RYUHO
RY
The absolute polar opposite to Kazuma. Ryuho is the cold, calculating elite enforcer for HOLY, the corporate police force of the walled city. Dressed in a pristine white uniform, he fights using Zetsuei, a fluid, ribbon-like Alter that moves with terrifying grace and precision. The escalating, deeply personal rivalry between Ryuho's rigid sense of justice and Kazuma's absolute chaotic freedom is the roaring engine that drives the entire series forward.
RYUHO THROUGH THE ARCHIVE //
HOLD, HOLY & THE MAINLAND //
Open page →HOLD Is the Government Arm; HOLY Is Its Alter Unit
Open →Police Power · Alter Special Operations · Lost Ground Control
HOLD is the Mainland government's police and administrative power inside the Lost Ground. HOLY sits inside that system as the special unit made up of Alter users. That distinction matters because Kazuma spends the early series treating every uniform as the same enemy while Ryuho sees HOLY as the tool that keeps uncontrolled Alter violence from swallowing ordinary people.
Why it matters
Kazuma sees a cage. Ryuho sees the danger that shaped his childhood. Neither man is completely imagining the problem. The argument is over who gets to decide what control is allowed to cost.
Episode 25 · Refined Alter Forces · The Political Problem Remains
Mujo is the final villain, but he is not the entire system. After Kazuma destroys him, the Mainland still sends refined Alter forces into the Lost Ground. Kazuma and Ryuho end up doing together what neither could imagine at the beginning: defending the same land from outside control.
Why it matters
The ending refuses the easy answer that one evil man caused everything. Mujo can die and the political relationship between the Lost Ground and the Mainland can still be broken.
Episode 22 · Alter Alias · One Last Lesson
During their final fight, Zigmarl tells Ryuho that Ryuho caused his mother's death by opening the Other Side. The claim is designed to enrage him enough to reach a higher level of Zetsuei. Only after Ryuho defeats him does Zigmarl admit that the accusation was a lie.
Why it matters
It is an ugly final expression of Zigmarl's worldview. Even when he wants Ryuho to surpass HOLY, he still tries to manufacture that growth through control, pressure and trauma.
KAZUMA & RYUHO: WHY THEY HAVE TO FIGHT //
Open page →Ryuho Sees Native Alters Through the Worst Day of His Life
Open →Crystal · His Mother's Death · Control Before Trust
Ryuho does not join HOLY as a neutral observer deciding which political system sounds best. His childhood is shattered by an Alter user he cannot control or understand. By the time he meets Kazuma, uncontrolled Alter power already means danger to him.
Why it matters
Kazuma looks like proof that Ryuho is right. He is powerful, unregistered, openly contemptuous of authority and perfectly willing to punch through anyone sent to contain him. Ryuho judges Kazuma before he knows anything about the life Kazuma is actually protecting.
Ryuho Loses His Memory · Kazuma Walks Away From Everyone
The Episode 13 clash does not settle the rivalry. It blows both men out of the lives that defined them. Ryuho wakes without his memories and begins protecting a Native settlement without HOLY telling him who deserves protection. Kazuma survives too, but retreats into underground fights and refuses to return to Kanami.
Why it matters
For eight months, each man lives outside the identity he defended in the first half. Ryuho learns he can choose to protect people without the uniform. Kazuma learns that absolute separation is not freedom when it leaves him too afraid to go home.
Amnesia Removes HOLY, Not His Instinct to Protect
Without his memories, Ryuho finds people being abused in a Native settlement and acts against the men controlling them. Nobody has to persuade him that the villagers count as people. The decision comes before the restored memories and before any reconciliation with Kazuma.
Why it matters
The amnesia arc quietly answers one of the series' biggest questions about Ryuho. HOLY gave his anger a structure, but it did not create the part of him that wants to protect people.
The Lost Ground Is Being Used · Kanami Is Taken · The Mainland Wants More
By the final Mujo campaign, Kazuma and Ryuho no longer need to agree about authority, discipline or what a good life looks like. They only need to recognize the same immediate truth: Mujo is using the Lost Ground, its Alter users and the Other Side as material for his own power.
What changed
Their alliance works because neither man has to surrender the thing that made him the other's rival. They finally have enough information to point those differences at the same enemy.
No HOLY Order · No Mujo · No Hostage · No Greater Cause
For most of the series, Kazuma and Ryuho can explain a fight with something outside themselves. Arrest. Revenge. HOLY. Kanami. The Lost Ground. Mujo. By Episode 26 those excuses are gone.
Why it matters
Kanami understands why asking them not to fight will not solve anything. They are not trying to decide which government should rule the Lost Ground. They are finally answering the stupid, sincere, completely personal question that has been sitting underneath everything else: when nothing is left between them, which one can make the other stay down?
ALTER EVOLUTIONS & DIMENSIONS //
Open page →Ryuho's Zetsuei evolves to mirror Kazuma's growth:
1. Masked Zetsuei: Autonomous metallic humanoid bound by silk ribbons.
2. Unmasked / Flight Form: Reveals Zetsuei's true face and sprouts massive bladed wings for supersonic aerial combat.
3. Ultimate Zetsuei: Fuses directly with Ryuho as sleek full-body liquid-metal armor with dual shoulder-mounted ribbon blades.
1. Masked Zetsuei: Autonomous metallic humanoid bound by silk ribbons.
2. Unmasked / Flight Form: Reveals Zetsuei's true face and sprouts massive bladed wings for supersonic aerial combat.
3. Ultimate Zetsuei: Fuses directly with Ryuho as sleek full-body liquid-metal armor with dual shoulder-mounted ribbon blades.
ALTER MECHANICS //
Open page →Ryuho's base Alter manifests as Zetsuei, a separate masked humanoid connected to him by long flexible ribbons. Unlike Kazuma's armor, Zetsuei can attack and defend away from its user, giving Ryuho reach, precision and control over the space around him.
Why it matters
The contrast is immediate. Kazuma puts his Alter on his own body and charges forward. Ryuho commands a separate presence with distance and precision. Zetsuei's later transformations belong in Ryuho: Three Evolutionary Tiers.
S-CRY-ED MASTER COMBAT LEDGER //
Open page →Kazuma vs. Ryuho (First Wasteland Clash)
Open →Episode 1 · Slum Outpost Ruins · Decisive Ryuho Victory (Kazuma Arrested)
HOLY launched an armed raid into the outer slums to subdue unregistered Native Alters. Kazuma deployed Shell Bullet to break through military barricades, confronting Ryuho on open dirt terrain.
The Breakdown
Kazuma unleashed his Shell Bullet thrusters for a direct punch. Ryuho summoned Zetsuei, effortlessly deflecting Kazuma's kinetic blow with silk ribbons before Zetsuei's razor claws shattered Kazuma's armor, resulting in Kazuma's capture.
Episode 13 · Lost Ground · No Winner / Second Great Uprising
Kazuma and Ryuho collide again after Kimishima's death, with both men pushing their Alters beyond the level shown in their earlier fights.
The Breakdown
Kazuma drives Shell Bullet harder while Ryuho releases more of Zetsuei's power. Their clash opens contact with the Other Side and triggers the Second Great Uprising. Neither man earns a normal victory; both disappear in the catastrophe created by the fight.
The consequences of that clash belong in Their Biggest Fight Removes the Identities They Were Fighting With.
The consequences of that clash belong in Their Biggest Fight Removes the Identities They Were Fighting With.
Episode 24 · Mujo's Fortress · Parallel Final Battles
Kazuma and Ryuho finally fight on the same side, but they are not attacking one target as a coordinated team. Kazuma takes Mujo. Ryuho faces the Alter being tied to the death of his mother. Each confrontation is the end of a different obsession.
The Breakdown
Ryuho reaches Zetsuei's armor form and defeats the being from the Other Side. Kazuma draws deeper on Alter power, reaches his full-body form and destroys Mujo after Mujo transforms again. The victory matters because the two rivals can finally point all of that power away from each other long enough to protect the Lost Ground.
Episode 26 · Open Wasteland · Final Duel
Kazuma and Ryuho finally fight without another enemy interrupting them. Both escalate through their highest Alter forms, carry the battle into the sky and continue after their supernatural power is exhausted.
The Breakdown
Proud Fist and Ultimate Zetsuei are eventually stripped away until the duel becomes two exhausted men trading ordinary punches in the dirt. The episode closes on the raised-fist image instead of giving the audience a spoken referee-style verdict.
Why this fight still has to happen after the larger conflict is over is covered in Episode 26 Is the First Time the Rivalry Belongs Only to Them.
Why this fight still has to happen after the larger conflict is over is covered in Episode 26 Is the First Time the Rivalry Belongs Only to Them.
