Takeru Tominaga
Takeru Tominaga was an assistant director and camera operator working in the Japanese media industry. He was friendly, always courteous and polite to those around him, and tremendously upbeat about life, but he had a reputation for being a little clumsy which often incurred the wrath of his superiors.
One example was when he had to book a bikini photo shoot with Yuki Mayu, one of Japan’s top gravure idols. When Takeru discovered the indoor studio was already booked, he organised an outdoor shoot without thinking about how cold the weather would be in the middle of winter. But ever the professional, Mayu got on with the job and Takeru was a massive fan of hers.
As a younger man he was quite socially awkward and would take steps to always avoid conflict and keep away from confrontational situations. His eyesight was not the best and his distinguishing feature was his large glasses. Outside of work, he was a big fan of horror movies.
In 2014, Takeru was hired as an assistant director to work on the fourth series of Idol Survival, a popular reality TV show where swimwear models competed in a series of survival games across a deserted island. That year marked the first time the series included international models and Yuki Mayu was entered as Japan’s top challenger. Takeru was immediately taken in by the picturesque beauty of Sonido de Tortuga Island and quickly found himself distracted by all the beautiful contestants, which again earned him a dressing down from show director Matthew Espinoza and the technical crew. The day before filming, Takeru was told that Coco, one of the other contestants, was missing. That night he and several others attended a ceremony at Ague village at the invitation of the local Shaman and witnessed a ritual Takeru recognised from classic Haitian zombie movies. On his way back to base camp, Takeru saw a zombified Coco wandering the jungle, but the others didn’t believe him and put it down to his over-active imagination.
The next day, Takeru, to his delight, was put in charge of filming Mayu for the first round of the trials. But shortly after filming began, they lost contact with base camp and soon witnessed reigning champion Kylie be murdered by a strange B.O.W. carrying a harpoon. This creature stalked Takeru and Mayu across the island and they had several close encounters, including sheltering in a cave network where they found a primitive underground settlement with the zombified forms of former islanders living there and performing basic menial tasks. The B.O.W. soon appeared again and Takeru nicknamed it ‘Moiro.’ But despite their ordeal, Takeru felt he had an overwhelming desire to protect Mayu and despite admittedly being a coward, he performed several acts of bravery to keep them both alive.
Later they met up with Brown Anderson, a former B.S.A.A. operative and someone Takeru had enormous respect for. Takeru took the opportunity to learn from Brown about the undead and how to make tough decisions when the time called for it. That time arrived very shortly afterwards when Takeru was faced with an infected Brown and had to shoot him, only to bottle the decision and make Brown shoot himself instead.
Shortly afterwards Takeru’s party found themselves inside the old Umbrella facility and were confronted by Dirk Miller and the horrors of the Kodoku Plan. By now Takeru was becoming braver and saved Inez Diaco from a Hunter and Mayu from the Schraube Damon, but his lack of self-assurance and courage was still present when he found himself unable to pull the trigger and kill Laura Bierce, who by this time was infected and on the verge of becoming a zombie. But in a strange way this lack of resilience paid off when zombie Laura actually saved his life by attacking Shen-Ya Pharmaceuticals spy Zǐlì and pushing her over the edge of a gantry and down into a large pit.
Takeru and the others escaped and had a final confrontation with Zǐlì on the beach after she injected herself with the Kodoku Virus. There Takeru proved his love for Mayu by saving her life from the creature. Following the incident and their extraction by a B.S.A.A. support team, Takeru and Mayu returned to Japan where they began a relationship and became big stars.
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