Tsukasa - His goal is to become a famous voice actor and singer/sva. He did want to become a star and make people smile when he was a kid, but after lots of setbacks and emotional turmoil, he ended up abandoning that dream and settling for what he thought was the next closest thing. He posts videos of himself doing voiceovers of different scripts and occasionally some of him singing along with playing piano. Tsukasa starts "Journey into Fantasia" after becoming close friends with Rui. It's meant to be a series of music videos and audio dramas that tell a story, with Rui and Toya later adding in some more hidden messages and internet ARG type things to engage their audience more (and also just for fun).

Tsukasa's fear of being forgotten is a large part of his character in the au and drives a lot of his actions even though he doesn't quite remember that being a fear of his. He doesn't exactly acknowledge that fear since he thinks it's selfish, so he represses it (along with a lot of his more negative childhood memories). It's a large factor in why he created Journey into Fantasia in the first place, since he not only wants to make others smile, he also doesn't want to be forgotten about forever.

Rui - Rui in the au never really broke out of how he felt during middle school in canon. He never reconnected with Nene and hardly spoke to Mizuki (she drops out of school early in the au, kind of like what she does in wl2) so he's basically completely alone. He has also given up on his dreams of making the greatest performances and making others smile since he's internalized a feeling of being inherently evil due to how others treated him for most of his life. This only changes after he meets Tsukasa. Rui originally didn't want anything to do with him, but Tsukasa was determined to befriend him after seeing how lonely he was, and Rui eventually warmed up to him. They became close friends and Rui helped Tsukasa start Journey into Fantasia. He finds ways to incorporate his inventions into the music videos they create and also does most of the audio and video editing.

One of his main issues is feeling like he'll hurt the other unit members without meaning to or sort of "corrupting" them. Since he holds a lot of doubt in himself and feels like he's a monster or villain for how "weird" he is compared to everyone else, he worries that he'll either drive the other unit members away or cause other people to avoid them because they hang around with him. After fully befriending Toya and Akito, though, he starts gaining more confidence in himself.

Toya - I had him parallel Mafuyu a lot while thinking of what his backstory would be. It's very similar to what it is in canon, with his father making him practice classical music even if he didn't want to almost all the time. He was also emotionally neglected and forced himself to "grow up" early so that he wouldn't be scolded for acting childish. He starts rebelling against his family after he meets Akito at school. Mostly via staying out late to hang out with Akito, since he knows his father wouldn't like Akito anyway. He'd shut out a lot of his emotions early on in his childhood and he started to feel more and more the more time he spent with Akito. At this point, his only friends were Akito, Tsukasa, and Saki. His relationship with Tsukasa is almost the same as it was in canon where Toya would stay with Tsukasa often when they were children, but neither of them see each other as brothers in this au. As he started neglecting his classical music practice and purposefully angering his father, he started arguing with him a lot more. After a particularly nasty fight (and with some encouragement from Akito), he ran away from his home and went to live with Tsukasa. Tsukasa gladly took him in, and he later met Rui and joined the Journey into Fantasia project. Toya learns how to work with synthesizers and starts creating instrumentals for their songs and works with Rui on sound effects for the audio dramas. He also learns how to sew from Tsukasa and starts creating costumes for them all alongside him. He's the one to invite and convince Akito to join.

Toya learns how to express himself more the longer he stays with Journey into Fantasia. He smiles more, laughs more, cries more, and generally gets more expressive. At the start, though, he acts really cold and can easily seem emotionless due to how he would rarely show his emotions through his face, voice, or body language. A big thing for Toya is learning how emotions work and how to label and deal with them. Finding his own identity is also a large part.

Akito - HE WAS THE MOST DIFFICULT TO FIGURE OUT . I managed to get it eventually but I had so many different ideas for him. So he still had a passion for music but it was continuously stomped on and ridiculed until it had been completely extinguished. He lost motivation for life and only really lived because he didn't want Ena and his mother to be sad if he was gone. Until he met Toya and found a good reason to live again. The two both bonded over their complicated relationship with music. Akito helped Toya experience a lot of things for the first time and seeing Toya enjoy himself because of him made him feel needed. Akito helped Toya break out of the places where he felt trapped and suffocated. They'd both sing together on occasion too. Akito was reluctant to join Journey into Fantasia but Toya didn't give up until he agreed to join.

Akito struggles with feeling incompetent compared to the rest of the group. They all have their own "specialties", things that they're the best at in the group, but Akito doesn't feel like he has that. The most he has is singing and mediocre voice acting (it's really not mediocre, he just thinks it is when comparing it to the others). And he doesn't even think his singing is that good since his passion for it burned out ages ago.

It takes a while but eventually he regains a spark of that passion he used to have with the help of the rest of the unit, especially Toya.

And here are some random other facts that I couldn't really fit into the summaries but want to share anyway

- Akito and Ena's relationship is very similar to how it is in canon with only some minor differences. Ena was actually the first person Akito came out to about being transmasc, and she helped him transition (this was before he met Toya.)

- Rui is intersex! He also just doesn't really care about gender. He contemplated it a lot when he was in middle school but after ages of not being able to find a label that resonated with him, he just called himself "unlabelled but vaguely masculine" and called it a day

- Tsukasa is cisgender but he questioned being trans for a bit after Rui told him about gender identities. He enjoys wearing feminine clothes but he figured out that he really was just cisgender

- Toya uses he/they and likes calling himself non-binary. He had a lot of fun experimenting with his identity after meeting Rui

- Tsukasa opens up the least out of all the unit members

- Tsukasa is very self conscious about his appearance, which is why he often straightens his hair and covers up his freckles with makeup. He doesn't feel the need to do this when he's in Sekai, though, which is why he has his curlier hair and freckles in his unit outfit on the ref image

- Rui reconnects with Mizuki and Nene later on in the Journey into Fantasia story! Akito and Toya also end up befriending An and Kohane, and Tsukasa meets Emu

- Tsukasa and Rui have a desire to bring their online performances to an actual stage. Toya is a bit uncertain about it but would love to try, but since Akito doesn't want to for reasons he won't share, they haven't been able to do so yet.

- Toya once dyed a streak of his hair pink with Akito's help. Just for fun. He ended up not liking how it looked and just stuck with his natural hair after the dye faded

- Toya helps Akito re-dye the yellow streak in his hair when it starts fading

- Akito was convinced that Rui's hair was dyed for weeks after meeting him. It is not.

- Tsukasa's hair used to fade into a more pink shade like Saki's, but it darkened as he grew up. Sometimes he wishes he could get it back to being the same pink shade as his sister

- They like to hold sleepovers at each other's houses. They have a rotation where they'll have one at Tsukasa's, then the next would be at Akito's, then the next would be at Rui's. Rui and Akito said that the next person in the rotation has to be Toya, but since everyone knows that Toya considers the Tenma house to be his house now, it's really just an excuse to have sleepovers at Tsukasa's house twice in a row

- They all help the others take care of each other properly!

akito freeing toya by letting him breach out to experience things he would've never gotten a chance to because of his father, showing him there's more than just his sheet music / toya saving akito by anchoring him and giving him an actual purpose and a reason to live despite not having anything to achieve

tsukasa reaching out to rui, giving him a bond he'll be able to cherish and not leaving him lonely and isolated from society / rui helping tsukasa start journey into fantasia, encouraging tsukasa to achieve a dream (of somesort) and to nourish his talents / in the same time the both of them would be helping eachother in gaining confidence and trust and hope in and for themselves.

I REALLY LOVE THEIR UNIT OUTFITS TOO #posts 2 draw