Characters / Ichi the Killer

Main Characters

Ichi

Ichi/Hajime Shiroishi

"Don't cry. If you cry, you'll lose."

Portrayed by: Nao Omori

Voiced by: Chihiro Suzuki (Japanese), Michael Sinterniklaas (credited as Michael Tremain) (English)

The Killer of the title. Ichi is a 22-year-old man-child, who lives by himself in a big house. A childlike loner, he gets bullied around by almost everyone he meets and reacts by apologizing. He spends most of his days working at a metal factory and going to the red-light district. At night, he is a deadly assassin. Whenever pushed to the brink emotionally and past the Despair Event Horizon, he becomes a monster, capable of tearing men to shreds. At first, he only kills when his mysterious guardian Jijii orders him to.

• Absurdly Sharp Blade: His boot razors, which he makes in the welding factory where he works.
• Almighty Janitor: Has unbelievable lower body strength and has spent quite some time practicing karate, yet he remains a white belt. This of course is by his own choice due to his low self-esteem, as Ichi thinks he doesn't deserve anything better than a beginner belt.
• Anti-Hero: An extreme example of an Unscrupulous Hero at best, since he only kills under the orders of Jijii and his victims are usually the Yakuza members or bullies who pick on him. That being said, he is the closest thing this setting has to a hero, and the most sympathetic.
• Anti-Villain: Of the Woobie sort.
• Axe-Crazy: Whenever he starts to cry, run as far as you can.
• Berserk Button: In Ichi, his was being called "Ichi the Bitch" after his bully started to associate the name with him.
• Berserker Tears: Ichi cries when he's in his killing trance, since he both hates his own repressed ultra-violent tendencies and is simultaneously fueled by rage at the bullies who made his childhood a living hell.
• Beware the Quiet Ones: He won't bother you as long as you don't set off his high school memories... but if you do, may God have mercy on your soul.
• Black-and-White Insanity: Ichi has a strong sense of justice tied to using his strength to overcome his weaknesses, but when he gets into killing mood, his attitude drastically changes. Everyone who has nothing to do with his trauma is okay at the moment, but anyone whose the bullies must be destroyed.
• Bully Hunter: In a twisted sense. He couldn't stand up for himself as a child, and as an adult only teaches kids how to stand up to bullies, not hunt them himself. However, he becomes delusional when killing his targets and associates them with the bullies from his past, taking vengeance on them for their cruelty.
• Character Development: At the very end of the manga, although we don't get to see much of it, Ichi seems to have become more sociable and able to speak with girls normally, as seen in the hostess club; but he maintains his freaky smile and killer impulse.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: Extremely skilled in martial arts and has amazing lower body strength.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: A cowardly unassuming young man who can turn into a killing machine when pushed to the edge.
• Cruel and Unusual Death / Death by Adaptation: In the movie, he's kicked to death by a angered and dissapointed Takeshi.
• Dark and Troubled Past: His original backstory bills him as a kid who'd get bullied wherever he went, and along the way manipulated into becoming a killer. His altered memories give him a worse backstory.
• Despair Event Horizon: He is pushed past it whenever someone attacks him in a way reminiscent of the bullies in his childhood.
• Embarrassing Nickname: At least in Ichi, the origin for his nickname "Ichi" came from a high school bully bastardizing his last name and turning it into the mocking moniker "Ichi the Bitch".
• Expository Hair Style Change: In the epilogue set three years later, Ichi has grown his hair out into a longer, flared out style; highlighting his more sociable and confident nature, but also foils Takeshi's hairstyle change.
• Extremity Extremist: His most powerful weapons (and most well developed muscles) are his legs, which he uses for most of the fights shown in the manga. He even customizes his boots to make a weapon for his dominant leg. By contrast, his punches are profoundly average. When his punch strength is gaged by an arcade game, his score is significantly below a retired kickboxer's.
• Fake Memories: It's implied throughout the manga given Jijii's better memory of Ichi's past than Ichi himself. Jijii uses this to his advantage, as he would manipulate Ichi's memories and Ichi's imagination would expand and fill in details after being prompted, to the point that it's unclear how the events actually happened or if the events even happened at all. This would be his tactic when killing—associating his memories with his targets.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: By all accounts in both his memories and in Ichi, the boy was just a really strong but mousy young man who kept running into trouble with bullies. Whatever made him snap turned him into a killing machine that even seasoned mobsters feared.

• Loners Are Freaks: In high school, he wasn't known to socialize much, and many of his schoolmates shied away from him due to his quiet nature.
• Morality Pet: His friendship with with Kaneko's son Takeshi, who views him as "my wimpy big brother". Also Ichi's earlier friendship with the bullied kid Norio, where he teaches the kid how to fight off the bullies.
• My God, What Have I Done?: His reaction after killing Shiela by accident.
• Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: With puppy eyes and a sweet smile: "No. I didn't want to have sex. I wanted to rape her."
• Orgasmic Combat: Literally. The only way he can achieve an orgasm is through beating and killing others.
• Pet the Dog: Consoling the poor abused prostitute, and even giving her money so she can have her nose fixed. They even have a romantic moment and he promises to kill her abusive pimp for her... that ends badly.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Ichi is one of the top examples of this trope. Jijii's manipulations ensure that he's constantly back in his state of mind as a bullied teenager, and beyond that, he doesn't comprehend concepts like rape. He also gets along well with kids and can understand their mindsets.
• Retired Badass: The epilogue reveals that spending a year in Shinjuku made Ichi lose most of his killing edge, so Jijii let him go. While he's still monstrously strong, he doesn't seem near the wreck he was three years prior.
• Secret Test of Character: In Ichi, his fending off a gang of hoodlums and slaughtering them all gave him the opportunity to become a professional hitman, beneath his notice.
• The Un-Smile: His creepy nervous "smile". By the epilogue, he's managed to make a real one.
• Unstoppable Rage: Whenever he goes into his killing trance.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: It's hard not to feel bad for this guy, especially since he knows that he's insane and wants to be normal.
• Zorro Mark: Jijii and the gang leave a bloody '1' on the floor after his first mission in the apartment complex, to warn the Anjou clan about what's to come for them.

Kakihara

Masao Kakihara

"Moral code, what's that?"

Portrayed by: Tadanobu Asano

Voiced by: Takashi Miike (Japanese)

Arguably the Villain Protagonist of this story. A high-ranking Yakuza mobster of the Anjougumi, who is equal parts sadist and masochist, he loves both receiving pain and dishing it out. He cuts, burns and pierces his body, and has twin friends who engage in S&M with him. His story begins when he finds out his boss and lover, Anjo, has gone missing. Kakihara is intrigued and goes in pursuit of Anjo's killer, but along the way takes over the gang. He eventually decides that Anjo's killer - Ichi - is the ultimate sadist he's been searching for.

• Adaptational Attractiveness: He's a lot more handsome in the live-action movie, as his constant Wide Eyes and Shrunken Irises are absent and he has a thinner frame and less squashed-looking nose.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: Has bleached blond hair in the movie.
• Asshole Victim: He has his penis, arm and three of his fingers sliced off by Ichi as well, as all of his teeth knocked out by him and then falls to his death by pigeon crapping on his index finger and losing his grip. While that is a rather brutal fate, Kakihara himself was so subhuman, that there's hardly anyone who would shed a tear for such a despicable monster.
• Ax-Crazy: He really enjoys torture and murder.
• Beard of Evil: He has his trademark Perma-Stubble and he's a psychopathic monster.
• Berserk Button: Belittle his former boss or the Anjou Clan at your own risk.
• Big Bad: While he is the main point-of-view character in the manga, Kakihara is also the leader of the Yakuza that Ichi and Jijii are trying to take down, making him the leading antagonistic force.
• Bondage Is Bad: In addition to his clan owning several BDSM sex dungeons among other sex shops, Kakihara himself is into extreme masochist play. We get a glimpse of his usual during a scene with Karen.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Oh, God. Since he's an extreme masochist, he is an expert at the human body and its physical limits, and applies this knowledge to his victims. His specialty is genital mutilation and keeping his victim conscious as long as possible.
• Combat Sadomasochist: He routinely tortures his enemies to death and enjoys every moment of their suffering. On the flip side, he also loves being hurt himself and had his Glasgow Grin given to him to enjoy the rush from the pain. (He's also this trope's current page illustration.)
• Deadpan Snarker: He's just as sarcastic as he is sadistic.
• Decoy Protagonist: Of a sort in the live action movie, he appears on the cover and is featured prominently in the trailer and movie self before Ichi is properly introduced, which leaves an impression that he's the titular character.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: Downplayed. In both the manga and live-action film he fell to his death. In the live-action version, he hallucinated Ichi beheading Takeshi and gets stabbed in the head by him, causing him to fall off the roof of the apartment complex. But the manga has him lose body parts before attempting to run away and dangled on a railing with only a finger left in his hand before a bird defecates on him, causing him to lose his grip and fall to his death.
• Disney Villain Death: In both the manga and live-action film, he goes out by falling from a great height. Though what leads up to it differs in the adaptation.
• Dragon Ascendant: He was once a high ranked enforcer until his boss was killed and spends the manga taking over his gang and trying to get revenge on Jijii and his cronies.
• Exotic Equipment: It's implied that Kakihara has body modifications in...interesting places.
• Glasgow Grin: Kakihara has one given to him by Jiro and Saburo back in the day, held together by piercings. He's also fond of giving the Glasgow Grin to other people. He takes the piercings out to swallow and bite off people's hands when they try to punch him in the face, and at one point has them torn out, which doesn't faze him at all.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: He has a horizontal scar running across his cheeks and nose, a horizontal scar across his forehead, and a vertical scar that connects both over his left eye. In addition to a Glasgow Grin held together by piercings at the edge of his lips.
• Improbable Weapon User: He has a pack of sharp needles which he uses for both combat and torture.
• In Love with Your Carnage: He feels this way when seeing Ichi's killings.
• Nightmare Fetishist: Kakihara's hobbies are torturing people and being tortured.
• Obviously Evil: He has a wild, hungry look in his eyes and his face is covered in intimidating scars, with even a Glasgow Grin as the cherry on top. To make it even more blatant, he doesn't even bother hiding how twisted he is.

• The Sociopath: As you can already tell, Kakihara a depraved monster with no morals or humanity.
• Sex Is Violence: "There's no love in your punches!"
• Too Kinky to Torture: That is until Ichi slices his cock and balls in half.

Jijii's gang

Jijii

Jijii

Portrayed by: Shinya Tsukamoto

Voiced by: Shinpachi Tsuji (Japanese), Tristan Goddard (English)

Ichi's guardian, who has turned the man-child into an unstoppable killer through Mind Rape and brainwashing. A mysterious old man who has dedicated his entire life to balance out the good and evil in the city — well, rather, the greater evil and the lesser evil.

• Adaptational Backstory Change: In the film, he's a former cop, whose goal is to eradicate the Yakuza from the city. Not so much in the manga, where he's got no professional ties of note.
• The Chessmaster: He's behind everything that went on in the series, wrapping entire gangs under his little finger with ease. Everything goes according to his plans, as he escapes the story with very few loose ends and Shinjuku a little bit safer.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: He betrayed almost every member of his own little gang of excommunicated gangsters. He even went on to get Karen killed to wrap up all of his loose ends.

• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": His real name is never given and is only ever called "Jijii."

• Good Is Not Nice: He's a real bastard to many of the major players, but he's sincere in that he wants criminals like the yakuza off his streets.
• Mind Rape: What he did to Ichi. No one deserves to have these horrendous "memories" implanted in them. In the final chapter when Ichi runs into Takeshi, Takeshi has no memory of Ichi; implying that Jijii is using the same tactics on Takeshi.

• Obfuscating Stupidity: He's a sharp old man, but to make his plan work, he portrayed himself as a feeble and ignorant elder to take the Anjou Clan off his trail.
• Old Master: Subverted; after he breaks Takayama's neck with one hand, he reveals that that he's in his 30's, but had plastic surgery to make him look older. On the other hand, he might be an old man and lying. Jijii isn't exactly known for his honesty.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Siccing Ichi on the Yakuza is just about one of the cruelest things he could ever do, but he feels they deserve it for being corrupt thugs.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: The shortest male in the cast by far, even shorter than the women in the story, but he's strong in his own right and managed to take down a seasoned yakuza barehanded.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Both continuities reveal that he starts his war on the mob apartment complex because he's trying to make Shinjuku safer by force. If that means he has to use criminals and groom kids into sadistic monsters, then so be it.
• Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: He often uses his plain and oafish looks to fool his victims, often throwing them off his trail.
• Younger Than He Looks: He looks like a geezer but he's actually on his late 30s... supposedly. This is thanks to Magic Plastic Surgery.

Noboru

Noboru

• An Arm and a Leg: While being interrogated by Jiro, he physically rips out both of his arms; simply to see if he could.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: Ichi shows up and kills Jiro, saving Noboru, but then immediately turns around and kills Noboru. It's revealed Jijii orchestrated it, as Ichi and Jijii's gang have never met, and had given Noboru as one of Ichi's targets.
• Groin Attack: Kakihara splices his genitals while being interrogated.
• Last of His Kind: He's the last member of Jijii's gang to get killed.
• No One Sees the Boss: He, Ryou, and Inoue have never met Ichi, only cleaning up after him. Noboru is the only one who meets Ichi, but since Ichi has never met him and Jijii used his master manipulation abilities, he has Ichi off Noboru.
• Those Two Guys: He, Ryou, and Inoue are the members of Jijii's gang, but the three of them are really only in charge of cleaning up after Ichi and are oftentimes forced to just stay back in their hideout.

Ryou

Ryou

Portrayed by: KEE

• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: It's no secret that Miyu-Miyu adores Ryou, however, he seems to just be using her to make money. When they're both abducted by Kakihara, Ryou reveals he really does care about her and his final words are telling her sorry.
• Groin Attack: Jiro punches and then Saburo slices his genitals, mocking him by saying "how can you be a pimp without your money maker?" The latter's assault on his groin is what kills him.
• Lovable Sex Maniac: His main source of income is that he's a pimp, having about twenty or so girls under his belt, one being his girlfriend. He reveals that he does this as a means to love girls that find themselves incapable of being loved.
• Manipulative Bastard: Ryou has Miyu deposit her earnings in their shared bank account in hopes of opening a tea shop, Noboru believes it's just Ryou is conning her out of her money and he essentially admits to it. Then you learn he actually cares about her.
• Token Minority: While there are a few minority characters in the criminal underworld, Ryou's the only Chinese guy important to the cast. His minority status also plays into the plot, with Jijii using him as a fake Chinese yakuza and Kakihara tracking him down easily due to being one of the very few Chinese pimps in the area.

• Together in Death: He and Miyu-Miyu, his girlfriend and one of the girls he pimps, die shortly after each other at the hands of Jiro and Saburo.

Inoue

Inoue

Portrayed by: Satoshi Niizuma

• Addled Addict: What ultimately leads to his end was his addiction to cocaine and heroin. He enters withdrawal after being cooped up in a hotel room with no drugs, and tells his dealer, who's being used by Kakihara, the address of their gang's hideout to get his fix.
• Those Three Guys: With Ryou and Noboru.
• I Love the Dead: He likes to rape the corpses of the people he cleans up after. It doesn't matter the gender, but he prefers pretty girls.
• Magic Plastic Surgery: He got plastic surgery done on his face after being excommunicated from the Anjou clan so he could stay in Shinjuku. When Kakihara's gang catches him, all the members say he doesn't look anything like how he used to.
• The Mole: Inoue used to be part of the Anjou clan. Before being excommunicated, he used this connection to plant bugs throughout the Yakuza Mansion, so Jijii and his gang could listen in and spy on Anjougumi's activities.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: He is the first of Jijii's gang to die, being killed off about a third of the way through the manga.

Anjougumi and Criminal Underworld

Kaneko

Kaneko

Portrayed by: SABU (under the alias Hiroyuki)

An enforcer for Anjougumi.

• Et Tu, Brute?: Ichi has this reaction once they learn which sides of the conflict they're on, resulting in Kaneko getting killed. Ichi likens him to a boy in high school who was friendly with him outside of bullying incidents, where he'd only join in so he wouldn't get killed himself.
• Foil: To Ichi. Ichi is a coward and timid while Kaneko carries himself with strong, self-assured confidence; when working, Ichi is calm and collected while Kaneko shakes in genuine fear, even tripping as soon as he enters an apartment when searching for Ichi in the final volume and dropping his gun when Karen unexpectedly shows up and thinks it's Ichi.

• If I Do Not Return: He asks Ichi to look after Takeshi in case anything happens to him. Ichi doesn't understand what he means, until he realizes that Kaneko is one of his targets that he has to kill.
• Last Request: His last words are tearfully asking Ichi to take care of Takeshi for him.
• Morality Pet: Strangely enough, Ichi is this to Kaneko. His company brings out Ichi's best sides, and Ichi views him as a cool big brother.
• Only Sane Man: When there's only him left in the gang, with Kakihara and Saburo.
• Professional Killer: A low-ranking hitman for Anjougumi.
• Tears of Blood: Has these when he's dying and asking Ichi to look after his son.
• Token Good Teammate: The most moral member of the Anjou clan, which puts him into a bind as the other members think he's too soft for his line of work.
• Undying Loyalty: Towards his deceased boss, Yoshio Anjo, and Anjougumi as a whole, even when it was turned into a street gang under Kakihara's leadership.

Jiro and Saburo

Jiro and Saburo

Portrayed by: Suzuki Matsuo (Jiro)

• Asshole Victim: Both are killed by Ichi. Jiro had his neck snapped from Ichi's kick, and Saburo had the top of his head slashed off by Ichi's bladed shoes.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: In shiny white business suits, no less.
• Berserk Button: Don't try to pick which brother is better. The one who wasn't picked won't take it well.
• Charles Atlas Super Power: Jiro has nearly inhuman strength, especially his grip. He can pulverize a breast with one punch and can tear an arm off with his bare hands. He's the one who gave Kakihara his Glasgow Grin... with his thumbs.
• Co-Dragons: They are Kakihara's most trusted enforcers and comrades from his past days, and before Ichi can finally face Kakihara, he has to kill both of them.
• Creepy Twins: Forceful, brutish, and nearly always in sync, Jiro and Saburo fit the trope well.
• Family Theme Naming: Together with their late brother, Ichiro. Ichiro, Jiro and Saburo means "First Son", "Second Son" and "Third Son".
• Force and Finesse: Jiro is the "Force" as he has inhuman strength and can tear through flesh and bone as easily as a sharp blade, and Saburo is the "Finesse" as while he's of average strength, he has mind-boggling skills with his dosu, and can easily slice through the nerves of somebody with pin-point accuracy.

• Identical Twin ID Tag: They both have the exact same face and dress the same way too. The only way to distinguish them is that Jiro is the super strong one with a pompadour, and Saburo is the one with dreadlocks who carries a dosu on his person..
• Master Swordsman: Saburo fights with a dosu, a short sword favored by Yakuza. His overall strength is said to be unremarkable, but his skills with a blade are so refined that he can cut two nipples off while drawing from the hip and sever the nerves that control the index finger before his enemy can pull a trigger.

• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: They rape their way through the series. Almost every woman they're alone with is raped and brutalized by them.
• Sibling Murder: Apparently they had an older triplet but killed him in an argument over who was strongest. When Jiro is killed by Ichi, Saburo is furious because he always wanted to be the one to kill Jiro to prove he was the ultimate brother. It's implied Jiro felt the same way towards Saburo.
• There Can Be Only One: Being Creepy Twins aren't enough for Jiro and Saburo. Their manga background shows that they were originally in a group of triplets, all of them monsters who wondered who was the one their father's sperm had blessed the most, so they have been trying to top each other in the "most heinous actions" scale, where the winner apparently kills the others. The third brother, their elder Ichiro, never made it to the main storyline... because his younger brothers murdered him prior. Ichi didn't give the remaining two siblings the time to finish their competition.
• Twin Banter: It starts out as normal sibling banter, and often devolves into a furious competition that frequently ends up with those around the twins being harmed or killed.
• Twin Telepathy: One can detect when the other has been killed.
• Undignified Death: Saburo dies completely as a result of him accidentally fumbling with his knife and leaving him open to getting the top of his skull cut off by Ichi in such a way that he didn't even realize it happened at first.

Takayama

Takayama

Portrayed by: Shun Sugata

Fujiwara

Fujiwara

Portrayed by: Toru Tezuki

• Butt-Monkey: He gets stuck with unpleasant tasks, like being forced to commit same-sex necrophilia on Masao's behalf.
• Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: His fate. He leaves due to being too frightened and doesn't get any sort of punishment for his cowardice.
• Sole Survivor: He winds up getting so freaked out by the situation that he leaves, crying in fear and shame and never appears ever again. This results in him getting away with his life.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: He's the only member of the Anjougumi to survive thanks to him making the wise decision to leave and never come back.

Suzuki

Suzuki

Portrayed by: Susumu Terajima

A member of the Funaki clan, who was abducted and tortured by Kakihara for his "involvement" in Anjou's disappearance.

Funaki

Funaki

Portrayed by: Jun Kunimura

Other

Karen

Karen

Portrayed by: Paulyn Sun (under Alien Sun)

A Kabuki-cho hostess Kakihara relies on for information.

• Dumb Blonde: Appears to be this initially in the manga. She isn't.
• Knowledge Broker: Serves as Kakihara's informant for most of the manga, since she has more connections to the rumor mill of Shinjuku and its social scene. She's also in on most of his plans.

• The Mole: Works for Jijii.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Like every other person who knew about the mission, Karen is quickly offed to leave no notable witnesses.

Takeshi

Takeshi Kaneko

Kaneko's son and Ichi's latest friend.

• Blood-Splattered Innocents: In the epilogue, Takeshi clumsily falls out of an alleyway, holding a bloodstained knife with blood stains on his face; implying he has recently begun his job as Jijii's latest killing machine.
• Character Tic: For a good portion of his appearances, he always has his hand covering his forehead. It's to hide that his bullies cut some of his bangs, leaving them uneven.
• Chekhov's Gunman: While most of his panel time is just talking to Ichi, Takeshi is instrumental to Kaneko discovering the identity of the hitman tearing through the apartment complex.
• Enfant Terrible: He was actually a normal kid throughout this nonsense, but the very end of the manga has him become an addled killer.
• Expository Hair Style Change: In the epilogue, he has grown his hair out in a style very similar to the one Ichi currently has; but it's moreso to display that he is being subjected to what Ichi experienced.
• Fake Memories: As Jijii did with Ichi prior, it's implied he's implanting fake memories into Takeshi. As a result, he doesn't remember Ichi when they run into each other at the end of the manga.
• Sinister Switchblade: He uses a switchblade as Jijii's assassin.
• Tyke Bomb: He ends up as Jijii's newest assassin.
• When You Coming Home, Dad?: Used in the most tragic way.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: After his father dies and Jijii takes him in.