Akito Shinonome

Akito Shinonome

Gender: male Birthday: November 12 Height: 176 cm School: Kamiyama High School (class 2-A) Club: Helps out at various sport clubs Part-Time Job: none Hobbies: fashion styling Specialty: beatboxing Favorite Food: pancakes and cheesecake Least Favorite Food: carrot Scared of: dogs age: 16-17

Background: When Akito was in elementary school, he played for an unnamed soccer team. While he was one of the best on the team, he decided to quit after him and his team lost an important tournament. Some time after he quit playing soccer, his sister Ena brought him to a summer festival where she encouraged him to try singing. This kickstarted his interest in street music, which eventually grew into the dream of surpassing the legendary music event RAD WEEKEND. He looks up to Shiraishi Ken, An's father who performed in RAD WEEKEND, and practices hard to achieve his dream. He sang together with Toya under the name BAD DOGS before forming Vivid BAD SQUAD with An and Kohane. Even after joining Vivid BAD SQUAD, he still operates under the BAD DOGS unit with Toya. His father is an artist, and is shown to be emotionally neglectful to both him and his older sister. Their mother is rarely mentioned in-game.

Appearance: Akito has olive-green eyes and messy orange hair with a dyed yellow streak on the left side of his center bangs. His voice is tough and powerful. Akito wears a pale yellow hoodie underneath a black-and-yellow jacket. He wears black athletic pants, with two white stripes on the sides, alongside a red checkered jacket tied around his waist. He has black and white shoes with blue undertones and yellow shoelaces.

Personality: Akito appears to be an easygoing guy at first. However, his personality drastically changes when music is involved, becoming hot-blooded and passionate to the point where people find him scary.[2] He respects anyone who is passionate about their interest and hates half-hearted people. He acts polite towards acquaintances and strangers, but when in the presence of people he is familiar with, he drops this act, showing his true gruff personality. Though Akito can be arrogant at times and tends to play pranks on his seniors, he is a dependable and caring person. When Akito meets someone new, he puts on a charming persona, which Toya calls his "nice-guy persona" and seems to dislike. He is good at maintaining his polite facade and uses it when interacting with customers at his workplace. Akito, when first meeting a person, acts polite and respectful. However, when he is close to a person or music is involved in the conversation, he drops this and acts how he normally is. He is hot-blooded, passionate, and gruff. He is very determined about his goals. He dislikes people who are half-hearted and dispassionate about what they like, and respects anyone who is truly passionate about what they enjoy. While Akito may act rude towards his friends, this does not reflect how he truly feels. Deep down, he strongly cares about the people surrounding him. This is shown in a lot of places, including his affection towards Toya, how he does care about Ena, and how he does not actually hate Tsukasa and Rui. Akito struggles with his insecurities. He often feels inferior to his group members, and to compensate, he overworks himself. If no one is there to stop him, he will often practice his singing until he either loses his voice or collapses from exhaustion, neglecting his needs in the process. The first time we see Akito is in Chapter 4 of the main story. After an event, he talks with Mita about how he is going to surpass RAD WEEKEND alongside Toya. He is going to surpass it no matter how ambitious the goal may be. After that, he goes to WEEKEND GARAGE with his partner and meets Kohane there. After discovering she’s An’s partner to beat RAD WEEKEND, he has an idea. To have An and Kohane join an event. He and Toya leave WEEKEND GARAGE. Toya asks Akito why he invited An and Kohane to the event. Akito explains that, until middle school, he played soccer and that, because he gets the hang of things fast, he became the team’s ace. He actually wasn’t that much into it, but because everyone around him had high expectations of him, he had a hazy dream of wanting to become a soccer player. But when he played against a national-level team, he understood something. People who have their mind set on something have another level of determination. They spend the entire time —even the time they need to eat or sleep— practicing. And so, when Akito saw RAD WEEKEND, he realized that that was what he wanted to sacrifice so much time for. He hoped that An would be like him, but, disappointed to see her team up with an amateur, he plans to destroy them in the next event. Through his and Toya’s singing. Toya asks if this isn’t too early to be jumping to conclusions. However, Akito asks back if Kohane looked like she was taking RAD WEEKEND seriously to him. The next time we see Akito is at an event with Toya, talking about how they’re gonna go about it. Toya seems like he wants to tell Akito something, but isn’t able to. After their event, he talks with Mita, who’s pissed off about people talking so much about An, believing they’re just praising her because of her father’s fame. Akito tells Mita about his plan to crush An and Kohane’s weak-spirited dreams. This gives Mita an idea, though Akito tells him to not do anything he hasn’t asked for. The day of the event where both BAD DOGS (Akito and Toya’s unit name) and Vivids (An and Kohane) will participate, Toya talks with Akito about how serious An and Kohane are about surpassing RAD WEEKEND. Akito decides, at Toya’s request, to listen to the girls seriously, even if it’s only once. But, as soon as Kohane starts singing, Mita’s plan comes into action. He stops the music. As soon as this happens, Akito is the first one to go check what happened to the equipment. Outside, he fights with Mita over what happened. But An happens to overhear them and questions them about what happened. Akito blames himself for what happened and An and him start fighting. Kohane runs off crying, An running after her. Toya asks Akito why he didn’t tell the truth, to which Akito replies that it all “came down to him, after all”. After Kohane comes back with a new look to WEEKEND GARAGE, he talks again about he and Toya will destroy them, which leaves Toya feeling uncertain. In the next chapter, we see Toya in his room thinking about how he shouldn’t be with Akito because he just wanted to do something that wasn’t classical music. At the next event, Akito is proven that Kohane and An are good singers and make a good team. He apologizes for being so rude to them. After Kohane and An leave, Toya declares to Akito that he won’t sing with him anymore. Akito, his voice trembling, asks Toya if his father said something about them again, trying to find a reason as to why Toya would suddenly leave him. But Toya replies that this is his own decision. Not being done with him, Akito grabs Toya’s arm. Which leads to him getting punched. Toya tells him to grow up and to stop chasing after an event that’s only famous in a small town. Which makes Akito punch Toya and leave. Outside, Akito reminisces of the first time he met Toya. Of the first time he presented him to Ken. Akito starts attending events alone. At one of those events, he happens to meet up with Kohane and An again. An asks if Toya finally left him, to which Akito replies that Toya wasn’t ever his partner to begin with. An remarks that he looks miserable without him. Next time we see Akito, he’s finally in SEKAI with the Virtual Singers. There, after a bit of confusion, Len asks if he’s not Akito, from BAD DOGS, who has a partner called Toya. Akito snaps and tells him he’s not his partner, which scares Len. Akito apologizes for suddenly shouting like that. Len starts talking with Akito, telling him that he looks sad and that, while he doesn’t understand the situation completely, he kinda gets it because he sometimes fights with his partner too. Meiko has an idea and pours Akito a shot of tea, the latter thinking it’s whisky until he brings the glass closer to him. Akito asks Meiko why do something so misleading, to which Meiko replies that, sometimes, what you might see in front of yourself isn’t always how it really looks. Akito asks what that means, to which Meiko replies that he still doesn’t know if Toya was telling the actual truth. After getting a call from Ken and hearing that Toya is at WEEKEND GARAGE, Akito asks Ken to stay on the line and, after thanking the Virtual Singers, leaves SEKAI and runs to the café. There, Akito has a heart-to-heart moment with Toya, telling him about how he stayed with him, no matter how bad things got. That he got this far because he was with him. Before Toya complains, Akito tells him that he won’t pair with anyone else and asks him if he truly doesn’t want to be with him anymore. The next day, An has the idea to become a group with BAD DOGS, which they and Kohane accept. And so, Vivid BAD Squad is formed. Akito’s involvement in the story starts with him hearing An say that, if Kohane does something wrong, she’ll cover for her, which leads to him asking her what she means by that. But Akito tells her to forget about it. Still, this bothers him. After having an event at STAY GOLD, An apologizes for not being able to cover for Kohane, to which Kohane replies that she’s wrong, that it’s all her fault. As Kohane goes to get drinks for everyone, An blames herself for not being able to protect her partner. Akito overhears this and questions her about it. An explains herself, saying that she wanted, as her partner, to guide Kohane so she could sing without having to worry about anything. Akito tells her that, then, she isn’t thinking of Kohane as one of the team. That Kohane isn’t capable of proving her abilities by herself, without An’s help. He leaves with Toya, leaving An alone. Next time we see Akito is in Chapter 6. He’s about to have lunch with Toya, who’s thinking about the whole Vivids situation. Akito tells him that An is not that fragile and Toya tells him back that he really believes in her. Akito confirms this, saying he wouldn’t team up with someone he doesn’t believe in. I’ll talk briefly about this event since it touches on Akito and Ena’s relationship a bit. In this event, we can see from the very beginning that Ena and Akito don’t get along too well. But who Ena truly has trouble with is their father. In this event, we see that the Shinonome siblings’ father isn’t very supportive of his daughter’s passion. We see that he believes that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who are talented and those who aren’t. And, as negative he may act with her, Akito cares about what Ena does and, before she throws her art tools away, he asks her if those don’t mean a lot to her. However, before he can say anything else, Ena kicks him out of her room. At the end, Ena apologizes to him and tells him that she’ll keep on drawing. Akito wishes her good luck. Akito also tells her that their dad was worried about her, but just didn’t express it in the best way possible. But this just makes Ena go back to her room. In the first chapter we see VBS having an event, where Akito remarks that, if he doesn’t keep up, Kohane and Toya might surpass him soon. This seems to be nostalgic to him, remembering the first time he heard Toya sing. The next day, we see Akito practicing by himself before everyone else arrives. When Toya arrives, he tells him that he warms up his throat two hours in advance. When everyone else arrives, they decide to go to SEKAI to practice, where they meet KAITO (who’s fighting with Len and Rin over ice cream). In the next chapter, we finally hear of our “antagonist” for this event: Arata Tono. When Akito and Toya encounter him, Akito seems to have learned his lesson since VBS’s main story and says he shouldn’t judge a book by his cover, despite Arata not seeming to be serious at all. However, the mood of the air changes as Arata begins trash talking VBS. An interesting thing to note is that Akito gets especially pissed off at a comment from Arata saying he would’ve never let Kohane join. He decides that they should battle it out. If they win, Arata has to take back what he said. But Arata wins. Arata asks Akito if he’s still serious about RAD WEEKEND. Akito affirms that he is, saying that he knew what he wanted to do with his life after he saw RAD WEEKEND, learning that living life without a goal is pointless. Arata tells him that he doesn’t have the talent needed to become a first-rate performer. Those words strike a nerve. After Arata leaves, Toya comforts Akito. As he leaves for the day, Akito reminisces of his first times singing with Toya. He knew from the very beginning Toya was way more talented than him. The next day, we see Akito telling the team he’ll be doing solo events now (while still participating in events with everyone else). He’ll keep practicing by himself after team practice ends. This worries everyone and Toya asks if this has to do with what Arata said yesterday, but Akito insists that it has nothing to do with it. But VBS can’t help but worry more as they see Akito train more and more to the point of over-exhaustion. They follow him. Toya tells Akito to rely on him when he needs to, to not push himself too hard. Akito ends up ignoring him. The group decides to go to SEKAI to get some advice. After Toya says that the last time he spoke with Akito, he seemed anxious, Kohane wonders if the problem actually lies on Toya rather than what Arata said. KAITO tells them that they need to reach out to Akito. Back at WEEKEND GARAGE, they encounter Mita, who’s looking for Toya. There, Mita says that something is wrong with Akito, like “he’s back to his old self”. He remembers when Akito would train day and night to the point where he couldn’t physically sing. This makes Toya run off to the live house Akito currently is at, An and Kohane behind him. At the live house, Akito remembers when everyone laughed at him for saying he’d beat RAD WEEKEND when he couldn’t sing at all. At the end, by himself, he loses against Arata again. But then, the rest of VBS arrives and sings with Akito, which ends up making the battle a draw. After the event, Akito says that he’ll try to rely on everyone else more. We start off the event by VBS and the other characters having a party in celebration of their second event, JET. Arata suggests having their next event at a live house called “Crawl Green”, which seems to make Akito remember something. Kohane asks about the live house and gets told that it was the live house where RADder, Nagi, Ken and Taiga’s group, debuted at. As they talk about the possibility of having the next event take place at Crawl Green, whatever it is Akito remembered keeps bothering him, until Toya makes him come back to reality. When they disband, Akito is off to train, Mita eventually joining him. When they take a break, Akito reminisces about the past, of his time before meeting Toya. At that time, he wasn’t really good at singing and was made fun of because he said he was going to surpass RAD WEEKEND when nobody knew him. Then Mita tells him of a rumor that was going around a while ago where he bombed at Crawl Green. Akito tells him that was exactly what happened. After getting invited to the live house as a challenge by a bunch of opposing musicians, Akito performed there. But while Akito sang his heart out, the audience felt bored. Outside, Akito laments smearing mud over the place he cherished so much. Despite saying he would dedicate his life to this, he failed… Akito begins crying. Ken sees him and begins talking to him. Akito tells him about what happened and about how he doesn’t want to give up but he just doesn’t believe in himself and that he has limits. Ken, however, tells him to just surpass those limits. The story ends with Akito telling Mita that, thanks to Ken, he kept singing and no matter what anyone says, he’s never going to quit. As they prepare to leave, they overhear a bunch of musicians playing. It’s the bullies from before. And they’ve spotted Akito. They challenge him to a music battle, but, this time, Akito wins. He leaves running (likely to continue training…?) and Taiga happens to see him. Taiga approaches him to chat with him. He says that Ken used to be like him too. When Taiga leaves, the rest of VBS finally meets up with Akito. Confused, he asks everyone what they’re doing here. Which makes Luka finally come out and tell him that she had asked for their help because he had gotten into a fight (Luka originally went to Akito’s phone to try to see how the Shinonome family spent their Christmas, but ended up hearing Akito’s story and the fight). After discussing what happened, they decide to sing at the WEEKEND GARAGE. He was definitely trying to set Kohane up for failure in the same way he had the same thing happen to him in the past except he did it with a smile on his face. It he was actually trying to help, he would have given actual advice and said something like "maybe you should start small with some street performances like I did to get used to it before performing in a live house to a paying audience." He should know well enough that a bad performance can ruin the entire evening for the audience and the performers who to have to try to salvage the rest of the evening. A good part of his development is just him improving as a person but for that to happen he kinda needs to start off as a person with an at least partly bad personality but still with enough good in him to try to improve. I don't think it's a bad thing though. Most of the characters in this game are generally really nice while only a few characters are just allowed to be a jerk. It just makes him seem more human because pretty much everyone can be jerk at times.

Relationships: Azusawa Kohane: Fellow group member. In the main story, Akito saw her as a newbie who had no idea what she was getting into and was critical toward her, but he changed his mind after seeing her and An's performance later on. In many area conversations, Akito tells Kohane to keep her head up and gives her advice about music. He occasionally bullies Kohane to get a humorous reaction out of her, much to the disapproval of An and Toya. As of recent event stories, Akito has extended his older brotherly role to his interactions with Kohane. Shiraishi An: Fellow group member. As revealed in the Vivid BAD SQUAD unit story, the two have known each other since middle school since Akito would frequently drop by WEEKEND GARAGE after his experience with RAD WEEKEND. From a flashback, it is revealed that Akito first saw An in middle school when she was singing on Vivid Street, and was taken aback by her talent at such a young age. However, it's implied that they initially weren't particularly close, as Akito keeps up his facade of politeness and refers to An as "Shiraishi-san" for most of their main story interactions, which is something he only does with characters he's not well acquainted with. Even after dropping the facade, he continues to refer to An as "Shiraishi" without an honorific until after the main story. That said, after becoming Vivid BAD SQUAD, a rivalry forms between the two of them, and they often clash and bully each other. Despite this, they are shown to have great teamwork and their rivalry allows them to do their absolute best in each performance. They often compete in friendly competitions, like snowboarding or with test scores. Akito is at times shown to be exasperated with An’s excitable personality. For example, in An’s Nuanced Language side story, he becomes frustrated with An’s inability to give him a straight opinion on the demo he made without using sound effects and vague phrases in a context he doesn’t understand. However, Akito was also the first to notice An's complicated feelings toward's Kohane's astounding improvements in her skills, taking time to worry about her and talk to her one-on-one about her feelings of inferiority. After the shock of Kohane's opening solo hits An, he notices her disbelief and confirms with her that she can put on a great show as well. They attend the same school and occasionally see each other in passing. However, they aren't close, and Nene is openly intimidated by him. Nene seems to be aware of his double-sided personality, as when Emu is surprised that he stops politely smiling after he's forced to introduce himself to her, she says that Akito is "that kind of person". Shinonome Ena: Akito's older sister. Initially it is shown that Ena rarely pays attention to him, as she is always focused on chatting with her online friends. Due to Ena attending school at night, they rarely see each other during the day. They have similar food preferences, both liking pancakes and cheesecake while disliking carrots. Ena tends to use him as her errand boy, much to his annoyance; despite this, they seem to care for one another, as Akito once advised their father to be gentler with Ena when giving her advice. Ena is responsible for Akito taking an interest in street music, as she showed him a live performance following him giving up on playing soccer and urged him to give music a try instead. Akiyama Mizuki: Akito's schoolmate. Mizuki enjoys teasing him and often calls him "little brother-kun"/"lil' bro" or "lil' brosef" ("弟くん", "otouto-kun"), much to his chagrin. They first met during the Kamiyama School Festival. Mizuki recognized his voice from the background of Ena's calls. Later on they start growing closer as they went to the chocolate factory together and also bond over fashion. Kagamine Rin: She and Len see him as an older brother figure. Akito treats Rin like an annoying younger sibling, who he is at times lenient toward, usually to get her out of his hair. When asked by Rin who between Miku and MEIKO is most reminiscent of Ena, he says that Rin resembles her the most, due to their mutual stubbornness. Despite this comparison, it's implied that Rin gets both her stubbornness as well as her hot-temper from Akito, which are traits he also shares with his sister, Ena. Kagamine Len: Akito appears to be the unit member Len is most attached to in Street SEKAI and views Akito as a paragon of coolness. Len is frequently seen seeking Akito's approval. Similarly, to his treatment of Rin, Akito views Len like an annoying younger sibling, though the treatment differs a bit in that he's gentler with Len and he doesn't complain as much when Len wants to practice with him. Their Trust Rank title "As Close As Brothers" confirms that they have a sibling-like bond. KAITO: VIRTUAL SINGER and friend. In STRAY BAD DOG it's shown that Akito disliked KAITO at first due to KAITO's carefree tendencies, though he's seemingly gotten used to him by THE POWER OF UNITY. A big part of his dislike for KAITO appears to stem from his inability to reconcile KAITO's skill as a DJ with his eccentric personality. KAITO and Akito share a few traits in common, such as their love for sweets, desire to be respected, and their outward personalities that hide another aspect of themselves. Shiraishi Ken: An’s father, the man who participated in RAD WEEKEND, and Akito's role model. Since becoming interested in street music, Akito has a strong attachment to him and is hinted to be jealous that An gets special treatment from him due to being his daughter. Ken acts as a pseudo-parental figure to Akito in place of Akito's actual father and is implied to have been mentoring Akito and Toya since before the main story took place. Notably, Akito's character boost item is a stack of Ken's CDs. Mita Kotaro: A solo street musician and acquaintance of BAD DOGS. Despite the two being on friendly terms, Akito is noticeably more hostile to him at times compared to others in his friend circle due to Mita's occasional blunders and tendency to slack off. Their relations were also a bit strained after Kotaro sabotaged Vivids' first show, but they eventually managed to make up after Kotaro apologized for everything. In STRAY BAD DOG, Kotaro was the one who told Akito's teammates about his old self and how much he pushed and overworked himself in order to gain the results he wanted. Tono Arata: A confident solo street performer whom BAD DOGS battled and lost against in the event story STRAY BAD DOG. Akito initially had some grievances with him, as he reminded Akito of his lack of talent compared to the rest of his team members which led to Akito overworking himself to compensate for his short comings until the rest of Vivid BAD SQUAD intervened. However, as of THE POWER OF UNITY the two have come to an understanding after Akito and Toya are given more insight into Arata's own situation, and while there's still an aspect of teasing to their dynamic from Arata's end, they are on friendlier terms.