Vatheon Application 3.0
[ TABLE OF CONTENTS ]
[ Player Name ] : Frudence
[ Personal LJ ] : frudence
[ Age ] : 25
[ Timezone ] : EST
[ Other Characters ] : Riku Replica
[ Character's Name ] : Mouri Shin / Suiko no Shin
[ Character's Age ] : 18. Shin is just a few months older than his fellow Troopers, so he's always a year ahead of them in canon and would have been starting college by the end of OAV #2.
[ Series ] : Yoroiden Samurai Troopers / English: Ronin Warriors. Anime-verse plus some supplementary Drama CDs. The dub was kind of an AU in and of itself, but the important events are the same.
[ Canon Point ] : OAV #2 Kikoutei Densetsu. In Africa, after Shin arrives and the other four guys wake up thanks to his power. Shin transforms, Byakuen roars, and Shin winds up in Vatheon sopping wet for the second time in 24 hours XD
[ History ] :
Old fandom is old and obscure to boot, plus the English version deviated from the Japanese in a few key areas - oh '90s - so I thought it best if I just supplied Shin's history. In the case of proper names, most of the time I go with the Japanese, but with a few titles/nouns I know it's easiest to understand if we just go with the English word if nothing will be lost in translation. For example, it's important to stress the Japanese names for the 4 Walords (Masho) because "Anubis" means the Warlord of Darkness in Japanese, but they gave that name to the leader (Shuten-doji, a different character) in English.
When Shin was still just a kid (before 10 years old), his father died from some sort of cancer, leaving just his mother and sister Sayoko (10 years senior), to live in Hagi, Yamaguchi prefecture, Japan. His mother has a weak heart and is often ill, but the three of them try to continue the family pottery business. At 15 (March of 1988) he read the "family [lineage] documents" that explained how his ancestor is Mori Motonari, a famous navy general, but more importantly he learned about the family armor, Suiko / Torrent. This is almost certainly why a family Rite of Passage is diving into the nearby Hagi Sea (a bay in the Sea of Japan) to see how deep the men can reach. Shin is probably the first to reach the bottom in a long time because he finds the Armor Orb for Suiko / Torrent with the help of an orca friend, Suiki, and this signifies Shin as one of the destined Samurai Troopers. Shin must have played around with the Torrent armor for the few months before the show - the series begins sometime during Summer Break, mid-July through early September - because he's at least decent when wielding his primary weapon, the yari. A yari is like a trident but with a mancatcher end that Shin can, apparently, make open and close at will. The weapon is also sharp enough to slice through obstacles like pesky Nether Soldiers' armor. Granted, he was likely trained with the spear and bo-staff as a child along with basic martial arts, but the yari's pincers are not especially easy to work into combat flow. He also has a tanto dagger behind his right shoulder and claws on his right arm-guard, but he's never shown using them - probably because they're secondary weapons to his yari and he's never been disarmed with it, so he's never had to actually use the back-up weapons.
The entire first season of the YST/RW series is devoted to uniting the Troopers as a team against their nemesis, Arago and his band of 4 Warlords -- Shuten-doji (the leader, Oni armor), Naaza (Poison armor), Rajura (Illusion armor), and Anubis (Darkness armor). In the very first episode, Shin meets the other four Troopers for the first time and they aren't capable of taking on Shuten alone, even in their fully armored forms! They bicker about who gets to do the fighting - even Shin - and can't defend a pair of civilians from getting captured for awhile either. Those civilians go on to become recurring side characters: Yagyu Nasté, the daughter of a professor, and Yamano Jun, a young boy. As the five teenage boys foolishly rush for the front gates to Arago's castle, he only laughs and scatters them across Japan. So begins the team-building process for the Samurai Troopers.
All that's left is for Nasté and Jun to try to find Sanada Ryou of the Wildfire (Rekka) first, because he left one of his katana behind as well as his pet tiger, Byakuen. Jun got separated from his parents when Arago's shock troops gathered up most everyone living in Shinjuku district and took them to the Nether World as captives. Nasté decided to watch over him until they could rescue his parents, but she also knows the legend of the Samurai Troopers and decides that it's in her best interest to help them defeat Arago. By following Byakuen's instincts, they discover Ryou sleeping in the nearby Mt. Fuji; since the story began in Shinjuku Prefecture of Tokyo, Mt. Fuji's only a few miles away by Jeep. They find Ryou and return to Nasté's grandfather so he can help them find the other Troopers, but he gets possessed by a Nether World spirit. Even after they expel the spirit, the strain is too much for his old body to handle and he dies in front of them. With his dying breath he explains to Nasté that she can find the other Troopers by decoding the riddles left in an ancient poem. After a brief scuffle with Naaza, they head out again. Before they can rescue Seiji, Naaza confronts them again and blinds Ryou. He still manages to find Date Seiji of Halo (Korin) using his armor's power to seek out fellow armor-bearers, Seiji defeats Naaza in another scuffle, and then Seiji heals Ryou's sight. They next decide to split up -- Seiji and Nasté go look for Shuu Lei Fuan of Hardrock (Kongo) while Ryou and Jun look for Shin.
Naaza gets one last chance to redeem himself and goes after Ryou to prevent him from finding Shin. Naaza beats Ryou and leaves him floating unconsciously in the Hagi Sea, but by using his poison powers Naaza alerted all of the marine life in the process - including Suiki the orca whale, the one that Shin had befriended as a child. Shin was sleeping in a Bubble Shield at the bottom of the Hagi Sea in full armor, but all of that plus Ryou's swords circling around Shin woke him up. His facemask lets him breathe underwater indefinitely and he'd been recovering his strength while he slept, so as soon as he realized what'd happened he let loose on Naaza -- instead of a normal "pillar", his Surekill: Cho Ryu Ha pretty much looked like a mini typhoon.
Before parting ways, Ryou and Nasté had agreed to meet up at a shrine in Kyoto after rescuing their respective Troopers. Ryou, Shin, Jun, and Byakuen arrive first, and Rajura ambushes them. Rajura's goal isn't to kill the Troopers - he's there to deliver a message. Hashiba Touma of the Heavens (Tenku) is being held in Amanohashidate courtesy of Rajura and the Nether Realm; this is actually a lie and a trap, but Ryou and Shin don't know that. They leave Jun and Byakuen behind to tell Seiji, Shuu, and Nasté where they went. When Ryou and Shin arrive in Amanohashidate, they're shocked to discover how easily the soldiers guarding Touma go down. "How did this happen? Touma of the Heavens captured by these wimps?" They see the illusion fade, leaving Rajura in Touma's place, but it's too late; Rajura's trap was set. His illusion makes Ryou and Shin think that the other person is Rajura, and thus fight each other. Ryou and Shin don't realize what happened until they knock each other out, and next thing the two of them know they're waking up to Nasté and Jun's ministrations. Shin goes to relax in the water nearby while Seiji regains consciousness -- he'd taken a beating from Shuu and chose not to fight back because he'd figured out the illusion, but knew that Shuu wouldn't trust the words of "Rajura," so he just took the hit. While Ryou's staring at the stars reflecting in the water, he gets the idea that maybe the "sky" where Touma was sent is actually space. A series of misadventures ensues where two numbskulls -- Ryou and Shuu -- go ahead with their own plan in spite of appeals to reason from Seiji, Shin, and Nasté. So Shin and co. arrive just in time to find a despondent Shuu alone with Byakuen, because Ryou ended up riding a Netherworld Fireball up to Touma. Arago intended to destroy Touma and Ryou with the Fireball, but Ryou took out the Fireball beforehand. The group back on earth gets a little visit from Arago as he laughs haughtily in their faces and sends a few foot soldiers their way, but they eventually see a shooting-star-like-thing fall from space and go to investigate. Lo and behold, it's Touma and Ryou, both conscious and a little worse for the wear, but alive even after fighting the Warlord Shuten again.
So with all of the Troopers together again, they decide it's time for Assault The Castle: Take Two. The problem is how to get there -- they need to get through a bunch of fog and even then they can't use the gates that the Warlords create, so after entering Shinjuku (a district in Tokyo) yet again looking for a way in, they get split up by the Warlords in an attempt to defeat the Troopers individually. This culminates in the Troopers working together to knock out Shuten, then taking a moment to realize they aren't fighting some 'demon' (like his Oni armor suggests) but rather a real human being. This fight was the first time Shin had seen Shuten without his helmet, courtesy of an arrow from Touma when he crash-landed with Ryou. Kaosu the Ancient One eventually appears to explain a few things that make the Troopers even more unnerved: all nine armors came from one source - Arago - and all have destructive potential (even Cye's). The Warlords are what happens when an armor-bearer strays from seeking his Virtue, because *gasp!* all of the Warlords are human too. They've just been indentured to Arago for a thousand years or so. Basically, the Warlords became weak-minded and easily manipulated into just seeking out power. Kaosu tries to convert Shuten to the side of the Troopers, but the Warlords appear to steal Shuten back, despite the Troopers efforts to stop them. In order to finally reach Arago's castle, the Troopers need a bridge, and Kaosu says he can provide one. He fails to mention he'll end up using all of his power and sacrificing himself for the cause to accomplish this. The Troopers get to the castle after all, only to get split up again by the three uber-powered Warlords (Rajura, Naaza, and Anubis) drunk on Netherworld Lava-bath Power. Shin specifically got stuck in a pool of acid with Ryou. Surprise surprise, it's Naaza after them, but Shin gets the genius idea to not bog Ryou down here and just get him to take down Arago at full strength. When Shin invokes his Surekill on Naaza, he uses the force of the water to send Ryou up and out of the room, then takes on Naaza himself. The five Troopers finally reunite on the rooftops of the castle as they each crash through a wall mid-combat.
Then more strangeness occurs. Arago summons the three warlords' armors back into himself and Shuten-doji awakens to his Virtue, rejecting Arago, but Shin never gets to see this (see below). Apparently each armor helps Arago rebuild his body, since all this time he's just been a floating disembodied spirit-head. Each of the Warlords' armors grant him a limb to work with, and so three limbs keep attacking the Troopers on the castle rooftops. One by one the Troopers fall to protect Ryou and keep him alive long enough to defeat Arago. Shin gets knocked down first because he uses his yari to get Ryou out of a giant armored hand's grip -- that makes the second time in a few hours Shin directly saved Ryou. The armored hand ends up grabbing Touma next and slamming his body down Shin's back repeatedly. Shuu tries to stop it, but Arago draws in Shin first, then Touma and Shuu. Eventually Seiji falls too, leaving Ryou alone. While Ryou's fighting, Shin and the others are apparently trapped inside Arago fighting to remain separate from him; so long as Arago doesn't have all of the armors, his spirit remains fractured. The four Troopers manage to stop Arago from moving a few times, but Arago pushes them down again and again. The final time the guys actually manage to speak to Ryou, trying to get him to destroy Arago while they hold Arago still. Ryou refuses to destroy his friends along with Arago, and this demoralizes the four guys so much that Arago regains control.
Unfortunately, Ryou finally gets sucked in too after that and he starts wondering if this isn't a good way to die anyway, alongside people who've become his friends, even if he did let them down. Kaosu then appears in spirit form and uses a bit of reverse psychology to set a fire under Ryou's butt. It's about how Kaosu shouldn't have expected the Troopers to take up his battle from a thousand years ago, showing Ryou how he split Arago's armor into nine parts, and how Kaosu imbued each piece of the armor with a human virtue to try to prevent Arago from ever utilizing that power again. (Nine = five Troopers plus four Warlords) It includes the phrases: "As long as there is hatred and bitterness in human hearts, maybe there was no way for me to win this battle... Forgive me, you five young souls. I had no right to sacrifice your lives." Ryou gets upset because he doesn't think it was a waste - yay the power of friendship! Unfortunately Shin and the others are starting to resent Ryou for his decision not to fight, despite his "good intentions" and thinking of them when he made that decision. The re-ignited zeal in Ryou's spirit basically gets him spit back out of Arago. Ryou then summons his friends' spirits out of Arago's body and into his own. But what's this? A new armor appears! It's all shiny & white & powerful and Ryou's wearing it to channel all five armors at once, soundly defeating Arago! The season ends without telling us how the heck that happened, or what happened to the Warlords, or anything else vaguely important. Good thing they made a second season!
Apparently defeating evil takes a lot out of you, because Season Two opens with Ryou laying in bed exhausted and the other guys basically taking it easy at Nasté's country home, waiting for Ryou to wake up. It's been a week or two, but still summer break for the guys -- kudos to them for time well spent. The boys aren't totally immune to intelligence it seems, because when Ryou asks why Shuu and Shin are training outside, the two explain that it's because they don't think the whole Netherworld went down just because Arago died. P.S. This "training" involves Shin doing some gymnastics and acrobatics on par with Trowa from Gundam Wing, and Shuu is apparently strong enough even without his sub-armor on to hold Shin above his head one-handed. They've become good friends while Ryou was asleep. The next few episodes involve "random" villains, but eventually the boys find out that these goons are actually all vying to take Arago's place.
The only really notable guy among them is Lord Saberstryke, who gets ~*~two~*~ whole episodes to himself. After fighting not just Arago but now these new guys as well, Ryou breaks the two katanas he normally fights with in his first fight against Saberstryke. Ryou gets more than a little depressed during this time while Nasté and the guys try to puzzle out what the White Armor is and how to get new swords for Ryou. Mr. Default Leader goes straight from having all the cool powers to being dead-weight and he really doesn't like it. Saberstryke's own pet tiger Kokuen-oh trashes Nasté's house during this time; Kokuen-oh looks exactly like Byakuen except with grey fur and this really nifty white armor that includes two holsters for Lord Saberstryke's swords. Byakuen fights the other tiger off, but not before Ryou emos a bit more about how he's endangering everyone and can't even fight back. This is when we find out Byakuen is a little smarter than your average tiger. Byakuen goes out one day to confront Kokuen-oh tiger-to-tiger, and comes away with one of Lord Saberstryke's swords. This battle comes at the cost of Byakuen's life, and Ryou is pissed. When Ryou arrives to fight Saberstryke again in the White Armor of Inferno (Kikoutei), they each fight with one of the two swords - which is really not a good idea considering the swords are meant to fight together not against each other. The swords are the supposed to be tied to the Kikoutei armor, but Saberstryke got there first. They fight, and Ryou ends up in his sub-armor with both swords. Saberstryke collapses, dying, and tells Kokuen-oh that Ryou is his master now. It had been raining when Byakuen died, but then cleared up when Kokuen-oh proved he understood Saberstryke's words - by reviving Byakuen. Henceforth, whenever Ryou transformed into the Kikoutei armor, Byakuen would transform into Kokuen-oh's visage complete with the Soul Swords on his back. Ryou's pet tiger gets called "Byakuen-oh" from then on out.
The other Troopers are happy that Ryou got this cool new armor, but decide they need to go make sense of some dreams Kaosu's been sending them to get stronger. No sooner do Seiji, Shuu, and Shin get their new powers awakened than they get captured by each of their rival Warlords (yes, they survived the end of Season One) and taken to the Nether World on orders from Arago (yep, him too) to drain the energy out of them. Shin's capture was a pretty cruel way to do it too - Naaza made a Torrent-look-alike out of his Poison powers and sent the clone out to fight Shin. The problem was that as powerful as Shin became in the water, so too did the poison-clone. This prompted a lesson from Kaosu about how the Suiko armor works and if Shin wants to tap into the powered-up version of his Cho Ryu Ha Surekill attack, then he'd have to pay closer attention to how his element worked with his virtue. Kaosu told Shin he'd have to "give up the desire to win" and "see the flow in nature," i.e. don't fight the current, use it to propel you forward, the same way that fish swim. Shin eventually beat the clone, but when the clone was defeated his armor pieces dispersed in an explosion of poison. To stop the poison from infecting the marine life in the area, Shin used another Cho Ryu Ha to redirect the poison into his own armor hoping to purify it. Unfortunately, the poison proved to be too much, and he collapsed. That made him easy pickings for Naaza to drag home by the feet on his back (no, I am not making that image up).
Most of the rest of Season Two is pretty boring for Shin, because he's tied up in Arago's basement with Seiji and Shuu. The only reason Shin's around for the final battle is because Shuten sacrifices himself to make Lady Kayura wake up out of a trance that Arago's Head Priest Badamon put her under. Lady Kayura is the season's new villainess who'd been tormenting Ryou & Touma without the others around. Shuten stepped up as the new "Ancient"-type disciple in order to help Ryou & Touma get the other three Troopers back. Really, it's not confusing at all, especially to Shin who just woke up to discover all of that. As Kayura snaps out of it, she inherits Shuten's armor, and everyone else gets broken out of their little towers that Arago had locked them in. So now the Warlords are mad that Arago used them and decide they won't fight with the Troopers, but they are prepared to help kick Arago's butt. It all works out in the end because with everyone beating up Arago there's only one thing left for Mr. Big Bad to do: go down to Shinjuku again and try to make the world go crazy so he can suck on the energy from their negative emotions, thereby becoming powerful enough to defeat all nine armor-bearers. Ryou gets to transform into the Kikoutei armor again, but instead of beating Arago in a battle, he 'sends' the armor to Arago and makes him "accept my Virtue of Humanity." Basically, it looks like Ryou's white armor keeps superimposing itself on top of Arago's black armor and red face-mask. Meanwhile, Ryou's telling his friends to kill Arago now that Ryou has him immobilized - because this totally isn't reminiscent of the end of the first season. The four boys end up cry-screaming and using all of their power to destroy Arago's armor, since that worked so well for them back in the first season. Who says boys aren't emotional? Just when Jun's freaking out, thinking Ryou's dead, the little charm that Shuten gave Jun activates. That little trinket - the Jewel of Life, a magatama bead on a necklace - is powerful enough to revive Ryou out of Arago. The TV series ends with the former-bad-guys (Kayura and the three Warlords) going back to change the Netherworld to good, and the five Troopers plus Nasté, Jun, & Byakuen-oh playing baseball with the freaking Jewel of Life that just saved Ryou.
Except there's 3 movies that come after this, only two of which I'm covering due to Shin's pull point. In Gaiden, Seiji gets kidnapped and experimented on by a scientist in California with the help of some ancient being that came from the Nether World. They figure out something's up when Seiji doesn't show up to Ryou's birthday party. The other Troopers track him first to New York, where his empty Kourin armor was causing problems. Then the boys go to California to try to find/save Seiji, with a red-shirt girl named Luna tagging along and eventually dying. All of this traveling was financed by Shuu winning the lottery. As the Nether Being - named Shikaisen - is defeated, his visage changes to that of Arago, but then he fades away again. I'm pretty sure Drama CDs involving the Warlords settle that problem once and for all. It's in this movie we also get to meet Shuu's lulz-tastic Uncle Chin in Little China, New York and Shin shows off his late-80s/early-90s lack-of-fashion-sense.
Somewhere in here there's another Drama CD called Suikoden in which Shin has to go home for a little while when his mom got sick again and Shuu tags along because they're BFFs. Shin meets his sister's fiancé, they get on each other's nerves because Shin thinks the guy (Shizuka Ryuusuke) is forcing his sister to give up her dreams. So Shin eventually challenges Ryuusuke to a diving contest (without the help of his armor), since Ryuusuke's trying to marry into the family and all. An oil tanker spilling over the Hagi Sea interrupts this contest, so Shin goes back looking for his armor orb, because he put it back at the bottom of Hagi Sea so he wouldn't be tempted to use it during the diving contest. Ryuusuke follows him for whatever reason, sees an orca whale coming at Shin, and throws himself between Shin and the whale. This changes how Shin thinks about Ryuusuke and they ride Suiki to the surface so Shin can take care of the oil spill. Ryuusuke then decides to marry into the family, so Shin doesn't have to worry as much while he's off at school and can become a marine biologist like he always wanted. YAY! Shin's actually been staying in an apartment in Tokyo this whole time all by himself. This little adventure ends with Seiji having to come pick them up because Shuu used up all of their money on food, so they don't have enough money for the gas to get back to Tokyo.
Then there's the second movie. It's summer break of the following year and Shin and Shuu are out surfing when a massive heat-wave breaks out. Apparently a guy named Mukala from Africa (dark skin, white hair, blue eyes) managed to find himself a Black Inferno armor (Kuroi Kikoutei). He runs around as if in sub-armor all the time despite wearing nothing but a skirt and a headband, plus wielding this giant black boomerang. He brings with him hallucinations of the African savanna and all of its creatures, fights with the Troopers, and tears up Shinjuku for awhile. Ryou, Touma, and Seiji got to deal with all that by themselves at first, because Shin and Shuu are late to the party. They sprint there in sub-armor, but when they get there Shin has a vision that hearkens back to what the boys learned in Season One - that their armors have the potential to be very destructive. Mukala wanted to fight against Kikoutei, but without Shin giving over his armor to help Ryou form it, that didn't happen, so Mukala just kidnaps Ryou to Africa. As they're floating away to some kind of teleportation wormhole, Seiji grabs onto Ryou, and ends up getting kidnapped as well. As soon as Mukala's gone, the hallucinations disappear and damage to the city district is magically restored.
Naturally none of this goes over very well back at Nasté's house. Shin actually gets into a verbal fight with Touma, who tries to calm him down, and Shin punches him in return, telling him to shut up! Shuu gets in on this too and the boys tussle to the floor. Turns out Shuu let Shin beat him up because Shuu knew how upset Shin was and needed to let things out, but Shuu figured he was tougher and could take it better than Touma. So Shin goes running out to the lake crying because he's so confused and actually chucks his armor into the lake, vowing not to fight with it again. He goes to sulk by the lake for awhile until Byakuen comes to nudge him back to the little pier where Shin cast away his armor. He decides to confront the nature of his armor with his own resolve, and Water-Portals out to Africa to help his buddies. The other four guys are beaten up physically and wracked emotionally, but Shin manages to help them rest by soothing their souls with Heal the Spirit. When the guys wake the next morning, Shin gets a little smug/proud, but then Byakuen does something weird by roaring. It feels like a big tug, which is when Shin will get taken to Vatheon! Woo!
[ Personality ] :
Shin was born in the city of Hagi, Yamaguchi prefecture, Japan on March 14th 1973 (White Day), and is thus 15 years old for most of the YST/RW series, 17 during the first OAV, and 18 at the time he is being pulled from in the second OAV. He's a Pisces, an Ox, Blood Type A, and since this is an old show all of that lines up to make the guy with the water element that is patient and sensible and mature... most of the time. His hobbies include basketball, swimming, tea ceremony, cooking, flower arrangement, and English Conversation. He's also extremely familiar with pottery thanks to his family's business. He loves marine life, having grown up right next to the Sea of Japan, but he will eat fish... if the head's cut off first. This also explains why he gets a Captain Planet-style ending to his first key episode where he's all upset about Naaza killing innocent fish, and Shin claims that as one of his key reasons for fighting Arago. Shin's kind of a hippie like that.
For most of the first season of the TV series, Shin went along with the whole Save The World thing mainly out of blind youth naivete but also because it was a lot easier than dealing with family politics back home, or so he first thought. His mother and older sister couldn't exactly tell him not to go to Shinjuku (where the Troopers were being 'called' to by Arago) since it was about The Armors and he'd pretty much been hearing about this whole destiny thing for a few months straight by that point (see background). By the end of the first season, he'd become close enough friends with the other four Troopers that he was also willing to fight just so he didn't let them down. He wasn't much of a strategist, but he was definitely the peacemaker between Shuu and Ryou (charge in headfirst mentality) versus Seiji and Touma (plan ahead mentality). By the middle of the second season, Shin was starting to get weary of fighting, but then Arago sent Naaza to kidnap him. Shin spent a good while in the Netherworld's pleasant basement accommodations, getting drained of his power alongside Shuu and Seiji. So when it came time for the final battle at the end of the TV series, Shin had a bit more of a personal reason to defeat Arago, and because Arago had always been viewed as this inherently evil demon. Even in the first OAV (Gaiden), Shin doesn't mind tagging along with Ryou and Shuu to New York when Seiji's in trouble; he was mainly concerned that Ryou and Shuu might do more good than harm unless they had someone else along to balance out their headstrong personalities.
All through the TV series and Gaiden, a young woman named Nasté and a boy named Jun had been tagging along. They got hurt, tossed around, taken hostage, put in mortal peril, and all sorts of other things that happen to normal people when they hang around heroes, but they never actually died. Byakuen did and was brought back immediately, but he was Ryou's pet tiger and Shin only saw Byakuen's revival, not the death. However, in Gaiden a woman named Luna died - mainly through her own choice of actions, but the impact was felt throughout the team. Shin hadn't known her that well or cared about her much, but as he's the most empathetic of the group, he could tell how much it impacted Ryou, and Touma to a lesser extent.
Thus why Shin was perfectly content to return to Japan with his friends and just put the armors behind them, but more importantly this was why the events of Kikoutei affected Shin so deeply. After a year of not thinking about the armors at all, it's no wonder that Mukala's appearance awakened Shin's pacifistic streak. Their opponent was no longer demonic shadows, but a human being, same as when they'd first found out about the Warlords. Through the initial events in Kikoutei, Shin develops a deep resistance to using the armors at all and becomes the kind of person that wishes war away, but doesn't want anyone to experience the pain it takes to get there. It's such a new personality development for the young man that he gets extremely emotional when forced to pit these ideals against a desire to help his friends. He can't figure out a way to reconcile the two desires at first. He gets angry that no one agrees with him, then lashes out, and then gets angry at himself for resorting to violence. He's the oldest member of the five Troopers and tries to be the most mature, but in the end he just has to go out and think for awhile about what to do.
At first he rejects his armor entirely. However, the events leading up to when I'm pulling him showcase the deep-running resolve that Shin has. He's able to refuse both of what the others saw as only two choices (fight and help, or stay out of it and keep his ideals), and instead pick Option C -- take his armor and use it in a non-violent way while still helping his friends. Shin's virtue is Trust/Faith, so he had to believe that he could shape the way his armor was used, instead of his armor's spirit dictating how he acted. At the point I'm pulling Shin from, friendship is back at the top of his priority list, but he's also a little proud/smug/happy because he was able to show his friends that his armor was useful for more than fighting. There was a point in the second season where he unlocked his improved Surekill move by learning to not fight the current, but rather use its strength to propel him forward, and that sentiment finally came back to the forefront. This new resolve to be less antagonistic and more understanding of human nature is tempered and strengthened through the end of the Kikoutei OAV and throughout the 3rd OAV Message, so it's a character arc that's sure to continue within the game.
I know I sort of summed up his series history again, but I feel that the fandom is a little rash to blindly label Shin as "the pacifist" when he clearly didn't have any problems fighting - at first. There's a big difference between being the peacekeeper / man-in-the-middle among a group of friends and outright refusing to use a weapon of destruction, i.e. the armors. He grew up over the course of the series, and that aspect of his personality shifted a little with it.
Some things about him weren't affected, certainly. Growing up without a father and as the one expected to run the family business when he was of age, Shin was trained in many cultural practices his family thought would be beneficial to him in the future, but there were many things he picked up being the only man in the house as well. He is a notoriously good cook and this came from years of preparing meals while his sister and mother worked, same with knowing the ins and outs of cleaning a house, doing laundry, etc. On the traditional Japanese side, he was taught the art of the tea ceremony and flower arrangement. Sensing the incoming Westernization, his family made sure to have him study abroad in Britain and Ireland during summer breaks to learn English conversation, which Shin now enjoys, but he developed a British accent to his English speech as a result.
One area he hasn't explored at all is romance - it simply hasn't come up for him. The last time he was in a place to think about that sort of thing, he was only 15, and most recently there was the whole incident with his sister's fiancé. Only now is the social pressure to have a family and continue his lineage (not to mention the business) lessening, which is why he was about to start college in a few months. This means he could actually consider dating, if he can be convinced that Vatheon isn't just the world inside of his armor and the game is just a test for his spirit. He won't know what he's expected to accomplish, but that'll be his first theory. So long as he believes that, romance still won't be a major component of his daily life.
At the end of the day, Shin is still an 18 year old boy. He likes teasing his friends, especially if they make a minor mistake that he can poke fun at. He'll drink in social situations and even get a little rowdy if he has a friend he's comfortable palling around with. He likes entertaining groups as much as one-on-one activities, and is patient with anyone who wants to learn skills that he possesses - so long as they're genuinely trying. He gets along equally well with men and women; generally, he prefers to have conversations with people at least as mature as he is. However, he is more than willing to be the clear-headed conscience to someone with a good heart but less maturity / a more action-first mentality. His best friend (Shuu/Kento) is one such person, after all. He tries to be the easy-going one who can understand people's faults, accept them, and lightly chide the person into better behavior instead of being angry or condescending towards them.
[ Strengths/Weaknesses ] :
On the physical side, Shin is very lithe and flexible. He can perform impressive gymnastic feats even out of his sub-armor, though he doesn't have nearly as much raw strength behind him. Due to the nature of his weapon being mainly staff-like, his upper arms and wrists have the most endurance and dexterity. However, his element of choice is hardly the most damaging, and he can't manipulate ice or mist or anything akin to water. Just water itself. Shin is built to last the longest in a combat assuming he can prevent his opponent from doing damage to him - Shuu would be the one who can last the longest while actually getting pummeled. So basically he tries to fight a battle of attrition.
Despite his stereotype, Shin is actually not that good at suppressing or controlling his emotions to the point of an eternally cool demeanor; he's largely a demonstrative personality. When he feels calm and relaxed, he reacts calmly, but if he feels a very intense emotion like sadness or anger, he does have the capacity to lash out. With him, it's usually a last resort and he'll feel bad about it later, then try to make reparations. He can plan ahead just fine, but he'll usually choose the path of least resistance if he can help it - meaning the path that causes the least amount of pain to himself and others. This may result in him not acting as quickly as the situation merits, or his plan taking a bit longer than other plans, and in turn the process creating a consequence he isn't happy about.
This is not the techno-savvy member of the group. He's getting pulled from mid-year 1991, when clunky desktop computers were still largely used by programmers and academics, not the public at large. Data was stored on large floppy disks from 8 inches wide to 3.5 inches wide. Mobile phones were heard of, but expensive and still not all wireless. There's no indication Shin was much of a gamer or grease monkey either, though he owns a scooter. So while he won't be in the same camp as a character plucked from the 1800s and asked to fathom modern amenities, things like the Starfish Communicator will strike Shin as 'advanced' technology.
Shin is very good at gauging how people will respond to certain situations, even if he's only seen their personality in action for a few minutes, and react empathetically if the situation warrants it. More than any of the others, Shin wants to believe in the inherent goodness of human beings - most often this means the ability to talk problems out instead of fighting. This is why he gets the label of 'peacekeeper' or 'middle man' in a group of people. With marine life, his empathy is through magical means as the Suiko armor's bearer, but with people it's completely mundane and simply his intuitive nature. If a friend is in trouble, and especially if they ask for a favor directly, he won't hesitate to help them, even if it inconveniences himself. He places a deep trust in the bonds of friendship, and believes that if he were in a similar pickle, his friends would come to his aid as well. It makes him look like a passive personality, but it's more that he just knows how to pick his battles. He will put his foot down if he feels that strongly about something - the second movie, his pull point, is all about him putting his foot down - but if it's just what show he'll watch with a group at dinner, that really isn't worth fighting over.
Lastly, his biggest strength when making new friends is that he actually has hobbies! *gasp* So he's good at trying out new hobbies that potential friends enjoy, as well as showcasing his own, and they are quite varied: a craft (pottery), fine arts (flower-arrangement and tea ceremony), practical skills (cooking and fishing), linguistic (English/Japanese), and of course athletic (basketball, swimming, surfing, and gymnastics).
[ Other Important Facts - Abilities Section] :
As I said on my Repliku app, I'd like to stress that none of these Abilities are surefire, always-work deals. Some of them are more powerful, but they can always be parried, dodged, repelled, etc. It's my personal play style, but it's also because the Troopers are at their strongest when they work as a team. Shin's pretty good on his own, but he prefers a watch-your-back/tag-team style of fighting. He could theoretically develop a whole new style if he makes a new friend he trusts, and adapt to their techniques. The point is that, on his own, he can only take out goon-level opponents with ease. I love me some fight scenes, but it's no fun to knock an opponent out in one hit. Okay sometimes that's fun if there's a clear power difference and it's explicitly for comedic effect - including my character being on the receiving end of it! However, in most serious combat scenes, I like a clear back-and-forth struggle. I enjoy trying to outwit the other player in creative attack prose, but only if the player is as experienced with combat scenes as I am and we've not agreed to a clear-cut winner at the start. I'm also perfectly happy to discuss with another player some options for beating Shin that their character may think of, but the player may not realize. This again goes back to Shin - he is not the strongest of the Troopers, nor does he have the most damage output. He's actually the best at siege warfare-style combat, stopping his opponent from doing damage and just wearing them down. That being said, here's his abilities.
Static Skills as the Suiko/Torrent Armor Bearer
♓Speak with Marine Life: Shin can communicate empathically with all forms of marine life, fish and mammals alike.
♓Advanced Swimmer: Shin can hold his breath much longer than normal humans, withstand more pressure when diving deep, and swim faster.
♓Aqua-kinesis: Most often, Shin does this to enhance his fighting techniques. He can't make water do absurd things like form a square and he can't summon it out of thin air, but he can affect the path of the water and kind of nudge it a little to a different direction. Anything more than that requires the use of his Surekill move to really send the water anywhere with a force behind it.
♓Environmental Enhancement: As with all of the armors, Shin's power is enhanced when he's in his element. Obviously, that would be water. This only means full submersion, not just being nearby it. It only makes him a little stronger and faster, but mostly it amplifies his Surekill and Bubble Shield powers.
Orb Powers: These Shin can only use if he has ahold of his cyan armor orb with the kanji for Trust/Faith in it.
⚓Heal the spirit: As with all of the armor-bearers, friendship is his greatest bond. This is one of the Suiko armor's special abilities (the Water Portals being the other of note), and the other Armor Bearers have similarly unique abilities, which is why this ability works on more than just other Armor Bearers. Still, this ability only works on dear friends who have fallen ill with an affliction of the spirit, not the body. This is a calming, soothing, revitalizing effect on a tortured soul like an onsen! that utilizes the Resonance bond more effectively. This does nothing to the dead. Shin must focus on his virtue of Trust/Faith while holding onto his Armor Orb and be within close proximity of the friend (basically within the same room). When he concentrates, his virtue's kanji appears in bright blue light on his forehead. Shin can do this even without his sub-armor or full armor on.
⚓Water Portals: In desperate situations, while holding onto his Armor Orb and focusing intently on his virtue of Trust/Faith, Shin can travel from one body of water to another. Normally this would include great distances like across oceans, but in this game we'll say he's limited to about the distance from one side of Vatheon to another, and only if the body of water is big enough to submerge himself in.
⚓Sub-Armor Transformation: When Shin holds his Armor Orb in one of his fists and concentrates, he can transform into his "Armor Gear" (borrowed English in the Japanese version), colloquialized in English as "sub-armor." This is a fairly thin protective body suit color-coded to his shade of pale blue/cyan in various areas and white in the rest, like those of his fellow Troopers. In this armor, his principle abilities include: running very fast, jumping higher than normal (which is a lot for him), punching armor without hurting himself, and being able to protect against blows from mundane (non-magical) weaponry. This sub-armor does not include a head-piece.
Armor Powers: All of these abilities require Shin to be in his Sub-Armor at bare minimum.
☯Yoroi (Full Armor) Transformation: Shin must already be in his sub-armor to perform this transformation. It requires both a call ("Busso*! Suiko!") and fancy arm motions. [*Arm, as in "take up arms!] Then lovely bolts of silk appear out of nowhere, burst into sakura blossoms, and then Shin is in his full suit of armor -- posing with some lights shining down on him. Only in this full armor can he use his Surekill move and Bubble Shield, both described below. He can't run very fast, as in his sub-armor, or jump especially high, but all of his normal dexterity applies. This armor comes with his signature Yari, or staff with a pincer end that Shin can open and close. His armor's helmet allows him to breathe freely underwater when the orange visor is down.
☯Surekill move -- Cho Ryu Ha / Ultra Wave Crusher: Shin can perform this attack in one of two ways, and only if he is in his Yoroi (full armor). The first is simply pointing the pincers of his yari in the direction he wants to attack, holding the staff with both hands. For a few moments, water collects between the pincers. He then shouts CHO RYU HA and pushes the staff forward, opening up the pincers further and sending a blast of water at the enemy in the shape of a horizontal-axis column. The second version is essentially a powered-up variant called Cho Dan Do Cho Ryu Ha (Ultra Ballistic Ultra Wave Crusher) which includes a mini-typhoon swirling around Shin if he's under water and allows him to purify poisoned water by re-routing the wave directly into himself.
☯Yoroi Resonance: How an armor-bearer knows this is working is by the sound of rings clanging on a staff in their mind. The visible effect -- which is easier to see in one form than another -- involves a pulsating white light. Unarmored, this happens to the Armor Orbs. In Sub-Armor, the colored parts of the armor glow. In full Yoroi, the whole armor and weapon pulses with light. There are a few reasons why this Resonance takes place, but it all goes back to the bond between those with the armors.
1) Searching for a fellow - this can happen with only one other armor-bearer looking for another, but the proximity is severely limited. A hundred feet at best. The armor-bearer being searched for doesn't have to be conscious or actively searching for his fellows.
2) Calling for help - slightly different from Searching, this is when one armor-bearer calls out to all other allied armor-bearers. In this case it's their Virtues pulsing with light on their foreheads. This can happen across great distances. It's the biggest instance of not being limited to the Troopers themselves, but also the Warlords when they begin to break away from Arago.
3) Our Spirits Are One - this can happen if at least five armor-bearers are focused on the same goal, i.e. defeating a very powerful enemy. This also works with any number of Warlords and Troopers as part of the required "five." In addition to being a requirement for other abilities (all Ryou's), it also enhances each armor-bearers power while they're all Resonating.
☯Bubble Shield: This appears in one of two scenarios, and only if Shin is in his Yoroi (full armor). If he is about to suffer a mortal wound, the bubble appears and he goes unconscious. It takes another Trooper to wake him up. For the sake of the game, we'll assume that if no Trooper is around, then he dies within a day. The other situation is far less likely, as it involves all five Troopers and Ryou activating the super-armor Kikoutei consciously or unconsciously. In that situation, the Bubble Shield is part of the Resonance effect and then Shin disappears inside of it completely during Ryou's transformation sequence -- i.e. it protects Shin and the other Troopers from being attacked while Ryou is powering up.
☯Shield Barrier: If all five Troopers use their Bubble Shields at the same time, they can create a Shield Barrier. This is both an offensive and defensive maneuver; it protects the five men from damage, but also sends out energy bolts all around them that can destroy minion-level creatures like the Netherworld Foot Soldiers. Against stronger enemies, it probably only deflects some damage for a short period and the energy bolts only do minor damage.
[ Sample ] :
It all happened so fast it nearly made Shin's head spin. One minute Byakuen was roaring and his sub-armor was pulsing, and the next instant there was a tugging sensation on his lower back. He blinked, and was standing in the fountain of a city square, completely drenched. The drenched part didn't bother him that much - but he was starting to wonder if he'd just dreamt the past few hours. Had he really gone to Africa and helped his friends, or had he gone straight here - wherever 'here' was, anyway - from the lake near Nasté's mansion?
His right hand immediately fished into his pocket seeking his armor orb - if he was in his normal clothing, his armor orb should've been on his person. He found the orb there, but he also found another trinket there that was definitely not his. It was star-shaped, but included the kind of technology that he thought would make Touma and Nasté jealous. It could be one of those new phones I've been hearing about - and someone may have misplaced it. Directly into his pocket, perhaps not, but he could barely remember how he even got there in the first place, so it wasn't a completely crazy notion to him.
"Excuse me-" "Hello, I'm new to this area and-"
No matter who he spoke to, they insisted that the star-shaped object must be his. It was as he sat down to think on his situation that he noticed a tiny burrowing sensation at the back of his neck. Shin jumped up abruptly, fearing an attack, and grabbed for whatever was back there. His hand completely closed around something there, startling him yet again. As he pulled his hand back around front of him, he realized it was a tiny person.
"A faerie?!" He gasped and let go immediately. He'd heard of those before from his English Conversation Partners. "I'm sorry - did you get lost in my hair?" He tugged on a bang. "They've been telling me to get it cut for awhile now…" He chuckled a little, then remembered 'they' weren't here with him. Something had happened and he'd become separated from his friends yet again. For all he knew, this was a dream - a challenge from the Suiko armor and Kaosu the Ancient One. It made sense to him, being so surrounded by water as this place was. "Hey, Ms. Faerie-" or so he guessed by the look of the being, "I'm looking for my friends. Can you help me find them?"
In response, the faerie flew down to his left pocket and tapped it once before resuming her hover by his right shoulder. That pocket was where he'd put the star-device, so it didn't clink against his armor orb. Reluctantly, Shin pulled it out again and stared at it for a moment before nodding to the faerie. "Got it. Thanks, Ms. Faerie."
[ Questions? Comments? Concerns? ] :
[ Player Name ] : Frudence
[ Personal LJ ] : frudence
[ Age ] : 25
[ Timezone ] : EST
[ Other Characters ] : Riku Replica
[ Character's Name ] : Mouri Shin / Suiko no Shin
[ Character's Age ] : 18. Shin is just a few months older than his fellow Troopers, so he's always a year ahead of them in canon and would have been starting college by the end of OAV #2.
[ Series ] : Yoroiden Samurai Troopers / English: Ronin Warriors. Anime-verse plus some supplementary Drama CDs. The dub was kind of an AU in and of itself, but the important events are the same.
[ Canon Point ] : OAV #2 Kikoutei Densetsu. In Africa, after Shin arrives and the other four guys wake up thanks to his power. Shin transforms, Byakuen roars, and Shin winds up in Vatheon sopping wet for the second time in 24 hours XD
[ History ] :
Old fandom is old and obscure to boot, plus the English version deviated from the Japanese in a few key areas - oh '90s - so I thought it best if I just supplied Shin's history. In the case of proper names, most of the time I go with the Japanese, but with a few titles/nouns I know it's easiest to understand if we just go with the English word if nothing will be lost in translation. For example, it's important to stress the Japanese names for the 4 Walords (Masho) because "Anubis" means the Warlord of Darkness in Japanese, but they gave that name to the leader (Shuten-doji, a different character) in English.
When Shin was still just a kid (before 10 years old), his father died from some sort of cancer, leaving just his mother and sister Sayoko (10 years senior), to live in Hagi, Yamaguchi prefecture, Japan. His mother has a weak heart and is often ill, but the three of them try to continue the family pottery business. At 15 (March of 1988) he read the "family [lineage] documents" that explained how his ancestor is Mori Motonari, a famous navy general, but more importantly he learned about the family armor, Suiko / Torrent. This is almost certainly why a family Rite of Passage is diving into the nearby Hagi Sea (a bay in the Sea of Japan) to see how deep the men can reach. Shin is probably the first to reach the bottom in a long time because he finds the Armor Orb for Suiko / Torrent with the help of an orca friend, Suiki, and this signifies Shin as one of the destined Samurai Troopers. Shin must have played around with the Torrent armor for the few months before the show - the series begins sometime during Summer Break, mid-July through early September - because he's at least decent when wielding his primary weapon, the yari. A yari is like a trident but with a mancatcher end that Shin can, apparently, make open and close at will. The weapon is also sharp enough to slice through obstacles like pesky Nether Soldiers' armor. Granted, he was likely trained with the spear and bo-staff as a child along with basic martial arts, but the yari's pincers are not especially easy to work into combat flow. He also has a tanto dagger behind his right shoulder and claws on his right arm-guard, but he's never shown using them - probably because they're secondary weapons to his yari and he's never been disarmed with it, so he's never had to actually use the back-up weapons.
The entire first season of the YST/RW series is devoted to uniting the Troopers as a team against their nemesis, Arago and his band of 4 Warlords -- Shuten-doji (the leader, Oni armor), Naaza (Poison armor), Rajura (Illusion armor), and Anubis (Darkness armor). In the very first episode, Shin meets the other four Troopers for the first time and they aren't capable of taking on Shuten alone, even in their fully armored forms! They bicker about who gets to do the fighting - even Shin - and can't defend a pair of civilians from getting captured for awhile either. Those civilians go on to become recurring side characters: Yagyu Nasté, the daughter of a professor, and Yamano Jun, a young boy. As the five teenage boys foolishly rush for the front gates to Arago's castle, he only laughs and scatters them across Japan. So begins the team-building process for the Samurai Troopers.
All that's left is for Nasté and Jun to try to find Sanada Ryou of the Wildfire (Rekka) first, because he left one of his katana behind as well as his pet tiger, Byakuen. Jun got separated from his parents when Arago's shock troops gathered up most everyone living in Shinjuku district and took them to the Nether World as captives. Nasté decided to watch over him until they could rescue his parents, but she also knows the legend of the Samurai Troopers and decides that it's in her best interest to help them defeat Arago. By following Byakuen's instincts, they discover Ryou sleeping in the nearby Mt. Fuji; since the story began in Shinjuku Prefecture of Tokyo, Mt. Fuji's only a few miles away by Jeep. They find Ryou and return to Nasté's grandfather so he can help them find the other Troopers, but he gets possessed by a Nether World spirit. Even after they expel the spirit, the strain is too much for his old body to handle and he dies in front of them. With his dying breath he explains to Nasté that she can find the other Troopers by decoding the riddles left in an ancient poem. After a brief scuffle with Naaza, they head out again. Before they can rescue Seiji, Naaza confronts them again and blinds Ryou. He still manages to find Date Seiji of Halo (Korin) using his armor's power to seek out fellow armor-bearers, Seiji defeats Naaza in another scuffle, and then Seiji heals Ryou's sight. They next decide to split up -- Seiji and Nasté go look for Shuu Lei Fuan of Hardrock (Kongo) while Ryou and Jun look for Shin.
Naaza gets one last chance to redeem himself and goes after Ryou to prevent him from finding Shin. Naaza beats Ryou and leaves him floating unconsciously in the Hagi Sea, but by using his poison powers Naaza alerted all of the marine life in the process - including Suiki the orca whale, the one that Shin had befriended as a child. Shin was sleeping in a Bubble Shield at the bottom of the Hagi Sea in full armor, but all of that plus Ryou's swords circling around Shin woke him up. His facemask lets him breathe underwater indefinitely and he'd been recovering his strength while he slept, so as soon as he realized what'd happened he let loose on Naaza -- instead of a normal "pillar", his Surekill: Cho Ryu Ha pretty much looked like a mini typhoon.
Before parting ways, Ryou and Nasté had agreed to meet up at a shrine in Kyoto after rescuing their respective Troopers. Ryou, Shin, Jun, and Byakuen arrive first, and Rajura ambushes them. Rajura's goal isn't to kill the Troopers - he's there to deliver a message. Hashiba Touma of the Heavens (Tenku) is being held in Amanohashidate courtesy of Rajura and the Nether Realm; this is actually a lie and a trap, but Ryou and Shin don't know that. They leave Jun and Byakuen behind to tell Seiji, Shuu, and Nasté where they went. When Ryou and Shin arrive in Amanohashidate, they're shocked to discover how easily the soldiers guarding Touma go down. "How did this happen? Touma of the Heavens captured by these wimps?" They see the illusion fade, leaving Rajura in Touma's place, but it's too late; Rajura's trap was set. His illusion makes Ryou and Shin think that the other person is Rajura, and thus fight each other. Ryou and Shin don't realize what happened until they knock each other out, and next thing the two of them know they're waking up to Nasté and Jun's ministrations. Shin goes to relax in the water nearby while Seiji regains consciousness -- he'd taken a beating from Shuu and chose not to fight back because he'd figured out the illusion, but knew that Shuu wouldn't trust the words of "Rajura," so he just took the hit. While Ryou's staring at the stars reflecting in the water, he gets the idea that maybe the "sky" where Touma was sent is actually space. A series of misadventures ensues where two numbskulls -- Ryou and Shuu -- go ahead with their own plan in spite of appeals to reason from Seiji, Shin, and Nasté. So Shin and co. arrive just in time to find a despondent Shuu alone with Byakuen, because Ryou ended up riding a Netherworld Fireball up to Touma. Arago intended to destroy Touma and Ryou with the Fireball, but Ryou took out the Fireball beforehand. The group back on earth gets a little visit from Arago as he laughs haughtily in their faces and sends a few foot soldiers their way, but they eventually see a shooting-star-like-thing fall from space and go to investigate. Lo and behold, it's Touma and Ryou, both conscious and a little worse for the wear, but alive even after fighting the Warlord Shuten again.
So with all of the Troopers together again, they decide it's time for Assault The Castle: Take Two. The problem is how to get there -- they need to get through a bunch of fog and even then they can't use the gates that the Warlords create, so after entering Shinjuku (a district in Tokyo) yet again looking for a way in, they get split up by the Warlords in an attempt to defeat the Troopers individually. This culminates in the Troopers working together to knock out Shuten, then taking a moment to realize they aren't fighting some 'demon' (like his Oni armor suggests) but rather a real human being. This fight was the first time Shin had seen Shuten without his helmet, courtesy of an arrow from Touma when he crash-landed with Ryou. Kaosu the Ancient One eventually appears to explain a few things that make the Troopers even more unnerved: all nine armors came from one source - Arago - and all have destructive potential (even Cye's). The Warlords are what happens when an armor-bearer strays from seeking his Virtue, because *gasp!* all of the Warlords are human too. They've just been indentured to Arago for a thousand years or so. Basically, the Warlords became weak-minded and easily manipulated into just seeking out power. Kaosu tries to convert Shuten to the side of the Troopers, but the Warlords appear to steal Shuten back, despite the Troopers efforts to stop them. In order to finally reach Arago's castle, the Troopers need a bridge, and Kaosu says he can provide one. He fails to mention he'll end up using all of his power and sacrificing himself for the cause to accomplish this. The Troopers get to the castle after all, only to get split up again by the three uber-powered Warlords (Rajura, Naaza, and Anubis) drunk on Netherworld Lava-bath Power. Shin specifically got stuck in a pool of acid with Ryou. Surprise surprise, it's Naaza after them, but Shin gets the genius idea to not bog Ryou down here and just get him to take down Arago at full strength. When Shin invokes his Surekill on Naaza, he uses the force of the water to send Ryou up and out of the room, then takes on Naaza himself. The five Troopers finally reunite on the rooftops of the castle as they each crash through a wall mid-combat.
Then more strangeness occurs. Arago summons the three warlords' armors back into himself and Shuten-doji awakens to his Virtue, rejecting Arago, but Shin never gets to see this (see below). Apparently each armor helps Arago rebuild his body, since all this time he's just been a floating disembodied spirit-head. Each of the Warlords' armors grant him a limb to work with, and so three limbs keep attacking the Troopers on the castle rooftops. One by one the Troopers fall to protect Ryou and keep him alive long enough to defeat Arago. Shin gets knocked down first because he uses his yari to get Ryou out of a giant armored hand's grip -- that makes the second time in a few hours Shin directly saved Ryou. The armored hand ends up grabbing Touma next and slamming his body down Shin's back repeatedly. Shuu tries to stop it, but Arago draws in Shin first, then Touma and Shuu. Eventually Seiji falls too, leaving Ryou alone. While Ryou's fighting, Shin and the others are apparently trapped inside Arago fighting to remain separate from him; so long as Arago doesn't have all of the armors, his spirit remains fractured. The four Troopers manage to stop Arago from moving a few times, but Arago pushes them down again and again. The final time the guys actually manage to speak to Ryou, trying to get him to destroy Arago while they hold Arago still. Ryou refuses to destroy his friends along with Arago, and this demoralizes the four guys so much that Arago regains control.
Unfortunately, Ryou finally gets sucked in too after that and he starts wondering if this isn't a good way to die anyway, alongside people who've become his friends, even if he did let them down. Kaosu then appears in spirit form and uses a bit of reverse psychology to set a fire under Ryou's butt. It's about how Kaosu shouldn't have expected the Troopers to take up his battle from a thousand years ago, showing Ryou how he split Arago's armor into nine parts, and how Kaosu imbued each piece of the armor with a human virtue to try to prevent Arago from ever utilizing that power again. (Nine = five Troopers plus four Warlords) It includes the phrases: "As long as there is hatred and bitterness in human hearts, maybe there was no way for me to win this battle... Forgive me, you five young souls. I had no right to sacrifice your lives." Ryou gets upset because he doesn't think it was a waste - yay the power of friendship! Unfortunately Shin and the others are starting to resent Ryou for his decision not to fight, despite his "good intentions" and thinking of them when he made that decision. The re-ignited zeal in Ryou's spirit basically gets him spit back out of Arago. Ryou then summons his friends' spirits out of Arago's body and into his own. But what's this? A new armor appears! It's all shiny & white & powerful and Ryou's wearing it to channel all five armors at once, soundly defeating Arago! The season ends without telling us how the heck that happened, or what happened to the Warlords, or anything else vaguely important. Good thing they made a second season!
Apparently defeating evil takes a lot out of you, because Season Two opens with Ryou laying in bed exhausted and the other guys basically taking it easy at Nasté's country home, waiting for Ryou to wake up. It's been a week or two, but still summer break for the guys -- kudos to them for time well spent. The boys aren't totally immune to intelligence it seems, because when Ryou asks why Shuu and Shin are training outside, the two explain that it's because they don't think the whole Netherworld went down just because Arago died. P.S. This "training" involves Shin doing some gymnastics and acrobatics on par with Trowa from Gundam Wing, and Shuu is apparently strong enough even without his sub-armor on to hold Shin above his head one-handed. They've become good friends while Ryou was asleep. The next few episodes involve "random" villains, but eventually the boys find out that these goons are actually all vying to take Arago's place.
The only really notable guy among them is Lord Saberstryke, who gets ~*~two~*~ whole episodes to himself. After fighting not just Arago but now these new guys as well, Ryou breaks the two katanas he normally fights with in his first fight against Saberstryke. Ryou gets more than a little depressed during this time while Nasté and the guys try to puzzle out what the White Armor is and how to get new swords for Ryou. Mr. Default Leader goes straight from having all the cool powers to being dead-weight and he really doesn't like it. Saberstryke's own pet tiger Kokuen-oh trashes Nasté's house during this time; Kokuen-oh looks exactly like Byakuen except with grey fur and this really nifty white armor that includes two holsters for Lord Saberstryke's swords. Byakuen fights the other tiger off, but not before Ryou emos a bit more about how he's endangering everyone and can't even fight back. This is when we find out Byakuen is a little smarter than your average tiger. Byakuen goes out one day to confront Kokuen-oh tiger-to-tiger, and comes away with one of Lord Saberstryke's swords. This battle comes at the cost of Byakuen's life, and Ryou is pissed. When Ryou arrives to fight Saberstryke again in the White Armor of Inferno (Kikoutei), they each fight with one of the two swords - which is really not a good idea considering the swords are meant to fight together not against each other. The swords are the supposed to be tied to the Kikoutei armor, but Saberstryke got there first. They fight, and Ryou ends up in his sub-armor with both swords. Saberstryke collapses, dying, and tells Kokuen-oh that Ryou is his master now. It had been raining when Byakuen died, but then cleared up when Kokuen-oh proved he understood Saberstryke's words - by reviving Byakuen. Henceforth, whenever Ryou transformed into the Kikoutei armor, Byakuen would transform into Kokuen-oh's visage complete with the Soul Swords on his back. Ryou's pet tiger gets called "Byakuen-oh" from then on out.
The other Troopers are happy that Ryou got this cool new armor, but decide they need to go make sense of some dreams Kaosu's been sending them to get stronger. No sooner do Seiji, Shuu, and Shin get their new powers awakened than they get captured by each of their rival Warlords (yes, they survived the end of Season One) and taken to the Nether World on orders from Arago (yep, him too) to drain the energy out of them. Shin's capture was a pretty cruel way to do it too - Naaza made a Torrent-look-alike out of his Poison powers and sent the clone out to fight Shin. The problem was that as powerful as Shin became in the water, so too did the poison-clone. This prompted a lesson from Kaosu about how the Suiko armor works and if Shin wants to tap into the powered-up version of his Cho Ryu Ha Surekill attack, then he'd have to pay closer attention to how his element worked with his virtue. Kaosu told Shin he'd have to "give up the desire to win" and "see the flow in nature," i.e. don't fight the current, use it to propel you forward, the same way that fish swim. Shin eventually beat the clone, but when the clone was defeated his armor pieces dispersed in an explosion of poison. To stop the poison from infecting the marine life in the area, Shin used another Cho Ryu Ha to redirect the poison into his own armor hoping to purify it. Unfortunately, the poison proved to be too much, and he collapsed. That made him easy pickings for Naaza to drag home by the feet on his back (no, I am not making that image up).
Most of the rest of Season Two is pretty boring for Shin, because he's tied up in Arago's basement with Seiji and Shuu. The only reason Shin's around for the final battle is because Shuten sacrifices himself to make Lady Kayura wake up out of a trance that Arago's Head Priest Badamon put her under. Lady Kayura is the season's new villainess who'd been tormenting Ryou & Touma without the others around. Shuten stepped up as the new "Ancient"-type disciple in order to help Ryou & Touma get the other three Troopers back. Really, it's not confusing at all, especially to Shin who just woke up to discover all of that. As Kayura snaps out of it, she inherits Shuten's armor, and everyone else gets broken out of their little towers that Arago had locked them in. So now the Warlords are mad that Arago used them and decide they won't fight with the Troopers, but they are prepared to help kick Arago's butt. It all works out in the end because with everyone beating up Arago there's only one thing left for Mr. Big Bad to do: go down to Shinjuku again and try to make the world go crazy so he can suck on the energy from their negative emotions, thereby becoming powerful enough to defeat all nine armor-bearers. Ryou gets to transform into the Kikoutei armor again, but instead of beating Arago in a battle, he 'sends' the armor to Arago and makes him "accept my Virtue of Humanity." Basically, it looks like Ryou's white armor keeps superimposing itself on top of Arago's black armor and red face-mask. Meanwhile, Ryou's telling his friends to kill Arago now that Ryou has him immobilized - because this totally isn't reminiscent of the end of the first season. The four boys end up cry-screaming and using all of their power to destroy Arago's armor, since that worked so well for them back in the first season. Who says boys aren't emotional? Just when Jun's freaking out, thinking Ryou's dead, the little charm that Shuten gave Jun activates. That little trinket - the Jewel of Life, a magatama bead on a necklace - is powerful enough to revive Ryou out of Arago. The TV series ends with the former-bad-guys (Kayura and the three Warlords) going back to change the Netherworld to good, and the five Troopers plus Nasté, Jun, & Byakuen-oh playing baseball with the freaking Jewel of Life that just saved Ryou.
Except there's 3 movies that come after this, only two of which I'm covering due to Shin's pull point. In Gaiden, Seiji gets kidnapped and experimented on by a scientist in California with the help of some ancient being that came from the Nether World. They figure out something's up when Seiji doesn't show up to Ryou's birthday party. The other Troopers track him first to New York, where his empty Kourin armor was causing problems. Then the boys go to California to try to find/save Seiji, with a red-shirt girl named Luna tagging along and eventually dying. All of this traveling was financed by Shuu winning the lottery. As the Nether Being - named Shikaisen - is defeated, his visage changes to that of Arago, but then he fades away again. I'm pretty sure Drama CDs involving the Warlords settle that problem once and for all. It's in this movie we also get to meet Shuu's lulz-tastic Uncle Chin in Little China, New York and Shin shows off his late-80s/early-90s lack-of-fashion-sense.
Somewhere in here there's another Drama CD called Suikoden in which Shin has to go home for a little while when his mom got sick again and Shuu tags along because they're BFFs. Shin meets his sister's fiancé, they get on each other's nerves because Shin thinks the guy (Shizuka Ryuusuke) is forcing his sister to give up her dreams. So Shin eventually challenges Ryuusuke to a diving contest (without the help of his armor), since Ryuusuke's trying to marry into the family and all. An oil tanker spilling over the Hagi Sea interrupts this contest, so Shin goes back looking for his armor orb, because he put it back at the bottom of Hagi Sea so he wouldn't be tempted to use it during the diving contest. Ryuusuke follows him for whatever reason, sees an orca whale coming at Shin, and throws himself between Shin and the whale. This changes how Shin thinks about Ryuusuke and they ride Suiki to the surface so Shin can take care of the oil spill. Ryuusuke then decides to marry into the family, so Shin doesn't have to worry as much while he's off at school and can become a marine biologist like he always wanted. YAY! Shin's actually been staying in an apartment in Tokyo this whole time all by himself. This little adventure ends with Seiji having to come pick them up because Shuu used up all of their money on food, so they don't have enough money for the gas to get back to Tokyo.
Then there's the second movie. It's summer break of the following year and Shin and Shuu are out surfing when a massive heat-wave breaks out. Apparently a guy named Mukala from Africa (dark skin, white hair, blue eyes) managed to find himself a Black Inferno armor (Kuroi Kikoutei). He runs around as if in sub-armor all the time despite wearing nothing but a skirt and a headband, plus wielding this giant black boomerang. He brings with him hallucinations of the African savanna and all of its creatures, fights with the Troopers, and tears up Shinjuku for awhile. Ryou, Touma, and Seiji got to deal with all that by themselves at first, because Shin and Shuu are late to the party. They sprint there in sub-armor, but when they get there Shin has a vision that hearkens back to what the boys learned in Season One - that their armors have the potential to be very destructive. Mukala wanted to fight against Kikoutei, but without Shin giving over his armor to help Ryou form it, that didn't happen, so Mukala just kidnaps Ryou to Africa. As they're floating away to some kind of teleportation wormhole, Seiji grabs onto Ryou, and ends up getting kidnapped as well. As soon as Mukala's gone, the hallucinations disappear and damage to the city district is magically restored.
Naturally none of this goes over very well back at Nasté's house. Shin actually gets into a verbal fight with Touma, who tries to calm him down, and Shin punches him in return, telling him to shut up! Shuu gets in on this too and the boys tussle to the floor. Turns out Shuu let Shin beat him up because Shuu knew how upset Shin was and needed to let things out, but Shuu figured he was tougher and could take it better than Touma. So Shin goes running out to the lake crying because he's so confused and actually chucks his armor into the lake, vowing not to fight with it again. He goes to sulk by the lake for awhile until Byakuen comes to nudge him back to the little pier where Shin cast away his armor. He decides to confront the nature of his armor with his own resolve, and Water-Portals out to Africa to help his buddies. The other four guys are beaten up physically and wracked emotionally, but Shin manages to help them rest by soothing their souls with Heal the Spirit. When the guys wake the next morning, Shin gets a little smug/proud, but then Byakuen does something weird by roaring. It feels like a big tug, which is when Shin will get taken to Vatheon! Woo!
[ Personality ] :
Shin was born in the city of Hagi, Yamaguchi prefecture, Japan on March 14th 1973 (White Day), and is thus 15 years old for most of the YST/RW series, 17 during the first OAV, and 18 at the time he is being pulled from in the second OAV. He's a Pisces, an Ox, Blood Type A, and since this is an old show all of that lines up to make the guy with the water element that is patient and sensible and mature... most of the time. His hobbies include basketball, swimming, tea ceremony, cooking, flower arrangement, and English Conversation. He's also extremely familiar with pottery thanks to his family's business. He loves marine life, having grown up right next to the Sea of Japan, but he will eat fish... if the head's cut off first. This also explains why he gets a Captain Planet-style ending to his first key episode where he's all upset about Naaza killing innocent fish, and Shin claims that as one of his key reasons for fighting Arago. Shin's kind of a hippie like that.
For most of the first season of the TV series, Shin went along with the whole Save The World thing mainly out of blind youth naivete but also because it was a lot easier than dealing with family politics back home, or so he first thought. His mother and older sister couldn't exactly tell him not to go to Shinjuku (where the Troopers were being 'called' to by Arago) since it was about The Armors and he'd pretty much been hearing about this whole destiny thing for a few months straight by that point (see background). By the end of the first season, he'd become close enough friends with the other four Troopers that he was also willing to fight just so he didn't let them down. He wasn't much of a strategist, but he was definitely the peacemaker between Shuu and Ryou (charge in headfirst mentality) versus Seiji and Touma (plan ahead mentality). By the middle of the second season, Shin was starting to get weary of fighting, but then Arago sent Naaza to kidnap him. Shin spent a good while in the Netherworld's pleasant basement accommodations, getting drained of his power alongside Shuu and Seiji. So when it came time for the final battle at the end of the TV series, Shin had a bit more of a personal reason to defeat Arago, and because Arago had always been viewed as this inherently evil demon. Even in the first OAV (Gaiden), Shin doesn't mind tagging along with Ryou and Shuu to New York when Seiji's in trouble; he was mainly concerned that Ryou and Shuu might do more good than harm unless they had someone else along to balance out their headstrong personalities.
All through the TV series and Gaiden, a young woman named Nasté and a boy named Jun had been tagging along. They got hurt, tossed around, taken hostage, put in mortal peril, and all sorts of other things that happen to normal people when they hang around heroes, but they never actually died. Byakuen did and was brought back immediately, but he was Ryou's pet tiger and Shin only saw Byakuen's revival, not the death. However, in Gaiden a woman named Luna died - mainly through her own choice of actions, but the impact was felt throughout the team. Shin hadn't known her that well or cared about her much, but as he's the most empathetic of the group, he could tell how much it impacted Ryou, and Touma to a lesser extent.
Thus why Shin was perfectly content to return to Japan with his friends and just put the armors behind them, but more importantly this was why the events of Kikoutei affected Shin so deeply. After a year of not thinking about the armors at all, it's no wonder that Mukala's appearance awakened Shin's pacifistic streak. Their opponent was no longer demonic shadows, but a human being, same as when they'd first found out about the Warlords. Through the initial events in Kikoutei, Shin develops a deep resistance to using the armors at all and becomes the kind of person that wishes war away, but doesn't want anyone to experience the pain it takes to get there. It's such a new personality development for the young man that he gets extremely emotional when forced to pit these ideals against a desire to help his friends. He can't figure out a way to reconcile the two desires at first. He gets angry that no one agrees with him, then lashes out, and then gets angry at himself for resorting to violence. He's the oldest member of the five Troopers and tries to be the most mature, but in the end he just has to go out and think for awhile about what to do.
At first he rejects his armor entirely. However, the events leading up to when I'm pulling him showcase the deep-running resolve that Shin has. He's able to refuse both of what the others saw as only two choices (fight and help, or stay out of it and keep his ideals), and instead pick Option C -- take his armor and use it in a non-violent way while still helping his friends. Shin's virtue is Trust/Faith, so he had to believe that he could shape the way his armor was used, instead of his armor's spirit dictating how he acted. At the point I'm pulling Shin from, friendship is back at the top of his priority list, but he's also a little proud/smug/happy because he was able to show his friends that his armor was useful for more than fighting. There was a point in the second season where he unlocked his improved Surekill move by learning to not fight the current, but rather use its strength to propel him forward, and that sentiment finally came back to the forefront. This new resolve to be less antagonistic and more understanding of human nature is tempered and strengthened through the end of the Kikoutei OAV and throughout the 3rd OAV Message, so it's a character arc that's sure to continue within the game.
I know I sort of summed up his series history again, but I feel that the fandom is a little rash to blindly label Shin as "the pacifist" when he clearly didn't have any problems fighting - at first. There's a big difference between being the peacekeeper / man-in-the-middle among a group of friends and outright refusing to use a weapon of destruction, i.e. the armors. He grew up over the course of the series, and that aspect of his personality shifted a little with it.
Some things about him weren't affected, certainly. Growing up without a father and as the one expected to run the family business when he was of age, Shin was trained in many cultural practices his family thought would be beneficial to him in the future, but there were many things he picked up being the only man in the house as well. He is a notoriously good cook and this came from years of preparing meals while his sister and mother worked, same with knowing the ins and outs of cleaning a house, doing laundry, etc. On the traditional Japanese side, he was taught the art of the tea ceremony and flower arrangement. Sensing the incoming Westernization, his family made sure to have him study abroad in Britain and Ireland during summer breaks to learn English conversation, which Shin now enjoys, but he developed a British accent to his English speech as a result.
One area he hasn't explored at all is romance - it simply hasn't come up for him. The last time he was in a place to think about that sort of thing, he was only 15, and most recently there was the whole incident with his sister's fiancé. Only now is the social pressure to have a family and continue his lineage (not to mention the business) lessening, which is why he was about to start college in a few months. This means he could actually consider dating, if he can be convinced that Vatheon isn't just the world inside of his armor and the game is just a test for his spirit. He won't know what he's expected to accomplish, but that'll be his first theory. So long as he believes that, romance still won't be a major component of his daily life.
At the end of the day, Shin is still an 18 year old boy. He likes teasing his friends, especially if they make a minor mistake that he can poke fun at. He'll drink in social situations and even get a little rowdy if he has a friend he's comfortable palling around with. He likes entertaining groups as much as one-on-one activities, and is patient with anyone who wants to learn skills that he possesses - so long as they're genuinely trying. He gets along equally well with men and women; generally, he prefers to have conversations with people at least as mature as he is. However, he is more than willing to be the clear-headed conscience to someone with a good heart but less maturity / a more action-first mentality. His best friend (Shuu/Kento) is one such person, after all. He tries to be the easy-going one who can understand people's faults, accept them, and lightly chide the person into better behavior instead of being angry or condescending towards them.
[ Strengths/Weaknesses ] :
On the physical side, Shin is very lithe and flexible. He can perform impressive gymnastic feats even out of his sub-armor, though he doesn't have nearly as much raw strength behind him. Due to the nature of his weapon being mainly staff-like, his upper arms and wrists have the most endurance and dexterity. However, his element of choice is hardly the most damaging, and he can't manipulate ice or mist or anything akin to water. Just water itself. Shin is built to last the longest in a combat assuming he can prevent his opponent from doing damage to him - Shuu would be the one who can last the longest while actually getting pummeled. So basically he tries to fight a battle of attrition.
Despite his stereotype, Shin is actually not that good at suppressing or controlling his emotions to the point of an eternally cool demeanor; he's largely a demonstrative personality. When he feels calm and relaxed, he reacts calmly, but if he feels a very intense emotion like sadness or anger, he does have the capacity to lash out. With him, it's usually a last resort and he'll feel bad about it later, then try to make reparations. He can plan ahead just fine, but he'll usually choose the path of least resistance if he can help it - meaning the path that causes the least amount of pain to himself and others. This may result in him not acting as quickly as the situation merits, or his plan taking a bit longer than other plans, and in turn the process creating a consequence he isn't happy about.
This is not the techno-savvy member of the group. He's getting pulled from mid-year 1991, when clunky desktop computers were still largely used by programmers and academics, not the public at large. Data was stored on large floppy disks from 8 inches wide to 3.5 inches wide. Mobile phones were heard of, but expensive and still not all wireless. There's no indication Shin was much of a gamer or grease monkey either, though he owns a scooter. So while he won't be in the same camp as a character plucked from the 1800s and asked to fathom modern amenities, things like the Starfish Communicator will strike Shin as 'advanced' technology.
Shin is very good at gauging how people will respond to certain situations, even if he's only seen their personality in action for a few minutes, and react empathetically if the situation warrants it. More than any of the others, Shin wants to believe in the inherent goodness of human beings - most often this means the ability to talk problems out instead of fighting. This is why he gets the label of 'peacekeeper' or 'middle man' in a group of people. With marine life, his empathy is through magical means as the Suiko armor's bearer, but with people it's completely mundane and simply his intuitive nature. If a friend is in trouble, and especially if they ask for a favor directly, he won't hesitate to help them, even if it inconveniences himself. He places a deep trust in the bonds of friendship, and believes that if he were in a similar pickle, his friends would come to his aid as well. It makes him look like a passive personality, but it's more that he just knows how to pick his battles. He will put his foot down if he feels that strongly about something - the second movie, his pull point, is all about him putting his foot down - but if it's just what show he'll watch with a group at dinner, that really isn't worth fighting over.
Lastly, his biggest strength when making new friends is that he actually has hobbies! *gasp* So he's good at trying out new hobbies that potential friends enjoy, as well as showcasing his own, and they are quite varied: a craft (pottery), fine arts (flower-arrangement and tea ceremony), practical skills (cooking and fishing), linguistic (English/Japanese), and of course athletic (basketball, swimming, surfing, and gymnastics).
[ Other Important Facts - Abilities Section] :
As I said on my Repliku app, I'd like to stress that none of these Abilities are surefire, always-work deals. Some of them are more powerful, but they can always be parried, dodged, repelled, etc. It's my personal play style, but it's also because the Troopers are at their strongest when they work as a team. Shin's pretty good on his own, but he prefers a watch-your-back/tag-team style of fighting. He could theoretically develop a whole new style if he makes a new friend he trusts, and adapt to their techniques. The point is that, on his own, he can only take out goon-level opponents with ease. I love me some fight scenes, but it's no fun to knock an opponent out in one hit. Okay sometimes that's fun if there's a clear power difference and it's explicitly for comedic effect - including my character being on the receiving end of it! However, in most serious combat scenes, I like a clear back-and-forth struggle. I enjoy trying to outwit the other player in creative attack prose, but only if the player is as experienced with combat scenes as I am and we've not agreed to a clear-cut winner at the start. I'm also perfectly happy to discuss with another player some options for beating Shin that their character may think of, but the player may not realize. This again goes back to Shin - he is not the strongest of the Troopers, nor does he have the most damage output. He's actually the best at siege warfare-style combat, stopping his opponent from doing damage and just wearing them down. That being said, here's his abilities.
Static Skills as the Suiko/Torrent Armor Bearer
♓Speak with Marine Life: Shin can communicate empathically with all forms of marine life, fish and mammals alike.
♓Advanced Swimmer: Shin can hold his breath much longer than normal humans, withstand more pressure when diving deep, and swim faster.
♓Aqua-kinesis: Most often, Shin does this to enhance his fighting techniques. He can't make water do absurd things like form a square and he can't summon it out of thin air, but he can affect the path of the water and kind of nudge it a little to a different direction. Anything more than that requires the use of his Surekill move to really send the water anywhere with a force behind it.
♓Environmental Enhancement: As with all of the armors, Shin's power is enhanced when he's in his element. Obviously, that would be water. This only means full submersion, not just being nearby it. It only makes him a little stronger and faster, but mostly it amplifies his Surekill and Bubble Shield powers.
Orb Powers: These Shin can only use if he has ahold of his cyan armor orb with the kanji for Trust/Faith in it.
⚓Heal the spirit: As with all of the armor-bearers, friendship is his greatest bond. This is one of the Suiko armor's special abilities (the Water Portals being the other of note), and the other Armor Bearers have similarly unique abilities, which is why this ability works on more than just other Armor Bearers. Still, this ability only works on dear friends who have fallen ill with an affliction of the spirit, not the body. This is a calming, soothing, revitalizing effect on a tortured soul like an onsen! that utilizes the Resonance bond more effectively. This does nothing to the dead. Shin must focus on his virtue of Trust/Faith while holding onto his Armor Orb and be within close proximity of the friend (basically within the same room). When he concentrates, his virtue's kanji appears in bright blue light on his forehead. Shin can do this even without his sub-armor or full armor on.
⚓Water Portals: In desperate situations, while holding onto his Armor Orb and focusing intently on his virtue of Trust/Faith, Shin can travel from one body of water to another. Normally this would include great distances like across oceans, but in this game we'll say he's limited to about the distance from one side of Vatheon to another, and only if the body of water is big enough to submerge himself in.
⚓Sub-Armor Transformation: When Shin holds his Armor Orb in one of his fists and concentrates, he can transform into his "Armor Gear" (borrowed English in the Japanese version), colloquialized in English as "sub-armor." This is a fairly thin protective body suit color-coded to his shade of pale blue/cyan in various areas and white in the rest, like those of his fellow Troopers. In this armor, his principle abilities include: running very fast, jumping higher than normal (which is a lot for him), punching armor without hurting himself, and being able to protect against blows from mundane (non-magical) weaponry. This sub-armor does not include a head-piece.
Armor Powers: All of these abilities require Shin to be in his Sub-Armor at bare minimum.
☯Yoroi (Full Armor) Transformation: Shin must already be in his sub-armor to perform this transformation. It requires both a call ("Busso*! Suiko!") and fancy arm motions. [*Arm, as in "take up arms!] Then lovely bolts of silk appear out of nowhere, burst into sakura blossoms, and then Shin is in his full suit of armor -- posing with some lights shining down on him. Only in this full armor can he use his Surekill move and Bubble Shield, both described below. He can't run very fast, as in his sub-armor, or jump especially high, but all of his normal dexterity applies. This armor comes with his signature Yari, or staff with a pincer end that Shin can open and close. His armor's helmet allows him to breathe freely underwater when the orange visor is down.
☯Surekill move -- Cho Ryu Ha / Ultra Wave Crusher: Shin can perform this attack in one of two ways, and only if he is in his Yoroi (full armor). The first is simply pointing the pincers of his yari in the direction he wants to attack, holding the staff with both hands. For a few moments, water collects between the pincers. He then shouts CHO RYU HA and pushes the staff forward, opening up the pincers further and sending a blast of water at the enemy in the shape of a horizontal-axis column. The second version is essentially a powered-up variant called Cho Dan Do Cho Ryu Ha (Ultra Ballistic Ultra Wave Crusher) which includes a mini-typhoon swirling around Shin if he's under water and allows him to purify poisoned water by re-routing the wave directly into himself.
☯Yoroi Resonance: How an armor-bearer knows this is working is by the sound of rings clanging on a staff in their mind. The visible effect -- which is easier to see in one form than another -- involves a pulsating white light. Unarmored, this happens to the Armor Orbs. In Sub-Armor, the colored parts of the armor glow. In full Yoroi, the whole armor and weapon pulses with light. There are a few reasons why this Resonance takes place, but it all goes back to the bond between those with the armors.
1) Searching for a fellow - this can happen with only one other armor-bearer looking for another, but the proximity is severely limited. A hundred feet at best. The armor-bearer being searched for doesn't have to be conscious or actively searching for his fellows.
2) Calling for help - slightly different from Searching, this is when one armor-bearer calls out to all other allied armor-bearers. In this case it's their Virtues pulsing with light on their foreheads. This can happen across great distances. It's the biggest instance of not being limited to the Troopers themselves, but also the Warlords when they begin to break away from Arago.
3) Our Spirits Are One - this can happen if at least five armor-bearers are focused on the same goal, i.e. defeating a very powerful enemy. This also works with any number of Warlords and Troopers as part of the required "five." In addition to being a requirement for other abilities (all Ryou's), it also enhances each armor-bearers power while they're all Resonating.
☯Bubble Shield: This appears in one of two scenarios, and only if Shin is in his Yoroi (full armor). If he is about to suffer a mortal wound, the bubble appears and he goes unconscious. It takes another Trooper to wake him up. For the sake of the game, we'll assume that if no Trooper is around, then he dies within a day. The other situation is far less likely, as it involves all five Troopers and Ryou activating the super-armor Kikoutei consciously or unconsciously. In that situation, the Bubble Shield is part of the Resonance effect and then Shin disappears inside of it completely during Ryou's transformation sequence -- i.e. it protects Shin and the other Troopers from being attacked while Ryou is powering up.
☯Shield Barrier: If all five Troopers use their Bubble Shields at the same time, they can create a Shield Barrier. This is both an offensive and defensive maneuver; it protects the five men from damage, but also sends out energy bolts all around them that can destroy minion-level creatures like the Netherworld Foot Soldiers. Against stronger enemies, it probably only deflects some damage for a short period and the energy bolts only do minor damage.
[ Sample ] :
It all happened so fast it nearly made Shin's head spin. One minute Byakuen was roaring and his sub-armor was pulsing, and the next instant there was a tugging sensation on his lower back. He blinked, and was standing in the fountain of a city square, completely drenched. The drenched part didn't bother him that much - but he was starting to wonder if he'd just dreamt the past few hours. Had he really gone to Africa and helped his friends, or had he gone straight here - wherever 'here' was, anyway - from the lake near Nasté's mansion?
His right hand immediately fished into his pocket seeking his armor orb - if he was in his normal clothing, his armor orb should've been on his person. He found the orb there, but he also found another trinket there that was definitely not his. It was star-shaped, but included the kind of technology that he thought would make Touma and Nasté jealous. It could be one of those new phones I've been hearing about - and someone may have misplaced it. Directly into his pocket, perhaps not, but he could barely remember how he even got there in the first place, so it wasn't a completely crazy notion to him.
"Excuse me-" "Hello, I'm new to this area and-"
No matter who he spoke to, they insisted that the star-shaped object must be his. It was as he sat down to think on his situation that he noticed a tiny burrowing sensation at the back of his neck. Shin jumped up abruptly, fearing an attack, and grabbed for whatever was back there. His hand completely closed around something there, startling him yet again. As he pulled his hand back around front of him, he realized it was a tiny person.
"A faerie?!" He gasped and let go immediately. He'd heard of those before from his English Conversation Partners. "I'm sorry - did you get lost in my hair?" He tugged on a bang. "They've been telling me to get it cut for awhile now…" He chuckled a little, then remembered 'they' weren't here with him. Something had happened and he'd become separated from his friends yet again. For all he knew, this was a dream - a challenge from the Suiko armor and Kaosu the Ancient One. It made sense to him, being so surrounded by water as this place was. "Hey, Ms. Faerie-" or so he guessed by the look of the being, "I'm looking for my friends. Can you help me find them?"
In response, the faerie flew down to his left pocket and tapped it once before resuming her hover by his right shoulder. That pocket was where he'd put the star-device, so it didn't clink against his armor orb. Reluctantly, Shin pulled it out again and stared at it for a moment before nodding to the faerie. "Got it. Thanks, Ms. Faerie."
[ Questions? Comments? Concerns? ] :