Ryoko Shinonome

PLAYER: Claire (she/they)
ARE YOU AT LEAST 18 YEARS OLD?: Yes
CONTACT: superorbital | superorbit | superorbital#8008
CHARACTERS PLAYED: N/A

NAME: Ryoko Shinonome
CANON: 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim
CANON REFERENCE: 13 Sentinels plot summary on Wikipedia
Ryoko on the 13S wiki
My own history & personality writeup for Ryoko
CANON POINT: Shortly before the beginning of her story chapter
CRAU HISTORY: N/A
AGE: 16
APPEARANCE:

Character sprite turnaround
Second anniversary art
forgive me for my linking to fanart sins but this is literally the only artist in the fandom who actually draws her hair to match her in-game sprite

Ryoko's fairly small and slight – she's got a delicate sort of build at the best of times but in her current sickly condition she looks concerningly frail. According to a few characters in the game, she's strikingly pretty and would probably be beautiful if it wasn't for how obviously ill she is – when Hijiyama sees her for the first time, he muses that she looks to be "more ghost than girl". Her hair and eyes are both a sort of charcoal black and her hair is wavy and shoulder length, but also a little messy and unkempt – she definitely gives the impression that she probably doesn't do much in the way of caring for it. As of her usual canon point, Ryoko has bandages on her head and most of her torso, covering wounds sustained from piloting her Sentinel that will scar as they heal.

CONTRACT PAYMENT: Ensure the destruction of the kaiju threatening her world and provide a safe and happy future for all of the pilots involved in fighting them, including healing those infected with DD-426 of their illness.

QUESTIONNAIRE:

What does family mean to you and who do you consider a part of your family?


... Family, hm. [ She makes a thoughtful noise and the expression on her face is a little bitter as she considers the question. ] Family is... the people you want to protect more than anything else and the people you can count on to have your back if it's necessary. They're the people you can count on not to betray you or deceive you, whatever the circumstances. The people who are worth fighting for – the people who make things worth fighting for.

For me, though... [ She trails off for a moment only to give a dismissive huff and shake her head. ] The only person I'd call family is Ei-kun.

What are your greatest regrets, if you have any? What would you have done differently?


[ The hand loosely resting on the opposite arm tightens into a fist, bunching up the fabric of her sleeve. ]

... I never should've listened to him. Maybe I never should've gotten into a Sentinel at all. If he was only ever going to do was betray us, after I did everything for his sake–

[ She's talking faster than she means to, more words spilling out than she intends and her voice, too, builds in intensity until her forces herself to a sharp stop. Her breaths come out a little shaky and she forces herself to take in a longer, slower one that she holds until she can trust her voice not to break. ]

... No. [ The word comes out in a sigh. ] If I could do it all again... I'd still fight. That part I don't regret. But I'd never, ever let Mr. Ida betray us again.

What is your favorite diversion? Hobbies, indulgences, vices? Would you put off important things for that diversion, or would you be more strict about how you spend your time and/or money?


Hobbies...?

[ She reacts with perhaps a little more surprise than the question really warrants – her eyebrows shoot up and then sink back down into a suspicious frown. Is she being made fun of, here...? What do they care down in Hell what she wastes her time with?

Eventually, she shakes her head. ]

I don't... really have anything you'd call a 'hobby'. After the kaiju came... I had more important things to worry about.

[ The instant she'd become a pilot, she'd thrown herself into it so deeply, into training and obeying orders, that hobbies and wasting time has been the last thing on her mind. Distracting herself from her duties seemed outrageous.

But she gets the feeling that's not really the sort of thing she should be answering when posed with a question like this. ]

But if I have to say something... I like to read. Really, anything that's relatively quiet that I can do by myself, I enjoy. But when it comes to working hard, I really don't care whether or not I get to do any of it. Duties and fighting are more important.

You've worked with your Faction awhile now and you feel like the reward of your contract is within reach. But at the last moment, you are told you have even more service to pay beforehand, an obscure clause in the contract being exploited to keep you under your boss's thumb even longer. Your Faction Leader hasn't spoken on this, and might be able to dispute it. Do you go to your leader? Do you argue the dispute yourself? Do you begrudgingly accept the additional work? Something else?


[ She considers the question for a moment – and then her lips thin into what can only be called an unpleasant smile. ]

... Pff. You know, somehow I'm not a bit surprised that even after signing a contract, being double crossed is still on the table. But that doesn't mean I'm happy about it.

[ Sure enough, her unpleasant smile only grows nastier. ]

It's not the work extra work I mind – if it means acheving what I need, then I'll work my fingers to the bone. But the one thing I can't take lying down is someone trying to take advantage of me.

I'd go straight to the Faction Leader and cause as much trouble about the whole thing as I can before I even think of agreeing to anything. They probably wouldn't care at all – and if they tell me to shut up and do the work if I want my wish granted, then I'll do it. But I don't have any intentions of making it easy or pleasant. I want whoever's ordering me around to learn a hard lesson about trying to trick me again in future.


POWERS & 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 has also has additional training and information downloaded directly into her brain (we love a scifi handwave) to further aid in increasing her combat capabilities. She is consistently noted to be one of the best pilots among the thirteen protagonists (and gameplay wise she is literally the most busted character). She'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. Specifically, she pilots 2nd Generation Sentinel which is an excellent all-rounder but has special focus on distance attacks and distracting or otherwise disarming the enemy. In particular, Ryoko's skillset revolves around setting up Sentry Guns (autofiring turrets), decoys that explode and destroy kaiju and hacking enemy kaiju to make them fight on her behalf for a time. Ryoko is able to summon her Sentinel from anywhere and it will teleport to her location, allowing her to pilot it as and when she pleases. However, given that the existence of the Sentinels relies on most of 13SAR happening in a VR simulation I don't expect this to be something she can do outside of her setting so consider it pre-nerfed.
  
• Nanomachines, Son!: Ryoko's body and brain are augmented with nanomachines that allow her to pilot her Sentinel, back up her memories and download information into her brain. They are also responsible for her brain damage as they are in the process of malfunctioning and dethatching from her. Fun stuff! She would be able to interface with certain types of technology using them if she found anything that was compatible but doing so would likely accelerate her DD-426 so she probably won't do this outside of emergencies.
  
• Hacking and Programming: Most of Ryoko's skillset as a pilot revolves around hacking and disabling enemy forces and she also displays some aptitude for hacking computers or otherwise getting into files and such that she shouldn't really be accessing.
  
• [Women in STEM joke pending]: This is more of a "future development" thing than an immediately relevant one, but Ryoko is the clone of a genetic engineer with background in computer and AI programming whose primary research goal was developing AI into true humans with full on 3D printed bodies. Ryoko seems to have inherited this aptitude from her past self and is shown at the ending of the game to have picked up her past self's research and brought it to completion - this is a field of study she has some instinctive affinity for, should anything like it ever come up in game.


SUITABILITY: Ryoko is, more or less, a child soldier who has seen her world destroyed and is currently teetering on the precipice of seeing it happen again. She's more than used to violence and is not at all squeamish about handing it out herself – she shoots and kills her beloved mentor when she realizes she has been betrayed by him and comes close to killing Sekigahara midway into her own story route. There is little she won't do or put up with in the name of achieving her goals and so the environment of Jigoku-cho, while not her ideal, is something she can easily grit her teeth and bare. Compared to facing endless waves of kaiju, this should be a walk in the park.

FACTION SUITABILITY:


Shuten Clan: While she doesn't fully buy into 'might is right', the basic philosophy of using one's own strength to decide your path in life is something that would particularly resonate with Ryoko. A lot is made of the contrast between her frail physical state and the raw power she wields as a high level Sentinel pilot and she puts that power to use to try and secure a future for her and everyone else in her world. There's also something to be said about her strength of resolve and how bitterly she resents deception and manipulation - though that isn't without its own shades of hypocrisy, as Ryoko isn't above using and even deceiving people if she thinks its necessary. The real major clash would be a cultural one - even outside of being underage (and therefore not really available for hard drinking and partying) Ryoko's an introverted, quiet person. Parties and loud, boisterous social gatherings absolutely aren't her thing and she'd struggle a lot if it was expected of her to attend and be involved.

Tamamo Clan: Given how much of Ryoko's life has been blighted by controlling outside forces, the emphasis Tamamo Clan places in freedoms – that of personal agency & freedom from pain and strife – would be something Ryoko could easily fit into as well. Her own agency is deeply important to her, as is her ability to decide her own fate and build her own future. Not only that, but as a person who lives with chronic pain, a philosophy focused on relieving oneself from physical discomfort could in the long term be good and helpful for her. She's also quite cunning in her own right, but the big snag here is insight and foresight – though she's an intelligent girl, the betrayals she's been subjected to by people she should otherwise have been able to trust have left her understandably prone to paranoia and reading bad faith into those who would seek to help her. This cynicism bleeds into every interaction of hers and can often lead to her making wild conspiratorial leaps in logic or otherwise being blind to a person's true nature – good or bad – because she has already so thoroughly convinced herself of what she thinks it is. In addition, the Tamamo Clan's focus on pleasures and distractions – sexual or otherwise – would very much clash with Ryoko who tends to tunnel vision herself on her goals with few allowances for free time or distractions. The Clan's actual focus would be very low down on her list of priorities.

Sutoku Alliance: At its core, the ideals of the Sutoku Alliance would resonate with Ryoko a lot - rather than allying with a pre-existing power structure, they all decided to pool their own power and challenge the system and authorities that otherwise could have been taken for granted. In this, Ryoko sees a lot of herself and her fellow Sentinel pilots and it would make her fairly sympathetic to their goals and beliefs. She would also really click with their stance on the power of information and the effectiveness of information warfare – Ryoko's experienced a lot of manipulation at the hands of people who controlled her by being very careful about what she did and did not know and it's only by taking matters into her own hands and gathered her own information that she was able to reclaim at least some of her agency. She knows just how powerful knowing and not knowing can be and how easily the right kernel of information can completely tip the balance of any given situation. Where Ryoko differs the most from the clan is probably in that while the Sutoku Clan is an alliance, Ryoko is spectacularly bad at allying with other people. She doesn't trust easily and refuses to let anyone else shoulder any of her burdens no matter how badly she needs the help. According to dev interviews, she's always been the type of girl to take care of herself and to solve all her own problems and so she could very easily become a loner, isolating herself even as she agrees and resonates with the clan's ideals of deriving power from pooling their strength. She's a hypocrite like that.

Department of the Enma: ryoko shinonome says fuck cops!! uh but no, really, the Department is probably the only faction in the game that Ryoko would be fundamentally incompatible with. "Justice" and "order" are relatively low on her list of priorities and she has absolutely no qualms about challenging systems or status quos she feels are unfair or that just so happen to be in her way. Like any good angsty teen, she resents overt control and authority - she only barely manages to pretend to respect Morimura when she's left in her care and starts breaking the rules set for her and ignoring orders more or less the instant she isn't under observation by someone who can tattle on her. While they share a disdain for betrayal, Ryoko is not interested in keeping the world orderly or in balance - she'll break any law and smash any obstacle between her and her goals, order and justice be damned.

SAMPLES



Ryoko's TDM toplevel with nine subthreads
the cain instinct