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Aircraft Design Company Quest Main Characters
Matsura Asuka
The main character of ADCQ, Asuka is an aircraft engineer working for Ohara Airworks.- Ambiguous Gender: Asuka is noted to take this very seriously.
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Artist Disillusionment: Starts to get this way as more and more people die flying their warplanes. - Badass Adorable: Though small, cute, fairly meek, mild-mannered, and in no way a fighter physically, when Asuka has an strong enough opinion on something, they don't yield. They also build their own planes, and used to ride motorcycles.
- Cigarette of Anxiety: Smokes, but very infrequently and only when overwhelmed.
- Collector of the Strange: Has all kinds of strange odds and ends cluttering their tiny apartment, including newspaper clippings and weather predicting instruments.
- Country Mouse: Grew up in a small rural town. Hasn't been back in years.
- Culture Equals Costume: They opt to wear traditional clothing when they go overseas, rather than having to choose between a binary of gendered Western clothing. This earns them scorn and ridicule... until their plane wins the Great Race.
- Dark Secret: Their first airplane flew only 11 seconds and quickly drifted off course. When it crashed, it paralyzed their sister and is implied to have killed one of their friends.
- Doesn't Like Guns: Thinks putting them on airplanes is a waste, and did not take finding Yachi's revolver well.
- Encyclopaedic Knowledge: But only of recent scientific discoveries. At the start of the story, they are painfully ignorant about history, politics, and world cultures.
- Expository Hairstyle Change: Asuka goes from a 'safe' jaw-length haircut to a swept inverted bob as they begin to experiment with their gender presentation. When the war ends, they start growing it back out as a return to normalcy.
- Expy: Began as essentially a non-binary version of Jiro Horikoshi's protrayal in The Wind Rises before their character diverged.
- Good with Numbers: Prerequisite for their job.
- Homemade Inventions: Their first plane was built out of a bicycle and a moped engine.
- I Need a Freaking Drink: Pretty much whenever a new plane gets completed.
- It's All My Fault: Believes themselves to be responsible not just for the deaths of the pilots who fly their planes, for for the entire war.
- Limited Wardrobe: Akitsukuni's nonbinary gender role and their dysphoria leaves them with fairly limited wardrobe options. This becomes a problem when going places where Western clothing is expected.
- Morning Routine: They usually wake up before dawn, because it takes them hours to shave, bathe, apply makeup, pick out their clothes, read their newspapers, and get breakfast. They consider a six AM wakeup to be "sleeping in".
- Nerd Glasses
- Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Downplayed. Asuka has an excellent understanding of all parts of aircraft design, but they are still only an engineer and specialists on their team often know more in their field. Everything else Asuka knows is only as a hobbyist.
- Sucks at Dancing: They are so bad at first it causes a minor disaster. They do learn, though.
- Trans Nature: Assigned male at birth but now identifies as non-binary. Asuka also takes cross-sex hormones, and many scenes show them navigating their dysphoria.
- Trans Tribulations: Asuka simultaneously finds the narrow confines of Akitsukuni's non-binary gender role constraining, and struggles with intense dysphoria which makes that role feel safe. This conflict worsens as the story goes on.
Arita Yachi
Asuka's main love interest, Yachi enters the story a brave, funny, patriotic Captain in the Akitsukuni Army, recently retraining to become a pilot. This doesn't last.- Ace Pilot: The best in Akitsukuni, ending the war with 30 kills.
- Dramatic Stutter: When he finally breaks down at the front, he can barely string together words.
- Gay Conservative: When we first meet him. This is normal in Akitsukuni, though, as it's the liberal and progressive parties that are homophobic. After the war, though, he has no political loyalties left.
- Goodbye, Cruel World!: As the war drags on, he writes a letter to Asuka that is, essentially a suicide note, as he's utterly convinced he isn't going to make it home.
- Heroic BSoD: His total breakdown before the final mission. He can't even bring himself to stand.
- These Hands Have Killed: When Yachi has his breakdown, driven in large part but the number of people he's killed, he stares at his trembling hands. The trembling doesn't stop even when he gets home months later.
- The Illegible: Played for drama. Yachi's war neurosis causes his hands to tremble uncontrollably. He wants to write about his experiences, but he can barely hold a pencil.
- The Storyteller: Yachi has excellent storytelling skills, a good sense of humour, and is a fairly eloquent writer.
Aircraft Design Company Quest Engineers
Kibe Koume
Mechanical Engineer, Office Manager- Majored in Western Hypocrisy: Studied engineering in Albia. Picked up a distaste for sexism back home, racism over there, and a plethora of swear words.
- Old Maid: Unmarried at 26 and getting desperate.
- Sir Swearsalot
- Tiny Tyrannical Girl
Sakane Jun
Materials Engineer, Prototype Workshop Lead- Henpecked Husband
- I Have No Son!: His father is not happy he's pushing pencils instead of fighting.
- Patriotic Fervor
- Survivor Guilt: Of a sort. His brothers aren't dead, but they're on the front and he isn't.
Tezuka Kenji
Areodynamics Engineer- Out of Focus: The least consequential engineer.
- The Stoner
Hasegawa Morio
Chemical Engineer Aircraft Design Company Quest Other
Ohara Satomi
Ohara Airworks test pilot and neice of Mr. Ohara- Actual Pacifist
- Butch Lesbian: Satomi is as masc as lesbians get in Akitsukuni. A lot of people assume she's nonbinary, and if she pushed it any further they'd just assume she was a man.
- Cultural Rebel: If there's a rule of Akitsukuni society, Satomi breaks it. In gender presentation, politeness, her job, how she dresses, Satomi violates every norm she comes across, and keeps doing it overseas.
- First-Name Basis: Everyone just calls her by her first name, and she tends to refer to everyone else the same way.
- Lesbian Jock
- Thrill Seeker
Coralie D'Amboise
Former Gallian test pilot who ends up in Akitsukuni, and eventually marries Satomi.- Allohistorical Allusion: Her obsession with Élan, the hand of fate, and honour in battle acts as a sort of toned-down preview of the nightmare scenario for the players: Akitsukuni taking the path of real life Imperial Japan.
- Blood Knight
- Eagle Squadron: Explicitly travels to Akitsukuni to fight for them in their war with Caspia once she gets kicked out of the Army.
- Everything Sounds Sexier in French: A strong believer in it. Dismayed by how its used mostly as a technical language in Akitsukuni.
- Honor Before Reason
- Martyrdom Culture: Gallia, swept up in revanchism, is one of these at the moment.
Castles of Steel Characters
Arisukawa Haruna
The main character of Castles of Steel, Haruna is a princess of an Imperial cadet branch, and the first woman in the Akitsukuni Navy.- Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: Haruna's inability to hold her drink is responsible for most of her worst decisions.
- All Women Are Lustful: As summarized in an info post...
haruna has messy and unwise attractions to women. she lusts, she makes poor decisions, she sleeps with prostitutes, hooks up with girls at bars and parties, contemplates infidelity, and is left profoundly lonely and longing by separation. haruna isn’t in yuris with a girl that makes her heart go doki doki, haruna fucks.
- By-the-Book Cop: Takes the regulations and stated values of the Navy extremely seriously, even when it goes counter to the actual culture of the organization. Manifests in small ways, like her respectful treatment of her uniform, and large ones, like her opposition to its increasing arbitrary cruelty.
- Casual Kink: Haruna is very into rope bondage.
- Category Traitor: Haruna's rapidly on her way to becoming an anti-imperialist Imperial princess.
- Cunning Linguist: Speaks three languages and reads a fourth at the start of the story, and then rapidly learns two more over the course of it.
- Embarrassing Old Photo: The newspaper keeps reprinting the photo of her from her first year in the Navy Academy, where not only is her skin not doing terribly well, she doesn't even have a proper uniform yet.
- Hand Cannon: Buys a huge Albian revolver with a cut down barrel. Quickly comes to regret it.
- Has a Type: Tall women make Haruna swoon, every time.
- Lady of War
- Mandatory Motherhood: As a member of the nobility, is terrified of this catching up to her and ruining her career.
- My Greatest Failure: The riot in Joseon and 'the girl in the blue dress' mark the beginning of Haruna's disillusionment with imperialism.
- Neat Freak
- New Job as the Plot Demands: Haruna is constantly being transferred for a variety of reasons. In the first two years of the story, she has five posts.
- Phobia: After her dip in the frozen sea, drowning.
- Politically-Active Princess: Not originally, but increasingly as the story goes on.
- Revolvers Are Just Better: Because she doesn't understand automatic pistols.
- Rebellious Princess
- Royals Who Actually Do Something
- The Alcoholic: By arc 5, Haruna's poor choices surrounding alcohol spiral completely out of control.
- The Stoic: Externally this, usually. Internally, less so.
- Villain Protagonist: When the story starts, at least.
- Warrior Prince: ... well, princess.
- Weaponized Headgear: Once used her thrown hat to distract a shooter as she came around a corner.
- Women's Mysteries: Has more than once used this to get out of awkward situations.
Kishimoto Aiko
Haruna's long-term love interest, Aiko is a student from the far southern city of Shimazu.- Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!
- But Not Too Bi: Self-enforced. While she's bisexual, she's essentially a political lesbian, unwilling to give up her opportunities and education for marriage.
- Brains and Bondage
- Constantly Curious: Has a tendencies to go through people's things if left to her own devices.
- Does Not Like Men: Her feminism is far enough on the 'radical' end that it causes her social difficulties and serious anxiety.
- Huge Schoolgirl
- Straw Feminist: Deconstructed. Aiko does not talk to men unless she has to, thinks heterosexual marriage is a prison, and often thinks that straight women are just brainwashed. This is ruining her relationship with her family, hurting her friends, and making her deeply anxious. Placed among a wide variety of other feminist characters, it is clear that her worldview isn't rational, but instead the result of a broken society.
- The Fashionista: On the cutting edge of imported fashions, so much so that she's almost a prototype for...
- The Flapper
Kwon Ji-Hu
An enlisted sailor (later Petty Officer) transferred into the Imperial Akitsukuni Navy from the disbanded remains of the Joseon Fleet. Haruna first meets him as a member of her minisub crew, and he follows her onto IO-2 and to her AA battery.- Category Traitor: Is serving in the military of the nation occupying his.
- Language Barrier: When he first enters the story, he doesn't speak any Akitsukuni, as he just transferred.
- Punch-Clock Villain: He has a wife and the Navy is a stable, well-paying job.
- The Cynic: To Ota's idealist.
- Those Two Guys: With Ota.
Ota Atsumori
Another enlisted sailor, Ota is first met on the minisub. Is basically never seen without Kwon.- Chummy Commies: An anarcho-communist, to be precise.
- Cunning Linguist: Speaks Joseon, allowing him to have conversations with Kwon nobody else can understand.
- It Runs in the Family: Shares his politics with his older brother... a famous terrorist.
- Satisfied Street Rat: Spent his youth fighting reactionaries in the street and loving it.
- The Idealist: To Kwon's cynic.
