Post by Nobu on Apr 9, 2008 12:55:15 GMT 1
山本 信雄
"The way of the warrior is found in death."
"The way of the warrior is found in death."
Name: Yamamoto, Nobuo
Alias: Nobu, The Japanese Experiment
Ethnicity: Japanese
Nationality: Japanese-American
Age: 18
Grade: Junior
Weight: 160 lbs.
Height: 5’ 8½”
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Body:
Nobu, possessing a natural athleticism and excellent genes, has a very well-developed musculature, despite never working out very often. His body fat percentage is minimal, and along with his very dense and cut muscles, Nobu’s body is a rather impressive sight. Complimenting his ripped physique is the natural, light golden tan of his complexion. Nobu’s shoulders, chest, and back are a bit broad for someone of his size, and from the waist down he is slender and toned.
His eyes are an almond shape, but are a bit larger than the average Japanese male’s. During a fight in his youth the area just above his left eye got split open, and now there is a line of scar tissue that hair cannot grow over, giving his left eyebrow a “strike-through” appearance. The very set of his facial features give him a natural look of contempt on his face. He has a pointed chin and his jaw is more squared than rounded, though not by much. Low, indistinguishable cheekbones and a small, somewhat rounded nose give his face a boyish appearance.
Possibly the most outstanding feature on Nobu’s body would be the intricate tattoo of a black dragon etched into the entire length of his left forearm. It was done in the traditional Japanese way, using a chisel, gouge, and nara ink. Another notable thing about Nobu’s appearance would be the amount of scar tissue on his knuckles and forearms; there is also a large scar running from his left shoulder, just above his armpit, to the center of his abomen, extended over his chest. In his left ear are a pair obsidian studs.
Cosmetic:
Function over style. Nobu never likes wearing clothing that makes him appear too distinguished or compromises his range of motion. Comfort and simplicity are also determining factors in what he wears, which are usually plain tank tops and track pants. He doesn’t like jeans all that much, and has several pairs of trousers that are sewn gi-style to offer his legs excellent mobility. Even though he goes for function over style, some of his old quirks carried on with him from his youth in Tokyo, one of them being to adorn various articles or items of his with small ornaments.
Eye color:
Nobu suffers from sectoral heterochromia, in which a section of his eye is a different colour. His eyes are a vibrant hazel with several dark brown flecks distributed evenly throughout the iris, and while the right eye is the same, it has a streak of deep jade running from the pupil to the edge of the iris.
Hair:
A natural, dark chocolate brown, and is often mistaken for black in areas of scarce light. It is shorter than shoulder length, but longer than chin length. Nobu maintains himself properly. He is always clean-shaven and well-groomed, believing you must always appear your best because you never know when you’re going to die.
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Personality:
Surprisingly, Nobu is a very reserved and soft-spoken individual; he seems almost too kind for someone of his past. When something he feels strongly about is concerned, he will speak up. He puts others whom he believes deserve it above him, and is prepared to die for them. At any moment, he is prepared to die; the way of the warrior is instilled to him by his samurai lineage. He will throw himself into battle without hesitation or fear of death. As was aforementioned, Nobu is a very selfless person, and is willing to assist those who he deems worthy of it. Along with this selflessness is also submissiveness; he isn’t really one who takes control of a situation, and is easily pressured by his peers into doing things.
Despite these redeeming qualities and Nobu’s usually cool and collected disposition, he has an extremely short fuse. His inability to remain calm in heated situations has gotten him in trouble more often than once, and this fiery temper has been a deep-seated issue since his childhood. Slowly, he is trying to rub out this glaring weakness, but he finds it increasingly more difficult to maintain his cool.
Habits:
Nobu can always be seen brushing hair out of his face, even if it is just a few strands. He has a problem of staring someone intensely in the eyes whilst speaking with them, and completely avoiding their eyes in any other situation. Ever since he lived with his grandfather, he has developed a tendency to wake up before the sun rises. He rarely raises his voice, and always speaks in a soft, gentle tone. There is also a slight, barely noticeable lisp in his speech.
Hobbies:
Nobu’s most prominent hobbies would be training his body and mind. He meditates and conditions his body frequently, believing that a strong body is nothing without a clear mind, and a clear mind is nothing without a strong body. Early in the morning, Nobu gets up and meditates before the sun rises. He sprints, chops wood, and conditions his limbs for pain daily. A majority of his time spent doing mental and physical strengthening. He has never smoked drag of a cigarette and rarely, if ever (since his childhood) consumes sweets or other sugary or unhealthy things such as soda. To him, the body and mind must be in optimal shape before death. Which, to him, could come at any moment.
Extracurricular:
Nobu wrestles for Hircine's wrestling team at the 160lbs. weight division, and plays on the Timberwolves' football team on the offensive line as a tight end.
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History:
Born as Nobu Odawa, to a professional boxer who was an up and coming contender in the Oriental Pacific Boxing Federation and a former florist who turned into a house wife once she got married, in Tokyo, Japan, Nobu lived a pretty content life during his early childhood, having a loving mother and elder sister, and a respectable father to look up to that showed him his acceptance by letting him train with him whenever he had a boxing match. That is, later in his childhood when things took a turn for the worst. His father suffered an injury that would end his career, and his happiness. He spiraled into a deep depression and became an alcoholic, and in order to support the family his mother returned to her job as a florist. His father worked odd jobs, but most, if not all of the money made was used on booze. They had to move to one of the grittier districts in Tokyo, where they were considered the lowest of the low class by the rest of society.
As a child in middle school, Nobu’s father and his drinking buddies always pitted him against another child or one of their own sons in a fight, and they would gamble on it like it was some sort of human cock fight. It was a human cock fight. What was even more inhumane was that they were children; but the children would never tell. They were all in similar situations. They all yearned for the acceptance they used to experience before their fathers became alcoholics. This was what drove them, what made them fight so eagerly; they fought for the recognition of their fathers. It was from one of these childhood fights that he obtained the scar above his left eye.
Nobu had been occasionally trained in boxing when he was younger by his father. After his father’s career-ending injury, every time the young Nobu asked him why they never trained anymore, he’d receive a beating. Eventually he learned not to ask him, and begun pounding on the worn-out heavy bag in the basement, using what basic knowledge he had of boxing and adding his own flare to it. It is because of this that Nobu was one of the most successful of the child fighters, and a favourite amongst the alcoholics. His father would boast about him to his friends and shower him with praise, saying “That’s definitely my boy!” It made Nobu feel good. No; it made him feel great.
A series of tragedies occurred in his early adolescent years, and the sadness he felt was soon channeled into rage. He joined a street gang after he grasped their attention during a conflict in a restaurant. Realizing his father was scum, he didn’t hesitate to join in order to feel a new sense of acceptance. He was satisfied with being a grunt, having someone to look up to, but he steadily rose in the ranks and became the leader’s right-hand man. Nobu wouldn’t have it any other way.
With his mother missing, presumably being kidnapped and killed with the intent of theft, and his father deemed unfit to care for him, they shipped him off to live with his closest relative. The closest relative they could find was his maternal grandfather, who lived deep in the Japanese wilderness. One could say he was a hermit, as he lived in seclusion. Needless to say, his grandfather was ecstatic to see him, not only because he had been a recluse for several years, but because he was nearly identical to his father (Nobu’s great-grandfather), in the sense that he shared the strip of jade in his right iris and his facial features and body structure.
At first, Nobu hated living in the mountains and wilderness. It was much too far from the city; he missed his friends—or gang, rather, and had dropped out of high school. He was stubborn, but his grandfather soon broke him down and rebuilt him into a new young man. There, in the Japanese wilderness with his grandfather, he learned about his samurai lineage. His mother’s maiden name was Yamamoto, and Nobu soon took it as his own, in respect to his mother and to his new master, his grandfather.
He trained his body and mind frequently. He learned the ways of his ancestors by listening to his grandfather’s words and an original print of Hagakure: the Way of the Samurai, from which he read in his spare time. Every day Nobu would sprint in the mountains, the high altitudes greatly augmenting his body’s ability to utilize oxygen; every day his grandfather would beat his body with hard, thick sticks to condition it. He was tutored in aiki-jūjutsu and traditional kenjutsu by his grandfather, and also received the dragon tattoo on his left arm from him.
A few years later, Nobu’s grandfather felt himself succumbing to illness. He hastily made arrangements for Nobu to travel to the U.S. in order to live under the tutelage of a close friend of his. Nobu obtained a passport and prepared his belongings for packing. His grandfather had always wanted to die in battle, so he requested that Nobu fight him to the death. Nobu, unafraid of death, readily accepted and killed his grandfather in his weakened state. Despite being ill, he managed to score a major hit on the younger, healthier Nobu, granting him the scar that runs across his chest.
Following a private ceremony Nobu held for his grandfather in solitude, he packed up his things and left with only his clothes, what cash his grandfather could leave him, and Hagakure. Unbeknownst to Japanese youth, the man that his grandfather had sent him to had also recently passed.
All of a sudden thrown into a new environment, even with passable knowledge of the language, without anywhere to go and only enough money in his pocket to last him a month, Nobu found himself sleeping in public parks when he didn’t feel like wasting money on motels and stealing food so he could salvage what little money he had. One night, however, Nobu gained recognition for the one thing he always seemed to be good at: fighting. A retired professional MMA fighter, who currently worked as a bouncer at a local club, witnessed a street fight between Nobu and a few thugs. He immediately took interest in Nobu’s ability and potential, and took him under his wing, training him to become a mixed martial artist.
During that year Nobu attended his sophmore year in Hircine High at the age of seventeen (he was a sophomore because he dropped out near the end of freshman year in Japan) and began training for an amateur MMA league, in which he participated in three matches and won two. People call him the “Japanese Experiment” due to his unusually calm and almost robotic demeanor when in the cage. The one fight he lost was by disqualification. Something triggered Nobu’s temper, and he wouldn’t cease his assault on his opponent even after the referee tried to stop it, so he was disqualified.
It is the following year, and Nobu is now a junior at Hircine. He currently sleeps in a back room at the gym he trains at because his part-time job as a dishwasher didn’t earn enough to provide housing, and he recently lost said job because of the restaurant closing down, and he once again finds himself hard-pressed for money. He still wonders why he hasn’t found the old man his grandfather sent him to find.
Recently, Nobu's trainers have found the amateur welterweight division lacking in skilled contenders. Feeling that Nobu is a fighter worthy of opponents of a much higher calibre, his trainers have asked him if was willing to cut weight in order fight in the lightweight division, which held fighters that were prospects for a professional league. Nobu was more than willing to cut weight if it meant fighting stronger, more capable opponents. A natural 160 lbs., Nobu lost some muscle which he packed on to reach his previous weight of 170 lbs., which he did in order to fight the bigger fighters. He cuts down to 155 lbs. for weigh-ins.
Fighting Style:
Nobu is something of a brawler-turned-boxer, in the sense that he mainly uses his hands to hit and his feet to maneuver, but his strikes and style still have that “rough” feeling to it. He has been trained in the art of aiki-jūjutsu, the predecessor to the martial arts Aikido and Hapkido. With aiki-jūjutsu, Nobu expanded upon his knowledge of fighting from simply hitting someone until they stopped moving, to several throwing techniques and joint manipulations to effectively control, subdue, or injure an opponent. More recently, he has been training for and competing in an amateur mixed martial arts league. His current amateur record is 2-1-0, with one win by knockout, one by referee stoppage, and a loss by disqualification. Stylistically, Nobu is a brawler at heart.
Strengths:
Dropping down in weight to 160 lbs., from 170 lbs., Nobu's body, which was accumstomed to sustaining larger muscles, now has a much easier time with feeding Nobu's smaller mass. Having already possessed a monstrous amount of stamina prior to the weight drop, Nobu's conditioning now is at the pinnacle of what any professional athelete's should be, perhaps even surpassing it. With a chin of granite, Nobu can absorb several shots to the head before being fazed, and even if he is rocked, he'll be able to recover quickly. Nobu exhibits an abnormal amount of strength for his size, being able to wrestle much larger fighters to the ground. With this abundance of power, he also possesses an explosive speed that has yet to be matched. His handspeed is also impressive, even for a lightweight.
Weaknesses:
Nobu's decreased weight has dampened his pain threshold because he was so used to being hit with more muscles cushioning his body. That's not to say he's not pain tolerant; he can take a hit as well as the next fighter. Although he has great handspeed, Nobu is not as dextrous as some lightweights, his speed more suited to sudden, explosive movement. In prolonged bouts of strength Nobu will likely have difficulty with a sigificantly larger (30lbs.+) fighter. He has the bad habit of occasionally dropping his guard, and he constantly taps himself on the temple or cheek to remind himself to keep his guard up.[/size]
