basic info

Name: Ryoko Shinonome
Gender: Cis girl (she/her)
Age: 16

Canon: 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim

Canon Info & Character History:

13 Sentinels plot summary on Wikipedia
Ryoko on the 13S wiki

Please note before continuing that Ryoko as a character deals heavily with issues of prescription drug use, loss of memory & identity, manipulation and grooming and there is an instance of intimate partner abuse and suicide mentioned early on, so please consider this a content warning going forward for all of those things.


• 13 Sentinels takes place twenty billion years into the future, after a disaster in the year 2188 causes humanity to be almost wiped out by nanomachine technology. In an attempt to save the human race from extinction, the Ark Project is created, consisting of a colony of the final 15 survivors of humanity and the probes they went on to create together. These probes were loaded with the DNA and and constructed AIs of the survivors and then sent out to terraform new planets, after which the survivors' clones would be raised safely within a virtual simulation of one of several "sectors", each one simulating a period of human history and set 40 years apart from each other.
  
• One of these survivors was Doctor Ryoko Shinonome, a genetic engineer and gifted AI programmer. When the 2188 colony broke into infighting and murder, she and her lover Tetsuya Ida were left as the last survivors. Broken by despair, Shinonome asks Ida to commit a lover's suicide with her in the hopes they would be happy together in death. Ida not only cold rejects her but admits to his hidden disdain for Shinonome, claiming that he had never loved her and was using her to the end. Robbed of all her hope for the human race, Shinonome sabotages the probes before their release in the hopes of eventually destroying what was left off humanity and presumably dies alone as the final survivor of the human race.
  
• Fast forward twenty million years and one of these probes succeeds in terraforming a planet and begins the process of raising the survivors to maturity to allow them to colonize their new world. However, Shinonome's sabotage causes the system to begin spawning kaiju at a certain point in the timeframe which destroy the VR environment and cause the whole system to reboot. This effectively causes a timeloop that goes on for some time (never stated but at least a few hundred years) before the events of 13 Sentinels proper finally begin.
  
• The playable Ryoko Shinonome of 13 Sentinels is the clone of 2188!Shinonome, born into the simulated Sector 2 millions of years after its creation with absolutely no knowledge of any of that nonsense up there. Ryoko grows up as a regular teenage girl and by all accounts, she has a totally normal childhood – she becomes the surrogate big sister of Ei Sekigahara and fake dates (then breaks up with) Renya Gotou in middle school. Her ordinary life comes to an end in 2064 when kaiju begin to swarm her city and she is separated from her friends. She comes close to being killed but is saved at the last moment by Juro Izumi, piloting a gigantic mech called a Sentinel.
  
• Ryoko's potential as a Sentinel pilot is recognized, but she's hesitant to jump straight into the fight. In the aftermath of the first kaiju attack, she develops a crush on the man responsible for managing the Sentinels who is currently posing as a teacher at her school – Tetsuya Ida. Recognizing Ryoko's feelings, Ida grooms and manipulates Ryoko into becoming completely dedicated to following his every whim, as he has his own ulterior motives for the Sentinels and needs someone like Ryoko to carry them out for him.
  
• As time goes by, Ryoko is repeatedly isolated and turned against those who could pose a threat to Ida's plans and in turn, comes to trust him more than anyone else – including Sekigahara, who also becomes a pilot in an attempt to look out for Ryoko. This comes to a head when Ida manipulates Ryoko into loading the Sentinels with what he claims is an upgrade but is actually DD-426 - a virus that causes the nanomachines that Ryoko and the others are hosting to begin detaching from the brain. This virus activates during Sector 2's final battle against the kaiju, forcing the command staff to shift all the surviving pilots to other Sectors – causing them to 'time travel', from their point of view.
  
• Ryoko ends up in Sector 4 (1948) where, after some initial trouble, she is found and "rescued" by Ida, who has ended up in the same time period. She is recruited into the Special Investigations Unit to help advance his plans. Complicating matters, however, is Ryoko's DD-426 infection, which is progressing at a rapid speed and already causing her a great deal of pain and confusion. Her memories from the final battle in Sector 2 are already muddied, causing her to believe that Sekigahara is responsible for her condition, conflating him with the mysterious "426", a criminal from the far future.
  
• With little else to do, Ryoko continues to further Ida's plans by following the orders given to her. However, in the process of investigating the other potential Sentinel pilots, Ryoko comes across a message left behind by the Shinonome of 2188 – lamenting her betrayal at the hands of Tetsuya Ida. Though she continues to deteriorate, Ryoko's suspicions are roused and she investigates Ida's activities across other Sectors. She eventually uncovers the truth of Ida's motivations – he intends to sabotage the current loop's Sentinels and start over again in the next one with the woman he loves. To this end, he eventually kidnaps Yuki Takamiya and forcibly brings her down to the simulation's mainframe in Sector 3. Alongside Shu Amiguchi, a fellow Pilot and the younger self of Ida from the current loop, she gives chase and confronts Ida.
  
• Upon realizing that she truly meant nothing to him and that he intended to throw her away in favour of starting over with his lover, Ryoko snaps. Her belief in him shattered, Ryoko forcibly returns herself, Yuki and Ida to 1984. Ida attempts one final time to manipulate Ryoko into following orders, but she coldly bids him farewell and SHOOTS HIS ASS!!!! YOU LOVE TO SEE IT

Personality:

"I won't let anyone else fight for me."

Once, in another life, Ryoko Shinonome was a perfectly normal girl. Quiet and introverted, her relative comfort in spending time alone could come off as aloofness or even coldness. Despite that, she was warm and sweet to the people she cares for and surprisingly earnest and open with her emotions. She was straightforward and often idealistic to the point of being a touch naive and easily manipulated by people who perhaps don't have her best interests at heart. In many ways, though, her naivety was its own kind of strength, allowing her to put her sharp intelligence and determination to good use when fighting kaiju.

That being said, the girl the present day Ryoko seems to be didn't come from exactly nowhere. She has a spiteful, stubborn streak that surfaces at inopportune times and it's not all that hard to get her to mistrust people who otherwise might be able to help her. She's also a little too comfortable using other people for her own purposes - as mentioned in her history section, she fake dates a boy in middle school entirely to get her parents off her back and then breaks up with him once he's served his purpose without ever once explaining herself or seemingly feeling any sort of guilt about it.

This seems to stem from a relationship with her parents that's quietly implied to be... complicated at best. Perhaps the biggest red flag in this regard is Ryoko's willingness to martyr herself for the people she cares about, throwing herself under the bus if she thinks it's what they want. Tetsuya Ida's manipulation of her is said to be as easy as it is specifically because Ryoko is – as described by the director – used to having to look after and rely on herself, so the idea that anyone else would even think to do so is a revelation to her.

As of the present day, the attack on Sector 2 and its aftermath have broken Ryoko down and sharpened the pieces into cutting edges and razor sharp points. Her worst traits have been brought into sharp focus, with her determination becoming bull-headed stubbornness that makes her dangerous when pointed in the right directions. She's much more cynical and irritable, with much less patience than she may have had in other situations – though given how much pain she seems to be in on a moment to moment basis, it's less a lack of care and more that she doesn't have the energy to waste on social niceties, especially when she's on the warpath. She's also prone to, bluntly, conspiratorial thinking – her difficulty with her memories often means that she's only getting half of the story at any given time and this is made worse by Ryoko's tendency to form-fit the facts into pre-existing narratives she's already built for herself rather than learning from them. This is an unfortunate lasting effect of Tetsuya Ida's grooming of her – she was taught to mistrust everyone around her except for Ida and even after his death, that part of his influence lingers. What's left of her willingness to trust is hard won and she takes perceived betrayals incredibly badly, willing to lash out with real violence when her trust is broken.

All this isn't to say that her worst traits are all that remain of Ryoko. Given the opportunity to better herself in a healthy environment with those who care about her and Ryoko becomes a force to be reckoned with. She'll champion and protect people who are unable to do so themselves and her understanding of what it means to be betrayed by those you trusted most makes her doggedly loyal once her trust has been well and truly won. She's sharp as a tack and quick to adapt to situations where her quick thinking might be of use and most importantly of all, under all her barbs and bad attitude, she's a truly compassionate girl who understands pain better than any girl her age should have to. Ryoko's issue isn't a lack of love, but rather, an overabundance of it directed towards people who certainly don't deserve it and in a situation where her love is put towards championing the right sort of people then she might just become unstoppable.

Abilities:

Basic Battlefield Training: As a pilot, Ryoko has some basic training on how to handle herself on a battlefield, how to perform first aid and some basic strategic experience from actually fighting kaiju. She's an excellent pilot who's survived a fair few gnarly encounters and even without her Sentinel, she could easily translate that experience into tactical use elsewhere.

Oh Yeah, The Giant Robot Part: Ryoko is a giant robot pilot! Hers in particular is called a Sentinel and manifests as a huge, heavy, blocky humanoid. Ryoko can summon it and connect to it using the nanomachines she's loaded with, but this isn't something she's normally able to do outside of her setting so consider it pre-nerfed lol

Nanomachines, Son!: Ryoko's body and brain are light augmented with nanomachines that allow her to pilot her Sentinel, back up her memories and uhhhh malfunction and literally give her brain damage. Fun stuff! In game these won't really do anything except interface with her Sentinel if/when applicable.

Other than that, she's a normal, weedy teenage girl.
Extras:

Ryoko's amnesia is caused by the nanomachines in her brain detaching from the brain tissue. This is caused by a virus called DD-426, and the process seems to be accelerated by emotional distress, given the state of Ryoko's condition compared to other characters who also have DD-426. On top of her memory loss and, she also suffers chronic pain and exhaustion, you know, her brain gets literally pulled apart.