Asada Shino

Asada Shino (朝田詩乃) is a skilled VRMMO player. She goes by the name Sinon (シノン) in «Gun Gale Online» and «ALfheim Online». She is nicknamed Hecate, after her gun «PGM Ultima Ratio Hecate II», a .50 caliber anti-materiel and rare sniper rifle. She is one of the main characters of the Phantom Bullet Arc and the first female player that Kirito meets in GGO. She plays GGO to overcome her trauma concerning guns. She originally considered Kirito as her rival and target, but she later develops passionate feelings for him.

After joining «ALfheim Online» she becomes a Cait Sith archer, where she is capable of hitting targets 200m away with a bow that should only shoot arrows accurately to a max distance of 100m. This bow was made by Lisbeth.

Appearance
Similar to both of her VRMMO game avatars, Shino has thin hair tied in small ribbons by the side of her face, with the back cut short. Unlike her avatars, her hair is black. She also wears a pair of half-rimmed glasses with oval-shaped lenses. Her skin is pale, and she has black eyes. Her three sizes are 80-61-81.

Gun Gale Online Avatar


Shino's avatar has thin, pale blue swaying hair that was casually short but there was a tuft of hair tied up on both sides of her forehead, and indigo colored eyes. When she is in combat, her wardrobe is a desert colored military jacket, bulletproof armor and combat boots of the same color and she wears a white muffler around her neck.



ALfheim Online Avatar
Shino's avatar maintains her blue hair from GGO, yet also holds the appearance of a Cait Sith with ears and tails. She wears a green coat with white chest armor, a black choker and a belted quiver across her shoulders.

Background
When Shino was less than two years old, she was involved in a car accident. By the time anyone noticed the accident, it had been 6 hours. During the 6 hours, Shino's father slowly died from internal bleeding while her mother watched. Her mother was traumatized by the event and became very frail and was hurt easily. This resulted Shino to become overprotective of her mother. 9 years later, Shino was traumatized after she attempted to protect her mother during a robbery at a postal office, and ended up killing the robber with his own gun. As a result, she developed an intense fear of guns and slight fear of men. She also was bullied up until high school for this reason. After being introduced into GGO she fell into a trap on one of her hunting sprees and faced an extremely powerful boss, through sniping it for countless hours from outside its attack range she received the Hecate sniper rifle. Her only reason for joining GGO is trying to relieve herself from her trauma with guns.

Personality
Calm and cool are two words that best describe Sinon's personality. In battle and most of the time in the game, she keeps a cool head that makes other female players admire her. However, Sinon has a violent temper once angered, best seen with her interactions with Kirito. It is actually said that Kirito is the first one to make her extremely angry. Despite all this, Sinon, while may be hard to approach, is generally a friendly person and doesn't mind helping others.

Shino, however, is probably the most fragile minded character in the series. This is due to her childhood incident that involved her killing a robber. If someone were to act as if they were shooting her in real life Shino would have a nervous breakdown and be on the verge of collapsing. People have used this to take advantage of Shino before. Not only this, but the guilt of taking another's life haunts Shino the same way killing Laughing Coffin members haunts Kazuto. After the Death Gun Incident, Shino has seemed to gotten over her fear and is moving on from the incident and is no longer vulnerable to her classmates' threats of using a gun on her.

In ALO, Sinon is shown to be admired by the other female members of the party due to her cool attitude. She also bickers with Kirito every now and then as the two constantly tease one another. Sinon also may be one of the few girls Yui likes, as Yui and her were seen getting along in the beginning of Volume 10.

Phantom Bullet Arc
She is introduced as part of a player-hunting squadron led by Dyne, and assault rifle user. She then engages in a fierce battle with the high ranked hitman-like player known as Behemoth, who uses a heavy mini-gun. After an arduous battle she emerges the lone survivor. When she returns to the city she encounters Kirito, mistaking him for a girl and offers him help. After buying Kirito's equipment, the two find themselves running out of time to register for the Bullet of Bullets contest. Taking a three wheel buggy, they arrive with time to spare and register for the tournament. They then go to the bathroom to prepare for battle by equipping their attire and equipment, at this point since Kirito accidentally sees Sinon without her armor or clothing, which then leads Kirito to confess, showing his ID, which Sinon finds out that Kirito is a boy and slaps him. In the end, she is irritated at Kirito for fooling her up to the tournament and makes him swear to her that he would survive up to the semi-finals where she would defeat him on the battlefield; she gives him her username: Sinon.

When Sinon returns from her first battle, she sees Kirito has already defeated his opponent, but sees him hiding his face between his knees, and when she tried to greet him, she notices that Kirito appears shaken and where he even holds onto her hand and they stay like this until Kirito is teleported to his next match.

In her last match to the semi-finals, Sinon clears her last opponent and manages to win all her matches for the semi-finals, and for her last match, she faces against Kirito in the «Inter-Continental Highway» stage. In a bus, she plants herself near an open window and scopes with her Hecate and sees Kirito. But not like himself, walking with his head down, he walks straight down the road where he displaying no will to fight her. Sinon angered by this, shot at Kirito, but missed each shot, she then ran out to meet him and demand an answer as to why he wouldn't fight her. Kirito then asked her for another chance, and to have a duel version battle, which Sinon accepts. Sinon and Kirito lined up and got ready, with Kirito throwing a bullet into the air, waiting for the bullet to hit the ground. As soon as the bullet hit the ground, Sinon shot, but Kirito was able to slice the bullet in half and get to her, asking her to resign as he doesn't like to cut girls.

Caliber
Shortly after the «Death Gun» incident was solved, Shino was invited to join ALfheim Online by Lisbeth and Asuna. She created a new account and chose a Cait Sith as her avatar, due to the race having the best eyesight of all the nine races which proves to be very useful for using a longbow for long-range attacks. Two weeks later, when the location of Holy Sword Excaliber is found by everyday players, Kirito decides that it is time to retrieve the sword. Sinon is one of the 5 players (not including Suguha, as she was the one who inspired the expedition, so she didn't need an invitation) invited to join Kirito's expedition to recover the sword.





In the tunnel leading to Jötunheimr, she gets her tail pulled by Kirito as a joke, which she responds to by threatening to attack Kirito back for that. When they enter the dungeon she is relegated to the back lines due to her having low health and long range. After Kirito is forced to drop Excaliber, Sinon retrieves this using a returning arrow. She hands it over to Kirito under one condition: that he always thinks about her when he uses the sword.

Notable Achievements

 * Co-winner of the Third Bullet of Bullets (alongside player Kirito), «Gun Gale Online».
 * 2nd place in the fourth Bullet of Bullets.

Trivia

 * Although her avatar's name is pronounced as "Shinon" in Japanese and although this name is based on her real name "Shino", the official spelling of the name is "Sinon", as it is spelled in English in at least one instance in the novel.
 * The glasses she uses don't have any prescription and are not meant for correcting eyesight. Instead, the lenses are made from an NXT polymer which is said to make the glasses able to withstand even the impact of a bullet. This gives her a modest sense of security and allows her to stay calm.
 * Her eyesight for both of her eyes in real life are 2.0, which is twice as good as the average person.
 * Asuna has nicknamed Shino as "Sinonon".
 * Sinon's avatar in ALfheim Online was originally going to be a Sylph archer. This was changed with the creation of the Caliber side story.
 * Sinon appears in the new game of Sword Art Online «Infinity Moment» as an archer, even though she was not an SAO player in the LN and archers did not exist in SAO so it's non-canon.
 * She aspires to become a policewoman.
 * Her motto is 'One Shot, One Kill'.

Gallery

 * See: Asada Shino/Image Gallery