I made Kenta Kosaku when I was 16 because I wanted to join a MHA RP group on DeviantArt. He’s probably the first(?) serious OC I ever thought of. Fr I took his hand and YANKED him out of my sketchbook and posted him online to be perceived (which is quite scary). I had a lot of illustrations of him, although now all of that old stuff has been archived and can’t be seen publicly. I’m grateful that my old RP applications and art haven’t disappeared forever when my laptop blew up into smithereens on that fateful day of 09/03/2021. Couldn’t save all the files unfortunately, but at least I’ve got a few saved. But hey! At least I can still draw, and I’m here now to info-dump, rant about, and post updates of my characters.
If I post different versions of Kenta (and other OCs) later on, just treat them as AU variants (I don’t believe there’s a true/canon universe for my OCs; I like to drop them in whatever world and see what happens. It’s exciting that way!).
With Kenta specifically, I like to follow a certain pattern when putting him in different, fictional universes. It helps me to keep his overall character consistent if I use and have him interact with different peoples’ OCs. So with that said, I basically made Kenta to be the kind of character who’s part of the common crowd, desperately wanting to be somebody else. And who’s that “somebody else”? Depends on the setting :]
…Urgh, there’s so much to talk about. Where do I even start? Maybe a brief character intro/history to this AU of Kenta? I LOVE talking about OCs (both mine and others’. Actually, it wouldn’t be a bad idea if I also info-dumped the ships my OCs are/were in… hmm. //writes it down).
For the MHA RP group, it would’ve been easy to make Kenta quirkless (being born with no superpower) and have him seek out a way to obtain a quirk through false means, or just pretend like he has a quirk— but in reality, he’s just a normie. But according to the actual MHA world (since the RP group was heavily based on the canonicity of the manga/anime series), it's a fact that around 80% of the population are born with a quirk. Thus in this universe, Kenta did have a quirk… I just made it a very useless one LOL.
Thinking back on it now, it’s so stupid I don’t know why I came up with this HAHAHA. But it’s an immobilizing quirk that only works if his lips make contact on another person’s bare skin (I dubbed it thee… “Petrifying Kiss”). I don’t think the user gets stunned for long either; when I’m trying to imagine this quirk in a combat scenario… it genuinely sucks. Like, all it would take is for the other person to be covered head-to-toe in their hero/villain suit, and Kenta would have no way to stun them. However, it was 100% my intention to give him a forgettable, pointless quirk. Tbh it doesn’t have to be the one I chose, I could easily replace the one he had with another quirk as equally worthless and laughable.
Like, if you had a cool quirk, you could totally show it off right? For Kenta, he had no chance of doing that. So he would often be ignored at school. Maybe at first his classmates made fun of him for having a stupid quirk, but over the years the jokes would get old pretty quickly. Even his parents pitied him? But they probably didn’t do much to help him feel better about his own quirk, nor did they try to get involved in their son’s life. So, he’s very much emotionally neglected. I believe I wrote down somewhere about his history (it was required by the group to have it in your character application) that his quirk was a combination of both his mother’s Recovery quirk (like Chiyo Shuzenji’s Heal quirk) and his father’s Immobilization quirk. On the night when Kenta’s quirk developed (he was around 4-yrs-old), he accidentally immobilized his mother when giving her a good-night kiss on the cheek. Even though the effect is short-lasting, it’s pretty unfortunate :[
Before Kenta had developed his quirk, he pretty much lived out a normal childhood. His future still undetermined with the lack of a quirk, his parents have always hoped that he’d either join his mom in ailing sick patients at the hospital (inheriting a similar Recovery quirk) or become a hero like his father (he’s no big-shot; probably works at a hero agency under a pro-hero). Sadly with the reveal of his dumb kiss quirk— discussing further more onto what Kenta can and can’t do— his parents deemed it was considered useless now to raise him into someone they hoped he’d grow up to. Ever since then, he was pretty much ignored in the household, failing to live up to his parents’ expectations. So where and how is he going to get the love and attention that he oh-so desperately wants?
When the teasing at school stopped, it left Kenta with a strange sort of emptiness inside his heart. He had gotten used to the teasing so much that he used it as a coping mechanism to remind that he still “existed.” Without the attention from his parents and peers, he did whatever he could to get it all back. As a result, this led to a series of him changing his appearance drastically multiple times, and a sudden shift in his personality. He started acting out during school and at home too— anything he could do to get a reaction out of those around him.
Oh, remember when I previously mentioned how I “follow a certain pattern” with Kenta’s character? Ideally, I want there to be some sort of “canon event” that takes place in his life (no matter the universe/setting) that marks the turning point of what makes him the way he is (as in, the design of Kenta that you currently see right now. Yes, he didn’t always have pink hair. It’s all hair dye). So for this group, I’ve had Kenta overhear his classmates about a big villain attack that had occurred over where U.A. High School was. Witnessing the non-stop chatter about villains from his peers is what gave Kenta the idea to become a villain himself. He then made a promise to the world that he’ll become somebody unforgettable.
“But wait,” you think to yourself. How the hell is he a villain? He doesn’t look menacing? He looks hella goofy instead. His hair even looks like a pink poop emoji. Well, let me tell ya another sad truth… he sucks at being a villain LOL. This dude’s threat level is unbelievably low, like I can joke that his worst crime would actually be stealing candy from a baby. He’s just a nuisance to the neighborhood, and likes to grab the attention of licensed heroes from time to time. Like “Ooh, LOOK! I’m looiiitering! :D” and the heroes would simply smack their foreheads and shake their heads. So far in the RP group I had him in, the numerous things he got to do were pestering a tech repair shop employee, somehow crashing into events he was never given an invite to, annoying the new incoming U.A. students (who were all other peoples’ OCs), and briefly bumping into other villains (who also were peoples’ OCs! Yeah, the group accepted both student AND villain characters. Which I think was pretty cool).
It’s unfortunate that I decided to leave the group at some point (other people left too). There was an issue in regards to the group somehow staying in “limbo mode” for a long time, and a LOT of good roleplay logs that people have accumulated were suddenly not considered part of the group’s canon lore anymore. So essentially, everyone had to “start over” with their characters not knowing each other and having to re-introduce them again. It felt a bit of time wasted, but I was mainly sad that any character development/friendships Kenta had gained along the way was now tossed to the side.
But enough about the group, I’m here to talk about my son :] I think this post was a nice introduction to this version of Kenta (I’m sorry if I jumped through topics pretty quickly, my writing will get better I promise). Soon enough, you'll get to see the Jabberwock Isle version of him.
Next couple of posts I’ll either talk more about his design + personality in-depth, or perhaps start doodling other characters I have in mind...
Note: Originally I was going to upload like, 9 files all in a single post but I miiight just go with posting things in short bursts because
I worry that having LONG text posts might look daunting.
I’ve been patient enough and I REALLY want to start posting art on Tumblr like a lot more.
