Strengths/Weaknesses: ✔ DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD I'VE BEEN TRYING TO NOT MAKE A "MAN OF WEALTH AND TASTE" JOKE As off-putting though his personality may ultimately be, Tsukiyama tries to be as cultured as he possibly can; he's well-read and he's multilingual on top of it, often peppering his speech with phrases in English, French and Italian. He's perfectly capable of acting classy when he wants to (and when he actually puts some thought into it), and he blends easily into the upper echelons of human society – he's able to walk around Tokyo freely without being suspected or caught by the authorities, despite his status as the Gourmet ensuring that they're certainly looking for him. Basically, he's fully capable of being a gentleman if he wants to, and he usually seems to have his shit more or less together even if he's a bit eccentric in general.
✔ THIS IS A REAL PUNCH While he's often a bit wispy-looking in the manga, physically speaking Tsukiyama is very strong; while part of this is due to being a ghoul and all the benefits that come with the territory, it's not unreasonable to think that he'd be a powerhouse anyway – he's very athletic, doing various sports and martial arts as hobbies, and he insists on keeping himself in peak physical condition. He's also shown to be incredibly strong, given that the natural weapon he wields is known for being notoriously heavy and difficult to use as an offensive weapon, something he's shown to do easily without sacrificing too much agility if he needs to back up and get away from a direct confrontation. Basically, he's designed to be a tank; while the more over-the-top physical abilities will be toned down (more on that below), a lot of his strength, speed, and endurance are trained skills and not supernatural, and so those will be kept.
✔ YOU'LL BELIEVE WHAT I WANT YOU TO While normally this would be considered a weakness in those who aren't deliberately attempting to do this sort of thing, Tsukiyama is incredibly good at manipulating people in one way or another. It's a skill he's grown into and intentionally cultivated (one of the light novels shows that he actually used to be really bad at it) and by now he's had about five years of practice with cold-reading people and working out what they want to hear. Outside of using this for his own means – something he definitely doesn't shy away from doing – he's also not opposed to using it to benefit others he's working with, should the need arise; to put it more mildly, he's good at persuading others into giving him the outcome he wants, and he spends a good amount of canon dealing information between his various contacts in exchange for favors or other things that he wants.
✔ PAY YOUR RESPECT TO A GREATER INTELLECT A lot of Tsukiyama's behavior tends to make him come off as...well, a little dense; he's very narcissistic and generally tends to act like he's very unaware of his surroundings and the people in them. But he's repeatedly shown to be surprisingly competent in the intellectual department; outside of the general skills with persuasion, manipulation and cold-reading, he's capable of being highly analytical and does a good amount of research into things before just going forward with plans – he surprisingly doesn't tend to jump into actual missions or tasks unless he can form at least some idea of what the outcome is likely to be and proceed from there. As was mentioned above in a few places, he's also very well-read and has a massive vocabulary spanning several languages. So while he's often obnoxious (and literally no one will deny that he has a tendency to be obnoxious), he's actually not an idiot.
✔ LIKES: NEW STIMULI AND EXPERIENCES For once in this app, this header is not being facetious; it's a direct quote from his character bio – he has a good sense of natural curiosity that will benefit him in Route. Rather than being alarmed or disturbed by new situations, Tsukiyama thrives off of them; while he knows what he likes and where he's comfortable in terms of how things are going, he likes to experiment and try new things and see what sort of outcome he can get if he explores new venues. As was mentioned directly above, he won't be reckless about it and some of the Pokémon will be off-putting or unsettling to him, but being in a new world entirely won't frighten or otherwise put him off so much as it will fascinate him, which is definitely a good thing when it comes to getting the character to actually do things in the setting.
✔/✘ AS CLOSE TO BLACK AS GREY CAN GET At his current canon point, Tsukiyama is no longer a proper villain – he's assisting the protagonist, having sworn to be his "sword" during battles and promising that while he can't be his shield, he'll always be the dagger kept under his pillow and by his side. While the phrasing is...questionable, he seems to have developed some sense of loyalty (even if it is initially self-serving) and he's trying to get used to working with other people in a group instead of just looking out for himself. In other words, he's capable of positive character development, even if he doesn't always realize that it's happening and it tends to be incredibly awkward when he does.
At the same time, he was the main villain of the Gourmet arc early on, and the tendencies he showed back then tend to resurface at really inopportune moments; while he's not completely resistant to change, per se, he tends to have a hard time processing it and he has not left villainous/underhanded tactics behind as valid options – he's willing to use them for...whatever his concept of "good" is now, but his sense of morality is quite frankly terrible and he has no qualms about going all-out against people both physically and psychologically if it suits him or his purposes.
✘ TSUKIYAMA, PLEASE... Tsukiyama is entirely capable of being personable and easy to get along with...as long as things are going his way. The second the world stops behaving exactly as he thinks it should he's incredibly prone to melodramatic meltdowns, completely losing track of both his surroundings and his current goal in favor of pitching a shrieking fit right in the middle of whatever it was he was previously doing.
✘ THIS IS EVERYBODY'S FAULT BUT MINE Of course, when things aren't going Tsukiyama's way in life, it's never his own fault; he tends to blame everyone but himself for his problems, going so far as to victim-blame people he's currently stalking in ways that are...more than a little uncomfortable. For example, he often tells the protagonist – whom he spends his first arc in the manga stalking and manipulating horribly so he can attempt eat him on multiple occasions – that it's his fault that Tsukiyama is acting this way, claiming that the protagonist is just that irresistible and therefore Tsukiyama can't be blamed for his fascination or the actions that he's taking to try to kill him. He's also never directly called out for this behavior in canon; if anything, this behavior is just enabled by the lack of argument from anyone he pulls this on, so he isn't going to be inclined to stop anytime soon.
✘ CAN'T STOP WON'T STOP NOT SURE HOW TO STOP And both of the above points tie rather solidly into this one – Tsukiyama is used to being in control and on top of every situation he's put into, and he very rarely has things work out badly for him. Being the top of both the literal and metaphorical food chain for so long has ensured that he's spoiled and unwilling to change his behavior (why should he, when it's worked for him for so long?), and even if someone can convince him that acting as he does is a bad idea, it usually requires a threat of some sort to get him to take the admonishment seriously. He also tends to default back into his usual ways of thinking when he's distressed or upset; rather than really evaluating why he feels the way he does or having a complicated emotional discussion with someone about it, he'll often insist that his behavior is still based in the superficial, self-benefiting reasons that he had in the first place – for example, it's easier for him to insist that he just wants to kill and eat someone one day, or to say that they have something he wants, than it is to try to explain that he's staying close to them because he might care about them at all.
✘ I'LL FOLLOW YOU UNTIL YOU LOVE ME, I EAT YOU, OR SOME OTHER NATURAL CONCLUSION IS FOUND Saying that Tsukiyama has an obsessive streak is another gross understatement along the lines of "the ocean is kinda wet"; once he finds someone he's interested in or decides that he has a goal that he needs to complete, he tends to fixate on it to extents that render him almost completely one-track-minded. While most of his obsessions are short-lived, some are decidedly not –if he's denied what he wants in any way, it tends to just make him more determined to get it, and he'll follow it through to self-destructive extents.
✘ PHYSICAL DIFFERENCES, OR: "CANON-BASED BULLSHIT MAKING THINGS NEEDLESSLY COMPLICATED" There are a number of physical differences between ghouls and humans that are going to make adjusting to Route's humanization rule difficult, at least at first; the most immediately pressing is the fact that ghouls only eat human meat, and they only have to eat once every month or two – needless to say, the inability to kill here, on top of the fact that humans have to eat every eight hours or so, is going to drive Tsukiyama up a wall for the first good while, since actually feeling hunger is generally a really bad sign as far as ghouls go. (It's usually accompanied by an immediate loss of sanity/sudden drive to kill and eat whatever's in front of them, which obviously won't be anything he experiences due to the humanizing thing, it's just going to be vastly confusing.)
The next most immediately-relevant issue is the lack of a healing factor, which is something Tsukiyama relies on more than he realizes – in canon, he takes for granted that a slashing injury that takes out both of his eyes will just heal itself in less than ten seconds and he'll be perfectly fine, and at one point he manages to regenerate an arm and the right side of his face after taking heavy damage in a battle and being left for dead. He acknowledges that the latter part of that probably should have killed him and he's very fortunate that it didn't, but given the fact that his personal combat strategy tends to be "stand there and take damage, heal, then attack once I've out-tanked everyone else" he's going to be far less careful with himself physically than he really should be until he works out that that might not be the best idea he's ever had.
Ghouls also have a natural weapon known as a kagune – in a nutshell, it's a collection of special cells that can be pushed through the ghouls' back, solidified and used as weapons. Tsukiyama's kagune, Koukaku, can be used as both a weapon and a shield; it's also noted for being incredibly heavy and awkward to use by someone who's inexperienced with it, but Tsukiyama seems to have mastered his to unusual extents. This isn't going to something he has access to in Johto, which will...not exactly be comfortable, given that kagunes are ghouls' primary forms of defense.
Pokémon Information Affiliation: Trainer Starter: Seviper Password: Spring Rolls
Samples First Person Sample: Ah, mes amis, it's been far too long since I've spoken to some of you!
[Well, today it seems that Tsukiyama has decided to grace the network with his presence; it's been a surprising length of time since he's done that, given that he tends to treat this entire thing like the world's most egregious vlogging experience, whether the rest of the region wants him to or not. Though it's not as though he hasn't been doing anything in that time, judging from the...uh, poodlecat lying draped across his lap; he's petting her idly while he thinks, twirling some of the tufts of purple fur at her neck around his fingertips while she just looks like the smuggest thing ever. She is the best kitty, yes she is. So cute and fluffy. The fluffy singularity.
Tsukiyama himself seems a bit restless, though it's a bit difficult to say what about him is giving off that impression; the usual smile is gracing his features, and his hair and outfit are as meticulously done-up as they always are. (The outfit is also exactly as loud as his clothes usually are, but that is neither here nor there, thank you very much, and haute couture isn't supposed to be particularly pretty anyway.)
Just the same, he seems a bit...off. At least he's getting vaguely better at forcing phrases past the translator; that's been annoying him since he arrived.]
Maybe you'll be able to answer something for me; this question been plaguing me terribly lately, and, well...I was just thinking that perhaps this would be better suited for people who have been here longer than I have.
[...Oh, this is going to - ]
Are there particular qualifications that Gym Leaders are required to have? After all, it doesn't seem right that certain people are able to restrict our movement around this place if they simply choose to do so – why, I hear that the leader in Goldenrod City is prone to attempting that very thing, for no better reason than she's a poor loser! How terribly unprofessional...
[He pauses for a moment, looking...mildly troubled before continuing; that smile is back, though his eyes don't seem terribly focused on the camera – he seems to be looking elsewhere, a bit lower than the device's vantage point. Whatever's down there must be fascinating, man.]
It seems I'll be here for some time yet – but! I am not going to allow for any more interference than I've already faced. They'll get tired of their droll insistences yet; I never really have cared much for gatekeepers.
[...in other words, he may or may not have gotten into yet another argument with Morty this morning, but really, that man is just insufferable. Can anyone really blame him?]
i don't even
✔ DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD I'VE BEEN TRYING TO NOT MAKE A "MAN OF WEALTH AND TASTE" JOKE
As off-putting though his personality may ultimately be, Tsukiyama tries to be as cultured as he possibly can; he's well-read and he's multilingual on top of it, often peppering his speech with phrases in English, French and Italian. He's perfectly capable of acting classy when he wants to (and when he actually puts some thought into it), and he blends easily into the upper echelons of human society – he's able to walk around Tokyo freely without being suspected or caught by the authorities, despite his status as the Gourmet ensuring that they're certainly looking for him. Basically, he's fully capable of being a gentleman if he wants to, and he usually seems to have his shit more or less together even if he's a bit eccentric in general.
✔ THIS IS A REAL PUNCH
While he's often a bit wispy-looking in the manga, physically speaking Tsukiyama is very strong; while part of this is due to being a ghoul and all the benefits that come with the territory, it's not unreasonable to think that he'd be a powerhouse anyway – he's very athletic, doing various sports and martial arts as hobbies, and he insists on keeping himself in peak physical condition. He's also shown to be incredibly strong, given that the natural weapon he wields is known for being notoriously heavy and difficult to use as an offensive weapon, something he's shown to do easily without sacrificing too much agility if he needs to back up and get away from a direct confrontation. Basically, he's designed to be a tank; while the more over-the-top physical abilities will be toned down (more on that below), a lot of his strength, speed, and endurance are trained skills and not supernatural, and so those will be kept.
✔ YOU'LL BELIEVE WHAT I WANT YOU TO
While normally this would be considered a weakness in those who aren't deliberately attempting to do this sort of thing, Tsukiyama is incredibly good at manipulating people in one way or another. It's a skill he's grown into and intentionally cultivated (one of the light novels shows that he actually used to be really bad at it) and by now he's had about five years of practice with cold-reading people and working out what they want to hear. Outside of using this for his own means – something he definitely doesn't shy away from doing – he's also not opposed to using it to benefit others he's working with, should the need arise; to put it more mildly, he's good at persuading others into giving him the outcome he wants, and he spends a good amount of canon dealing information between his various contacts in exchange for favors or other things that he wants.
✔ PAY YOUR RESPECT TO A GREATER INTELLECT
A lot of Tsukiyama's behavior tends to make him come off as...well, a little dense; he's very narcissistic and generally tends to act like he's very unaware of his surroundings and the people in them. But he's repeatedly shown to be surprisingly competent in the intellectual department; outside of the general skills with persuasion, manipulation and cold-reading, he's capable of being highly analytical and does a good amount of research into things before just going forward with plans – he surprisingly doesn't tend to jump into actual missions or tasks unless he can form at least some idea of what the outcome is likely to be and proceed from there. As was mentioned above in a few places, he's also very well-read and has a massive vocabulary spanning several languages. So while he's often obnoxious (and literally no one will deny that he has a tendency to be obnoxious), he's actually not an idiot.
✔ LIKES: NEW STIMULI AND EXPERIENCES
For once in this app, this header is not being facetious; it's a direct quote from his character bio – he has a good sense of natural curiosity that will benefit him in Route. Rather than being alarmed or disturbed by new situations, Tsukiyama thrives off of them; while he knows what he likes and where he's comfortable in terms of how things are going, he likes to experiment and try new things and see what sort of outcome he can get if he explores new venues. As was mentioned directly above, he won't be reckless about it and some of the Pokémon will be off-putting or unsettling to him, but being in a new world entirely won't frighten or otherwise put him off so much as it will fascinate him, which is definitely a good thing when it comes to getting the character to actually do things in the setting.
✔/✘ AS CLOSE TO BLACK AS GREY CAN GET
At his current canon point, Tsukiyama is no longer a proper villain – he's assisting the protagonist, having sworn to be his "sword" during battles and promising that while he can't be his shield, he'll always be the dagger kept under his pillow and by his side. While the phrasing is...questionable, he seems to have developed some sense of loyalty (even if it is initially self-serving) and he's trying to get used to working with other people in a group instead of just looking out for himself. In other words, he's capable of positive character development, even if he doesn't always realize that it's happening and it tends to be incredibly awkward when he does.
At the same time, he was the main villain of the Gourmet arc early on, and the tendencies he showed back then tend to resurface at really inopportune moments; while he's not completely resistant to change, per se, he tends to have a hard time processing it and he has not left villainous/underhanded tactics behind as valid options – he's willing to use them for...whatever his concept of "good" is now, but his sense of morality is quite frankly terrible and he has no qualms about going all-out against people both physically and psychologically if it suits him or his purposes.
✘ TSUKIYAMA, PLEASE...
Tsukiyama is entirely capable of being personable and easy to get along with...as long as things are going his way. The second the world stops behaving exactly as he thinks it should he's incredibly prone to melodramatic meltdowns, completely losing track of both his surroundings and his current goal in favor of pitching a shrieking fit right in the middle of whatever it was he was previously doing.
✘ THIS IS EVERYBODY'S FAULT BUT MINE
Of course, when things aren't going Tsukiyama's way in life, it's never his own fault; he tends to blame everyone but himself for his problems, going so far as to victim-blame people he's currently stalking in ways that are...more than a little uncomfortable. For example, he often tells the protagonist – whom he spends his first arc in the manga stalking and manipulating horribly so he can attempt eat him on multiple occasions – that it's his fault that Tsukiyama is acting this way, claiming that the protagonist is just that irresistible and therefore Tsukiyama can't be blamed for his fascination or the actions that he's taking to try to kill him. He's also never directly called out for this behavior in canon; if anything, this behavior is just enabled by the lack of argument from anyone he pulls this on, so he isn't going to be inclined to stop anytime soon.
✘ CAN'T STOP WON'T STOP NOT SURE HOW TO STOP
And both of the above points tie rather solidly into this one – Tsukiyama is used to being in control and on top of every situation he's put into, and he very rarely has things work out badly for him. Being the top of both the literal and metaphorical food chain for so long has ensured that he's spoiled and unwilling to change his behavior (why should he, when it's worked for him for so long?), and even if someone can convince him that acting as he does is a bad idea, it usually requires a threat of some sort to get him to take the admonishment seriously. He also tends to default back into his usual ways of thinking when he's distressed or upset; rather than really evaluating why he feels the way he does or having a complicated emotional discussion with someone about it, he'll often insist that his behavior is still based in the superficial, self-benefiting reasons that he had in the first place – for example, it's easier for him to insist that he just wants to kill and eat someone one day, or to say that they have something he wants, than it is to try to explain that he's staying close to them because he might care about them at all.
✘ I'LL FOLLOW YOU UNTIL YOU LOVE ME, I EAT YOU, OR SOME OTHER NATURAL CONCLUSION IS FOUND
Saying that Tsukiyama has an obsessive streak is another gross understatement along the lines of "the ocean is kinda wet"; once he finds someone he's interested in or decides that he has a goal that he needs to complete, he tends to fixate on it to extents that render him almost completely one-track-minded. While most of his obsessions are short-lived, some are decidedly not –if he's denied what he wants in any way, it tends to just make him more determined to get it, and he'll follow it through to self-destructive extents.
✘ PHYSICAL DIFFERENCES, OR: "CANON-BASED BULLSHIT MAKING THINGS NEEDLESSLY COMPLICATED"
There are a number of physical differences between ghouls and humans that are going to make adjusting to Route's humanization rule difficult, at least at first; the most immediately pressing is the fact that ghouls only eat human meat, and they only have to eat once every month or two – needless to say, the inability to kill here, on top of the fact that humans have to eat every eight hours or so, is going to drive Tsukiyama up a wall for the first good while, since actually feeling hunger is generally a really bad sign as far as ghouls go. (It's usually accompanied by an immediate loss of sanity/sudden drive to kill and eat whatever's in front of them, which obviously won't be anything he experiences due to the humanizing thing, it's just going to be vastly confusing.)
The next most immediately-relevant issue is the lack of a healing factor, which is something Tsukiyama relies on more than he realizes – in canon, he takes for granted that a slashing injury that takes out both of his eyes will just heal itself in less than ten seconds and he'll be perfectly fine, and at one point he manages to regenerate an arm and the right side of his face after taking heavy damage in a battle and being left for dead. He acknowledges that the latter part of that probably should have killed him and he's very fortunate that it didn't, but given the fact that his personal combat strategy tends to be "stand there and take damage, heal, then attack once I've out-tanked everyone else" he's going to be far less careful with himself physically than he really should be until he works out that that might not be the best idea he's ever had.
Ghouls also have a natural weapon known as a kagune – in a nutshell, it's a collection of special cells that can be pushed through the ghouls' back, solidified and used as weapons. Tsukiyama's kagune, Koukaku, can be used as both a weapon and a shield; it's also noted for being incredibly heavy and awkward to use by someone who's inexperienced with it, but Tsukiyama seems to have mastered his to unusual extents. This isn't going to something he has access to in Johto, which will...not exactly be comfortable, given that kagunes are ghouls' primary forms of defense.
Pokémon Information
Affiliation: Trainer
Starter: Seviper
Password: Spring Rolls
Samples
First Person Sample:
Ah, mes amis, it's been far too long since I've spoken to some of you!
[Well, today it seems that Tsukiyama has decided to grace the network with his presence; it's been a surprising length of time since he's done that, given that he tends to treat this entire thing like the world's most egregious vlogging experience, whether the rest of the region wants him to or not. Though it's not as though he hasn't been doing anything in that time, judging from the...uh, poodlecat lying draped across his lap; he's petting her idly while he thinks, twirling some of the tufts of purple fur at her neck around his fingertips while she just looks like the smuggest thing ever. She is the best kitty, yes she is. So cute and fluffy. The fluffy singularity.
Tsukiyama himself seems a bit restless, though it's a bit difficult to say what about him is giving off that impression; the usual smile is gracing his features, and his hair and outfit are as meticulously done-up as they always are. (The outfit is also exactly as loud as his clothes usually are, but that is neither here nor there, thank you very much, and haute couture isn't supposed to be particularly pretty anyway.)
Just the same, he seems a bit...off. At least he's getting vaguely better at forcing phrases past the translator; that's been annoying him since he arrived.]
Maybe you'll be able to answer something for me; this question been plaguing me terribly lately, and, well...I was just thinking that perhaps this would be better suited for people who have been here longer than I have.
[...Oh, this is going to - ]
Are there particular qualifications that Gym Leaders are required to have? After all, it doesn't seem right that certain people are able to restrict our movement around this place if they simply choose to do so – why, I hear that the leader in Goldenrod City is prone to attempting that very thing, for no better reason than she's a poor loser! How terribly unprofessional...
[He pauses for a moment, looking...mildly troubled before continuing; that smile is back, though his eyes don't seem terribly focused on the camera – he seems to be looking elsewhere, a bit lower than the device's vantage point. Whatever's down there must be fascinating, man.]
It seems I'll be here for some time yet – but! I am not going to allow for any more interference than I've already faced. They'll get tired of their droll insistences yet; I never really have cared much for gatekeepers.
[...in other words, he may or may not have gotten into yet another argument with Morty this morning, but really, that man is just insufferable. Can anyone really blame him?]