Kanata Shinkai

An idol who loves the ocean, and is searching for his own way to live as a human being. He has a calm and carefree personality, and his home is the aquarium. He physically feels suffocated without water. With a softly swaying singing voice, his performances are relaxed.

He is RYUSEI Blue in Starmaker Production's RYUSEITAI.

Appearance
Kanata is a tall young man with a good build. His hair is a cyan color, cut short, and slightly wavy. Kanata has a curved ahoge on the top of his head and has light green, narrow eyes.

On stage, he wears the blue color version of RYUSEITAI's uniform. It includes a black and white leather jacket with blue accents and gold trimming and detailing. The jacket is longer on the back than it is in the front, and the inside is designed with a sparkly purple fabric, reminiscent of a galaxy. He wears a black shirt underneath and a gold necklace with a blue star as well as white form-fitting pants with a sparkly purple stripe down the outer sides. This is accessorized with a blue and white striped belt with a gold and blue star-shaped buckle. The belt has golden strings dangling from it and a sparkly blue and white wrap tied to it. He also wears tall blue boots with white accents and gold detailing, along with a pair of black fingerless gloves.

Personality
Kind, eccentric and easygoing, Kanata is the type of person that goes about life in his own pace. He generally has a calm demeanor, rarely finding himself genuinely angry, and generally being friendly towards the people he interacts with. He also happens to be surprisingly tactful regarding the emotions of others, picking up with little difficulty when someone is upset.

Initially he feels like a distant person to most, being perceived as "mysterious" by his RYUSEITAI juniors for a while, and struggling to really get along with them. However, as time goes on, Kanata begins to feel a lot more at home in RYUSEITAI, and it's notable that despite his isolated upbringing he seems to genuinely love to be with other people, especially ones he cares about, having a caring part of himself that always prioritizes making others happy, even if it means hiding away his own problems and dealing with them all by himself. This attitude of his can be worrying for his friends, however, which is why he is called out on this tendency by Kaoru during Aquarium, and thus ever since does his best not to go overboard and worry others like that.

Also because of everything that happened in his youth, he does not dream of anything too grand but instead appreciates the simpler things in life, such as being together with the people he loves and living on as a human, instead of the living God his family made him to be. This upbringing also influences the way he deals with his emotions, since he often does not know how to properly handle them or what to do with them, an example being when he mentions in Aquarium that he has never been selfish before, which is why he isn't good at it.

He has a lifelong love for fish and sea animals of all kinds, caring deeply about them to the point where he refuses to even risk letting them fall into the wrong hands. He considers them "sea friends", and seems to bond easily with them, although he is not necessarily opposed to eating sea food such as lobsters. Kanata also harbors a love for water and the sea in general, finding time to splash in water whenever he can, even during winter. He also feels stressed whenever he spends too long away from water.

Etymology
Kanata's first name is homophonous with the word 彼方, meaning "faraway". His last name means "deep sea". The provenance for Kanata's name is likely linked to various of his physical and personality traits, such as his hair color, his fascination with marine life, and his color in his idol unit.

Trivia

 * Kanata's autograph consists of his full name rendered in hiragana, inside a drawing of a footballfish.
 * Kanata only "speaks" in hiragana, never in kanji and katakana, which reflects his slow way of speaking. According to Arashi, he also writes in all hiragana, which causes the teachers trouble when grading.
 * The only word he says in its proper spelling is hero ヒーロー. The one time he didn't is when he first heard the word in his first year in school.
 * During Enstars! era, he often used to soak in the school's water fountain. In Enstars!! era, he soaks in the pond in ES's Floating Garden.
 * Apparently, he can communicate with sea creatures. His ancestors could do it as well.
 * Kanata’s usual Ryusei Blue intro is not actually the proper introduction for Ryusei Blue; instead, he uses a personalized version. Chiaki has recited the proper version before.
 * It has been mentioned multiple times that Kanata is much stronger than he looks, since he is the one who transports the fish tanks of the Marine Life club room. Kuro has even stated that Kanata is so strong, it's unknown who would win in an arm wrestling match between the two of them.
 * Kanata has never read manga before, not until Keito showed him one. He says that it's because whenever he attempts to read any book, it becomes wet and unreadable.
 * Kanata has shown to have an interest in crafts. He made seashells by hand for a miniature fish tank he has given to Anzu, and has also crafted many small stuffed fish similar to the Atlantic footballfish keychain he gave to Midori.
 * He tends to impulsively shop.

Voice Actor Comment
"Shinkai-kun seems like a guy who would share with you all sorts of trivia if you were to go to the beach with him. He can't actually swim--throw him in the water and he'd sink like a stone, but I can't swim, either, so that works out perfectly (laugh). He does everything in his own pace, and he kind of has a mysterious air. At the same time, there's something about him that draws you in and makes it impossible to leave him to his own devices, so I'm personally very interested in this character. I look forward to seeing how he'd develop and how he'd interact with the other characters around him." (Enstars!)

"Congratulations! Let's puka puka a lot more with Kanata and everyone~! Here's to being able to see lots of smiles!" (Enstars!!)