
BASIC INFO
| NAME: | Kamui |
| A.K.A.: | Captain of Harusame's Seventh Division, Admiral Idiot |
| CANON: | Gintama |
| HOMEWORLD: | Rakuyou |
| AGE: | 18 |
| GENDER: | Male |
| SPECIES: | Yato |
FIRST GLANCE
| APPEARANCE: | Link |
| HEIGHT: | 5'7" |
| BUILD: | Lean muscle |
| HAIR: | Vermilion, usually tied back in a braid |
| EYES: | Blue |
| DRESS: | Chinese martial arts styled uniforms |
| SCENT: | Blood |
| VOICE: | Link |
| DEMEANOR: | Always smiling |
PERMISSIONS
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| BACKTAGGING: | ✔ |
| 4TH-WALLING: | ✔ |
| THREADJACKING: | ✔ |
| MIND-READING: | ✔ |
| FIGHTING: | ✔ |
| ROMANCE: | ✔ |
| INJURY: | ✔ |
| KILLING: | ✔ |
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sightseeing, is it?
plenty to see in hell, i'll bet.
PERSONALITY
Kamui is by his own admission "empty," a snapped soul with nothing left but to move forward on his eternal quest for strength.
As a child, his family meant everything to him. They were the reason he first sought strength. His father was one of the strongest Yato out there, and that all powerful man had asked him to protect his mother and little sister in his stead. When his mother fell ill, Kamui poured his heart and soul into being everything she needed him to be. Until he learned the harsh truth his father had been hiding from him. His mother was a mutant, born on the Yato's now uninhabitable home planet. That planet was the only place she could live, yet her husband and children would die under such harsh conditions. She chose her family over her health. Now she was dying in their place.
Kamui's very existence was killing the one person he wanted to protect most.
The day he learned this was the day he shattered. He took his family down with him when he tried to kidnap his mother and force her to return to her home planet. He attacked his father, and his father nearly killed him, all while his mother watched weakly from the sidelines and his little sister begged them to stop. His young mind warped, desperate for a way out, but all he could do was run away. He'd destroyed everything he cared about, his one place in the universe, and he'd done it more thoroughly than even he'd thought possible. He could never go back again.
It's from this mentality that the Kamui of the present was born. He is a man who only looks forward, disregarding the past as nothing more than a crutch. He shuns worldly or emotional attachments to anything, even his own life, and openly despises the weak. His only goal is to become "the strongest," and he will do anything, kill anyone, to get there.
Kamui's obsession with strength is a lifelong one. He has always had difficulty defining it, and thus, he's looked to others as examples. When his father's strength couldn't save his mother, he began looking to a man named Housen, the then leader of the Harusame Space Pirates Seventh Division. Housen's strength was easy to understand because it wasn't meant to protect, only to destroy. It makes sense, after all. The strength Kamui had gained in his desperate attempts to save his family only netted him tragedy. This must be because strength isn't meant to protect others in the first place. No, strength is not a means to an end; strength is the only end for which one should strive.
He is very closed minded in that sense, choosing to see the world in black and white. Anything that doesn't fit into his definition of strength must therefore be weakness. Umibouzu, one of the strongest men in the galaxy, is weak in Kamui's eyes because he wasn't willing to kill Kamui, his first and only son. Housen, the King of the Yato and the man who taught Kamui how to fight, is also weak because he not only fell in love with a woman but was so afraid he'd lose her that he locked her in a cage. These two former idols of Kamui's fell prey to such weakness as love, guilt, lust, and possessiveness. According to Kamui, that is their downfall, and he's not wrong. Housen dies to an uprising of those women he's subjugated, and Umibouzu loses both his arms because he can't watch Kamui die right there in front of him. The very concept of honing one's strength to protect something is now outright insulting to his ideology because it betrays one's weakness, and more than anything else, Kamui detests his own weakness.
This is why he has so much trouble with protagonist Gintoki and his little sister Kagura. They wear their weaknesses like a badge of honor and yet Kamui cannot beat them into submission. Through their persistence, they lay his weakness bare: the fact that he still loves and wants to be acknowledged by the family he destroyed.
Kamui does eventually accept this weakness as a part of his identity and is forced to eat a piece of humble pie, but this doesn't make him a better person by any means. If anything, it gives him the opportunity to be even more intolerable. He sees no reason to reform (once a pirate, always a pirate) and decides that because the reason he couldn't defeat Kagura was that she refused to stay down, he'll just have to refuse to accept defeat himself. This becomes his new definition of strength: refusing to give up until he's accomplished his goal. In the hands of a shounen protagonist, such conviction becomes his best trait. In the hands of Kamui, it becomes a vow to protect his prey until he can kill them himself.
His decision making has always been guided by his momentary whims in this way. While his well-honed battle sense and pure, unadulterated power are what he's known for among his enemies, his followers see a different side to him daily. Kamui is brutal, yes, but he's also selfish, sacrilegious, and single-minded to the core. He will tease and taunt and pettily torture his companions with as much gusto as his enemies. He will ditch anyone and anything the moment they no longer interest him. These traits are actually what make him so charismatic among his fellow outlaws. What Kamui desires isn't the perks of a higher status or a better world to live in but rather to topple the entire hierarchy just to prove he can.
He says as much when his second in command Abuto points out that his actions will get the entire Seventh Division in trouble with Harusame's higher ups. If his superiors don't approve of his actions, Kamui chimes cheerily, he'll kill them. He'll have to kill them sooner or later anyway if he wants to become the strongest; angering them enough to come after him only makes his job easier.
Honestly, this entire personality section could be summed up with a concise, "He does what he wants when he wants, and screw everyone else." Not only is he a selfish asshole, he is a self-aware selfish asshole. This makes his smug grin that much more intolerable because he can't be reasoned with. He is the man who waged war against the universe and said with a smile that it's just what pirates do. He already knows he's an idiot with no desire but to fight until he dies, so anyone with the balls to tell him what he is as if he doesn't know is clearly asking to be shat on.
What makes this unabashedly obnoxious personality so fascinating, however, are the moments when Kamui contradicts his own rules. Until Kagura beats some sense into him, he's convinced that caring is weakness, that strength is all that matters, and that losers deserve death. Yet he still spares one of his subordinates when he's lost a fight, holds back his desire to do battle with Shinsuke because he "owes him one," and repeatedly aids his little sister rather than kill her. Despite Kamui's long-suffering crusade to snuff out his emotion, he never actually succeeds.
The reason for this is revealed as far back as his very first appearance. During his introduction arc, he goes to great lengths to reunite a young boy with his prostitute mother. He justifies it as spiting Housen, but Housen chides him over how transparent this act of vicarious redemption really is.
Kamui's mother has been his conscience the entire time.
It's just too bad that she couldn't also be his therapist.
ABILITIES
➛ Superhuman strength and endurance. All Yato are significantly stronger than humans, and their bodies are capable of taking damage that would kill anyone else. For example, Kamui's subordinate catches a bullet in his teeth, his father is able to withstand a blast from a battleship with only his umbrella as a shield, and Kamui himself keeps fighting long enough to slaughter twenty men after being pumped with poison plenty to kill an elephant. Not only can they survive the vacuum of space (somehow!), Kamui even manages to break into the control center of a spaceship from outside. He frequently murders opponents just by thrusting his palm through their chests.
➛ Rapid healing capabilities. Though Kamui is very skilled with ignoring or simply hiding his pain on top of his insane durability, his abilities go one step farther. Yato are very quick healers. This is established right away when Kagura is shot and bleeding on the ground only to sit up and show her new friends that the wound has already closed less than an hour later. Kamui has been literally blown up and yet still able to pop in for some first aid treatment then jump back into battle on the same day.
➛ Extensive hand-to-hand fighting experience. Kamui is not only powerful, he is also disciplined. Fighting life-or-death battles has been his norm since he was a child, and through accumulated experience, he's gained a keen battle sense to accompany his seemingly weightless acrobatics. His teacher was the infamous Housen, King of the Yato Clan, and Kamui has since usurped his late teacher's position as leader of Harusame's Seventh Division, the organization's strongest combat division. Though he regularly refers to himself as an idiot, when it comes to the battlefield, he's a brutal mastermind.
➛ Yato blood. The blood of the Yato Clan is described by Kamui as a sort of collective intuition made up of the memory of their ancestors. Throughout most of the series, this is seen as a negative trait because Yato instincts always tend toward violence. The Yato have to overcome their base instincts or else lose their identities to a sea of mindless bloodlust. Kamui, Kagura, and Umibouzu all fall prey to their blood at one point in their lives - during which time they attack their opponents indiscriminately and with no regard for their own bodies. It's their own personalized berserker button. Although Kagura is originally afraid of this blood, Kamui teaches her that there's more to it as long as the Yato in question is properly disciplined. This well of instinct can be utilized through the senses and allow one to measure his/her opponent, comparing said opponent to the thousands of battles stored within their blood's collective memory. Kamui can sense the presence of other Yato with it, distinguish the truly powerful from the braggadocious, and better analyze the enemy's battle strategy.
➛ Sunlight sensitivity. Though the Yato are infamously powerful, they do have one prominent weakness: their bodies cannot handle direct sunlight. Exposure to the sun's rays will dry them out until they literally crumble to death. Many Yato, Kamui included, develop some small immunity through exposure therapy, but even then, the sun will make them ill or exhaust them and prolonged exposure will still kill them. Because of this, Yato are known throughout the galaxy for their pale, flawless skin and the parasols they carry. Because they have to have these parasols with them at all times anyway, the Yato reinforce and weaponize them, using them as clubs or even guns. Kamui is no exception.
➛ Yato metabolism. The Yato as a species have to eat enormous amounts of food in order to maintain their muscular physiques and quick healing. Kamui is ranked the biggest eater of them all.
INVENTORY
ONE REINFORCED METAL PARASOL. Complete with working gun barrel hidden in the handle as well as limited ammunition.
MARTIAL ARTS UNIFORM, HOODED CLOAK, BOOTS. The clothing he arrived with.
BANDAGES. Wrapped around his arms to protect them from sunlight.
ONE LAPTOP. Still lying undiscovered in his apartment.
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