Kanade Minamino

[Kanade has been thinking about her next move for a little while now, but hasn't gotten the courage to make a decision and actually do anything. That's not an issue today; she woke up and her first thought was, 'this is the day.' In keeping with that, she's pulling a Hibiki and sneaking into her suspiciously-good-friend's room slightly early in the morning. She's hoping her sneaking is unopposed, but she'll manage if she's discovered. She's paying no mind to the fact that this is slightly out of character for her; there's no way this couldn't work. It's a foolproof plan. There's no way Hibiki could possibly misunderstand what Kanade had planned, if everything went as she intended.

Hibiki, there's someone in your room; the tables appear to have been turned on you, as she's let herself in.]

Player nickname: MaxSalsa
Player DW: maxsalsa
Way to contact you:
AIM: UltimateSalsa (preferred!)
Plurk: MaxSalsa
Are you at least 15?: Aye.
Current Characters: Rita Mordio, Itsuki Myoudouin, Totooria "Totori" Helmold

Character: Kanade Minamino
Fandom: Suite Precure

Character Notes:
History: Kanade shares the role of "lead character" in Suite Precure with her partner Hibiki. Amusingly, the two hate each other. They were the best of friends until the beginning of their first year of middle school, when a misunderstanding made Kanade not want to talk to her again; their relationship was weird for the rest of the year. At the beginning of their second year, though, an odd incident occurred: when Kanade went to an old church the two girls frequented in their younger days with an old record, she found Hibiki cornered by an odd cat and three strange men. When the four attacked Hibiki and Kanade with an odd creature that stole Kanade's record to take a form, their hearts harmonized and they became Precure! Hibiki became Cure Melody, while Kanade became Cure Rhythm. Their task: to defeat the minions of Minor Land, who stole the Legendary Score and seek to complete it with its magical Notes to sing the Melody of Sorrow, a score that will drive the world into despair. Hummy, their cat mascot, seeks to recover the Legendary Score for Major Land and rearrange its component Notes into the Melody of Happiness, which will bring smiles to the world instead.

It was a rocky start for the girls; though they were able to mend their friendship, the cat from Minor Land, Seiren, repeatedly tries to get in the way and drive a wedge between them, usually over something that seems minor but is a huge hangup for the girls. They start to learn about each other again and become close; they also start to branch out and start really seeing the people around them, rather than letting their old grudges against each other ruin their lives. Their various friends help keep them afloat when they're feeling down, though Minor Land's cronies tend to prey on the girls' friends as bargaining chips and targets.

Kanade, while interested in music, has another pasttime she puts her energy into: cooking. Her parents own a cupcake shop, the Lucky Spoon, which Kanade will one day take over; she works hard to hone her skills in preparation for that day, and she depends on Hibiki to taste-test for her. She gets cross when Hibiki's response after eating all her hard work is not particularly useful, but she deals with it over the course of the year. Seiren loves to get in the way of Kanade's cooking, and has actually used it as an in to attack in a few cases.

Over the course of a few months, the girls steadily regain a large number of the Notes for the Legendary Score, managing to edge out Minor Land's forces for control; the Precure are puzzled by the arrival of a new ally, Cure Muse, that seems to only work alone, and doesn't seem to speak. Muse only seems to act at all when Melody and Rhythm are either way off the mark, or about to get in serious trouble they won't recover from, and disappears just as quickly afterward. Seiren, meanwhile, is missing her old friend Hummy, but is blocked from trying to leave her post by her boss, Mephisto, who effectively forces her to continue doing evil by poisoning her mind with lies. Eventually, Seiren runs away and convinces Hummy to bring her the Notes, allowing her to complete the Melody of Sorrow. With precious little time left, Hibiki and Kanade search for a way to combat the dark music, but can't figure anything out, and are resigned to their defeat... until Seiren finds she can't sing, at the last possible moment, because she refuses to harm Hummy. Mephisto tries to force her, but Hummy maintains faith that Seiren will not hurt her. That faith is enough to break the control, and a new power is born: Seiren turns into her disguise form Ellen Kurokawa permanently, and Ellen becomes the third Precure, Cure Beat! The three are able to repel Mephisto, and Kanon Town is safe for the moment.

The girls start a set of new trials as Minor Land becomes desperate and the attacks increase in number and intensity, though Cure Muse appears more often to protect the three. They discover a box that is said to give the Precure power, and eventually find it contains a mentor of sorts: Crescendo Tone, the most powerful of the Fairy Tones that accompany Hummy and assist the Precure. While the Fairy Tones are magical and definitely useful, the power of Crescendo Tone turns out to be off the scale. But even that power turns out not to be enough when Mephisto attacks directly, seeking to defeat the Precure and get them out of his way once and for all. When all hope seems lost, the three are saved by an unlikely source: Cure Muse, who turns out to be someone the girls know from Kanon Town. Muse, or rather Ako, is Mephisto's daughter; Mephisto himself, the king of Major Land was corrupted by dark power and forced to serve Minor Land's goals. The four work together to purify Mephisto of the dark energy and save themselves for a bit longer, but the remaining forces of Minor Land regroup and take up the fight themselves as Muse joins the team.

A short time later, Ako returns home to Major Land to visit her father, but a dark force attacks; her mother, Aphrodite, seals the power within her, and the Cures are forced to attack to drive it out. Though they are initially defeated, a new power is awakened in them, and Hibiki leads the assault to free Aphrodite with her new abilities.

The battle with Minor Land continues for a few more months; the final enemy is revealed to be Noise, a being of discord that Minor Land wants to revive. The key is Notes, and the girls fight Minor Land at every turn to make sure their goals don't succeed. But when the last Note is finally collected, Noise is resurrected anyway, and brings overwhelming power to bear against the Precure, nearly defeating them outright and taking away a number of their friends and even some of their powers. Eventually, Hibiki realizes that Noise is the embodiment of human sorrow, and refuses to fight it. After a number of last-ditch schemes, the Precure gain a new power, and their feelings reach Noise, purifying it and restoring their worlds to normal. It looks like smooth sailing ahead for the girls...

There are two side-stories via the Precure All Stars crossover movies that affect the Suite team. DX3 is set early in Suite and is a huge clash in which two dozen Precure fight what is effectively the origin of every bad guy in all of their battles: Black Hole. They prove unable to defeat it, and must sacrifice the power that bonds their world to the worlds of the fairies, the Prism Flower, to defeat Black Hole once and for all. Though this disheartens them, the Cures find new hope in each other; and after a time, a new seed is found blooming on the Heart Tree that protects the world: a new Prism Flower.

The other side story is set after Suite's end in All Stars New Stage, where a girl by the name of Ayumi befriends a small piece of a major enemy, Fusion; Fusion decides to grant Ayumi's (misunderstood) wish to reset the world that has slighted her, and it's up to the Cures to work together and bring Ayumi to Fusion to make her feelings understood. The Suite team plays a nontrivial role, as the most recent team to finish off their enemy, and thus the mentors to the newest team (the Smile team, of which Yayoi is a member).

Neither of these events is plot-critical to Suite directly (and playing Suite alone, they technically never happen), but they're considered canon to the greater Precure (and Toei) metacanons, so if we can play them sometime, we probably should.

Personality: Kanade is her best friend's polar opposite. She's not the kind of person that can let things go, and she will actively seek solutions to problems even if they're not her problems. She also has a hard time admitting when she's wrong. The two of these together create the biggest reason the girls clash all the time: they bicker about tiny things, Kanade blows things out of proportion, and Hibiki backs off before the two's relationship becomes unsalvageable. Typically this leads to Kanade realizing she's made a mistake and trying to fix things, and the two will work out their differences and be friends again until something else inevitably goes wrong.

Kanade refuses to lose at anything, and will force that by making herself be the best at everything, even if she has to push herself to and beyond her limits for it. It's not at all uncommon for Kanade to bite off far more than she can chew and need to rely on Hibiki for help, lest something bad happen. This has the side effect that she's horribly hard on herself. As odd as it sounds, though, the two make a good team when they aren't fighting; if she's got someone behind her, Kanade can put out quite a bit of confidence, and she can rally a cause quickly. She just needs that support first.

Aside from her duties as Precure and her love of music, Kanade's true calling is as a baker, and someday a patissier, and she practices on a regular basis, putting her heart and soul into baking sweets, especially cupcakes, which happen to be Hibiki's favorite food. She becomes happy easily when cooking projects are going well (or when she can solve a problem by cooking something), and gets angry rapidly if Hibiki manages to get in her way or eat something she shouldn't have.

With others, Kanade is largely a reasonable person, though her patience has limits. She gets along well with her friends in the cooking club, and is not exactly unpopular in school. Her other sore spot is her relationship with her brother Souta, who she can't seem to get through to, and she resents Hibiki for being a better sister figure than she herself. Ironically, though, it's through Souta that a good amount of Kanade's relationship with Hibiki is repaired. Kanade also does have something of a crush on a schoolmate, Ouji, though she can't bring herself to spit out her feelings anywhere around him. Rivals for his love will be met with resistance bordering on a declaration of war.

Other: Kanade is part of a Precure team with Hibiki; unlike most other teams (and later, their teammates), the two need to be together to transform, so by herself she's hilariously mundane unless she's been able to become Cure Rhythm beforehand.
Conflicting Characters: Itsuki Myoudouin is part of the Heartcatch team and is Kanade's senior; the two won't interact directly in DDD unless something specifically needs them to speak to each other, and considering Itsuki is largely ignored even in her own canon when not directly relevant, the odds of that are low.

Additional Links:
Kanade on the Precure Wiki
Hibiki's app for DDD, which may help fill in anything I missed

First Person (video):
[Kanade's looking quite stressed this morning, running her hands roughly through her hair.] I screwed up. I messed up again, and I'm so... ugh! Just once, once, when Hibiki is right, I want to actually pay attention and not rush in headfirst. I should have realized the whole thing was a trap. The signs were obvious enough that they could have put a big sign that said "this is a trap, please come in!" on the door and I'd still have just barged in like an idiot.

[Her head drops to her desk with a thud as she groans.] Somebody smack me. Maybe then I'll be thinking straight.

Third Person:
She'd thought it would bring them closer. She'd thought, like an optimistic fool, that they could learn to play the piano together, and they'd be friends again, and nothing would go wrong. Hummy would have her Harmony Power, they'd deal with Minor Land, and that would be the end of things.

The discord of a dozen random keys at once filled the empty church as Kanade stood from the bench sharply. "It's always like this!" Always, she just couldn't get through to Hibiki. Not for lack of trying, not for Hibiki doing anything wrong. Kanade just couldn't say what she wanted to say when her friend - her one true friend that she knew, in her heart, she'd never truly hate - was there.

Not that it was just with Hibiki, either - her brother Souta, her parents... This wasn't sustainable, and she knew it. Something had to give. Whether it would be her or her friend, she didn't know. And she didn't want to find out.