[SNPC/Esper] Yoritaka Erize

FULL NAME: Yoritaka Erize
AGE: 13
GENDER: Female
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: A slender young girl with long ginger hair and brown amber eyes. She is wearing the usual summer uniform of Tokiwadai high consisting of a short-sleeved white dress shirt with a light brown vest and her school's emblem on it. She also wears a black skirt and small white socks and brown shoes. She also wears a yellow ribbon and small red ribbon to tie her hair up.  More often than not she is found with a pair of black and blue headphones.

INFORMATION: Yoritaka Erize is the daughter of both Yoritaka Akihitoa a famous scientist and Yoritaka Yumi a shrewd business woman. Her father's claim to fame has been his work on researching sound waves and its effect on the human mind, and also attempting to find a cure for hearing loss. His greatest achievement being reversing partial hearing loss and most famously with his daughter. Her mother being a shrewd businesswoman had used her success in the corporate world to fund her husband's research while also using that fame as a social climber.  

Both understand the importance of creating connections and building upon existing relationships for success. Their desires and goals being inspired by their daughter's impairment would later end up isolating their daughter at home. The drive to help their daughter created fame which took them away from Yoritaka.  At the same time, kids would prove to be cruel, and as a young girl, she had suffered isolation because of her impairment and use of hearing aids.

The problem was at her age, she could only hear certain tones of pitches often reached in many songs, and this had lead to her love for music. This enjoyment of music results in reading about their origin and her future love for western culture. The clearest thing she could hear without hearing aids was the song of Scottish bagpipes being the one soothing sound which helped her through the younger years. This lead to a particular love for the Scottish identity and Gaelic music. To the point, she had dyed her hair ginger and took up bagpipes as her instrument to learn.

Though her impairment wouldn't last forever as thanks to her father's achievements, Yoritaka's full hearing would be restored. While this didn't resolve her relationship with her parents, it ended up driving Yoritaka to make the first step and building on her hard work which led to her enrollment into Tokiwadai.

All this was made possible by the same isolation she was found in due to her circumstances. Alone she spent the time focusing on her lessons, she read materials often studied by those many years older and she continued to study music indulging into her passion. Building on these strengths she had proved well enough to be enrolled in the elite middle school.

Her parents status being part of the reason, they would claim to have pushed their daughter to this achievement while it was Yoritaka who took this path on her own.

While Yoritaka hasn't got much direct social experience, she doesn't allow that and her past to influence her future once she entered the middle school, displaying a strong confidence born from the tide of change caused by her father's achievement. Though it turns out her confidence actually had a negative impact as she focuses on starting conversations by using her unusual hobbies and likes as an ice breaker. Her love for western culture had made her seemingly strange in the Tokiwadai environment and leading to her not able to hold conversations with her fellow students. This, in turn, has made it a personal struggle for her to achieve her aim of ending her isolation by making real friends. As now people intend to ignore her due to her unusual hobbies and her learning the Scottish bagpipes don't exactly help.

But she never cared about image or reputation, she believes through the power of music she can create friends with anyone. This strong belief had only made her more determined to try and get people to listen long enough for it to happen. She just wanted to have real friends and not people who tolerate her for status. And she believed she could achieve this through the power of music, but first, she has to force them to listen.

Her motivations to have a real friendship would be the source of events in the Ballad of Oddities bringing together the player characters.

ABILITIES:

Harmonic Guidance is a minor mind control ability which alters the perception of emotions in the limbic system part of the brain. This is done by the use of sound waves which is perceived by the brain through vibrations in the air which are then converted into electrical signals which are used to transfer information.

Basically, Yoritaka alters existing soundwaves in the air and calculates the necessary changes to these vibrations, which would then translate to the appropriate electrical signals to excite the desired emotions being perceived by the target. These sound waves can be generated anywhere, either being her own voice, a moving car and basically anything which generates sound. The only rules being that she must understand the origin of this sound and able hear them herself. And while the effect isn't as powerful as a true mind control ability, its greatest strength lies in the fact it can affect all who can hear these altered soundwaves.

However, the primary weakness remains to be it requires the targets to hear these utilised sounds. Those with hearing impairments or wearing earplugs and even distance can reduce the effect dramatically. With the volume of the noise determines how far it can reach. What does not affect the ability, however, is other noises. Even if the utilised sound is mostly drowned out, as long as it is able to reach the target's ears, it will display its full effects.

The longer you hear these altered sounds, the more the targeted emotions are excited with those exposed to it long enough will find their logical centres being overwhelmed. The most obvious example being 'fear' which if great enough can cause people to act in panic.

FACE CLAIM: Momo Kisaragi from Kagerou Project.

OOOOOOK. This will get a quick evaluation, since this is quite the coincidence. But no spoilers.

I. The Ability — Fair and Square

When I first read the ability it didn’t occur to me, but when I took a second read I realised that this one is rather unfortunate in many ways. Unfortunate enough, to blow it away right off the bat.

Three reasons unfold.

1. The ability itself deviates a bit from the ordinary. Usually Esper Abilities function by having the user manipulate the outside world in any sense. Her’s however is based on causing an effect by releasing a special pitch with her voice, which is also infused with some AIM insertion weirdness. I’d say it is in fact possible to use an ability to alter existing sound waves in a way to cause a specialised effect, but that would be a tad pointless and way too low, stuck between Level 1 and Level 2 at max. The AIM part itself is an issue entirely, as an ability should not be about that to begin with. Abilities cause physical effects, not fire AIM beams at others.

2. A tone that disrupts Esper’s calculations; that sounds familiar, doesn’t it? The keyword here is Capacity Down, a device developed by none other than Therestina Kihara Lifeline, someone who is quite out there. The perspective of there being someone with an ability that can replicate the effect naturally is therefore a tad dubious; after all Capacity Down itself is a technology that isn’t just an everyday thing, but a special development from one of the city’s top scientists.
Besides, the ability itself would be pointless as there is no growing immune to it; at least none shown so far.

3. Lastly…I need to admit…there is already a character with nearly the exact same ability. A character written a while ago to claim an important role in a big future plot. While I mentioned before that such an ability should not exist by the standards of the lore’s logic, I actually have quite some elaboration on why said character has an ability that steps into the domains of the Kiharas (especially considering the ability they have is artificially created).
Also, to add further comedy to this…that character’s name is also Suzume.


I’m sorry for the complications I caused here, but this is a rather out of the line case, actually crossing over with something that has been prepared in the shadows ages ago. I hope for your understanding.

Updated with a different but rather simple ability and new name. Adjusted other parts of the profile to remove suggestions to previous ability but its basically the same.

With the issues from last time cleared we can now commence a whole new evaluation for this character formerly known as Suzume (even though the pages file will keep bearing that name).

I. History — Tokiwadai, the ideal environment for weak spirits!

Tokiwadai is the home of elites. Absolute elites even. Elites that are so elitist that it’s really like a lion’s den. They may be well protected ojous for everyone on the outside of the School Garden, but looked at from within, these girls are quite a tough bunch. After all they are the children of higher class families and the like, truly having to deal with lives much heavier than anything we normal citizens can imagine. And here we have a girl that is daughter to a scientist, not some super powerful economic overlord, and suffers from strong weakness to pressure. I do think that doesn’t add up. With Tokiwadai middle school being the kind of place it is, anyone like her, especially if they have a problem with crowds and pressure, is pitifully doomed to fall up to the point of being expelled from school while it’s actually doubtful how they made it in to begin with (the average expectations towards an elite girl are rather high after all).


II. The Ability — Here we are again

I’m sure I should have elaborated a lot more on one of the points of the last evaluation, but I guess better late than never.

Esper Abilities don’t simply enable people to alter their physical abilities or whatever. They manipulate the outside world in order to cause an effect on a scientific basis. The latter you got right, but the first portion is lacking quite a lot. As the ability stands right now, she just emits a scream that is beyond what a normal person is capable of, much like a certain mutant from the X-Men. This however is not in line with what Esper Abilities should be about. These, as stated before, function by changing something that already exists, like using sonokinesis to manipulate existing sound waves, like her screams, to amplify them towards reaching the wanted effect. That is all there should be.

And going back to the Tokiwadai middle school problem, we still have the same issue as before on the table. All she can do at this point is create a single effect that might sound powerful, yet not really anything worthwhile, after all it is straight forward and just a single application for the sake of causing a single effect. With everything summed up it would hardly reach the heights of Level 3, even if the output may be rather heavy. After all she can’t get full output without the support of specialised equipment.

Edits are done.

Knowing that this profile is actually the result of a team effort made me curious to see the next iteration of the evaluation. Now let’s test how good all of you united are.


I. The History — We were born to…wait wrong series

First, a question: Do her parents live inside Academy City or do they live outside?

Second, a rant: I feel like this version of the profile is much better than the last, is the history a lot better thought through. However, knowing the workings of Tokiwadai I am once again lead to wonder if people would actually fear her ability? It’s forbidden to use your ability like that anyway and to be honest, I don’t think any of the cliques would worry about it at all, since they do have much more troublesome means at hand oftentimes. Tokiwadai is filled with powerful abilities so they wouldn’t mind that kind. Don’t blame her loneliness on her ability, but at her oddness, that should be enough entirely. Ability tie ins hardly ever work out that way, after all your ability isn’t much of an influencer in this world, unless of course it’s Level 0 or something. Besides, not everyone can run around and do the Mental Out all day long without getting into big trouble and everyone knows that~


II. The Ability — Actually what?

This is unusual, but even though I have read it five times over and over again, I don’t get it. I understand what the ability does in terms of effect, but I just don’t get how it functions. Could you extend the explanation on its absolute basics?

Her parents aren't in Academy city and edits are done hopefully...

Tried to explain its functions and how it works as clearly as possible.

Now then, after a lot of tries everything seems fine to me. The explanation of the ability should be sufficient for just a SNPC, so nothing else to worry about.

Good.


May your little ballad commence.