Mitsumo
Image from Len’en Ten’eisenki ~ Brilliant Pagoda or Haze Castle (video game, 2016)
Custom-made image, visualizing how the child looks in The Chaos Zone.
Visualized Mental Scars
Crystal/Phantom Type
Original Media: Len’en Ten’eisenki ~ Brilliant Pagoda or Haze Castle (video game, 2016)
Story
The first thing you should know about Mitsumo is that they don’t have a humanoid form; that frame on a swarm of clouds is Mitsumo’s one true body. They’re an ungaikyou (also spelled ungaikyō), a mirror that became a youkai after 100 years. While most ungaikyou have the power to control other youkai, or show a human an image of a youkai they could become, Mitsumo takes a different approach: showing humans their greatest fears, and taking control of their bodies. To Mitsumo, this is the easiest way to move around, as their true body can’t move or speak on its own.
Mitsumo’s current human “vessel” was originally a young child named Terumi, though Mitsumo has neglected the essentials of keeping a human body alive for long enough that only her corpse remains, her spirit having traveled elsewhere.
Mitsumo is carefree in the worst way possible; as much as they see kidnapping, possessing, and indirectly killing people as a regular thing to themselves, they enjoy the displeasure it invokes on others – especially the fear, since that might be an opening for switching to a healthier vessel. Mitsumo uses the eyes of their true body and face and limbs of their vessel to emote in a very casual manner; even in the middle of projecting fears, Mitsumo doesn’t talk or gesture any more threateningly. Ironically, this emphasizes just how little they care about the well-being of others over their personal gain.
What’s more, if things don’t go Mitsumo’s way, the monstrous mirror dips into cowardice, trying on the fly to get their opponent to talk things out. If this ever worked, they’d go straight back to projecting fears. Again, if it ever worked; it doesn’t.
Abilities
Scopophobia
The fear of being looked at or stared at. Mitsumo gives a violent stare. If the stare is targeted at a projectile, it will dissipate. If it’s a stare at an opponent about to use a melee attack, that attack will deal almost no damage. Finally, if it’s a stare at a non-attacking opponent, the opponent will be Paralyzed, reducing their speed and sometimes stopping movement entirely. Only one of these effects can occur with a single use of the ability, with priority going to whatever is closest to the center of Mitsumo’s vision.
Phantom/Shadow Type
Acrophobia
The fear of heights. Mitsumo warps themselves and the opponent upwards. While Mitsumo can cancel their warp early to land on a solid surface above their initial position, the opponent cannot. Mitsumo also cannot cancel their warp if there is no solid surface sufficiently above them.
Phantom/Wind Type
Claustrophobia
The fear of enclosed spaces. Mitsumo temporarily traps the opponent in an invisible box with a surface area of only about twice the opponent’s own.
Phantom/Grapple Type
Nyctophobia
The fear of the dark. Mitsumo causes one opponent to be Darkened, reducing their field of vision to roughly 10 feet in front of them and making anything beyond that look like nothing but darkness. Takes a long time to prepare for use, but is almost guaranteed to work if it isn’t interrupted.
Phantom/Shadow Type
Thalassophobia
The fear of deep bodies of water. Mitsumo temporarily gives the opponent the sensation that they’re drowning as humans do, even if their physiology prevents them from feeling such a sensation otherwise. Has near-perfect accuracy at point-blank range, but the further the opponent is, the less accurate the attack will be (50% accurate at about 16 feet/5 meters, down to a minimum of 0.1% accurate at about 33 feet/10 meters, unable to hit from any further away). Can’t actually drown someone, or deal direct damage.
Phantom/Water Type
Pantophobia
The vague fear of everything, or of an unknown threat. Mitsumo begins to draw in energy that manifests in the form of energy spheres and beams, circling around them and their opponent as they fly to the center one at a time.
Phantom/Dimension Type
Self-Fear “Wounds Gouged by Oneself”
A Spell Card where Mitsumo uses the opponent’s own fear to make them surround themselves in a ring of energy spheres. Mitsumo can extend the effects of the Spell Card with energy spheres of their own, usually fired in a ring formation where they constantly intersect.
Phantom/Weapons, Neutral/Shadow Type
Image is from Brilliant Pagoda or Haze Castle.
Voice
General Description
Child (coming from the vessel, since the mirror can’t speak on its own); rather casual and nonchalant; has a faint, deep gurgling voice on top that indicates it’s really Mitsumo speaking, and not the child
Example Voice
Source: SMITE (video game, 2014)
Original Context: The voice of the character “Scylla”.
Additional Notes: The samples have been edited from their source material to include the “gurgling” mentioned above.
Behind the Scenes
The cast of the Len’en video game series consists mostly of human-like characters, even when the characters themselves aren’t human. Mitsumo was a character who immediately caught my interest not just because they were an exception, but because of how their concept was handled beyond that. The idea of a helpless, dying child being used as a puppet for a malicious being surprised me with how disturbing it felt when many character in the series had a whimsical appearance to them; amplifying this was how Mitsumo was just the game’s first boss, and is otherwise inconsequential throughout the events of the game.
Wanting to do more with the idea of Mitsumo than Len’en had done, I quickly decided to introduce Mitsumo in a short plotline showing them fighting one of my other characters. Within the plotline, I explored ideas like how a more impressionable person could be tricked by Mitsumo’s human vessel, how the human vessel has had its basic human needs neglected (leading to things like broken bones), and how expressive I could make the mirror’s eyes even as the vessel was speaking.
A significant liberty that I took with Mitsumo was the idea that sometime after the events of Brilliant Pagoda or Haze Castle, the child (who was originally alive, albeit helpless under Mitsumo’s control) died, with Mitsumo puppeteering their corpse. This was thought of in part as a form of mercy (I was disturbed at the idea of having a character who’s constantly on the brink of death for as long as another character is around), and in part because I wanted to see if somewhere down the line I could explore Terumi as her own character (which I did).
Brash Buster 