Storm Shadow (Thomas S. “Tommy” Arashikage)

Of course, you can’t do a Snake Eyes film without including also his blade brother and sworn enemy Storm Shadow, and the upcoming movie doesn’t fail to deliver. In the new continuity, the white-clad ninja is going to be portrayed by Andrew Koji, and his complicated relationship with Snake Eyes seems to be respected more in detail than it was in the first two movies. In G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and G.I. Joe: Retaliation, the character was portrayed by Byung-Hun Lee, in a version that however was quite different from the original, being mean and cruel from the beginning, instantly antagonizing Snake Eyes even when he was a starving street orphan. Before seeing what they did with this ambiguous villain, let’s take a look at the original one.

Tommy Arashikage was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of a Japanese man and an American woman; from his father’s side, Tommy was the heir of the Arashikage Clan, a clandestine sect of ninja assassins, operating in Japan for thirty generations. Since his youth, during his travels in Japan Tommy trained under his uncles, the Hard Master and the Soft Master, gaining some remarkable skills, as well as the moniker Young Master. When the United States needed him, however, he left the Clan, and came back to enroll in the US Army, just in time to participate to the Vietnam War. Raising to the rank of Sergeant, he joined Sgt. Wilkinson‘s Long Range Recon Patrol, along with Wade Collins, Dickie Saperstein, Ramon Escobedo, and an unnamed man who, years later, would have become known as Snake Eyes. The latter soon became Tommy’s best friend, to the point that he even invited him to Japan to join his family’s Clan. To Tommy, war was almost a continuation of his original training, and he surpassed by far his teammates in sheer skill and ability… all but Snake Eyes, who was quite a natural in everything concerning fighting and warfare. When the LRRP fell into an ambush and most of its members got killed by the NVA, Tommy refused to believe that Snake Eyes was dead as well and, defying Wilkinson’s orders, he came back alone, storming the enemy units, and finding his friend, wounded but alive, in the jungle. This episode made the two friends become close like brothers, and they promised to always have each other’s back. When their shift was finally over, the two came back home, and Tommy immediately left for Japan, where he resumed his training, waiting to be appointed the successor of the Hard Master. Not so long afterwards, also Snake Eyes appeared: his family had been killed in a car crash while he was gone, and he had finally come to accept Tommy’s offer to join the Arashikage Clan. Tommy’s uncles took him in, and the young man was overjoyed to have him by his side again… until Snake Eyes started surpassing him.

As Snake Eyes honed his skills and showed a deeper morality, killing only if truly necessary, Tommy started seeing him as a rival, and when rumors started spreading that the Hard Master wished to choose the American as the new leader of the Clan over his own nephew, his grudge against the one he used to love as a brother only grew. What happened later was just the last nail on the coffin for the relationship between the two: one night, as the Hard Master was teaching Snake Eyes the Blind Sword technique in the Darkened Room, an assassin shoot an arrow to the one he believed was Snake Eyes, but actually killed the Hard Master. Witnessing everything, Tommy pursued the killer, who however escaped on a helicopter with the mark of the terrorist organization Cobra on its side. As he learnt that everyone in the Clan, Snake Eyes included, believed him to be the killer of his uncle, Tommy left to never return, secretly blaming his former friend for the Hard Master’s death, as the master was imitating him during training in a mirror fight, and for that he had been killed. Wanting to obtain revenge on his own, Tommy adopted the name Storm Shadow, and he joined Cobra, the same organization he knew his uncle’s killer worked for: his plan was to raise in the ranks enough to learn the identity of the Hard Master’s true murderer, and to obtain his revenge. With his abilities and ruthlessness, Storm Shadow soon became Cobra Commander‘s bodyguard, and the leader of his assassins. Cobra Commander himself promised him to reveal the identity of the Hard Master’s killer in exchange of his absolute loyalty, and loyalty Storm Shadow granted him: he even crossed blades with Snake Eyes in the Silent Castle, as his former brother had joined the G.I. Joe Team, born to counter Cobra, and he even led a retrieval operation when Cobra Commander was captured by the enemy. If working for assassins and terrorists was the price he had to pay to obtain revenge, Storm Shadow would have gladly paid it, with everything it implied.

Tommy Arashikage is a man of honor, but also of great pride, and the two sides of his personality often clash, leading him to bad choices, dictated by rage and thirst for revenge. As Storm Shadow, he’s a formidable combatant, a master martial artist with a black belt in several combat styles, lethal in the use of swords, shuriken, nunchaku, and most of all the long bow, a weapon he’s pretty much infallible with; even if he is specialized in the use of traditional Japanese weapons, Storm Shadow is more than capable to use also modern weaponry, that he however considers unrefined and vulgar. A hero or a villain depending on the moment in his life, Storm Shadow fights to regain his honor, a path that has led him away from his sword brother Snake Eyes and then back to him, to join Cobra and then to join the G.I. Joe, in a dance of death and betrayal in which only his ultimate goal truly matters.