Kamisato Kakeru

"Do you wish for a new world?."

- Kamisato Kakeru

Kamisato Kakeru (上里翔流) is a character introduced in Shinyaku Toaru Majutsu no Index. Similar to Kamijou Touma, he holds a mysterious power in his right hand, the World Rejecter, a power that is the exact opposite of what the Imagine Breaker represents. With this and his similar background, he can be viewed as a counterpart to Touma.

His appearance in the story marks the abrupt end to the magic god subplot that began since the end of the Othinus debacle after defeating most of the remaining magic gods in the world.

Appearance
Both he and the narration describes him as a normal high school boy. He has brown hair and eyes, and wears a uniform consisting of a white formal shirt with a blue tie, a blue jacket buttoned by two gold buttons and grey trousers.

Personality
Kakeru has a firm and somewhat pessimistic view of himself as a 'normal high school boy', someone who he thinks is merely average or below in everything, not someone whom girl would look up to or fall in love with, and someone likely to be killed first on running into a supernatural incident, being nothing without special power. This view may have come about partly because of his doubt and lack of trust in himself and others.

Believing that his situation would not occur naturally or logically, especially to a 'normal high school boy' such as himself, Kakeru thinks that the girls which have gathered around him have been twisted by the power he has been given. As a result, he hates the World Rejecter and the Magic Gods whose wishes ended up creating it, enough to hunt them all down and wipe them out. Despite this, he willingly makes use of their abilities and continues to save girls with his right hand, as a form of revenge in his own way.

Kakeru has a tendency to view the world through his own ideas and assumptions of similarity or difference, imposing them on himself and his surroundings, and assuming to understand. When confronting an adversary, he tends to try to prepare beforehand and acts calm and aloof (and in the case of Kamijou Touma, initially somewhat overfamiliar) while explaining his views to them and imposing them. However, if his views and righteousness are challenged, he will lose this composure and angrily deny and spite his opponent.

Unlike Touma, who would try to seek a solution where everyone would be saved even when one doesn't seem possible at first glance, Kakeru tends not to look for another way and is more willing to give up and cut one off to save another. He is also more willing to inflict potentially lethal injuries. However the two are similar in their intolerance of injustices inflicted on others and their tendency to fight to save girls they come across who are in trouble.

Kakeru has a habit of placing his hand to his neck and trying to crack it, though he is usually unable to do so unless he is angered. He also has respect for those he sees as strong, the kind without the conflicting desires that would make them a target for World Rejecter.

Background
Not much is known about Kakeru other than the fact that his existence is unknown even to Aleister Crowley. At the time of his first appearance, only Laura Stuart knew he existed. What is known that prior to getting the World Rejecter, he was truly an ordinary high school boy who lived in an ordinary town outside of Academy City. He was childhood friends with Elza but had stopped talking to her, and was classmates with Claire, admiring her from afar, both of whom he believed were ordinary persons like himself, unaware that they were a Magician and Gemstone respectively. In his conversation with Patricia Birdway, it is implied that he once had a girlfriend prior to getting a harem. Regardless, Kakeru was a normal high school boy who knew next to nothing about them prior to getting the World Rejecter.

Around the beginning of November, when the Magic God Othinus became uneasy with the world, a strange power began affecting Kakeru. It was not until two to three days prior to December 3, the time when High Priest, Niang-Niang, and Nephthys descended into the word, that the World Rejecter fully manifested in his right hand, born out of the wishes of the magic gods after becoming disappointed with the Imagine Breaker. In that short amout of time, he not only saved one hundred girls but also became acquainted with the world of magic and science.

However, perturbed by the dependence and affection of the girls that surround him, Kakeru began to believe that the World Rejecter had changed them, not believing at all that it was his actions when using the World Rejecter that drew the girls to him. Despite his complaints, he began using them when he was in trouble. Sickened that he had become the center of a veritable harem and believing that the magic gods deliberately put the power in his right hand, Kakeru decided to embark on eliminating all the magic gods for giving him the World Rejecter. Along the way he later learns of the Imagine Breaker and its wielder, Kamijou Touma, opting to find him to "lighten his burden" due to their similar circumstances, essentially wanting him to agree with his way of thinking.

Magic God Invasion Arc
While Kihara Noukan was busy killing the High Priest, Kakeru was out and about and using his World Rejecter in "exiling" the magic gods. His first appearance in the story is him easily exiling Niang-Niang, much to Nephthys's shock, right after they decided to destroy Academy City in order to kill the one (Noukan) who can kill them.

After defeating Niang-Niang, Kakeru explains that he has defeated all the other magic gods apart from the High Priest and Othinus as well as the nature of his power to Nephthys. Nephthys tries to stop herself from falling into the temptation of the World Rejecter, mustering enough willpower to try and create a new phase to change the world so Kakeru is defeated, as she had the ability to hold her powers in reserve. However, it is too late; Kakeru crushes the phase she tried to embed into the world, and she is then consumed by the World Rejecter.

Despite this victory however, Nephthys manages to escape thanks to her being a mummy, with organs separated from her body, allowing her to escape after leaving her primary organs to be consumed, much to his dismay.

Abilities
Kakeru's ability is the World Rejecter (理想送り (ワールドリジェクター)), a mysterious power that resides in his right hand. Formed from the desires of magicians to abandon and escape the current world, it allows him to erase individuals with conflicting desires and their creations, and cast them into a 'new world'.

World Rejecter makes use of excess regions within the world's timeline - though parallel worlds are not known to exist and the world or universe is confined to a single timeline, the timeline can expand or contract like a rubber string, and as such it has a fair amount of unused space. Kakeru compares it to only using ten frames in a sixty fps film, with no one noticing if subliminal footage is slipped into two or three of the leftover frames.

In order to use World Rejecter, certain conditions must be satisfied. The most important condition is that the individual who is being targeted must possess conflicting desires in their heart, which cause them to waver and not focus on a single path, clinging to their current world while at the same time wishing for a new world. On the other hand, those who have a single goal in mind and are resolved to walk down a single path without wavering, are unaffected. As well as working on individuals, World Rejecter also affects anything created by those individuals, including physical constructs and supernatural powers. World Rejecter's effective range is determined by the shadow of Kakeru's right hand and its movements. As such, Kakeru makes use of a torchlight in darkness in order to support his power.

As long as the conditions are satisfied, World Rejecter will erase the target and exile it to the 'new world', even for powerful beings such as Magic Gods. Kakeru claimed that if the conditions were met, it could even erase the sun or a black hole. The World Rejecter has been shown to be capable of crushing a newly created Phase before it could be embedded onto the world, and even managed to somehow erase Imagine Breaker. However it doesn't erase everything evenly at once - there is a slight time lag and it works from the outside in.

As the target is erased by World Rejecter, it is relocated and exiled to the unused regions of the timeline, the 'new world'. The erasure apparently doesn't cause the victim pain and in observed cases, induces a state of bliss and hope for the new world in their heart. Though Kakeru doesn't know what lies on the other side, he knows that there is at least something there, and considers the exiling in a way to be a form of 'salvation'. World Rejecter's victims are not technically dead, however it is noted that their situation, being erased, separated and exiled from the current world and unlikely to return, is such that they might as well be. World Rejecter can apparently recover erased objects to a certain extent, as shown with Nuada's Airgetlám, though the exact extent isn't known.

The nature of World Rejecter makes it particularly effective against Magic Gods, who ironically played a key role in its creation, having comprised the majority of the Magic Side's power. Magic Gods tend to possess the conflicting desires which make hearts waver, these feelings having unconsciously formed World Rejecter in the first place. Being all restricted to a single world, they also have a wish to leave the troubled world behind and spread their wings in a new world of unknown possibilities despite knowing that it wasn't possible, having searched the farthest reaches of the universe and the piled-up phases but found nothing new left. As shown with Nephthys, a side-effect of seeing the World Rejecter in action and knowing its effects is that a Magic God would be greatly tempted to let themselves be banished by it, being drawn to it in a similar fashion to a bug being drawn to its death by a bug-zapper or a sweet scented carnivorous plant. On realizing the danger, Nephthys quickly tried to use her reserved powers before she could give in to temptation.

Difference with Imagine Breaker
World Rejecter is the exact opposite of what the Imagine Breaker represents. The Imagine Breaker represents the ideal for magicians and magic-users that will allow them to fix, repair, and remain in the current world, while World Rejecter is the complete opposite. World Rejecter on the other hand gives them an illusion that will let them abandon, leave, and throw out the current world.

According to Laura Stuart, World Rejecter solidified because the incomplete Imagine Breaker could not contain the dreams and desires of all magicians. Because of this, these desires and dreams overflowed to create the World Rejecter, their hope that would grant them these dreams. Nephthys concurred that the World Rejecter was a "hope" formed from dreams escaping the Imagine Breaker, largely due to the influence of Gremlin's subconscious doubts in Touma. If Imagine Breaker represents the hope for magicians to return the world back to normal, then World Rejecter represents the hope for magicians to escape the world.

Unlike Imagine Breaker, which is restricted to Touma's right hand and what it touches, World Rejecter can operate from a distance, with its range determined by the shadow of Kakeru's right hand. While Imagine Breaker is always active and restricted to the supernatural, World Rejecter appears to be consciously activated and works on both natural and unnatural things, providing that they possess or originate from one with conflicting desires.

Character Art Design
According to Haimura, his design for Kakeru was based on an early rough of Sogiita Gunha. He intentionally made Kakeru similar in appearance to Touma, though much more refined-looking and taller.

Quotes

 * (From NT13): "I am the kind of normal high school boy you can find anywhere."
 * (His catchphrase from NT 14): “Do you wish for a new world?”
 * (To Touma, from NT14): “How conceited are you? We’re nothing but the kind of normal high school boys you can find anywhere. We’re average or below in everything. And you think someone would fall in love with a person like that? You think this ridiculous harem is a natural thing and the Magic Gods only gave the girls the last little push? What kind of convenient fantasy world do you live in? Or have they already poisoned you and tamed you this much?”
 * (To Touma, from NT14): “It’s true I didn’t gain this power because I wanted it. If I could rid myself of it now, I would. And I do need to pay a visit to the Magic Gods who forced it onto me. But that doesn’t mean I can abandon someone who needs help.”
 * (To Touma about Patricia, from NT14): “I respect that courage. I respect that small sense of righteousness that allowed her to face the pain without running away and to accept the fear without giving up. So I’m sick of meaningless talk of good or evil. I don’t care who looks down on me or criticizes me. I won’t leave Patricia all alone. Her heart was powerful enough to deflect my World Rejecter, so I’ll support her to the end.”
 * (To Noukan after explaining his deduction about the Sample Shoggoth's origin, from NT14): “If I had to say whether I was irritated or not, I’d say I’m just a tad pissed. This too might have been drawn to me by this ridiculous right hand, but just this once, I’m starting to not even care. To hell with you masterminds. I won’t let you rob anyone of anything else.”
 * (To Noukan, from NT14): "It’s useless. My World Rejecter has the power to exile people to the excess region in the same timeline. It affects anyone whose conflicting desires cause them to cling to the current world while also wishing for a new world. In other words, your efforts here are useless. It doesn’t matter how much power you have or how many strategies you’ve put together. If the one who made that power has a wavering heart that can’t focus on a single path, then my World Rejecter will react to everything related to that individual. It will be exiled and blown away. Give up. You chose to join forces with the wrong person.”

Trivia

 * The name "Kamisato Kakeru" is actually a play on words that hints at his actions against Gremlin. "Kamisato" (上里; lit. "upper village") can also be written as 神里, meaning "gods' village" or "divine village", and "Kakeru" (翔流; lit. "soaring current") is homophonous to the verb 欠ける, meaning "to be damaged/broken". Thus, as a whole, the name "Kamisato Kakeru" can be written as 神里欠ける, creating a phrase meaning "[the] gods' village is broken". This fits how, through his ability, Kakeru has eliminated multiple magic gods affiliated with Gremlin.