Chai

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## Chai

* 3D
* 2D

### Enemies

Rekka, Zanzo, Korsica (formerly), Mimosa, Roquefort, Kale Vandelay (archenemy)

### Voice Actor

**English**
Robbie Daymond
**Japanese**
Hiro Shimono

"***LU-C1LLE**: Chai... is it?
**Chai**: Yup.
**LU-C1LLE**: Profession... Rockstar?
**Chai**: FUTURE... rockstar.*"
―LU-C1LLE and Chai, from the introduction cutscene

**Chai** is the main playable protagonist of Hi-Fi Rush. One of the Heroes in the game, Chai is a college dropout that became a "defect" after a botched experiment from Project Armstrong, making him a target of Vandelay Technologies.

## Profile

"*CHAI

A slacker with larger-than-life ambitions, Chai's life is turned upside down when a botched corporate experiment accidently gives him musical robot powers.

Labeled a defect, Chai will have to rely on his pals, including his mechanical cat assistant 808, to fight back against the megacorp looking to "recall" him.*"
―Character profile on the Hi-Fi Rush website

## Appearance

Chai is an average height person with brown hair and brown eyes. He wears a red scarf (originally a sling before getting his new arm) with a blue button and a smiling face button centered near his neck. Chai's robotic implant is primarily a mechanical arm from Project Armstrong, possessing grey-and-red highlights with four fingers. Within his heart is a MP3 Player that makes everything synced to the beat for him.

Chai's default outfit consist of a yellow-and-orange jacket, with a t-shirt donning a white lightning bolt. He also wears blue jeans with grey stripes and grey-and-white sneakers with red soles.

During the beginning segment of Track 1: A Fresh Start up until recovering his regular clothes, Chai wears a hospital gown. During Track 9: Take the Stage, Chai temporarily wears a blue shark costume. While the hospital gown is exclusive to its respective segment and cannot be worn anywhere else in the game, the shark costume is available as one of Chai's purchasable costumes under the name "Shark Set".

### Outfits

Chai unlocks a number of different outfits and guitars after beating the game once as well as permanently gaining the Vandelay pin on his default outfit, changing his attire for both gameplay and (most) cutscenes. The Deluxe Edition outfits don't have an unlock requirement and are available immediately at the start of the game, however, other DLC outfits need the customization screen unlocked previously. You can see them in the gallery.

## Personality

Described as a slacker with larger-than-life ambitions, Chai is quite laid-back, witty, and easygoing. Though not particularly intelligent and rather self-centered, this also makes him adaptable to many unfortunate situations, even if he causes most of them. Despite a lack of achievements, Chai at first acts as if he is the center of attention due to his fear of rejection and inferiority, but through his newfound friends, he eventually grows out of his selfishness and develops a surprising amount of empathy and emotional maturity.

Due to the music player implanted in his chest, almost everything in Chai's perspective of the world is synchronized to a musical beat. Though this makes him a terrifyingly competent fighter, it occasionally makes him zone out, interacting with the world as if it's a stage he is performing to.

## History

Sometime after dropping out of college, Chai became interested in getting a robotic implant from Project Armstrong to replace his disabled right arm and to finally become a rockstar, but Vandelay's assessment of his profile would have landed him on simple garbage pickup duty. However, this ended up going sideways as his MP3 player that was tossed aside by Kale Vandelay himself (unknowingly) landed on his chest just as he was about to get his implant. This resulted in the MP3 player becoming embedded in his power core, giving him, in his own words, "musical robot powers".

## Powers and abilities

Chai possesses a LX-DUST75 Project Armstrong arm implant with a trash grabber inside. It can be released to attract scraps of metal to the grabber, giving it a form reminiscent of a guitar and allowing it to be used as a light, but powerful blunt weapon. Chai will see the grabber as an actual guitar after defeating a boss, or during gameplay with a B ranking or higher. Additionally, he can use a Magnet Link with his arm implant to attach and detach himself from magnetic materials.

His most notable ability are the self-entitled "musical robots powers". With Chai's MP3 player embedded in his chest, he envisions the entire world to the time signature of his current song. It somewhat acts as his "sixth sense", as he can feel the beat of his entire environment as if the world is a musical score, allowing him to time his movement when traversing through dangerous areas, read his opponents' movements and evade any of their attacks, parry said attacks, and more.

When synced up with 808, he can also create what it seems to be colorful shockwave blasts and even beams of energy at the end of strings and attacks. While the syncronization only appears to have effects on combat for Chai, she occasionally copies his expressions, and it emits a signal that can be picked up for location-based technology.

Even without the arm prosthetic, Chai is durable and limber to a strange degree that no other character is affected by. He's able to leap in the air well above other people, and take punishment that would severely injure or even kill others - from crashing through walls and windows, being shot out of a cannon, kicked and attacked by the Vandelay units' laser sabers and buzzsaws, and even being a few seconds in lava, only causing brief temporary pain at best.

## Trivia

* Chai is voiced by Robbie Daymond in English, known for voicing Spider-Man in various Marvel works; and also Goro Akechi from *Persona 5*, Tuxedo Mask from *Sailor Moon*, Hotaru Haganezuka from *Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba* and Prompto from *Final Fantasy XV*.
	+ Chai is also voiced by Hiro Shimono in Japanese, known for voicing Zenitsu Agatsuma in Shueisha and Aniplex's *Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba*, Zephyr in Sega's *Resonance of Fate*, Dabi/Touya Todoroki in Shueisha's *My Hero Academia*, and the titular protagonist of *Peter Grill and the Philosopher's Time*.
		- Interestingly enough, both English and Japanese voice actors play their respective roles of certain characters in the same series, that being *Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba*.
* When signing up to Project Armstrong, Chai was originally assigned to waste management as a garbage collector before becoming a defect, explaining why he has a grabber and magnetically collects metal scrap.
* His name means "Tea" in several languages. This follows the pattern of several characters being named after foods/drinks.
* Chai is scared of both regular spiders and robot spiders.
* Despite claiming that he's a 'future' rock star when joining the Armstrong program, he had never actually played any guitar at all prior as pointed out by Peppermint and Kale, and in fact has no idea of what a rockstar truly consists of.
* The game's director has stated that Chai didn't have full function of his right arm and wasn't simply faking it with his scarf in the intro. It also explains why he signed up to the Armstrong program, to replace it and finally have a chance at his dream.
* The red scarf he wears as part of his default outfit for the majority of the game was originally the sling he wears in the intro. No longer needing a sling he tore it and made it into a makeshift scarf.
* Chai probably can't drive, and most likely bums rides off of other people.
* Chai's greatest weakness is common sense.
* John Johanas wanted Chai's hospital gown to be an unlockable costume, however, the physics weren't cooperating with everything and it looked bad.
* Aside from his Vandelay pin, Chai automatically unlocks the Vandelay Solutions Custom Crimson upon beating the game in any difficulty. It appears to have chipped decals with the company's older imagery and Peppermint's logo, suggesting it belonged to her previously.
* Chai's Prototype set is indeed his original outfit as seen in concept art.  However, Chai's scarf lacked detail, and the LX-DUST75 arm was much thinner and similar to his flesh arm's proportions.
* The Promoted set is an orange version of Kale's suit, contrasting with the Bossplay version. Unlike in that costume, Chai doesn't wear a wig, but his front bangs are lifted up in the same spot Kale's are.
* Close inspection of Chai's model when he's electrocuted shows the LX-DUST75 isn't entirely metallic - instead, only the magnetic grabber and the inside of the shoulder piece are. As the arm still makes various rigid noises as it moves, it's possibly made of a compound rather than pure metal.

## References

1. ↑ https://twitter.com/johnjohanas/status/1660178169851437056?s=20
2. ↑ https://twitter.com/robbiedaymond/status/1618367808848662529
3. ↑ https://www.behindthevoiceactors.com/video-games/Hi-Fi-RUSH/
4. ↑ https://twitter.com/hifiRush/status/1618345764882620444
5. ↑  Official Hi-Fi RUSH Director Interview
6. ↑ https://twitter.com/johnjohanas/status/1623295803707228160?s=20
7. ↑ https://twitter.com/johnjohanas/status/1642751730353057793
8. ↑ https://twitter.com/johnjohanas/status/1651333547171430400?s=20
9. ↑ https://twitter.com/johnjohanas/status/1630912974297907201?s=20
10. ↑ https://twitter.com/johnjohanas/status/1633688894402342913?s=20
11. ↑ CGWorld's article about Hi-Fi RUSH's Visual Development