Ryuji Sakamoto

## Voices

**Ryuji Sakamoto** (坂本 (さかもと)  竜司 (りゅうじ) , *Sakamoto Ryūji*) is the deteuratagonist of *Persona 5*. he is a student at Shujin Academy and a former track star who lives a double life as a Phantom Thief.

## Appearance

Ryuji has short spiky dyed blond hair and dark brown eyes. According to Sadayo Kawakami, his hair is naturally black. He has a noticeable widow's peak and his eyebrows are unusual in that he lacks the outer sides. He is shown to be muscular.

He wears his winter school uniform a bit modified. It consists of the standard black blazer, unbuttoned to reveal a yellow t-shirt with a comic style star symbol and the word 'ZOMG!' He has plaid trousers rolled up to reveal his ankles. His pants have black suspenders that hang down instead of being worn on his shoulders. He has a white belt. His white sneakers have a rising sun flag motif. His summer school uniform is the same as his winter's, except his yellow t-shirt is replaced with a red one reading 'NO MO RULES' and he no longer wears his blazer.

On his days off in winter, he wears a purple hoodie with red lining and the number '777' on the back, a black shirt with a yellow frowning face, dark pants and yellow sneakers. In the summertime he wears a yellow tank top that reads 'ON UR MARK!' with red shoes prints, khaki shorts, and blue sneakers. He wears a chain necklace and white belt as accessories.

During *Persona 5 Royal's* third semester, Ryuji wears a bright blue jacket over a red sweatshirt with a graffiti paint design, a camouflage-patterned scarf with black pants and blue sneakers. At school, he wears his uniform the same, but with his pants rolled down, a new red sweater with a black skull and the word 'NOBODY' on the front underneath the blazer, a blue shirt and purple sneakers.

His Thief outfit consists of matching black jacket with elbow pads and what appears to be a metal vertebral column attached to its back, pants with knee pads and a double-sided holster belt with ammo on each side, a red ascot, combat boots, a pair of yellow gloves with metal knuckle protectors and a skull mask.

Due to his injury, he walks and runs with a slight limp, and occasionally trips if he overexerts himself.

In *Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight*, he retains his Shujin Academy uniform except he wears a yellow shirt with a black "X" design and a red tattered scarf, and yellow and light blue sneakers with matching laces. He wears sunglasses on his head, a golden chain bracket on his right wrist and metal bracket on his left wrist.

In *Persona 5 Strikers,* he wears a red tank-top, a dog-tag chain necklace, puffy black sweatpants that go down to his shins, a camouflage-pattern belt and a pair of yellow shoes. While at the festivals, he wears a beige yukata and a mask on the right side of his head. On the beach in Okinawa, he wears yellow-orange swim trunks with a palm tree design. In the spring, he wears a khaki coat.

## Personality

Ryuji is known as a disruptive "problem student" at school whose bad behavior causes all sorts of trouble for the teachers. He is quite proud of his status as a self-proclaimed "troublemaker" and his rebellious, mischievous and disobedient nature are the perfect qualities to be a Phantom Thief. He is sometimes vulgar and aggressive, as shown in his early interactions with the Ren Amamiya, Yusuke Kitagawa and Makoto Niijima. He is also rather short-tempered, easily taking offense from even the slightest of comments. That said, he will never resort to violence without being legitimately provoked.

In reality, his seemingly delinquent-like behavior is merely a coping mechanism for the loss of his reputation to Kamoshida's tyranny and his inability to continue becoming an athlete after the injury he suffered at Kamoshida's hand. Deep down, he is nothing more than a kind and altruistic boy. He deeply cares for his mother and takes fervent effort as an athlete to relieve her worries. He also reveals that his father was an alcoholic who beat him and his mother and then left, so his mother is the only family he has. When he tells the group about the aftermath of his confrontation with Kamoshida, he is broken when he admits that, following a meeting with the school authorities, she apologized to him for being a single mother and not giving him a strong father-figure in life. He even calls himself a "bad son," due to him messing up his efforts to make things easier for his mother. He's generally friendly and on good terms with everyone in the Phantom Thieves (despite frequent bickering), particularly Ann, with whom he shares somewhat of a love-hate relationship.

His frequent density causes him to be viewed as an idiot by his peers, Morgana and Ann in particular. Ryuji's academic abilities, his Japanese included, are outright questionable at best and horrid at worst, as he more often than not, gets bad grades from exams, usually by oversleeping or refusing to study at all. Ryuji's also rather vulgar, which encompasses his tone, posture and his manners. Ryuji also seems to have poor taste, as the first calling card he designed was based off of references online, and even then failed to be convincing, as Ann described it sounded like "an idiot trying to be an adult." In *Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight*, Ryuji's dancing style is also uninspired in the same fashion, as he often lifts popular street dance moves without any thought, such as the robot dance.

Ryuji's rather fickle and follows what interests him the most. Although he has passion for helping others, he very often gets distracted by his perverted interest in girls, which includes picking up girls. Ryuji was interested in "Victoria's Housekeeping," a maid service with adult undertones. He would also be convinced to join the school's social studies trip only upon hearing there'll be female actresses, making the excuse that he's taking up Morgana's suggestion to keep a low profile. This is also reinforced with Ann Takamaki, as he might stare at her in the Mona car while the group were traveling through the desert in Futaba's Palace. When Ann confronts him about this later, he doesn't even try to deny it, saying that "it was a great view."

Unfortunately, Ryuji eventually gets caught off guard by the conspiracy's deceit. It comes to a head after the Phantom Thieves are framed down by Shido, resulting in him breaking down and calling himself "an idiot" for his past behavior. He's able to eventually reconcile his weakness after talking with the protagonist and striving to become a better person after the protagonist makes him realize he can still change as a person.

Ryuji cares a great deal for the well-being of others around him, such as when he attempts to help end the abuse of the track team, even going as far as letting them beat him up in an attempt to air out their frustrations. He also has a strong sense of right and wrong. When Morgana warns him and the protagonist that stealing Kamoshida's treasure may result in his death, Ryuji is shocked and reluctant to take that risk, believing that he and the protagonist going around secretly doing whatever they wanted would make them no different from Kamoshida. He changes his mind after Shiho Suzui's attempted suicide, but even after it's done, he wonders if it really was for the best. After a chance encounter with Masayoshi Shido, however, Ryuji comes up with the idea to continue as the Phantom Thieves, in order to get rid of adults who have gone unpunished for so long and give courage to all those who need it. Furthermore, Ryuji is a rather forgiving person, as evident by his willingness to help out his former teammates on the track team despite them viewing him as a traitor, as well as being the first to forgive Makoto for getting the team blackmailed, despite having despised her up until then. He even tells Natsuhiko Nakanohara that being treated like dirt doesn't give one the right to do the same to them. In *Strikers*, Ryuji becomes one of Sophia's closest friends, and he came to care a lot about her, enough to give the mysterious voice in the Okinawa Jail a tongue lashing for having insulted Sophia.

Hobby-wise, apart from being on the track team, he also does muscle training. He can drink a 500mL bottle of carbonated water in one go which he did as training during his track and field club days. When he was active, he could also do 1000mL bottles. He is often impatient and has a habit of tapping the ground with his toes when he's bored, and prefers to get "straight to the point" during conversations. He claims he never reads, and his artbook profile claims he only reads manga. When it comes to food, he's particularly fond of ramen, to the point of being fussy about the flavor and texture of the noodles. Though not a cook by any means, Ryuji displays some cooking skills, as he mentions a recipe involving combining of honey and sliced lemons as a way of restoring stamina, something his mother taught him.

## Etymology

Ryuji's name references Ryōma Sakamoto (坂本 龍馬) from the bakumatsu period, which is supported by his Confidant subplot which is an allusion to the ja:井口村刃傷事件 井口村刃傷事件 (iguchi mura ninjō jiken, ***井口村刃傷事件***). The brother of lower samurai Toranoshin Ikeda (池田 寅之進) was killed by a higher samurai for possibly bumping into him. Informed by the witness, Ikeda quickly arrived at the scene and killed the two superiors for revenge. This serial murder stoked the tension between the lower and higher samurai the next day. Sakamoto as a fellow lower samurai helped mediate, but things only settled down after Ikeda performed honor suicide by seppuku and his family's salary was confiscated. The superiors' families received virtually no punishment for the initial killing. The unequal treatments led to desertion of many lower samurai, including Sakamoto and his comrade Shintarō Nakaoka (中岡 慎太郎), from their serving clans who were disappointed by their higher-ups' suppression.

## Trivia

* In the Japanese version, Skull self-proclaims "Phantom Thieves' Captain Kirikomi" 怪盗団の切り込み隊長 (Kaitou-dan no kirikomi taichou, ***怪盗団の切り込み隊長***) which is localized as "Charge Commander." "Captain Kirikomi" may be a reference to the Marauding Captain card from the Yugioh (series) series. "ja:切り込み" either refers to curing fish slices from Hokkaido regional cuisine, or naval boarding in ship-to-ship combat (in keeping with Captain Kidd's privateer background), referring to the grappling hooks for closing the distance between the ships, allowing ship crews to charge into the enemy’s ship for melee combat.
* Ryuji's civilian shoes are censored in the Chinese and Korean versions of the game, due to containing the Rising Sun Flag. The symbol is a sensitive issue in many other Asian countries when they suffered from Japan's invasion during World War II. Atlus removed it out of courtesy when the issue was brought up.
	+ The rising sun symbol on Ryuji's shoes is also removed from the official artwork used for his Spirit in all versions of *Super Smash Bros. Ultimate*.
* Just like with Makoto Niijima and Goro Akechi before, the official twitter account for the Persona series posted a "Happy Birthday" message for Ryuji on July 3, 2017 JST.
* Pointed out by the same Twitter account, Ryuji's birthday is on Wave Day 波の日 ({{{2}}}, ***波の日***), a Japanese anniversary. The origin of Wave Day comes from the pronunciation of the numbers and the word "wave" combined なみ ({{{2}}}, ***なみ***), forming 7/3.
* Only in the English version, after escaping Kaneshiro's Palace Ryuji comments in the gang's message group "*I'm a Phantom, on a steel horse I ride*." This is a reference to Bon Jovi's "Wanted Dead or Alive" from the 1986 album "*Slippery When Wet*" to which Makoto follows up with continual reference by stating that she is not *wanted*.
	+ In the Japanese version, this conversation is completely different with Ryuji stating he wants to drive a stolen bike and Makoto instantly denies hers to be stolen from elsewhere.
* According to an interview from the *Persona 5 Royal Official Complete Guide*, the cutscene where Ryuji single-handedly saves the protagonist and Akechi from Cendrillon's final attack was added very late into development. The producer remarked on how the design teams were begging him to let them add that to the scene, and when he played it for himself, he was shocked at how "cool" Ryuji looked during it.
* Ryuji's artwork on the *Persona 5 Strikers* box art differs between the Japanese and Western versions: it was changed from him being punched in the face by a Shadow in the former, into only falling down wielding his weapon, and the Shadow grabbing him by the ascot. This is because ESRB does not allow video game box arts to depict violent blows to the head.
	+ This applies only to the box art though, as the image in the sound room in the *Persona 5 Strikers* Bonus Content app still shows Ryuji getting punched in the face.
* In *Persona 5 Strikers*, Ryuji has a voiced line where he says "fuck." This marks the first time he's said it in a cutscene, though the word also appears in a text box during Futaba's Palace in *Persona 5*.Reminder that Ryuji does, in fact, say fuck.