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In Character Information
Name: Ryoga Hibiki
Age: 17
Birthday: 04-15 1977
Series: Ranma 1/2 Animeverse with just a little Manga to round out the missing details in his backstory
Appearance:
Ryoga has dark grey hair, bordering on black and eyes that are very dark grey-brown. He stands at about 5'7" (175 cm) and despite his strength, doesn't look overmuscled. He actually looks relatively plain - A Japanese teenager much like any other, at least from his homeworld. He's often unkempt and messy from long periods in the wilderness though, and when he talks, you can see that he has slightly prominent canine teeth. (His name translates roughly to Good Fang.)
He's always carrying a very large backpack with an umbrella fastened to the top of it. Even indoors, sometimes.
Personality:
usual moods
Ryoga is, unfortunately, a somewhat depressed individual. Judge him all you like, but as they say - walk a mile in a mans shoes before you speak ill of him. Because of various events to be discussed in the backstory section, he's generally morose and frustrated. The best way to describe Ryoga is an Eternal Lost Boy. He has a lot of trouble figuring out where he is at any given time -- he can get lost in a small house for hours at a time and that's an incredibly aggrivating thing to deal with when you have stuff you need to do.
Often he finds himself very isolated and lonely. He doesn't really chose to be by himself all the time, it just kind of happens. However, pay him some attention or spare him a kind word and he perks right up. Generally, when around other people, he's polite, helpful and a little quiet.
interaction with others
Ryoga DOES like other people. He's often described family type situations as 'bliss' and while he sometimes gets on the wrong side of people when he's upset, he really means no harm to anyone barring a select few. He's especially courteous and eager to please when interacting with women, and is the first to step up to defend their honor should some big fat headed jerk *coughRanmacough* start shooting his mouth off. He's a little more hit and miss with the guys - he's somewhat easy to anger and if your goal happens to interfere with his, then you're probably going to have to fight for it.
interactions with friends
Ryoga is a true friend. He's been lonely so much of his life that anyone who shows him kindness instantly finds themselves on his good side, for better or for worse. He'll fight for you like you wouldn't believe.
His one true love is Miss Akane Tendo - the first girl to ever show him any real kindness. From that day on he's been in love with her to the point where his single-minded devotion is all at once sweet, amusing and entirely pathetic. However, any girl who shows him kindness generally becomes the victim of a quick bout of infatuation - even Ranma in his female form has tricked him like this once or twice. (That pervert!)
In general, if you can put up with someone who's kind of self pitying, quick to fly off the handle over generally silly things, and who's always off somewhere else simply because he can't find you? Ryoga is definitely the kind of friend you want to make because he'll be there for you through thick and thin.
Backstory:
((Baaaasicly? Ranma 1/2 has seven seasons and most of it is pretty inconsequential in terms of character development. So, I'm gonna pick out the important stuff for the specifics,
Ryoga grew up on a largeish estate in the woods in the shadow of Mt Fuji. The many rooms of his house were often empty becaue his family all have the same directional disfunction he does, so are usually all wandering around in different areas of the house, yard, forest, countryside, country etc. So even among his own family home, he was often lonely.
He had a relatively standard childhood apart from that, attending school as an average student without either exceptional nor dismal grades in anything bar Geography, which he failed as regularly as clockwork. Upon reaching Middle School - a much larger campus than he was used to - he found himself late for lunch every single day.
School lunches are far from perfect, no matter where you go. But when a kid is hungry, they'll eat most anything. And every day he'd arrive to late to have any of it - however. There was usually a single piece of bread left which he'd run for with all his might. Along with all the other boys who had missed out.
Oh woe is he, however. Another student in the same grade, Ranma Saotome, thought it would be a fun game to play to try and beat this other poor boy to the bread, not really realising that, holy crap, this is distressing! He's had nothing to eat since breakfast, and now here's this other kid who's already had lunch, punking him out of the very last piece of dry, tasteless bread!? What the hell, man! And thus began a rivalry for the ages.
Every day they would fight over the bread. Ryoga had a strange capacity for sheer physical strength, despite being hungry he would get a little stronger every day. Ranma, however, had been trained in the martial arts for as long as he could remember and so it was his skill that let him win each and every battle. To Ranma, it was just a silly game. To Ryoga? Oh.. it was so, so much more.
Finally, it came to a head. Ryoga challenged Ranma to a formal duel and would be sure to defeat him once and for all!
Ranma obliged and they picked a spot to battle - a vacant lot just behind Ryoga's house.
Ranma showed up on the date and at the time arranged.
And stood there for three whole days. And nights. And most of a morning.
Ryoga, meanwhile, ran down to France (Yes. It's canon.) with stops at Osaka, Hiroshima and Yokohama, and back, only to arrive literal hours after Ranma had left, thinking he'd been stood up. He just.. couldn't find the field. So went looking for it. And couldn't find it for three whole days.
Fast forward about five years. The little town of Furinkan in the Nerima district of Tokyo. Ranma Saotome has just moved here and discovered that he is engaged to tomboyish and positively un-cute Akane Tendo. Their Fathers decided this must happen to forever perpetuate the Anything Goes school of Martial Arts, as instructed by their Master, Happosai. Neither one of them is thrilled with the idea, but because Ranma is new, Akane walks with him and shows him around most mornings. Even though they bicker pretty much constantly.
Suddenly! Seeming to dive from the sky, a dark shape nearly strikes Ranma down where he's walking! "RANMA SAOTOME! PREPARE TO DIIIIEEEE!" Only quick reflexes saved Ranma from becoming skewered on the end of an umbrella. The strike leaves a large crater in the concrete.
Ryoga announces himself to a dumbfounded Ranma.
Who barely even remembers who Ryoga is. Because their whole.. bread.. thing is a pretty much insignifigant footnote at the end of one of the more boring chapters of Ranma's life. But in fact, once he remembers? He's genuinely happy to see Ryoga! "Hey man! Long time no see!"
This is almost too much for Ryoga to bear and a fight breaks out, with Akane as a witness to Ryoga and Ramna recounting the whole tragic tale, blow for blow while trading blows. Her sympathies obviously fall on Ryoga. The strange thing being - so do Ranma's! Once he realises that he's upset this other youth so much, he does his best to make it right, running to fetch many and varied types of bread to appease the savage beast.
Alas, to no avail. This has gone beyond bread, dear Ranma. This is a duel of honor between men. "Thanks to you, Ranma Saotome, I've seen HELL!"
If you're thinking that this sounds a bit extreme in relation to stolen lunches, you'd be completely right. There's a lot more to it than that.
Chasing Ranma around Japan, trying to finally duel him was no easy task - But once he found out that Ranma was on a training mission in China? It became all new levels of hard. China is a much bigger place than Japan. More surface area to wander around on. But strangely, and tragically enough, Ryoga DID find Ranma at a very specfific place called the Jusenkyo springs. These springs are cursed, each and every pool playing a starring role in a Very Tragic Story (Very tragic stories are registed trademarks of Jusenkyo Guide and all characters, icons and indicia are used with written permission.) There are three particular springs that play a key role here - Spring of drowned girl, spring of drowned panda and spring of drowned black piglet.
Ranma and his father Genma both fell afoul of cursed springs, Girl and Panda respectively. However, this was a training mission and they were going to train! Leaping around and fighting on the bamboo poles sticking up from the ground, thirty, forty, fifty feet.
This was the place, alright. Ryoga arrived, looking over the springs with thier poles, and waited. Waited for that coward Saotome to arrive so they could finish their match. And his vengeance would be glorious!
...however, the panda that seemed to spring from nowhere seemed to halt his thought processes pretty quickly. Not as quickly as the foot that soon followed - the foot of a red headed girl that sent him plunging from the clifftop, down into the springs below.
And thus began Ryoga's true misery.
When splashed with cold water, Ryoga would become a tiny black piglet. The rain, a bucket, a lawn sprinkler, even backsplash from stepping into a puddle. It really doesn't take much at all to kick the curse into effect, and as a tiny, defenseless black pig? The world takes on an entirely new level of terror. Half the wildlife and people you meet want to eat you, the other half are crazy old people that want to keep you as a pet.
Upon meeting Ryoga's pig form, Akane fell in love with it. Having no idea that it was actually Ranma's rival, she adopted the pitiful little creature, giving it the name P-Chan. She treated P-Chan with kindness and care, looking after him, even if Ranma knew who it really was, and acted far less kindly.
Upon recieving a kiss on the snout from Akane... well. Ryoga was smitten. Surely, Akane Tendo was the sweetest, kindest, prettiest girl in all of Japan. Nay, the world! It was true love. And... if he had to remain a little black piglet just to be close to her and recieve her affections, he'd do it. Much ro Ranma's displeasure.
From that point on, Ryoga was a man divided. Half the time he spent as the little P-Chan, the other half he spent as a man, fighting Ranma over some injustice or another. (Whether percieved or real, it didn't much matter.) Trying to win Akane's heart as the man he truly was instead of just as her pet... but really taking attention from her however she gave it. Dealing with the crazy people Ranma seemed to attract, from the beautiful and extrmely violent Chinese Amazon, Shampoo, to the Egotistical and ridiculous Tattewake Kuno. Later on, he'd form uneasy alliances with each of them, as well as another Chinese Immigrant by the name of Mousse - master of concealed projectiles.
His training really stepped up a notch upon meeting Shampoo's Grandmother. (Many greats precede the title so let's just keep it simple.) Cologne trained him in a powerful technique on Mt Terror to try and give him an edge over Ranma. If he could win Akane's heart, Ranma would be free to marry Shampoo, after all. The technique was called The Breaking Point, or Bakkusai Tenketsu - A powerful ability that one can only master with thier eyes closed. Feeling out the weak spot in any object, and then attacking it with but a finger to shatter it into smithereens. The teachnique's training also required repeated blunt force trauma to the individual and so Ryoga's body became resistant to impact.
However, even this wasn't enough and Ranma bested him again, using techniques above and beyond this and applying them inventively.
And that seemed to be Ryoga's problem. Each and every time. Bested by skill and innovation - it never came down to raw strength. It was always trickery or strategy or some combination of both that saw Ryoga lose out. It was enough to really depress a guy.
It continued this way for several years in a neverending whirlwind of events that saw him either blissfully happy cradled in Akane's arms but unable to do more than squeak and squeal, in heated combat with Ranma or one of Ranma's many rivals, lost somewhere completely out of the way and with no clue how to get back, or on some adventure with the people he really did come to see as friends eventually. For all the bad blood between them, a respect was surely, steadily growing between Ranma and himself. They were rivals... fierce ones. But eventually, they became friends, even if neither would say so out loud. And despite the property damage, the Tendo family dojo tended to treat Ryoga as a guest and almost like one of the family even when he wasn't the family pet.
Ryoga eventually did master one technique long before Ranma, however. Harnessing his Ki into an attack. Lost in a series of tunnels, he came across an old miner who told him a tale of a technique that the miners of old used to blast their way through solid rock. The Shi shi Hokudan, or Lions Roar Shot. A powerful blast of Ki, emitted either through the hands or sent roaring out of one's body into the sky, only then to crash down on ones enemies.
The secret to this technique? Something he had no end of while Ranma had barely any - negative emotions.
Raw negativity. Sadness, despair, lonliness, rage, frustration and bitterness all served as a focussing point for a person's Ki to be released in a powerful wave. With this technique and his boundless sadness, he was sure to whipe Ranma off the map!
And he very nearly did. Until Ranma, once again figured out a winning strategy. Using a lie about kissing Akane, he made Ryoga's Ki so heavy and potent that it created a ten meter wide crater as it rose hundreds of feet into the sky. Ranma then leapt up and using the momentum of the Ki crashing down on Ryoga, admitted to the lie, distracting him long enough to pound a fist into his upturned face backed by the full force of Ryoga's mortal depression.
It was pretty epic. You shoulda been there.
Eventually, Ryoga came accross a black and white dog who seemed to be in a spot of trouble. After having defected from it's clan of Ninja Dogs, there was a contract out on it's head. A group of highly skilled ninja dogs and the ninja servant of Tattewake Kuno all after this one lone dog. In it's rush to escape it landed in a river, only to be found and.. sort of saved by Ryoga. (Who also fell in the river and was then saved by the dog.)
Ryoga had a letter written to Akane in his backpack. All his love, all his emotion given prose and laid out on paper. After explaining what the letter was to the dog, and not really expecting it to understand, the dog waited for him to drift off. It then took it and ran all the way to the Tendo Dojo, giving the letter over to Akane.
...one.. one bit of information that Ryoga forgot to include? His name.
The dog waited for Akane to write a reply before leaving the dojo and evading capture by Sasuke and the Ninja dogs... though only barely. Without the use of it's mouth while it was holding the letter, it was near defenseless.
Luckily, Ryoga once again found the dog and rescued it from all attackers, before confronting Ranma with the reply to his letter. Akane, however, had stated she was already IN love with someone else and so couldn't return the feelings of this mystery man. Ryoga is completely and utterly crushed by this... until Ranma points out the lack of a name and Ryoga decides that.. well. Maybe it's HIM Akane is in love with! it could happen! Right!?
....right?
Ryoga and the newly christened Checkers strike out into the wilderness together after telling Ranma that they'll meet again. And chances are, they probably will.
Anything Else?:
Ryoga is physicfally strong to a ridiculous degree. He can destroy even sturdy objects by accident and so is kind of a tough person to spend a lot of time with.
He's also resillient with a great deal of stamina - walking day and night and running all over the place has made him hard to tire out. But he can also take a great number of hits without seeming to feel any ill effects.
Not only does he have the aforementioned Shi Shi Hokodan and bakusaitenketsu, he can also turn fabric into a deadly weapon, flinging headbands like boomerangs and using his belt like a rapier.
Despite being lovesick for Akane and easy to lure into simple infatuation... he's... kinda a prude. Very chaste. He gets all blushy and freaked out over holding hands or simple kisses. This all comes from a lack of actual experience, of course, but it's pretty funny.