In the first episode, Ryo was innocently taking out the garbage at work one day when a crazy tentacle took off with one of his friends and he pursued it, until it attacked him. In the end he was rescued by a fire-breathing dragon, which had apparently decided it wanted to take him home and keep him as its pilot. When he accepted that, things went smoothly. For a while. Until episodes 7 and 8, wherin he finally found out how his father had... er... died. And in episode 15 Youko was kidnapped and Ryo had to face the Three Stupid Gohma on his own, 'til his friends caught up with him. Ryo's life trundled along fairly smoothly until episodes 21 and 22, wherein he was the kidnap victim, and very nearly ended up sliced and diced as a Gohma sacrifice.

And then in episode 26 and 27, he met someone who was... well, I don't really know what Ryo saw him as. A mix between everything Ryo wanted to be, and everything that he feared and hated? Jin, a freelance assassin, because of whom Ryo learned to fight as a discipline rather than simply relying on his natural skills. They faced each other again in Episode 35, and Ryo had to battle his own terrors and learn to balance in his greatest extremity. Their last official meeting was in Episode 39, wherein Ryo tried desperately to do something in return for all that Jin had inadvertently given him. He did everything in his power to save the other man's soul.