Sho Akasaki

* BLR
* The Voice
* Portrait

**Sho Akasaki** (赤碕 翔) is the player character and the protagonist of Racing Lagoon. Akasaki is street racer who is suffering from amnesia. He is recruited by Ikki Fujisawa into joining team Bay Lagoon Racing of South Yokohama, where he begins his journey in becoming the fastest racer, and finding out about his lost identity.

## Personality

Akasaki is a stoic and serious person who has a tendency to monologue about things that happen around him, and tends to act either annoyed or indifferent toward people with expressive personality like Kenzo Yamada, Makoto Sawaki, and the Ishikawa brothers. He also had shown indifference towards various aspects, such as the food at Johnny's and the wish-making aspects associated with the night of shooting stars. As time passes, however, he significantly opens up to other people, and start paying respects to racers who have either died or got involved with WON-TEC's affairs.

## Synopsis

### Background

In the 1980s, an unnamed street racer with a black Zeta3000 took up a simple pleasure of street racing. Having been inspired by the construction of Bay Lagoon Tower and South Yokohama from the view of the Ancient Bay, the youth determined to become faster. He raced on the street everyday until he's got bored, and then he raced some more. Before long, he developed a reputation as "Yokohama's Fastest Legend".

As the youth roamed the highway, he spotted several DiabloZeta cars being sent out by WON-TEC and challenged them into battles. Being able to defeat them all without the use of the Diablo drug, he managed to impress Aoi Kawashima, the overseer of the D-Project. The two then engaged in a romantic relationship. However, this relationship did not last long as Kawashiwa offered him Diablo, which he refused. Having been disgusted with Diablo, the young man took out on a quest to put an end to WON-TEC. In the event of the War of Yokohama, he came across several Drivers violently crashing into one another and causing a fiery pileup. Enraged at the sight of the DiabloZetas defiling street racing, the youth walked into the inferno, beated the DiabloZeta wreckages and killed the remaining Drivers with a pipe while laughing like a mad man.

After his rampage, the young man lost conciousness and was captured by WON-TEC's staff Heidel Schneider and Satoru Kawashima. With the D-Project completely in ruined and all the Drivers dead, the two determined to use his reputation as Yokohama's fastest driver to mythicize the DiabloZeta accident and used him as a tool to revive the D-Project. As WON-TEC was in need to recover from its financial crisis, Schneider and Kawashima place the youth inside the D-Sleep system for 10 years in order to preserve his body. To prevent him from a shock, they also forcefully implant him a fake and temporary identity in order to prevent him from a shock of waking up ten years later and taking his own life. As Satoru headed off to hide himself at the Forgotten Hill, Schneider falsely reported to Aoi that both her boyfriend and brother were dead.

As the young man was being put into suspense, his final memory of hared and anger towards Diablo greatly intensified and overwhelming his psyche. While his memory was replaced by the D-Sleep, his wrath manifested itself as the voice that would subconciously haunt his new identity in order to take back his body and destroy everything related to WON-TEC and Diablo.

### Joining BLR

In 1999, "Sho Akasaki" was relesed from D-Sleep as a regular teenager. He was recruited by Ikki Fujisawa to become a new member of the Bay Lagoon Racing team, being given the two-tone white and black 86-Lev (Toyota Corolla Levin) that was originally Fujisawa's. In the debut race event at Bay Lagoon Wharf against Night Racers Honmoku. He and Kenzo Yamada defeated the assigned rival Keisuke Ishikawa. Despite taking up street racing to kill time, Akasaki was allured by the race and wished to experience street racing further.

In the following night, Keisuke and his brother, Shinsuke, kidnapped Bay Lagoon Racing's female member Yuka Suzuki in exchange for a rematch of the team race, but Akasaki and Makoto Sawaki was able to catch them and free Suzuki.

The day after the kidnapping, Akasaki is appointed by his team to participate in the promised rematch, named the Revenge Race held by Night Racers' leader Akira Tsujimoto. In it, he was chosen to race in a one-vs-one Taiman race against Sawaki. While Akasaki won the race, Sawaki suffered a life-threatening wreck in a corner (later named Sawaki's Corner in remembrance of it). As Akasaki witnessed the accident, he develops a strange, horrifying vision.

With Sawaki sent to hospital, Akasaki becomes determined to find out about the mystery of the legend ten years ago as well as his forgotten past. He tries pressing the matter with Fujisawa, who he believes has a connection with the his past.

### Yokohama GP

At a team meeting days after the crash, Fujisawa presents the team Sawaki's Sil-14Q's taillight as what is remained of the wreck, and encourages the team to pay a tribute to him by joining the upcoming Yokohama GP sponsored by WON-TEC. With Fujisawa getting qualified for the race by organizer invitation, the second representative would be decided with a decider race held in North Yokohama. The event excites Kyoji Nanba, who would like to participate in the event and follow the footstep of his deceased older brother. However, Akasaki was able to advance to the Grand Prix's qualifying stage when Nanba's Seven-RX suffered an engine failure by the finish line. The loss led Nanba to engage in suspicious conversations with Aoi Kawashima and Keisuke Ishikawa.

Nanba soon disappeared from his workplace and was never seen for the next three days. Worried, Akasaki searched the whole city for him. While doing so, he spots a mysterious car running around at an extraordinary speed. Akasaki returned to Bay Lagoon Wharf after finding no trace of Nanba as he prepares himself for the Yokohama GP. He is then called by Nanba, who appeared before him in an unrecognizable Seven-RX (except for plate) while he himself is in a terrifying zombie-like state, claiming he has finally understood the mystery behind his brother's death and warning about the voice that would come haunting Akasaki. Nanba challenged and defeated Akasaki in a race, then promptly disappeared.

On the race day of the Yokohama GP qualifiers he managed to qualify himself for the finals along with Night Racers' Akira Tsujimoto. Things went worse afterward, however, as Yuka told him that Nanba had been killed instantly in a fatal accident. At around the same time, Makoto Sawaki also succumbed to his injuries and died in the hospital.

Between the qualifiers and the championship race, the remaining members of BLR visited Hakone to allow Fujisawa to have his rematch against Miharu Koguchi of Hakone Drift Dancers (the initial loss was the reason Fujisawa left Hakone) after Genji Kato stormed the GS Milage during a stormy, rainy night informing Fujisawa and Akasaki about it, as well to allow them to find the answer being the Yokohama's Fastest Legend from Fujisawa's mentor, Manabu Oda. During this encounter, both Fujisawa and Akasaki began hearing strange voices, which on Akasaki's side, gradually intensified the morning before, and the night after, the Yokohama GP Championship Round. Despite winning the race, he soon gained a reputation for being a grim reaper after Fujisawa also crashed out in the same corner as Sawaki's in a Taiman race the morning after the Grand Prix; before this, Akasaki had attacked Fujisawa during the GP's afterparty, having mostly sat out the party after winning the race. Both the attack and the Taiman race occurred when Akasaki was being possessed by the voice, although this fact was not known to anyone else.

### Finding His Past and Battling WON-TEC

His continued quest to find the voice that haunted him, Fujisawa, Nanba, and Shinsuke Ishikawa (to brink of retirement), that also required him to visit Hokkaido to met the man who knows about it, Satoru Kawashima (he was told about it from Oda), would eventually uncover his past: his involvement in the WON-TEC's D-Project. After he was brought to WON-TEC's headquarters after Darkness GP, where he fought defeated the legendary Diablo-Zeta (driven by Fujisawa in that race), it was revealed that he was the one that became the legend 10 years ago, driving a silver Zeta3000 and was a major test subject for the D-Project. He was also the one that caused the incident that ended the legend, and the lives of his fellow Diablo drivers, in an incident the company called The War of Yokohama. Because of this and that he has the right antibodies required for the Diablo drug, he was placed into a decade-long D-Sleep, in which he lost his memories, and was designated as the corporation's last hope. Between the race and the meeting, he witnessed the Diablo Tuneshop as Keisuke and Gamou Kusunoki unsuccessfully attempted to kill him before WON-TEC took him.

When he escaped the headquarters, WON-TEC continued to track his whereabouts, hoping he would appear at the Bay Lagoon Tower. When he arrived there, he was taken again by WON-TEC where he was psychologically tortured by them to the point the voice (his past self) took him over completely. Fully possessed by the voice of his past, he promptly killed a number of WON-TEC Drivers that are there, including Keisuke and Kusunoki, before collapsing in the parking lot. Tsujimoto and Suzuki found him and arranged him to escape from the self-destructing building.

Having escaped the tower, just before he could beat WON-TEC president Won Lee with a steel pipe (as his past self did ten years prior during the War of Yokohama), Heidel Schneider shot and killed Lee, who promptly dismissed Akasaki as actually being unworthy for D-Project. Schneider himself was killed when his car fell into a burning crevice on the road when he challenged Akasaki in a race in which only one of them would survive. However, it was not yet over, as he has one more battle in which he confronted Aoi Kawashima, Fujisawa's girlfriend, in which she reveals about her recognition of Akasaki, her connections to WON-TEC, and how she introduced Fujisawa to Diablo. During this, Akasaki was able to prevent her running away with Fujisawa and his car, in a Diablo-tuned state.

If the player is able to achieve the "Gale A Moment" title by completing as many UOR races and maintaining win rates as high as possible, the Voice challenges Akasaki into a last Taiman battle with no reward or stake at hand. Winning or losing, the Voice willingly coexists with Akasaki and says that he may take over once Akasaki has become bored with his life.

At the end of the game, he raced against Fujisawa after his recovery from the effects of the final battle. There, he went back to his old Zeta3000, as a new day begins for the team with Tsujimoto joining BLR out of gratitude, and Kenzo Yamada also recovering from an attack by WON-TEC thugs the night prior.

## Gallery

Akasaki in the 2 Warriors Battle ModeAkasaki's first appearanceAkasaki's 86-LevSho Akasaki's split personality (the voice). His outfits was inspired by the music video "Wake Up!" by CHISATO (千聖) in 1999.Akasaki in Redrenga WarehouseAkasaki in the last sceneAkasaki's ending scene drives black Zeta3000Aoi Kawashima and Sho AkasakiOfficial artworkAkira and Sho in HakoneYuka and ShoAkasaki's first appearance (demo version)Sho portrait (demo version)Sho Portrait