Facts and Stats
Notes on his name: Actually, this particular immortal has no real name that we know of. He is called "Shinigami," or "The God of Death" (hence the title bar up there), but this is only the name we mortals have given him.^_^ ("Charon" is the name this particular obsessed mortal has given him; not a direct translation of anything.^^) Basically what happened was that a psychic mortal was able to see him, and she accused him of killing people and taking their souls--in short, she called him the God of Death. True to his character, Charon replies in his amused and contemptuous way, "I have no interest in the titles mortals give, so you can call me what you wish." To me, that sort of said that "Shinigami" wasn't his name at all; he was only indulging the 'poor deluded mortal girl,' in his opinion.^^ Well, in writing my stories I realized I couldn't keep calling him "God of Death," or even use "Shinigami," (except for titles, I don't use Japanese in my stories) and that this immortal really needed a name. So, influenced by my love for Greek mythology, I decided to call him "Charon," the ferryman of the Underworld, who carries the souls of the dead in his rowboat to Hades' shores. After all, it seemed fitting, because in a way, that's exactly what this particular Charon does as well.^_^ But more on that later...
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Physical Description
A typical description of Charon (translated from the 6th volume, p.33, Mandarin version) goes like this, "He's wearing a black cloak, complete with a hood... and he vanished in a instant...so I don't know whether it's really a 'he' or a 'she'...and the age too... All I do know is that the person was very tall, and wore all black..." Hmm, not very clear, is it? But one can hardly expect to get a good description of Charon, seeing as this particular immortal is particularly elusive and "anti-social."^_^ (More on that wonderful quality of his later...) Well, let's see if I can do a bit better. Charon's hair is incredibly long and tumbles in waves down his back (sounds like a girl-_-;), but you don't usually notice its length because it's almost always hidden beneath his trademark black hood and cloak getup. In the one colored pic Matsumoto-sensei drew of him, we can see that his hair is white, and his eyes are a clear, sharp blue. Besides the slightly odd hair color (since he looks youthful), Charon doesn't have any of those obviously-not-human characteristics the Sentinel sports; he's actually quite nondescript...if he'll let you see him at all.^^ The one thing that is, however, noticable about his appearance (besides his clothes) is his remarkable height. Charon is very, very, and I say again, very tall.^_^ It's a joke between my best friend and I that he could probably fit two Sentinels in his cloak and people would be non-the-wiser. Uh...not that he'd want to fit two Sentinels in his cloak, of course... At any rate, from what we've seen of him, Charon always has on one of two expressions: an arrogant, almost evil smirk, or scornful, but nevertheless puzzled frown. (The former is much, much more common.) Charon also has the honor of being the only immortal in YWT to actually look his gender^^, that is, he's the only one who looks like a guy. :D Similiar to the Sentinel, I'm afraid I can't provide the usual information you'd expect in a character profile (favorite things and so on), because Matsumoto-sensei was apparently trying to keep her immortals as mysterious as humanly possible.^_^; |
| Charon's duty is pretty clear-cut, all the more so because he kindly explains it all to a bewildered girl during the manga. (One day I will put up summaries of the manga...) This oft-slandered immortal doesn't deserve his bad reputation as the God of Death (although he probably welcomes it), because Charon is not the cause of mortal deaths. In his words, all deaths are already foreordained, so he doesn't need to do any dirty work. However, his special ability is one which allows him to 'sense' a death about to occur. Thus, he follows the unfortunate mortal around until the inevitable death happens, then he pulls the individual's soul out of the lifeless corpse. His duty is to take the souls he has gathered and guide them to the place they're supposed to go after their death. Charon never specifies where exactly this is, claiming, "I'm only in charge of guiding. I neither know nor care about what happens next." Whether this is because he really doesn't know or if he just didn't feel like explaining (a likely reason, considering it's Charon), us readers will never know. |  |
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Now, people might wonder: if Charon is there to guide souls, then why do 'lost' souls constantly drift to the Sentinel's room? (Well, I wondered anyway. Charon was good enough to explain it all to me and the confused girl in the story.^^) It turns out that there's a peculiar balance and overlapping of jurisdictions where the Sentinel and Charon are concerned. Here's what Charon has to say about it, "There are occasions when a soul will escape from my hand. In that case, it is no longer my problem." These 'escaped' souls are the so-called "lost souls" that the Sentinel deals with: they aren't ready to go on to the next world, so they leave their guide and wander to the darkness. It's actually interesting to try and figure out if Charon's duty ever encroaches on the Sentinel's, as one of their conversations seems to suggest. As we all know, the Sentinel is in charge of feeding the demons, and during Charon's visit to him in book 6, our Guide of Souls makes a (rather snide) comment about how hungry they were, and how that means the Sentinel was starving them. In response, the Sentinel retorts (also rather snidely^^;) that it certainly wasn't his fault, and that Charon was to blame for the demons' hunger by "doing his job too well"--in other words, Charon is so talented at guiding souls that very few evil-hearted (but not lost) spirits find their way to the darkness. Since the Sentinel can't really feed the lost souls to the demons (apparently very few lost souls are ever evil enough for that punishment), the said demons are stuck being hungry.^_^ Now, did that make sense to anyone? You have to understand that the term "lost soul" means someone who has unfinished business, and just because a soul appears in the darkness, it doesn't necessarily mean he/she is lost. When Charon guides souls, he makes no distinction between good and bad (or at least he's not supposed to, from what I gather): as long as they don't try to escape from him, he carries them to the next world. If Charon weren't doing his job, then all the souls (lost or no) would eventually find themselves to the darkness. The Sentinel only deals with "lost souls," so all the other unfortunate ones would become food for the demons. That, I believe, is why the Sentinel says Charon's diligence is the cause of the demons' hunger.^^ |
Charon's powers are a lot easier to identify than the Sentinel's, which makes no sense because he appears in only one story, but okay, I'm fine with that.^_^; I like the table thing, so here it is again for him:
| This is Charon's most obvious ability, and I apologize for the dumb name I've given it. Basically, Charon can take a person's soul out of their corpses. I specify corpses because I've never seen him yank the soul out of a living person, but I'm assuming his power isn't so small that he'd be limited to just dead people.^^; At any rate, he accomplishes this task/skill by holding his hand over the dead person's body; subsequently, the soul drifts out, and Charon grabs it.
To put things in another perspective, it's possible that this isn't a skill at all, and that the souls leave their mortal shells on their own accord, leaving Charon to wait for them. However, I think this is unlikely, because then why would Charon hold his hand out as if he were exerting a force on the soul? Therefore, I believe that eventually, if left alone, the mortal soul will leave its body by itself, but when Charon comes (which is always, actually^^), he's the one who makes the soul depart. |
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| I mention this particular skill because Matsumoto-sensei made a point of reiterating that "normal people cannot see 'Shinigami' (aka Charon)." I don't know why she keeps bringing this up when speaking of Charon, because it seems that the Sentinel and Satan/Akuma are also perfectly capable of making themselves unseen in the mortal world. My assumption is that since Charon works in the mortal world and thus is in contact with mortals all the time, his 'natural state' is already invisible to most of us, whereas the Sentinel and Satan would need to exert extra power to "turn" themselves invisible. (But this is just an assumption, I don't really know how this works.) Notice also that Matsumoto-sensei says "normal" people, that is, people with no special abilities. It has been demonstrated twice (in book 6 and in another book that isn't YWT) that psychics, or individuals with a heightened "sixth sense" can see Charon as he drifts around the mortal world. In these cases, Charon can apparently make himself more invisible, to the point where even those special mortals can't see him, because he says to Nana (psychic girl in book 6 and the girl I keep mentioning in this whole profile) that he'll "make sure you never see me again." If I hold with my earlier hypothesis, this means Charon needs to exert the extra bit of power that the Sentinel and Satan use to make themselves invisible to regular people, in order to keep himself hidden from psychic eyes.^^ In other words, he's one step ahead of his fellow immortals in the invisibility aspect.
*Note*~ If you read my stories, I make a big deal about Charon's "elusive" and "unobtrusive" energy signature.^_^ This stems from the whole idea of our Guide of Souls being more invisible (*grin*) than the Sentinel or Satan. It makes sense, after all: if he already appears invisible to mortals without doing anything, and the Sentinel and Satan need to work a little to achieve the same state, then it would seem that Charon does have an unusually 'quiet' energy signature, no? |
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| Another one of Charon's very obvious abilities, and one that, according to him, he uses very rarely. Basically, there are times when Charon deems it necessary to switch the lifespans of two people. It is never revealed under what circumstances these exceptions are allowed. In addition, the story hints that Charon cannot simply change the length of someone's lifespan. I think, in the YWT universe, fate can only be twisted so far, and there are certain rules even our immortals must follow. One of these cast-iron laws seems to be that, if it has been decided that a mortal will die in that particular place at that particular time, no one (meaning Charon, who is really the only immortal who can interfere at the moment) can stop a death--any death--from occurring. To cite an example, let's say Charon arrives at a scene to take the soul of a girl, and there's another person there who is projected to live a very, very long time. If Charon feels like it, he can switch the lifespans of the two (hence the girl will live a long life and the other person will die right there), but he can't just lengthen the girl's life by itself.
Now, this seems to contradict with what I said the Sentinel's duty was, namely to change fate. But when you think about it, it makes sense. The lost souls who journey to the darkness have already died once-- meaning at that moment, what fate ordained happened. The Sentinel changes things so the death is 'erased,' but at one point, it still happened. So Charon can't prevent a death when it occurs, and since the Sentinel deals with people who have experienced death once, he's not breaking that 'law' I mentioned up there. Wow. Are you as confused as I am now? (I tried to make it clear, I really did!) |
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| That Charon can see the future is a fact beyond doubt. Not only can he see what will happen (if someone *ahem...Sentinel* doesn't intervene to change fate, that is), but Charon can easily show that future to anyone he wants. This is demonstrated in vol. 6 on pages 82-84, when Charon--rather sadistically--shows a girl what happens to her boyfriend because of a foolhardy decision she made. Unlike the Sentinel, who uses a candelabra to show mortals what happened or will happen, Charon appears to go directly through the mind, conjuring up mental images in a chosen person's head. It is not certain whether he can channel those images into some other object, or if this power is confined only to the mind. | |
| This is the only ability that Charon doesn't tell the readers about. However, in one of Matsumoto-sensei's earlier books, Charon actually makes an appearance. (We know this character is Charon and no one else because Matsumoto-sensei states at the end of book 8 that Charon also appears in this earlier book *forgot the title* and we should take a look at it.^^) Anyway, in this book, one of Charon's powers is revealed to be a remarkable ability to transform himself into any kind of creature. This is different from the Sentinel's illusions, but is actually related to Satan/Akuma's deceptions. Apparently, our Guide of Souls uses this ability to follow his 'victims' around when he doesn't feel like being invisible.^^; As an example of how versatile this particular power is, I'd like to direct your respective attentions to that book I was talking about earlier. In this one very interesting story, Charon turned himself into a cockroach. Do not ask. All I can say is: weird sense of humor... I guess he needed to be a small animal in order to fit into that crowded elevator he was on.^_^; | |
| This is going to sound stupid, but I thought I'd put it in. (As if this thing isn't long enough already!) Since Charon is in charge of guiding *all* the souls from *all* corners of the world, he can't exactly move around sluggishly. Otherwise, how would he get around to everybody? Hence, I hold that Charon can move at a speed that is so fast it is unimaginable, thus enabling him to reach every person who dies with time to spare. (He never seems rushed; on the contrary, as aforesaid, he actually follows the mortals around a little before their deaths. He even has time to give a very long explanation of his duty to someone, namely Nana.^^;) It is likely that Charon moves so quickly, he 'time warps', for lack of a better phrase. So not only does he go everywhere, he goes everywhen too, which is certainly convenient for his duty. Lastly, I should mention that this power is uniquely Charon's; neither the Sentinel and Satan seem to have (or require) the ability to move so inhumanly fast that they wind up going back in time. |
Yayoi: Charon's power list is shorter, but that's not because he's less powerful or anything; it's just that he only appeared in one (long) story, and then he told us everything, so there's somewhat less speculation involved.^^ You'd think a guy so keen on being mysterious would talk less, but no...
