Kou Ichijo's Persona: Umisachihiko

“The Luck of the Sea” is what his name means.  He is also known as “Hoderi,” or “Flash-Fire,” as when he was born, a raging inferno started.  Given a magic fishing hook to allow him to fish whatever he desired, Umisachihiko was jealous of his brother’s magic bow and ability to hunt anything he desired.  Their story was a long and complicated one (that I won’t recount here), but know that it involved a sword made of thousands of fishing hooks and that, in the end, after their fight, the brothers made up and Umisachiko vowed to serve his brother’s temple for all time and he is said to be the ancestor of the ancient Hayato people, also known as the falcon men.

So there’s a lot going on in Umisachihiko’s story, but primarily I went with him due to him feeling that he was the “unfavorite,” something Kou could relate to.

The hardest thing about this design was calling back to the Shadow Kou design, which was a weird doll thing.  The best I could do was make it similarly segmented with similar swirling designs.

Mostly I pulled from the myth this time around.  We got the bird like head referencing the Hayato people.  The flames, both erupting from its head and etched onto the armor.  And I always wanted to do a Persona design with a straight up sword, but I had to reference the fishing hook sword thing, so…

The design is also supposed to look kind of trapped—like, he’s bolted into the armor even, kind of like Kou feels regarding his situation.  But still the fire escapes, so he must be making some headway.