Ritsu is a very sharp, logically-driven student. Despite being percieved as asocial, she's very open-minded to others and wants to learn as many lessons from the people around her as possible. She's deeply sympathetic to those who are wronged or hurt, and wants to lend her talents to help people en masse. While she comes across as mature and self-aware (and that's not necessarily inaccurate), her limited social exposure growing up causes her to struggle with bluntness and emotional connection in deeper conversations with others. She approaches social interaction very logically, like it's a science!

When living in the dorm, she starts out by automatically keeping herself out of everyone else's business. She has a tendancy to get "out of the way" automatically of people she loves, always naturally drifting to be more of a "spectator" to people. It takes them a while to get her out of this mindset.

When confronted or approached, she is courteous, formal, and surprisingly people-pleasing; she values first impressions more than you'd expect. However in the case of her friends, once she's comfortable, sometimes she'll tease those she's close to, loving to see people's reactions to her suddenly messing with them. She's well aware of the way that she comes off and doesn't have any reservations with manipulating it to surprise people for a little fun smiles

When she's carrying out her vigilantism, she plays a character of sorts. To her victims, she can be very sadistic, cruel, and ruthless- this is all in the interest of making sure her victims die as scared and as miserable as possible.

Ritsu is painfully logical in her thought patterns, to the point it detaches her from being able to properly feel her own emotions. She works through the emotions of her and others through objective analysis and psychology, making it difficult for her to empathize and connect.

This mindset is a double edged sword; it helps snuff out instinctive fear and terror in tense situations, especially during combat, and makes her act fast and quick (and push others to do the same).

However, this thought process keeps her from being able to feel her own emotions to a full, healthy extent. This is a direct cause of why she feels disconnected from people. It also causes her to freeze up when facing phenomena that doesn't have a typical, logical explanation.

Ritsu's love for justice is a strong motivator to everything she does. It guides her whole life, and she believes that there is no situation in which what goes around shouldn't come back around.

For example, Ritsu has very dangerous opinions on violence, believing it to be a necessary metric in situations where it probably isn't. She believes it's the quickest and easiest answer to many of her issues with people, and doesn't fully understand the consequences to violence, or the trauma it can inflict on people.

This is because her mindset to everything in life is so mutual, she doesn't really fear the threat of violence/death towards herself at all. As such, has no reservations to being violent towards others. Ritsu will be fully accepting of any violence done to her, and likely not resist, knowing she's done the same- in fact, she might take a little joy in it, feeling like it's a reassurance that what she does is okay.

She self-punishes herself to such an extreme degree, depriving herself of everything good or indulgent in life, because she thinks it's the price to pay for what she does. Doesn't indulge in good food, living luxuriously, keeping money, maintaining friendships, etc., to keep herself humble and "worthy" of doing what she does.

NOTE: This is her moveset when she's fighting YOU- it'd probably be different for when she's actually on the team I GUESS

Ritsu is a nuke/almighty user concentrated on making every hit count. She has physical skills as a backup (usually for the very likely scenario in which she runs low on SP), but her strengths are very much in magic. She still has solo-focused healing/buffing skills, though, because she's never expected to fight on a team- hence the diarama and tarukaja.

She's one of the final fights, so I want her to pack a punch. She's ruthless, increasing her attack and decreasing your defense as much as possible to try and wipe everyone out in one fell swoop. I'm no pro at combat balance or anything tho sooo SORRY if shes like super op idk i didnt think about this that hard

The main messages of Ritsu's social link are about exploring themes of karma/revenge, and giving an early look into Ritsu’s relationship with violence, and how far she’s willing to go to see justice be served.

RANK 1

Hamuko invites Ritsu out to just hang out. It’s a basic first event- they eat, enjoy the food together! They mostly talk about Hamuko, because Ritsu doesn’t really talk about herself like that lol

RANK 2

The two are back at school, studying in the library. As they’re studying, Ritsu suddenly complains that she can’t focus, because she keeps hearing the whispers of a group of girls.

When she and Hamuko listen in on the gossiping, they realize the girls are talking about another meek student, Yumi, who’s in Ritsu’s class. Ritsu grumbles, but otherwise goes back to studying, sneaking in a comment about how people like that are miserable and insecure.

RANK 3

When they next hang out, Ritsu tells Hamuko that she went to talk to Yumi. Long story short, Ritsu’s extremely worried- Yumi’s not focusing in class, she hides in the bathroom, she’s very jumpy and anxious, etc. Ritsu asks for Hamuko’s help in talking to her.

The two find Yumi, who is doing horribly. But despite that, she has enough energy to still be very avoidant of the pair’s questions, especially about the girls who were gossiping about her to begin with.

It doesn’t take long for them to conclude this is a bullying case. Yumi knows they realized it, and begs them not to tell ANYONE. Once Yumi’s gone, Ritsu asks Hamuko to confront the bully group with her, and she agrees.

RANK 4

Ritsu and Hamuko are after school late this time, mostly messing around with Ritsu’s computers for fun. Very few students are still at school.

They’re alarmed when they hear sirens outside, and rush to see what’s going on, only to see Yumi being wheeled out. The blanket over her is visibly bloody.

The two discover that, while they were hanging out together, the bullies brutally physically assaulted Yumi- kicking, punching/slapping, etc. The worst of it by far was when they used a piece of shattered glass to cut along the full side of Yumi’s torso. They’re furious, but assume the girls are going to get expelled. Knowing their lives will be ruined forever with that expulsion is enough to give the two peace for now.

RANK 5

Surprise! Next rank, the girls pass one of the bullies in the hallway as they’re leaving the school. Long story short, they learn that the girls only got community service hours as punishment for their assault, and will continue to enroll.

Hamuko is livid. But Ritsu is eerily quiet the whole time- she’s still visibly just as angry, but it seems like she has less idea of how to express it. Ritsu tells Hamuko she just needs some time to think, but she’ll have a plan for the next time they meet, leaving Hamuko with the feeling that there is justice to be served.

RANK 6

Ritsu and Hamuko meet up to talk.

Ritsu finally does the most of the talking. She tells Hamuko how she just can’t let this slide- she goes into detail about her very passionate beliefs in karma, how there is no situation where the eye-for-an-eye mentality shouldn’t apply. That if you hurt someone, you should be hurt back.

Hamuko listens as Ritsu tensely explains that they can’t go against Yumi’s plea for them not to tell anyone. It would bring her and her family humiliation and shame, and Ritsu can't live knowing she was responsible for that.

But she can’t live knowing that, because the school covered it up, and the police will never know, then she starts to feel this pull towards wanting to take justice into her own hands- she explains how feels like she physically can’t share a space in the school with them anymore.

When Ritsu says she wants to hurt/cut them back, Hamuko asks her about the risk of expulsion. Ritsu explains that she cares so little about her future life as an adult, that it wouldn’t be a problem- that no career in her future could give her as much fulfillment as serving justice.

She says that her having no stakes/no worry about consequences puts her in a unique position, where she can do something when nobody else can. And she strongly implies that she will, and she’ll update Hamuko later, determined to do it alone.

RANK 7

NOTE: Rank 7 will only be available two weeks after rank 6.

Hamuko goes to their usual meeting spot, but Ritsu doesn’t show. Eventually, she hears an announcement calling Ritsu to the office. Hamuko waits outside the office for her.

When Ritsu comes out, she looks deeply frustrated and troubled. She’s surprised to see Hamuko waiting for her, and pulls her aside to talk.

Ritsu tells Hamuko that she went through it- she found the bullies involved, and physically assaulted them back, including cutting most of them right back. All the girls reported her, and Ritsu tells Hamuko that she has been suspended.

Because her resources are necessary for lesson plans for (basically) the whole science division, they have no choice but to keep her behind the scenes. She’s going to rewrite lesson plans for the future, designed to be independent of her own resources. By the end of this year, Ritsu will be expelled from Gekkoukan.

Ritsu only starts getting visibly emotional/frustrated when she explains that the bullies are still not getting suspended, but rather, are now being seen as victims. Ritsu cut them up so bad, that once they started making a show of it, people began to pity them. She shows extreme frustration that her attempts to bring Yumi justice may have only ended up hurting her more.

Before the rank event ends, she gives a final cryptic implication that she will get rid of those girls, no matter what it takes.

RANK 8

NOTE: Ritsu’s meetup spot changes from in the hall, to right outside the faculty offices, where she’s rewriting the lessons. She won’t be out in the classroom hallways anymore.

Hamuko, of course, feels extreme frustration at the injustice, too. Ritsu explains that they might be able to get the girls suspended if Ritsu can get her hands on one of their phones. She could extract pictures/videos that the bullies took of the incident (as they know they did from Yumi’s account), and use those as hard evidence of their cruelty. Hamuko agrees to help her, and together they find, corner, and confront one of the girls.

Ritsu takes very visible delight in being able to continue to bully her right back.

Hamuko’s more of a backup as Ritsu takes charge, managing to take the phone and telling the girl she’ll get it back tomorrow. She accompanies Ritsu as she puts her tech wizardry to work! After appropriately censoring Yumi as much as possible, to minimize the humiliation she could feel, she compiles the evidence to present to the administration.

Ritsu is sure that, with actual picture/video evidence of the evil of these girls (as opposed to simple text on a case report), the staff could surely be persuaded into a suspension. Hamuko agrees, and after Ritsu thanks her for her help, they go their separate ways.

RANK 9

Ritsu and Hamuko storm into the office together.

They were right- the combination of the bloody, brutal visuals of the incident (as well as the genuinely unbelievable cruelty of the girls in the videos), as well as a passionate and very aggressive speech from Ritsu, persuaded administration to start the process of suspending the students.

Some faculty are hesitant at first, given the case was already closed. However, Ritsu- feeling like she has nothing to lose now- lies and says the girls sent these videos around to other students. So, if they leak it, and it gets around that something this brutal and bloody happened at their school, well. They’re fucked! And that pretty much does the job of persuading them.

They do not lift Ritsu’s suspension, of course, but very bitterly agree to suspend the bullies.

Emotions and anger are still running high in the two when they leave the office, but they feel good. As bumpy as the road to justice was, they both feel like they still helped serve it. They’re tired, though, and both walk right back to the dorm in comfortable silence.

RANK 10

The two go to the hospital where Yumi is. They decide not to bring up anything about what had happened- they don’t want to bring more stress to her while she’s recovering. They bring Yumi snacks and talk for a bit. It’s normal chat, just talking about random school things, music, etc.- a talk where none of them have to think about anything that had happened, and just chat as schoolmates.

When they leave, Ritsu seems fully satisfied and happy with what’s happened to her, regardless of her imminent expulsion. She thanks Hamuko profusely for helping her with this, and assures her they’ll make the most of the time they have left in the dorm together. (Y'know, like a liar!)