Character Name: 佐藤洋子 Yoko Sato (Her first name is in honor of one of Japan's greatest ballerinas, Yoko Morishita. It contains characters for "ocean" and "child". Her surname is the most common surname in Japan. It is formed of the characters for "assist/help" and "wisteria".)
Gender: Female
Age: 16
Universe: Persona
Canon or Original: Original

Appearance: Yoko just looks like a ballet dancer. She is moderate height, 158cm (5'2"), with a very thin and willowy build. Years of training for dance have given her plenty of muscular strength and overall stamina despite an almost malnourished-seeming form. Her facial features are delicate and almost doll-like. She has pale and even skin and deep dark brown eyes. Her long, straight, lustrous black hair sometimes has a violet shine to it. She always wears it pulled back, no bangs or layers, and coiled into a neat ballet bun at the crown of her head. She often wears cute scrunchies pulled taunt around the bun as her only accessories. Jewelry is forbidden in class, so she never wears it even when not practicing. Makeup is only for performances and some auditions.

Yoko only seems to have two outfits—"ready for ballet class" and "school uniform". On most weekdays she can be seen wearing the white button-down shirt, blue pleated knee-length skirt, navy blue blazer with school crest, navy blue tie, black tights, and black loafers that her school requires. She wears the blazer even in the warmer months. When heading to ballet class, Yoko sticks to her studio's requirement of pink tights and black leotards, layered with a haphazard arrangement of warmups—most of which don't match or coordinate. She always carries her large dance bag filled with ballet and pointe shoes along with all the various accoutrements needed for her dance classes.

Personality: Her mother remembers young Yoko as an inquisitive and mischievous little girl, but that person now exists only in another time. Years spent training for ballet have crafted an entirely different person. Her academic classmates huff that Yoko is too serious and boring—just a goody-two-shoes and a suck-up. Her ballet peers mutter similar comments: stuck up, haughty, full of herself, teacher's pet... Despite being regularly surrounded by others, she has no friends. She doesn't care about connecting with others or getting to know them. She isolates herself a little bit more with each passing year, throwing herself into her studies and her dance training and leaving all other things at the wayside. She only focuses on her grades because her family has promised that she will not need to apply for college if she scores in the top percentile on mock exams and receives an position at a ballet company. Yoko has virtually no interests outside of dance. It is more than a passion; it is an obsession.

For this reason, her injury last year turned her entire life upside down. From the very beginning, Yoko's teachers saw great potential. They heaped upon her a mixture of praise and detailed criticism, nurturing the girl towards an inflated belief in her own ability and a relentless perfectionist streak. She only feels valued as a person when she is being complimented or singled out as an example. Every comment about things that she needs to improve cut her to the core, even though she never shows it, and she will work herself to exhaustion trying to fix that issue. She fixates on every element of her appearance and technique, totaling calories down to the smallest measurement and practicing a move until her toes are blistered. Yoko has only one goal: a career as a professional dancer.

But in one of the most critical years of her training, all of that was dashed aside when she suffered an injury. At first, she kept a clear head and listened carefully to the doctor's advice. But, through no fault of her own, it just isn't healing well. Yoko is supposed to be preparing for auditions and competitions that have a direct bearing on her chances of getting hired in a year or two, but although she is able to practice and train there is so much she must refrain from. This has sent her spiraling into depression, containing a despondency she locks deep inside. For Yoko, there is no "back up plan". She doesn't know what she will do with her life, if anything, if she cannot be a professional ballerina.

As she has no friends to rely on, she has withdrawn deeper into herself. She doesn't know what to do, and she doesn't want to ask for help. Her interactions with her classmates, both at high school and her ballet studio, have become increasingly limited. The perception of Yoko as "too good to mingle with the rest of us" has only increased. Her parents remain both blind to their child's struggle and unable to bridge her self-imposed isolation. Her ballet teachers, previously her closest relationships, have cooled their attention on her due to her need for injury recovery. She feels somewhat abandoned by them, and wonders if this means there is really nothing she can hope for.

Still, Yoko keeps dancing and studying. She doesn't know what else to do. She cries only when she is alone—only when she has to think about everything she has lost. She watches her ballet classmates prepare for auditions and competitions filled with envy that threatens to consume her. She spends long afternoons practicing over and over, fully aware of the skills she has lost and may never regain. She stays awake late nights reading textbooks to force her fears of a lost future from her mind. She slowly backs herself into a corner, alone, wishing that something would come out of the sky and put her out of her misery.

Any Unique Abilities/Skills:
• If not for her recent injury, Yoko is an excellent ballet dancer who was thought to have a future as an internationally-acclaimed professional. She has balance, strength, and stamina as anyone who applies so rigorously to a program of physical activity for so long.
• Yoko is a Persona user and can summon the "Red Dancer" to defend herself.

"Red Dancer" Info:

History: Sending Yoko to ballet class was supposed to be a simple gesture. Just something simple for their little toddler daughter, an easy excuse for a pink tutu. Her parents never imagined that it would become the all-encompassing interest for their child, almost transforming her into someone they barely recognize. On the one hand, they don't have to worry that she is engaging in delinquent behaviour. On the other, they rarely even see her due to her packed schedule, they have to make many financial sacrifices to afford her training, and it seems that she speaks a strange language they don't understand. She barely seems to need them anymore, unless there are tuition fees due.

On the whole, Yoko's life has been very "normal", ballet-fixation aside. Her stoic father works long hours and has spent several years in distant branch offices of his company. Her soft-spoken mother quietly maintains the family home, never voicing a complaint out-loud. They've always had enough money to get by, even with the costs of her training. There are some family activities they don't really do—such as vacations—mostly due to Yoko's reluctance to divert from her regular schedule.

Her mother has taken up in all kinds of charity groups in the neighborhood to distract her from her empty-too-soon-nest. If only they had the opportunity for other children... Children who would need her. She does what she can, packing boxed lunches and snacks for Yoko, making sure the laundry is always done so there are fresh tights and leotards, placing orders for pointe shoes before the current pairs are dead. She thought that the injury, tendon snapping suddenly mid-recital performance where Yoko had acquired a leading role, would give her a chance to reconnect and spend more time with the girl, since there would be less dancing... but the physical therapy and class schedule only seemed to increase instead.

The last year has been the most involved and overall worst that Yoko can remember. First there was the surgery. Then she spent many months working with a physical therapist after that, trying to recover in as safe a manner as possible. After that, ongoing sports medicine to try and ease her back into ballet training. There were some aspects of that she never stopped participating in, although she had to be very careful not to exacerbate her injury. Exams for university are looming overhead at school, giving her plenty to focus on in that area. There are few other classmates who could claim to be as busy as Yoko is.

Why, then, does she start to drift towards an interest in the Occult Club...?

Other Noteworthy Facts:
• Last year, her left Achilles tendon injury sustained significant damage. Yoko is slowly recovering. The progress has been set back several times.
• Family: Mother, Yuuko (Housewife) and father, Daisuke (Salaryman). No siblings or living distant relatives.

Universe Specific Information:
• In an urban fantasy setting, high school students fight back against Shadows that prey on humans by utilizing magic in the form of Persona.
• Personae: The main power that the players (Persona Users) defend themselves with. They are manifestations of a person's soul—personality, base desires, and will—in a tamed and controlled form. They're the "masks" people use to face the hardships of life, which usually come out in a time of emotional intensity or at the perceived risk of death. Summoning a Persona is draining both physically and mentally; it will take a toll on the user as they fight. Personae tend to take the shapes of mythological, historical, or even popular fictional figures. They are "born" in the unconscious collective thoughts of humanity: the Sea of Souls. Each Persona has a collection of physical and magical abilities it can use, depending on the Major Arcana it is assigned.
• Shadows: The main enemies, creatures that are born of negative human thought and emotions. These monsters are assigned one of the Major Arcana and possess skills to attack with, but they tend to be more instinctual and savage without guidance. Stronger shadows are much more intelligent and can even manifest as dark versions of their creators as Shadow Selves. A Shadow that has been tamed and accepted by the one that created them becomes a Persona. This process can revert under excessive stress, and a Persona can turn on its user if their will is too weak or if their creation is unnaturally forced. Shadows can manipulate time and space, but this power grows stronger when they gather in large numbers, causing reality itself to shift in unexpected ways. Normal humans can see Shadows if they are in a special location or if there is a space-time anomaly effecting the area. Otherwise, they are invisible.
• Gods, spirits, and other entities can step in and affect reality, though this is very uncommon under normal circumstances.

Storyline Specific Information: TBD

Source:
• List of Person 3 Skills
• Universe Specific Information from JTC's profile for Hina Ginbayashi, used with permission

RP Sample: She leaned down, overlapping the satin ribbons around her ankle, trying not to listen to the whispers.

"Did you see? Sato-san is back."

"Oh, really? After that awful accident? She's ready to dance?"

Then a chuckle, almost snorted in reply. "Please, she should be. It's been three months! How much longer is she going to slack off? Just because she thinks she's better than the rest of us..."

"But the injury..." The speaker's hesitation was palpable.

No one in the school could forget that moment, when the rising star of the ballet academy executed a graceful grand jeté only to land with an audible noise like a rubber band being plucked. How she made it through the rest of the solo, no one knew. They could all see that she was struggling, but it wasn't until after that they learned the truth of her injury: torn Achilles tendon. It sent collective shivers through the group; something that could have happened to any of them. Even now, some of them acted like it was contagious.

"Yeah, she should just give up. How does she think she'll be ready for audition season?" another chimed in. The self-satisfied smirk didn't need to be seen to be understood.

"Right. It's over. Why pretend?"

"Hey, that's not nice... What if she hears you?"

Yoko knotted the ribbons carefully and tucked the ends underneath. Please... like I care what any of you sheep have to say. She stood, keeping her eyes anywhere but the group of clustered gossips, and executed a few gentle relevés while holding the barre. She kept it slow and controlled—making sure that her ankle didn't feel strained.

Just focus on the motion. Up, and down. Up, and down. This was familiar. This was right. This was just what she had to do.

What other choice did she have?

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I'd like to add this SSI, please:

[Advanced] Persona: The Broken Sea: