Perpetually Confused

Takumi Sumino

Takumi is canonically dissociative!! Here's some Takumi Dissociation Quotes: (While looking at himself in the mirror) "It's the same face I see in the mirror every morning... But somehow, something about it seems wrong. I don't know how to describe it... It's like this reflection doesn't "feel" like me anymore." "And so, four days passed in the blink of an eye. [...] But because of all the stress, I barely knew what I was doing. I felt like I was wandering through thick fog every day, my memory skipping around." "My body felt like it wasn't mine anymore. It was like I was having an out-of-body experience. Suddenly, I heard a voice. "The date is about to change..." I had no idea who said it. For all I knew, I might have said it myself without realizing." As for him actually having alters, I won't be counting the multiple time an external thing takes over his body. But also I think his reactions to having sudden gaps in his memories are interesting under the system Takumi headcanon!! Like, sometimes he just wakes up with no memory of what happened and doesn't know how to react so he just kinda... moves on as quickly as he can. MAJOR SPOILERS: Takumi was grown as a clone in a tube to be a child soldier, and had normal regular memories implanted in him, but he also has a fabricated reason to fight in his childhood friend Karua. But unbeknownst to Takumi, Karua is based on the real life girl named Nozomi, who snuck into the pod room and talked to him while his memories were formed and completely altered Takumi's brain-world. When Takumi realizes his past is fake and Karua isn't real, he originally wants to discard the memories he had, but through Nozomi's help comes to the conclusion that "even if the memories are fake, the way they made me feel is real" and learns to treasure Karua as a separate person from Nozomi. Even though she's not real, he carries her inside him...!! I interpret him remembering Karua encouraging him as alter Karua encouraging him in the present, and in the final scene of that route when Takumi engages on a suicide mission in order to save the planet, all his dead friends are visualized to appear behind him, and then Karua joins them, pushing Takumi forward. Karua is pretty easily interpreted as an alter even if that obviously wasn't the intention!!! The other "whoa he's a system" thing and the thing that personally made me get into this headcanon is the route Box of Calamity. This route starts with Takumi allowing an enemy commander named Eva to be killed even after she begs for her life to be spared. Takumi starts to see Eva's ghost everywhere. In one timeline, he finds a way to communicate with the real Eva's ghost, but on another timeline he ends up hallucinating a lot, including being attacked by an unspeaking ghost in a way that leaves genuine marks on him, and later on in a haze he watches all his friends die. That's when he comes to the realization that *without him even knowing at all* he'd created a physical projection with his magic in the form of Eva's ghost, and even talks to the ghost as it being part of himself. Also, the marks the ghost caused were him completely unaware he was self harming!! He was explicitly not in control of his body!!!

Takumi to the ghost: "That makes you... me. You're my... guilty conscious." (I'd always known. We'd changed so much. I realized the invaders were more than just enemies, but I averted my eyes from the truth. [...]) "We're hideous. I knew it, that's why you're here. There were two ghosts. Eva, and you. If that's true, I'm supposed to be killed by you, but..." Like I said before there's also the possession situations, but even outside of that it's fun to headcanon Takumi as a system!! [The following was added through Tumblr asks later] Additions to my system Takumi headcanon about stuff I either forgot or skipped Takumi is a time traveler and the way he's represented gaining his memories from the future is the two of them being shown holding hands and then one of them becoming smoke and disappearing into the other There's an entire route called Multiple Eitos where he kills and absorbs the powers of his enemy/former friend (???) Eito for a SECOND TIME because of time travel stuff. Because of this, Eito's consciousness ends up stuck in Takumi's brain and gives Takumi a cognitive disorder where he sees everyone with the appearance and voice of Eito. The Eito in his brain mocks him and manipulates him and tries to take over his body, and in the various endings Eito: a) becomes part of Takumi and won't take over anymore and will only commentate from inside Takumi's brain, but Takumi has the cognitive disorder forever, forever seeing Eito's face everywhere b) Takumi tortures Eito and himself simultaneously because Eito can feel his pain. Eventually, Takumi stops fronting and Eito takes over, looking very sinister c) Eito tricks Takumi into killing his friends, and Takumi is shown with Eito's eye color as Eito talks in Takumi's head about how they're one now, united in hatred. (There's also an ending where both of them die but that's not super interesting for this headcanon) Speaking of Eito, there's a segment in one of the routes where Takumi genuinely believes he has an Eito alter. He doesn't (though he does talk about summoning Eito's evil from inside him so... I think there's something there if you want to believe), but he blames Eito for his memory blackouts, which are caused by a timeline-hopping version of himself knocking him out and taking his place Honestly the whole thing where he keeps hearing about himself doing things he doesn't remember is pretty interesting. There's two Takumis several times in the game!!! There's an entire route where Takumi gets possessed by a murderous brain parasite called a G'ie, and it gives him amnesia whenever it's fronting. He starts just blacking out all the time and he has no choice but to deal with this and try to live his life protecting who and what he can protect. Other characters also get taken over, but we don't see them swapping in and out with the G'ie and instead it seems like they're fully taken over. Takumi is in a special situation though because there's no actual parasite inside him, just the remnants of its data/consciousness due to time travel stuff (again) I still think the stuff I put into my main submission is the more compelling evidence, but my god there's so much stuff that goes on throughout the different routes that lead to there being more than one person in Takumi's head, or more than one Takumi existing at the same time, etc

Asya Shubina (alters noted by submitters: Tosya)