THE CHARACTER

Character Name: Sakamoto Ryuji (Western order: Ryuji Sakamoto)
Series: Persona 5
Canon Point: December, before fighting Akechi or sending the calling card
Character Age: 17 years old (his birthday is in July, so by December, he should be 17)
Background: Ryuji specific history & Entire game synopsis
He'll be returning to El Nysa with his memories of his first stint intact - which means he will remember what happened between Wyver and Olympia, the terrorist attacks, the party to bring the two nations together, and the fact that it didn't really work.

Personality: Ryuji seems to be your typical teenage boy – he likes manga and video games, used to run on the track team, has a bit of a vulgar mouth, and tries to be suave with the ladies much to his friends’ exasperation. When Ryuji first appears to the protagonist, he’s full of bluster and anger as he sees Ann Takamaki leave with a teacher – Suguru Kamoshida – in his car. He approaches the protagonist and complains about Kamoshida immediately and we learn two things: he says whatever he thinks and he has a deep hatred of Kamoshida.

Later we learn that he’s the school delinquent. He isn’t particularly smart and with his naturally black hair dyed blond, he often gets into trouble with teachers at Shujin Academy. He regards teachers with disdain and doesn’t seem to care about his terrible reputation for tardiness, disruptiveness, and disrespectfulness. Still, he befriends the protagonist after they experience Kamoshida’s palace together because they’re the only ones who can really understand what they went through. While with the teachers, he shows anger and disdain, with the protagonist he does a complete 180 – acting friendly and open. As the protagonist works through his social link, we learn the reason behind his attitude toward authority figures.

As a child, Ryuji’s father was an abusive alcoholic who beat him and his mother until he eventually left the family altogether. After that, his mother raised him by herself and did everything she could to give him the best. Ryuji relied on the one thing he was good at to get him into good schools – sports. He was counting on his athleticism to get him through high school and college, so he joined the track team and quickly became their ace sprinter. He hoped to use his running as a way to relieve some of the burden on his mother, for whom he cares deeply and of whom he is fiercely protective.

Which brings us back to Kamoshida; he muscled his way into being the track coach then worked to destroy the team. He pushed them beyond their limits and became a new abusive male figure in Ryuji’s life. Ryuji tempered his anger for a while, afraid of the consequences, until Kamoshida began flaunting his family history in front of the team and the school. The moment Kamoshida began speaking ill of his mother, Ryuji lost it. He attacked Kamoshida and the teacher broke his leg, using the attack as a reason to disband the track team and destroy Ryuji’s athletic career, his dreams, and his standing within the school in one fell swoop. His teammates ostracized him over the incident, and Ryuji became a delinquent until he met the protagonist.

In Kamoshida’s palace, we learn that Ryuji cannot stand seeing people being bullied. He memorizes the faces of all the “slaves” in the palace and tries to get them to confess about Kamoshida’s abuse. When they won’t, he gets the protagonist, along with Morgana and later Ann, take it upon themselves to free the school of Kamoshida’s influence. Throughout their run as Phantom Thieves, Ryuji is vocal about his hatred of selfish adults and completely gungho about changing their hearts and saving people. He connects with the rest of the Phantom Thieves because for one reason or another, they’re all being treated as outsiders. He is quick to call people friends and compatriots as long as he can find something in common with them.

With Ann, they’re both scrutinized for their looks – and he apologizes for doing the same to Ann when he heard the rumors of her relationship with Kamoshida. He knew her from when they were younger, but they never really spoke to each other until becoming Thieves together. Once they become friends for real, he finds her attractive physically, but their personalities are too close for him to like her romantically, much to his disappointment. For example, at their first celebration party after taking Kamoshida down and getting revenge for the volleyball team and Ann’s friend, Shiho, he grabs platefuls of meat while she only gets cake.

With Yusuke, at first he finds the guy creepy because he was stalking Ann. But later once he learns how Yusuke was being taken advantage of by his teacher, he quickly comes to his aid. He finds Yusuke weird because of his adherence to his aesthetics, but still counts him as a good friend and respects his tenacity, even if he doesn’t understand it. The same goes for Makoto – the student body president – who he originally disdains because of her close connection to the teachers. When he learns that she, too, is under the pressure of people’s expectations on her, he quickly accepts her as part of the Phantom Thieves. Even Mishima, the admin of their “PhanSite,” and the one responsible for releasing information on the protagonist’s past, is accepted in his friends group – unfortunately for Mishima. He and Mishima often concoct plans trying to get girlfriends and fail, usually because of their own ineptitude or because they plain chicken out of things as when they call the “maid service” to an empty apartment in Ryuji’s building.

The only person he never accepts into the Phantom Thieves is Akechi. From the beginning, he’s never liked Akechi. He thought someone like him wouldn’t do well on television, despite him being a wildly popular figure, and when he later blackmails his way onto the team, Ryuji never warms up to him because they’re actually running a con of their own on Akechi. When the Phantom Thieves’ trick Akechi into revealing himself, he celebrates being able to take the guy down a peg. But even when Akechi reveals his sordid past and how Masayoshi Shido drove his mother to suicide, while Ryuji does feel bad for his circumstances, he can never really bring himself to accept Akechi as part of his friend circle. The things Akechi did are just inexcusable to Ryuji, no matter what.

With his friends, he is sunny and caring, even though he can often stick his foot in his mouth. He’s loud and brash and doesn’t always think of the consequences of his actions, blurting out that he’s a Phantom Thief in public to the point that they get caught by Makoto when she’s investigating them. When the Phantom Thieves become popular online and around the world, he easily gets caught up in the fame, equating the Thieves' popularity with his own popularity. As someone who has been on the outside of society for so long, the chance to be at the center of it gets to him and he becomes arrogant, thinking he can use his position as a Thief to get girls. He has a rude awakening when the Thieves are thwarted by the "black mask" Metaverse user after finishing Haru's father's palace and they plummet in popularity again, reminding him that he has to find his own place, rather than look to others to give it to him. He is quick to fight and retort whenever someone brushes up against his pride or insults someone he cares about, which is what causes his fight with Morgana.

Morgana and Ryuji always teased each other. Morgana would call him stupid and Ryuji would call him useless, Morgana called him a monkey, Ryuji called him a cat. But after Futaba joins the group, Morgana begins to feel like he truly is useless while the Phantom Thieves are on their school trips. When they return, the cat goads Ryuji into a fight by calling him names and Ryuji doubles down, causing Morgana to leave the group. Exasperated with his friend and not really understanding Morgana’s reason for leaving, he later botches an apology Ann sets up when they meet Morgana and his new “Beautiful Thief,” Haru, in Mementos. After chasing Morgana through Mementos and almost getting run over several times, Ryuji is fed up with the cat thief and wants to punch him in the face – up until he hears Morgana calling for help when Haru’s fiancé attacks them. He is the first to run to Morgana’s aid and also gets between Haru and her fiancé.

So despite his sometimes brash actions and words, the fights he gets into, and the thoughtless things he does on occasion, Ryuji cares deeply about those he considers his friends. He makes his mistakes like in his fight with Morgana and when the entire group gets caught up in the fame of the Thieves, but overall he is a good kid who tries his best to connect to people and to protect them. He can’t stand seeing bullying or abuse and, even if it gets him slugged in the face, he wants to do right by the people he cares for – as in when he went after Yamauchi for trying to use the newly reformed track team for personal gain, and got beaten up by his former teammates to make them feel better. He doesn’t blame them for their reactions, and instead finally feels free having realized, thanks to the protagonist, that what others think of him doesn’t matter. Most of all, he’s thankful that he finally has someone who sticks with him no matter what. Having experienced abuse, abandonment, the loss of his one place in the school, finding a new group and a new outlook on life thanks to the protagonist means the world to Ryuji. After that he becomes fiercely loyal to the protagonist and his chosen group of friends, ready to take on the world for them and to help them change it.

Powers/Abilities:

• Drinking a 500ml bottle of soda in one go, it used to be more, but he hasn't been training
  
• Being loud
  
• (former) track star ace; could run 100m in 11.2 seconds at peak performance – due to his injury, pushing himself causes him to trip or fall
  
• Wields bludgeons and shotguns in the Metaverse: he's very much an in-your-face opponent, preferring the wide spread of a shotgun and the heavy hitting of beating people down with bats
  
• Persona user who uses the Captain Kidd Persona:
  
  • Strengths: Captain Kidd is resistant to electric attacks and has a wealth of physical attack abilities. His main attack (Zio) summons lightning to attack his foes, ranging from a single foe to as many as all foes on the battlefield in front of him as he grows stronger. As he grows stronger, he can even weaken enemy resistance to electricity or inflict a Shock status on enemies, incapacitating them.
    
  • Weaknesses: He is vulnerable to wind based attacks, but more importantly most of Captain Kidd's physical attacks take health from the user. While Ryuji is a former athlete, his endurance has suffered since leaving the track team and the longer he uses Captain Kidd, the more run-down he'll get. Also, summoning a Persona uses the mental strength of the user, so the longer Ryuji uses Captain Kidd, the harder he is to sustain. If he overuses him, Ryuji can fall into exhaustion and pass out.
    
  • Support: He can buff his allies' attack rates, making them temporarily stronger than before. It won't let them punch through walls, but they'll hit harder than before and feel a little stronger - like an adrenaline boost.
    
  • Awakening: Captain Kidd can eventually awaken into Seiten Taisei, or Wukong from the Journey to the West. This new Persona has an automatic skill that gives it a chance to evade its weakness, Wind. As with the others, this will be a regain eventually as he forges stronger relationships in game.

Power Nerfs (if applicable): According to this FAQ question, while Ryuji will be able to summon his Persona at will, he'll also have a problem with endurance and be limited to four skills. Since he's coming into a new world, I'm going to nerf him down to the earlier skills and have his power-ups be possible regains. His skill set will be:
    1. Lunge: The Persona causes physical damage to one enemy (at the cost of his own health)
    2. Tarukaja: Buffs the attack power of 1 ally for 3 subsequent attacks (mana)
    3. Zio: Deals electrical damage to one enemy (mana)
    4. Adverse Resolve: Increases his critical rate when he's been ambushed (automatic)

Inventory: His school uniform clothes, his phone and wallet (with a few yen bills and coins, a couple of receipts, and a point card for the gym), his school bag, a few notebooks that are about 99% just him doodling about being badass Phantom Thieves and 1% notes on class, a volume of manga that has obviously been read more than any of the notebooks, and his Persona/Phantom Thief outfit as his weapon. He'll lose his former AC points and rewards, so back to zero for this kid.

Incentives: Money, food from home (especially actually good ramen), video games, and reassurance that his mother is okay again. He wants to know that his friends are safe. After he's gotten the basics taken care of, buffing up his Persona, getting weapons so he can help if the tensions come to a head, and getting things for his friends will take precedence.

SAMPLES

El Nysa TDM Top-Level Link (Two threads of 5 comments each: ★Urbosa & ★Akechi)
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