Canon point: Post-series, following the events of Kamen Rider x Kamen Rider Gaim and Wizard: The Fated Movie war Feud. Basically, he's gotten himself re-possessed by Chimera but is now using Helheim fruit as a magical food source as opposed to mana.
Character history: There's a wiki link here! The episode summaries here are also good for history; Nitou first appears in episode 17. Please note that the subs I watched went with a different spelling of his name than the wiki uses, and I'm rolling with that. There's an argument about sub groups and this fandom in here somewhere.
Character world: Nitou's world is largely equivalent to the modern world save for the presence of magic. Magic is by no means a common thing--only certain people can become wizards, and this is not common knowledge. Those with the ability to become wizards are, should they fall into a significant enough despair, are at risk of giving birth to a Phantom, a creature of despair. When a Phantom is successfully born from despair, the potential wizard will die, and the Phantom will take their form and their place.
Wizards are those who have faced their internal Phantoms, not succumbed to despair, and continued on. They use the awakened power of their defeated Phantom in conjunction with magical rings and belts and continue to fight manifested Phantoms and to stop more Phantoms from being born. (Nitou's powers, though they do make use of rings, skew more towards using a bound spirit than something that comes from within and are different enough that he is referred to as the Ancient Wizard by those in the know. I will go into more detail in his abilities section.) It is possible for a wizard to go into the Underworld (basically, their psyche) of a person in the process of giving birth to a Phantom, fight off the Phantom that is trying to be born, and save the person from their despair. When the nascent Phantom is defeated, that person will no longer have the potential to become a wizard. By and large, the public is unaware of all of this. The wizards don't really make too much effort to conceal themselves, and the police are definitely aware of things, but it's by no means a big thing in the public eye. There was an incident late in canon in which it looked like Tokyo might be wiped out, but the average citizen wouldn't have known much beyond "there was a weird eclipse and everyone almost died."
Character personality: Nitou usually comes off as a loud and crazy hobo. This is in no small part because he really is a loud, crazy hobo. He does not maintain a permanent place of residence, instead pitching his tent wherever he ends up. He is not always good about things like making sure that he is allowed to pitch his tent wherever, and it's not unusual for him to get driven away after parking it somewhere they don't appreciate vagrants. He's happiest when he can keep moving and adventuring, always on the lookout for something new and exciting. He is the sort of man who would get himself inhabited by an insanely powerful magical creature that threatened to kill him if he didn't do its bidding, cut that magical creature loose in a last-ditch effort to save his friends and the entire city of Tokyo, and then, once he was free of the magical creature, go seek it out again and renew that contract because the adventure involved was just too good to pass up. He's in this for the thrill of it all, and if he can help some people along the way, then that's cool, too. Nitou coasts through his life propelled by the thrill of it all. He is an adventurer. An adventurer without much foresight, no less.
He lives the life of a vagrant despite the fact that he comes from a wealthy family--it's all about adventure. Nitou lives by the idea that in danger, there is opportunity. The series is all about hope, and this is Nitou's way of looking at bad situations and having hope--no matter how bad things get, there's always an opportunity to be found somewhere. Nitou is a bit of a gambler and a lot of a risk-taker. Most people might be a little uneasy to have an insanely powerful magical creature living inside of them and demanding regular tribute of Mana in order to prevent oneself getting devoured. Not Nitou. He's resistant to any and all attempts to have Chimera forcibly removed in part because this is the greatest opportunity he's ever had. With Chimera, he's always in the middle of some grand adventure and amazing battle, even if it comes with a heaping helping of danger on the side. Nitou's penchant for taking chances is even evident in his weaponry. Beast uses a Dice Saber, which means that a six-sided die mounted in the saber's hilt is rolled before the saber launches a magical attack. If he rolls a six, then the attack will be spectacularly successful. A roll of a one is a failure, and the resulting attack will be laughable.
With Nitou, what you see is largely what you get. He's honest and direct, and there are times it seems as though he expects that everyone else will be the same way. This can make him somewhat easy to fool. When an archaeologist named Nakamoto finds a couple of relics that look like Nitou's rings and belt, he's excited and goes to see the man--though he effectively opens the dialogue with "hey, I think you have something of mine," which does not go over well. Nakamoto decides to steal Nitou's things to add to his own find, despite the fact that Nitou seems agreeable to allowing Nakamoto to study the items anyway. Nakamoto's approach is to get Nitou so drunk he passes out, and it works beautifully. Nitou never suspects a thing, and it actually takes a little convincing for him to realize that he's been played. In that vein, when he first meets Haruto, it's very hard for him to grasp that Haruto is fighting Phantoms for reasons other than harvesting Mana, for that's exactly why he's fighting Phantoms. Seeing the situation from someone else's point-of-view and accepting that things can work differently than how he's experienced them or views them is hard.
Subtlety is not his strong suit. He tends to be blunt and direct, and he has no problems with interrupting people or charging headlong into a situation to do what he thinks needs to be done. If someone needs to be confronted, he's not about to take the time to think about the most diplomatic means of approaching the situation. He's just going to up and talk to them. He isn't much good at sugar-coating things, and he'll call it like he sees it. He's loud and animated, but if things aren't going well for him, he'll try to hide it. He doesn't often think things through, and making snap judgments and poorly thought out decisions is a thing with him. He grew up thinking his grandmother was strict and hated him, when in reality, she was trying to stop him from doing dangerous things that could get him seriously injured. It takes a Phantom targeting her life--and her saying she's willing to get sacrificed to become a Phantom if that meant he'd get to eat her energy and continue surviving--to get him to see this. In a lighter example, when he thinks he's found Medusa in human form disguised as a high school student, he springs into action, trying to drag the freaked-out girl away while threatening to eat her up in front of a large amount of witnesses. The girl in question is not Medusa, as should have been apparent to Nitou from her behavior when he jumped her, but he is genuinely surprised when he ends up in jail--he was trying to do something good, and he's completely failed to realize how this just might look bad.
Nitou has a knack for cheerfully doing his own thing, much to the discomfort of everyone else around him. The logic that he uses doesn't always match up with everyone else's. This makes him pretty good at improvisation, even if the results of his improvisation usually bring a lot of secondhand embarrassment to all who know him. In one instance, he does not want his grandmother to know that he is a wizard, but he's got to fight off an attacking Phantom. He's transformed into Beast out of sight. He is wearing a full face mask. As long as he keeps quiet, she would have absolutely no way of knowing it was him. So what does he do? He proclaims himself to be the Magical Girl Beast and commences fighting that Phantom in the manner of a magical girl, complete with a high-pitched voice, twirling, blowing kisses at people, and a lot of "tee-hee"s.
Food is a Big Deal for Nitou. He often speaks of things in food-like terms--his battle cry is "It's lunchtime!", and he will often address his enemies in mealtime terms, such as referring to bigger and more powerful Phantoms as the "main dish." While a meal of Mana is a supernatural need, Nitou's got a big appetite to match Chimera's magical one. His favorite food in the whole world is mayonnaise. He puts mayonnaise on everything. Everything.Donuts, ramen, hot dogs, if Nitou eats it, it's going to be drowned in mayonnaise. He stubbornly refuses to accept anyone else's opinion on the food and can't seem to grasp the fact that not everyone else wants their donuts drowning in the stuff. Even when the donut shop owner breaks down and makes a tuna-mayo donut for him, he's got to put more mayo on there to make a mayonnaise tuna-mayo donut. He also has no qualms about reaching over and squirting mayonnaise on anyone else's food, just so he can share the glory and perfection that is mayonnaise.
It is easy to get Nitou horribly distracted and send him into a particular realm of stupid if you are a good-looking woman. He can and will make an ass of himself if he thinks a girl is cute or if he thinks she might be interested in him, regardless of whether or not he would actually stand a chance with her. He's confident enough that he believes himself to be amazingly attractive. It is, however, relatively easy to dissuade him from thoughts of this nature with things like food, a good fight, or an old-fashioned slap upside the head. Nitou has declared Haruto to be his rival, and Haruto's protests and insistence that they are not rivals does not seem to mean much to Nitou. Haruto is Nitou's rival because Nitou says so, and that's that. Having a rival is really cool and makes this whole wizard endeavor much more of an adventure. Sure, rivals can become friends, but using the word "friend" makes things way too mushy, in Nitou's opinion.
no subject
Character name: Kousuke Nitou
Character canon: Kamen Rider Wizard
Canon point: Post-series, following the events of Kamen Rider x Kamen Rider Gaim and Wizard: The Fated Movie war Feud. Basically, he's gotten himself re-possessed by Chimera but is now using Helheim fruit as a magical food source as opposed to mana.
Character history: There's a wiki link here! The episode summaries here are also good for history; Nitou first appears in episode 17. Please note that the subs I watched went with a different spelling of his name than the wiki uses, and I'm rolling with that.
There's an argument about sub groups and this fandom in here somewhere.Character world: Nitou's world is largely equivalent to the modern world save for the presence of magic. Magic is by no means a common thing--only certain people can become wizards, and this is not common knowledge. Those with the ability to become wizards are, should they fall into a significant enough despair, are at risk of giving birth to a Phantom, a creature of despair. When a Phantom is successfully born from despair, the potential wizard will die, and the Phantom will take their form and their place.
Wizards are those who have faced their internal Phantoms, not succumbed to despair, and continued on. They use the awakened power of their defeated Phantom in conjunction with magical rings and belts and continue to fight manifested Phantoms and to stop more Phantoms from being born. (Nitou's powers, though they do make use of rings, skew more towards using a bound spirit than something that comes from within and are different enough that he is referred to as the Ancient Wizard by those in the know. I will go into more detail in his abilities section.) It is possible for a wizard to go into the Underworld (basically, their psyche) of a person in the process of giving birth to a Phantom, fight off the Phantom that is trying to be born, and save the person from their despair. When the nascent Phantom is defeated, that person will no longer have the potential to become a wizard. By and large, the public is unaware of all of this. The wizards don't really make too much effort to conceal themselves, and the police are definitely aware of things, but it's by no means a big thing in the public eye. There was an incident late in canon in which it looked like Tokyo might be wiped out, but the average citizen wouldn't have known much beyond "there was a weird eclipse and everyone almost died."
Character personality: Nitou usually comes off as a loud and crazy hobo. This is in no small part because he really is a loud, crazy hobo. He does not maintain a permanent place of residence, instead pitching his tent wherever he ends up. He is not always good about things like making sure that he is allowed to pitch his tent wherever, and it's not unusual for him to get driven away after parking it somewhere they don't appreciate vagrants. He's happiest when he can keep moving and adventuring, always on the lookout for something new and exciting. He is the sort of man who would get himself inhabited by an insanely powerful magical creature that threatened to kill him if he didn't do its bidding, cut that magical creature loose in a last-ditch effort to save his friends and the entire city of Tokyo, and then, once he was free of the magical creature, go seek it out again and renew that contract because the adventure involved was just too good to pass up. He's in this for the thrill of it all, and if he can help some people along the way, then that's cool, too. Nitou coasts through his life propelled by the thrill of it all. He is an adventurer. An adventurer without much foresight, no less.
He lives the life of a vagrant despite the fact that he comes from a wealthy family--it's all about adventure. Nitou lives by the idea that in danger, there is opportunity. The series is all about hope, and this is Nitou's way of looking at bad situations and having hope--no matter how bad things get, there's always an opportunity to be found somewhere. Nitou is a bit of a gambler and a lot of a risk-taker. Most people might be a little uneasy to have an insanely powerful magical creature living inside of them and demanding regular tribute of Mana in order to prevent oneself getting devoured. Not Nitou. He's resistant to any and all attempts to have Chimera forcibly removed in part because this is the greatest opportunity he's ever had. With Chimera, he's always in the middle of some grand adventure and amazing battle, even if it comes with a heaping helping of danger on the side. Nitou's penchant for taking chances is even evident in his weaponry. Beast uses a Dice Saber, which means that a six-sided die mounted in the saber's hilt is rolled before the saber launches a magical attack. If he rolls a six, then the attack will be spectacularly successful. A roll of a one is a failure, and the resulting attack will be laughable.
With Nitou, what you see is largely what you get. He's honest and direct, and there are times it seems as though he expects that everyone else will be the same way. This can make him somewhat easy to fool. When an archaeologist named Nakamoto finds a couple of relics that look like Nitou's rings and belt, he's excited and goes to see the man--though he effectively opens the dialogue with "hey, I think you have something of mine," which does not go over well. Nakamoto decides to steal Nitou's things to add to his own find, despite the fact that Nitou seems agreeable to allowing Nakamoto to study the items anyway. Nakamoto's approach is to get Nitou so drunk he passes out, and it works beautifully. Nitou never suspects a thing, and it actually takes a little convincing for him to realize that he's been played. In that vein, when he first meets Haruto, it's very hard for him to grasp that Haruto is fighting Phantoms for reasons other than harvesting Mana, for that's exactly why he's fighting Phantoms. Seeing the situation from someone else's point-of-view and accepting that things can work differently than how he's experienced them or views them is hard.
Subtlety is not his strong suit. He tends to be blunt and direct, and he has no problems with interrupting people or charging headlong into a situation to do what he thinks needs to be done. If someone needs to be confronted, he's not about to take the time to think about the most diplomatic means of approaching the situation. He's just going to up and talk to them. He isn't much good at sugar-coating things, and he'll call it like he sees it. He's loud and animated, but if things aren't going well for him, he'll try to hide it. He doesn't often think things through, and making snap judgments and poorly thought out decisions is a thing with him. He grew up thinking his grandmother was strict and hated him, when in reality, she was trying to stop him from doing dangerous things that could get him seriously injured. It takes a Phantom targeting her life--and her saying she's willing to get sacrificed to become a Phantom if that meant he'd get to eat her energy and continue surviving--to get him to see this. In a lighter example, when he thinks he's found Medusa in human form disguised as a high school student, he springs into action, trying to drag the freaked-out girl away while threatening to eat her up in front of a large amount of witnesses. The girl in question is not Medusa, as should have been apparent to Nitou from her behavior when he jumped her, but he is genuinely surprised when he ends up in jail--he was trying to do something good, and he's completely failed to realize how this just might look bad.
Nitou has a knack for cheerfully doing his own thing, much to the discomfort of everyone else around him. The logic that he uses doesn't always match up with everyone else's. This makes him pretty good at improvisation, even if the results of his improvisation usually bring a lot of secondhand embarrassment to all who know him. In one instance, he does not want his grandmother to know that he is a wizard, but he's got to fight off an attacking Phantom. He's transformed into Beast out of sight. He is wearing a full face mask. As long as he keeps quiet, she would have absolutely no way of knowing it was him. So what does he do? He proclaims himself to be the Magical Girl Beast and commences fighting that Phantom in the manner of a magical girl, complete with a high-pitched voice, twirling, blowing kisses at people, and a lot of "tee-hee"s.
Food is a Big Deal for Nitou. He often speaks of things in food-like terms--his battle cry is "It's lunchtime!", and he will often address his enemies in mealtime terms, such as referring to bigger and more powerful Phantoms as the "main dish." While a meal of Mana is a supernatural need, Nitou's got a big appetite to match Chimera's magical one. His favorite food in the whole world is mayonnaise. He puts mayonnaise on everything. Everything.Donuts, ramen, hot dogs, if Nitou eats it, it's going to be drowned in mayonnaise. He stubbornly refuses to accept anyone else's opinion on the food and can't seem to grasp the fact that not everyone else wants their donuts drowning in the stuff. Even when the donut shop owner breaks down and makes a tuna-mayo donut for him, he's got to put more mayo on there to make a mayonnaise tuna-mayo donut. He also has no qualms about reaching over and squirting mayonnaise on anyone else's food, just so he can share the glory and perfection that is mayonnaise.
It is easy to get Nitou horribly distracted and send him into a particular realm of stupid if you are a good-looking woman. He can and will make an ass of himself if he thinks a girl is cute or if he thinks she might be interested in him, regardless of whether or not he would actually stand a chance with her. He's confident enough that he believes himself to be amazingly attractive. It is, however, relatively easy to dissuade him from thoughts of this nature with things like food, a good fight, or an old-fashioned slap upside the head. Nitou has declared Haruto to be his rival, and Haruto's protests and insistence that they are not rivals does not seem to mean much to Nitou. Haruto is Nitou's rival because Nitou says so, and that's that. Having a rival is really cool and makes this whole wizard endeavor much more of an adventure. Sure, rivals can become friends, but using the word "friend" makes things way too mushy, in Nitou's opinion.