shibuyasmusic

Joshua is a mind reader, and has no qualms with reading a character's minds whenever he feels he may need more context in a conversation, or if he suspects another character is thinking thing about him. However, in Destiny Strings, he can only read minds during the 13th Hour, meaning during most of the general day your characters are all safe from his probing.

Please let me know if it's alright to let him read your characters' minds always, never, or with explicit permission. I likely will ask for permission first, but in some cases Joshua will impulsively read minds, meaning it would be better if I knew whether or not this was okay with you, first.

Preface: Joshua is by far the most complex character in The World Ends With You, who goes through more drastic change in his character than any other character in the game, including Neku Sakuraba. However, there are many who have played the game all the way through and would disagree, favoring one of two characterizations of him.

The first and most common are the people who find Joshua to be a completely hatable character with an irritating personality and, in the end, nothing but a total asshole of a villain. These people tend to sympathize with Neku's perspective the most, the people who really step into Neku's character, which is fine, because that's the point. Joshua was made to seem like a total asshole, from Neku's eyes, but one has to keep in mind that Neku was not seeing the entire picture.

The second also very common characterization is the one that characterizes Joshua as being overly flamboyant, incredibly prissy, enjoying women's clothing, and always hitting on Neku to tease him. Most people who come to this conclusion likely paid most of their attention to the funny or suggestive things Joshua said throughout Week Joshua, and then played Another Day, where he does indeed act this way. These people tend to make the mistake of assuming that Another Day!Joshua is the same character as the main story-line's Joshua, mixed with wearing their shipping goggles a little too tight.

Both of these misinterpretations are entirely understandable, since the game isn't about Joshua's characterization, it's about Neku's; Joshua is merely his foil. I know several people who were guilty of one interpretation or the other, including myself who was very guilty of the second one for a while. This discussion is meant to both organize my own analyses and characterization as well as offer a detailed look into his character for anyone else who might not be able to see past the surface of his character.

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OOC Information:
Name: Kat
Age: 17
AIM: nyanface@aim.com
MSN: kitty_boo@live.com
Y!M: n/a
E-MAIL: kristonmac@yahoo.com

IC Information:
Name: Yoshiya "Joshua" Kiryu
Fandom: The World Ends With You
Timeline: After Week Joshua, when he's supposedly "obliterated" by Sho Minamimoto
Age: 15 (in appearence)/mid-20s (in appearence in his true form)
Appearance: Joshua is average in height, if not a bit on the tall side. He has short and silver wavy hair that is well kept, which he enjoys playing with when he's bored. He is incredibly skinny and pale, yet not in an unnattractive way. His eyes are a light lavender. He wears a light blue short-sleeved and button-down shirt with white bands on the sleeves that appears to be a little baggy on him. He has black jeans and wears white sneakers that look somewhat dressy. When in his true form, he takes on an appearence of an older man in his mid-20s. His power is so high in his true form that his figure is blurred by white light and it makes his features very difficult to distinguish.
Abilities: Exactly the extent of what Joshua can do isn't certain. His power has never been pushed to even close to its limits. In his 15-year-old human form he is significantly weaker, but is still a rather powerful ESPer. In gameplay, he is able to use telekinesis and throw objects at enemies like street signs, cars, motorcycles, etc. He can also conjure objects of the same nature. More effectively, he is able to call beams of light to strike enemies (nicknamed "Jesus Beams" by fans) while levitating in the air. When in sync with his partner he can either conjure up full-sized vans to drop on enemies (level 1 fusion), conjure fire and ice storms to strike enemies (level 2 fusion), or summon a meteor to pound enemies into the ground (level 3 fusion).
His powers go a lot further, however, including the ability to summon beams of energy to strike enemies of just about any size, as well as single-handedly defeating full-scale bosses the main character has trouble with even when he's with a partner. Joshua can also enter alternate timelines (essentially alternate realities). Even when he's in the Realground, the dimension humans live on where Joshua's power is reduced tenfold, he is still able to pull crazy ESPer stunts such as stopping bullets in mid-air without moving a muscle.
In his true form as the Composer of Shibuya, Joshua is practically unstoppable. He is supposedly impossible to kill when in this form and has enough power to erase an entire city from existence. He is also the only one who seems capable of communicating, at least in part, with Angels.
Personality: Joshua's most notable characteristic is his arrogance. His ego is almost as massive as the city he lives in, and he has a lot of the intelligence to back it up. He tends to look at things rather logically and think quickly and is rather patronizing to the main character, Neku, when Neku doesn't figure something out as fast as he does. His arrogance gets to the point of near intolerable for quite a few people, with an absolutely grating personality that drives the main character insane. He's a tad flamboyant, giggling and making jokes about girly things, being fairly sexually ambiguous. He's usually giving a smug smirk to any situation he's in and is unintimidated by most anything (and when he does appear intimdated, it's definitely a ruse). Joshua's good at keeping his cool and it's nearly unheard of for him to actually get angry.
A big plot important part of his personality is his view of society. Joshua believes that everyone who lives in Shibuya is selfish, foolish, and entirely jaded by everything in their lives. He views them as untrustworthy, and impossible to understand, and relatively horrible people for not enjoying everything that's been given to them. He especially despises those who shut out society and have nothing to contribute to the creative potential of Shibuya's culture, ie Neku, whom he completely despises (though he doesn't show it). Obsessed with cliques and trends and generally unimportant things, Joshua views Shibuya's pop culture society as a cancer for the rest of the world's society, one he intends to take obliterate.
However, over the course of time spent with Neku, Joshua starts to slowly see that he and Neku are incredibly similar in their beliefs about culture. The notion that someone he completely hates is so similar to him in his personality really scares him, and the more he realizes it, the more it conflicts with everything Joshua stands for. He also sees Neku go through really heavy duty character development, and Neku starts to change as he rethinks his position and his life. Seeing Neku change like this also really confuses Joshua, who believed that Neku was so deep in his disdain towards the people around him that he'd never be able to change. He quite literally viewed Neku as "the worst person in Shibuya" and after seeing all of this, Joshua begins to change himself. His personality is at this stage by the end of "Week Joshua", the point in time where he's taken and put into the facility.

History: When a person dies, they are given a choice. They can die, or they can go for a second chance at life. This second chance is called the Reapers Game, and is hosted in Shibuya, Tokyo. This game is orchestrated by the Reapers, who are under control of the Game Master, who is ordered by the Conductor, who is controlled by the Composer. Working together, the Players of the game must attempt to survive for a week, in order to reach the end and regain life. During this week they must face monsters called Noise, which exist upon a zone in-between the zone of the Reapers Game—The Underground—and the real world—The Real Ground. People who inhabit the UG cannot be seen by those in the RG, however those in the RG can be seen by those in the UG.
However, once upon a time, the Composer decided no one was worth having a second chance, anymore. The world, in his eyes, had become tainted and corrupt, and so he decided that he must destroy the city once and for all. The Conductor, however, loved his city so much, he begged and pleaded for the Composer to change his mind, to give him a chance to show that the city wasn’t nearly as bad as he thought. So, he was proposed to a game. If the Conductor could prove within a month that Shibuya was worth saving, then he would back off of his plans. If he could not, then the plan would go forth. Also, the Composer would have one proxy in which to represent himself in the Reapers Game during this month. And thus the agreement was made, and the game was on.
Of course, this meant the Composer needed his proxy! So he dialed down his frequency and traveled into the UG, sights set on a boy he had deemed the most despicable and lowly human in all of Shibuya. His name was Neku Sakuraba. In order to bring Neku into the Reapers' Game, however, Neku had to be dead. With gun in hand and a smirk on his face, the Composer shot him in the heart in the backstreets of Udagawa, giving him his Player pin and stepping back to watch events unfold.
Neku woke up in the middle of Shibuya, confused and angry. It wasn't long before he met some other Players, Shiki, Rhyme, and Beat, whom after several days of irritated anti-social behavior and constantly trying to ditch or simply avoid them, Neku began to warm up to them. He even managed to become good friends with Shiki, and the two of them were able to complete the Week and gain their second chance...
But the Conductor had a nasty trick up his sleeve. He was determined to let no Player survive, in order to eliminate the Composer proxy and win their game to save Shibuya. He didn't allow Neku or Shiki their second chance at life and instead took Shiki as Neku's entry fee for yet another game, this time set on wiping out every Player in the game. The Conductor assigned extremely dangerous rule-breaker Sho Minamimoto as the Game Master for the next week, certain that Sho would erase everyone before the week was up.
Not forseeing this turn of events, the Composer deemed it necessary to get involved and interfere with the new game that Neku had gotten himself into. He entered the game as a Player and became Neku's new partner, Yoshiya "Joshua" Kiryu. Joshua used this time to get a better look into the Conductor's plans, as well as teach his proxy and protect him from any harm. At the end of the week, they took their final stand against the Game Master, facing Sho with teeth bared. Sho had one deadly trick up his sleeve, however, a special attack called the Level i Flare, aimed at the two partners. Joshua managed to get Neku out of the way before taking the blast himself, supposedly being obliterated along with Sho.
In reality, Joshua had simply deflected the blast and teleported himself to an alternate universe, where he stayed for the following week as Neku was forced into a third and final game. (This is the point in time where he'll be put into the facility.) This week Neku partnered up with Beat, who'd had a fling with the Reapers in an attempt to bring his sister, Rhyme back to life. Beat decided he was done with the sneaky, cruel, and deceptive ways of the Reapers, and he and Neku together were determined to break in on the Composer, jack Shibuya, and put an end to the Reapers' Game once and for all.
Things hadn't gone exactly the way they planned, however. The Conductor's plan had finally been unveiled, as almost everyone within Shibuya became brainwashed into doing his bidding, thinking alike and speaking of paradise. The Conductor plotted to do the same to the entire world, using Shibuya as his pedestal while he conducted his perfect paradise. However, Beat and Neku were able to bust in after finding out the nature of his plans, taking him down and reuniting with Shiki and most surprisingly, Joshua. Joshua let the big reveal behind how he was Composer and that he and the Conductor had been playing a game to determine Shibuya's fate, and the Conductor's time was almost up. The Conductor had lost, and was then erased. Joshua then offered a choice to his proxy.
His proxy had changed so much over the course of time that Joshua decided to give a final test to him, which would decide the fate of Shibuya. The two had a final showdown, aiming guns at one another. Whoever shot first would kill the other. If Joshua shot Neku, he would stay Composer and "go through with his plans." If Neku shot Joshua, then Neku would become Composer and decide its fate himself.
The two took aim, and even though Joshua had caused him all of that pain, all of that suffering, he couldn't bring himself to shoot someone he once considered a friend to him. Joshua shot Neku and Neku fell unconscious.
In the end, it turned out that Joshua decided to spare Shibuya after all. He decided that if Neku was able to change himself, then so could the rest of the city. Neku and his friends were finally given their second chance at life, and Neku himself learned to appreciate every day to the fullest, not taking his life or his city or the people in it for granted.

Roleplay Sample - Log: Joshua ran his fingers through his hair, giving a gentle sigh. Well, that was exciting. Avoiding obliteration, faking his own death, all well and good. Hah, poor Neku would never know what hit him. He had to trust that his proxy would be able to best his Conductor. He knew he could do it, judging by everything that had happened in the past week. Neku was good at this game. He was stubborn as a mule, and that really took him a long way. He was also determined as hell, for a rather noble cause. Huh, noble. That never would've struck Joshua as a characteristic Neku would even have.

Things had changed for him. And honestly it had been the greatest shock to Joshua. To see his proxy learn to care for someone other than himself, to fight for something bigger than himself. It made no sense to him. Neku was supposed to be the unmovable, absolutely horrible, selfish person. He wasn't supposed to change.