Who He is: Tadashi Kojima is a Japanese Interpol agent who comes to Cheju Island in search of the cursed skulls. The story begins when Miho is entertaining her father’s business associates, and a mysterious box is delivered to her. When she opens it, she finds one of the cursed skulls, and it’s spirit makes short work of everyone in the room, except for her. Kojima and his friends (three Japanese spiritual warriors) sense the skull and rush in to destroy it. Miho is unconscious by that point, but when she awakes, Kojima is eager to question the only witness to what happened. This begins their strange relationship, as the two of them work together (for a while) to try and find the person behind the skull attacks.

Appearance: Kojima is a fairly attractive character. He has somewhat long hair that he normally keeps pulled back into a short ponytail. He wears glasses and casual clothes (consisting of pants, a leather-looking jacket, and what appears to be a sleeveless, leather turtleneck underneath). At one point in the story he lets his hair down and takes off his glasses and jacket (I think he actually looked very good like this).

Skills: Kojima is not a spiritual warrior, though he is still a force to be reckoned with. Physically, he’s very tough. He takes quite a bit of damage throughout the story and somehow manages to keep going. He even survived a run-in with Pan (though this was due to the interferences of both Miho and Aikawa). But Kojima’s true power lies in his excellent aim with his gun. He’s a perfect shot, from nearly any distance, and he makes full use of this talent in the series. As he says himself “The spiritual powers are impressive, but they’re nothing compared to a well-aimed gun!”

Personality: Kojima’s personality is a hard thing to describe, since he appears to have a case of split-personality. He begins his role in the series as a friendly, easy going guy who flirts shamelessly with Miho and attempts to keep Kyoichi in line. He goes SD, he grins, he gets the little hearts floating around his face, the whole nine yards. At first glance, he’s almost on par with John. However, there is a certain seriousness to him when it comes to his mission (to recover the cursed skulls), a certain look he gets in his eyes when he’s firing his gun, that lets you know he is not what he seems.

We first see Kojima’s dark side in volume five, after his glasses are blown off his face in a small explosion. As soon as his glasses are broken, he seems to completely change personalities. Suddenly Kojima becomes ruthless and violent, even attacking his friend Kyoichi (he literally shoots her ear off with his gun at close range). The same night, he heads over to Miho’s house for another string of violence. He first shoots John in the leg, beats Miho to the brink of unconsciousness, shoots John again when the poor boy tries to help Miho (this time the bullet grazes his head, putting John out of the fight), and then attempts to rape Miho. He tears off most of her clothes and begins groping/licking before Pan comes in. After Pan throws a few insults Kojima’s way, Kojima shoots him in the shoulder. After this, upon Miho’s request, Pan attacks Kojima. At this point, it’s not much of a fight, as Pan begins chopping Kojima’s arm up, a little at a time (surprisingly, Kojima retains his sense of humor even then, cracking me up with the line “Miss Won, could you give me a hand? I mean… my hand?”). Thus ending Kojima’s attacks.

But now the question remains “Why did he do it?” I thought a lot about Kojima’s behavior in volume 5, trying to figure out exactly what happened. As far as I can tell, his snap had at least something to do with his glasses. The first clue is the fact that his broken glasses are emphasized in the panel before he loses it. Another clue is in the dialogue exchange between him and Kyoichi (in the scene where he attacks her). She specifically says “So that’s why you wear glasses all the time, even though you don’t need them.” Then, later on, he has his glasses on again and seems to be back to normal. I first thought that he was a demon, and his glasses somehow concealed that part of him. But Pan himself says that Kojima is not a demon. So what gives? Is it possible that Kojima really does have a split personality, and his glasses somehow make the difference between these two personalities? It’s not unheard of, that a person with this disorder will have certain things they change about their looks when they switch personalities. However, I believe this theory is faulty. First of all, Kojima seems to know full well what he has done when he appears later, with his glasses on. He doesn’t try to deny what he did, nor does he behave as if he particularly regrets it. Second of all, even when he went berserk, he still retained most of his normal traits (his perfect shot, his morbid sense of humor, his adoration, which turned out to be obsession, with Miho, and his seriousness about his mission). So I don’t believe he truly has a split-personality.

Honestly, I think he’s just the sort of person who loses control easily. What’s worse is that he’s not even apologetic afterward. I think this is because he doesn’t see it as losing control. I think he honestly didn’t see anything wrong with his behavior. He was going along with his mission, and, well, if he could get a little sex from Miho in the process that was fine with him. Does that make him a bad person? Probably. But he does have some redeeming qualities.

In the end, Kojima reveals that he truly was in love with Miho. He tries to get her to surrender to him after she escapes from the police, since all the other officers had been ordered to shoot her on sight (an order Kojima protested). Miho understandably refuses (the man had just tried to rape her only hours before!), and when some police officers arrive and shoot at her, Kojima jumps in front of her, taking the bullets for her. Kojima dies shortly after from his wounds, lying on top of Miho.

So why was he so cruel to Miho in volume five? I think what it boils down to is this: Kojima is a naturally abusive person. When he sees something he wants, he takes it. He wanted Miho. He tried the friendly method of flirting and asking her out. When that didn’t work out, he decided to take her by force. I think he really was in love with her, but it was a dangerous sort of love. He had the mentality of “it doesn’t matter if she wants me or not, I’m taking her”. You’ve probably met or heard of someone like this in real life, someone who’s nice until things don’t go their way, at which point they get violent. This is the way abusive husbands/boyfriends usually behave (they keep their wives/girlfriends by being very sweet and kind, until the woman disagrees with them, which places the woman on an emotional roller coaster, so to speak). I believe Kojima is like this. Another similarity he shares with this type of men is his tendency to shift the blame for his actions from him to the victim. He insists that he only acted the way he did because Miho was prejudiced against him for being Japanese and wouldn’t give him a chance.

So in the end, I think the only way I can summarize Kojima’s character is to say he’s like an abusive boyfriend. Sweet and cute, but beware of rejecting him or disagreeing with him! Now how Kojima developed this sort of attitude is a mystery to me, since no details were revealed of his past. I suppose things like that are left to the realms of fanfiction, ne?