Nagata Shinichi

Nagata Shinichi (長田伸一) is a friend and classmate of Kirigaya Suguha. He controls the Sylph avatar, Recon (レコン), who excels at using daggers, stealth and dark magic in combat, in the VRMMORPG «ALfheim Online». As Recon, Shinichi acts as Suguha's character Leafa's mentor in the game, until she surpasses him.

Real Life
Nagata Shinichi is a bespectacled boy of average height with short black hair. He has a tendency to wear a brown trench coat over his school uniform that consists of a black long sleeved shirt with yellow buttons and a matching pair of pants. He also wears a pair of blue sneakers.

ALfheim Online Avatar
Though his appearance was randomly generated, Leafa notes that Recon looks similar to his actual self. He is a teenage Sylph with yellow green bob-styled hair, green eyes (it is revealed that he chose to pay an additional fee to be able to play around with his eyes to match his sense of aesthetics, as he thought that their balance was off ), a delicate body, and long pointed ears. He usually wears an expression that makes him appear to be on the verge of tears.

He wears a hooded long-sleeved green cardigan, under of which is a long dark green shirt covered by a dark blue vest. He wears a pair of brown pants with armor around his shins and a pair of dark gray shoes. He also wears a belt with his dagger strapped to its back.

History
Shinichi was approached by his classmate Suguha who asked him to teach her to play VRMMORPGS. When Suguha revealed that she couldn't afford to cut down her time for Kendo and studying, Shinichi suggested ALfheim Online since it was not time intensive and was based on player skills. He then proceeded to play the game with her, acting as her mentor and partner.

ALfheim Online
After being ambushed by a group of Salamanders, Recon begins to suspect their party leader, Sigurd, as it was unlike of him to act as bait to lure away some of the Salamanders. After seeing Leafa off at the tower of wind, he decides to follow Sigurd by using his «Hollow Body» transparency spell to remain hidden, initially to look for a chance to assassinate Sigurd with poison for saying bad things to Leafa in the tower of wind, but, after seeing Sigurd put on an invisibility cloak in front of an ally, he suspects that Sigurd is up to no good and follows him into the sewers of Sylvain (due to Recon's tracking skills, he is able to see through Sigurd's invisibility).

There he sees Sigurd meeting with 2 Salamanders and hears him telling the Salamanders to put a Tracer on Leafa, as well as conspiring with them to have a large attack force of Salamanders attack an alliance conference between the Sylphs and the Cait Siths, which was taking place in a neutral territory that day, and killing the lords of the two races and, consequently, ruining the alliance. Because the conference would be attacked due to an information leakage on the Sylphs' side, the Cait Siths would likely blame the Sylphs for the death of their lord (a death of the lord of a race brings a great penalty on the race) and, in the worst case scenario, even start a war with the Sylphs.

As Recon attempts to leave the sewer and warn Leafa, he accidentally kicks a stone, revealing his presence to the Salamanders, who use search magic to see through Recon's disguise. Before Recon manages to escape, he is shot at with a poison arrow, which paralyses him, allowing the Salamanders to capture him. Due to not being able to warn Leafa or the Sylphs at the conference in-game, he resorts to calling Suguha in real life to warn her about Sigurd's conspiracy. Because of Recon's warning, Leafa and Kirito manage to get to the conference just in time to save the lords, preventing the possible war between the Sylphs and Cait Siths, if the conference was a failure.

Recon, after killing the 2 Salamanders with poison, once his paralysis wore off, and escaping the sewers, decides to head over to Aarun, taking a full night to pass through the mountain range (unintentionally luring active monsters onto passing-by players along the way, which is considered as Monster PK) and, as he reaches the city, is reunited with Leafa in the south terrace, just outside the dome to the World Tree. After hearing that Leafa is planning to disband her party with Kirito, the young Sylph confesses his love for her, only to receive a punch to the solar plexus (an area of the abdomen).

He is later dragged by Leafa to help her and Kirito attack the World Tree. Initially, Recon was supposed to stay near the ground with Leafa and help chant healing spells to keep Kirito, who went for the gate, alive. It was expected that the guardians would focus on attacking Kirito, as monsters usually didn't attack players who were not in the detection range of the mob and did not use long-range weapons or offensive spells, so using only healing magic from afar should have guaranteed safety to both Leafa and Recon.

However, as the attack pattern of the guardians was different from that of normal monsters, some of the guardians started targeting the two Sylphs. Realizing the importance of the mission and likely wanting to protect Leafa, Recon changes from using healing spells to using wide area wind attribute offensive spells to draw the attention of the stray guardians (the amount of guardians chasing Recon increasing each time Leafa used a healing spell), while dodging their blows as much as possible, and, ultimately, decides to sacrifice himself by using a high level Dark attribute self-destruction spell, despite knowing that it would entail a high death penalty. His spell kills a large number of guardians and gives the Sylph and Cait Sith reinforcements enough time to arrive.

Recon later accepts an offer from the Sylph Lord, Lady Sakuya, and is currently a member of the Lord manor staff.

Abilities
Flight: As a member of the Sylph race, Recon is capable of flying with the use of his wings. However, despite playing the game for a long time, Recon has yet to master the skill Voluntary Flight, making him incapable of effectively fighting in midair.

Magic: As a member of the Sylph race, Recon is capable of using magic. Aside from the Wind Magic that his race specialize in, Recon is a master of stealth magic and is one of the few Sylphs known to be able to cast Darkness attribute magic.
 * Hollow Body - Due to him possessing a high level of stealth magic and being gifted in covert operations, Recon is capable of using Hollow Body, his most adept transparency skill that makes him invisible to both players and monsters alike.
 * Heal - An unnamed healing spell that allows him to heal a certain percentage of a target's HP.
 * Wind Blade - A weak unnamed wind attribute spell that affects multiple enemies in a wide area. When cast, several green blades would spread from the caster in a fan-like fashion and attack those in a specific area.
 * Sacrifice - An unnamed high-level darkness attribute self-destruction spell. When activated, this spell causes a massive explosion that causes a huge amount of damage to the surrounding area, obliterating those around the target. Due to the sheer power of this spell, the player would sacrifice his life in order to activate it and would suffer a death penalty several times worse than the normal one.

Tracking: Living up to his name, Recon is considered to be one of the best trackers among the Sylphs. Because of this, he takes up the role as lead tracker during hunting expeditions.

Equipment
Dagger: Despite his somewhat unreliable attitude, Recon is a veteran in ALfheim Online and has mastered the use of daggers in combat. However, his inability to use Voluntary Flight makes him incapable of fighting effectively in midair.

Trivia

 * Recon's name (pronounced as Riikon) is spelled in English and refers to the U.S. military reconnaissance team.