Spoilers Ryou

Appearance
Ryou is very tall and muscular due to his extensive training and the muscle growth hormones he was forced to take as a child. Always having been a bit rebellious, he grew out his crimping hair until it reached the middle of his back.

Background and family
Like all the other Team Summer A candidates, Ryou has no family. He was created by the Japan government from carefully selected sperm and egg cells as one out of about 100 childen and raised in a secret training camp   cut off from the outside world, learning very little or no knowledge at all about the rest of the world.

Personality
Nomen est omen: Ryou is a very cool and mature person who almost never loses his composure. His cynical nature might have been developed to protect himself from the high pressure the institute's teachers put on him to become more "obedient".

Very wary of adults, Ryou never openly asked them questions because he didn't believe them speaking the truth anyways. Instead, together with Nijiko, he spied around the teachers' offices, trying to discover the true nature of the 7 Seeds project. He found out despite to what he believed at first - that they were being taught to be elite child soldiers - the government really seemed to believe in the world's destruction.

Listening in on a conversation between Takashi and Kaname, they also found out that the final test would be a challenge to the death. This knowledge gave Ryou and Nijiko a big advantage during the last test. Like this, Ryou always aims to be one step ahead of everyone else.

Ryou is also very silent and observant and rarely gives away his true thoughts. He isn't as quick to lose his temper as Ango, but if he decides that someone is a threat to him or his friends, he acts quickly and with deathly accuracy.

Special Characteristics
(hobbies, strengths and weaknesses, special skills…)

Ryou received a vast range of survival skills during his training in the secret facility. When it was his time to choose his Specialist Class, Ryou joined the Fire and the Water Class.

His special forte is handling the knife and the gun.

Past
(before being frozen)

Ryou always was the most rebellious child of the training camp, testing out how far he could go without being thrown out of the project and what the adults really wanted from them. He often picked on Shigeru, whom he looked down upon as being a "weakling". This caused fights with Shigeru's closest friend Ango on a very regular basis. Nevertheless, Ryou acknowledged Ango for his leading abilities and his skills.

When he turned into a teenager, he started going out with Nijiko, although their sexual interaction didn't go that well: because her "first time" obviously hurt her, she hit him and that was the end of their advances in that direction. They continued to stay together though, and seemed to trust into each other a lot.

Due to spying on the teachers, the two of them knew about the true nature of the final test and were constantly on their guard. So they were all ready when it finally started and proceeded to the mountains instead. During the test, they always tried their best to avoid any and all danger.

But when Koruri and Ango were in danger, Ryou couldn't just keep on watching anymore. He separated from Nijiko and went out of his way to support the two of them. Secretly, he was always good at watching after people, what Ango noticed only quite a while after entering the New World.

His reason for going to the future on his own free will was that he would have free reign and would be able to do whatever he wanted without being watched or judged. His sometimes slightly sadistic nature showed when he left the severely wounded Unami   to die slowly.

Development throughout the story
(starting with the first appearance in the New World)

Ryou was the one who suggested to Ango that they might take in the mixed team of Team Spring, Autumn and Winter  in order to "whip them into shape" and making them their slaves. He also threatened Hana with a gun because he wanted to know whether anyone of them had developed symptoms of Acari X.

Later on, he started to regard Haru as a "disturbance of peace" because the young musician got too close to Koruri for Ryou's tastes - he always had a very soft spot for curly-haired small-framed women. So he decided to stage Haru's death by accident and tossed him into a bog. Haru could be saved in time by his friends though.

Later on, when he noticed that Ango was gradually losing his mind due to his hatred for Hana, he took it upon himself to kill her in order to protect Ango's mental state. Although he gave Ayu the order to stop Ango from raping Hana, Ryou later on cut off the rope holding Hana while they were exploring the caves.

When Aramaki accused him of being "inhuman", he didn't oppose his words and remained almost lethargic although the baseballer became very aggressive towards him. Because he still felt the closest to Ango, he went into exile together with him. That Nijiko refused to leave together with him surprised him quite a lot, though.

Upon meeting Team Summer B, both Ango and Ryou were very wary but only turned hostile towards them when they heard the "Song of Farewell", making them believe that Summer B's "test had started". Ryou set up various dangerous traps for the members of Summer B, almost killing several of them. They grew aggressive especially towards Arashi when they learned about his connection to Hana.

When they came upon the ship gaveyard, Ryou originally didn't want to accompany the others, but because Ango wanted to follow Natsu, Ryou reluctantly joined them as well. During their Fuji ghost ship adventure, Ryou got separated from the others and explored the ship together with Matsuri who tried to console him when she learned about Ryou having been almost killed by a teacher on an abandoned ship. She misread it as Ryou having been sexually assaulted and told him "You don't have to be scared anymore"

Later on, they reunited with Semimaru who had been playing around with some guns he found on the ship. Fortunately, the young punk had been wearing a bullet-proof vest. So, even though Semimaru accidentally pointed a gun towards Ryou, the shadow king of Team Summer A was level-headed enough to only shoot at his opponents' torso protected by the bullet-proof vest in order to throw him on his back.

Semimaru and Matsuri's cheerful nature let Ryou experience a lot of interesting new things: especially the new world of table-tennis and basketball! Ryou also noticed that Semimaru, despite being a moron, occasionally spoke words of wisdom and used his words later on to console Ango. When the three of them almost died in a falling elevator, Ryou saved them - and then got angry at them for their foolishness, raising his voice for the very first time.

When Ango broke down and told Arashi and Natsu about the final test, Arashi's words made both Ango and Ryou realize how much they had been trapped within their own minds. Ryou then told Ango the truth about Shigeru's suicide which finally set Ango's mind at ease. Upon leaving the ship, the shadow king of Summer A at last realized that life wasn't a test at all - up until then, he'd been acting towards anything with his mind still caught up in the fear of walking into traps of all sorts.

Further information
Ryou has developed a funny bond with Semimaru, where the latter refers to him as "Sensei" due to his extensive knowledge and survival skills.

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