had a pretty terrible personality prior to canon, and there are still some shades of it evident in Arashi's current behaviour and personality.

Arashi is stupidly competitive - most of the time, it's harmless and it's friendly competition between the runners in the track team, and most of Izumi and Arashi's interactions, as fellow models, usually involve a competition of some sort. For instance, in Beauties of Nature and Ballet, Arashi and Izumi both get competitive over how much attention they can command from the audience. Arashi is someone who thrives if there is someone to surmount or surpass, because it makes her feel like she has to work for that validation of being the best and at the peak. This need for competition wasn't always benign - Arashi used to utilise underhanded tactics to go behind Izumi's back to steal his modelling jobs to get an edge over Izumi, and would be rude to seniors and respond both sarcastically and flippantly when confronted about it. Even now, Arashi still has a tendency to respond with witty, sarcastic remarks if the situation calls for it, although it's mostly played off as teasing.

Something that not everyone expects Arashi to have is a vicious and almost cruel streak - it's not immediately apparent, because Arashi is very good at interacting with people, but because of that, she is also very good at manipulating people and using people's weaknesses against them. During the events of Judgment, Arashi has zero qualms about using Makoto's fear of Izumi to threaten Makoto (specifically, Arashi mentions siccing Izumi on Makoto) and hold him hostage to wrangle information about Leo's temporary unit for Judgment from Nazuna, and uses it to pretty great effect (she definitely got the information she wanted). She's also spiteful enough to manipulate Tetora into a humiliating situation by making him crossdress because she was upset and wanted to take it out on him for making her feel worse. She's definitely also can be a bit of a sadist, especially during Lives - while she's also stated that she's not a huge fan of the Duel format which knights are famous for, in a Duel against Trickstar, she actually seems pretty into it, taking pleasure in the thought of single-handedly destroying Trickstar and annihilating them.

Oh my, what do we have here? Making a sudden appearance with all four of you? Oh, to be so young and reckless ♪ Ufufu. Does this mean I get to gobble all of you up? We got along well in the ‘joint practice’, but this time, I won’t let you off so easily! I’ll crush ‘Trickstar’ to bits...☆

CANON POWERS: Technically, no magical powers to speak of! She's a model and an idol who has a lot of working knowledge of like. A lot of different things? Flower arrangement, flower language, basic ballet, athletic skills, ice skating, cooking are some of the things that Arashi is stated to know/have a decent working knowledge of, and her canon talent is stated to be memorisation.
OTHER: ... look at how pretty she is.


CRAU INFO: Not applicable!
MAGIC ABILITY: Glamour/illusive appearance - the user is able to alter their physical appearance by the use of illusions, appearing as any person that they wish to.  

✘ Illusions will last a maximum of 24 to 36 hours depending on the complexity of the illusion.
✘ It is a conscious use ability - it has to be consciously activated and being knocked unconscious will make her drop her illusions.
✘ If the appearance which Arashi decides to take on is based on someone she knows or has seen before, she is limited by what she can remember of their appearance. It will not be a perfect copy unless it is someone who she knows very well and can replicate perfectly (e.g. Izumi), or if she has an image reference to copy.
✘ People with awareness of illusions will be unaffected and will see through her glamours.
✘ Does not extend to any actual powers, skills or memories from the copied target. All quirks are her own.

ANY WEAPONS/MAGICAL ITEMS?: None!
ANY PETS?: Nyanko, her kitten.


LINKED SAMPLE: musebox thread and TDM thread (7 comments total across both!)