Damn!  I missed out on some great discussions today!  I have to say that I am extremely jazzed that we have so much participation and feedback happening -- that's a great sign that it's going as well as I'd hoped it would.<br/><br/>Well, I already expressed how I felt about the game in general, so I suppose I can give more depth to Masato as well as his thoughts on the rest of the cast.<br/><br/>* The big lug has a lot of issues, as everyone who meets him is quite aware.  He really does wish that he could be a normal high school kid, but fate obviously had other things in store for him and they all seem to have to do with pain for him and everyone around him.  He's developed that gruff exterior to drive people away so that he can't hurt them but, as evidenced by his behavior around his mother, he's perfectly capable of forming lasting relationships with people he cares for.  The only major problem he has, though, is with attractive girls as they tend to test his self-control.  He's okay as long as he doesn't spend a great deal of time around them, so he is loathe to allow most girls to get too close to him.  Most people are generally scared of him, though, so he's almost completely clueless as to how one makes or maintains friendships.  He knows about respect, however, and most of the group has earned his.  And, as Whately pointed out, Masato is indeed Marked and, while he might just seem odd to the casual observer, those who know that things like oni really do exist would likely find his true nature to be sorely obvious (even if he himself isn't completely aware of it yet).<br/><br/>* Matt is probably the only person in the school that Masato would trust, though he couldn't immediately explain why.  Ever since they met, though, Matt has seemed to generally be unafraid of Masato, making him one of the only people that he could possibly associate with.  Masato doesn't care to pry into his life and he was never one for small talk, so he never suspected that Matt might be a wizard.  Now that he knows, though, he's glad that he isn't on the guy's bad side.  After the incident at the school and the midnight event, Masato has come to realize that Matt knows waaaaaay more than he does about what is going on, so if things are going to just keep getting weirder, he's going to be sticking to Matt like duct tape.<br/><br/>* Ichigo was always weird and really goddamn creepy as far as Masato was concerned, but the fact that she was both cute and unafraid of him meant that she was a potential problem so he made sure to stay well away from her.  Fortunately, she didn't seem to have much interest in hanging around him either.  Things are different now, though, and as he learns more about her rather disturbing background, he's finding that he has more in common with her than he'd suspected.  He isn't sure yet if he finds that to be comforting.<br/><br/>* Hikari scares Masato.  Not only is she completely unafraid of him, but every minute he spends around her drives him further up the wall.  No one has ever tested his self-control as much as she has and Masato is not looking forward to working with her.  Secretly he hopes that she'll wise up and go home before something bad happens.  Knowing what happened to her, he is still pretty sympathetic and he'd really hate for her to have to suffer it again, especially if he's involved.  As it stands, he thinks she's just a normal girl with a killer body and an amazingly strong willpower (how else could she seem so unaffected by everything that happened?).  Once he discovers what she really is, though, his opinion of her will most likely change.<br/><br/>* Masato isn't as familiar with Jessica, but he's slowly beginning to understand that, like Matt, she knows a lot more of what's going on here than he'd suspected (why the hell do the Americans know more about Japanese monsters than the Japanese kids?).  She appears strong and he finds that very respectable.  Once he finds out that she could definitely hold her own in a fight against him, he'll be far more happy to have her around.  That said, if she decides that he's a monster and needs to be treated as one, she's going to find how unamused he is when people call him Oni.  ;)