doormat_hikari | app for vatheon

[ Player Name ] : Sammy
[ Personal DW ] :

satrugha
[ Age ] : 28ish
[ Timezone ] : PST (US)
[ Other Characters ] : Kenshin

otaku_hitman

[ Character's Name ] : Ryou Bakura (western order)
[ Character's Age ] : 18
[ Series ] : Yu-Gi-Oh!
[ Canon Point ] : end of the manga, after the ceremonial battle

[ History ] :
http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Ryou_Bakura#Biography (all of it)

[ Personality ] :
Ryou is a rather sweet and friendly person. He's easy to approach, easy to befriend, and rather easy to get along with. He first arrives as a mysterious transfer student that sets the girls wild. He immediately hits it off with Yugi and the gang, befriending them really fast and remains friends with them throughout the entire series. As with many of Yugi's friends, friendship is very important to Ryou. He seems to have no friends outside Yugi and company, nor does he ever show any sign of wanting to befriend anyone else. Because of this, Ryou's friends are very important to him (they also consider him a very good friend, in return).

Ryou is often left alone so his friendships with Yugi and company are very important. His sister was killed in a car crash, his father always off to archaeological digs, his mother unknown. His friends are the only thing he has for human company. If anything happened to his friends, Ryou would do what he could to protect them. Ryou isn't a fighter by any means. He's a reclusive gamer. His shadow, Dark Bakura, is, but he could care less about Ryou's friends. Anyway there was one exception, however. When Yugi was lured into a deadly battle with a crazy escape artist, Ryou arrived to beat up the duelist and help Yugi escape from the fire.

In general, Ryou is friendly to strangers and has no problem talking to them either. He's incredibly approachable and easy to befriend, though his strongest friendships are reserved for Yugi and company. He doesn't like being oggled and that's when he becomes a bit coy and catty and would rather be left alone.

Ryou is also incredibly humble. Despite being a game master, he always seems really down to earth. Right after he befriends Yugi and company, he invites his new friends over to play games. He never brags about any of his gaming skills or even grades at school. Ryou extensively uses honorifics, which is considered a polite manner of speaking in Japanese. He uses the less formal honorifics for his friends, which includes -chan and -kun. His words and speech manners are also rather polite (which is translated to a British accent in the dub).

Ryou can come across as very oblivious. He had trouble with his shadow dumping him off in the middle of situations and he was left to himself. Dark Bakura taking over has left a lot of holes in his memory for the past three years, and it had a bit of an impact on his mind. While this doesn't make Ryou any less intelligent, he's just more oblivious. It doesn't seem to bother him.

Ryou has a surprising dark side. In Battle City, Ryou expresses his fascination with the occult and macabre. His deck reflects this, including Ouija boards, possessed paintings, ghosts, and a manifestation of death with a creepy talking baby doll. He doesn't find anything really creepy about it, but instead seems to find it more amusing and fascinating.

Ryou also has somewhat of an odd violent side. The tendencies are incredibly passive and only directed at his shadow self. When Dark Bakura first appeared, he took over Ryou's body, leaving Ryou completely out of control. When Ryou did finally regain control of his own body, he impaled his hand on the castle of the game board. Dark Bakura repays the favor a few seasons later when he slices up his arm. Ryou has never turned any sort of violence out against anyone else; it's only ever been against his shadow self. (The one exception is when he went to rescue Yugi).

Ryou also has an odd habit of writing letters to his dead sister. There aren't any details about why he does it, but it could be missing her or loneliness, as he does live alone. His father is always away on archaeological endeavors and his mother is never mentioned.

[ Strengths/Weaknesses ] :
Strengths:
- Ryou is easily one of the smartest characters in the series (surpassed by Seto Kaiba and maybe Pegasus (maybe)). He's considered a gaming genius, being a champion in many types of games, particularly board games and is apparently an excellent dungeon master. His entire apartment is filled with gaming figures and game pieces. He also builds rather complex Duel Monsters decks, involving complex traps and the ability to completely lock-down his opponents. All the decks his shadow Dark Bakura uses were built by Ryou.

- Ryou is incredibly friendly. He's easy to approach and is often classified as "fluffy". No one in the entire series actually hates him. Kaiba doesn't seem to care for him but then again, Kaiba doesn't care for many people.

- Ryou is incredibly durable, despite appearing rather weak. He impales his hand but has no visible scarring soon thereafter. His shadow slices up his arm but somehow he's still moving around just fine. (He does later become weakened by the stress of a battle, but that's well after he first gets cut). He only fell into a coma with exhaustion (and recovered within a few days).

Weaknesses:
- Ryou is a bit of a pushover. While he does have his own opinion in many things, he is easily persuaded by his friends to do something.

- Ryou can get lost sometimes. He seems to have a bit of a poor sense of direction. His shadow, on the other hand, seems to have a very good sense of direction. It doesn't help with the obliviousness he seemed to develop thanks to his shadow dumping him places randomly and suddenly.

[ Other Important Facts ] :
Throughout a good deal of the series's events, Ryou is suppressed or controlled by his shadow, aka Dark Bakura. At first, Ryou isn't sure what is going on, just that something is possessing him. By the end of Battle City, Ryou is well aware of this Dark Bakura. The two don't necessarily get along. Dark Bakura does protect Ryou, but he's also a total douche. He also would suddenly let Ryou have control back, leaving poor Ryou confused and completely lost. Ryou is now free of Dark Bakura and in complete control of his own self.

It is unsure of how much of Dark Bakura has rubbed off on Ryou, as he's had Dark Bakura in his own soul for 3 years. Ryou's very sweet but Dark Bakura may have brought Ryou's darker tendencies to the surface while Ryou still retained his happy fluffy personality.

Ryou's father was also an archaeologist. As a result, Ryou seems to have a huge fascination with Egyptian history (and probably a rather large understanding of it too).

Ryou also has an amazingly huge appetite. He's been known to eat full 5 course meals without getting full. Also during Battle City, when he was in control, he'd sneak out and get food, particularly bananas and milk.

[ Sample ] :
Ryou's arrival had been less than pleasant. His sudden arrival started with showing up upside down in the fountain, completely dazed and lost. He wasn't sure how he'd gotten here. It looked like a European plaza, and he was pretty sure he'd made it back to Japan after the Ceremonial Battle in Egypt. This was definitely not Japan, he could tell that much.

He straightened himself up, standing up from the fountain, checking first to make sure his deck was okay and second to make sure he didn't have the Millennium Ring (as it had a horrible habit of finding its way back to him). Last thing he really wanted was to be stuck in some unknown location with that irritating spirit trolling him all the time. Thankfully no ring, deck was fine.

And so he took to wandering after the people kept smiling at him like Children of the Corn or some creepy movie. And then it started raining. No, wait a second. He looked up at the sky only to be nailed on the face by a rubber ducky. He stared at it with his large eyes curiously before leaning over and picking it up, giving it a gentle squeeze. It squeaked back at him. "This is odd," he mused to himself, wondering where such an oddity may have come from.

SQUEAK

Another hit him on the back of the head. "What in the world?" He picked up the second one. This one had cute pink spots, unlike the other one which was blue and looked like it was going to a party. It too squeaked when he squeezed it.

SQUEAK. SQUEAK. SQUEAK.

Before he realized it, he was being barraged by falling rubber duckies. "Oh dear."

[ Questions? Comments? Concerns? ] :
nope