00-2 | Character Information
Name: Sho Fukamachi
Source: Guyver: The Bioboosted Armor
Apartment: 552
History:
[Spoilers through episode 23. Also, apologies for the length.]
It all begins on what is seemingly just another day at Narisawa High School for Sho Fukamachi. He's just starting to leave after the student council meeting and another missed opportunity to talk to the girl he has a crush on when his friend Tetsuro Segawa asks if he's got time to talk. The two head up to their little "secret spot", the banks of the lake at Mount Narisawa, with the intention of talking about the Sci-Fi Club report. Their discussion is cut short, however, when an explosion occurs nearby and a strange metallic object slides to a halt on the grass near them.
Tetsuro promptly starts poking it with a stick, despite all of Sho's protests to just leave it alone. Sho continues to try to convince his friend to put the thing down, but the two get into a minor tug-of-war over it... until the thing lights up, at least.
"I think I pushed a switch or something..."
The thing ends up in Sho's hands, giving him the perfect opportunity to see the inside of the strange object writhing around. He has just enough time to comment that he thinks it's alive before it bursts open and envelopes him. It's not just wrapping itself around him; it's wrapping itself through him. Tetsuro can only watch as Sho falls into the lake, completely covered by whatever the thing is.
The next thing Sho knows, he's standing over some kind of monster, broken and bleeding on the ground. His reflection in the lake shows that he isn't human anymore, but when he freaks out about that, the thing snaps off of him, revealing itself to be a strange suit of armor, and disappears.
Back home, Tetsuro's love of science fiction clashes a bit with Sho's disbelief at what the hell happened to him. Tetsuro theorizes about the "pod-creature".
"This wouldn't be so funny if it had happened to you!"
A couple of days later, a detective approaches Tetsuro to discuss the explosion. Sho tags along, and the two get taken to an abandoned warehouse, where the "detective" begins to interrogate Tetsuro about the explosion and the mysterious object. And if Tetsuro doesn't talk, a man turned monster will tear Sho apart. The "detective" demands to know where the Guyver is; Sho latches onto the name and tries to call the armor back to him -- and does. The Guyver destroys the monsters and rescues Tetsuro.
Things keep getting worse after that. The strange men who turn into monsters -- Zoanoids -- are the soldiers of an organization named Chronos, the group who had the Guyver units until a test subject stole them. Chronos, however, wants the units back, and they're perfectly willing to kill to reclaim them. There are three Guyver units, and as Chronos continues its attempts to reclaim Sho's unit, Sho and Tetsuro meet the other two Guyvers as well. One is a Chronos agent, while the other won't give any clues to his identity. It is the third Guyver who first calls Sho Guyver I.
Then something Sho didn't want to happen happens: Tetsuro's sister Mizuki, the girl Sho has a crush on, sees a Zoanoid. Guyver III rescues her, but not before she sees enough to start asking the questions Sho can't bring himself to answer. Mizuki rests at the hospital while Sho and Tetsuro go home. The next morning, Sho finds a note under his door calling him back to Mount Narisawa. It's a Chronos trap, but as he tells Tetsuro, he has the power to fight. He's going to go put an end to this.
What Sho doesn't know is that this Zoanoid is different from all the others he's fought. This one was designed specifically to destroy him. And it does, ripping the control metal from his head before melting away and taking what's left of him with it.
That isn't the end of Sho Fukamachi, however. Guyvers, as it turns out, have a habit of not staying dead. He wakes up not in the battle he remembers, but standing in a badly damaged hallway overlooking the cell Tetsuro is in. Tetsuro fills Sho in on what he can -- Sho died, he got captured, they're in the Chronos Japan headquarters -- but there really isn't time to get into the details. They try to escape, eventually ending up on the roof, the alarms from the building's self-destruct sequence ringing loudly. Guyver III appears long enough to blow up the helicopter containing Chronos Commander Guyot and then tells Sho how to fly before disappearing into the night.
Guyver II shows up then, and he and Sho fight. Sho is on the losing side until Guyver II's damaged control metal starts causing problems and makes itself a nice target. Tetsuro notices this and yells for Sho to attack it. Sho punches it hard enough to break it into pieces, and Guyver II's armor starts devouring its host.
As the self-destruct sequence reaches zero, Sho grabs Tetsuro and leaps off the building, leaving what's left of Guyver II to perish when the building explodes. Chronos' Japanese branch is no more.
Sho returns home just before dawn. His father is still sitting at the table, asleep, but Sho can't bring himself to wake him up. So instead, he heads up to his room, leans against the door, and tries to make what just happened to him make sense. He can't. When his father wakes up, the two have a father-son talk, one that goes a long way towards easing the tension that's been building between the two, but Sho still can't bring himself to tell his father about the Guyver.
But it doesn't matter, he thinks. He can just focus on going back to his normal life now.
[This is the point where Sho went to Jigoku the first time. It seemed real at the time, but when he woke up back at his home, he convinced himself that it had to be a dream. After all, only a few hours had passed. He put it out of mind and went back to his normal routine.]
There are, however, two things that Sho is blissfully unaware of at that moment. The first is that while Chronos Japan has been destroyed, Chronos itself is far from defeated. The second is that they know precisely who Guyver I is, and they're determined to make him pay.
A Zoanoid is sent to kill him. Sho manages to escape, but the Zoanoid sets most of the neighborhood on fire, burning the Fukamachi house to the ground along with many others. The Zoanoid is eventually destroyed with the help of a strange man with a massive gun, and Sho finds Tetsuro alive and well. Mizuki sees him recall his armor.
Meanwhile, Chronos agents find Fumio Fukamachi, Sho's father, and kidnap him. Fumio is on the phone with Sho when it happens; naturally, Sho calls his armor and gives chase, leaving Tetsuro and Mizuki behind. The two talk about what's happened to Sho, only for Chronos agents to find and kidnap them as well. Sho manages to catch up with the truck holding his father, but ends up distracted by Zoanoids and another Guyver.
It turns out the other Guyver is a Zoanoid in disguise, but by the time Sho figures that out, he's bound and losing. He's saved by the strange man with the gun, who introduces himself as Murakami Masaki. Like Sho, he's fighting Chronos. After very little discussion, Murakami and Sho set off for Mount Minakami and the Chronos base of Relic's Point to rescue Sho's father and friends.
What neither of them realize is that Guyver III is in Relic's Point, going to rescue the hostages. Sho and Guyver III meet up, and between them, they manage to get Mizuki, Tetsuro, and Fumio out of the base... but the Hyper-Zoanoids, stronger than normal Zoanoids, arrive and retake Fumio. One of the Hyper Zoanoids gets a lucky hit on Sho's control metal with an electrified tentacle, and the blow both knocks Sho out and forces his armor to recall. The last thing Sho remembers before passing out is the sight of his father being taken away again.
He wakes up in a safe house that Agito Makishima -- Guyver III -- keeps in the woods near the mountain. The group tries to plan out their next move, and Sho and Agito make plans to rescue Fumio. The two sneak into Relic's Point disguised as Chronos soldiers and find Fumio, only to be forced to fight their way out. The two Guyvers split up when a Hyper Zoanoid arrives, Sho fleeing with his father and Agito staying to fight.
Sho and his father find a quiet spot and have a long talk; Fumio says that he's proud of his son. But Chronos wasn't idle while Sho was recovering. While he was resting, Fumio was processed into a Zoanoid. Dr. Barcas, one of the Zoalords [capable of controlling Zoanoids with psychic commands], commands Fumio to transform, and the man is powerless to resist. Sho can only watch as his father turns into a Zoanoid, a new version of the type that killed him back at Mount Narisawa.
It's a gamble by Barcas; the doctor believes that Sho can't kill his father. And he's right. Sho weakly defends himself, but he can't attack out of fear of hurting or killing his father. Fumio, unable to stop himself, crushes Sho's skull, killing his son. Barcas orders Fumio to rip out Sho's control metal, but Fumio finally finds the strength to resist the mental control.
Guyvers don't like to stay dead, of course, and they have one other trick: a self-defense mode where the armor itself battles any threats of its own accord. There's just one little problem. A Guyver can't tell a friend from a foe. It sees Zoanoid-Fumio, and it attacks mercilessly, killing Fumio. As if to add insult to injury, Sho wakes up in time to see the aftermath of what he did. And that is how he sees it. Despite the fact that Murakami and Tetsuro arrived on the scene during the fight [wisely keeping their distance] and are able to tell him what happened; despite the fact that the Guyver killed Fumio and not him, Sho sees himself as his father's murderer. He passes out again.
The group regroups. While Sho was fighting his father, a pair of Hyper Zoanoids attacked the cabin. Murakami used his abilities to protect everyone there, and Agito showed up as backup, but the cabin is lost. The group doesn't get far before three Chronos agents -- all Zoanoids of the same type as Fumio -- arrive and attack. One of them throws the vehicle Sho is sleeping in at a cliff wall. Just before it hits and explodes, Mizuki screams Sho's name. It's enough to wake him up. His armor is enough to protect him from the explosion.
Sho starts to join the fray, but one look at the Zoanoids and his armor disengages itself. He doesn't remember anything about rescuing his father or the battle that followed, but it affects him just the same. He tries and fails to call his armor to him.
Agito attempts to fight the Zoanoids off, but three against one are bad odds, especially when dealing with anti-Guyver Zoanoids. Murakami transforms into something like a Zoanoid but not and destroys the Zoanoids. The group heads into the forest, hoping to hide.
The next day, they attempt a strategy session. There's little to do now but try and hide; they can't risk going to a town and being spotted. It's during this session that Murakami tells his tale. He's a proto-Zoalord, an unwilling guinea pig for Commander Guyot's other form, and because of that, he's determined to destroy Chronos. He's got much more of a story to tell, as well. Humans are a biological creation of aliens called the Creators, living weapons meant to fight the aliens' wars. For unknown reasons, the aliens left Earth, leaving the humans to their fate. Zoanoids are simply the next step in human evolution, and the Zoalords are taking advantage of this in a plot to rule the world. [To oversimplify the whole thing a bit.]
Partway through the tale, Mizuki gets up and leaves. After a while, Sho goes off in search of her. She doesn't want to believe what she's hearing; she just wants to go home. Sho comforts her as best he can, finally convincing her to head back to camp with him.
They never get the chance.
Commander Guyot arrives at camp intent on killing Murakami, though Sho and Mizuki don't know this. They do see the clearing where camp was explode from a distance, the result of the final attacks of the battle. In the end, Guyot is unconscious and the others nowhere to be seen. Chronos sends soldiers out to retrieve Guyot and find the survivors, and Sho and Mizuki find themselves surrounded by Zoanoids. Since Sho still can't call his armor, all they can do is hide. Their hiding place doesn't stay hidden for long.
Just when it seems that they're going to be captured, Guyver III shows up and tells the two to run. They do, finding a cave and taking shelter there. Sho and Mizuki try to cheer each other up; after all, if Agito could come and rescue them, then the others must be all right. Something about Guyver III wasn't right to Sho, though he doesn't mention this to Mizuki.
When Guyver III finds them, Sho knows something's not right. It isn't Guyver III at all; it's Aptom, the fake Guyver from before. He survived that battle and is back seeking revenge for the deaths of his teammates. Aptom starts his revenge by regaling Sho with the tale of Fumio's death, mocking the boy for killing his father, but that's not enough. He then grabs Mizuki and starts threatening her, kicking Sho away every time the boy tries to attack. After more taunting, Aptom transforms into the same type of Zoanoid as Fumio and starts slicing Mizuki's clothes off. When Sho tries to stop him, Aptom stabs him through the stomach; it's a fatal wound.
"You can watch me tear her to pieces, or you can roll over and bleed to death, but either way, neither of you will survive."
In that desperate moment, Sho accepts that he needs the Guyver's power if he's going to save Mizuki. He asks his father for strength, staggers to his feet, and tries to call his armor.
This time, it answers.
Sho wastes no time in getting Aptom away from Mizuki. The battle is long and hard, but in the end, Sho thwarts Aptom's every attempt on his life and blows the Zoanoid away. He returns to the cave and to Mizuki.
The next morning, the two decide to head to the nearest town and hide there while trying to get in touch with Tetsuro and the others. This turns out to be a bad idea, as Chronos agents find them easily, and despite what Sho and Mizuki thought, Chronos is desperate enough to capture them that they'll transform in full view of civilians. Many of the townspeople transform and give chase, controlled just as Fumio was.
Sho can't bring himself to attack innocent people, even to protect himself and Mizuki, so he flees through the town with Mizuki clinging to him. But there are too many Zoanoids to outrun, and they're barely out of town before they're surrounded. Sho still can't bring himself to attack.
Agito, on the other hand, can. He shows up in the nick of time, destroys all the Zoanoids, and then gives Sho a tongue-lashing for hesitating. Those innocent people would never be able to return to their old lives; killing them quickly and painlessly is the nicest thing that can be done. But Agito's not just there to lecture Sho. He's there to lead them to where Tetsuro and the others are. They've found a new hiding place -- the bottom-most floor of Relic's Point. Sho and Agito again disguise themselves in uniform, hiding Mizuki in a crate as they head down. It's a long trip, and they almost get caught at the final security check, saved only by Dr. Odagiri, the leader of the scientists.
While everyone rests and Murakami recuperates from the battle, Tetsuro and Sho fill each other in on what's happened over the last day or so. Dr. Odagiri explains the situation a bit better: he is the leader of the scientists on the floor, and they plan to destroy Chronos from within -- literally. Their job is researching the Relic, a living alien spaceship buried deep within the mountain. When everyone has recovered and is ready, Dr. Odagiri elaborates on the plan. No one has been able to get inside the Relic and survive, but he believes that a Guyver would be able to safely enter the ship. Since the plan is to destroy Relic's Point by launching the Relic, someone needs to be able to find the controls and power it up.
It's dangerous, but Sho and Agito both agree to do it. Mizuki doesn't want Sho to risk his life, but Sho has spent the last few days thinking, and he's decided that he can't run away anymore if he wants to keep his friends safe. Before he heads into the Relic, Mizuki begs him to come back safe; he promises he will.
And so, carrying backpack-mounted cameras [Sho says the cameras make the Guyvers look silly], Sho and Agito armor up and head into the Relic. There are some close calls, like when the Relic floods the airlock with some kind of fluid -- it turns out that the entire interior is full of this liquid, which thankfully doesn't cause the two Guyvers any problems -- and when Sho finds himself trapped between what look like two massive control metals. His own seems to split apart, but it turns out that it isn't something bad; it's Sho's unit interfacing with the Relic. He's now the pilot.
Sho tells the Relic to start powering up, but it will take time.
Meanwhile, Chronos is turning against itself. Zoalords from beyond Japan are heading to Relic's Point, and the leader of them all, Archanfel, goes after Guyot. It turns out Guyot has an ace-in-the-hole, a device that can remove a Guyver unit from its host, and Archanfel demands that he hand it over. Guyot refuses, and the two battle within the base.
The battle at least helps draw attention away from the minor earthquakes that the powering-up Relic is causing. Dr. Odagiri and the others prepare to flee into the Relic for safety during launch, since Sho can tell the ship to let them inside.
Guyot manages to overpower Archanfel -- by sucking him into a miniature black hole, no less -- and makes his way to the bottom level, finally getting to the Remover. Unfortunately for the group, this also alerts him to their plans. A new battle breaks out, and Agito heads outside the Relic to join the fray. Guyot fires the Remover at Agito, but Agito is stubborn enough that he's able to force his armor to stay on, barely. Dr. Odagiri is shot as everyone flees into the ship; the others bring him along. Agito heads inside the Relic, but Murakami stays outside, battling Guyot and winning.
As Guyot falls, Sho gives the now-charged ship the order to launch. Murakami falls to his knees, winded; inside, Dr. Odagiri dies from his wounds. The Relic surrounds itself with an energy barrier and begins to rise up from within Mount Minakami, shredding Relic's Point as it goes. Outside, the other Zoalords have arrived and are gathered together, trying to figure out who is responsible for launching the Relic.
But Guyot isn't dead. He manages to climb onto the Relic and ambushes the weakened Murakami. He easily overpowers Murakami and threatens to kill the man unless the Guyvers come out and face him, up to ripping the man's arm off to prove his point.
The Relic bursts out of Mount Minakami and then stops in mid-air; Sho angrily charges outside to face Guyot. Guyot's response is not to free the hostage as he claimed but to strike a fatal blow. Sho catches Murakami as the man falls; Guyot prepares to fire the Remover. Agito leaps in the way and counterattacks, making the shot miss. Murakami dies in Sho's arms; Sho screams in rage and leaps at Guyot, charging his mega-smasher as Guyot charges the Remover.
Neither gets the chance to fire. The Zoalords assembled below begin attacking the Relic with the intent to destroy it. Better than no one has the Relic than to let their enemies get their hands on it. Guyot, realizing that he can't fight that many opponents at once, makes a strategic retreat. Sho moves to follow, but an energy beam cuts Agito's arm off, and Sho stops to check on his comrade.
It turns out that even a black hole can't destroy Archanfel, as he reappears to get his revenge on Guyot. He kills the man with a single attack. Guyot's body falls back into the ruins of the base. Sho and Agito don't know who Archanfel is, but they charge their mega-smashers and fire -- it's obvious the man is an enemy.
Archanfel simply warps the combined blast back at the two of them. Agito tries to dodge, but Sho is caught in the blast and vaporized along with the Relic. His last thoughts are of Mizuki.
Another earthquake hits as Mount Minakami, actually a volcano, erupts; the eruption completes the destruction of Relic's Point -- and of the Remover Guyot was still wearing.
It is after this that Sho wakes up in the apartments again.
Personality:
In episode 19, Mizuki describes Sho like this: "He's almost like a girl sometimes. I mean, he's really sensitive, he can't fight, and he likes taking care of flowers and stuff."
Later in the same conversation, Murakami replies, "Sho's a lot stronger than you give him credit for. [...] I have absolute faith in [him]."
That, in many ways, is Sho in a nutshell, contradiction and all. For the most part, Sho is a typical teenager. He's average both athletically and academically. He's a gentle, introverted young man with a bit of a dorky side who focuses on going about his life without being a burden on his father. He served as the secretary on the Narisawa High School student council, a position he took as an excuse to be close to Mizuki. Unfortunately for him, she only has eyes for the student council president, Agito Makishima, and Sho takes this rather hard. Even so, he doesn't say anything, especially when he finds the Guyver unit and everything starts spinning out of control. Later on, out in the woods near Mount Minakami, Mizuki starts returning the affection. That only makes Sho more determined than ever to keep her safe.
Sho keeps a lot to himself. Despite his shyness, it's not particularly hard to know what he's thinking a lot of the time. He's fairly expressive, and his friends, especially Tetsuro, can read him like a book.
Sho seems to spend more time reacting to events around him than being particularly proactive. Part of that is, of course, just the situation, but part of it is his lack of any real goals in his life. The more his real life crumbles around him, the more determined he is to keep his friends safe. When his father is killed, part of him loathes the Guyver for turning him into a monster, but at the same time, he needs power to keep his friends safe, power that he can only get from the Guyver. It still hurts, especially since it's still so new, but he can only ask his father for strength and promise vengeance on Chronos for what's happened. Part of him coming to terms with his father's death is him actively recognizing that he can't just run away from what's happening; if he wants to protect his friends, and he does, he has to stand up and fight.
The stress and the strain of battle have been honing him, and while he's still not the greatest warrior or the brightest tactician, he's crafty. Chronos doesn't think he's particularly dangerous, but Sho has come up with plans on the spur-of-the-moment and actually pulled them off successfully. He's stubborn and tenacious; Sho doesn't really know when to give up, and it seems almost like he's taking all of the rage he feels towards Chronos for everything and is channeling it into his every attack.
As for the fact he's died and come back more than once, he's not really sure what to think. At first, he thought he was just a clone, but he even has his childhood scars. Since his father's death, he really hasn't had much time to sit and think, and when he did, he had more important things to worry about [namely the whole bit about not runny away]. Right now, it's a necessary evil, but then Sho hasn't thought about life after Chronos for a while, so that could change.
Biggest Fear:
There are certain things that Sho holds dear: his father, his friends, his hometown, all the aspects of his once-normal life. The thing he fears more than anything else is to have those aspects torn away and destroyed. This fear has only been getting worse as he's lost one thing after another, and even the Guyver can't save them. So far, he's been keeping his friends safe, and he won't stop fighting to protect them. Losing any of his friends would be hard on him, but it's pretty safe to say that if anything was to happen to Mizuki, Sho would completely and totally lose his mind.
Powers:
When he isn't the Guyver, Sho is a normal human being with no noteworthy abilities aside from his stubborn determination and ability to freak out at a second's notice.
The Guyver changes him into an alien being, one of incredible strength, speed, and endurance; it also grants him enhanced senses and the ability to 'fly' by manipulating gravity. The armor has incredible regenerative powers, as well as a variety of weapons that Sho can use at will. These weapons include high-frequency swords, a very narrow beamed infrared laser, a gravity-wave blast, a sonic wave attack, and by far the most powerful, a particle beam cannon called the mega-smasher. Sho tends to rely mostly on his own hand-to-hand skills and the high-frequency swords, as the others require more energy and tend to be rather destructive when used; he doesn't want to cause any more damage to the area than necessary.
At the same time, this incredible power has an Achilles heel: the control metal, shining on the Guyver's forehead. Strong shocks to the control metal can "short out" the Guyver, forcing the armor back into the pocket dimension it stays in when Sho isn't wearing it. And if the metal should ever be destroyed, the armor goes haywire, devouring its host. The host's state of mind is apparently an Achilles heel as well. Sho has since recovered from his block, but for a short while, he couldn't call the armor at all.
SAMPLES:
Third Person:
Sho remembers chaos. Screams and energy blasts and a roar that could only be the Relic. But he doesn't hear anything. When he opens his eyes, he sees not the bottom level of Relic's Point but an old apartment. He walks slowly around the room. Weird, this place seems kind of... familiar. Why is that?
He walks towards the door -- and stops himself. He shakes his head; he remembers ghosts. He opens the door and peers up and down the hallway, cringing inwardly at the pure nonsense the Guyver's senses are relaying. The building is big yet small, empty yet full... All it's really doing is giving him a headache.
He steps back into the room, closes the door behind him, and dismisses his armor. Damn, it's chilly in here, and the air tastes like dust.
A few more minutes wandering around the old apartment and Sho finds himself remembering a long, weird dream. Is that it? That was just a dream, though; how can it be real?
Maybe that's it. Maybe he's just dreaming again. Hell, maybe he's dead for real this time.
Why does he hear footsteps? He whirls around, but there's no one there.
How did it go? Damn. Things have been so crazy, he can't remember. Something about power, but like that means anything by itself.
"I know you're there," he says.
One of the doors creaks; he turns to it, but no, still no one there.
Sho sighs. "Look, just... creak the door all you want." He walks back to the living room and falls into the first chair he finds. Ugh, there's dust everywhere.
If this is a dream, he'll just wait until he wakes up. If it's not, well... rest sounds good.
First Person:
At least I know I'm not dead. [His voice is soft; he sounds sore.] Now, the real question is am I dreaming now, or was what I was doing before a dream?
Man, Tetsuro's never around when I really need him.
[A creak, some footsteps, and then a curse.] Ow! Okay, this isn't a dream.
Now I wish I'd written that damn dream down. No, that wouldn't have worked; I wouldn't have it anyway. Great.
[More footsteps; it sounds like he's pacing. They abruptly stop.]
Hey, wait. There was that guy. If this is the same place, then that guy should be here.
[Knock, knock, knock.]
Yeah, I figured that wouldn't work. [Muttering.] That should work. If there's a computer, it's got to be connected to something, right? Then... [the sound of typing] I should be able to get in touch with somebody.