Shiroe

Shiroe (real name: Kei Shirogane) is the main protagonist of the light novel and anime series Log Horizon. He is a 23-year-old engineering graduate student and a veteran player of the MMORPG game Elder Tales. After the Apocalypse, he forms a party with his friends Akatsuki and Naotsugu, and later becomes the Guild Master of the titular Log Horizon. He is a Half-Alv Enchanter-Scribe and he is at level 90, which was the level cap before the Apocalypse.

He is voiced by Takuma Tereshima in the Japanese version of the anime and Mike Yager in the English version.

Appearance
Compared to his real-life body, Shiroe is several centimetres taller in Elder Tale and his figure became slightly slimmer. When he first regains consciousness in the game, he notices that his hands are more slender but also seemingly more dexterous. Shiroe in real life has black hair and a slender build, and also wears glasses. Currently, he's one of the few characters seen outside of the game.

Shiroe wears round glasses and is described by Naotsugu as having eyes that are "sanpaku," a term that means that the iris is small and doesn't completely cover the vertical axis of the eye.[6] Although this is also the result of his Half-Alv race, he notes that he is insecure about it since he was called the same thing in real-life.

In Shiroe's original outfit, he wore a brown turtle-neck sweater with a harness-like thing over it. He wore green pants that go from a lighter green on the top to a darker green right above the knees. Dazaneg's Magic Bag almost always rests on his left side, held in place by a belt. His boots follow a similar colour scheme as his pants. A bracer always sits on his forearm, although whether it provides any sort of purpose is unknown. This outfit is topped off by his signature cloak, which has a collar large enough to comically serve as a basin for water.

Personality
Shiroe was a graduate student majoring in engineering when he was trapped in the game Elder Tale. Naturally a cautious and thoughtful introvert, he has played the game since middle school and is a veteran with a near-encyclopaedic knowledge of the game, which is known for its depth and complexity. Even as a child, he disliked playing outdoors and from middle school-on preferred to stay indoors, where he used computers to explore virtual reality. Shiroe remained somewhat of a hikikomori through college, and he notes upon regaining consciousness in Akiba that it's been awhile since he was last outside.

Although Shiroe is socially awkward and tends to be asocial, he does not actually dislike other people. Instead, he is fiercely independent and wary of others who approach him with ulterior motives. He is not above helping people who are really in need, and he appears to have a soft spot for beginners, such as Tohya and Minori. In addition, he can be quite protective of people he cares for, a trait that Nyanta used to tease him about. While a generally serious individual, he at times displays a dry, acerbic wit, particularly when around Naotsugu.

Shiroe is overly humble, seeing himself as prideful and arrogant and leading him to be self-conscious about enforcing his principles or beliefs on others. However, even if he knows that others might not appreciate his actions or thank him afterwords, if he sees it as the greater good, he will use any means possible to achieve his goals. An example is when he bribed three guild masters into giving him a huge pile of gold in order to buy the entire guild hall so he could force people to go along with decisions made by himself or his newly-formed council, which he did so in order to force Hamelin's disbandment and free the players they were holding hostage, of which included Touya and Minori.