strike_you_out | Character Profile & Player Contact

Is he real or is he imagined? It isn't easy to tell. Paranoia Agent has as many interpretations as it has viewers. That's Satoshi Kon for you, what're ya gonna do. Well, I know what I'm going to do. I'll be playing this guy as though he is a real entity beyond the dependence of anyone's imagination. It is my belief that Lil' Slugger definitely began as a figment of one individual's imagination but as the series develops and he begins to infect the imaginations of many others, he becomes something very real. He is, from start to finish, a man-made monster.

Name & aliases - "Lil' Slugger" [English]; "Shounen Bat" [Japanese]

Fandom - Satoshi Kon's Paranoia Agent (2004)

Background  - The mysterious serial assailant known as Lil' Slugger originated in modern day Tokyo, Japan, where he was blamed for a series of "random" attacks in the streets of Musashino. He has no real name and was dubbed "Shounen Bat" by the Japanese media based on vague descriptions given by his surviving victims, all of whom attested that their attacker was a junior high school aged boy wearing a baseball cap, gold inline skates, and carrying a golden baseball bat that was bent at an angle. In each case the bat was used as a weapon to inflict temporary injury, amnesia, and even death. The first victim in the string of assaults was Tsukiko Sagi, a young and timid toy designer who created the extremely popular Maromi doll (a pink plush dog similar to Hello Kitty and tarepanda). She was supposedly assaulted by Lil' Slugger at a time when she was under great pressure from work. When questioned by detectives assigned to the case, she was reluctant to provide much information and seemed to be hiding something.

Several more attacks followed of an identical nature and finally a perpetrator was caught. Makoto Kozuka fit the description of Lil' Slugger and claimed to be the attacker but it turned out that the boy was suffering his own set of delusional issues. The attacks persisted and the boy later confessed that despite randomly attacking two people with a bat, he was not the real Lil' Slugger. Makoto was charged anyway and after succumbing to a state of despair, received a visit from the real Lil' Slugger which ended in Kozuka's brutal death. By now the city was in an uproar, shocked that the attacks continued despite the suspect being dead. Kozuka may have been a small time copy-cat assailant but he was certainly crucial in spreading public fear and belief in the existence of Lil' Slugger.

Mitsuhiro Maniwa, a detective dedicated to the Slugger case to the point of obsession, was the first to piece together the truth. He discovered that all the crimes committed by the real Lil' Slugger had elements in common: all the victims were in conditions of extreme distress at the moment they were hit and the attacks were a welcome release. Some of those who survived were left in a state of empty calm with no memory of what ailed them. Maniwa surmised that when darkness overcame one's mind, Lil' Slugger would find them and strike.

Later, it is revealed that Tsukiko was never actually attacked and that she created Lil' Slugger herself when she was a child to use as a source of blame for her own acts of carelessness (specifically, letting her dog, Maromi, wander away onto a busy street with fatal results). Tsukiko allowed herself to believe in the delusion that a boy with a bat had killed her dog, feeding into it her guilt, anger, and fear for years. After Lil' Slugger's attacks were publicly sensationalized, the delusion began to grow and took on a life of its own.

Essentially, Lil' Slugger is a manifestation of dark human emotions, guilt, lies, anger, and hysteria. When more and more people started believing in his existence, he became all the more real as well as powerful. Soon he grew to be a paranormal entity with the power to do real physical harm and to actually kill people.

Personality  - At first glance he appears to be a wayward, bat-toting juvenile boy around the age of 12 to 13 with upturned eyes and a wide grin, but look into his eyes and you will find a monster. He is a predator who preys on those whose minds have been weakened by stress, psychological trauma or instability. Able to sense when these individuals reach their limits, he will appear before them no matter where they are (though he usually waits until they are alone) to deliver a wallop with his bat -- and never without a grin on his face.

Humans, as he sees them, are nothing more than shallow beings who are incapable of overcoming their worst challenges and are in need of an outlet for escape. He believes he is providing them a service by killing them or rendering them unconscious and is thereby deluded in his own way of thinking. More than "providing a service", he very much enjoys doing what he does. It's the reason for his existence after all. He takes immense pleasure in the sport of frightening, harming, and slaughtering his victims, sometimes going about it with a twisted sense of humor. He's playful in a demented sort of way and is happy to toy with his victims. Often, before attacking a potential victim, he will stalk them and threaten them with sourceless echoes of the moving wheels of his skates, perhaps just to prod and push them a little closer to the brink of insanity. He has also been known to tail moving vehicles (canonly speaking, a van traveling over 100 mph) before climbing into the backseat without opening a door or window. The more bizarre and impossible the situation, the more fun he has.

Lil' Slugger is usually softly spoken, creepy, and smug with limited social skills. When he has something to say, he will say it using few words and always in a low, soft voice. To aid in communication, he uses exaggerated body language and sounds (sighs, gasps, etc.). Unless angered or provoked, he has an air of sinister nonchalance about him and though he is not openly antagonizing, the grin on his face suggests that he's finding constant amusement at your expense. He thinks rather highly of himself now that he has become a powerful entity and a source of fear amongst those in his home world, so when faced with a real challenge, he's quick to lose his temper. This is best seen in ep. 11 where his victim fights back by calling upon the strength of her own will, much to Slugger's frustration. The angrier he gets, the larger he grows and the more bestial he becomes, eventually reaching 10 to 12 feet in height and bearing resemblance to a werewolf (sans the extra hair). His strength also increases in this form allowing him to do extensive damage to property. However, Slugger is NOT able to deliver direct hits to individuals that are sound of mind and strong of will; no matter how hard he tries, the worst he can do is scratch or bruise them. When Slugger reaches his own limits as he did at the end of the series, he transforms into a formless black entity -- a sentient sludge-like mass that can move rapidly to swallow up an entire city within just a few minutes.

But Slugger isn't all horrible. At times he may even seem somewhat human. He's capable of being rather polite when he wants to be (usually on rare occasions). If invited into a home or private residence, Lil' Slugger will take off his skates indicating that he has some capacity for manners. Though not much of a talker, he can be a surprisingly good listener. However, he's liable to erupt into a fit of maniacal laughter for reasons apparent only to him (again, that twisted sense of humor). But when made a target for laughter himself, he will become visibly embarrassed and/or enraged. Remember, Slugger may not be a real child, but he was created by a real child and is not immune to acting like one.

Abilities

can transform into a monster of impressive size and strength
can pass through walls and/or "vanish" into thin air
can reach high speeds on his inline skates and leap great heights
recovers quickly from physical damage
capable of sensing when someone is in distress and of locating that individual

Info specific to Mayfield: The town of Mayfield, through means unknown, has managed to do what no amount of imagination ever could and has transformed the powerful phantasm known as Lil' Slugger into a mere human child. As expected, this will be a most unwanted and bizarre experience for Slugger who must now adapt to his 'new life' as a 12-year-old boy in the American 1950's. To survive, he must come to depend on his assigned 'family' and the surrounding human community. He must attend school and obey the law (at least where witnesses are concerned) to avoid being completely brainwashed, or 'droned', as a means of punishment. His goal in all of this? To slowly gain back his identity and abilities as the paranormal entity he once was.

For an updated list of items/abilities Slugger has regained, see this entry.

Writing sample; 3rd person:

At a secondary school in Tokyo, a young instructor sat in mournful silence at her desk. School hours had ended some time ago and the classroom was empty. She was here to gather up the last of her personal belongings. As a part-time instructor, she had been disposable, replaceable in spite of all her good work and best efforts. In the process of clearing out the meager remains of her existence from the drawers, she stopped to rest her head upon the desk as if overwhelmed by a crippling wave of despair. Darkness rose from her like invisible smoke signals, beckoning for release.

She never saw him enter the room. He had simply appeared without a sound or a ripple of disturbance. Here he sat at one of the student desks, waiting for her to lift her head and find a young pupil watching her from the back of the classroom. With his crooked, golden bat resting upon the table before him, Lil' Slugger folded his arms and sat back into his seat causing it to creak purposefully. As expected, it captured her attention. He grinned beneath the shadowy bill of his cap as the despondent woman slowly raised her head and caught sight of him. For a moment she stared blankfaced and wordless.

As if to prove that his presence was more than a passing hallucination, the boy leaned forward onto his elbows, chin cradled in his hands like some ideal student eagerly awaiting the next lecture, and gazed silently back at her. Yes, it's me. I'm really here.

Finally she broke the silence, trembled his name on her lips but made no effort to escape.

Suddenly, he was before her without a second spent in crossing the room, close enough to deliver a blow to her head. In a flash of gold, the desk split and shattered beneath his bat as easily as a snapped twig. Its two halves collapsed inward toward the center spilling papers and pens and dumping a phone and computer monitor onto the floor. The sound was deafening but neither he nor she flinched.

At the last moment, she had found strength and remained seated, staring down at a photo in her lap to avoid his eyes. Lil' Slugger's grin faltered and his teeth gritted. Strike one.

In the photo was a young child bearing its mother's resemblance. "I can't," she whispered.

Above her, Lil' Slugger breathed a sigh of frustration.

Yet as she continued to mull over the photograph, he sensed her resolve begin to crumble once again and the darkness within seeped through. He bared his teeth in a menacing grin, hands wringing the grip of the bat in anticipation.

"My son in America... he was three in this picture. Seven now. It's been so long..." she was saying to herself, falling deeper into darkness with every word. Lil' Slugger stood over her and the splintered desk, still holding the bat over the ruins on the floor. His shoulders gently shook with subdued laughter that grew by the decibel the longer she spoke.

"If I were to go now, he wouldn't even remem--" she paused as the bat rose. He'd stopped laughing now, but the grin remained while he waited for her to finish her final words. Instead she looked up at him, eyes shifting to the warped, metal weapon. He knew then that she had given up and an arc of gold collided solidly with her cranium.

The metal rang a dull musical note as it dismantled bone and cartilage in a single blow. A spray of fresh blood now coated the wall behind the desk and Lil' Slugger stood silent over the scene of carnage. At his side the bat hung from one hand, dripping blood onto the floor. Then, with a soft skrrrr of wheels following the path of a quarter-circle, he pivoted on his inline skates to face the doorway and left her corpse on the classroom floor, skull caved-in but smiling.

PLAYER CONTACT

the_mushuzuki
TheMushuzuki@gmail.com
DailyDoseOfChaos [AIM]