Kenji Yamamoto

Kenji (賢司), also known as Kenji Yamamoto(山本健二ことケンジは), is one of the main characters in "KiriKiri JingJing!" And a student of Fukuoka Prefectural Fukuoka High School's Class 86-A With His Older Brother, Minato Yamamoto.

## Appearance

Kenji is a short high school boy with fair skin and grayish-red eyes. His short black hair reaches above his neck. His tongue is also a bit revealed. Kenji wears the standard Fukuoka Prefectural Fukuoka High School uniform of a white button-up shirt with a blue bow tie. However, he wears a choco-colored hooded cardigan underneath his blazer. His hip-wear consists of a pair of black mid-high shorts and grey loafers. In School Arc - Episode 06, Ruruka dons Kenji's AI counterpart's brick red cardigan instead of his usual choco-colored one.

## Creation and Development

Kenji's design was heavily inspired by Tohru Kobayashi from the anime series Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid As MU5HR00M had been inspired to create original characters similar to her favorite characters in other media. When the anime had only just begun MU5HR00M believed this was somewhat easy to notice due to the lack of development, stating Kenji's Cheeky personality as one of the similarities.

MU5HR00M has also stated that Kenji is the main protag from the series, yet attempted to be as unbiased as possible with his involvement. During Episode 3 and 4 specifically, MU5HR00M began to have fun when writing the dialogue for his character during the later part of the series and eventually reached a point where she didn't think much about what he was saying, as Kenji "doesn't think about what he's saying" from her perspective. She's also worry that many people wouldn't like him, but was surprised when he later began to gain popularity in the Japanese and Fanimation fandoms.

## Personality

Kenji is a teenager who makes friends and has fun. While he can be a bit silly, he maintains an optimistic outlook in most situations. However, his optimistic personality turning a blind eye to the joy of the story of The Warriors of Zodiacs, and not reading the room atmosphere sometimes makes him come off as rude to the other students. He often concentrates heavily while painting, even in the tense situation of The Warriors of Zodiacs, so much so that he was unable to tell that Ruruka had been with him the entire time. This is mainly fueled by his habit of painting in tough situations to collect himself, possibly developed during his childhood. Albeit his optimism Kenji appears to lack any confidence in himself or his art, confessing that he wasn’t too confident in painting landscapes, further proven with hisbrief (and then extended) embarrassment when asked if he could be watched painting by Ruruka, and when revealing he was most confident in painting the beach.

As a student of Fukuoka Prefectural Fukuoka High School, Kenji is a hard studying person and cares deeply for Mitten, tending to all aspects of daily life, although this will often lead to trouble such as when Kenji tries to feed Mitten or clean Lilith's dirty laundry. Even still, Mr. Ando always shows his appreciation for Kenji's efforts and does his best to guide Kenji in the ways of modern school life and culture. Kenji is very protective of Lilith and is essentially her father figure and big brother combined.\

## History

### Early Life

Kenji is the middle son of the Yamamoto Family. He saw how happy they were when creating their work, but he never really liked to create such artwork, but was forced into the occupation by his strict parents. Neither of his parents ever saw any value in any type of art that wasn’t framed, so they were quite quick to forbid him from painting landscapes or people.

As a child, Kenji was forced into solitary confinement in his old school, watched for 24 hours, as well as forced into painting all of the time. He considered himself lucky that he was well-fed and had a decent room. As his skills never met the expectations that his parents and family had forced onto him, his life gradually became worse. He was regarded as a 'nobody' by his family and was never allowed to be seen in public, with every day of his life focused on making his artistic skills up to their standards. Outside of the Yamamoto family household, nobody knew much about Kenji; and his family often made up excuses to cover up why he was never heard about or seen. The most common excuses were that he was always sick and that he had a mental disability, but this was more of a way for the public to forget that he ever existed in the first place.

Whenever Kenji tried to escape the room he was trapped in he would be physically abused by his parents, and that he wasn't allowed to run away until his parents believed he was 'worthy enough to be a part of the Yamamoto family'. Kenji describes that the time in the tower during Episode 4 was nothing compared to the time in his old school.

At an unknown point in his life, a spirit named c saved him, and he would be gifted by fortune. His artistic skills began to improve drastically to a point that his family began to approve of him now, and he soon became a talented individual and was allowed to read manga. One day however The Pisces God never appeared, and out of fear he successfully ran away to find her.

Later in his life, he then met Ruruka And Kenzo, who came to the conclusion that they all had one thing in common: they were blessed by The Pisces God. However, this spirit suddenly disappeared, leaving Ruruka, Kenji, and Kenzo alone. This caused Ruruka to create the organization named Children of The Pisces God to search for this person while each one of them were doing their jobs that were related to their talents. Progress regarding finding The Pisces God was very slow and had nearly no leads, and so Kenji, along with Kenzo, started to greatly doubt Ruruka. It is noted that Ruruka never really got along with her friends from her perspective; but Kenji, and Kenzo considered her a good person still.

## Trivia

* Yamamoto (山本) means “base of the mountain” while Kenji (賢司) means “Intelligent; Second son; Strong; Healing”.
* Kenji possessed a Nantendo Game girl Rainbow an obvious parody of Nintendo's Game Boy Color. The name of MU5HR00M is likely a pun on the surname Yamamoto.
* Kenji's defeat scene in *School Arc* is very similar to Chiaki Nanami's death in *Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School - Despair Arc*: excepted being suddenly attack by dragons

### Minato Yamamoto

Kenji is deeply in love with his brother Minato Yamamoto. He does his best to serve Minato as his brother every day and hopes that someday they'll share feelings. Throughout the story, he attempts helping Minato with his homework (without success) after detoxifying it.

It is confirmed that Minato has begun to return Kenji's feelings of a more romantic nature.

**Childhood:**

### Fuyuko Munakata

A fellow member of Class 85th. They were once close childhood friends. Fuyuko always did what Kenji asked, though Kenji had a habit to push things off on her. Kenji wanted to help Fuyuko, but Fuyuko was unable, which made Kenji very upset.

In *KiriKiri JingJing!* manga, Fuyuko tried to sit with Kenji at lunch, which the food caused her to get infected and allergic to the point of almost dying. Kenji then always went to visit Fuyuko while she was in the hospital and felt better.

Kenji, Minato and Fuyuko all later attended Fukuoka Prefectural Fukuoka. One day, because of a run-in Fuyuko had with Ruruka, she gave Kenji a laxative drug to put in his sandwich instead of a physical enhancer, which was then fed to the examiners. Because of the misunderstanding, Kenji thought Fuyuko intentionally gave him a wrong drug, causing his exams to fail. Fuyuko, in turn, was hurt by Kenji's words and they both lashed out and let out the pent-up anger they had felt towards each other for years. In addition, the two students and Minato caused a school bombing unintentionally with the bombs set by Ruruka. As a result, Fuyuko was expelled. Both her And Kenji believed the other to be responsible for the event and now mutually distrusted one another.