Character Name: Toshizou Hijikata
Canon: Hakuouki
Canon Point: Chapter 5, Hijikata Route (January 1868)
Background/History: I'm pretty sure you know it's a damn mess by now, but here's the Hakuouki wikia link which does jack shit with a side order of fuck all in terms of really good descriptions unless you're really interested in season two. But hell, it alludes to his childhood.

That said, Reimeiroku and season one of the anime. Plot summary and episode descriptions of the prequel and season one. Reimeiroku's timeline. And here's a recap of season one of the anime, which doesn't really have much substance to it, but hell...it's like a bullet point list of shit that happened except screencaps were included.

Personality:

Hijikata is a layered, compartmentalized man who wears a metaphorical mask and basically tries to present himself as the demon commander of the Shinsengumi: a ruthless hardass who is strict, has a will of steel, and basically is a fucking pain in the ass to work under. How effective he is at being the demon depends on who you talk to, how well they know him, and if they have any reason to lie or be honest. Reactions would probably vary from frightened agreement to a deep sigh to mocking laughter.

In a different lifetime (or if he had been less smart or if circumstances didn’t call for a demon commander hardass) Hijikata would’ve grown up to be a standard shounen protagonist. At first this seems possibly ridiculous as he’s very much the hardass demon commander with a ton of self control. However: he has a temper, one that can be sparked rather easily by the right people or the right causes. Hijikata has problems with giving up and admitting defeat, and often powers through with sheer willpower and determination and nothing else on his side. He values his friends and his people, even if he doesn’t always show it. One of the quickest ways to piss off Hijikata is to attempt to hurt someone under his command.

Hell, when one of his friends died - not just a generic soldier, but a named character who was a captain and had a history with him - Hijikata ended up giving the guy who cut him down a ‘don’t mock my friend and his sacrifice’ speech before he powered up. (It doesn’t play out the same way it would in Bleach or Naruto or similar series and it gets quickly subverted because this is one of the canons in which most of the cast ends up dying. But, point being, Hijikata does the speech and powering up scene despite the fact he’s in the wrong genre entirely for that sort of thing.)

So, on a level he has some traits similar to standard shounen protagonists and in a different lifetime might’ve ended up as one. However, what the Shinsengumi needed wasn’t a shounen protagonist. What they needed was someone who could do what needed to be done, no matter how dirty or vile, and keep the men in line. They needed someone to be responsible. They needed a demon. So he accepted that challenge with mixed results.

He became the demon. He still had his temper, but as the de facto leader of the Shinsengumi he had to learn to rein it in and tamp it down in certain circumstances. As much as he would’ve loved to Hijikata couldn’t just indiscriminately tell Lord So-and-So to go sodomize himself with his katana for some bullshit or another. He could lash out, and he does, but his hotheadedness was balanced by cool pragmatism and self control. A willingness to make hard decisions.

Sort of.

…he tries, but it’s hard when Hijikata gives a shit about someone. During the events of the prequel Reimeiroku he ultimately orders his men to kill another guy, Ryunosuke, for knowing too much. Does so without hesitation. And then when Souji reports that he shoved Ryunosuke off of a bridge and so he probably drowned (he didn’t), Hijikata’s response was basically, “Well, it’s been raining a ton so he probably drowned.” Except he totally knows that Ryunosuke probably didn’t drown and gets called out on it shortly after by another guy. “Seems legit.”

So, yeah. Mixed results. Which is reflected with how others view him.

The soldiers all figure he’s a ruthless drill sergeant and someone they don’t want to piss off. Success there.

The people who knew him the longest - the captains and Kondou - know otherwise. It’s not that the demon thing is a total facade, but more that he’s complicated and compartmentalized and has enough layers that he'd probably be a badass cake. More than other people. He’s a strict drill sergeant with immense self control. He has shounen protagonist traits. He’s an awkward dork who writes bad poetry. They’ve known him long before he had to act as the Shinsengumi’s demon and so know when he’s genuinely pissed off, when to leave him alone, and when his strictness is actually a cover for him trying to reassure so-and-so but not wanting to do it directly lest they pick on him for being soft or trying to shield such-and-such from various things and know when they have an opening to pick on him for that.

So, he’s the captains’ boss and someone who they listen to and respect - kind of - and they let him chew them out when the situation calls for it. But he’s also a drinking buddy…at least if he could hold his liquor (he can’t) and they’re very comfortable with picking on him. In general, the relationship Hijikata has with the captains is a bizarre mix of boss and hardass mixed with friend and a bit of team mom holding the toddler leashes lest they accidentally destroy part of Kyoto. The specifics vary from guy to guy.

Kondou is a bit different given that he’s Hijikata’s boss and not the other way around, and also because basically Hijikata’s entire life goal is to lift up Kondou’s name and make him legendary. They’re friends. Kondou doesn’t get half as much crap from Hijikata as everyone else does. Kondou calls him Toshi, not Hijikata. He is only one of two characters to use that name, and the only one to do so without a suffix of some kind. Hijikata, in turn, is respectful and hauls ass to shelter Kondou from as many realities of command as humanly possible to keep him pure and stress free. He tries to be the shadow to Kondou’s light. This bites them both in the ass later.

At the point I’m pulling him from shit has gotten fairly real. Heroic Manly Deathfest 1864 had kicked off but the core cast hadn’t all died off. Yet. Everyone had started on a rousing round of bad life choices and passed around the flask of the Water of Life. Hijikata took a chug. This really sucked for him. He turned into a fury.

The physical changes? Those I’ll toss down into abilities so forward to that down there. Mentally? Mentally, the circumstances which proceeded and followed him becoming a fury as well as the side effects of being a fury basically did a number on him. He had to work insanely long hours to keep the Shinsengumi together, and on top of that daylight hurt him and he was occasionally overcame by the urge to slaughter the living and drink their blood and had to rein that in. This wore down on him much like acid on enamel, revealing the very pissed off guy beneath who was being dicked about by the world and the Tokugawa shogunate specifically and knew that it was happening the entire damn time.

Abilities/Powers: Can stab shit, is basically a vampire but not in the sparkle tilde desu Twilight but more in a bastard child of vampirism and zombieism sort of way.

…fine. In terms of wielding a sword he’s good, but his main strength is basically in the fact he’s unwilling to give up. He’s good, very good, but there’s other people who’re better in terms of straight up skill. That said, unlike some of those other people (not all, but some), Hijikata’s far more willing to keep on slashing even after he gets the crap beaten out of him and/or gets a lung punctured so he might beat some of those people who’re technically better.

Or to put it another way, he’s the sort of swordsman who fights best in actual life or death situations and the same person who might kick his ass in a friendly duel with practice swords might get their ass kicked by him in an actual fight to the death.

As for the fury (aka vampire) thing, I’ll just break it down into a list:

PROS: Can regenerate wounds pretty quickly. Is stronger. Faster. Can rock dramatic white hair and red eyes in Fury Mode™ (think of it as a transformed state they can turn on and off at will…for the most part) which may or may not be a pro depending on their color palette in general and what they’re wearing.

CONS: Sunlight hurts to be in and furies work best at night. Silver is also the exception to the wound regeneration thing: getting shot or stabbed by silver means that they’d have to heal the hard way. Occasionally they get seized by the need to drink blood, and the longer they go without drinking blood the more likely they’ll snap, go mad, and basically end up as a zombie except instead of groaning, “Braaaaains.” they groan, “Bloooooood.”

Their fury powers also draw upon their total potential/lifespan/life energy. To give an example, one of the characters, Heisuke, became a fury around age 18ish. (I'm too lazy to look up the specific year. Close enough.) He had no choice: it was becoming a fury or dying of his wounds. He was active in using his abilities, and ultimately he ended up dying of natural causes - in that he ran out of lifespan but wasn’t killed prematurely by a silver bullet to the heart or anything - at the ripe old age of very early 20something.

Being a fury sucks.

Items/Weapons: His katana and a wakizashi.
Sample Entry: One Two
Sample Entry Two: ("Someone talk me out of writing a sample about a line for the bathroom." "Why." "Do it." "Nah.")

Normally, the bathroom supply was sufficient to meet the demand. Normally, there wasn’t a line. Normally, a person could count on getting in, doing their…business, and getting out. Normally, certain people went nowhere near the kitchen. Certain things were normal for certain damn god reasons, apparently, for reasons that he was going to explore and fix.

…later. Because apparently lunch had ambushed certain (that fucking word again) other people before it got around to getting him. End result; he was the increasingly pissed off end of a long line for the only bathroom in the building. A bathroom that was growing more and more filthy by the second. Like he gave a damn. (But he could smell it. Everybody could. It was just another reason why he was so pissed off about waiting.)

Finding the nearest bush was and continued to be a tempting option, but like hell was he going to admit defeat. He had survived literal demons, politics, and battle. Like hell he was going to lose to badly cooked eggs - or whatever it had been - and his gut. So there he waited. Bitterly refusing to leave. Bitterly refusing to jiggle on his feet and do the fucking pee dance. And-

“Dammit! How fucking long are you going to take in there?!”

…some things a man couldn’t resist and one of them was pounding on the door while swearing. All he got was some incoherent moaning and a decisively moist sound in reply.

Fuck this.