Characters / AI: The Somnium Files - Kaname Date

AI: The Somnium Files | Main Index
Protagonists: Kaname Date | Mizuki Date
AI: The Somnium Files (Iris Sagan) | AI: The Somnium Files - nirvanA Initiative

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Special Agent Kaname Date

Voiced by: Tarusuke Shingaki (Japanese), Greg Chun (English), D.C. Douglas (English, in his original body)

"Heh, I'm used to "Psyncing." Part of the job."

The main protagonist and POV of the game, Kaname Date is a detective employed by ABIS (Advanced Brain Investigation Squad), a top-secret branch of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. As one of ABIS's Psyncers he can "psync" with suspects who are either unable or unwilling to cooperate during investigations to access their subconscious state - their "Somnium" - to uncover their minds' hidden secrets.

Six years prior to the game he lost both his memories and his left eye in an undisclosed incident that seems to be linked to the New Cyclops Killings he finds himself investigating in the present...

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A-H

• Action Dad: He's Mizuki's unofficial guardian following her parents relinquishing care, and adopts her in the Resolution route. The two of them even share several action scenes, taking out bag guys and hunting down clues together.
• Actor Allusion: This is not the only time Greg Chun has done the English voice for the main character in a game about a Japanese detective searching for a serial killer who removes their victim's eyes...
• Agent Mulder: Although he is an atheist, he is rather open to other less grounded possibilities. For instance, the events of the game cause him to seriously consider whether alternate realities exist and he doesn't dismiss Iris's statements that a Illuminati-esque organization is trying to kill her (partially because they did get jumped by a bunch of armed goons earlier that evening, though they were unrelated to Iris's paranoia). He is also terrified of ghosts.
• Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Poor Mizuki...
  • Date tells Ryuki and Co. the story of how he acquired [["porno-mag powers"]] , rationalizing his porn addiction in front of a group containing two kids and his work colleagues, and completely destroys Mizuki's remaining fragments of respect for him.
    Mizuki: "Yeah, I think I'm gonna change my last name."
    Komeji: "I think that would be a good idea."
  • She and Bibi leave in disgust when he and Hitomi are indulging in pet play.
• Ambiguous Situation: The Golden Ending requires Date to know information he could only have acquired through other routes. What exactly is happening here is purposely kept unclear- whether or not if Date has become a user of the Morphogenetic Field is unknown. AI: The Somnium Files - nirvanA Initiative implies that his fate was manipulated by The Frayer, who has the ability to traverse different timelines because they exist outside of the game's world.
• Ambiguously Bi: Not so much in the first game, where the closest he gets to is agreeing with Kagami that they could be starting into a relationship if either one was a girl. In nirvanA Initiative however, apparently Gen and Date have seen each other's buttholes. Ryuki and Date also causes this to come into question, where Date is encouraging and watching out for him, and repeatedly claims that the two have a close "physical" relationship. Mizuki immedietely jumps to the obvious conclusion from that phrasing.
• Amnesiac Hero: Only remembers the last six years of his life. Because when his personality jumped to his current body, his memories didn't.
• Amnesiac Lover: He's revealed to be this to Hitomi, due to actually being Falco post-body swap and amnesia.
• Amnesiac Villain Joins the Heroes: Heavily implied by the hints that he's the original Cyclops Killer, as Date lost his memories six years before the game began, which is also when the Cyclops Killings took place. His boss and coworker both insist that the events are a coincidence and that he has nothing to do with the case. It's ultimately subverted. He inhabits the body of the Cyclops Killer due to a case of Grand Theft Me that caused him to lose his memories. His original identity was a Killer Cop, but he was already on the heroes' side when the body swap and memory loss took place.
• Anguished Declaration of Love: With a twist! When Date has to lie in order to trigger Aiba's self destruct when she can't come back due to her cloud data being wiped, he tells her that he hates her and never wants to see her again.
• Arch-Enemy: To Saito who's trying to corner Date to get his body back. He targets all of Date's loved ones in order to make this plan work.
• Aww Look They Really Do Love Each Other: For all of their bickering, he and Mizuki share several moments that show the two really do love each other:
  • Date is there to assure Mizuki, who's suffering from a massive guilt complex caused by parental abuse, that her terrible upbringing wasn't her fault.
  • At the end of her route, Mizuki is left as the only one who can save Date from his coma, venturing into his Somnium to save him.
• Badass in Distress: In the climax, Saito has him tied up so that he can swap their bodies back with the prototype psync machine. Once the procedure is done, Date is left delirious and at Saito's mercy.
• Badass Normal: While capable of some incredible feats, nothing indicates that Date has been altered or empowered in anyway besides having Aiba; he's simply a very strong and determined human. Unless, of course, his silly White Snake story told in nirvanA Initiative is meant to be taken remotely seriously.
• Best Friend: Renju is this to him for five years before the game starts. The two are incredibly close and constant drinking buddies, with Renju opening up how his Dark and Troubled Past, being able trust Mizuki in Date's care when he and Shoko are horrible parents, and Date grows worried about him when he seems to vanish without a given reason. Whenever he finds Renju's corpse, he's actualy devastated, but continues to do his job.
• Blackmail:
  • He gets Ota to cooperate with the investigation by threatening to tell Iris that Ota is running multiple social media accounts to make it seem like he is defending A-Set from haters.
  • He gets Moma to cooperate by threatening to expose him as an A-Set fanboy to his yakuza brethren.
• Big Damn Heroes: In nirvanA Initiative; the Shoma and Komeji route, he comes driving onto the scene and steering through several of the kidnappers with his car, all to save Ryuki, Shoma, and Komeji from being shot.
• Big "NO!":
  • Played Straight; he lets one out after he sees Iris getting killed in the Annihilation Route.
  • Played for Laughs; he lets one out when Mizuki tells him she tossed out all of his porno mags.
• Blatant Lies:
  • Anytime he tries to lie to Aiba, who sees everything he sees and can hear his thoughts.
  • Ryuki and Tama detect a stack of magazines he hides in his apartment's speaker systems; Date insists they're "academic journals" that he hides because they're "limited edition". Everyone can immediately guess that it's porn like usual.
• Boyfriend-Blocking Dad: Despite not being her actual father he occasionally acts like this in regards to Mizuki, such as being very unhappy upon hearing that she's friends with Ota or being inwardly relieved when she says she hasn't kissed anyone yet.
• Brief Accent Imitation: Date puts on a stereotypical Japanese accent while playing the role of a martial arts master for Mizuki during a flashback.
• Brought Down to Badass: He's no longer got Aiba in his eye by the time of the sequel, meaning he can't rely on her calculations and constant stream of info. That doesn't make him any less of a badass though.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Heavily perverted, stubborn, easily distracted, and notoriously childish; Date remains one of the best detectives around, being able to crack open a mystery no one else could have. Of course, his effectiveness is heightened by Aiba's help, but it does not invalidate his efforts.
• But Liquor Is Quicker: Boss implicitly accuses him of this when he's taking Iris to Marble, but he firmly denies it on the notion that she's not yet 21 - although when she asks him if his answer would be different if she was of legal drinking age, he doesn't say a thing.
• Calling the Old Man Out: In a flashback between him and Renju; after being fed up watching Shoko and Renju's failure to properly care for Mizuki, he, on Mizuki's behalf, calmly tells Renju to his face what shitty parents the two are.
  "Okay, sorry, but I'm just gonna say it: You two are awful parents."
• Can't Act Perverted Toward a Love Interest: He can shamelessly flirt with Ritsuko, but he's very shy by comparison when it comes to Hitomi once he gets back his original body. Becomes subverted in the sequel, where he's shown shamelessly engaging in petplay with her in the Playable Epilogue.
• Cassandra Truth: Date is the only person who saw "Iris"'s body in the cold storage warehouse, with somebody having come along to hide it before the police arrived. Because Aiba ran out of power before then, he has no photographic proof to show for his discovery, and even Aiba thinks he might've hallucinated the body. Then we find out later that it was Hitomi who came and hid the body.
• Casual Kink: Too many to list! He's into cuckholdry, older women, girls doing intimate things, hip bones, being hit on, petplay - and many more!
• Cell Phones Are Useless: Date certainly seems to think so, since he has Aiba for any time he needs to make calls, texts, or check info on the internet. This bugs Boss to an extent, since she has to go out of her way to print pictures of persons of interest for his investigations. Having one also would have likely saved a lot of trouble when Aiba's battery dies just before Date finds the corpse of "Iris", really Manaka.
• Chivalrous Pervert: Has a lecherous streak a mile wide and literally gains superpowers in the presence of porno magazines (real or fake) while being good-hearted and protective toward others, as well as a good parental substitute for Mizuki.
• Clueless Chick-Magnet: Downplayed in that he's not ignorant to all interest toward him, as he picks up on Ritsuko's advances (granted, he made the first move), but when the likes of Boss and Iris show obvious interest in him, he either interprets it as nothing more than casual flirting or is oblivious to it outright.
• Comically Missing the Point: When Mizuki rattles off her backpack's extremely extensive disaster relief kit-grade contents ranging from a Swiss Army knife to a grenade, Aiba points out there was an illegal item in the list, but Date chooses to look the other way on the knife.
• Cool Car: He has an imported '89 Ford Falcon which was modified to charge Aiba in the steering wheel and can be driven by her remotely.
• Cowboy Cop: Downplayed; he's normally on the same page as the rest of ABIS, but when the team's hands are tied due to external factors, he'll take it upon himself to pursue the case anyway, often against Boss's orders. The best example comes from the raid on the Sejima house, all after So (or rather Saito in his body) cripples the department's objectives to stave them off.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Date can behave immaturely and perverted even when he's supposed to be working, giving him the image of a detective who isn't very good at his job. But despite his antics, Date is a competent investigator and a marksman capable of making some seriously improbable shots.
• Deadpan Snarker: He has his moments, and it gets worse when he is dealing with either Aiba or Mizuki.
• Defective Detective: Zig-Zagged if you view his personal life as a whole: he's got a strained relationship with his adopted daughter, hits up cabarets in lieu of pursuing a romantic relationship, and has no past memories to rely on due to his amnesia. But he's also clearly close with his colleagues at ABIS and is on good terms with Renju and Mama from drinking together, showing he's at least got some social graces.
• Deus Exit Machina: In the sequel he ends up getting amnesia and going away due to the cathedral explosion, thus leaving Aiba with Mizuki instead.
• Déjà Vu: Whenever he encounters people he knows from his past life, his adrenaline levels spike which is indicated by the screen pulsating. Examples include meeting Hitomi and Iris for the first time, his lover and daughter surrogate.
• Did I Say That Out Loud: Date and Aiba can communicate mentally with each other, but Date has a tendency to talk out loud when he thinks he's alone or when he gets frustrated with her. It leads to people who don't know about Aiba to think that Date just talks to himself a lot.
• Does Not Like Spam: He apparently dislikes soft-boiled eggs, as confirmed in his bio. The epilogue in the first game ahs him fall out with Mizuki because she didn't cook eggs like how he wanted.
• Double Entendre: Leave it to Date to drop suggestive quips at every opportunity, often to the bemusement of Aiba.
  Aiba: (Hugging a Somnium Hitomi) "She's hard..."
  Date: "Yeah, me too."
  Aiba: "Hmm?"
  Date: "Nothing."
• Dude Magnet: He's gotten the attention of a couple guys, such as Pewter and Ryuki.
• Dream Walker: A detective who can use a special machine to "psync" with people, allowing him to see their dreams in order to extract clues from their subconscious. But given how dreams are, the information he gains this way can be somewhat unreliable.
• Easy Amnesia: Not so easy in the first installment. He lost all his memories for 6 years due to transference into another body with the Somnium device and only started regaining them bit by bit over the course of the game. A much straighter example occurs in the sequel however. Date loses all his memories due to the falling debris in the Naix cathedral and spends another 6 years not knowing who he was only to suddenly regain all his memories upon seeing a newscast about Jin's other half showing up out of the blue.
• Electronic Telepathy: Thanks to the artificial nerve in his left eyesocket, he can wirelessly communicate with Aiba via his thoughts. This provides an early hint in nirvanA Initiative that he's disguised as Gen in the "Gen/Amame" route when "Gen" somehow can hear conversations between Mizuki and Aiba since his artifical nerve was still connected to Aiba despite their breakup and she was using an unsecured line.
• Establishing Character Moment: The first scene in the game, when Date and Boss are investigating Shoko's body, gives almost everything you need to know about him: you know his name and occupation, his jokey and immature nature, the fact that he has an advanced AI in his eye, and his highly protective nature towards his loved ones-as shown when he ignores investigation protocol to rush towards a traumatized Mizuki.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • While he's always unapologetically horny and shamelessly flirts with women, he finds Ota's obsession with Iris a tad disturbing, especially when he discovers Ota's sockpuppetting on social media to generate traction for her.
    "This kid is pathetic..."
  • He assures Aiba he's not gonna try and make a move on the teenaged Iris - although when later given the opportunity to make her do something a little perverse with her implicit approval, he can't resist the temptation. Thankfully, Aiba threatens him into backing down.
  • Even he can't help but be a little put off when Boss gets aggressively perverse, though when she hits on him, Aiba can tell he likes it.
  • Despite being a shameless pervert who frequents cabaret clubs, even he can tell from a glance how much of a money trap Sunfish Pocket is, and isn't impressed with how honest Amame is about the store's policy.
• Eyepatch of Power: Wears an eyepatch during Ryuki's segments in nirvanA Initiative, complete with a pattern identical to Aiba, due to Aiba leaving Date's face in disgust from him watching too many sexy videos and Boss sending her on a "secret mission" until she calms down.
• Eye Scream: He lost his left eye at some point prior to the game; it is replaced by Aiba. It happens to him again in the Resolution Route, after Saito Psyncs with him — Saito even takes Aiba with him once he's back in his original body.
• Failure Hero: Despite all of Date's hardwork, a lot of routes feature him failing to save numerous people. The Annihilation Route has this at its worst as several fatal decisions leads to Saito killing nearly everyone Date cared about and leaving him stuck in the body of Boss. Even after Aiba incapacitates Saito, Date mournfully wonders if there's a much happier alternate universe...which leads to the Resolution Route unlocking.
  Date: Could I have had...a better future?
• Failure-to-Save Murder: In the Annihilation Route's ending. After Iris and Ota Matsushita are killed by So Sejima, Mayumi angrily blames Date for Ota's death, and refuses to cooperate any further with his investigation.
• Fetish: He'll occasionally express an erotic fascination with bones, especially hip bones, much to Aiba's annoyance.
• Flanderization: Downplayed. In the first game he was mostly a Covert Pervert who, while making plenty of sexual remarks in his head, tried to keep his thoughts to himself and focus on the investigation. In the second game he's much more open about his perverted tendencies, though he keeps them to himself in more serious situations, at least, for a vast majority of the time.
• Foreshadowing: There are several hints given, some more explicit than others, that the body Date inhabits is not his own.
  • This is literally one of the first lines he says upon entering his own Somnium for the first time:
    I feel like I'm in someone else's head. What a strange feeling.
  • The very first Somnium explored is Date's own dream, which has both Hitomi and the yet unnamed Falco present, characters that the player wouldn't know anything about yet and who have no established connection to Date unlike Boss or Renju.
  • When meeting Ota and getting frustrated by the latter's refusal to cooperate, Date humorously has several prompts to smack the kid which Aiba has to talk down. She then comments that maybe his "dosage should be increased". She's talking about his oxytocin levels which Saito's brain can't produce, instead deriving pleasure from violence to compensate.
  • The moment he learns Iris's name, a flashback to her childhood is shown. It's the time he, as Falco, played with her.
  • Iris's (who is actually Saito) Somnium shows a distrubing revelation of the Cyclops Killer's face which looks exactly like Date, when in reality it's because the face belongs to Saito.
  • As Date travels with Iris, he has several flashbacks showing Falco's perspective as he bonds with a younger Iris, something Date couldn't possibly know unless he really was Falco.
  • So is incredibly revolted by Date's pressence because Date looks just like his son.
• Friends with Benefits: Zig-Zagged. Some of his and Boss's remarks imply that the two have gotten frisky together, but it's unclear if they're just joking.
• The Gadfly: He does enjoy doing things to tease Aiba or get under her skin, as well as with many other people he meets. Though he's not as bad as the likes Shizue or Iris who get under his skin regularly.
  • He makes up a story to Mizuki about belly buttons being sacred in Shintoism, and that you have to clean it with spring water before praying. When she recounts this story to Ryuki in the second game, Date's trying his best to hold back the biggest belly laugh.
    "Heh, she'll catch on eventually."
• "Get Out of Jail Free" Card:
  • In Mizuki's ending, he gets away with killing So Sejima (albeit in justified self-defense) and is even potentially looking at a promotion since So was deemed the New Cyclops Killer after no further murders of a similar nature were reported after his death and he had dirt on the higher-ups which led to the 'do-not-arrest' order, who are now grateful that he isn't around anymore.
  • His crimes as the corrupted cop Falco got the perfect opportunity to be swept under the rug due to a string of events that let his original body, with someone else's mind, pay for the crimes, while his amnesiac mind birthed the new man known as Kaname Date in Saito Sejima's body, Boss outright spells the implicitly unlawful extent of what she did to grant Date a new life as a reborn officer under ABIS.
• Grappling-Hook Pistol: He has Wire Bullets available for his Evolver that shoots a hook on a wire. However, he's only seen using one as an Improvised Lightning Rod.
• Great Detective: Investigating throughout the game shows that he's got a real knack for detective work, being able to link together seemingly sparse clues to track the case's culprit.
• Gun Fu: He's perfectly capable of shooting and performing some amazing acrobatics at the same time.
• Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: Inverted; he fights mostly with a gun while Mizuki is the one bludgeoning bad guys with a metal pipe.
• Handicapped Badass: He's very capable of fighting multiple people at once even when Aiba isn't serving as his left eye.
• Hellbent For Leather: His leather jacket gives him a cool and mysterious vibe. Yusuke Kozaki has gone on record saying it's real animal leather.
• Hidden Depths:
  • His Somnium indicates that he enjoys wine tasting, and can even idenity a wine's flavor and origin from the just the color.
  Aiba: "Why would you have something like this in your dream?"
  Date: "Even a guy like me enjoys good drinks and better company."
  Aiba: "But these social engagements never seem to turn out well for you..."
  Date: "Stop, don't remind me!"
  • He's an audiophile, and will constantly admire any sound systems he spots.
  • Mizuki's route reveals that he thinks himself as no good as Parental Substitute for her, even with both of her parents dead. Luckily, this self-doubt goes away in both Mizuki's route and the True End.
  • Date likes explaining mythology which is where Iris got her interest back when he was Falco. He tries explaining some things about the shrine to Mizuki and Ryuki... only for both of them to fall asleep standing. He's never amused by this (and even uses the same tone of voice usually reserved for when something bad happens to his porno mags).
  Date: "Hey, don't fall asleep!"
• Hollywood Atheist: Averted. There was no particular event that led to his atheism, he simply just doesn't believe in God. He does at least humor others who are more spiritual such as Mizuki, and is open to think of a simple traditional Japanese prayer in hopes of Mizuki living a happy and healthy life, when they visited the shrine.

I-Z

• Improbable Aiming Skills: Most of the games QTE's involve some form of this, most notably Date ricochets a bullet to hit So from a thrown metal pipe. It's mostly thanks to Aiba making incredibly fast calculations and directing him, but Date clearly has remarkable skill of his own, such as another time he hits a spinning fire extinguisher's valve in midair, while Aiba is outside of his eye - he shouldn't even have depth perception!
• Inappropriate Pride: Date has a very unapologetic obsession with porn, to the point that he hides it in every corner of his apartment and dreams up an absurd story on why porn gives him superpowers. This tends to bewilder and/or disgust everyone around him, especially his daughter Mizuki.
• Insistent Terminology: He and Mizuki still refer to each other as "roommates" despite him being her guardian. This is indicative of him feeling unfit to truly be her guardian.
• Irony: In the years leading up to the first game, Date and Mizuki lived together for five years, but didn't know each other well. In nirvanA Initiative, a few months after Mizuki and Date get to know each other better and connect, he disappears for six years.
• It's Personal: While Date was always gonna have to hunt down the Cyclops Killer because it's his job, it gets really personal once Iris's life is threatened, both when she's killed in the Annihilation route and when kidnapped in the Resolution route.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Date can be incredibly blunt and pretty stubborn, but his intuition is pretty spot on and his logic tends to check out. Probably best shown with Iris in the Resolution route, where Date shuts down just about anything Iris truly believes in, but is doing so because he's trying to make sure she has a grip on reality, even if she gets distressed and frustrated with him.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Downplayed. While Date can lack tact and be pretty stubborn, as well as give plenty of snark, Date remains very nice to civilians and those he is close to. Even his teasing relationship with Aiba is still incredibly on good terms, and his strained relationship with Mizuki still shows he cares about her very much.
• Last-Name Basis: Everyone either calls him Date or Mr. Date.
• Last Request: Played for Laughs; after Date saves Ryuki from a life-or-death situation, Ryuki takes a moment to express gratitude and asks if what he can do to repay Date.
  Date: "...When I die someday... I'll need you to do me a solid."
  Ryuki: "...?!
  Date (whispering): "When I die, I want you to wipe the hard drive on my computer."
  Mizuki (unamused): "How about I bust it open for you right now?"
  Date: "No, please don't..."
• Latex Perfection: How he appears to be back in Saito's body in the sequel. His reasoning is that people are more familiar with his "Saito" face and it's apparently more popular with women.
• Lifesaving Misfortune: On the right side of the flowchart because of a misunderstanding, he winds up running around in a circle chasing the completely wrong lead and temporarily deluding himself into thinking that he can change reality via entering Somniums. However, his actions following his reaction to said misunderstanding accidentally put Saito Sejima into a car accident and screwed up his plans completely, resulting in the least amount of bloodshed and making it possible to stop Saito as well.
• Likes Older Women: He mentions in a few routes that he is into older women and is attracted to Ritsuko and Hitomi, who are 6 and 7 years older than him, respectively. It turns out that his original body is older than both women, but that doesn't invalidate his remark. Further cementing this is during nirvanA Initiative is that during Iris's Somnium, Date will claim that he's into "milf-y women". That said, his constant ogling of Amame Doi's hips and occasional excitement around Iris shows he's not completely above feeling attraction towards younger girls.
• Magic Plastic Surgery: Invoked; after returning to his original self as Falco/Hayato Yagyu, this trope is actually just an excuse that everyone uses to explain why his face looks different to those who don't know his true identity and only knew him with Saito's face.
• Male Gaze:
  • At the Lemniscate building, Date catches a glance of the receptionist's giant chest. Continuing to examine her will cause Date to increasingly focus on her chest.
  • Examining the "Mermaid" Amane Doi using X-Ray will result in Date admiring her hip structure despite the X-Ray working realistically and displaying just her skeleton rather than her naked body.
• Manchild: Played With. While no one in the game constantly sticks out as particularly mature, Date is childish, stubborn, easily distracted, and can have problems focusing on the matter at hand without making jokes. However, he can still be responsible when he needs to be, for the most part at least. The worst he ever does is get in childish bickering with Mizuki and Aiba.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Date (伊達) can mean "putting on appearances" or "doing something for show". After all, "Date" is neither his original name nor identity. Moreover, Date shares his last name with Masamune Date (伊達 政宗), who was a famous Daimyō through Edo period. Masamune Date was well known for missing an eye and thus was called the "One-Eyed Dragon of Ōshu" (独眼竜). However, unlike Date, Masamune lost his right eye instead of his left eye.
  • Kaname (鍵) is written with the kanji for "key", as in like the key to solving a mystery.
  • Kaname can also be spelt with "金目", meaning "golden eye".
  • Most interestingly, Kaname can be written as 要, that is, "pivot" or "vital point", which is apt to say the least due to him, or more accurately, his body being the pivotal point of everything that happens. In fact, this kana is where he gets "Kaname" from, as 鍵 is pronounced "kagi" (i.e his name is written with a kana but with the pronunciation of another kana. This might be on purpose.).
• Mr. Fanservice: He's commented to be rather attractive in-universe. He's got a pleasing face, an athletic build, he's clean kept and a flirtatious personality. Of course, this becomes disturbing when it's revealed Date's body is actually that of a serial killer. Played straight with his real body and identity Hayato Yagyu, who is a rugged Tall, Dark, and Handsome man.
• Mysterious Past: You know almost nothing about Date's past at the beginning of the game, only that he lost his memory six years ago. The first game gradually reveals who and, perhaps more importantly, what he is: the consciousness of a remorseful hitman in the body of a serial killer.
• Mysterious Purple: Purple is his primary color, as reflected in his outfit and UI assets. It plays into the symbolism of his Mysterious Past.
• Named After Somebody Famous: Shares a surname with Masamune Date, Japanese warlord who founded the city of Sendai, who, like Kaname Date, was also famous for lacking an eye, earning him the nickname "The One-eyed Dragon".
• Never Found the Body: His remains were never found after the explosion in the cathedral in nirvanA Initiative. Naturally he turns out to be fine.
  Aiba: "Don't worry, I am positive it would take more than that to kill Kaname Date. I am certain he's at the hot springs district in Atami or some place, spending his time in leisure."
  Mizuki: "If he is, I'd go down there and drown him in that boiling water myself."
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: All of the Iris Route occurs because Date buys into Iris's delusions about a secret organization targeting her. Not only does this impede the actual Cyclops Killer investigation but also it ends with Iris succumbing to her brain tumor and dying as Date fruitlessly tries to keep her alive with the Psync Machine.
• Noodle Incident: He and Boss apparently spent a night on a long table where they got salmon roe and seaweed salad all over each other. They didn't make love, but Pewter claims that throwing food all over each other sounds even more kinky than if they did.
• Not Himself: During Iris's route, Date's mental state is affected by Iris's when he Psyncs with her. She has become paranoid about a conspiracy involving secret societies out to get her due to her advancing brain cancer, and her mentally off state affects Date if he buys into it too much. If he believes her during the psync, for the rest of the route he is just convinced as she is that there is a group called Naixatloz out to kill her, despite normally being a pretty heavy skeptic.
• "Not So Different" Remark: During their final confrontation, Saito says that as a Killer Cop and hired gun, "Falco" was no better than a Serial Killer like Saito himself. Date doesn't actually debate him on this, implying he shared the sentiment.
• Not So Innocent Whistling: He does this in his thoughts during the Iris Route when Aiba calls him out for stealing the panties and a porno magazine from the Golden Yokocho gunfight earlier.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: In Iris' route, Date foregoes any of his usual skepticism and becomes much more desperate to keep Iris safe- something Aiba notes repeatedly. This is later explained in the Appendix as Date succuming to Iris's somnium in what is best described as mass hysteria.
• Papa Wolf:
  • He may not be her biological father, but if you try and hurt Mizuki, the child he has raised for the past four years, he WILL hurt you, as Saito Sejima finds out the hard way on the Mizuki and Resolution routes.
  • He's willing to storm a warehouse surrounded by hired mercenaries to rescue Iris. It gets even more intense when she's kidnapped by Saito, the true Cyclops Killer, and Date is even more determined to put him down for good.
• Parental Substitute: Before the story begins, he became Mizuki's guardian as neither of her parents (who Date was friends with) were fit to take care of her. Their relationship is somewhat distant, but the events of the story bring them closer together. Particularly in Mizuki's route where their relationship is fully explored and in the true ending where Date officially adopts Mizuki and becomes her father for real.
• Parental Neglect: He's Mizuki's (not legal) guardian by the time of the game's beginning, and by his and Mizuki's admission, Date hasn't made much of an effort to know Mizuki. Unusually for the trope, Mizuki is similarly keeping her distance from Date.
• Past-Life Memories: His bouts of Déjà Vu are actually Falco's memories resurfacing whenever he does something that triggers said memories.
• Perverted Sniffing: He takes a big whiff of the Sagan's shoebox, to Aiba's absolute disgust.
• Pet the Dog: Very early on when Aiba clearly wants praise for a job well done, Date teases her about it... before gently rubbing her form, which ends up tickling her.
• Platonic Life-Partners: He and Aiba share a tight, unwavering bond, both on a professional and personal level. And there's no romantic connotation to it. After all, Date has a Love Interest already and Aiba's an AI which would make physical intimacy impossible.
• Porn Stash: Date stashes porn in almost every corner of his apartment-inside his computer, the sounds system, his sofa, you name it. Mizuki usually throws it away or deletes it when she finds it.
  Mizuki (nonchalantly): "Date, the hard drive was full again. I had to make space, so I deleted all your cuckoldry videos."
  Date (seething): "First, I told you, those are "husbandry" videos. Second, WHY?! WHY DID YOU DO THAT?!"
• Proud Beauty: A male example; he has the option to flirt with himself when looking at Aiba's projection of him.
• Pungeon Master: Constantly inspecting the scenery brings this side of him, particularly when it comes to the Lemniscate sofas.
• Rage Breaking Point: He goes ballistic when Saito shoots Mizuki, proceeding to wail on the bastard and uppercutting him across the warehouse.
  "YOOUU!!!!"
• Recurring Element: Like the Zero Escape series that came before, Date is a character with generalized amnesia, something present with at least one character in each installment of that series.
• Retool: nirvanA Initiative expanded the silly surge in vigor Date had in the first game upon seeing a porno magazine into a full blown super power, where he clearly gains Super-Strength and Super-Speed with said surge; it even added an outrageous backstory to it, if Date is to be believed, all began when he was a kid who just so happened to find a porn mag in the bushes, his childish curiosity led him to check the magazine then and there, however, at that exact moment a white snake appeared, bitting Date on the leg and so he fainted, upon awakening later he would forever correlate the sight of a porn mag with the survival instinct he experienced with the white snake encounter, somehow mixing the two into awakening enhanced strength and speed whenever he reads a porno mag. When Date unveils this past of his everyone around him accordingly look at him in silent disgust, except Mizuki who openly expresses it; all that because such an outrageous story might actually be just an allegory for Date's first erection, where his super power esteem from sexual arousal.
• Riddle for the Ages: At the end of the first game, he never finds an answer for why he's remembering events from different timelines.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: When Iris takes off in the Resolution route, Aiba prompts Date to determine who "the person she trusts most" is. One of the options is himself, which Aiba dismisses due to Iris losing faith in Date when he didn't believe her about Naixatloz. Given that Date's true identity is Iris's "uncle" however, this assessment ended up being more accurate than Aiba previously believed.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: In Mizuki's route, he goes against Boss's orders and tries to apprehend So Sejima for himself. Though in the end Boss is actually happy Date did so, since the order to not arrest So basically came from So himself, and taking out a Serial Killer that had prime blackmail material against the police department under circumstances that could easily be labelled as self-defense is a tremendous relief for the higher-ups.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: There's a joke ending you can get where Date decides to resign from the police force and skip town with Ritsuko, and they live happily ever after in Shizuoka.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: In some routes, Date believes that he can change the past with his actions in Somnium because he found Iris' corpse in the warehouse, only to see her still alive after saving her in So's Somnium. However, this only turned out to be a major coincidence, and the one time he tries to actively take advantage of it, it fails to work.
• Ship Tease: Despite his lecherous streak, he has quite a bit with Hitomi, being noticeably a lot gentler and more cordial with her than other characters he talks to. It becomes even more pronounced after he returns to his original body and Iris is waiting for the two to finally tie the knot.
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog: All his efforts in the Annihilation route amount to this. He tries to stop the New Cyclops killer, only to fail time after time, being forced to find Renju's corpse, see Iris get killed on a live stream, and then find out Boss was killed without being aware of it at the time. He's finally forced to go into Boss' significantly injured body while Saito gets his old one back. Even when Aiba knocks out Saito, Date's left wondering how things could have gone in another world.
• Skewed Priorities: He can be motivated/excited by the prospect of porn in the middle of a firefight.
• Skyward Scream: His reaction upon discovering what he believes to be Iris's frozen body in the warehouse. Good thing for him that it wasn't actually her.
• Spanner in the Works: Ends up being this for the killer on the right path. Him warning Iris to be careful and be cautious prompts her to not trust Renju, who was actually Saito after stealing his body with the Prototype Psync Machine, which ends up derailing his plans to kidnap and kill her, leading to the prevention of the Annihilation Route and the survival of of her, Ota, So, and Boss.
• Speed Blitz: In nirvanA Initiative, we see how fast his porn-powered Super-Speed is from an outside perspective.
  • In Komeji/Shoma's route, he reads a porn mag, tosses it up in the air, and defeats all the nearby Mooks in the time it takes for the mag to fall back down.
  • In Gen/Amame's route, all that's visible is flashes of light from him taking out goons.
• Standard Power Up Pose: When he activates his "Porno Mag Power", he charges up in this pose, complete with the yellow aura firing off around him.
• Straight Man and Wise Guy: Zig-Zagged between him—a distractable and childish Bunny-Ears Lawyer with a massive porn addiction—and his partner Aiba—a highly advanced Artificial Intelligence with a coolheaded and sarcastic attitude. The two will snark, insult, and make terrible puns at each other to no end, Aiba's cold computer logic balancing out Date's impulsiveness and immaturity. While it's usually Date as the wise guy and Aiba as the straight man (not a man though), the two can switch the dynamic up depending on context (i.e. Aiba making terrible jokes and squeeing like a fangirl at insects, Date being laser focused on public safety and showing his detective chops).
• Super Cop: When you have superhuman reflexes, an AI partner, and dive into people's dreams for a living, it's hard not to qualify. If you factor in pornography, he literally gains faux-superpowers.
• Super-Speed: Telling Date that there's a porno mag somewhere near him briefly allows Date to move quickly enough to dodge bullets in an effort to reach it.
• Talking to Themself: Date occasionally attracts unwanted attention by accidentally speaking to Aiba out loud instead of in his head. Mizuki is particularly skeptical of his mental health.
  • He can also do this intentionally as a joke, because Aiba, outside of his body, sends live feed of him by looking at him, so he pretends that he's talking to a different version of himself.
    Date: "Who are you?"
    Also Date: "(deepening his voice) My name is Kaname Date. I work as a Special Agent for the investigation squad ABIS at MPD."
• That Man Is Dead: In the true ending, when Date is back in his original body, he completely discards his past as Hayato Yagyu/Falco and embraces his "fake" identity as Kaname Date.
  Hitomi: Mr. Falco? It is you, Falco, right?
  Date: You shouldn't call me that. I am Kaname Date. MPD, special investigation team ABIS. Psyncer.
• Throwing Off the Disability: Although he was completely unaware of it at the time, his (Saito's) brain lacked the ability to produce oxytocin and instead gets High on Homicide. Aiba secretly provides oxytocin for him when appropriate so he can uphold healthy relationships. By the first game's ending and nirvanA Initiative, he's in his original body which has no need for this.
• Took a Level in Badass: He's more generally effective in a fight in nirvanA Initiative, being able to fight off multitudes of goons on his own even without Aiba being present and with his porn reactions jumping from giving him heightened reflexes to making him border on invincible, all of which can be easily justified due Date being back in his real body, albeit under Saito’s appearance, through a mask, out of his own preference.
• Tsundere: A downplayed case compared to Mizuki and Aiba, but Date does throw insults at Aiba and Mizuki (more so with the former), though he cares about them both very much. He's also willing to openly compliment them much more than they do with him.
• Vague Age: In Nirvana Initiative, Date’s age is conspicuously left out with it being a question mark. This references the disconnect of Date styling himself after Saito, when he was thought to be 30, his actual body, which is around 42, and the amnesia he had for six years following the Cathedral incident.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Both with Aiba and with Mizuki. This leads to several Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other moments in the Mizuki route and the final route where it becomes clear he loves them both, and vice-versa.
  • Aiba and Date cannot go a single conversation without snarking at one another at least once, and they are quick to call each other out on their flaws, but it's quite evident that the two care very deeply for each other, no matter how much they may get on the other's nerves. Date is particularly distraught when he think Aiba is gone forever after blowing herself up. Even their final moment was an indirect declaration of love.
  • His relationship with Mizuki isn't any less vitriolic. It's justified due to his struggles to properly tend to her needs, frustrating her to no end. But it's clear by their bantering and teasing that they still greatly care for each other. It's kept up even at the end of Mizuki's route and in the true ending once the two legally become family.
  Mizuki: "Stupid old man."
  Date: "Punk-ass kid."
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • In many routes, Shizue and Ota will call Date out for not spending time with Mizuki after finding the corpse of her mother and later father, instead focusing almost entirely at the case at hand.
  • He chides Ota when it's revealed the latter ran away in terror from Shoko's corpse, leaving Mizuki all alone.
  "You left a twelve-year-old girl by herself?![...]Jeez, you're a real hero kid."
• Workaholic: For all of his casual attitude towards many things, Date is nothing but ridiculously determined to do his job correctly. So much so that he spends three days straight working on the New Cyclops Killings before his body collapses from being over worked.
• Would Hurt a Child: Upon learning Mizuki was being bullied at school, his first reaction was wanting to hurt the kids bullying her. Kids most likely around Mizuki's age at the time, being 11. Aiba quickly shoots that idea down, though.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: In Mizuki's Route: When Mizuki breaks down, having just released all of her pent up self-loathing due to her awful upbringing, Date is there to comfort her, letting her know that how her parents treated her isn't her fault.
  "Mizuki, you did nothing wrong. Don't blame yourself. It's not your fault. Not one single thing was your fault."

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Date's True Identity (HEAVY UNMARKED SPOILERS)

Hayato Yagyu aka Falco

Voiced by: Tarusuke Shingaki (Japanese), D.C. Douglas (English)

Hayato Yagyu was a police detective who, years prior to the main story, became a hitman for the Kumakura Family codenamed "Falco". He fell in love with Hitomi Sagan and tried to go clean for her but, in a cruel twist of fate, was the one responsible for shooting and crippling her in the past. Following this incident he was arrested and incarcerated for life at Fuchu Prison as Inmate #89.

It's eventually revealed that Hayato Yagyu is actually Date's original identity and body. The personality inside the body that instigated the shooting and went to jail was actually Rohan Kumakura after Hayato swapped bodies with him using the Psync machine and assumed his identity in a partially successful plan to protect Hitomi and Iris from the Kumakuras. Later he was captured by a suspicious Saito Sejima and used as Saito's guinea pig for the stolen prototype Psync machine, landing himself in Saito's body and with almost all of his memories lost. "Kaname Date" is the new identity given to him by Boss.

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• Abusive Parents: More like caretakers, but it’s stated the staff of the orphanage he spent his childhood in subjected him to every type of abuse imaginable.
• Affectionate Nickname: Iris started calling him "Uncle" when she was little.
• Badass in Distress: Twice! Once he's found and blackmailed by Rohan to be the Kumakuras' mercenary. And then he's ambushed and kidnapped by Saito, injected with a truth serum, and forced to switch bodies with him after being held hostage for several days.
• Bad Liar: While in the body of Rohan Kumakura, he does an extremely poor job of getting information out of Saito who figures out instantly that he's an impostor at least due to not knowing information Rohan should be privy to.
• Being Evil Sucks: His backstory as a hitman and Killer Cop is painted as a crushingly dreary existence, all rendered in gray and with Falco never cracking a smile at his work. Meeting Hitomi by comparison is what finally let him feel alive again after years of taking lives.
• Death of Personality: Despite it being stated that Yagyu's personality had been kept even with the Psync machine malfunctioning, Date's personality is drastically different than Hayato's, most likely from the very different experiences he had, as well as Aiba sharing his brain space.
• Defrosting Ice King: Being with Hitomi gradually brought back the humanity he had lost in the years spent killing. It came to the point where he tried to go clean and leave the Kumakuras behind. Though Rohan had other plans...
• First Kiss: Technically his first with Hitomi was to keep her out of sight from the men chasing him on a job. Their first true kiss though would be months later as the two fell in love.
• Glitch Entity: A shadowy MissingNo.-like version of him appears in the sequel during Iris' "Kusemon GO"-themed Somnium as a Superboss who has only one glitched attack, but it's a One-Hit KO when used.]]
• He Who Fights Monsters: His bloody vigilantism molded him into the perfect killer, one that made him the perfect candidate to be Rohan's personal cleaner. Ironic for someone who believed in seeking justice.
• Hidden Depths: Iris's fascination with mythology came from Falco who'd tell her all kinds of stories as they spent time together.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: He agreed to switch with Rohan Kumakura's body to leave the Sagans alone and safe since he was sick of living as "Falco" even if he could settle with them after guaranteeing their protection. In the Resolution Route after Saito's death, the bizarre circumstances on top of the cover story written by ABIS covering up the body-swapping allows a chance for him to settle for real.
• Killer Cop: A detective who started moonlighting as a vigilante, then as an assassin for the Kumakuras.
• Living a Double Life: He was a regular detective by day and a Vigilante Man by night. Later on that second job became a hitman for the Kumakuras.
• Love Redeems: He tried to reform after falling in love with Hitomi, but Rohan Kumakura insisted he take one last job.
• My God, What Have I Done?: In an attempt to save her from Rohan, Falco accidentally shoots Hitomi and critically injures her. While she survives, Yagyu decided to leave both her and Iris behind because of the pain he caused them.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • He came to be acquainted with Rohan after killing a Kumakura informant. This forced him into serving as Rohan's personal hitman when no other alternative became clear.
  • He, Boss, and Pewter left an unconscious Rohan unattended in the Psync room on top of not making sure Rohan (as Hayato) wasn't allowed to leave the premises, giving him enough time to escape the presinct and hunt down Hitomi. Cue Falco's tragic friendly fire against the love of his life.
  • After swapping bodies with Rohan, he attempts to confront Saito to learn more about the Cyclops Killings. He quickly slips up his guise though, and Saito orders his men to take Falco/Rohan to the chemical plant to be tortured and interrogated.
• Not So Above It All: Heavily implied that despite being jaded and killing criminals in cold blood (or anyone the Kamukuras told him to), he was still a porn loving addict like his time as Date. He was also noted to be squeamish at horror fiction according to Hitomi when they dated.
• Parental Abandonment: His parents died when he was young, leaving him to grow up in an abusive orphanage. This is part of what shaped him into someone who sought justice against the corrupt.
• Punny Name: "Yagyu" is goroawase for "89", and for most of the game, his original body is known as "Prisoner #89" as well as Date's car being a '89 Ford Falcon.
• Rescue Romance: He fell in love with Hitomi after she saved his life following a nasty bullet wound.
• Start of Darkness: When a murderer he had cornered started gloating about how he'd plead insanity, get off with no punishment, and go out and kill again, Yagyu immediately shot him, having become jaded with the system. He started a killing streak of notorious criminals after this.
• That Man Is Dead: After recovering his original body and memories, Date does his best to put his past as "Falco" to rest so he can be a better person, including his original name Hayato Yagyu and deciding to go by Date instead.
• Trapped in Villainy: When Rohan tracked him down over his extrajudicial killings, he forced Hayato to start killing for the Kumakuras.
• Vigilante Man: How he started out, hunting down and murdering criminals.
• Walking Spoiler: "Kaname Date" is his amnesiac ego in Saito Sejima's body. Revealing this at the beginning would undo every revelation the game throws at you.