Wataru Takayama

Wataru Takayama (; Takayama Wataru) is a character featured in Ryu Ga Gotoku Online. He is a lieutenant of the Go-Ryu Clan, a subsidiary of the Omi Alliance.
== Profile ==
=== Personality ===
Takayama strongly dislikes Ryuji Goda because he believes Ryuji was handed his position within the clan by virtue of being the patriarch's son, while he had to spend years serving Jin Goda to attain the same rank.
Despite his enmity with Ryuji, Takayama shares a similar belief system to him, believing that power should belong to those who have the strength to seize it. Takayama believes that the strongest, most bold yakuza should be the ones in charge of the underworld and thus sees himself as an ideal candidate for the next chairman of the Omi Alliance, due to his combat skill and criminal ambition.
=== Appearance ===
Takayama appears to be in his 40's. He has graying black hair, a thin mustache and a soul patch. 
He wears a bronze-yellow suit with a patterned dark-blue dress shirt. He also has a matching dark-blue handkerchief folded into his lapel pocket. Additionally, he also wears a pair of tinted, gold-rimmed aviator glasses, even when in-doors.
== Involvement ==
=== Ryu Ga Gotoku Online - 1999 ===
In 1999, Ryuji is expelled from the Go-Ryu Clan due to his constant insubordination towards his father. This shocks most of the Clan's members, who respected Ryuji for his toughness and expected him to be appointed as Patriarch Goda's successor. Instead, Takayama is appointed to that position. Even though Patriarch Goda insists that he will not rescind Ryuji's expulsion, Takayama wants to ensure that Ryuji will not find his way back into the Clan to supplant him and resolves to kill him.
Since Ryuji left Osaka after his expulsion, Takayama is unable to locate him initially, but some of his informants eventually tip him off that he's found his way to Hiroshima. Takayama travels there with a large retinue of his men and asks Heizo Iwami, the leader of the local reigning yakuza, the Yomei Alliance, for permission to kill Ryuji in his territory. After being paid a substantial bribe, Iwami agrees to allow the hit and promises to keep it secret from the Omi. Takayama subsequently ambushes Ryuji and his new traveling companion, Joon-gi Han of the Jingweon Mafia, outside a restaurant in Onomichi. The ensuing battle ends with Han taking a bullet for Ryuji and the pair fleeing from Takayama and his thugs. Ryuji ultimately staves off his death by breaking into Chairman Iwami's mansion and convincing him to rescind Takayama's permission for the hit. After getting word of this, Takayama leaves Hiroshima and decides to wait for another opportunity.
Takayama makes his next attempt on Ryuji's life a week later, when he and Han have moved on to Fukuoka. When he and his men catch up with the pair in Nagasugai, Takayama finds them already embroiled in a fight with Ichiban Kasuga and Daisaku Kuze, who've been sent by the Tojo Clan to take out the pair. Amused, Takayama decides to not interfere and instead only watch the fight. When Ryuji and Han split up and flee, Takayama pursues Ryuji with Kuze's help. They eventually manage to surround him on a bridge, where Han re-joins him. However, Han now pulls a gun on Ryuji, since he's received new orders from the Jingweon to instead kill him. When Han hesitates too much, Takayama pulls out his own gun, only for Ichiban to get ahead of him by snatching Han's gun, shooting Ryuji in the chest and then tossing him into the river. Satisfied, Takayama and his men leave. However, unbeknownst to him, Ichiban only wounded Ryuji so that he could then retrieve him and take him to a nearby underground clinic, since he'd decided to defy the Tojo's orders.
After Ryuji's seeming death, Takayama gets in contact with the Jingweon and offers them a deal: He wants their help in assassinating Jin Goda and supplanting him as Omi Chairman, since he believes Goda has gotten complacent and weak in his old age. In exchange, Takayama promises to use the Omi to help the Jingweon destroy the Tojo Clan in retaliation for the Christmas Massacre of 1980. The Jingweon leadership in Korea agrees and dispatches one of their top officers and his personal retinue of assassins to aid Takayama's coup.
Unfortunately for Takayama, when he and his Jingweon co-conspirators attempt to assassinate Goda outside the Omi headquarters, a remorseful Joon-gi Han intervenes and rescues Goda, protecting him to atone for his role in his son's death. Han takes Chairman Goda to a safehouse in Sotenbori, but he is eventually tracked down by his own Jingweon boss and Takayama. However, before the traitor and his Korean cronies can kill them both, Ryuji arrives with Kasuga and with Kuze (whom he'd persuaded to help him stop Takayama to protect the Tojo Clan). While Han, Kasuga and Kuze fight the Jingweon Officer and his lackeys, Ryuji has a one-on-one duel against Takayama. Ultimately, Ryuji and his friends prevail against their enemies. Once he's beaten, a battered Takayama says that he's impressed by how tough Ryuji has become and admits that he's finally earned his position within the Omi; after which he escapes.
For his betrayal, Takayama is banished from the Omi Alliance. After Takayama learns that the Jingweon Officer still plots to kill Ryuji as revenge for defeating him, Takayama kills him, since he now believes that Ryuji has it in him to become the next Omi Chairman and lead the Alliance to supremacy over all of Japan's yakuza. In retaliation for their boss' murder, the Officer's personal assassins then kill Takayama.
Category:Go-Ryu Clan
Category:Omi Alliance
Category:Ryu Ga Gotoku Online Antagonists
Category:Ryu Ga Gotoku Online Characters
Category:Ryu Ga Gotoku Online Bosses