[FAQ] About Ibuki
Everything we learn about Ibuki Taki prior to his audition appearance.
Introduction
Before Ibuki Taki was introduced as a new character on April 26 2024, he was hinted in previously released stories. In this post, I’ve answered common questions about the stories prior to his appearance in the audition main story.
You can read Ibuki Taki’s profile and introduction quote on the Wiki. See below for his Idol Story 1 and 2 (Released in April 2024).
Please Note: A lot of the information written here is not fully confirmed yet. Please keep in mind that some of this information might become outdated once we get a story that fully confirms the facts. I recommend reading the stories listed for a full understanding of the current information available.
For this reason, this post may get edited once we get full confirmation in the upcoming stories. For any questions or mistakes in the post, please let me know on Twitter!
Q. Which stories contain hints of Ibuki and his family?
Submarine (May 2021 Story): Ryuseitai and Akatsuki’s SS Qualifying Round story. Started the Okinawa story arc for Ryuseitai by establishing connections. Doesn’t contain any Ibuki information, and rather acts as a means to establish the Okinawa-related storyline. Contains one tiny hint of Ibuki’s grandfather in Ruthless Battlefield, Okinawa 4.
Supervillain (Jan 2023 Story): A Ryuseitai story where the major events happen in Okinawa. Contains hints about Ibuki and what he was doing before he went to the US. Talks about the Oni group and mentions “the descendant of Oni”. Thoroughly establishes Tetora’s involvement in Okinawa through his determination to take down the Okinawa-based criminal organization called “Crimson Production”.
Atlantis (Aug 2023 Story): A fine story that happens after Supervillain, and before Stella Maris. Doesn’t contain any Ibuki hints, but it’s a good context provider for why fine is involved in Okinawa (and why they appear in Stella Maris as well). There’s one interesting part where fine are talking in a newly-established Okinawan restaurant based near ES. It uses the same background as the Okinawan restaurant Ryuseitai and Akatsuki were in during Submarine!
Stella Maris (Jan 2024 Story): A Ryuseitai story that happens in Okinawa. This story has the most information about Ibuki and his family, especially in hidden island 10. Also establishes that there is a new ES branch in Okinawa. I recommend reading the full story for all the information available.
For translations, please see here:
Q. What do we learn about Ibuki and his family from the above stories?
A summary of the main things we learn (this is not the full list):
Mizusaba is an NPC introduced in Stella Maris. Ibuki is very likely to be Mizusaba’s younger brother. If so, then according to Mizusaba, Ibuki is so respected and reliable in the community that he’s everyone’s “big brother”, so even Mizusaba calls him by an older brother naming.
Ibuki’s grandfather was a feared pirate around Okinawa, known as “Oni”, who eventually settled down as he grew older. He likely works in a restaurant that he owns in Okinawa, but he currently has a strained back. He’s very well-known in the Okinawa main island, so Ibuki and Mizusaba also have influence around the area.
While “Oni” originally referred to Ibuki’s grandfather, it eventually referred to Ibuki too as the “second generation of Oni”.
There was a vigilante group called “Oni” in Okinawa. When a company called “Crimson Production” was causing problems in Okinawa, the Oni group took down the company. After defeating Crimson Production, the group disbanded likely because the boss went to the US.
What we then learn from Ibuki’s Idol Story 1 and 2:
Ibuki uses a lot of Okinawan dialect; the same dialect we see Mizusaba speak with in Stella Maris. From my own interpretation, I’ve noticed that Ibuki sees himself specifically as an Okinawan (with American influence) rather than a “Japanese person” born in Okinawa (Shown in his Idol Story 1). In other words, although Okinawa is a prefecture in Japan, he likely considers himself distinctly Okinawan (rather than Japanese).
Ibuki calls himself the descendant of Oni, likely because he is the “second generation of Oni”. The first generation is his grandfather, hence calling himself a descendant.
The Oni vigilante group’s boss is very likely about Ibuki. Tetora mentions “the descendant of Oni” in relation to the group, and the boss was said to have gone to the US, and Ibuki is also someone who was first born in Okinawa and then went to the US at some point.
It seems that Ibuki got interested to go to Japan under Nice-P’s invitation. After arriving in Japan and presumably then meeting up with Nice-P (Idol Story 1), he somehow learns that Crimson Production got taken down by Tetora, and then tries to go meet Tetora to learn more about him (Idol Story 2)
Ibuki has mentioned his grandfather plenty of times, but has yet to mention that he has a sibling. For the time being, the hints that Mizusaba and Ibuki are siblings are mainly based on Mizusaba’s words and connecting together the information we know so far, especially what we learn in Stella Maris, hidden island 10.
Q. What’s the context behind Ibuki Idol Story 2?
Ibuki Idol Story 2 mainly has to do with Supervillain. Here is a breakdown of the events. Please Note: this is my personal attempt to compile the events based on my own understanding.
Prior to Supervillain and its events, there was another separate time when Crimson Production had power in Okinawa. It was said to have “gone on a rampage” in the area, so a certain local Okinawan group wanted to take it down. This was the vigilante group called “Oni”.
As the two groups were enemies, they had a clashing until the Oni vigilante group successfully took them down. After defeating Crimson Production, the group eventually disbands after the boss leaves for the US. This boss is very likely to be Ibuki, as he had also left for the US at some point. This weakened the group since then. (Supervillain, Supersized-Villain 5 & 7)
By the time the story Supervillain happens, Crimson Production revived itself, and became a lot stronger than before because it fed on the Okinawans’ fear and hatred of ES. This fear and hatred harbored after the events of the SS qualifying round, due to ES’s invasive-like nature on the area. Crimson Production became so strong in Okinawa that even many members who were once part of the Oni vigilante group joined Crimson Production. (Supervillain, Supersized-Villain 7)
This is the part that Tetora is talking about with Ibuki in Idol Story 2. Tetora seems to hold conflicting feelings about his decision to take down Crimson Production, and one of them is because he feels like he may have left the place with “a lot of unsettled business” (Stella Maris, hidden island 2). While he’s glad that the evil Crimson Production was defeated, he feels like he might have made people who weren’t 100% evil suffer in the process (he mentions these conflicting thoughts in Supervillain, Supersized-Villain 15), so it tends to weigh on his mind. This is also shown in Stella Maris, where he constantly fidgets whenever he’s reminded of his time as an ES spy infilterating Crimson Production, and even says he sees it as his dark past. (Stella Maris, hidden island 6 & 9)
When Tetora learns Ibuki is the boss of the Oni vigilante group, he wonders if Ibuki’s here to take revenge for hurting those vigilante members that later on joined Crimson Production. Ibuki responds that he won’t take revenge because “it’s old-fashioned”… But after getting a chance to throw a deadly kick at Tetora and seeing Tetora successfully dodge it, he then seems to be satisfied to know that Tetora is the real deal. This is why he says “I’m sure even the guys at Crimson Production were happy to get taken down by you” (which implies even the vigilante members who joined Crimson Production were “happy” about it too.)
I’m not sure about the implications beyond this point. This is my own interpretation, but it seems like Ibuki gave Tetora a reason to keep him in mind (because he threw a sneak attack on Tetora in a “villain-y” way…?), while Ibuki feels satisfied enough to know Tetora is genuinely strong (and potentially even capable of “exterminating” him, the Oni…?). In his introduction quote, Ibuki says that “I’ll be looking into things with my own eyes and confirming it for myself”, and that does add up with how he acted towards Tetora.
What makes this a bit easy to mix up is that the vigilante group seems to have been called something like “Oni”, and the boss himself was known as Oni too because of his ancestry (Specifically, Tetora mentions the descendant of Oni in Supervillain, Dark Star 4). This is again my own interpretation, but I assume the Oni family (Mizusaba and Ibuki’s grandfather) was just that influential, that even a whole group led by one of them is called Oni rather than its own unique name. I could easily be wrong, though!
Q. What is the relationship between the people of Hoshijima and the Oni family?
For a long time prior to the Enstars story events, the people of Hoshijima never left their island and rarely got involved with anyone outside of “Hoshijima”, a small remote island a short trip away from the Okinawa main island. But because they’re worshippers of the religion related to Kanata, some relations between them and Kanata were established following Submarine. Their interactions with the outside world increased further after the ATLANTIS project was put into motion; the ATLANTIS project is an amusement park introduced in the story Atlantis, handled by Tori. Since then, the people of Hoshijima began to have more involvement with the outside world.
On the other hand, the Oni family (Ibuki, his grandfather, and Mizusaba) are well-known and influential around Okinawa due to their grandfather’s history as a pirate (now retired from that). Their grandfather also likely owns a restaurant in the Okinawa main island, and Mizusaba works as a chef in it.
In regards to the relationship between the two, the Hoshijima people have connections with the Oni family as the mediators and the ones who ship supplies to the island. It used to be the grandfather who’d send supplies to Hoshijima, and it then became Mizusaba’s job. Mizusaba mentioned that they’re not a worshipper, so I think they might not have anything to do with the religion (Stella Maris, hidden island 4). The labels Mizusaba gave their family are “Mediator” and “Point of contact”. Mizusaba also mentions that they’re an outsider in Hoshijima and doesn’t have any connections with the Hoshijima residents as of yet (Except for Konata). This is my own interpretation of the story, but it implies to me that Mizusaba’s relationship with Konata is more of a personal one, and that’s why Mizusaba tends to spend time with him.
That being said, there is still a lot we don’t know about the Oni family, so there may be new information in the future. For now, I recommend reading Stella Maris for as much information as possible.
Q. What about Ibuki’s appearance in the audition?
This post doesn’t cover any information from the audition (third venue, VS★AUDIENCE). The only thing I’ll say is that his scenes in the audition don’t provide any confirmation (or invalidation) for most of the information written here, so we have yet to get the story that confirms all the facts.
For any questions or mistakes in the post, please let me know on Twitter!