Larry's been Phoenix's best friend since grade school, and he's the kind of guy who sticks around even when he's busy messing up his love life or coasting through whatever job he's got at the moment. He's easygoing and laid-back most of the time, but he wears his heart on his sleeve—which makes sense given how trusting he is, maybe too trusting. That tendency to believe in people, combined with a certain flakiness, means he cycles through girlfriends and part-time gigs pretty regularly.
The games love running a joke at Larry's expense: "When something smells, it's usually the Butz." (In Japan, the gag worked differently—"When something happens, it's yappari Yahari," basically a play on how his name sounds like "you know it's Yahari." France got their own version too: "Quand Paul Defès arrive, tout part à la dérive"—"When Paul Defès shows up, everything goes downhill.")
His family's never really brought up across the series, but his dating life definitely is. He's had a few different girlfriends over the games, including Cindy Stone.
On his name: "Butz" was picked specifically to set up that joke—Larry sounds close enough to "Harry" that he sometimes gets called "Harry Butz," which the game plays with. In Japanese, "Yahari" means something like "I knew it" or "of course," and his first name Masashi comes from "Masashiku" (meaning "with certainty"), suggesting the name was chosen for that same punchline.
Content compiled by AnimeList.moe from publicly available sources.
