Akane Shinjo

* **Overview**
* Synopsis
* Relationships
* Gallery

* Repli-Compoid Avatar
* New Order
* Human

## Portrayal

Akane Shinjo (新条アカネ, *Shinjou Akane*) is one of the main characters and alongside Alexis Kerib, she served as a central antagonist in **SSSS.GRIDMAN**. Alexis・Kerib created Zegga (ゼッガー, *Zeggā*) using Akane Shinjo as a basis.

## Appearance

### Human Form

Appearance-wise, Akane's real-life self, as confirmed in the ending and the series' video theme song, greatly resembles Rikka albeit less assuming. She also wears a white scarf in addition of a school uniform.

### Repli-compoid Avatar Form

Akane's repli-compoid avatar is a young girl who is easily recognizable by her pale pink, bob-styled short hair and reddish-pink eyes. She is normally seen wearing an outfit comprised of a white, button-up shirt, purple ribbon, dark purple jacket with pink trim and a black lining, a charcoal gray skirt, light gray leggings, and black shoes. She is usually barefoot at home, and wears pink glasses with a cracked right lens, along with a headset to communicate with Alexis Kerib.

During the field trip in the mountains, she wore a ruffled white bikini top that exposed her cleavage, along with a matching skirt-like bottom.

Throughout the series, she is noted to be very beautiful and to have a full figure by other classmates, especially Utsumi.

## Personality

Akane appears to be a nice girl, offering Yuta a special dog when he forgets his lunch. However, behind that facade lies a mentally troubled individual with sociopathic tendencies, easily harboring petty grudges against anyone who wrongs her, even if it was an accident. In the first episode, the special dog she offered Yuta gets knocked to the floor because of a volleyball thrown by Sakiru Tonkawa. Akane retaliated by sending Ghoulghilas to kill Tonkawa while it wreaked havoc on the city. This malice even extended to her homeroom teacher, whom she nearly killed with Devadadan after he bumped into her without apologizing.

She is also shown to be extremely manipulative. She keeps up her kind and peaceful charade on a daily basis, only showing her true colors to those who knew beforehand, or figure out the truth for themselves. This plays into her manipulation tactics.

She also displays violent tendencies when she gets frustrated. For instance, she kicks her monitor, throws things, and shatters the screens of all her computers, phones, and tablets. Alexis Kerib even remarks on this, and calls her "violent."

## Abilities

Akane is stated to be a gifted young woman who, according to Sho, is skilful in many things.

* **Repli-compoid Avatar**: In Tsutsujidai, Akane appears through a Repli-compoid Avatar which appearance reflects that of perfect girl in her image and thus has impressive skills in her disposal, some may or may not carried over from her real-self in the real world.
	+ **Righting Reflex**: Akane's Repli-compoid avatar can land on her feet from great heights like a cat, which obviously involuntarily since it's part of the avatar's system.
	+ **Age-changing**: As shown in Hime and Samurai, Akane's Repli-compoid avatar can change its age to further her disguise.
* **Artistic Skills**: Akane is shown to be very adept at art, possibly carried over from real-world, and has no trouble sculpting the forms of Monster for Alexis to bring to life. These Monsters are extremely detailed in both design and aesthetics - akin to ones made by a professional modeller.
* **Technology Acuity**: Mirroring her predecessor Takeshi, Akane is remarkable when it comes about using and tinkering with technology. A testament of this was her use of a remote-controlled drone that may or may not built by herself. It's unclear whether this exclusive to her Repli-compoid Avatar, however.

## Trivia

* Akane's character is partly based on Takeshi Todo from live-action Gridman series as well as the latter's expy/successor in the scrapped show that later became the basis to *SSSS.GRIDMAN*, Gridman F. In stark contrast of the more introverted and unlucky Takeshi, however, Akane managed to put up a friendly facade in front of everyone and is the ace of her class, further reinforcing her disguise.
	+ Another basis to Akane is a minor character whom shared her namesake from episode 16 of *Ultraman Cosmos*, Akane Tachibana. Like the former, this Akane was mentally troubled and manipulated by a cosmic entity who even helped her created a kaiju where in her case, Chaos Head. Not surprisingly, both shows had Keiichi Hasegawa as their writer.
	+ As with many other characters in *SSSS.GRIDMAN*, Akane's design has minor references to Transformers franchise color. scheme-wise where in her case, matches that of Optimus Prime's *Shattered Glass* incarnation. In addition, the glasses she wears are cracked in its right side, just like one of the parts of Shattered Glass' Optimus Prime.
		- She would be later homaged back in Transformers by Transformers Generations Selects manga character Purple Wicked Convoy who uses Shattered Glass Optimus Prime body who has a fond for popsicles, and has a similar personality to her such has having creating the Pretender Monsters and Hybrid Creatures homaging Akane’s Kaiju Collection. During God Neptune manga 1 he speaks to CyberVerse Shockwave through a computer same way Akane contacts Alexis Kerib. Ironically this version of Shockwave and Alexis are voiced by Tetsu Inada. Her color scheme would be used for the Purple Order Sentinel Ship’s which was explicitly stated by colorist Josh Perez that he took inspiration from her.
	+ In a nod to how Nemesis Prime was eventually redeemed and became Nova Prime, Akane's New Order costume is primarily white, with a tiny Matrix of Leadership pin on the collar.
* Akane's voice actress, Reina Ueda, also voices Jasminka Antonenko from *Little Witch Academia*, another Trigger production.

## References

1. ↑ SSSS.GRIDMAN 超全集
2. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4CIYS1Bme4
3. ↑ *SSSS.GRIDMAN* Episode 1 - Awakening
4. ↑ *SSSS.GRIDMAN* Episode 2 - Restoration