BADMAN/SHIGEKI BIRKIN
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DESIGN
APPEARANCES
FURTHER READING


ARTIST: BONEFACE


MASK: BIG VAN VADER


POSSIBLE NAMESAKES:

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KILLER7 APPEARANCES


NO MORE HEROES APPEARANCES

Additional Notes:

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Excerpts from "The Unhinged Birkin Writeup" (August 1, 2021)
The below text has been edited for brevity and clarity. It contains 1) heavy speculation and 2) spoilers for No More Heroes 3 and should be understood solely as the personal opinions of the author. Thanks!

Shigeki Birkin, a drug-addicted underworld assassin who uses a bat to kill people (hence the name Bat Man), has unknowingly become a test subject for an experimental drug developed by Curtis Blackburn to create terrorist bioweapons (prototype for Heaven’s Smiles). When Curtis decides to eliminate the evidence trail, Birkin enlists the help of his two-faced informant, Christopher Mills, to intervene on his behalf.

Dan Smith, an antagonistic member of Curtis’s organization, approaches Birkin with a proposal to kill both Curtis and his underworld rival, Mario Castiglione (also known to employ terrorist bioweapons in his organization).

Birkin continues to suffer increasingly psychotic breakdowns and painful episodes on his way to becoming a Heaven’s Smile, while also attempting to set up a meeting with Curtis to beg for his life. He meets a nice librarian and asks if she would run away with him, but when she comments on his eerie smiling face he smashes her head with a bat. There’s even a brief hint of Birkin contemplating accepting his fate as a villain, redubbing himself “the Badman” in a fit of self-loathing.

The story ends with Birkin taking a handful of pills from Mills to end his suffering, but it turns out either he is so drug-immune or Mills is such a cheap conman that nothing happens. The meeting with Curtis is scheduled, the outcome of which is left a mystery.

… Or not! Notably, although Killer is Dead (short story) went unfinished, Suda51 comments that there are no potential scenarios in which Birkin survives the final chapter.

ちなみにバーキンに残された選択肢の中には、生き残る選択肢はないですね（笑）。
"Incidentally, among the options remaining for Birkin, there are no options for him to survive (laughs)."


Fast WAY the hell forward to 2019, the Day 7 patch for Travis Strikes Again has been released and Grasshopper fans everywhere are losing their minds that Suda51 has finally confirmed a tangible connection between the timelines of killer7 and No More Heroes (maybe). The Day 7 patch - in the literal sense, because the patch came out a week after the initial game. On the other hand, it fits the countdown convention originally started by Killer is Dead (short story). In the first chapter, Curtis delivers his ultimatum to Birkin that he will die in seven days. Each day after that, Birkin remarks at the beginning of each chapter that “I am going to die in # days.” The story ends on day 6 of 7, so there is some validity to the claim that TSA was written as the conclusion to his story (14 years later!)

The timelines don’t quite line up, but I am more than happy to call TSA a relatively favorable outcome to the negatively spiralling and depressing story of Shigeki Birkin aka the Bat Man aka Badman. In TSA, Badman is very squarely framed as the one who sold Dan out to Curtis (NOT Mills, and NOT Pedro Montana), but he receives a second chance at redemption so long as he kills Travis Touchdown and avenges his daughter.

There has been some ………………………………………… talk, lately, some ~speculation~ if you will about Badman not making it through the first few scenes of No More Heroes 3. I will say first and foremost that I genuinely don’t care. I think the story will be equally compelling whether or not he dies or lives (dare I say MORE compelling if he dies, but I also think he’s too good of a character to sacrifice for emotional protagonist development but whatever I’m just a dude on the internet and ultimately respect whatever the author gives us). I’ve been subsisting on pure copium since I read that Shigeki Birkin was not intended to survive past the last day of Killer is Dead (or perhaps the first stage of killer7). He’s dead to me anyways. The time he spent in the spotlight has been a gift.

And therein is where I think the most thoughtful and touching part of his character lies.

(hits wrestling round bell) Alright, commercial break time!! (We’ll come back, I swear!)


In a 2015 interview with GamesRadar, Suda51 mentions that the first No More Heroes game was originally supposed to end with the death of Travis Touchdown at the hands of Sylvia Christel (with [Kozaki] concept art to match!) but ended up deciding against it because it would be a little too evil, even for her.

However, because Travis didn’t die at the end of No More Heroes, he was able to go on to become a dynamic character that actually developed with the times rather than remaining the same, stinky, reckless otaku. He went through some shit in 2 (didn’t we all), but he comes back in TSA and beyond as a much more thoughtful, empathetic, battle-hardened, and rather cynical ... reckless otaku. He’s stinky, but in a different way now. He hates racists and has kids and a family he has to think about now. This ain't about him, though.

Badman is and always has been living on borrowed time. Whether you consider him as the same or a similar character to the Shigeki Birkin of Killer is Dead, or give him a new slate as Badman to exist only in the world of NMH/TSA, he is under an ultimatum, the end of which leads to almost certain death. In Killer is Dead, his options are to kill himself, be killed by Curtis, or turn into a Heaven’s Smile and be killed by the Smith Syndicate. In TSA, his options are to be killed by Dan Smith or to go up against Travis Touchdown and hope he wins. Although he successfully avenges-revives his daughter, he clearly does not end up killing Travis as he was instructed, which could lead to all kinds of speculation as to what his fate will be, come No More Heroes 3.

But that’s fine, isn’t it? The Shigeki Birkin of Killer is Dead speaks at length about his regrets and his wishes to escape the hellhole that he considers 1970s Seattle, to travel the world, to experience human interaction, and love, and emotion. He conveys it with a bit more vulgarity, but at his core he wants to make a name for himself before his time is cut short, and clings to the time he has left, wishing he could’ve done more.

死ぬ前は、何もしないことだ。
“Doing nothing before I die.”

A bit like Travis, he wishes he could find the exit to Paradise and escape the endless cycle of boredom and violence he’s grown accustomed to in his everyday life. And perhaps he’s earned it - regardless of familial estrangement, is it not a bit honorable to die, having spared the life of a rival and saved the life of your daughter? This grumpy, has-been, sloppy assassin and footnote of a character who’s never aspired to anything, lived his life down in the dumps, and been subjected to nothing but fear and pain throughout his career (killer7 or Badman Strikes Back timelines, take your pick) was able to find some semblance of a family, become the deuteragonist of his own game, and enjoy a fair amount of popularity among No More Heroes and Suda51 fans alike.

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