The "Red Ribbon Reborn" Saga in the adventures of the new Ginyu Force is my tribute to the good ol' Dragonball hunts of yore in the original Dragonball manga. Over the course of the saga, several villains are intoduced, including Colonel Dark, Major Murasaki, and General Violet of the original DB manga, and Pasta and Bongo from the first DB film. As the story progresses, we see the return of another classic DB villain in the form of Taopaipai, and with him comes a character of my own creation: His protégé, the new deadliest assassin on Earth, Shuri-Ken. At first glace, she's nothing special; just another villain I created for the sagas of the new Ginyu Force. However, there's a lot more to her history behind the scenes, so I figured I'd share it with you here, in case anyone's interested.

It was, as it is in many of the background stories I tell, the year 2000. I had started up my Dragonball Z RPG campaign, and things were going well. Our Heroes had defeated Colonel Maroon, Black Ninja, Asparaga, Coliflur, and more, and were about to face their greatest challenge ever: The deadly Pokémon mutant Mewtwo. However, even as that conflict came over the horizon, I was planning ahead. I'd decided, for whatever reason, to throw a female ninja at the players. My initial character designs, one of which is seen at the left, were of an unbelievably buxom woman dressed in a white martial arts costume, with a tattoo of a Japanese torii gate on her shoulder. I created her as a character in the game, but didn't have much more beyond the picture and a name: I was going to call her Ninja Star.

Some time passed. I hadn't yet found a point in the game to insert "Ninja Star," and I quickly realized just how stupid her name was. However, it soon occurred to me that the Japanese word for a throwing star, shuriken, had some potential. I added in a hyphen to change the word's pronuciation a bit, and Shuri-Ken was born. I also went on the internet to a Japanese/English dictionary to come up with a real name for her, and I found the word Kyonyuu, which apparently means "huge breasts." It seemed to fit with the punning nature of the original Dragonball, so I went with it. However, even as I was coming up with this info behind the scenes, the players in the DBZ RPG game were becoming much more powerful, which meant that when the time came to reveal Shuri, she would need to be stronger than I'd originally created her. I made the changes, but the resultant warrior was far too powerful to be a mere mortal, so I added a bit to her backstory saying that her adoptive father of the villainous organization T.H.E.O. had used the Dragonballs years before to wish for her to become the greatest warrior on Earth.

I finally found a way to put Shuri into the DBZ storyline when our heroes returned from their epic battle with Mewtwo and the ensuing hunt for Earth's Dragonballs. I explained that Shuri, working for T.H.E.O., who had a contract out on sushi chef Tim, had posed as Tim's niece and taken over his sushi empire while he was away. But further adventures beckoned, and Shuri never got to reveal her true identity and attack at that time. Over the next few storylines, the heroes became even more powerful, once again moving beyond Shuri-Ken's league. I then concocted a way for her power to increase even further, and added a bit to her history stating that she'd peformed an arcane ceremony that bonded her to an otherworldly demon and gave her more power than ever before. Then, shortly afterward, the DBZ campaign ended. Shuri-Ken was shelved, never having been used as an opponent for my heroes.

When the adventures of the new Ginyu Force began, I immediately decided that I'd find a way to utilize poor Shuri, who was champing at the bit for combat after so much inactivity. I decided that T.H.E.O. had retracted its contract on Tim, and Shuri was therefore a free agent once more. Then, around the time I conceived the idea for the Red Ribbon Reborn saga (probably early 2002), I figured that would be the best place to use Shuri. It had long been a part of her history that she'd been trained by Taopaipai, so it seemed fitting that in this new Red Ribbon saga, the next generation of world's deadliest assassin would interfere in a Dragonball hunt. Now she's appeared in the Ginyu Force stories, and after three years since her creation, she is finally seeing the battle she was made for.

Hope that was interesting to someone! I think it is, anyway.

The Shuri-Ken Image Page

Shuri-Ken's Character Profile