Much like Junker Jorg itself, Azuki got her start in a dream. It began with what is now the fight with Dakota and proceeded to Azuki’s rescue of Root. In the process of writing the story, I had to fill in the significant blanks in plot and character. Azuki’s character design was largely inspired by Kagerou from Fire Emblem if, and the shapeshifting was a latter addition as a way to explain how she could cover ground quickly in the harsh arctic environment of the Neveland. Her “Art of the Snow Woman” form was developed as a way to explain how a naked woman (as I rarely let my shapeshifters’ clothes transform with them) could survive in subzero temperatures and provided some striking imagery for the fight scenes. There are elements of both a kunoichi and a matagi in how she operates. Actually, it would have been nice if I had shown of the hunter side of her skillset more.

As far back as that original dream, Azuki’s love for Root had been a central aspect of her character. Besides his usual way with women, as she explained in JJ2, the fact that he was the only person to treat her as a normal human was a big part of the reason why she fell for him. Even in her home village, where skinchangers were rare but not unheard of, the reception she received was complicated. Skinchangers were seen as both blessed and cursed in the folk belief of the villagers, and Azuki struggling with her otherness was a big part of the reason she became a mercenary. Over the course of her travels, she was found useful but never accepted, as a woman, as a foreigner, and of course as a skinchanger. Root was the one exception and that understandably counted for a lot. Add that to them bonding in a high-stress environment, Root defending her during her show trial by the Blackamoors, her “dying” in Root’s arms, etc., and is it any surprise she remained so devoted to his memory? I actually feel bad for her that she spent all her time being used and abused by the Empire holding on to the memory of Root as her sole comfort while Root himself moved on with his life. I’m not blaming Root, mind you, just pointing to the tragedy of her character.

Now, more critical readers are going to point to some values dissonance aspects of her character, namely her racism and patriarchal attitudes, as points against her. While aspects like these may cost her sympathy with some readers, as an author I’m strongly opposed to taking all the warts off a character for the sake of audience appeal, especially an appeal to values that wouldn’t make sense for the character and the setting. I’m reminded of watching an LP of LA Noire and seeing a flashback scene from WWII where Phelps berates his Marines for their bigoted attitudes toward the Japanese. Looks lovely and conciliatory to the modern viewer, but even if you could find many officers with such sentiments on the ground in the Pacific Theater, I can’t imagine them doing their preaching to the grunts if they had any sense of self-preservation. Of course this was done to make Phelps appear more sympathetic to the player, as some of his other displays of sensitivity in the story that are very much at odds with the setting and the sort of attitudes a person would be likely to have in the time period. Just rubs me the wrong way. I don’t want my characters to conform to what I think or what the perceived audience might think. I want the characters to be true to themselves and let the chips fall where they may. In my role as narrator, I try to remain neutral so the audience can form their own opinions without my own biases informing them. If this actually succeeds in making more well-rounded complicated characters, only the reader can say.

I don’t go into any great detail about Azuki’s time in the Empire between JJ1 and JJ2, but throughout the Cross Arc we learn more and more about what it means to be one of their little projects. Bioethics aren’t exactly the Empire’s strong suit. The price of her second lease on life was extensive experimentation to test the limits of her abilities and to expand them, and also to breed those traits into a new strain of operatives. Depending on your perspective, it may or may not be much comfort that her children were artificially gestated so that she could remain on active duty. And then there’s the whole deal with the conditioning she was put through to make her an obedient daughter of the Father of All Humanity. It was a long ten years (Miravellan years, that is; in Earth years it was closer to 15 years).

While there’s a chance of things working out halfway decently for Root, realistically there’s no such prospects for poor Azuki. The best she can hope for is to serve out her time until she’s eligible for retirement. Yes, retirement is actually an option for her, albeit on some sort of preserve for Imperial experiments, effectively a sort of benign prison so long as she doesn’t act up. Not a great way to go out, but I suppose it could be worse.

For our next feature, I’m thinking about hopping series to cover some Celestial Kingdom characters, definitely Batista and Yasuko, maybe Masako and Sturla as well Stay tuned.

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