Dimmy is a wind attribute E Ranked yokai of the shady tribe.
And he is shady alright.
According to the yokai medallium, being inspirited by Dimmy will tone down your prescence.
Dimmy uses this for his job as a ninja.
So obviously we know two things about Dimmy so far.
He's a ninja and his special ability is to basically have no prescence.
As for his appearance, he basically has the shape of an ambiguous rectangular figure with
a face the resembles the masks that ninjas wear to conceal their identity.
And of course, the metal headband we've all come to know and love.
What's interesting is the hand seal that he's doing in almost every pose he has including
the ones in toy form.
It is the ram hand sign.
But more on that later.
His lower body becomes liquid-like and melts into the floor with his shadow.
Quite the literal representation of his ability.
His personality matches that as well.
He always acts like he wants to stay out of everything.
He wants to blend in as much as possible and tries to be as plain as he can.
His thin frame and small shadow probably comes from the japanese saying "Kage ga Usui".
Which literally means having a thin shadow.
But figuratively, it means barely standing out, fading into the background or just having
a weak prescence.
What's funny is that his Japanese name Jimmy, is a popular English name while his English
name Dimmy is not a popular name.
And this is no mistake, they didn't switch it up by accident.
In Japanese culture, the name Jimmy is often related to being ordinary, plain or unremarkable.
Many japanese people think of comedian Jimmy Onishi when the name Jimmy is brought up,
where you might know him from Gaki No Tsukai counting numbers in english.
And after watching that, it really brings a whole new meaning to the word dim.
But enough about his name, let's move on to the most interesting part of his character
design.
His hand sign.
When we hear the word ninja, it is hard not to associate images of Naruto to the word.
Ever since the show came out, hand seals have been popularized to a degree where we will
associate the word ninjutsu to a series of fast hand seals.
But before ninjas from popular culture popularized them, they were actually symbolic or ritual
gestures in Hinduism and Buddhism and they were called Mudra.
These gestures are supposed to generate spiritual focus and power which are then manifested
in some way externally.
In Naruto, the use of hand seals in Ninjutsu (which btw, are totally made up by Kishimoto)
are from the 12 animal zodiacs (including the ram which is Dimmy's hand sign) and each
seal represents the animal's qualities.
For example, the tiger seal is fire.
So why is DImmy always holding the ram sign?
Let's take a look at the ram from the chinese zodiac.
Also known as a goat or sheep, the ram prefers to be on the sidelines than in the center
of attention.
Home and alone is where Goats feel most comfortable.
When traveling or seeking entertainment, goats prefer groups or venues that hold many people.
Goats at work prefer to be part of a flock.
Power and status aren't important.
They are quite reserved because they spend most of their time absorbed in their thoughts.
All of this fits perfectly with Dimmy!
And I didn't make any of that up, with a quick google search of zodiac animal goat, you'll
get similar findings.
Dimmy's character design is a testament to the level of thought and detail Level-5 puts
into designing each of their characters down to having symbolic significance even in the
pose the character is making.
What do you think of Dimmy or Jimmy?
Do you practice mudra in your spare time?
Are you a ninja?
Let us know in the comments below.
And if there are other yokai or characters from other series you would like to see on
Tokyosaurus.
Let us know in the comments below as well.