Larry Butz / Masashi Yahari / Paul Defès
矢張政志

Age: 23
Gender: Male
Height: 177 cm
Occupation: Various
Official Art

Larry has been Phoenix's friend since grade school, and despite his problems with women (and slacking off) he's a good friend who sticks by Phoenix.

Personality: Larry is generally easy going and laid back, but shows his emotions easily. He's very trusting and a little flaky, which leads to him moving between women and part time jobs fairly regularly.

Misc Facts: In T&T, Larry is determined to become an artist, and goes under the pen name Laurice Deauxnim (aka Mashisu Tenryuusai in Japanese, Laurence Deauxnim in French).

In PW:AA, it's often joked that "When something smells, it's usually the Butz." In the Japanese, they instead joked, "When something happens, it's yappari Yahari." ("You know it's Yahari") In French, it's: "Quand Paul defès arrive, tout part à la dérive" ("When Paul Defès shows up, everything's going downhill").

Friends and Family: Larry is good friends with Phoenix, and has been since they were little kids. Larry's family isn't mentioned through the games, but he has a few different girlfriends along the way (one of which being Cindy Stone).

Name Origin:
English: "Butz" was probably chosen so that it could be used in the above joke against his name. Larry is close to Harry, which would give him the name "Harry Butz" (which he is sometimes mistaken as).

Japanese: "Yahari" in Japanese means, "I knew it" or "of course," and Masashi comes from "Masashiku," which means "with certainty." Like the English, probably chosen specifically for the above mentioned joke.

French: Poil des fesses means in English "butt hair".

Background:

Spoiler:  

  Larry has known Phoenix since they were children, and in the fourth grade was the one who actually stole Miles' lunch money, which Phoenix was then blamed for.  Though he stood up for Phoenix, he didn't admit his own guilt or return the money until 15 years later.