Reiji Akaba

"I've seen a possible way for Pendulum Summon to evolve even further."

- Reiji revealing a secret of Pendulum Summon.

Reiji Akaba ( Akaba Reiji) is the second CEO of the huge Leo Corporation in the Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V anime. He is also a Super Elite Duelist with a genius brain. Like Shun Kurosaki, he is also fighting against Reo Akaba for a unknown reason.

Appearance
Reiji is a tall teenager. He has long chin and normal skin color. He has purple eyes. He wears black tops on both his ears. He wears red spectacles. His hair is colored grey and light grey. He wears a red long scarf. He wears a full-sleeve shirt that is dark blue. He wears pants that white. His shoes are white colored and appear to be normal.

Personality
In general, Reiji has a serious and stoic demeanor but he takes an interest in Yūya Sakaki. He is utterly polite without fail, save rare moments of a loss in composure. Despite his advanced skills, he is not arrogant and is respectful to Yūya's father, Yūshō Sakaki, fiercely defending him when he was insulted in a rare moment of emotion. While he does not consider empathy as beneficial on the battlefield, he does seem to enjoy himself while Dueling, and even requested Yuya to demonstrate Yusho's Entertainment Dueling. He was shown to smile when Yūya exerted his full strength. He later admits that while Yūya's feelings gave birth to a great power, this is not always the case and emotions can still cost one on the battlefield. He is very calm and collected and is also quite and talking only when he needed and when dueling he is shown to think and observe carefully. Despite his declared rivalry with Yūya Sakaki, he does not show any open dislike for him, and in fact defended him from false accusations of attacking Leo Corporation employees; this demonstrates that he may hold a degree of respect for Yūya. Reiji has also mentioned that he does not care very much for his father, Reo Akaba, and he demonstrates an intense dislike of his father's ambitions, given the suffering that they have caused. Reiji is also pragmatic without regard for the actions of potential allies, offering an alliance with Shun and Serena despite their attacks on his students.

He is shown to be highly analytical and a skilled strategist, and claims he only plays games that he knows that he can win. He used the Maiami Championship as a test to recruit Lancers, and came up with a plan to fend off the Fusion Dimension invasion within only a day. He can show less moral side when executing his plans, as he had no problem allowing many Duelists to be sealed in cards during the Battle Royal and only cared about the ones that did survive. During his second Duel with Yūya he showed a cruel indifference and revealed that he considers feelings to be a weakness and a tool to manipulate others, as seen when he used Yūya's feelings towards Yuzu to push him to Duel more efficiently by lying about Yuzu's fate after her disappearance. Despite his cold nature, he seems to care closely about his younger brother Reira and gets along with his mother.

In his youth, Reiji was more reckless, crossing dimensions (though unaware that he had done so at the time) to find his father after he had disappeared and exposing his hiding place to save Serena. He also spoke far more brashly (in Japanese, he referred to himself as "boku" in contrast with his current self who refers to himself as "watashi", which is the polite form), demanding answers from his father.

Etymology
This character's last name, Akaba, means "Red Horse". This character is similar to Seto Kaiba ( Kaiba Seto) from the original/first Yu-Gi-Oh! anime, whose name also has also has 馬 (Uma, Horse), making this character the ARC-V counterpart to him as the similarities of the last names and appearance they share. Reiji means "Zero Child".