Ryuji Sakamoto

❥ Character Information

Character Name: Ryuji Sakamoto (坂本 竜司, Sakamoto Ryuji)
Character Age: 17
Character Species: Human
Current Health: Alive, healthy, physically disabled
Outfit: His winter casual outfit, consisting of black skinny jeans, a black graphic tee, a purple hooded track jacket, and yellow sneakers.

Character Canon: Persona 5 Royal
Link to History: Link to character history
Canon Point: Endgame, good ending path. He arrives in Folkmore on March 4th 2017, the day after Joker's release from juvenile detention and the disbandment of the Phantom Thieves
Canon Iteration: Original canon

❥ Folkmore Roles & Attributes

Skills:
🏃‍➡️ running, both long distance and sprint
🤸 horizontal and vertical jumps
🏋️ exercise physiology
🦹 stealth and infiltration
👑 grand larceny (allegedly)
👯 teamwork
🔫 shotgun handling

Canon Abilities:
🏴‍☠️ ⎡PERSONA USER⎦ By defiantly shedding the mask he wears to face a cruel and unjust world, Ryuji can summon his Persona William to aid him in battle. Based on the infamously disgraced privateer Captain William Kidd—Ryuji's image of a true rebel—this Persona grants him powerful physical abilities and electricity magic, in addition to support spells to boost his teammates' attack power. William's passive trait Eccentric Temper has a chance of nearly doubling his allies' physical attack power at the start of battles, as a true Captain should do for his crew.
⚡️ ⎡CHAOTIC FIGHTING STYLE⎦ Ryuji is neither the strongest nor the most agile fighter, but he uses the element of surprise to his advantage in battle. Controlling an element as unpredictable and volatile as Electricity, Ryuji can inflict status effects such as Shock on his enemies in addition to hurting them, leaving them vulnerable for follow-up attacks by his teammates. He also relies on his luck, letting him land Critical hits more often, as well as buffs to enhance his and his allies' physical strength.
🤼 ⎡ENHANCED ENDURANCE⎦ What he lacks in magic prowess and precision, he makes up for with the highest defensive capabilities of all the Phantom Thieves. Ryuji can tank even the hardest of hits, jumping in to shield his teammates from devastating blows without a second thought. As the Phantom Thief with the most health, he has more than enough to spare—and his role as the Chariot lends him the determination to face adversity head on until victory is within his grasp.

Role: Myth
Role Qualities/Attributes: Ryuji will take on physical characteristics of an oni, growing two black horns curling up and back from his temples. His ears will grow pointed, and a third eye will open vertically on his forehead, all to aid his enhanced perceptive skills. When he becomes enraged, fangs protrude outward like tusks from his mouth, and his skin seems to crackle with electrical energy.
Role Reasoning: Ryuji is a damn good kid. He's kind, gregarious, and altruistic, with a strong moral compass and sense of justice that's honestly more befitting of a Legend. Nothing makes him madder than the strong hurting the weak.

But his passionate and protective nature combines with his awful temper in ways that ultimately hurt him. He's reckless, tempestuous, prone to lashing out and rushing heedlessly into dangerous situations. Because he's unable to keep his head down and ignore obvious injustices, particularly those that adults inflict on the young without consequence, Ryuji has been labeled a troublemaker. A disobedient problem child, an aggressive vulgar bully, a nail that refuses to get hammered down. In collectivist Japan, his loud rebellion and refusal to endure unbearable unfairness lead to both teachers and peers ruthlessly shunning him.

Suddenly finding himself a social pariah, Ryuji chooses to wear the mask of delinquency as protective armor. And later, when he becomes a Phantom Thief, he dons the mask of a man disgraced to fight society's evils. If doing the right thing, if protecting the weak and fighting for justice makes him a villain, then Ryuji will be a damn good villain.

❥ Personality

OPTION 2 QUESTIONS (PICK 4-5) 100-300 WORD LIMIT EACH:

What was the most traumatic experience your character endured? How did this change them?
Coming from an abusive, broken home, Ryuji always wanted to support his mom. He was never any bright, but as a spry and strong and social kid, he fit right in at his school's track club. Soon he was the team's star runner, putting his school on the path to competing internationally. That's how you get scouted by good colleges. That's how even a dim bulb like him could make something of himself, go to school on an athletics scholarship, easing the burden on his mom. Then, guaranteed a steady job, he could be the one to support and protect her, the way she had always done for him.

Then the team's advisor, Suguru Kamoshida, started telling everyone about Ryuji's homelife. About his alcoholic dad viciously beating his family before walking out, leaving his son with a divorced mother, an incredibly shameful thing to be in Japan.

Enraged, Ryuji physically retaliated against Kamoshida, who responded by breaking the star runner's leg. "Self-defense," everyone called it. No one believed Ryuji when he said the coach had maliciously, intentionally hurt him, that he'd always intended to ruin the track team so his precious volley ball club would be the school's pride instead. No one took his side. He was labeled a traitor for getting the track team disbanded, a violent delinquent for attacking a teacher, and he subsequently lost everything. His friends, his future, his passion for running, and his dream of supporting his mom.

Most traumatic of all though, was how she blamed herself. For being a single mother, for not providing him a father figure, for ruining his life. Ryuji is slowly recovering from his injury, learning to live with his disability, but he'll never recover from his mom's tearful apology as long as he lives.

Is your character capable of forgiveness or will they hold a grudge until they die? Would anything ever make them change their mind?
Ryuji's capacity for forgiveness is definitely context sensitive. He has a lot of empathy, so he's frequently able to understand why people do or say cruel things (with the benefit of hindsight). His former track club teammates berate and bully him to his face, but Ryuji knows they're upset with him for a good reason. Goro Akechi betrays the Phantom Thieves when they're so close to the end, selling them out and seemingly killing Joker, his best friend—but when Ryuji learns about Akechi's upbringing, his reasoning and revenge plot, there's a part of him that understands why Akechi turned out like this. While he says out loud he's not able to forgive him, Ryuji still doesn't want to see him hurt, taking blows for him in combat and fighting alongside him for justice.

Other wrongdoers, however, will never be forgiven. Rotten adults who exert their power over the young and weak, adults like Kamoshida and Ryuji's own father, are forever on his shitlist. There's nothing to excuse the awful things they did for their own selfish gain.

What is your character's safespace? When do they feel the most settled and comfortable? When do they feel confident and relaxed?
The gym. A lot of people are intimidated by the gym, like you have to be a hulking buffed-out beef-for-brains to even get in the door, but Ryuji knows that the gym takes all sorts. Everyone has to start somewhere! There's something about the camaraderie at public gyms that speaks to him, like everyone is there for each other, working hard to become stronger together, even when they're there alone. Since losing the track team, Ryuji has craved that sense of belonging and community, but he struggled to attend for a long time. Not only because it hurt too much to do what he once loved—both physically and otherwise—but because he had nothing to get stronger for.

And then he became a Phantom Thief. Suddenly, he had both a cause to fight for and a team to protect again. He doesn't have a choice but to get stronger for everyone. It's still hard, and it still hurts, but when Ryuji hits the gym to train, he knows he's not the only one in there struggling. Everyone is in there for their own reasons, muscling through the noise, the heat, the stench, the unwieldy machines, the embarrassment, the sweat, the pain, in order to get stronger for something, together.

What would your character sacrifice to get what they want or to reach their potential? What have they sacrificed already?
Ryuji doesn't really think long-term like that, nor does he make decisions with a lot of thought and care. Despite that, he has already sacrificed a lot in order to do what's right. After putting Kamoshido away, Ryuji helped put the track team back together, fully knowing they all hated him. When he was offered a spot back on the team for his efforts, another chance to do what he loved and make his dream come true, Ryuji turned them down, because he knew the Phantom Thieves needed him fighting alongside them. He is also fully prepared to sacrifice his own life for the Phantom Thieves, like when Shido's Palace was collapsing all around them. Ryuji broke off from the party to release a lifeboat so they could all get off the sinking ship, knowing he might get left behind.

We see his self-sacrificing nature most prominently during the story's third semester. Everyone ended up caught in a false, idealized reality, one where they'd never suffered the trauma that brought them so much pain—including Ryuji. In this world, he never broke his leg, was never kicked off the track team, and was on his way to a prestigious college on a full athletics scholarship. Joker's attempts at convincing the Thieves that this reality was all wrong initially failed, but it was Ryuji who was the first to believe him, casting aside this world that gave him everything he'd ever wanted, in order to do the right thing. Ryuji's pain makes him who he is. He can and will sacrifice his own comfort, stability, and safety to fight for what's right.

❥ Player Information

Player Name: Mar
Pronouns: they/them
Are you over 18?: Yes
Contact(s): lektormar
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