I'm deeply disappointed that I almost had this ready on April 1st and then forgot about it
Who is Kintsugi? A Dragon's Dance Theory
(this post contains spoilers for "Chapter 8: The Vigilante" and "Chapter 9: The Protege, Part 1", which might also be "Chapter 10: The Vigilante" and "Chapter 11: The Protege, Part 1" or "Part 2: Chapter 1: The Vigilante" and "Part 2: Chapter 2: The Protege, Part 1", depending on how your localization handles chapter numberings)
with that said, let's begin.
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One of the most interesting things about
Dragon's Dance is how it handles character reveals. The characterization and careful grounding of somewhat cartoonish archetypes into a more realistic setting is also good, but far and above the most interesting part is just knowing which characters will show up, and what kinds of pokemon they'll have, and if said pokemon will look good in fanart and title sequences.
So when the cycle is disrupted and a non-canon character is introduced, this is even more the cause for intrigue. What kind of clothing will they wear? How tall are they? What color are their orbs?
"Not many people can lay a hit on Kintsugi," Jiro said, examining the mottled bruise
An unastute Pokemon scholar might assume that Jiro is also an OC, which is false. After the reveal that Wataru was Lance all along, a twist no one could have seen coming except through fortuitous intellect (refer to
my previous essay on the topic), it became clear that most of the human characters were actually canon characters rather than OC's.
Jiro is an obvious example of another such deception, and refers to
Forrest, who English viewers may immediately recognize as Brock's anime-only younger brother who appears in 5 episodes, 3 of which are exclusively flashbacks. Given that the Pewter Gym Leader is Muno/Flint, it may be confusing to some readers as to how Jiro could possibly be close to Muno's age and also be Muno's son. I suspect that this points to a future plot point involving a time flute, Celebi, and a non-trivial amount of cashmere.
So with that issue neatly resolved, we must of course wonder who Kintsugi is, the only non-canon character* to show up in the entirety of Dragon's Dance. (* One might be confused because Hamako exists, but I believe Pen is actually misspelling
this character instead. A common mistake.) Careful searching around the name "kintsugi pokemon" does indeed reveal that there is no one named Kintsugi associated in the Pokemon franchise, fandom or otherwise.
Looking through the text, there isn't much information given on Kintsugi. Kintsugi is cool, she is fast, she single-handedly 1v1's a dragon in a fight. She also seems to have some connection to the legendary pokemon of Kanto:
Kintsugi let out an irritated mew
Truly, fascinating.
The name
Kintsugi itself seems to refer to some sort of ancient pottery thing. The origins itself seem fairly unclear but it seems to mention the color gold, and pottery, which is clearly a reference to a rock-type of some sort. The thematic implications of the term appear to have been lost to antiquity, so we must only refer to the literal understanding. Are there golden rock types? It doesn't seem so, although shiny Nosepass and Geodude may qualify, and would fit nicely in Jiro/Forrest's eventual role as Pewter City's Gym Leader. However, that simply doesn't seem to be the case--all names must have deeply complex and convoluted meanings, and the thematic implications pale in comparison to the sheer joy of understanding the logical reason for why this name is a good pun.
Perhaps Pen intended to go for an even more literal evocation of the name, such as a reference to general bop but critically unpopular "Kintsugi", the 2015 Album by Death Cab for Cutie. Looking at the track list for the album
Kintsugi, it appears the answer is quite obvious and we are indeed on the right track:
Two things stand out about this list: first are the two blue tracks in the middle, "Black Sun" and "The Ghosts of Beverly Drive". Blue, being roughly the opposite of gold, is an obvious hint for our route forward, and not referencing that the other 9 songs on this album are pretty meh and were not well-received.
The second obvious hint is the final song: "Binary Sea", or more accurately, Binary C. The way forward is immediately clear.
We must first convert our seed text to binary:
"Black Sun"
"The Ghosts of Beverly Drive"
This yields the following string:
00100010 01000010 01101100 01100001 01100011 01101011 00100000 01010011 01110101 01101110 00100010 00100000 00001010 00100010 01010100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01000111 01101000 01101111 01110011 01110100 01110011 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01000010 01100101 01110110 01100101 01110010 01101100 01111001 00100000 01000100 01110010 01101001 01110110 01100101 00100010
A simple C script can then be created to sum this string:
=
int main()
{
char string[] = "00100010 01000010 01101100 01100001 01100011 01101011 00100000 01010011 01110101 01101110 00100010 00100000 00001010 00100010 01010100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01000111 01101000 01101111 01110011 01110100 01110011 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01000010 01100101 01110110 01100101 01110010 01101100 01111001 00100000 01000100 01110010 01101001 01110110 01100101 00100010";
/*binary input for kintsugi*/
int count, nc = 0, sum = 0;
for (count = 0; string[count] != '\0'; count++)
{
if ((string[count] >= '0') && (string[count] <= '9'))
{
nc += 1;
sum += (string[count] - '0');
}
}
printf("str check %d\n", nc);
printf("str sum %d\n", sum);
return 0;
}
It is critically important that this step be conducted in C, both because of the hint in track 11 and because no other programming language could possibly perform such a task and it was absolutely necessary to study the difference between printf() and std::cout for this shitpost, my god, who the fuck, why.
Compiling this yields the following:
The sum is 142, which is coincidentally the dex number for Aerodactyl, a pokemon that comes from golden amber and is creating new life from a lost, idyllic past which can never be returned to, which doesn't really seem too themed to the name itself but is a cool detail to mention here. It also would be a perfect fit for Forrest, future rock-type specialist and time traveler.
and even if I don't have the galaxeon brain for these, they're fun to follow along with! 
