Shinkawa Shouichi

Shinkawa Shoichi (新川 昌一) is one of the 10,000 players who were trapped in «Sword Art Online» where he was infamously known as Red-Eyed XaXa (赤眼のザザ), a member of the infamous red guild «Laughing Coffin». He later became a player of «Gun Gale Online» under the name Sterben (ステルベン). He is also the mysterious self-proclaimed «Death Gun», alongside his brother Shinkawa Kyouji and Kanamoto Atsushi (Johnny Black), and is the main antagonist during the Phantom Bullet arc.

Sword Art Online Avatar
XaXa's overall design revolved around the color red, which made Asuna irritated at his taste. He wore a skeletal mask with red eyepieces and the design of a reverse cross, as well as a black cape with a hood. He had red eyes and hair that seemed to match with the red eyepieces. He bore the Laughing Coffin guild tattoo on his right forearm.

Gun Gale Online Avatar


Shoichi's avatar in Gun Gale Online, Sterben, is similar to XaXa in Sword Art Online. Like his SAO avatar, Sterben wears a skeletal mask with red eyepieces but also wears a dark optical camouflage mantle around him. On his right forearm, he re-tattooed a half-opened coffin with an arm sticking out of inside, waving; the emblem of «Laughing Coffin».

Personality
Shoichi is a cold and sadistic person who believed in PoH's principles, thus he enjoys killing other players, even with full knowledge that they would be killed in real life as well. It was later revealed that Shoichi enjoyed killing other players because he enjoyed the feeling of being feared by others.

As Shoichi's father did not have any expectations for him due to him being frail and sick, Shoichi eventually dropped out of high school and turned to the Internet as his heaven and started playing MMORPGs until he was trapped in SAO, where he committed various crimes, became a Player Killer one year after the game started, and joined Laughing Coffin. Shoichi's sense of reality had been wearing thin since then, feeling that only things beneficial to him were real.

After the death game had ended, Shoichi took his brother's Kyouji's advice and started playing Gun Gale Online. Shoichi spent time on the streets observing other players and imagining ways of killing them. While playing Gun Gale Online under the advice of his brother Kyouji, Shoichi did not battle monsters, but instead observed other players while thinking of ways to kill them. After obtaining his camouflage mantle, he practiced ways of obscuring himself from others, feeling that it was interesting to tail someone from behind. After he managed to find out the real life addresses of several players by tailing them when they inputted their personal information in the presidential estate of SBC Glocken, he and his brother came up with a plot to continue killing people in the real world, supposedly via the use of a «Death Pistol» in-game.

Shoichi has an amazing memory, as he is able to remember players' addresses and then write them down when he logged off.

Background
When Shoichi was young, he was rather frail and sick, and thus moved between his home and the hospital after graduating middle school. He entered high school a year late but his father had already given up on him taking over the family business, thus he pushed the burden onto his younger brother, Kyouji. Shoichi eventually dropped out of high school and turned to the internet and started playing MMORPGs until he got trapped in Sword Art Online.

Aincrad Arc
XaXa was one of the top members in the red guild «Laughing Coffin». He was a master of the «Estoc Thorn Sword» that was bathed in the color of red. He was partners with Johnny Black, and together served as a combination where they poisoned and killed.

During the anti-PK raid led by the Clearers, he fought Kirito in battle, but later retreated. Before being sent to the Black Iron Palace prison, he was about to reveal his name to Kirito, who refused to learn it. He was later one of the 6,147 players to log out after Kirito defeated Heathcliff on the 75th Floor.

Phantom Bullet Arc
Due to being an orange player in SAO, Shoichi underwent a time of observation and counseling after his release from the death game. He began to play Gun Gale Online under the advice of his brother Kyouji. After obtaining his camouflage mantle, the two brothers looked to Johnny Black, another former Laughing Coffin member, and began to plot an ingenious plan to kill players in the real world from within the virtual world.

Shoichi entered the Bullet of Bullets tournament under the name «Sterben» to prove his "true" killing ability to the rest of the world. He would stun people with special shells from his L115A3 Silent Assassin sniper rifle and then get up close to shoot them with his «Death Gun», the Type 54 "Black Star". While he committed the kill in-game, his brother and the other Laughing Coffin member would inject the players in the real world with succinylcholine, a drug capable of stopping the heart. They had obtained the address by hiding under a «Metamaterial Optical Camouflage Mantle» while they watched the other players type their real addresses during the BoB registration process. His plans were foiled by Kirito and Sinon, and he eventually went to prison after the incident had passed.

Sword Art Online (SAO)

 * Skills
 * One-Handed Rapier

Gun Gale Online (GGO)

 * Skills
 * Knife Creation
 * Weapon Creation
 * Main Equipment
 * Starship Metal Estoc - Weapon created with game skills.
 * Metamaterial Optical Camouflage Mantle
 * «Type 54 "Black Star"» Pistol
 * «Accuracy International L115A3»

Gallery

 * See Shinkawa Shoichi/Image Gallery

Trivia

 * Shoichi's GGO avatar was named as Mortale fucile (モルターレ・フチーレ) while Shoichi's real name was Ryouichi (亮一) in the web version.

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