Shigemura Tetsuhiro

Shigemura Tetsuhiro (重村徹大) is the main antagonist in Ordinal Scale. Tetsuhiro is a professor of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the Toto Institute of Technology, where he had established his Shigemura Laboratory that was attended by students such as Kayaba Akihiko, Sugou Nobuyuki, and Higa Takeru. Shigemura Tetsuhiro was also an external board member at Argus, the company that created Sword Art Online (SAO).

After the death of his daughter Shigemura Yuuna in Sword Art Online, Tetsuhiro developed the Augma, Ordinal Scale, and YUNA at Kamura as part of a plan to resurrect his daughter as an artificial intelligence (AI) by gathering memories of her stolen from Sword Art Online survivors. The plan would have culminated in a mass high-output scanning of Sword Art Online player brains during YUNA's first concert at the New National Stadium, but it was thwarted by the artificial intelligence reproduction of his daughter, who decided to sacrifice herself to save the players from potential death due to the scan. In the aftermath of the incident, the professor resigned from Kamura, relinquished his rights to the YUNA AI, and was introduced to Project Alicization at Rath by Kikuoka Seijirou.

Appearance
Shigemura is a forty-eight-year-old man with grayish hair and an extended goatee beard. Outside his home, he either wears a white lab coat over a shirt with a tie, or a variety of suits with a tie.

Personality
Shigemura Tetsuhiro is a father who dearly loved his daughter; however, he was also strict and demanding, such as only allowing his daughter to perform classical music. On the other hand, Tetsuhiro could be cold and ruthless to others, such as betraying Eiji when the boy no longer served any use for him, or being willing to potentially murder thousands of people if it meant that he could have his daughter resurrected. Moreover, he was obstinate and conceited on his beliefs to such an extent that he dismissed the opinion of the very AI he had created in Yuuna's likeness when she attempted to protest against the actions he was taking for her sake, believing that the artificial intelligence was not advanced enough to represent his daughter's views correctly.

Background
Shigemura Tetsuhiro was born on June 22, 1977 and enrolled at the Electronics Course at Toto Institute of Technology in 1996. There, Tetsuhiro became a member of Professor Saitou Fujio's laboratory in 1998 and later became an assistant at the laboratory upon completing his doctoral course in 2006. Tetsuhiro became a lecturer at the institute in 2011 and advanced to the position of associate professor in 2014. In November that year, Shigemura Tetsuhiro inherited Professor Saitou Fujio's laboratory and thus established his own Shigemura Laboratory. In 2022, Tetsuhiro became a professor at the institute.

At some point, Shigemura Tetsuhiro became an external board director of Argus, the company that his former student Kayaba Akihiko turned from a puny maker in 2010 into a prestigious virtual reality device and game development company, to assist Akihiko in his FullDive research. Using this position, Tetsuhiro managed to acquire a NerveGear and two copies of Sword Art Online for his daughter Yuuna and her childhood friend Nochizawa Eiji in an attempt to look good in his daughter's eyes. After Sword Art Online became a death game, trapping both his daughter and Eiji, Tetsuhiro became Eiji's de facto guardian when the boy's parents divorced merely a month after the death game's beginning.

Following Yuna's demise in Sword Art Online, Tetsuhiro blamed his own foolishness for the death of his daughter. However, after Sword Art Online was cleared and the remaining survivors were released from the game, Professor Shigemura devised a plan to resurrect his daughter as an artificial intelligence by stealing memories related to his daughter from the Sword Art Online survivors and then using deep learning to simulate his daughter's personality based on these fragments.

To this end, Tetsuhiro began development of the Augma in December 2024 and gained access to the SAO server in Argus. Tetsuhiro used the most sophisticated language engine on the server that had been reserved for the final boss of the game as the foundation for his artificial intelligence reproduction of Yuuna. Inside the server, the professor also found the «Ordinal System», a system that Kayaba Akihiko had begun developing but scrapped in favour of the «Cardinal System». As the Ordinal System made the top-ranked individual on the server invincible, he decided to copy and recycle this system for the creation of a new game titled Ordinal Scale, believing that this would offer the ultimate protection for his new artificial intelligence, as it would otherwise be reset if the boss were to be defeated at some point.

In the autumn of 2025, Professor Shigemura recruited the help of Nochizawa Eiji with the promise of a way to resurrect Yuuna as an artificial intelligence. With the release of the Augma and Ordinal Scale in April 2026, Tetsuhiro sought to have the memories of Sword Art Online players stimulated through YUNA, an AI crawler with his daughter's likeness, and Sword Art Online bosses in the game, before using the Augma to scan their brains when the player experienced fear of death during the battles. The plan would culminate in a mass high-output scanning of Sword Art Online player brains during YUNA's first concert at the New National Stadium. Tetsuhiro also distributed free copies of the Augma and tickets to YUNA's live concert to the students at the SAO Survivor School for the sake of his plan.

Ordinal Scale
On April 28, 2026, Shigemura Tetsuhiro held a lecture at the Toto Institute of Technology in the Meguro Ward promoting the use of augmented reality technology in favour of using FullDive technology. At the end of the lecture, the professor accepted questions from the audience; however, when an auditing student named Kirigaya Kazuto began questioning the inherent dangers of the technology he was promoting, Tetsuhiro decided to dismiss the class and continue the conversation with the boy in a private setting. At his laboratory, the professor denied the boy's claims about him being personally acquainted with Nochizawa Eiji, as well as the claims that the Augma had a memory scanning function. Tetsuhiro also speculated that the SAO survivors who had lost their memories had possibly desired to forget the past themselves, before forcing the boy to leave. Some time later, the professor called Eiji to warn him that someone had become aware of their plan and thus urged the boy to accelerate his pace.

On April 29, 2026, the day for the final phase of their plan, Tetsuhiro decided to observe the events unfolding at YUNA's concert venue from the SAO server room at Argus's headquarters. After launching the final phase of their plan by summoning a horde of Sword Art Online bosses at the venue to prepare for conducting a high-output scan of the Sword Art Online players' brains when they were overwhelmed by fear, the professor received a visit from the Yuuna AI he had created. When the AI protested against his actions as it may lead to killing his victims, Tetsuhiro dismissed her opinion and obstinately continued with his plans. Following Kikuoka Seijirou's discovery that he was not present at the concert venue, the professor received a call from Eiji, who reported his defeat in his duel against Kirito. Finding no more use for the boy, Tetsuhiro betrayed him by summoning Dorz'l the Chaos Drake at his position to retrieve the boy's memories of Yuuna.

Eventually, Tetsuhiro's plans were thwarted by the very AI he attempted to create and Tetsuhiro himself was apprehended by Kikuoka Seijirou and his team. The professor was forced to take responsibility for the incident by resigning from Kamura and relinquishing his YUNA management rights to the company. However, instead of being charged for his crime, he was brought to Rath by Seiirou to introduce him to the Self-Defence Force's secret venture, Project Alicization.

Trivia

 * Shigemura Tetsuhiro is the leading expert on non-invasive Brain Machine Interface (BMI) research.
 * With his team of researchers at his laboratory at the Toto Institute of Technology, the professor succeeded in upgrading an electromagnetic coil-type BMI into a solid-state device.