Concept Reveal: NatsuChiru
For the last few months, I've been doing a lot of concept work for an original project that I'm extremely passionate about. Taking place in 1970's Tokyo, it's about a mixed-race Tlingit girl connecting to the heritage she was raised outside of while also discovering the deeper truth of the one she's lived in her whole life.
Trigger warning for mentions of police brutality, suicide, loss, grief, war, cancer, past child abuse, and the atomic bombings in the character descriptions under the readmore.
Primary Cast:
Natsuko (her father chose that name because it reminds him of Natsilane, a figure from the Tlingit story of Blackfish, the first orca) is one of the 2 titual characters. Born in Japan, she's never known life in her father's homeland. She's incredibly optimistic despite not really finding community in either the other local kids or the other military brats at the naval base. Even though she doesn't have any friends her own age, she's got the best family in the world to make up for it. She aspires to live the dreams of a career in music that her father and his cousins never got to and inherited her mother's affinity for animals, leading her to become an idol that performs with our other titular character.
Yáxwch (yax-witch), aka Yax (or Yakuza-kun by only his wife), is a young Tlingit singer/songwriter from Sitka, Alaska; he's also Natsuko's father. After the death of a very close friend (crush, but he'll never say that) to a drug related shooting by the police in his teenage years, he and his cousins vowed to get out of town by any means necessary. This eventually leads to them all joining the navy together as engineers, using his father's connections to ensure they're deployed to a relatively safe base under the watch of a family friend. It's here where he meets his future wife and mother of his only child.
Ashika, Natsuko's mother, is a soft-spoken young woman until you really set her off. She volunteers at a local wildlife center, which has led to her developing close bonds with several rescues she has fostered and released. Not much about her past is known to her husband and daughter, primarily due to her having a 3 year gap in her memory from a traumatic childhood event surrounding her family's Yakuza ties, which she intends to keep secret from them for their own protection.
Chilkat, stage name Chiru, is the other titual character and a 6 year old orca that was kidnapped from her pod off the Alaskan coast 2 years prior to the story's events. Being trained to perform, she desperately craves interaction and bonds with Natsuko almost immediately upon them meeting, as if their souls were drawn to one another. Through the bond they share, Natsuko can tell she wishes to return to her mother.
Antagonists:
Ryosuke is Ashika's older brother, and now head of their family's Yakuza branch, which was supposed to be passed to her. Although he loves his little sister, he knows what triggered her memory block and is deeply ashamed of himself for it. The lifetime of lies and secrets to keep himself out of hot water have jaded him to the principle their family was meant to uphold: harm only those that deserve it and use our power to help the disenfranchised to build up the community. He can't see this, however, and thinks he is doing everything he is supposed to be. He helps fund one of his client's marine park, where Chiru performs, and acts as a talent agent to find a captivating group of young performers.
Elizabeth is 1 of a pair of twins, the daughters of Yax's captain at the naval base. She deeply resents Natsuko for her seemingly perfect family and life after her and her sister suffered horrific abuse at the hands of their mother back in the states, only to be shipped to an entirely new country to live on the naval base with their now single father who barely has time for them. Having acted as her sister's protector their entire childhood and now losing her to Natsuko, she's become aggressive and standoffish to an alarming degree, and the adults in her life all fear that she may be too far gone.
Supporting cast:
Jimmy, one of Yax's cousins, is afro-indigenous, his mom being a black woman from New Orleans. He was very much raised to be overly polite and kind, which makes him very sweet, but also a bit gullible and a bit of a pushover in most situations. He isn't naive, however, and very much understands how people can and do sometimes take advantage of his big heart.
Eagle is Jimmy's partner since they were in middle school and cousin to the late member of their group. He's a Tlingit/Haida trans man who is incredibly open and honest about who and what he is, which sometimes gets him into trouble in the climate of the 1970s. He takes it all in stride, however, as he took martial arts in his childhood to defend himself (at his very supportive parents' request so they could be a little less anxious). Fiercly protective of his friends and family, he will not hesitate to call out bullshit where he sees it and give a dose of reality to those that cross him.
Javier, the youngest of the squad, is Yax's other cousin. His father is a Latino immigrant who ended up working at the cannery thanks to a Tlingit woman being willing to translate for him since she took Spanish in school growing up. Javi acts as the glue that holds the group together, being able to mediate arguments thanks to his unrelentingly calm demeanor and general positivity.
Kenji is Eagle's cousin and Ryosuke's partner, being his and Ashika's childhood friend. He was born in Anchorage, but his parents divorced when he and his brother were just kids, leading to their father taking them back to Japan. He ended up getting a law degree back in the States and served 6 years as a defense attourney. He eventually became disillusioned with the justice system in both the US and Japan, prompting him to join the police force in an attempt to force change from the inside out. His policy is to only make an arrest if he can't diffuse a situation civilly, as he sees himself as a civil servant to the community. This led to his conviction rate percentage to be pretty high since he only arrested people he felt would cause problems and allowed him to eventually be promoted to lead detective. His brother was a very stressed and depressed salaryman who ended up taking his own life, sending the entire friend group into a deep depression over a second hard loss that they're only just starting to shake off.
Captain Mortimer Smith was stationed with Yax's father during the bombings and made a promise to him that he would do whatever he could to help the people whose lives were destroyed in those moments. The horrors he saw during restoration deeply saddened him, and he vowed never to become the disgusting types of people he worked alongside. With his youth occupied by humanitarian efforts, he was late to the fatherhood game, having his twins at 40. When he learned how badly his ex-wife failed as a parent in his absence, he took it on himself to give his daughters the best possible life he could despite the circumstances. He was entrusted by Yax's father to keep an eye on the boys so they don't get themselves killed or arrested, and he does so willingly. Although, sometimes, he regrets taking on that burden.
Yuki is Natsuko's older cousin, the adopted daughter of Ryosuke. Her birth parents were clients of his, and both ended up dying young due to radiation induced cancer. Ryosuke and Kenji took her under their wings without question. She's very attuned to life as a Yakuza child and often inserts herself into Ryo's world without his or Kenji's blessing. Due to her turbulent upbringing, she often gets into trouble at school and hangs with questionable crowds, which eventually led to her being expelled from her catholic private school and being put in the same school as Natsuko and the twins. In an attempt to keep her out of trouble, Ryo insisted that she be a member of the idol group he's trying to build to perform with Chiru.
Olivia, though she just prefers Ollie, is the younger of Captain Smith's twins. She's a ball of anxiety but tries her best to stay thinking positive. Her sister sheilded her from the worst of the abuse their mother put them through, and she watches and worries about Elizabeth every step of the way into their new normal. Although she starts off joining her sister in the bullying and torment of Natsuko, Ollie finds that she actually really likes the girl and grows to feel romantic interest for the first time in her life. She joins the idol group and attempts to get her sister in it as well to help her warm up to the others, but unfortunately, Elizabeth wants nothing to do with that.
Other important figures that will be discussed and even spoken to on the phone, but might not be shown in anything other than flashbacks:
Elvira: Yax's indigenous mother, she and her siblings grew up in a residential home. She bonded with a pod of orca that visits every year and likes to swim with them into her older age despite a worsening heart condition. She never names them, though, as she respects them too much to treat them like pets. She opted to give her son a Lingit name, meaning sea otter, as a nod to the culture she was torn from and had to rediscover.
Montgomery: Yax's father, he's legally blind from watching the nukes but is otherwise healthy and makes a living as a financial advisor. Bad at parenting, but he loves his son.
Ai: The name Natsuko gives to Chiru's mother, who is Elvira's favorite of the pod. She misses her baby and is still in a state of grief over losing her.
Shinji: Kenji's younger brother who committed suicide 8 years prior to the events of the story. He developed a crush on Yax but didn't want to overstep and ruin his friendship with Ashika, so he kept it silent and took it to the grave.
Jin: The group's late friend from back in Sitka. His mother is a refugee from North Korea, and the community protects her without question or hesitation. Yáxwch was present to witness the brutal overkill that took him, leading to lifelong trauma and nightmares.
Cheif Natsilane: He has watched over his direct bloodline in the thousands of years since his death. While the stories of him are much grander than the reality, he feels a sense of paternal connection to those who connect with his likeness and ideals. He's been very interested in Natsuko since her birth and has been carefully guiding her from the sidelines.
Blackfish: Natsilane's spirit guide in the afterlife. She's a bit sassy and is fiercely protective. The symbolic form she takes often unintentionally frightens those she meets for the first time.
Sakura: A woman samurai from feudal Japan. Her village had been targeted in an ongoing war, and she was instructed by her mother to take all the children deep into the forest to hide. When they emerged, their home was devoid of life. As the oldest, she took up her father's sword and armor to defend this community of orphans, her children. She watches over her descendants as well, having adopted every child she happened to come across, with a special focus on the branch that has Yakuza ties. She met Natsilane during the bombings, as he had noticed her and instinctively went to comfort her.
Pastor Brown's family: literally an excuse to sprinkle in tidbits of my family history in the gang's discussions of the goings on back home, as my father would have been 16 in 1978 when the story takes place. He's got a lot of really insane stories about his rebellious youth. Anybody who knew our family back then knows exactly who I'm talking about.
I'm super excited to set out on this journey, and I hope the experiences I'll have will be extraordinary. Feel free to ask me any questions about the project, as I'm eager to share and discuss! Stay healthy and happy, everybody!
