Sougen Esaka

Sougen Esaka
江坂 宗源
Gender	Male
Height	189cm
Hair Color	White
Eye Color	Blue
Affiliation	Guardian
Voice Actor	Hiroki Tōchi

Sougen Esaka (江坂 宗源 Esaka Sougen) is a middle-aged man who owns the antiques shop "Forest" in Kazamatsuri.

Appearance

Sougen has an upper-class look, wearing a suit and a monocle. His gray hair makes him look rather old, although a few years prior, in the Terra route, he looks much younger. In the Terra route, he wore a white suit quite alike to the one he wears in the present but lighter and he had black hair.

Personality

When nothing serious is happening, Sougen is very laid back and easy going. He likes to joke around (mostly with Kotarou Tennouji), and he seems to have a knack for tsukkomi rebuttals, although the actual comedic impact of these on the people around him is debatable.

When the matter at hand is important, he acts like a general commander. He's known to be strict with the Guardian recruits, to the point where Arata Imamiya claims to having been hit and screamed at by him. The people at Guardian seem to respect him and fear him to the point where his "comedic" outbursts terrify people.

Story

Kotarou's Past

Sougen first appears in the forest where he and his crew, TheBayern Knights save Kotarou from a dinosaur-familiar that nearly kills him. Kotarou passes out after the attack and Sougen takes his phone. Eventually, Kotarou calls his own phone number in order to get it back, and so they both decide to meet up.

Sougen and Kotarou have a few meetings were they talk about Kotarou's problems with his parents and what he should do about his future, which ultimately leads Kotarou to decide to run away from home and join the organization that Sougen is part of: Guardian.

Sougen follows Kotarou's path into becoming a Guardian soldier closely, clearly feeling paternal affection for him. In order to measure his progress, Sougen often spars with him when his confidence is low.

He orders Kotarou and his teammates Imamiya and Touka Nishikujou to stand guard at an entrance to the forest, but as his comrades enter the forest leaving him behind, Kotarou follows them and finds Kagari. As Kotarou tries to capture her, he gets seriously wounded by her and is put in a coma for ten years.

Common Route

Esaka meets up with Kotarou at times, both at the ramen stand and in his shop, but hides the fact that they've met before or his previous affiliation with Guardian.

Chihaya Ohtori's Route

When Sakuya Ohtori transforms into a gigantic familiar with the ability to destroy the world, Sougen appears and discusses over how to destroy him. The only thing they think will work is a launching a nuclear strike that would knock the earth off its axis. As Kotarou figures out that the gigantic familiar will be destroyed if they somehow wake Sakuya up, Esaka cheers him on as he rides Touka's arrow of light up to Sakuya.

Terra Route

Sougen meets Kotarou for the first time when the Bayern Knights save him from a dinosaur familiar in the forest. They eventually become friends, and Sougen asks Kotarou to join Guardian, where he is paired up with Imamiya, Touka and Nagai. Sougen constantly spars with Kotarou, keeping up with his progress, and cheers him on telling him that it's not necessary for him to be a hero, because it's better to just know how to be a soldier.

After Kotarou meets up with Kagari and lets her go, he talks with Sougen about going to work in a foreign branch of Guardian. After he comes back, their relationship is still strong, and Sougen goes as far as to leave Kotarou in charge of his antiques shop when he's out of town. This pains Kotarou, since he's scheming and is actually a triple agent at this point, but he continues to do it for the sake of the world.

At the end of the route, Kotarou and Sougen have a final, fatal spar where he's slain.

Quotes

"WHHYYY!?"

Trivia

• Esaka enjoys food, and makes memos of the restaurants and cafes he particularly enjoyed.
• He runs an antique shop called "Forest", however, he rarely gets any visitors.
• As with a number of other characters in Rewrite, Esaka is also the name of a place in Greater Osaka.

Gallery

Esaka ten years prior to the main storyline