Ryoken Takahiro

Ryoken Takahiro

Ryoken Takahiro

Kanji	良謙貴浩
Rōmaji	Takahiro Ryoken
Also known as	Water Emperor Ryoken (Middle School and High School Peers) Ryo (General Nickname from friends) info

Description

Gender	Male
Sign	Capricorn
Birthday	January 17th
Age	17 (Eternal Summer) 18 (Dive to the Future) 18 -> 19 (Final Stroke Part 1) 19 -> 20 (Final Stroke Part 2)
Height	180cm (5'11)
Weight	72.5kg (160lbs)

Professional Status

Occupation	University Student Aspiring Olympic Athlete
Education	Hidaka University Iwatobi High School (former) Kazami High School (former) Unnamed Middle School (former)
Clubs	Hidaka University Swim Team Iwatobi High School Swim Team (former) Kazami High School Swim Team (former) Unnamed Middle School Swim Team (former)
Position	Lead Butterfly Swimmer (Iwatobi High School)
Swim Style	Butterfly (Specialty) Breaststroke Backstroke Frestyle
Events	100m Butterfly 200m Butterfly 400 Individual Medley 4x100 Medley Relay

Personal Status

Relatives

Hiroki and Viola Takahiro (Parents) Katarina Takahiro (Younger Sister) Gou Matsuoka (Wife) Rin Matsuoka (Brother-In-Law) Miyako Matsuoka (Mother-In-Law)

Debut

Anime	Episode 13
Light Novel / Manga	CHAPTER HERE

Voice Actors

Japanese	Jun Fukuyama
English	Robbie Daymond

Ryoken Takahiro (良謙貴浩 Takahiro Ryoken) is a fan character for the Free! anime joining the cast at the beginning of Eternal Summer after transferring to Iwatobi High School in his 3rd year following 2 years at Kazami High School but has since graduated and moved on to (a yet to be chosen) university and joined their swim team prior to his injury in his first year. Despite the injury, Ryoken has a passion for swimming with the dream of being an Olympic swimmer, he's well versed in the four Olympian styles of swimming but primarily focuses on the butterfly stroke and intends to compete on a global level once recovered.

Appearance

Ryoken is a fairly tall tanned skin young man who standing at 180cm or 5'11 is the second largest member of the Iwatobi Swim Team being just slightly shorter than Makato Tachibana. Due to spending the majority of his life swimming and training for the Olympics, Ryoken has a rather musclular physique having what Gou Matsuoka calls "The Perfect Body" (though this is most likely her perspective given her obsession with muscles).

Unlike most characters of the series, Ryoken sports two hair colors with his bangs and back portion of his hair being a neon blue while the main portion of his hair being persian blue in color along with eyes of the same color. When at school, Ryoken wears the standard uniform of male students while his casual outfit is more varied. When swimming, he tends to wear swimskin shorts that have ablue or at times orange pattern on the side with goggles of the same color. Though generally when he isn't swimming, Ryoken is often seen wearing a red cashmere scarf that he's almost never seen without.

Personality

Ryoken often displays a laidback and easy going attitude generally being easy to get along with, preferring to not let much bother him, being content with keeping to himself to avoid conflicts when he can but willing to jump into something if he feels it’s necessary displaying characteristics of an introverted-extrovert. Typically he displays a personality being a mix of Mako Tachibana being as quiet and soft spoken with a strong sense of camaraderie and sociable and talkative when amongst friends or those he’s comfortable around with a strong concern for their well being as Nagisa Hazuki even if not to the same degree. With his laid back personality when his friends tend to get loud and bicker with their antics he’s often just watching or ignoring them amused with it before he inevitably gets dragged into it and goes along with it for a short while

Having been in swim teams since he was 10, Ryoken puts a lot of emphasis on the value of teamwork and being on the same page as his friend for both their success as a team and their individual success caring about their performances in the pool as much as his own, feeling that with them being on the same team, it’d be best for them to know the insides and outs of each other’s styles to build off of each to perform at their best which leads to hangouts outside of the pool allowing them to grow closer as friends first and teammates second with the mindset of “There’s no ‘I’ in team”. This extends to those who don’t get into the pool such as Gou Matsuoka after he joined the Iwatobi Swimming team believing she was as important to the team as those who swam and credited her for being a major part of their success with her training regimens (even if it was tweaked version of her brother’s) and her getting the team on a better diet believing any little thing she did was still vital to team. Though the camaraderie he feels for his team(s) remains after they’ve gone their separate ways believing that the water is something that connects them all no matter how much they may grow/change physically and mentally.

Ryoken has a modest personality, despite him being seen as 'perfect' being considered tall on top of being a talented swimmer with his middle school referring to him as “Emperor of the Sea, Ryoken” being able to do multiple styles with consistently good grades. However, despite all of this, Ryoken, prefers not putting much stock into what others say about him, choosing to show humility by writing off such things as his genetics for his height, his scholarship being the result of his hardwork in the pool with his grades being good because he has to make good grades to keep his scholarship, with simply a humble ‘thank you’ and not dwell too much on it.

Though despite his humility, he can be a good sport in the pool opting to shake his opponents hand as a showing of respect. Though despite his sportsmen ship, he isn’t immune to getting frustrated if his performance in the pool isn’t up to his standard with a tendency to push himself a bit too hard at times and dwell to much on his mistakes, feeling he has to live up to an expectation he sets upon himself for both his dream and his family who he left to pursue after getting his scholarship.

Due to his dream of being an Olympic level swimmer, Ryoken has a strong work ethic knowing how huge it is for an athlete to reach the Olympics and knows one won’t reach such a goal on talent alone which adds to him brushing off compliments of his ‘talent’ which such things does get under his skin feeling as though he’s being viewed as someone who was born with a knack for swimming and ignoring the blood, sweat, and tears from hours/years of work to get to where he is. Because of his dream and experience in both the individual and relay medley along with swimming for a decade, Ryoken shows he’s rather disciplined with his swimming, having the ‘ideal form’ to pace himself to conserve energy when in the pool and use it for the final spurt.

History

Childhood

Ryoken was born in Stockholm, Sweden where he lived for the first eight years of his life before moving to his father’s home country of Japan where he learned how to swim following his falling love with the water around the time he was 8 where watching the Summer Olympics sought to have a career like that where he could see the world while simultaneously swimming on a grand stage.

Elementary

After turning 10, Ryoken began learning how to swim in a more competitive since before he and his family would leave Sweden and return to his father's home country of Japan were he'd finish out his primary education

Junior High School

TBW

High School

Ryoken would initially attend Kazami High School with Asahi Shiina whom he'd become close with before transferring to Iwatobi High School in his 3rd year and finish high school there. TBW

University

TBW

Story

Main article: Original Character/Story

Skill

Stats (specific timeframe, if applicable):

Relationships

Main article: Original Character/Relationships

Trivia

• Ryoken is multilingual being able to fluently speak: Swedish, English, and Japanese
• Ryoken’s love for water was born from astraphobia (Fear of Thunderstorms) he had when he was younger that lasted for a couple of years before his mother would insist he focus on listening to the rain rather than the boom of thunder which led to him loving the sound of running water whether it’s rain, the ocean, or rivers. This results in hobbies such as:
  • Listening to Rain during storms
  • Going on walks on the beach later in the day when no one else is there
  • Going on hikes close by streams
• Ryoken in his final year of high school used the pronoun 僕 (Boku) reflect his humble nature. Though toward the end of his high school career and time in college before his injury, he began to use 俺 (Ore) reflecting his more prideful shift in personality. Although after being injured and recovering he reverted back to using "boku" while also using 私 (Watashi).
• Ryoken's animal motif is a sea lion .
• Ryoken is a fan of the Pokemon series and has a preference for water Pokemon with his favorite being Greninja and Vaporeon while his favorite region is Hoenn. He in particular loves the ‘Surf’ theme especially from Kanto, Hoenn, and Unova.
• Like Haruka, Ryoken has a fondness for seafood particularly fish with his favorite being catfish and salmon salad. Albeit he doesn’t eat it constantly as Haru does with mackerel. Ironically, despite his love for fish he hates tuna.
• Ryoken’s diet was initially unbalanced with Ryoken believing he can burn off extra calories through his workouts and swimming before Gou got his diet on track.
• Ryoken’s name “良謙貴浩” could be translated to “Humility brings Prosperity” which hints to the theme of Ryoken’s story.
• One of Ryoken’s pet peeves is having his talents repeatedly mentioned in front of him or constantly being told he’s talented, mainly because it makes him feel as though all of the time and effort he spends practicing to better himself is being invalidated and not noticed.
• Ryoken likes watching Synchronized Swimming, even though he himself doesn't do it
• Ryoken loves snowboarding games with the SSX sereis being his favorite
• Outside of swimming, Ryoken generally enjoys other water-based activities such as
  • Canoeing
  • Water Polo
  • Marco Polo
• Ryoken’s scarf is a gift from his parents meant to symbolize his dream of being a swimmer.
• Ryoken is a dog person, owning a chocolate labrodor named "Marabou" or "Snickers" that lives in his apartment
• Even though he’s capable each type of competitive style of swimming he prefers the butterfly.
  • Backstroke is something he prefers to do for casual swimming when he just wants to be in the water
  • Freestyle is typically a warm up style for him
  • Breastroke is his second best style due to it’s similarity to butterfly

Quotes

—Ryoken asserting his views of 'perfection'Other Character

• (Ryoken to Haruka Nanase) "You understand me don't you? I can see you're not too talkative so from swimming together can you understand the person I am and the relationship I have with the water is no different from yours. So even if we're a little different we have that connecting us."
• (To Gou Matsuoka) "It's sad you see things that way, you do more than realize. You come up with our training even if not being a swimmer, you have us eating right, do all you can to improve our times. You see things that matter to a professional swimmer or to a manager, so I think you do just fine as a job, even more so that none of us would be here without you like you wouldn't be hear without any of us. That's what a team is. You think we're a great team and you're a bad manager but we're all in this together, we're a great team because we have a great manager who wants us to succeed as we do and want her to know she's a major part of this team."
• (To Maiko Izumi)"How did you do it? Get so badly injured but still see yourself doing what you loved?."