created a new design for my arcane character Jinhao! (formerly known as Jinhao Tan)
fyi for people who’re unfamiliar with my posts
Jinhao Tan (now Sol Jinhao) is my arcane character and heres his old design:
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Upon seeing this character design for the first time, I felt pretty stressed because I found it hard to decipher the meaning behind the design. I spent around 45 minutes looking up information to calm myself down. This is the best intepretation I could come up with after those 45 minutes.
Judging by the Chinese characters, I suspect Sol Jinhao does not come from the War Seas. The closest thing there is to his Chinese ancestry is Ryujin Kingdom but it is based off Japan instead of China. However, even then, Sol Jinhao doesn’t seem to be 100% Chinese by blood. He appears to be mixed race which is quite special.
In China, there is a special territory called Macau, Having been ruled by Portugal for a long time, Macau’s culture is quite distinct from China, having a more liberal political system in comparison to the rest of the mainland. In addition, there is an ethnic group in Macau called Macanese whose genetic is a mix between European and Chinese. Finally, Portuguese is one of the offical languages there though its number of speakers is very small, only at around 2-3%.
With that being said, I suspect that Sol Jinhao was born on island whose culture is similar to Macau though his birth does not seem to be celebrated but was shrouded by pain and misery. I will not state my reason here as it would get really dark.
Moving on to his name, the name Sol Jinhao is quite interesting. Sol means “sun” in Portuguese while Jinhao means “gold” in Chinese. His name, to me, means golden sun. This is reflected in his appearance, the hair is gold while the eyes look like the sun.
However, these physical characteristics feel off. On the outside, they may look glorious but I feel like they are layers of glitter hiding something sad beneath.
His eyes have vertical red marks which seems normal at first but when he wears his blindfold, the red marks look like they are tears, tears permanently fixed to the eyes as if the sadness or pain carried by those tears never goes away but forever haunt Jinhao’s soul. In addition, his red blindfold color appears to be waning. In Roman culture, red symbolizes courage, love and vitality. The fact that it’s fading away may indicate that Jinhao is aging rapidly and needs to act quickly before the day of his passing finally comes. The golden hair further supports this as it may not be his natural hair color but a sign of aging.
Moreover, Jinhao’s outfit carries this very dull grey color. Grey may be associated with metal and when tempered under extreme heat, it becomes a beautiful blade. However, in this situation, I think the grey color refers to charcoal after they have been burnt. Once charcoal is done being used as fuel, they are simply tossed away, never to be glimpsed at again.
His eyes appear to look like the sun. It seems that, to me, wind is not Jinhao’s real magic, it is merely a seal to hides away his true magic, sun. Perhaps that when Jinhao used sun magic, he has done some genuinely horrible stuff or was used for the purpose of that. Those incidents permanently haunt him yet he can not rest yet. It seems like he is being hunted down by some organization that wants to use him again or him under their command and he is running away from them.
That said, I think there is a bigger person that Jinhao is running away from, himself. He feels ashamed of his sun magic as when he can fully use it, he had done unspeakable horrors with it. He accepted the enforcement of wind magic on himself in hopes that one day, it would completely erase sun magic of off himself and become his true magic only to realize that this enforcement carries a darker purpose.
Overall, I absolutely love this design as it looks very simple yet carries so much meaning. You have done an amazing job moving away from that awkwardly childish design.
****, I just realized that I spent 135 minutes searching for information and writing this, I have thought too much.
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jesus christ
Great analysis, anyways the character still has Miquella the Tickla written all over it
Nah it was just that it was completely out of the blue, more of a debacle.
HELP IJUST THOUGHT IT LOOKED COOL atp ur the one writing jinhao’s lore
i accept this as canon
as for jinhao meaning “gold” that is usually the case but since i used different chinese characters instead of the regular ones which is 今豪
今 meaning “today”
豪 meaning “a heart of gold”
the meaning 今 (today) symbolizes freedom and living in the present
things that are true/something that i put into his design and being aware of it:
- its true that jinhao’s real magic is NOT wind
- the meaning of Sol is indeed “sun”
- he WAS used for horrible stuff by the Order of Aesir
- his eyes is related to his real magic
- he is mixed race – or more specifically, blood(?)
things that are not true/something i have not thought of:
- i just put vertical red marks on his eyes to make his face less empty lol also it looked cool but the tears thing is awesome so canon it is
- his red blindfold being a warning??? ok i did not think of that thats dope i accept this as canon, though his blindfold is actually there because of his eye condition (namely nuclear type cataracts stage 2)
- his golden hair is natural, it is a common characteristic of a certain ancient race(?)
- the grey/white colour of his clothing is just his theme colour
- he is not aware of his real magic, but morden knows
OTHERWISE GREAT ANALYSIS I LOVE UR INTEPRETATIONS
dude im blown away by ur analysis like straight up its always accurate?? like wtffff
After a response from the artist and for him to also accept it as canon, I think it’s fair to say you brewed a master cooking in the labs
Holy, you accepted the paragraphs as the official lore for Sol Jinhao and actually like it. Jesus Christ, I straight up thought that you were deeply hurt by my over-objectification of Jinhao, thinking him as my own character instead of yours. I spent ~2 days days watching anime to cope with this
However, those days have passed. I appreciate your gratitude. Please keep up the great work. I’m waiting for further Jinhao’s lore from you! He has so much potential, so many questions about him are unanswered. Honestly, if you expand on Sol Jinhao a lot more, he may very well be one of the most recognized OCs on this forum.
1 Like
BRO WHAT NO WHY WOULD I BE HURT OVER SUCH A GOOD ANALYSIS
and tbh having someone like my oc enough to care about it this much is legit such an honor as an artist
tbh any kind of question regarding jinhao i can most likely answer
though ill do my best to expand his lore within my abilities!!
BROOO thats soo cool!!! (as a designer) I ended up staring at the details of the clothing and thought, “how are those pins on his belt and boots holding the straps?” so i propose this… but idk im not an artist
oh dw it does have that i just dont go into that much detail lol since it’ll be a character ill be drawing repeatedly