Great Dios, he's actually *smiling*! In a non-malevolent way! (Sorta...) Of course, he's about to break into maniacal laughter, but that's beside the point ;)

Kunzaito-sama... my favorite Shitennou. Why, you ask? I'll tell ya. *ignores the screams of protest* It all owes to a little thing I like to call the "Spock Appeal." This is what makes people who are a little... er, stoic (*cough* emotionally inept) so attractive. These people (men, in my case ;) ) are so attractive to me because they rarely show any emotion, and when they do, it's... like heaven. I call it the Spock Appeal not because Spock is my favorite member of the breed, but because he's the first one I actually noticed. People in this group include Owen Burnette from Gargoyles, Zelgadis from Slayers, Skinner from The X-Files, Athos (the Musketeer) as well as many more. And, of course, Kunzite.

The first we see of His Stoic-ness is in episode 21 or 22, I can't remember which... at any rate, we first see him sitting in a giant chair, with only his hands and eyes visable, and stroking Zoisite's head. Before we actually find out that he's the most powerful king, we're kind of under the impression that he is only there to give council to Zoisite. Well, we find out soon enough that that isn't true. In the manga, he appears in a slightly different way, right after Nephrite is destroyed by Sailor Jupiter's flowerstorm (hanafubuki, hanafubuki! *remembers that she isn't talking about Utena and shuts up*). Zoisite is distraught (surreally so ;) ) by Neffy's death, and Kunzite appears to tell him that it was his fault and that he is a disgrace to the Dark Kingdom. Uhh, uhh... he was just teasing! Really! ^_^ Anyway, after Nephrite's death in the series, Kunzy comes farther into the spotlight. Even before he starts helping Zoisite, he's around a lot. He becomes more prominent when it starts to become clear that Zoisite isn't really getting anywhere. He made a lot of progress with the rainbow crystals, but he couldn't seem to get the missing ones back from Tuxedo Kamen. So Kunzite is brought on to help. Personally, I like this part of the first season the best ^_^ I bet you can guess why.

Kunzite and Zoisite work together very well, and acquire more than a few of the rainbow crystals (they still can't seem to get the other ones back from Tuxy.) Finally, after many cute cuddly scenes together, they get all the rainbow crystals except the ones that Tuxedo Mask has, and they start plotting to steal them back. The best plan they can come up with (and a rather good one at that, which is odd for villains) is to dress Zoisite up like Sailor Moon and send him off to lure Mamoru and take the crystals from him. They must have used some sort of magic for this, because no make-up (er... no pun intended ;) ) could make Zoisite look that much like Sailor Moon. Anyway, it worked. Anyway, Mamoru comes to the rescue of the fake Sailor Moon where "she" is being held at a construction site. The Senshi follow, of course, and Kunzite traps them in a dome of black energy while Zoisite keeps Tuxedo Kamen busy. With the arrival of Venus, Tuxy and the Senshi get away, and Kunzite and Zoisite are called back to the Dark Kingdom before they can get into a bigger brawl (much to the ire of bloodthirsty little Zoi-chan ;) )

Beryl is pissed that they didn't get the crystals, but she and Metallia have another plan. They lure Mamoru to the Crystal Tower (along with Usagi, by accident) and trick him into giving them the remaining rainbow crystals. As Zoisite tries to kill them against Beryl's wishes, Kunzite has the job of guarding the crystals, now all together. But, as fate and the writers would have it, Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask find out each other's identities and the Silver Crystal is revealed-- it is Usagi's crystalized tear, shed over the quite toasted Endymion and combined with the rainbow crystals. So Sailor Moon is revealed as being the Moon Princess, and things go from bad to worse for our heros... uh, villains, whatever ^_^ After the fateful moment, Kunzite zaps himself up to the battlefield to lend aid to his lover, who got blasted by Princess Serenity's power. He and Zoisite retreat (gratuitous touching! *drool*) to Beryl's throne room, and we all know what happens then... *bawls*

Well, at least we get to see a little bit of what's under that icy exterior at this point. Sorta. Heck, it's better than nothing! But I'll go into that on my Kunzite and Zoisite page... this one is for Kunzy himself, and even though he wouldn't be nearly as cool without Zoi, I want to save that stuff for later ;)

After Zoisite dies, he sorta... well, he isn't at his best, let's just say that. He still follows Beryl's orders and tries to get the Silver Crystal (and the Sailor Senshi... he's less than happy with them as well.) Besides having the loss of his lover on his mind and the burden of being the only Shitennou left, he also has to deal with the evil-ified Endymion, who he really doesn't like. I mean, would you like someone who pretty much took over your job (shades of Nephrite), and who you blamed for the death of the person you loved most? So, Kunzite just goes along, much less enthusiastically if I do say so myself, and eventually Endymion gets Moon Healing Escalationed (I think) and goes back into a coma. Now poor Kunzy is completely alone, and all of Beryl's wrath falls on him. To make a fairly long story short, he faces the Senshi once more at the gate to the Dark Kingdom, sending them to a random place in history (duh... come on, Kunzy, we know you can do better than that) and they wind up at the Moon Kingdom and learn all about how Queen Beryl and Metallia really messed stuff up back then. The Senshi return moments later only to be pink boomeranged by Kunzite, who slices their clothes off O_o At least, until Sailor Moon uses her Moon Stick to bunt his boomerang back at him, and he gets it right in the chest. Ow. His final words (and the best piece of voice-acting Sogabe Kazuyuki gives us) are, "Zoisite! Lead me to the place where your soul rests!"

*sniffle*

On to Kunzite's personality... He doesn't compare to Zoisite in complexity, but his still has quite a bit of character development, especially for a first-season villain. He had a heck of a lot more personality than some of the later BSSM evil people. The deepness of Kunzy's personality lies in the fact that he doesn't show that he has one very often. He is the very definition of composure, and I'll be damned if I can remember more than a couple occasions where he was actually happy. Negative emotions like anger and annoyance are one thing, but the more complex are another, and those are the ones that we rarely get a sample of from him. Much to the ire of fangirls like me. It's obvious that Kunzite is the most powerful and experienced of the four kings, and perhaps he felt that he had to keep up that exterior in order to keep the respect of his cohorts. The only time he ever showed emotion (I'm excluding anger here ;) ) was around Zoisite, for obvious reasons. It was completely clear that they were a couple from the beginning, and became even more so as the show went on. There's really no doubt (in my mind ;) ) that Kunzite returned Zoisite's feelings for him, he was just... a heck of a lot less open about them. But there was tons of evidence. I mean, just take the fact that they had their hands all over each other practially every minute ;) And Kunzite even showed a slightly playful side once, teasing Zoisite about how pretty some woman was (just to get Zoisite riled up, I'm sure ^_^ )

Of course, we all know the best example of Kunzite losing control was Zoisite's death, and even then, he didn't lose much control. That could have been done so much better, in my opinion, but hey, I'm not the director ;) Anyway, Kunzite flat out begged Queen Beryl to blame him for what happened to Tuxedo Kamen instead of punishing Zoisite, and that just shows you how deeply he felt about the younger king. I mean, Kunzite isn't the type of person to act as a scapegoat for someone else's screw-up, but he was willing to cover for Zoisite, probably because he knew that Beryl would go more easily on him than she would on his lover. She didn't listen, of course. Bitch. She probably did it half to torture Kunzite. But at any rate, Beryl ignored Kunzite's rather desperate protests and blasted Zoisite with evil sparkly pink energy. Then she had the nerve to tell Kunzite to "clean up that garbage." *snarls*

The famous death scene. The worst part isn't the fact that Zoisite is dying (although that's pretty damn bad ;) ), it's the music. I don't know if I've heard more heart-wrending bgm in my life, and I can't believe they changed it in the dub! Yarg! Just one of the many evil injustices. I've sorta dissected this scene with what tiny knowledge I have of the Japanese language, and the word that Kunzite uses for "Forgive me" seems to be used in much more serious situations than "gomen" or "gomen nasai." I've seen it usually used as extremely emphatic, and, I believe, usually by males... maybe it just doesn't have that additional meaning of "excuse me," or maybe it's more the way a guy would apologize than the way a female would. I could be completely wrong with this, it's only speculation (of someone with a very limited knowledge of Japanese, no less ;) ) Also, in the atrocious up-the-nose shot of Kunzite, he asks "What?" in response to Zoisite's last request. It's not my fault that I find this hysterical, it's actually Saionji's... hehe... You see, in Shoujo Kakumei Utena, Saionji uses the phrase "nan da" to mean "What?!" a lot. And it's usually really grouchy and snappy (like Saionji himself ;) ) and it just reminds me of when he and Touga were in the motorcycle and... well, I'll shut up about them now ;) This isn't my Utena page, after all. But one of the very few things I liked about the dub was the way this scene was carried out... Malachite's voice actor was the most talented of the NA cast, in my opinion. I think that "Anything" in response to Zoisite's (uh... Zoycite's) request was nicer than "What is it?" but that's just Kunzy's personality. He doesn't get mushy, no matter how much pain he might be in. And that's one of the reasons I love him so much.

Since I don't have as much room on my page as I'd like to (and I'm paying anyway, due to Geocities' evil new data transfer policy) I have some links here to pages where they have lots of good pictures. If there's a picture you've seen previously on this page, e-mail me, and I'll try to fish it out of the vast space that is my hard drive ^_^

Stayka's Dark Kingdom Home
This page has the most screenshots I have ever seen from any show, let alone the Dark Kingdom of Sailor Moon. There's tons and tons of them, and almost all of my pictures came from here. This page is amazing ^_^

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