Bai Jin

Bai Jin is a male anime and manga character who features in Karakuri Circus.

Biography

Bai Jin (白金) was a male human born many years ago in the land of Qin where he had an older brother named Bai Yin. The pair grew up to be skilled puppeteers where they sought to improve their art. To achieve that end, they travelled to Prague the City of Spires in order to apprentice themselves under an alchemist. The two wanted to master the art so that they could use it on their puppets in order to bring them to life. It was in France they had met a girl named Francine. Bai Jin was the first to fall in love with Francine, giving her food and other supplies. The affection was evident, as the young lad had no problem doing anything Francine suggested. A bright morning, the trio headed out for a festival. The idea was that Francine wanted to go see the puppets, as she explained that she was fascinated by them. This reminded the two brothers of their own joy as puppeteers. While watching a show, Jin gave Francine bread, which she was later shown to take to her brothers and sisters. The trio then came upon the puppets that Francine so wanted to see, but find that the stall was closed, with an old man managing it horribly. Instead of going home sadly, Francine suggests that Jin and Yin could do the puppets for him. Falling victim to his crush's idea, the two ended up doing it; amusing kids that walk by and the day was a success. The two brothers drinking and enjoying at the end, Bai Jin appeared to have drunk too much so his brother lays him on the bed. It was then that Yin offers to walk Francine to her door. In that timeframe, Yin learns about Francine's 'family', and about her having the mark of a thief. He also learnt that Francine was a truly kind person, helping both orphans and the disabled. The next day, when Yin and Jin were home when the former asked a question concerning love, and walking the road to the world with someone else. Jin came to be worried and possibly suspicious with him asking if he was talking about Francine. Jin cried that he loved the girl first, making his older brother uncomfortable. After that day, for a time, Jin did not talk to Yin.

He then secretly kidnapped Francine where he fled Prague with his brother attempting to find him over the course of the next 9 years. Every time she attempted to escape he was noted to had beat her until one day he demanded why she could not love him the way she loved his brother leading to her eventually silently obeying his commands. In that time, he settled in Quiberon in France where he settled by a village in order for her to fall in love with him. However, she still held out hope for Bai Yin to find her as she was in love with him instead of Jin. By this point, her eyes had become cold to the point that it made Jin uneasy and he grew to dislike Francine more and more in this time. Around this time, a sickness fell among the villagers of the town and they came to believe Francine was responsible where a mob of them captured her and imprisoned her in a basement. Due to his growing dislike of her, it was said that he had allowed her to be captured though still worked to free her. Unable to free her, Jin looked to develop the Aqua Vitae in order to cure the villagers and thus secure Francine's freedom. By this point, his brother Yin had tracked him down and demanded to know the location of his wife with Jin directing her to her prison. Thus, the two were re-united but he was unable to free her as the villagers forced him away from Francine. Around this time, a fire was started at the prison engulfing it in flames where it ended up killing Francine. Jin arrived at the scene with the Soft Stone holding the Aqua Vitae but was too late and had found that his brother had similarly already made the stone to save his love. Both were too late and Jin was broken over the loss of Francine as well as the fact that she only loved his brother. Yin though said that in her own way she cared for Jin as well which was the reason why she had never attempted to run away from him. Giving Jin a lock of Francine's hair, Yin departed and left his brother to mourn the loss of their shared love.

Using the remains of her hair, Jin sought to re-create Francine as a doll automaton who he also named Francine after her. Upon being activated, he had wished for her to love him and though she was devoted to her creator she had a blank expressionless face. In an effort to see her smile, he crafted other automatons that eventually became the Midnight Circus that were tasked with making performances to see the doll Francine smile. This included acts of murder that were perpetrated on the villagers at Quiberon for their role in the death of the original Francine and he even began to infect them with a virus that led to the Z.O.N.O.P.H.A. syndrome. Despite all these efforts, the doll never smiled and in anger Jin began to resent her as well as take his frustrations out on her. This led to one day when he attacked the Francine doll and damaged her where he left her broken on the ground after which he departed France as he journeyed back to his homeland. Unknown to him at the time, the Francine doll was repaired by the other automatons who then departed the area as they continued in their murderous efforts to make her smile whilst spreading the ZONOPHA pathogen across the lands. Returning to Qin, the now elderly Jin was struck with a realisation that he could make a new Francine by using the Soft Stone and her hair to reincarnate her in a new body. To achieve this, he needed the hair on the Francine doll and was prepared to return to France but his aged body began to fail him and he realised he could not survive the journey. Thus, he kidnapped a Bai boy from his village and created a well of Aqua Vitae from the Soft Stone where he dissolved his body into allowing for his personality to be present within the waters. The boy was then tricked into drinking the water allowing for Jin to reincarnate within the younger body which gained white hair and other superhuman traits as a result of exposure to Aqua Vitae. He then made the journey back to Quiberon but found the doll Francine to had long departed the area and sought to look for her. But then he saw a young girl that was the age of his new body who looked exactly like Francine. This was Angelina who resembled her aunt and was overjoyed at seeing a boy like her where she introduced him to her family where he came to join the ranks of the Shirogane that had formed as victims of the automatons and looked to destroy those machines.

He took the name of Dean Maistre where he joined their ranks as he reasoned that they would help him track down the Francine doll. However, he came to be obsessed with Angelina and he wanted her to love him where he intended to accomplish this by being her protector. During this time, her mother Lucille did not want her child to live the life of a Shirogane and had her leave Quiberon where she was told to make a new life for herself elsewhere. Maistre later came to find out that Angelina had gone to Japan where she had fallen in love with a man named Shoji Saiga who she shared he Aqua Vitae with so that they could be together. Dean joined the couple where he secretly held hope that Angelina would fall in love with him eventually if he stayed with the couple. His close ties to them led to Shoji deciding to adopt Maistre who then took the name of Sadayoshi Saiga where he helped manage the Saiga Group business conglomerate that had a talent for making puppets. He intended to use his business acumen to grow the company whilst trying to become closer to Angelina in his own way. In these years, Jin overheard a conversation between Angelina and Shoji where she revealed to him that she was pregnant with his child. The couple were overjoyed at this news but this shattered Maistre's views of Angelina as he believed she was no longer worthy of being his love as she was no longer a human being to him. Discarding his love, he maintained his identity when Angelina gave birth to a daughter that she named Éléonore Saiga where the child had her mothers appearance and Sadayoshi hatched on a twisted scheme to achieve his goals. He secretly dispatched automatons to Kuroga Village to acquire the Soft Stone that Angelina had passed to her daughter. During the attack, the family were visited by the doll Francine who wanted to be dismantled by Angelina as the automaton saw no further purpose in her life. During the attack, Angelina and the doll Francine were both killed with Éléonore being trapped in a well where the Soft Stone in her led to the formation of a pool of Aqua Vitae. Exposure to it led to Éléonore becoming a Shirogane which was a path in life that her parents never wanted for their child. By this point, Éléonore was raised by Guy Christoph and her father who did so from the shadows in order to better protect his daughter. In this time, Éléonore suffered from regular nightmares of being attacked by automatons that came from the inherited memories from the Aqua Vitae. Guy Christoph then suggested that the girl be sent to Quiberon to be trained as a Shirogane in order to better protect herself whereupon Shoji Saiga could recover her from the village.

It was then that Sadayoshi Saiga decided to enact part of his scheme as he decided to incarnate himself in a new body. The intention was to father an illegitimate child named Masaru Saiga and transfer his mind into the young boy. He then intended for Éléonore to be assigned as his protector and through this he could get her devotion as well as her love by being her charge. In this time, Sadayoshi Saiga began to visit the Shirogane village in Quiberon where he disguised himself as Shoji Saiga and convinced the young Éléonore that she was simply a puppet and that she had to protect Masaru Saiga who was the most important thing in her life. This meant that when Éléonore's father attempted to have Éléonore assigned to him so he could free her from her life as a Shirogane that she simply refused as she no longer saw herself as being human. Meanwhile, Sadayoshi had revealed Masaru Saiga's existence to Shoji but expressed no interest in looking after the child. Shoji then took the boy in and looked after him as his 'grandson' whereupon Sadayoshi left documents to indicate that he wanted to provoke a civil war in the Saiga Group that would result in factions forming in Kuroga village's puppeteers that would seek to claim either Masaru or kill him after he inherited his father's place in the company. Thus, Shoji looked to protect Masaru and asked the Shirogane to have Éléonore come to Japan to serve as his grandson's protector thus inadvertently falling into Sadayoshi's scheme. Eventually Shoji and Guy discovered that Sadayoshi was posing as him and of his plan to use Masaru to cause infighting. Fearing the worst, Shoji requested Eleonore to come to Japan so she could protect Masaru so both would be safe. This played right into Sadayoshi's plan who at this point was all but ready to download himself into Masaru and Shoji was about to reunite him with Eleonore. Having no more use for Shoji, Sadayoshi infected the Kuroga village with Zonapha Syndrome in order to lure Shoji. There Sadayoshi explained all his plans to Shoji starting from trying to get Angelina to himself and later Eleonore and using Masaru to become his vessel. Shoji utterly disgusted at Sadayoshi fought the madman who brought his own puppets to kill Shoji, using his new self-made puppets, Golleyemes, Captain Nemo and Jack-O'-Lantern while demanding to know where the Soft Stone is. Shoji manages to defend himself but is slowly overwhelmed and asks Sadayoshi why he needs the Soft Stone. Sadayoshi explains that while Eleonore is a Shirogane, Masaru is not, as such the latter will age more rapidly than Eleonore will thus forcing him to redo his plan time and time again to recreate the close bond suggestion, so he plans to create Aqua Vitae so that Masaru's body will age five times slower and live a long life with Eleonore.

Once on the station, he made his way to the replica of Prague that he had created to be his and Éléonore's home. However, without his love, he came to despair at his plan being thwarted by the Shirogane before embarking on a new plan. He decided to use DNA samples of his original body to create a clone replica and transferred his mind into the younger form. Thus, he discarded his Faceless identity as the body was too badly damaged where he was happy at being back in flesh and blood form again. He then created a number of Francine Dolls to shower him with love and attention whilst he decided to remain on the station to watch the death of the human race from Zonopha. Bai Jin by this point had decided that he would see the world destroyed and would be tended by the dolls till he died with this being his final death. Whilst on the station, he came to be visited by his son Masaru who had come to find a cure for Zonopha and begged his father for a means of stop the disease.

Overview

Personality and attributes

In appearance, Bai Jin was originally fair skinned young Chinese man of average build with long black hair. He used for the most part a set of brown robes that covered most of his body, a more dark greenish hood over his clothes. Underneath he used to wear black pants and darkened shoes. Nine years after Francine's rejection, Bai Jin has become far more crazed in appearance, this maniacal new look becoming far more exacerbated in his later years as an old man. After his reincarnation in a Bai boy, he began to take the name of Dean Maistre when he joined the ranks of the Shirogane. He then took the name of Sadayoshi Saiga after being adopted by Shoji Saiga and joining his family. Following his assassination attempt on Saiga, it was believed that Sadayoshi was killed but he took on a new identity as Commander Faceless who led the Shirogane-O. His good lucks led to him being popular among the ladies in his youth.

Originally, he was shown as being an easy going, expressive, polite and cheerful person. These traits though began to disappeared once he developed an obsession with Francine and the unrequited love led to him falling into madness. In time, Bai Jin became a self-centered individual who could not see anything wrong with his own actions. In fact, he believed that if something benefited him then it could not be wrong and did not care who he hurt to accomplish his goals. This eventually led to him developing a god complex and he looked down on humanity. He also described himself as being fickle and to quickly suffer from boredom after a while.

Sadayoshi shows himself as a polite, somewhat playful and friendly man in public. In truth and being the next incarnation of Bai Yin, he retains his worst traits, namely his psychopathic obsession with Francine and their look alikes, his complete disregard for human life and anything that doesn't benefit him, and his manipulative and treacherous nature.

He will use anything and everything to achieve his purpose of being loved by the image of the woman he set his sights on, no matter how underhanded or bloody he has to go to do it. At this point he has become far more self-entitled and selfish, as he stopped thinking of Angelina as a human being after she got pregnant of Shoji's child, simply reasoning she was worthless for not loving him.

He became smitten with Francine after first seeing her and was in love with her. At the time, his brother Bai Yin showed no interest in her and Jin sought to court her. However, she and Yin came to fall in love with one another with Jin seeing this as an act of betrayal by his brother. The jealously he experienced mentally broke him and made him more crazed over the years.

Her obsession with Francine led to him creating the Doll Francine where he used a lock of the real ones hair when making her. After creating the doll, he had her obey his commands but saw no love or laughter there. Thus, he made many attempts to make her laugh including creating clown-like Automata who performed gruesome acts of murder to entertain her. All these efforts failed and Bai Jin came to be frustrated with her where he eventually took his anger out on the Doll Francine where he seemingly destroyed it. However, the Automata managed to repair the Doll Francine and continue with their mission in attempting to make her laugh.

Powers and abilities

Originally, Bai Jin was an ordinary human being with no special inherent powers or abilities at first. By adulthood though, he came to learn the principles behind alchemy where he looked to find a means of creating human-like living puppets. He and his brother later came to become skilled alchemists where they sought to create the Aqua Vitae.

Bai Jin came to develop it after his brother where he managed to make the Soft Stone that produced the substance. Jin also came to develop sophisticated mechanical dolls that were called Automata. These came in a variety of shapes and sizes along with capabilities where they came to form the Midnight Circus.

As Faceless, he had reconstructed his body to be half-automaton where he headed the Shirogane-O where he provided them similar enhancements under the pretence of fighting the Midnight Circus. This saw him having built-in weaponry within his body such as being able to fire spikes from his arms to grievously wound others. In this state, Jin could survive having his limbs being severed where he could attach another limb with ease. He also created a new group of elite automatons to serve him with these being the Les Dernier Quatre.

Bai Jin was the person responsible for creating the ZONOPHA virus as punishment on the villagers that were responsible for killing Francine. The pathogen was actually created by microscopic dust-like automatons that he named Apollyon. Jin managed to craft these into giant statue sized silver winged incarnations formed of dust that were called Artemis which were used as part of his plan to infect the entire world with ZONOPHA.

Over the years, Jin in his various identities had developed an impressive array of technology at his disposal. This included the ability to turn humans into mechanical puppets like the Shirogane-O's that had built-in weaponry in their bodies. He also had the means of transferring a person's mind between bodies and keeping copies of a person's consciousness. This was the means he attracted Shirogane to his cause where he offered them immortality via mind downloads from their original bodies and placing them in mechanical vessels. For himself, Jin was able to transfer his mind to replace another living beings consciousness where he improved the time it took for the process. Alternatively, he could transfer his mind into a younger clone body of himself.

He maintained a flying airship that could house a large number of automatons and served as a mobile headquarters.

Notes

• Bai Jin was created by Kazuhiro Fujita where he featured in the setting of the Karakuri Circus universe.

Appearances

• Karakuri Circus:

External Links

• Karakuri Circus Wiki Entry

This article is a stub. You can help Multiversal Omnipedia by expanding it.