Ichi Anrakuki

Black hair kept short sits above a face locked in a permanent scowl, even at rest. He is a grown man, and inside Mikuzu Prison he wears the plain standard-issue clothing like every other inmate.

Ichi is grave and soured, though none of that makes him difficult to hold: he follows the rules and gives the guards no trouble. What he has abandoned is the idea of a life afterward, believing a criminal like him is stuck in the gutter permanently. Society shut him out over his record, and watching the friend who set him up grow rich left him deeply bitter about his own trajectory and about the justice system generally.

Danjuro Tobita's determination to be a model prisoner caught him off guard, and his first instinct was to wave the old man off and tell him not to waste the effort. Being rescued by him changed that. Ichi turned out to be decent and even-handed when it counted, volunteering to share the punishment for Danjuro's Quirk use as repayment, and began to entertain the thought that he might not be finished after all.

Ichi once worked at a technology start-up his friend had founded, the two of them intent on succeeding loudly enough to inspire other people. Hunting more investors, the friend, who was also the CEO, told Ichi to dress up the company's books. Ichi did not refuse an order from the top. When the fraud came to light he was handed the entire blame and sent to Mikuzu Prison for it. He served that sentence as a model inmate, meaning to make amends, and earned a mechanic's certification along the way. It bought him nothing. No employer would touch an ex-convict, so he ended up on the street, where he eventually crossed paths with his former friend, by then rich and celebrated. He attacked him in a rage, drew an aggravated assault charge, and went back inside.

Arriving for that second stint, he met Danjuro Tobita and could not work out what so elegant an older man was doing there. Danjuro kept fumbling the tasks the guards set, and Ichi assumed it was a distraction play until he learned the man sincerely wanted to earn model-prisoner standing. Ichi told him his own story, advised him to give up because there is no way back out of the hole they had fallen into, and suggested they wing the work detail and call it a day.

Later, on a construction assignment, a loose screw gave way under Ichi's footing and he fell from the scaffolding, thinking as he dropped that he had earned it. Danjuro caught him with Gently Trampoline, using Elasticity, which violated prison rules and cost him his standing. Ichi argued the man had only acted to save a life; the guards took him away regardless.

Word of it spread, and the other inmates could not understand the choice. Ichi asked Danjuro directly why he would wreck his own record, and worked out that someone was waiting for him outside. Danjuro confirmed it with a photograph of himself and Manami Aiba, explaining that he would only deserve to see her again by conducting himself as a gentleman and reaching out at the moments that count. Ichi answered by openly using his own Quirk, Static, which generates electricity when he rubs himself rapidly, so that Danjuro would not be punished alone. It convinced him the world had perhaps not turned its back on him for good. As the guard led him away he mentioned the photo of Danjuro's granddaughter and promised the man would see her again. Danjuro corrected him: Manami is not his granddaughter, and he is thirty-two. Ichi, at thirty-three, was stunned to learn he was the older of the two.