Shinkawa Shouichi

Shinkawa Shouichi (新川 昌一), known as XaXa (ザザ) in «Sword Art Online» and as Sterben (ステルベン) in «Gun Gale Online», is the main antagonist of the Phantom Bullet Arc and a minor antagonist in the Aincrad Arc. He is one of the 10,000 players who were trapped in Sword Art Online, where he was a member of the infamous red guild «Laughing Coffin», nicknamed as Red-Eyed XaXa (赤眼のザザ) because of the red eyes of his skull mask. After being released from the game, Shouichi began playing Gun Gale Online due to the recommendation of his brother, Shinkawa Kyouji. In October 2025, the two brothers created and began executing the «Death Gun» plot, which involved giving the impression that they could kill people in real life from within a game.

Sword Art Online Avatar
XaXa's overall design revolved around the color red. He customized his hair and eyes to be crimson, and wore a skeletal mask with glowing red eyepieces alongside a ragged, black hooded cloak marked with a red reverse cross, seemingly mocking the crest and colors of the Knights of the Blood. In combat, XaXa utilized an estoc so powerful that the metal gleamed in what appeared to be the colour of blood. He bore the Laughing Coffin guild tattoo on his right forearm.

Gun Gale Online Avatar


Shouichi'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 black goggles containing red lenses, along with a dark gray, tattered optical camouflage mantle and grungy, faded boots. On his right forearm, he re-tattooed the emblem of «Laughing Coffin»: a half-opened coffin with a eerie, leering smile on the lid and a white skeletal arm extending from the darkness within, beckoning the viewer.

Personality
Shouichi 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 Shouichi enjoyed killing other players because he enjoyed the feeling of being feared by others.

As Shouichi's father did not have any expectations for him due to him being frail and sick, Shouichi eventually dropped out of high school and turned to the Internet as his haven 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. Shouichi'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, Shouichi took his brother's Kyouji's advice and started playing Gun Gale Online. Shouichi 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, Shouichi 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 Gun» in-game.

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

Background
When Shouichi 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 by then his father had already given up on him taking over the family business, thus he pushed the burden onto his younger brother, Kyouji. Shouichi eventually dropped out of high school and turned to the internet and started playing MMORPGs until he got trapped in Sword Art Online.

A Murder Case in the Area
In April 2024, XaXa, along with PoH and Johnny Black, was hired by Grimlock to kill Schmitt, Yolko, and Caynz to prevent anyone from discovering the truth behind the death of Griselda, the leader of the Golden Apple guild. On April 23, after Johnny Black paralysed Schmitt while he was being confronted by Yolko and Caynz at the Hill of the Cross, XaXa seized the estoc Yolko and Caynz had requested to intimidate Schmitt, complementing on its design and deciding to add it to his collection. However, before the red players could accomplish their mission, they were forced to withdraw when Kirito arrived on a horse and warned them that he had arranged for reinforcements to arrive and had enough healing items to stall for time. As the Laughing Coffin members departed, XaXa promised Kirito that he would hunt him down on a horse like the Black Swordsman had done to them.

August, 2024
During the anti-Player Killer raid led by the Clearers, XaXa fought Kirito at the start of the counterattack, but was forced to retreat after his hit points were reduced to less than half, swearing to kill Kirito. Before being sent to the Black Iron Palace prison, XaXa offered to reveal his name to the Black Swordsman, but the latter refused to hear it, declaring that he never wanted to meet him again. While in prison, XaXa spent an indefinite amount of time practicing Sword Skills repeatedly, despite the lack of gain in cor and experience points, burning the motions into his muscle memory.

November, 2024
XaXa was one of the 6,147 surviving players to log out after Kirito defeated Heathcliff on the 75th Floor.

Phantom Bullet Arc
Due to being an orange player in SAO, Shouichi underwent a time of observation and counseling after his release from the death game, though he only confided his experiences and accomplishments therein to Kyouji. Lacking other SAO Survivors' aversion to virtual reality, he accepted his brother's advice to begin playing Gun Gale Online, but unenthusiastically limited himself to simply observing other players in town and imagining how to kill them. However, when Shouichi used the allowance allotted to him to purchase an invisibility cloak via a Real Money Transaction (RMT), he started utilizing it to stalk other players undetected just to amuse himself.

Sometime in early September, 2025, upon following one of his targets into the regent's office hall, Sterben impulsively watched via his binoculars from a pillar's shadow as the player operated an information terminal. Surprised to find he could see the player's real-life name and address displayed on the screen, he memorized the information and wrote it down after logging out. Excited by his theft, Sterben then spent the next several days in the regent's office secretly observing players interact with the information terminals, until he had acquired the personal information of sixteen players.

Shouichi 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.

Hollow Realization
Sometime after Richter's (Kyouji's) second meeting with Kirito and Sinon, Shouichi used Kyouji's account to log into Sword Art: Origin. While wandering around the Town of Beginnings, he encountered Kirito, just as the boy was about to log off for the day. When greeted by Kirito, Richter inquired whether the boy was truly the legendary Black Swordsman of Sword Art Online. Treating his startled reaction as a confirmation of this, Richter commented on the strangeness of the Black Swordsman being in a world so similar to Aincrad. Before taking his leave, Richter gave a warning that the swordsman could not do as he pleased in Ainground, regardless of the resemblance between the the two worlds.

Gun Gale Online

 * Knife Creation
 * Weapon Creation

Gallery

 * See Shinkawa Shouichi/Image Gallery

Trivia

 * Shouichi's GGO avatar was named as Mortale fucile (モルターレ・フチーレ) while Shouichi's real name was Ryouichi (亮一) in the web version.
 * Shouichi makes a brief cameo game appearance in Hollow Realization by using Kyouji's in-game avatar to speak to Kirito while his younger brother was spending time with Shino in the real world.

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