List of Ring characters
This article lists the characters who have appeared in the Japanese Ring films, based on a series of novels written by Koji Suzuki. The series is made up of Ring, Rasen, Ring 2, Ring 0: Birthday and Sadako 3D. The films have also been adapted into the Korean film The Ring Virus, and the American series The Ring, Rings, The Ring Two and Rings. In television the first novel has been adapted into the television film Ring: Kanzenban as well as Ring: The Final Chapter a 12-episode television series. A follow-up series, Rasen, was also produced.
The books and films revolve around a mysterious video cassette that is said to curse those who watch it so that they will die within a week of viewing. The main characters discover this to be true and must solve the videotape's origins to save themselves and other characters from the deadly curse.
Main characters
Kazuyuki Asakawa
Kazuyuki Asakawa is the lead character in the first novel of the series, Ring. He has two older brothers: Junichi, who works in a publishing company, and another one who works as a high school teacher. Kazuyuki is married to Shizuka Oda and they have a one-year-old daughter named Yoko. His best friend is Ryuji Takayama, a college professor and alleged rapist. After his wife's niece Tomoko dies and he comes across another boy who died on the same day on his motorbike, Asakawa tries to find out why, which then links him to the cursed videotape. After watching it, he is left with just seven days to figure out how to break the curse. While Kazuyuki manages to escape the curse by showing Ryuji with a copy of the videotape, as revealed in Spiral, his daughter and wife do not despite having done the same, as the virus which causes the curse mutated when Kazuyuki copied the tape for Ryuji. In his panic, Kazuyuki experiences a car accident which leaves him catatonic. Ando attempts to interview him about the virus, but he remains mute. Several weeks later, Kazuyuki passes away in his sleep. It is later revealed that the virus spared Kazuyuki because he unwittingly helped it spread; Kazuyuki's journal chronicling his investigation on Sadako is printed by Junichi into a book published nationally.In Ring: Kanzenban, Asakawa is played by Katsunori Takahashi with little difference except for an unborn child rather than a one-year-old daughter. In the 1999 television series, Ring: The Final Chapter, he is played by Toshirō Yanagiba. In this incarnation, he is a widower with a young son, Yoichi, while Ryuji is not a friend of his and it is not speculated that the two have previously known each other. In the film series, Kazuyuki's role is played by Reiko Asakawa. Other than the gender change and her relationship with Ryuji, who is now Reiko's ex-husband and the father of Yoichi, Reiko is otherwise unchanged from Kazuyuki's persona. The producers opted for this because they felt a woman would have more appeal to box office audience.
In Ring 2, after the death of his father, Yoichi has started to become more and more like Sadako and is unable to speak. Reiko and Yoichi go into hiding from the authorities but are tracked down by Mai Takano, one of Ryuji's students, and she promises to help Reiko solve the problem with Yoichi. However, when another person dies from the curse of the videotape, Mai tells the police about Reiko and they arrest her. Scientists plan to do tests on Yoichi to test his level of ESP. Yoichi cries out to Reiko in a panic. When the policemen call Yoichi a "monster", Yoichi launches a physic attack on two doctors. The police chase the two of them and they try to escape. While trying to cross a road, Reiko falls into one of her terrible visions; her father telling her that Yoichi is not himself anymore. She did not have enough time to escape; she is hit by a truck and is killed. The shock of seeing his mother killed prompts Yoichi to nearly kill one of the policemen. It appears that Reiko's spirit is watching him still and Yoichi is saved from Sadako by the spirit of his father Ryuji.
In Rasen, after she and Yoichi turn up dead following a car crash, her superior Yoshino finds both the videotape and Reiko's diary in her car. Following Reiko's death, many people begin to die after a week as they did after watching the video. While the hero, Andou, thinks that it is the video causing the deaths, he discovers that none of them watched the video tape. At the end of the film, it turns out that it is Reiko's diary; she and Ryuji were helping Sadako all along. Consequently, the reincarnation of Ryuji takes the diary with the intention of publishing it to spread the curse even further.
In the BBC radio drama adaptation, Fright Night: Ring, broadcast in 2015, Kazayuki's name is altered to Mitchell Hooper and is depicted as a British expatriate living in Japan rather than a Japanese citizen by birth. He is voiced by Matthew Gravelle.
Ryuji Takayama
Ryuji Takayama is a major character in the series, first appearing in Ring. In Ring, Ryūji Takayama is a strange man with a dark sense of humor, who as such claims to be an occasional rapist and seems to fear nothing. As soon as Asakawa explains the story, Ryuji believes him, and wants nothing other than to see the cursed videotape. Asakawa shows it to him, and although Ryuji remains nonchalant, he agrees there is a powerful aura around the tape. He asks Asakawa to make him a copy to study at home, which Asakawa does. By the end, he and Asakawa believe they have solved the mystery surrounding the series' central character, Sadako Yamamura; the following day, however, Sadako's malignant spirit emerges from the tape and kills him. In Spiral a former medical school classmate, Ando, performs the autopsy on Ryuji. He discovers a bit of newspaper sticking out of Ryuji's stomach sutures, with two sets of numbers on it: "178" and "136". Later on, it is traced to a code, utilizing a sequence of Ryuji's DNA. The message contained was "mutation". Ando later discovers that Ryuji decided to join forces with Sadako, and is blackmailed by Sadako into bringing Ryuji back to life. Sadako and Ryuji then plot to spread the virus throughout the world using the diary of his dead friend, Asakawa.In Loop, protagonist Kaoru Futami discovers that he is actually a clone of Ryuji, who realized he was living in an artificial world right before his death and asked the outside world to help him escape. Kaoru realizes that he is the cure to the virus that afflicts his girlfriend, Reiko, and is implanted into the Loop; in order to obtain the cure to the virus to save his girlfriend, he has to die. When in the Loop, Kaoru is reborn through Sadako instead of Ryuji, and Kaoru from then on lives under the name of Ryuji Takayama. After six months of research, Kaoru/Ryuji creates a vaccine for the Ring virus, a sample of which he gives to Ando. The vaccine is then mass-produced, neutralizing the effects of the Ring virus. He also creates a virus designed to accelerate the Sadako clones' aging rate and kill them, ridding the Loop of Sadako Yamamura forever. However, the virus also affects Ryuji, and he eventually dies his second death. His last thoughts are of Reiko and her face.
In the novel S, set twenty-five years after the events of Spiral, Ryuji is revealed to be the real identity of Seiji Kashiwada, an apparent serial killer who murdered four girls and made an attempt on Akane Maruyama's life. Ryuji tells Takanori and Akane that he had impersonated the real Kashiwada in his attempt to apprehend Hiroyuki Niimura, his student and a fundamentalist who wanted to rid the world of Sadako clones for good, targeting four clones whom Ryuji spared because he thought that they posed no danger. He failed in saving them all, but managed to save Akane when Niimura attempted to kill her. However, this ended up implicating the real Kashiwada, who was subsequently captured and executed by the authorities. Ryuji then reveals that he is Akane's biological father, fathering her with Masako Maruyama, the Sadako clone born from Mai Takano's womb. He then bids them farewell before leaving Loop, attempting to reach the real world once more.
In the film series, Ryuji is portrayed by Hiroyuki Sanada. In the films, Ryuji is shown to have a more somber and reserved personality, with no implication of being a rapist like in the novel. He is also the ex-husband of protagonist Reiko Asakawa, the gender-flipped version of Kazuyuki, Ryuji's best friend in the novel. Ryuji also possesses ESP powers similar to Sadako which he passes down to his family. Yoshio Harada portrays him in Ring: Kanzenban, while Tomoya Nagase portrays him in Ring: The Final Chapter. Seiji Kashiwada, Ryuji's fake identity, is played by Yusuke Yamamoto in the adaptations of S, Sadako 3D and Sadako 3D 2, but this version of Kashiwada is not connected to Ryuji, instead a person whom Sadako uses in aid of her revival. In the television series, Ryuji is instead a sociopathic occultist who is revealed to be the son of Sadako having been passed on her powers. His relationship with Asakawa is not close but rather exists for the purpose of solving the curse of the videotape.
Ryuji's counterpart in the American film series is Noah Clay, portrayed by Martin Henderson, while in the Korean version, his counterpart is Dr. Choi Yeol.
In the BBC radio drama adaptation Ryuji is voiced by Akira Koieyama.
Mitsuo Ando
Mitsuo Ando is the protagonist of the second novel, Spiral. A forensics doctor and autopsy surgeon, Ando was friends with Ryuji Takayama in medical school before he turned to mathematics and has to perform an autopsy on his body. His young son, Takanori, drowned while swimming with him and his wife filed for divorce afterward. Ando and Ryuji's student Mai Takano destroy the original tape after he watches it to end Sadako's curse for good. It is later revealed that both are manipulated by Ryuji, who is working with Sadako to ensure his survival; in return, he will help resurrect her. Ando is forced to agree to spread the curse as he already has sex with Sadako, causing the dormant Ring virus to infect his body; in exchange, Sadako will resurrect Ando's son. Disgusted at Ryuji, who ostensibly worked with Sadako, Ando keeps a distance from both and does not participate in the search for the cure to the virus, electing to live a quiet life with his family. He reconciles with his wife and conceives a daughter, Takanori's younger sister. Ando has a small supporting role in S, which stars Takanori as the protagonist. When Takanori asks him about the virus and his suspicions regarding his resurrection, Ando vehemently refuses to answer, forcing Takanori to seek others' help.In the film Rasen, Ando is played by Kōichi Satō.