Hironobu Satou (佐藤 浩伸 Satō Hironobu),[1] also credited as the ghost (亡霊 Bōrei) in the OVA, was a Japanese man whom Roberta killed and later envisioned as an intrusive thought to prevent her from continuing her revenge against the Grey Fox unit under her Bloodhound persona.
Appearance[]
Hironobu was an older Japanese man with a skinny build, short dark-gray hair, and pale skin. He wore a white dress shirt with a green necktie and his ID card around his neck, in addition wearing gray-blue dress pants with a belt. He was frequently seen with blood streaming downward on his face from his forehead while he was an apparition, marking where Roberta fatally shot him.
History[]
Hironobu was an employee at Taisho Electric who worked at their Magdalena branch. In 1989, FARC soldiers assaulted the business and Roberta captured two engineers, one of them being Hironobu. Before she executed him, Roberta callously ripped apart his family photograph before killing him, and that photograph remained in Roberta's mind as one of numerous emotional wounds.[2]
El Baile de la muerte / Roberta's Blood Trail[]
Roberta saw Hironobu in her hallucinations caused by the great amounts of pills she ingested. In the first instance in her hideout, she had been praying for Diego Lovelace's salvation and Garcia Lovelace's protection, and Hironobu's apparition warned her not go through with her revenge plan on the Grey Fox soldiers. He added that she could not be saved no matter how much she repented, angering her. As she continued praying and ignoring Hironobu, Richie Leroy entered the room, so Roberta immediately pointed a gun at him, scaring Leroy. Terrified, he told her that it was only him and clarified that he brought her some requested items, also asking Roberta who she was talking to. The apparition disappeared and she ignored his question and accepted the items.[3]
As Roberta walked on the roof to begin her first attack, Hironobu's apparition appeared behind her as she walked to the roof's edge. He told her that there was still time to walk away, adding that no one asked her to seek revenge. In response, Roberta furiously retorted that sin could only be atoned for by blood and proclaimed that she would kill the murderers to make them regret their actions.[4] Later that night when Roberta noticed that Garcia had watched her kill Alberto Camarasa, Roberta freaked out and tried to wake the boy up after he fell down and froze from shock. As she pleaded for his life to be safe, Hironobu appeared and asked her if it was not her who made him appear in her vision in the first place to be a conscious voice of reason to prevent Garcia from seeing her violent actions. In turn, Roberta sternly asked Hironobu when he would stop haunting her vision, and he responded that it was not her who forgot him, as she always remembered the emotional wounds that she received when she murdered him. Reminding her that it was 7 years ago since Roberta did that, he remarked that her emotional wounds continued to fester even in calm daily life ever since.[2]
He claimed that if Roberta remained with Garcia, then her wounds would have healed in time, but by continuing cycle of killing, she would travel even deeper into hell. Roberta asked what she could do then to be forgiven, but then snapped at the apparition since he followed her to prevent her from forgetting her sin. Immediately, she thought that Garcia Lovelace too was an apparition created by her imagination to make her see a horrible vision that she would not forget. Consequently, she pointed her pistol at the fainted Garcia to show that her master was just an intrusive thought.[5] Thankfully, Horner interfered just in time to save Garcia, scaring off Roberta and removing Hironobu's apparition.[6]
Later when Roberta returned to her hideout in defeat, Hironobu appeared and told her that she was lucky to get out alive, causing Roberta to angrily shoot bullets toward the apparition, who disappeared when the bullets hit the wall.[7] When Garcia pointed his pistol at Roberta as part of his plan to prevent her from further losing her sanity, she saw Hironobu's apparition behind Garcia, and soon she agreed with Garcia to end the dance of death that she had engaged in.[8] Once Roberta returned to Venezuela, Hironobu's wife and grown son visited the estate since Roberta wanted to make amends with them. In the Roberta's Blood Trail OVA only, Roberta had a photograph of the late Hironobu and his family on her lap, and Shane Caxton also accompanied Hironobu's wife and son.[9]
References[]
- ↑ Shown on his ID card in Episode 27. Only his given name Hironobu and the second character in his surname were visible in the manga in Chapter 76.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Episode 27: Angels in the Crosshairs
- ↑ Chapter 54: El Baile de la muerte Part 11
- ↑ Chapter 57: El Baile de la muerte Part 14
- ↑ Chapter 63: El Baile de la muerte Part 20
- ↑ Chapter 64: El Baile de la muerte Part 21
- ↑ Chapter 69: El Baile de la muerte Part 26
- ↑ Chapter 76: El Baile de la muerte Part 33
- ↑ Episode 29: Codename Paradise, Status MIA