ZHAO TIANYOUMob boss turned line-cook. He actually really prefers the day job.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
LOOKS LIKE | Zhao dresses very ostentatiously. He always wears a whole lot of jewelry (rings on every finger, at least one bracelet per wrist, gold hoop earrings and a big gold chain), paints his nails, and if he's not wearing either a bold color or a bold pattern it's because he's combining both at once. His hair is undercut on the back and sides, and he always slicks the long top back. Unfortunately yes, the purple tinted sunglasses are prescription, so he is never without them or other similar-looking but differently colored pairs. (He always goes for round frames, because he thinks it's what looks best on his face shape.)
Despite his chaotic, busy aesthetic and irreverent, laid-back demeanor, he's always clean and made-up.
SOUNDS LIKE | Zhao always sounds a bit like the cat who got the canary. He has a very sing-song way of speaking, and his tone frequently borders on open laughter at whoever he's speaking with or whatever situation he finds himself in. He'll drag out his vowels and croon at people he's either trying to get a rise out of, or is fond of (or both.) He almost always sounds like he's flirting, mostly because he is. Example here!
SMELLS LIKE | These days, Zhao mostly smells like the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant: hot oil, smoke, spices like ginger and fennel, and aromatics like scallions and Sichuan peppercorns. For colognes, he leans towards scents with woody or spicy top-notes, and florals for soaps and detergents.
PERSONALITY
Zhao puts up a front of being flippant and callous, but actually he is a big old softie. Because of the way he was raisedâand the dangers of appearing weak or sentimental while being a mob bossâhe rarely just openly shows people that he cares for them and instead pretends that any acts of kindness he commits are accidental or done purely for selfish reasons. He is easily flustered by anyone seeing through his act, though time as a civilian has at least made him less prickly about it.
When hanging out with friends he spins tall tales and tells outrageous lies basically just for fun, especially to more gullible members of the group. He shows his affection through needling and teasing and being generally quite annoying, but he's quick to back up his chosen pals on literally anything including borderline suicidal missions without hesitation. He loves a good tedious, fiddly hobbyâsome of his current fascinations include traditional tea ceremony and bonsai, to give an ideaâand he's incredibly generous (read: irresponsible) with his money and time. Zhao is super into fashion and video games, but honestly most of his free time not spent working at his restaurant or helping put out the proverbial fires of Ijincho's criminal underground, he spends at the bar.
Despite having become a mob boss through sheer, blunt-force nepotism, he is very frank and self-aware. He is under no delusion about the silver spoon lodged firmly in his mouth since birth, and he will openly admit to any and all of his own shortcomings, even in casual conversation. He really admires cutthroat, greedy ambition in others because he sorely lacks it himself, and he is way, way too permissive of backstabbing and general cruelty (even when he is the victim of it), reasoning that they're criminals and that's kinda what criminals do. He is constantly bored, so he gravitates towards people who take life by the balls rather than just going with whatever flow like he does, which is great when it's folks like Ichiban and Kiryu who have scruples, but is less good when it's Mabuchi and he's perfectly happy sitting back and letting his friend cut bloody swaths through people in his pursuit of money and power.
That said, stepping down from his position of gang boss did him a world of good, and allowed him to present exactly as laid back and easygoing as he always was under the surface. He's very gregarious and flirty, and he just really likes people for the most part, so he's an easy friend to make and he doesn't mind an uphill battle to get to know someone as long as they're entertaining along the way (whether of their own volition or otherwise.) He's not a bad guy to have in your corner, as long as you don't mind his general persistent shadiness.
POWERS
HISTORY
Warning: contains headcanons where the games didn't give us any info one way or the other. Will update if future games joss me.
EARLY YEARS
Zhao's father was the leader of the Yokohama Liumang, a criminal organization made up of Chinese expats and their second/third gen children in Yokohama, Japan. Growing up, Zhao was groomed to take over for his father one day, but since he spent his whole childhood watching his father descend further and further into misery and paranoia over the job... well, he wasn't too keen on it.
He excelled academically despite getting into plenty of fights, but when it came time to pursue secondary education he was finally disillusioned about his plans to escape his duty to the gang through proving himself more useful elsewhere. Basically all of Zhao's ambition and drive died when he finally really realized there was no getting out of the path his father had laid out before him, so he knuckled down and shut out the parts of himself that were desperate to leave.
CRIME YEARS
Turns out he's pretty good at compartmentalizing, because he did it for about a decade without letting the cat out of the bagâand that's with the fact that as soon as his father retired and he ascended to the position of leader of the gang, it was revealed to him that the two other criminal organizations that the Liumang had been clashing with over territoryâconflicts so protracted and dangerous that their district of the overall city was considered off the table for both the police and other gangsâwere actually secretly in collusion at the highest levels with a politician laundering money through all three. Zhao had to keep that fact under wraps from the rest of the gang while still reigning in his own people from too successfully attacking any of the others, and from trying to overthrow him for not letting them grow beyond that point.
Needless to say, he really hated it.
CANON YEARS
That might explain why, despite getting a warning about what was happening under his nose before it all came to a head, Zhao didn't bother to mobilize to stop the coup taking place during his introduction in the game. He was betrayed by his second-in-command (and childhood friend) Mabuchi making a play for more power and territory and better alliances, immediately pulling apart the careful balance of power between the three gangs in Ijincho and
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