True Name: Shinsaku Takasugi Class: Archer Gender: Male Height: 177cm Weight: 63kg Source: Historical Fact Region: Japan Alignment: Chaotic Good / Man Likes: Interesting things Dislikes: Pufferfish (Fugu)

A revolutionary and heretic who appeared gallantly in Choshu during the end of the Edo period.

A student of the Shoka Sonjuku academy led by Yoshida Shoin, he was one of the "Four Heavenly Kings of Shoka Sonjuku" alongside Genzui Kusaka, Toshimaro Yoshida, and Kuichi Irie, with a promising future. At first glance, he seems like a calm, intellectual, and gentle man, but his personality is wild and troublesome, driven by the idea that anything is fine as long as it's interesting. He is a free-spirited, self-centered, "one-man CEO" type who takes independent action as a matter of course.

"Let this Shinsaku Takasugi lead you all to victory!"

Born into the prestigious Takasugi family, which had served the Mori clan for generations since the Sengoku period.

He initially attended the clan school, Meirinkan, but found the rigid classes and the fact that only those of samurai rank could enter to be incredibly boring. He eventually joined the Shoka Sonjuku, which had been taken over by Yoshida Shoin, the former head of Meirinkan. Unlike the clan school, the classes at Shoka Sonjuku—or rather, Shoin's teaching—were incredibly fun, and he quickly distinguished himself among Shoin's students. He also traveled to Edo to study, but his mentor, Yoshida Shoin, was captured and executed during the Ansei Purge. From then on, he began to openly advocate for the overthrow of the Shogunate. Later, he joined a Shogunate mission to study in Shanghai. Witnessing the threat of Western powers firsthand, he felt even more strongly about the future of Japan and the need to topple the Shogunate.

Upon returning to Japan, he joined the Sonno Joi (Revere the Emperor, Expel the Barbarians) movement, interacting with patriots from various clans in Edo and Kyoto. Among them, Takasugi was a rule-breaker known for radical actions, such as the burning of the British Legation. The Choshu clan tried to keep the wild Takasugi quiet by giving him official positions, but he easily declined them. He claimed he would "play for ten years," shaved his head, and acted completely erratically. Even when he said he was going somewhere, he ended up playing the shamisen and composing poems in his hometown.

After Choshu was pummeled by American, French, and Dutch forces for firing on ships at Shimonoseki, the panicked clan, for some reason, entrusted Takasugi with the defense of Shimonoseki. There, he established the "Kiheitai," a modern army not bound by social status. However, he was soon dismissed as the Kiheitai commander due to internal friction. Those clan bureaucrats and their petty complaints... Well, after the Kinmon Incident, Choshu became an enemy of the Imperial Court and was further bombarded by a four-country allied fleet. Just when everyone thought it was over, the Choshu clan once again entrusted the peace negotiations to the imprisoned Takasugi—a "just make it work" strategy. But Takasugi handled the peace conference with pure momentum, pulling off an "Ultra C" maneuver by shifting the reparations onto the Shogunate. During the meeting, he suddenly began reciting the Kojiki and feigned deafness to ignore the demand for the lease of Hikoshima, achieving a massive success.

While this was happening, the First Choshu Expedition approached, and the pro-Shogunate faction, which wanted to accept the Shogunate's demands, gained power in the Choshu clan. Enraged, Takasugi led a tiny force and rose in arms at Kozan-ji Temple. Though it seemed reckless, the high-spirited Takasugi and his men marched on Hagi and wiped out the pro-Shogunate faction. This unified the clan's policy toward toppling the Shogunate. Sensing this, the Shogunate began the Second Choshu Expedition. Everyone thought Choshu was finished this time, but the clan, having developed a taste for it, appointed Takasugi as the Naval Commander. Takasugi took command, repelled the Shogunate fleet, and won a grand victory. This victory shattered the Shogunate's authority and became one of the factors leading to the Restoration of Imperial Rule.

However, Takasugi, who had been suffering from illness, died of pulmonary tuberculosis without seeing the Restoration.

"Ah, just when it was getting good."

Though he has a rather slender build, he is actually a master of the Yagyu Shinkage-ryu style. Surprised? Well, that alone was too ordinary for him, so he developed a mysterious "eccentric swordsmanship" that combines special Molotov cocktails with Shinkage-ryu. He swings it around for fun.

In normal combat, he displays a reckless fighting style, swinging around his self-made special Molotov cocktails and shamisen blades, and even calling upon and operating a small prototype machine, Prototype Arahabaki. While his style seems more like a Rider than an Archer, he's not the type to be confined by such categories, so consider it a quirk of his.

These traits stem from the events in the Singularity, the Restoration City Saitama, but due to the unique nature of his Noble Phantasm and his strange fate, they have been engraved into Takasugi's Saint Graph.

--- Make the world that is not interesting, interesting.

Good grief, I wasn't thinking about anything grand like doing it for the country or for other people. Ever since I can remember, I couldn't stand boring things. I can't get motivated for anything other than what I find interesting, and my body won't even move. To me, being uninteresting is an evil in itself. Yes, if it's interesting, it's justice. In this world where you don't even know if there's such a thing as truth, this is just about the only truth there is, no doubt about it. Uninteresting things, boring things—they usually lead to no good. Simple, right? Oh, I'm not saying this to get you to agree with me. In the first place, it doesn't matter what people say or if they think I'm crazy. If everything in this world is boring, then it's the world that's wrong. I'll just break all the boring things and make them interesting myself.

--- Make the world that is not interesting, interesting.

Well, in the end, humans just need to live interestingly and happily. It's not about what you achieved or didn't achieve, it's about how you live. That's right. Live interestingly, live happily, and just live.