Who She is: Kyoichi first appears in volume 4 as a Japanese spiritual warrior who accompanies Kojima to Cheju. Like the other spiritual warriors, she is searching for the cursed skulls of Shinjuku in the hopes of preventing further bloodshed and protecting her country. She takes an immediate disliking to John, and the two of them clash many times before a final showdown between the two of them reveals Kyoichi’s gender (she had been posing as a man). After her defeat, she still supports Kojima for a time and stays true to her mission.

Appearance: Kyoichi is a very cute character (arguably a little less cute than John though). Even when posing as a male character, she was quite adorable. She normally wears her hair spiked up tall (a la Vash the Stampede), but it hangs down prettily when wet. It appears to be blonde or perhaps silver (I personally consider it blonde) as it is never shaded. Her eye color is unknown, though probably brown (she is Japanese after all, though several characters have unlikely eye colors). She wears baggy, trendy male clothes. Her fashion sense is similar to John’s. ^^

Skills: Kyoichi is good at video games, defeating everyone in the arcade except for John at one point. She’s also good at hand-to-hand combat, as most of her fights with John start out this way (and she does a pretty good job, considering how good John is). But Kyoichi’s true power lies in her dark magic and summoning spells. She can do many things, ranging from energy blasts to summoning a huge, frightening wraith (an attack she can do one-handed).

Personality: Ahh, another complex character. Kyoichi initially seems to be a rough, playful Japanese boy who has little patience and loves to complain. She slips off away from the others to hit the arcade once, and at another point she goes back to the hotel room, leaving Aikawa and Monk Seinan to search for the skulls alone. She continuously causes disruptions by allowing herself to be easily provoked by John. So, one attribute we can immediately attach to her is that she’s reckless. This holds true throughout the entire series. She goes to fight John alone, the wager of the fight being one of the hard-to-acquire cursed skulls, and looses. She attacks one of her own team mates and switches sides on the spur of the moment, because she finds a new path that she believes is right. In short, Kyoichi does a lot of things that surprise us, or cause trouble for her friends.

Kyoichi is also very sensitive about her gender. This is perhaps the most serious subject about Kyoichi. She is a female, but she persistently says that she feels like a male on the inside, and even says that she plans to have a sex change operation. She’s also gay. Because of all this, and because of a very brief but revealing moment later on, I believe that Kyoichi has had a bad experience with a man (or men) at some point in her youth. The moment I spoke of is in the scene where Kojima shoots her ear off, where she says to him “You’re just another dog keeping his fangs hidden.” Just another dog? This line is what convinced me of my theory. Perhaps she had a bad relationship with her father. Perhaps a male relative abused her. Perhaps a male friend betrayed her. Who knows? All I know is that she has somehow developed a very negative view of men, and what they have to offer. “But she wants to BE a man!” you may say. I believe there is a reason for this as well. I think Kyoichi wants to be a man so that she can somehow right some kind of wrong. It’s her chance to be in charge of a male, and change what a man is and can be. Here’s an example of a similar situation: My mother’s mother was very abusive and cruel, so my mother kept having children until she had her own daughter (me), and she continuously tries to be the exact opposite of her own mother. She once said to me that she was “trying to right the wrong”. See how a situation like this can apply to Kyoichi?

It isn’t until John tells Kyoichi that the woman in her will die that she begins to have doubts. She starts rethinking her plans to become a man, and even seems to be embracing her femininity a bit toward the end (after she realizes that it has it’s perks, so to speak).

Aside from her gender issues, Kyoichi is also complex in that she’s very different from the other Japanese spiritual warriors. She cares about her mission, but she’s not overly serious about it. She likes to have fun and be challenged. Then, later, she even blasts Monk Seinan in the back to save John and tells John to take the skulls back to Korea. This was a very important and surprising move. Kyoichi realized in the end that she and her friends had gotten off the right path, and she gave John the skulls in an attempt to get back on that path. Kyoichi had good intentions all along. She wanted to help gather the skulls because she knew they were dangerous and causing so much death (even children were being killed). Then, she found out that the skulls had been wronged in the first place, and tried to right yet another wrong.

Having said all this, I think it’s safe to say that Kyoichi has some “justice issues”. She’s constantly attempting to make things right. In short, she’s a good person. In fact, she may be the best person of the bunch (with the possible exception of John). Sure, she’s reckless and often rude or overly blunt, but her heart has always been in the right place.