[ Hannya | Shikiyou | Beshimi | Hyottoko ]

Hannya

Name: Hannya

School: Oniwabanshuu

Weapon: Iron Claws

Technique: Western Boxing

Appearance: A mask man who wears queer outfit with red and black strips on the sleeves which have some sort of illusion. For more info, please click here.

Personality: Extremely loyal to Aoshi. He even sacrifice his life trying to save Aoshi.

Background: He was born in a poor village which had famine for years. His parents tried to eat him when he was still a child. Somehow, he manage to escape and was forced to live in the wild, fighting with animals for food until he was picked up by Aoshi. Aoshi trained him to become one of the best Oniwabanshuu warriors. In order to become Aoshi right-hand man, he even disfigure his face so that he can disgused like anyone easily.

Makings of Hannya: Hannya’s motif wasn’t a masked ninja (laughs) but the Elephant Man and Spiderman. In the early story, like the Elephant Man, Hannya’s mother was trampled by an animal while he was in the womb and so was born disfigured. He could not come in contact with people without being persecuted, and was called a demon, and so lived alone deep in the mountains. Aoshi found him there and he became one of the Oniwabanshuu. "There is no place other than the Oniwabanshuu where I can live as a human being," I thought about him saying, and so only through fighting could he prove he was human. That was the early Hannya. But, when I had to draw it, the idea that "one’s birth determines one’s situation" didn’t appeal to me, and at the end of a long debate with my boss about what would be the best way to end a boy’s comic (the longest since the beginning of Ruroken, I’m sure) I replaced it with the present version.

After this, Yamazaki Susumu of the Shinsengumi was brought to his nature. I received a lot of interesting guesses about Hannya; many people though he was actually a beautiful woman, others that he was Aoshi's double or his twin. Many of them I’d never even considered, and I thought they were very interesting. Maybe I’ll have to bring them in as a new character . . . (But my plans are uncertain.) Other than the motif, his design was purely a skeleton. That his two eyes are a different shape is a holdover from the original design. This is off the subject, but as we drew Hannya’s clothes over and over, my assistants kept calling him a robot or a mobile suit.

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Shikiyou

Name: Shikiyou

School: Oniwabanshuu

Weapon: Iron Ball

Technique: Brute Strength

Appearance: A very muscular man with numerous scars on his body.

Personality: Extremely loyal to Aoshi. He even sacrifice his life trying to save Aoshi. His muscles have been his pride.

Background: He used to work for the government as an assasin during Bakumatsu No Douran. On one mission, he was defeated by a 13 years old Aoshi who was on duty. Aoshi admired Shikijou's skills, hence spared his life on a condition that he join the Oniwabanshuu. Aoshi not only trained him, but also give him steroids which will help him in the development of his muscles.

Making of Shikiyou: Shikijou’s motif was Sanosuke. It is surprising to write this, but it is true. That is, he has the same kind of nature as Sanosuke (full of self-confidence, big-hearted), his fighting style (power fighter) is the same, and we assume his position (the most helpful in the group) is the same. When they confronted each other, the match between Sanosuke and Shikijou threw the differences between the two groups into sharp relief.

Hannya is a character that you cannot call evil for certain, but I tried to make Shikijou a villain. But, when we see him at the edge of death, he accidentally became cool. On top of that, as is customary for a secondary character, a section of enthusiastic readers became attached to him. If you think about it, all of the Oniwabanshuu are like that. This time the best reader response was for a single page, when the young Aoshi is introduced . . . as you did expect, all the guys look like that.

Other than that, I do not have much to say about the design. A power fighter needs muscles, but he looked too ordinary so I covered him with scars. The depiction of muscles is a reference to American comics.

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Beshimi

Name: Beshimi

School: Oniwabanshuu

Weapon: Poison darts which are coated with Mandaraba.

Technique: Amazing Speed, Spin those poison darts like bullets.

Appearance: A small build man.

Personality: Extremely loyal to Aoshi. He even sacrifice his life trying to save Aoshi.

Making of Beshimi: Rather than from an actual design, this character was made up almost impromptu. Actually, in drawing the Megumi story, while I was arguing with my boss, I thought that Kanryuu’s soldiers would fight Kenshin and the others. But he said, "Up till now the swordmen Kenshin fights have just been punks. Isn’t that kind of boring?" and so the group of spies, the Oniwabanshuu, were added to the other fighters. Naturally since this was while I was going ahead with the story I did already planned, it ended up sort of haphazard.

When we first see Beshimi, he does not show much strength, and he only exists to show that something strange is going on. I did not plan out his character, and he ended up being an incompetent coward. Later on in the story, he shows a different face, but let’s not give anything away.

The design is as haphazard as his character. Except for Aoshi, all of the Oniwabanshuu are pretty weird, and I only planned him to be shorter than Kenshin. The fact that he is short goes along with his cowardice. My readers tend to like short character, so I heard a lot of people saying, "Oh, Beshimi is cute!" It was sort of an odd feeling, though.

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Hyottoko

Name: Hyottoko

School: Oniwabanshuu

Weapon: Flaming breath

Technique: His fat around his stomach cushions the blows of any attacks.

Appearance: A tall and fat man who carry a bag of oil on his back for refill.

Personality: Extremely loyal to Aoshi. He even sacrifice his life trying to save Aoshi.

Making of Hyottoko: There was no model for this character. However the idea of "Hyottoko" meaning "Fire Man" had already been developing into a man who could breathe fire.

I wanted to put this man who could breathe fire into the group of spies but Hyottoko seems out of place. Maybe it is something you just do not have in this fictional world. As for his personality, for someone who is bang introduced and bang defeated, a conceited idiot seemed natural.

By the way, as for the match between Hyottoko’s Kaentoiki and Kenshin’s revolving sword, everyone: readers, people at the magazine, friends and aquaintances all said, "Which one’s the sideshow act?" Looking at it more closely, all I can say is I give up.

For the design, I again took a mutant from that popular American comic. As I said before, I needed to keep a strange characteristic in mind, and as I planned to conceal an oil sac in his stomach, I thought I did make him extremely fat. It was the first time I did ever drawn someone like that, and until I got used to it, it was really difficult. Once I did gotten used to it, though, it became easy.

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