Characters / The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa

Characters from The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa.

Ringo and the gang:

Ringo Ishikawa

• Anti-Hero: Willing—and eager—to use violence to achieve his aims. Melancholic, apathetic, and even comes off as lazy to his peers and teachers. It comes with the territory of being a gang leader. However, towards his classmates and friends, he's surprisingly altruistic.
• Blood Knight: Ringo plays it straight. For instance, he has no qualms against encouraging Shiro to take on Nakazawa's gang in vengeance for one of their members' dating Shiro's girlfriend, and Ringo tags along with him for the fight.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: It's implied by a number of characters that Ringo suffers from this. In a double-date sequence, Ringo's date argues that this is how Ringo's cowardice manifests. Although he is capable, he is reluctant to display his talents, because people will come to rely on him for those talents. In response, he underperforms.
• Celibate Hero: In spite of his apparent cluelessness towards romance, averted. When Noboru asks him about his experience with women, Ringo admits that he has been with them before. He refers to it as "Nothing special."
• Cultured Badass: Ringo is surprisingly melancholy and intellectual for a street punk. You can get him to read books from both the library as well as the local bookstore in between the bits of gang violence he engages in.
  • Pop-Cultured Badass: On the other hand he's also fond of martial arts movies and is initially a bit annoyed when Frank the video store owner clarifies that the Bruce Lee poster at the front of his shop is an ad for a documentary rather than one of his films.
• Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: Implied to be the source of Ringo's perpetual melancholy. Because he also has an antipathy towards following through with any such purpose—for reasons that have to do with his own personal philosophy and experiences—he is stymied and unfulfilled.
• Determinator: While he might seem like a slacker, when Ringo is incited to act, nothing will stop him. Not even the prospect of taking on an entire school gang without anyone to back him up.
• Dismotivation: One of Ringo's defining self-expressed character flaws, and the reason for his potential Brilliant, but Lazy status.
• Experienced Protagonist: Ringo's been a yankee delinquent for quite some time before the game started.
• Fatal Flaw: Idealism, for Ringo. Especially a poor combination with his wrathfulness.
• Hidden Depths: Ringo can also turn out to have unplumbed depths if the player chooses to have him indulge in the classical works available at the local bookstore.
• Honor Before Reason: Ringo, in keeping with his steadfast commitment to his personal moral code, acts this way. This behavior is the major factor fueling the conflict in the climax of the game.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Ringo fails to perceive the deeper character flaws of his friends. As a result, he is left to face his final fight alone, unwilling to believe they would abandon him.
• I Just Want to Be Loved: Downplayed, but revealed to be a key aspect of Ringo's motivations (or demotivations). Because he feels that excelling in anything leads people to rely on him, and value him for those talents alone, he slacks off instead. One of the few desires he voices in-game is for people to care about each other for no other reason than that they exist. In pursuit of this desire, he is very willing to put himself on the line for his friends, to his own detriment.
• Jaded Washout: Ringo is seen this way by some of his ex-mentors. Ringo reveals his reasons for becoming so jaded partway through the game.
• Jerkass with a Heart of Gold: Even if the player plays Ringo to be a jerk, Ringo will still have several redeeming moments that indicate a profound idealism and sense of duty to the people around him.
• Mr. Vice Guy: Very wrathful. His knee-jerk reaction to any slight against him or his friends is to commit violence. If not for this, he'd be a fairly heroic, decent person.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Ringo's choice to break the established agreement between the school gangs about issuing official challenges sets up the final conflict in the endgame. His choice has disastrous results for Goro.
• Pragmatic Hero: Ringo, if the player isn't wantonly attacking the other school gangs. In the context of the game's script, Ringo is a gang leader because he enjoys it, but also because he believes that he has a moral code to uphold, and that he should fight to adhere to those ideals.
• Principles Zealot: Ringo's defining character trait.
• The Perils of Being the Best: He's conscious of them, and they are his primary source of Dismotivation.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: After Nakazawa's gang puts Goro into a coma, Ringo cannot be dissuaded from taking out every last one of them.
• Tragic Mistake: Ringo's decision to attack Nakazawa's gang without issuing a formal challenge. The rash decision provokes Nakazawa's gang to disregard the rules and go after Ringo's crew in full force. The aftermath puts Goro into a coma and leads to the dissolution of Ringo's gang, leaving him to face Nakazawa's gang on his own.
• Trauma Conga Line: At the climax of the game, Ringo's actions have provoked Nakazawa's gang to ambush Goro and put him into a coma, giving Ringo's friends the impetus they need to finally part ways and leave Ringo to avenge Goro on his own. Ringo responds by attacking the entirety of Nakazawa's gang alone, with his final fate left unknown.
• Treachery Is a Special Kind of Evil: Based on his statements and his responses to characters in literature like the Anna Karenina Expy, Ringo strongly believes this. The Irony is that he is faced with the variable treacheries of his friends in the endgame.
• Tragic Hero: Ringo Ishikawa, the titular character. A theme of the game is how his ideals about friendship and loyalty will not withstand the transition from adolescence into adulthood. In spite of this, Ringo refuses to change. What keeps him from swerving into Byronic Hero territory is his naivete and idealism.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: Ringo, surprisingly given his lifestyle and the setting he lives in. It ends up causing him quite a bit of trouble.
• Uncertain Doom: Ringo, in the ending. Whether or not he survives the onslaught of Nakazawa's gang is left unanswered.
• Violence is the Only Option: As a gang-leader, it should be unsurprising that Ringo believes this.

Ken Nakamura

• Brutal Honesty: Ken's dialogue almost exclusively consists of putting forth hard truths to his comrades.
• Career-Ending Injury: Ken ends up making his pinky finger injury stick around long term, which is why he both quits boxing and avoids hanging out with the gang unless absolutely necessary.
• Dumb Jock: Averted with Ken. In spite of being the most athletically-driven member of Ringo's gang, he has the most consistently decent scores of the group.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Ken's statements are presented this way.
  • He points out to Shiro that his infatuation with Madoka is foolish, and he's right in the sense that high school love is a tumultuous mess. He's also proven right when Madoka cheats on Shiro.
  • In the endgame, he also tells Ringo straightforwardly that no one cares about being in a high school gang anymore, that Ringo has to grow up. Given what Ringo's choices up to that point and beyond cause, he isn't wrong.
• Love Makes You Dumb: Ken firmly believes this, and informs Shiro as much.
• Rebellious Rebel: Of all of Ringo's friends who eventually abandon him, Ken's motivations fit this trope the most. He has become disillusioned with the high-school tough-guy image that Ringo encourages his friends to emulate, and his decision to leave the group is based primarily upon seeing it all as childish.
• Took a Level in Cynic: He's the most disillusioned of all Ringo's friends. During the prologue, he states that he looks forward to the gang's opportunity to leave a legacy behind through their delinquent activities. After a year has passed, he is as melancholic as anyone else, distant from his friends, and by the end of the game, admits to Ringo that he just doesn't care about any of it anymore.

Masaru Takahashi

• Delinquent Hair: He has blond hair.
• Flaw Exploitation: Murakawa to Masaru, by way of Masaru's gambling addiction.
• Hypocrite: When Ringo expresses disapproval that Masaru is bullying fellow classmates for lunch money, Masaru counters that as a delinquent gang leader, Ringo has no moral ground to stand on, especially since he doesn't come from the poor background that Masaru and his mother do. It's later revealed that Masaru's constant scraping for cash is to fuel his illicit gambling addiction, and he's deeply in debt to the Yakuza.
• The Gambling Addict: Masaru becomes one and ends up owing quite a bit of money to Murakawa, the local Yakuza.

Shiro Abe

• Conflicting Loyalty: Shiro's loyalty to Ringo and the gang is complicated by his loyalty to Madoka, his girlfriend. At the climax, he chooses Madoka over his friends.

Goro Yamaguchi

• Blood Knight: Goro is a downplayed example; his violent tendencies stem from unresolved personal issues.
• The Big Guy: Goro, who is also the most violent of the gang. At the start of the game, he has the highest health stat.
• Dumb Muscle: He scores in an F in every subject. However, this may be because his true intellect is obfuscating by his thuggish posturing and his failure to show up to any exams.
• Hidden Depths: Goro's foray into theatre takes the rest of his friends by surprise. He turns out to be quite the committed actor.
• Unmanly Secret: From the perspective of some members of Ringo's gang, Goro's hobby as a thespian is this.

Ringo's schoolmates:

Noboru

"A man's word is his bond, Ringo. Especially a word to yourself."

A straight-laced, academically proficient student in Ringo's class. Noboru and Ringo used to be classmates in elementary school, and they are on friendly terms. Ringo can speak to Noboru about various developments in contemporary geek culture for the setting of the game.

• Cloudcuckoolander: At one point, he tells Ringo that Japan is going to start selling mechas to other countries.
• Nerds Are Virgins: Admits as much to Ringo.

Aiko

Madoka

• Small Role, Big Impact: Her affairs leads to Ringo and Shiro taking on Nakazawa's gang, which ends with Goro being in a coma.

Ringo's teachers:

Harima

Ringo's ex-karate instructor.

• Reasonable Authority Figure: When he hears that Ringo is uncertain about rejoining the karate team, he encourages him to drop by and talk to him and the other members.

Machida

"You aren't a stupid boy, Ishikawa, maybe you should clean up your act."

The guidance counselor at Ringo's high school.

• Corrupt Bureaucrat: A downplayed example. He originally pushed for Ringo and the crew to be expelled for a Noodle Incident after the Time Skip, but the Principal nixed the idea. In response, Machida tells Ringo and Masaru that he'll do all he can to make sure they graduate. Masaru postulates that this is because it would be bad for the school's stats if they were to be held back a year.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: In spite of Masaru's speculation, Machida is otherwise supportive of Ringo and encourages him to take his work seriously. If Ringo scores straight-As, then Machida will offer Ringo a research scholarship as an incentive for him to improve himself.

Northern High:

In General

• Always Chaotic Evil: They are allied with no other school and are always hostile to Ringo. And the other schools.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: They wear red. This coincides with their perpetual hostility.

Nakazawa

The leader of the Northern High gang.

• Knight of Cerebus: Once he starts taking a more active role in the plot, events take a much darker turn, much faster, for the protagonists.
• Orcus on His Throne: After the prologue, he never directly comes in contact with Ringo or his crew. Instead, he sends his goons to do his dirty work.
• The Rival: To Ringo and his gang.

Hattori Kenichi

A member of the Northern High gang who challenges Ken to a fight one day after school.

• Curb-Stomp Battle: His battle against Ken is completely one-sided, in Ken's favor. Ken fractures his own wrist in the process of punching him, not because Hattori managed to get any kind of offense against him.
• Let's Fight Like Gentlemen: This is how he challenges Ken to a battle.
• Small Role, Big Impact: His schoolyard challenge to Ken results in Ken fracturing his hand, preventing any progress in his recovery from his prior injuries. As a result, Ken's opportunity at becoming a boxing champion is a pipedream, and Ken's attitude towards the high school gang life sours severely.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Averted. He's fully aware that he's a nobody, and hopes to defeat Ken in order to make a name for himself.
  Hattori: "I'm Hattori Kenichi from Northern High."
  Ken: "Never heard of you."
  Hattori: "Nobody has."

Trainers:

Takamura

• Dumb Jock: Averted with Takamura the manager of the local gym. He'll occasionally muse about Greek Mythology, philosophy and other literature. When Ringo explains to him that one book you're having him read isnt actually The Illiad but is really just a contemporary book using the name Odysseus as a framing device he'll scoff and go on a rant about "smart ass contemporary writers" and their tendency to "shit on the classics with their faggotish whining".

Watanabe

• Everyone Has Standards: Warns Ringo against going to see Ken if he's there to train at the gym, given that he knows of his delinquent activities.

Civilians:

Murakawa

• Loan Shark: He's responsible for Masaru having a gambling debt to him.

Storeowners:

Guy (Bookstore)

• Misogyny: His summary of the plot of "Anna," a stand-in for Anna Karenina, is that it's about "this crazy whore."

Kondo (Burger Shop)

The owner of the burger shop. He's an old acquaintance of Ringo's who never went to high school, and is on fairly friendly terms with Ringo, calling him "Ringoman." Kondo encourages Ringo to read the books at the school library and educate himself. He also fancies himself an anticapitalist nonconformist.

• Capitalism Is Bad: According to him. Seems to be Played for Laughs.
• The Nicknamer: Refers to Ringo as "Ringoman," for some reason.

Girl (Grocery Store)