Maxie Tanaka

"If you ask me, I think the guards only took this job so they could beat the shit out of us."

- Maxie

Maximilian 'Maxie' Ji-yeong Tanaka is an inmate at San Hill, and one of the The March Nine.

Appearance
Maxie has red, shoulder length hair, and a small beard styled into a soul patch. He has tattoos on his arm that he has described as meaning nothing but got them just because they "looked cool". Maxie stands at exactly 6ft tall, and is described as "solidly built".

Personality
One of the more naive inmates, Maxie is not outwardly aggressive and seems to spend much of his time building a relationship with his cellmate and trying to avoid conflict. He is shown to be obsessed with cats, admitting to owning a vast amount of them on the outside, and all of his creative outlets behind bars somehow feature cats.

Season One
Maxie claims that his incarceration in San Hill is not his first time behind bars, however he does not act like a hardened criminal or someone who is aware of prison rules, so this statement may be simply bluster. Upon his arrival at San Hill, Maxie is argumentative and is handled roughly by the guards.

He is the first inmate to have his cell reassigned after arrival, which leads to his first encounter with Chief CO, Marcel O'Brien whose face he spits in. Marcel subsequently throws him in a cell with Grey McCorduck.

While he was glad to have a nice cellmate, this incident meant that Maxie has been harbouring a grudge against Marcel, going so far as to insult him in Korean, and when questioned about it, he said that it was a greeting in his mother tongue.

His first encounter with Warden Odysseus was an unpleasant one. He was brought in for questioning after it was revealed that Jason Zharkov was beaten up and he was a match to the height and build of the perpetrator, along with Syrus Norwood and Armando Alighieri. Video evidence revealed that he was not responsible and he and Armando were released, but the incident had left him shaken and unable to face going to the Warden for anything else.

He has since started an impromptu gym club following encouragement from Grey.

When a cold bug spread throughout the prison that caused a visitation to be cancelled, Maxie was among the ones who caught it and Grey became his impromptu nurse. However, this cold was enough to cause breathing difficulties and when he returned to work when his cold symptoms were gone, he suffered a severe asthma attack and was quickly brought to the infirmary by Sanders, whom he had been talking to while working. Lincoln Morley was unable to treat him there and so he had to be escorted to hospital by William McCaffrey.

He stayed in hospital for 3 days and was treated by Brick, who then sent things back to the prison when he was well enough to return, although he was given orders not to return to work until he was fully stabilised.

His next visitation led to his relationship with Matsu becoming strained when the man found out how close he'd gotten to Grey. Believing that Maxie had been close with Grey and forgotten all about him, he left visitation early and for a while Maxie felt like he couldn't leave his cell at all to the point where he'd even missed his medications. When Grey came to check up on him, in the heat of the moment he blamed Grey for his relationship on the outside being in jeopardy and for a while they avoided one another. The next day Maxie started to write a letter to Matsu to apologise, explain the situation and to get his thoughts down, but it took several attempts for him to word it right.

A few days later he knew he needed to get his meds back on schedule, and he was reprimanded by Link for missing them and told that if he continually missed his meds he'd be sent to psych.

About a week after his outburst, he'd received a letter from Matsu to say that he still loved him and that his apology was accepted, but he still needed some time and he had some other things occupying him. After reading this letter, he went to make amends with Grey to apologise for how he'd acted, knowing that he'd acted out in the heat of the moment.

Not long after they'd made up though, Marcel had finally caught on to what Maxie had been saying to him in Korean and gave him a severe beating in the showers. While trying to recover from the initial beating, Adam Lee was passing through, but saw that Maxie was roughed up and went to check up on him. He told the librarian that he considered Marcel to be a bully, and that he liked Adam's kind nature and desire to help people. Adam did warn him about tangling with the COs but he did somewhat agree with Maxie's statement about Marcel being a bully.

Season Two
Following the attack in the greenhouse, Maxie spent a lot of time comforting Grey over this since he could clearly see how traumatised the event had left him.

He applied for the job of commissary clerk when it became available and was given the job by the new Warden, Soren White. He wanted to get a new job in the prison and it was implied by Soren that this may have been due to his decline in health, though Maxie had said that he had some experience in retail and that working the commissary would be like that in a sense.

Since getting the job in the commissary he has run a tight ship with it, to the point where he told Sprinkles that nothing leaves the commissary on Tuesdays. He also does more work on teh days before and after commissary day to ensure everything is up to date.

He also took it upon himself to investigate the chicken murders, much to the chagrin of Adam, because he believed that someone in the prison was using them to target Grey.

His tireless investigating on top of his diligent work in the commissary had started to tire him and one day this was noticed by Armando, after Maxie came to him in a rush about a possible theory that, when he found out that Armando's partner had been hurt on the outside, Armando's partner and the doctor who treated him for his severe asthma attack were one and the same. Armando confirmed that this was true and suggested to Maxie that he take a bit more time for himself and that it's okay to ask for help. Maxie acknowledged this and said he'd think about it.

During the cell reassignments, he was paired with Regicide Rollinstar. He could tell that the man wasn't too happy about the cell reassignment and so he tried to establish himself as a friendly face in the hopes that he could cheer Reggie up. They discussed why they were locked up and sharing a few stories seemed to help perk Reggie up.

He's also been getting his impromptu gym club up and running again with Grey, and now Korbyn and Armando have joined him.

Romantic

 * Matsu
 * Grey McCorduck
 * Armando Alighieri (briefly)

Allies

 * Sanders - Maxie is incredibly grateful that Sanders saved his life and he has said he would like to return the favour.
 * Maude Gallagher - The two of them worked together on their own detective work and Maxie admires Maude for this.
 * Regicide Rollinstar - Maxie's most recent cellmate. He admires Reggie's hair.

Neutral

 * Ilya Luzhkov
 * Korbyn Mendosa

Enemies

 * Marcel O'Brien
 * William McCaffrey

Trivia

 * He speaks Korean, and limited Japanese.
 * He owns thirty cats and brought a collection of photos of them into prison with him.
 * He used to train in Tang Soo Do and said he worked up to the midnight blue belt.