Amano Ginji
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Sex: male Nom de Guerre: Raitei |
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A Few Words on Ginji-
cheerful, optimistic, innocent, forgetful, forgiving,
warm, ditzy, none-too-bright, tough, sweet, perceptive, dense (yes,
perceptive and dense, he manages it), direction-clueless, sucker for
women.
overall- precious
Ginji's Story
Ever cheerful and bouncy, Ginji
is the "G" in Get Backers, partner (probably more appropriately
called sidekick) of best friend Midou Ban. He is by no means the
brains of the outfit, nor is he really the brawn. Ban is plenty clever
and quite strong enough to take care of himself in a fight. In fact, Ban
has needed to ride to his partner’s rescue on more than one occasion. Instead,
Ginji plays the role of conscience, checking Ban's greedy and somewhat cold-hearted
tendencies.
Very easy to just hang out with, Ginji is in many ways the “eternal child” character type. For all that he is 19 years old, and has spent the vast majority of that time living on some of the harshest streets in Tokyo, he retains a surprisingly innocent personality. He’s an incorrigible optimist and loves to glomp people, especially Ban. He automatically trusts everyone he meets, and continues to trust them even after they provide several harsh and painful reasons why he shouldn’t. Often smiling and always open hearted, Ginji can (and does) talk to anyone about anything, even when it‘s something it‘s better he didn‘t mention. He says what’s on his mind, and hardly ever lies. Then there’s this stubborn habit of his-- he persists in seeing the good in everyone, even when they do their best to hide it. Hang around him long enough, and he’ll even start to draw it out.
Ginji isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, not by a long shot. You might even say he’s well down on the duller end of things. He can be incredibly (and I do mean incredibly) forgetful at times, and he seems to missing a lot of “common knowledge”-- basic stuff people pick up through 13 years of school. For example, he didn't know that putting a floppy disc in the microwave will not cause a nuclear explosion. Now that it's mentioned, he lacks surprising amounts of common sense, too. ^.^;
On the other hand, he has uncannily sharp perceptions when it comes to picking up on other people’s moods, especially when they’re hurting or sad. Usually, he’s very quick on figuring out just what to do to make that person feel better.
Though he touts one of the most fear-inspiring names in the whole of the Tokyo underground, Ginji himself really doesn’t like fighting. Not that he’s a die-hard pacifist or anything, he just doesn’t go out of his way to pick fights, nor is he easily goaded into them, like Ban is on occasion. That attitude of his usually throws most opponents for a loop when they actually cross him, as they figure nice means weak. They learn their error very quickly.
Compared to an electric eel more often than he likes, Ginji can produce and manipulate electrical currents with scary proficiency. He can control precisely how many volts he channels, and can either touch-and-stun, or even let fly with miniature lightning bolts. Given time and practice, he learns how to generate plasma balls, of which he can create several at a time and send them flying every which way.
On the flipside of electricity is electro-magnetism, another skill Ginji’s well capable of. He can generate enough pull bring metal things to him, or bring himself to metal things. For example, he can stick himself to a metal grate on the side of a building, or yank a bunch of metal to himself through considerable resistance.
Unfortunately, Ginji always needs an exterior source to pull the electrical power from. The electrical energy a human body usually generates is enough for him to manage some simple electrical attacks, but more complex things, and battles that take time almost always require him to have an external source somewhere near by that he can draw from. Wall sockets, appliances, and lights often do the trick quite nicely. He doesn't really need to touch them to draw the energy, they just need to be close.
A last, often overlooked ability Ginji has is a very fast healing-factor. I mean VERY fast. Most minor injuries heal themselves within a day or less. More serious injuries take a little more time, unless he sticks his finger in an electrical socket. Then they heal up nice and quick… as in as-you-watch quick. It’s a trait that usually irks Ban somewhat, seeing as he’s stuck on injured reserve for sometimes weeks at a time. ^_^
Before meeting Ban, those powers were enough to secure Ginji a spot as one of the most feared residents of Mugenjou's Lower Town, one of the nastiest slums in Tokyo. Called "Raitei", Emperor of Thunder, he led the teen punk gang "VOLTS", which in turn essentially policed all of Lower Town. While feared, neither VOLTS nor Raitei were really hated. Their presence and activities added a couple more rules, if somewhat hazy ones, to the only one inherent to Mugenjou-- survival of the fittest. This brought them a healthy bit of respect, and many permanent residents of the place look back on Raitei’s reign with a sigh of nostalgia.
The time frame around Ginji’s first meeting with Ban, and starting work as Get Backers is a very hazy one yet, and just what happened how isn’t known. How they met is vaguely touched on; Ban showed up in Lower Town for some reason, and it lead to what had to be a spectacular fight, but the result and what happened afterwards are as of yet unknowns. I’d bet meeting Ban was probably what spurred Ginji’s decision to leave Lower Town. It’d make Kazuki’s and Shido’s initial hatred of Ban make sense. However, how much time elapsed is unknown. And for some strange reason, neither Ginji nor Ban seem very inclined to talk about the details.
But since then, Ginji has come to trust Ban utterly, totally and completely. While a lot of people throw the uglier bits of Ban’s past at Ginji in an attempt to instill in him some iota of wariness, it’s all futile. It isn’t clearly said, but I doubt Ginji is totally in the dark about Ban’s past. What he knows notwithstanding, he still has absolutely unshakable faith in Ban.
SPOILERS
(black on black. just highlight it to read)
Ginji was abandoned in Mugenjou about the time when he
was 7 or 8 years old. He has no idea who his parents are, nor does he particularly
hate them for what they did. In his typical forgiving fashion, he believes
they had some reason why they had to do it. That reason could be a little
more twisted than he expects, however. There are implications floating
around volume 20 that name him the child of Mugenjou’s very own “god”.
What that could lead to… who knows.
Very little is known about Ginji’s time in Mugenjou, but it’s safe to guess that he wasn't abandoned for too long before one Teshimine Takeru took him under wing. Not much is known about Teshimine himself, but it is fairly certain that he and Ginji got along really well. Like a big brother looking after a little brother, Teshimine took care of Ginji while he was too young to take care of himself. When and how they parted ways is completely unknown.
I’d guess Ginji was at least 17 when he first met Ban, so that’d put him in Mugenjou for almost 10 years. Mugenjou itself is an extremely strange place. Survive in there long enough and weird things might start happening to you. Those ‘weird things’ happened to Ginji probably when he was around 11 or 12. During a raid by thugs from Mugenjou's middle-level, the Belt Line, a close friend of his, a girl by the name of Chien Lonfa, took an arrow that was aimed at him. Overwhelming grief at her death tripped something in him and the resulting lightning-burst fried close to 30 people in an eyeblink. That was the first glimpse anyone got of Ginji’s other side; Raitei. It's implied that that was the first time Ginji displayed any powers at all.
On an interesting side note, that’s also the event that changed Ginji’s hair from black to blonde. All the pictures of young Ginji have black hair, right up to the point where he’s running away from the raiders with Chien. After the lightening burst, his hair’s blonde.
But anyways… no timeline is given as to when he became the unofficial Emperor of Lower Town, and I actually doubt anyone there could give any specific dates. I can’t see Ginji going out of his way to gather people around him, and I doubt he set out on a campaign to conquer Lower Town. I’d say that, over time, things just sorta fell out that way.
The place still holds influence on him, as with all who spend any significant amount of time living there. Whenever Ginji actually sets foot within Mugenjou's confines, his powers are given a massive boost, especially the healing factor. The boost is to such a degree that he becomes, for all intents and purposes, completely invincible.
To make things even more unfair for the competition, inside Mugenjou, things have a habit of going Ginji’s way. This isn’t he’s-scary-so-no-one-messes-with-him sort of “things going his way”. While Ginji is there, everything that would happen in Lower Town re-arranges itself to occur in a ways favorable to him. Not that he does this purposefully, mind you, it just happens.
Considering there’s already one “god” up in Babylon City who controls all of Mugenjou to such an extent that a roll of a single die falls exactly in the desired way, that could make the situation in Lower Town a little complicated. As Ginji grew older and his will got stronger, it’d could shove an already messy area into a really messy battle of wills. Knowing that on some gut level, Ginji chooses to go with Ban and leave Mugenjou, leaving everyone there behind.
…that’s my theory, anyway. None of that is stated outright, but taking a lot of the clues and hints dropped during the Mugenjou arc and this latest Kiryuudo arc, that’s the picture I’ve come up with.
RAITEI- Depending on which psychologist one drags Ginji to, he could possibly be diagnosed with Multiple Personality Disorder. Raitei is a completely separate personality from Ginji, and nearly the polar opposite in character. Calm, quiet and cold, Raitei is very no-nonsense guy. Counter to Ginji’s usual light, bright cheer, a somber air of melancholy seems to hover around Raitei. It’s pretty apparent that he’s inured to battle, and he doesn‘t seem to have very much at all of Ginji‘s innocence. He never flinches from the fight presented, and he doesn’t fool around getting the job done: the “job” being the eradication of anything that brings sadness or harm to Ginji.
Shifts to Raitei are involuntary, usually happening whenever Ginji is in life-threatening danger-- put more clearly, whenever Ginji sustains injuries that should in all sanity kill him. Of the 5 times Ginji switched to Raitei, only twice was he not either thoroughly beaten up or spitted on a sharp object. First was the first time he changed, in Mugenjou. Second, the fifth time, when Shido forced the change.
Switches back, however, might be a different story. The events that trigger the switch back are different every time, but it’s not a small possibility that Ginji can control when he comes back. He hardly ever remembers anything he does as Raitei, though. From Ban's constant worrying and nagging, one gets the impression that these switches are NOT a Good Thing, though in what way isn’t certain.
In the series so far, Raitei has made a total of 5 appearances in the present-tense timeline. First is in Mugenjou, when MakubeX’s illusion of Teshimine pisses Ginji off enough for the switch to occur. The second time is during his fight with the Miroku Seven. Natsuhiko neatly spits Ginji through the gut with his sword, the fatal injury necessitating Raitei’s appearance. Time number three is in the middle of the adventure with the CCG from Hell, Kami no Kijutsu. Squaring off with Seiryuu is harder for Ginji than at first thought, since the guy is a Lonfa, and the elder brother of Chien, whose death triggered Raitei’s very first manifestation. Not too keen on fighting him, Ginji gets pounded to a pulp, and Raitei comes out to salvage the situation. Appearance number four is on Tokyo’s China Street, during the first half of the quest to retrieve Otowa Madoka from the Kiryuudo. Jourougumo, in the guise of Madoka, sticks a dagger into Ginji right about where his heart is. The injury causes Raitei’s appearance, and he winds up calling down enough lightening to fry the entire building. The last case happens at the very tail end of the hunt for Madoka, when Shido uses the true facet of his beast-whistle to force Ginji to shift to Raitei, in order to defeat Kabuto.
While what Ginji can do is nothing to scoff at, switching to Raitei magnifies his powers by factors of ten. Storms gather when he's pissed off, lightening falling where he wants as if natural. Taking electricity up one step, Raitei can manifest and direct plasma to such an extent that he can construct lifelike dummies of himself. Ginji’s normally sharp perceptions spike up, Raitei reading and reacting to danger with feral speed. What takes the cake is his healing factor, which is enough to repair any damage in a matter of seconds. A sword through the gut or a knife to the heart, whatever… you could count how long it takes to heal on both hands and still have fingers left over.
Unfortunately for Ginji, those powers take a massive drop in volume 21. The whole encounter between him and Jourougumo is funky, something she says striking a cord in Ginji. That translated into a very foul-tempered Raitei. To make matters worse, there’s something odd about the atmosphere in the Kiryuudo’s building, and once Jourougumo leaves, it’s almost as if Raitei loses control. Down comes a lightening strike that pretty much levels the whole skyscraper.
A side effect of that blast, Ginji’s electric powers are almost totally burned out. For a good stretch of time, neither Ginji nor Raitei can use lightening or plasma balls or any other electrical attack (he does get them back, don't worry). What’s left to them are the lowest frequency electric waves, i.e. radio waves. Physically used, the current’s so low that it’s only useful for mild numbing or pleasant back-rubs. On the flip-side, Ginji’s become a constantly-on radar. Things that no one else can sense he knows are there. As Raitei, he can do damage to what's inside a person without actually hitting them.
Mentioned at the very end of the search for Madoka, it’s said that Ginji is the only one who can really “break” fate and defy the absolute predictions in the Archives. This goes back to the whole bit about Ginji’s having some control over the events in Lower Town. This is nothing he does voluntarily, it’s just that his presence creates the possibility to warp fate. If you take the thought that he might be the son of the “god” in Babylon City, that’s more than plausible.