Characters / Kengan Ashura Purgatory

Kengan Ashura Main Character Index
Kengan Association (Yamashita Trading Co.) | Kengan Association Fighters (Left Block | Right Block) | Purgatory | Worm | Other Groups

Purgatory (煉獄, Rengoku)

Another organization which is part of the Japanese underground martial arts industry, established fifteen years before Omega out of Idemitsu Toyoda's own pocket. It was second to the Kengan Association in Ashura. However, in Omega, it has become the largest-scale underground martial arts promotion in Japan after absorbing the third-biggest Bishamon and is now looking to do a merger with the Kengan Association.

In General

• Alternate Company Equivalent: Word of God states that Liu Dongcheng, Fei Wangfang, Naidan Mönkhbat, and Nicolas Le Banner are Purgatory's equivalent to the Kengan Association's "four idiots". Liu and Kaneda are even neighbors living at the same apartment complex.
• Combat Pragmatist: The rules are safer than the Kengan Association but it is still much more extreme than combat sport. The fighters are not above using a few tricks such as forcing a ring out or poisoning their opponent.
• Fantastic Rank System: Purgatory ranks its fighters as either A-list, B-list or C list. Most fighters are in the C-list (around 2,000) are a mix of wheat and chaff, with a few diamonds in the rough. Some of those diamonds enter the B-list (around 200), but that is also a mixed bag. The A-list (around 30) have only had strong and exceptionally strong fighters, with them all supposedly as strong as the top Kengan fighters. This is a noticeably different method of ranking compared to the Kengan Association. Purgatory ranks their fighters by strength, while the Kengan Association ranks companies by how much money they have earned through matches.
• Foil: To the Kengan Association in almost every organizational way.
  • Purgatory is a relatively new underground fighting organization while the Kengan Association is steeped in centuries of Japanese history and had until the beginning of Omega been stable under the same Chairman for over five decades.
  • While Kengan matches are simple in their winner-takes-all, no-holds-barred ruleset, Purgatory disincentivizes outright deathmatches despite still being no-holds-barred, but also introduces sub-rules that make it possible for a fighter who is on paper weaker than his opponent to clinch a win through other means. Alisa explains to the crowd that more of these sorts of rulesets are still in the works to mix up the league.
  • Purgatory places audience entertainment and fighter strength above all else, while the Kengan Association is a dispute resolution mechanism that focuses on the positions of individual companies, with fighters being seen as chess pieces to achieve corporate goals. Even one of Purgatory's top tiers in Yumigahama has nearly a half-dozen losses on his record in just a few years because fights occur much more frequently than Kengan Matches and are guaranteed to be against strong competition within the A-list, whereas high-end Kengan fighters are generally relegated to can-crushing and building up long records of being undefeated before they are truly tested unless a massive corporate dispute or an Annhilation Tournament occurs.
  • Purgatory is funded exclusively by one source, while the Kengan Association gets its funding from its members.
  • Purgatory is run by one person without hassle. The Kengan Association has internal political strife between different groups and members vying for power.
  • The tournament is noticeably different from the Kengan Annihilation Tournament, being a team based tournament where the fighters decide which order and who they want to fight, and only fighting once. The Kengan Annihilation Tournament placement is decided by the employers, with the fighters fighting multiple rounds.
• Gladiator Games:
  • Moreso than the Kengan Association, Purgatory is run by one man and puts entertainment and competitiveness as their highest priority, paying its fighters enormous and attractive sums of money. They even refer to their fighters as "Gladiators". This is different compared to the Kengan Association, which primarily uses underground fighting as a method of resolving company disputes and contracts. This has made it outpace the Kengan Association in Omega, with them even managing to poach fighters from the Kengan Association and bring them over to Purgatory.
  • The fights in Purgatory routinely pull in around 50,000 attendees, which the Kengan Association would only get during an Annihilation Tournament for a new Chairman.
• Godzilla Threshold: Humorously, Purgatory seems to always have a construction team ready at the ringside with new tiles to replace those that are destroyed in the fights. This comes particularly in handy after Toa and Julius' slobberknocker of a super-heavyweight match that makes the ring look like it'd been hit with an artillery strike.
• Insistent Terminology: Fighters are known as Gladiators in Purgatory.
• Lighter and Softer:
  • Compared to the Kengan Association, Purgatory fights have rules to ensure a small level of fighter safety and to avoid fights turning into deathmatches. Gladiators lose if a) they are knocked out and fail to get up in 10 seconds, b) have any part of their body touch the outside of the ring or c) kill their opponent during the match, not only leading to their disqualification but also not being paid. Besides those, anything still goes. This has helped Purgatory beat out the Kengan Association, attracting a larger audience who might not want to see death battles and attracting fighters with a level of safety and greater pay.
  • Purgatory's rules end up being used for the Kengan Association vs Purgatory Tournament, with each fighter only being allowed to fight once, as opposed to multiple fights over the course of a few days.
  • Purgatory's rules also end up being a factor that the Kengan Association Fighters are not accustomed to, as they fight in no holds barred fights with death being a possible factor. In the first fight between Carlos Medel and Kaolan Wongsawat, Carlos manages to lure Kaolan into falling off the ring, turning a fight he had no chance of winning into one where he won due to the rules
    Liu Dongcheng: Under Purgatory rules, Purgatory gladiators will never lose.
  • The fight with the Falcon does show that like the Kengan Association some fighters aren't shy to break their own rules and little punishment comes out of it.
• New Rules as the Plot Demands: For the 4th round of the tournament the rules change for a special match. The rules changed so that a) fighters can only move within the spotlight, b) the spotlight will shrink as time goes on, c) whoever forces their opponent out of the ring in 5 minutes is the winner, d) if there is no clear winner in 5 minutes, both fighters will be disqualified and the match made into a no contest and e) the 10 second knock down rule is not in play. According to the ref, Purgatory are still trying to incorporate more of these different sorts of fights.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted. There are no less than four former or current A-list Gladiators with the name Kim, two of them Korean, one American and the fourth one a Swede who was set to be one of Purgatory's 13 representatives, but had to pull out due to an injury during his training. Oh, and there's another guy named Kimura just to make it even more confusing to the Purgatory Gladiators who aren't fluent in Japanese. Due to this, when Rolón brings up their substitute Kim Jang Gi, the entire Purgatory bench is thrown into internal confusion trying to remember which Kim that is and not wanting to ask out loud, including Rolón.
• Organization with Unlimited Funding: Courtesy of Toyoda Idemitsu, the richest tycoon in Japan, the organization is basically this.
• Rule of Three: The Three Demon Fists, the strongest Chinese martial artists in the organization. Although one of their number, Liu, considers it more of a marketing push than anything else since they act as one another's opponent's most of the time. Liu is also the only real Chinese martial artist of the three, the other being Worm agents using their Chinese martial art as dummy style.
• Shout-Out: The Purgatory MC in attendance when Koga, Ryuki and Kazuo first visit the Purgatory stadium looks almost identical to Keisuke Itagaki, the author of Baki the Grappler, in his younger days.
• Technician Versus Performer: Most of the seasoned fighters are focusing on the fight and are more akin to athlete with proper technique compared to Kengan association, who is mostly composed of bruisers hired by companies to kill or hospitalize someone fast sportsmanship and morals be damned. Those that are more wild or unusual in their fighting style like Terashi and Alan are new additions to the roster and confused by the general attitude of the Gladiators.
• Theme Naming: The Three Demon Fists all take a sub-title from the five poisonous animals of Chinese folklore; Centipede, Serpent and Toad, with the Spider and Scorpion going unseen or being titles of former members. Also present with Rolón and Jurota, whose respective “King” and “Gentle King” epithets come from their first and second placement in the "Ultimate Gladiator Playoffs", to signify their high status within the A List.
• The Rival: To the Kengan Association. This comes to the forefront in Omega, with them looking to do a merger. The organization which wins the merger will be primed to take over the underground tournament scene in Asia.
• Rule of Escalating Threat: Averted, the threat of absorbing Kengan Association is a big deal but compared to Hayami's dealings and the Worm terrorist attacks. Even as thr average fighters level is higher due to the smaller number of entrants, a fair competition with fighters on the same level as the Kengan's best is a lower stake.

Leadership

Idemitsu Toyoda

“Nonsense, isn't it? Selling things in this day and age? I switched over to dealing in information quite a while ago. Don't have to keep an inventory. I just have to bring myself.”

Age: 49

The representative of Purgatory and the richest tycoon in Japan. His father was a Yakuza who made a massive profit in the post-war economy, but Idemitsu renounced his father's wealth in his late teens and became a tycoon by himself within a matter of years, eventually becoming so rich that he could buy his own country if he put his mind to it.

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• Affably Evil: Evil is a bit of a stretch; He is trying to absorb the Kengan Association into Purgatory for rather selfish reasons, making him an antagonist, but otherwise he is always very affable and friendly with Kengan fighters and members, in particular Yamashita and his employees. He is also in bed with the Wu Clan, and possbly the Worm by extension. This turns out to be a Red Herring; Idemitsu was betting on the Worms coming out of the Purgatory woodworks for the cross-league competition, and sure enough he managed to flush out every Worm in the A-list during the tournament's span.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: He is a really, really out there guy, but when it comes to striking a good deal and pushing enormous amounts of money and information around, he is second to none bordering on Charm Person levels.
• Classified Information: What he deals in, with his explanation being that selling objects in the modern day is obsolete and information is much more desirable. This means he's involved in anything from working with private investigators and poaching champion fighters from abroad straight out of the Chinese mafias and even worse groups' hands, to purchasing redundant nuclear bunkers from the government to host the Berserker Bowl in.
• Eagleland: Despite being Japanese, he has many of the stereotypes of an American billionaire on top of the general appearance, being an eccentric recluse who spends much of his wealth on odd personal projects, and is known to act arrogant and childish. He gets ingredients flown in by helicopter from Boss Burger to his private island to serve Nogi and Kazuo fresh burgers and fries during their first meeting.^note That said, Boss Burger being a nod to real Japanese burger chain M.O.S Burger, this would still be Japanese.
• Exotic Eye Designs: His pupils are wide like a goat's. No explanation for why this is the case has been given yet.
• Fiction 500:
  • He is absurdly wealthy, having total assets that exceed that of the Kengan Association (which runs on contributions from member corporations). He could buy his own country if he wanted to.
  • To give an idea of how mind-bogglingly wealthy he is, he owns his own private island and mansion, with the central chamber being an art gallery filled with artwork thought "lost" during World War 2, and it's own private aquarium large enough to be built under the ocean and filled with animals such as Whale Sharks. The kicker? He bought the island and built everything on it for one of his mistresses.
• The Hedonist: He has a multitude of mistresses and leapfrogs his way around his interests due to his fabulous wealth. He even admits in a meeting that Purgatory is essentially just his favorite side-venture that he's busying himself with until his private space program is ready to take him to the moon.
• Humble Hero:
  • Despite his wealth, status and reputation, he is actually someone quick to make friends due to being both generous and earnest, casually giving up one of the 13 spots for the competition to Edward Wu because he liked his confidence and being chummy with him from then on. He also rushes to Koga's defense when Yumigahama hits him to provoke Jose, quickly resolving the situation by offering Jose a rematch ASAP, giving Yumigahama a dressing down and apologizing to Koga on his behalf.
  Idemitsu: "Yumigahama, was that any way to treat a friend of mine?"
  • He is strong enough to blow holes in the cut of meat he uses as a sandbag at one point with simple punches, yet thinks of his own prowess as pathetic. This already makes him by far the strongest civilian in the series; for reference, Lihito is the only "fighter CEO" in the Kengan Association's history (not counting fighters that became CEO after retiring from fighting).
• Large and in Charge: When he appears at a Kengan Match in person, he's shown to tower over the representatives, with Yamashita only coming up to his chest and Koga to his shoulders, and can look the towering Yumigahama straight in the eye when he tells him off for starting a scene in the Purgatory crowd.
• Manchild:
  • Described as such by Mana Kimishima. He is a slave to his desires like a child. He eats what he wants and takes what he wants because he has the power and wealth to do so. Why did he build a massive aquarium? Because he likes them, so he had to have one of his own. Why does he want to merge the Associations? Because he wants to take over the world, starting with the Japanese economy. Why does he want to do that? Because he needs to occupy his time whilst he builds his own spaceship to go to the moon. Why? BECAUSE HE WANTS TO AND HE CAN!!
  • May lean into Psychopathic Manchild, as he arranged a meeting with Nogi because he wanted to change the time for preparation from a year to a month, and increase the number of fighters from 13 to 50 because it would be more entertaining. His whole reason for doing things is based upon selfish desires, and he seems willing to do anything to get what he wants.
  • Edward Wu actually compliments him on his "touch of childishness" when he's hanging out at the completely extravagant hot spring pool, with marble statuettes and a massive screen displaying Purgatory's already absurd volcano crater arena.
• Nice Guy: Despite initially appearing as a villain, he really is nothing but kind to Kengan and Purgatory fighters alike, treating anyone he meets as treasured friends almost immediately.
• Noodle Incident: Apparently had a "kerfuffle" with the Beijing mafias for poaching Toa Mudo and The Falcon, the Openweight and Middleweight champions of their underground martial arts league, into Purgatory at the same time. Considering what Chinese gangs are known to have done to those that cross them in the past, he got out of the situation very well.
• Not So Similar: He is quick to shut down the comparison of the tournament of champions and the Gu Ritual the Worm does, as they value the fighters and avoid casualties unlike the ritual that force fighters to kill each other to the brink of madness.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: During the interleague tournament, he strictly acts as the host and refuses to take executive decisions or weight in his opinion on rulings, leaving that to the referees for the sake of fairness and just being there to keep the conversation flowing.
• Renaissance Man: He's an expert businessman, a skilled painter, a martial artist (albeit not to the level of any of the major fighters in the series, but he's still a giant of a man with mean right hook), and will be an astronaut once his space program gets off the ground.
• Self-Made Man: Renounced his inherited wealth from his dad and still became the richest man in Japan before he turned fifty.
• Smarter Than You Look: Despite being a somewhat childish businessman who prefers the straightforward approach, Toyoda isn't nearly as stupid as he looks or acts.
  • He correctly deduces that Mumon Yuzuki had been killed and impersonated, just by looking at the impersonator's eyes and by noting his fighting style has suddenly changed. He also notices the foul play going on in the crossover tournament by the fifth round's conclusion and gets Muteba to do some behind-the-scenes investigation for him.
  • In spite of his Manchild tendencies, he is a very shrewd and sharp businessman. When he made his proposal to shorten the time till the tournament to one month and increase the number of fighters to 50, part of it was because of his Manchild tendencies, the other part was because he knew about the Kengan Associations issues with internal policies and their more limited roster.
  • He's also a skilled artist, as Yamashita and Nogi learn when they find a painting of one of his ancestors that he reveals he created himself.
  • Being an informant by trade, he's very knowledgeable on matters such as portrait sketching, impersonation and sniffing out talent.
• Yakuza: Subverted, though he may look like a yakuza because of his tattoos and was born as the son of a yakuza boss, he renounced his status and wealth to build a new fortune for himself and went from Rags to Riches.
• Xanatos Speed Chess: He would have liked to win against the Kengan Association if possible, but he takes his league's loss in good stride, as he and the Kengan Association managed to use it as an oppurtunity to lure out Worm and Nogi ultimately refuses the merger even after winning because the Kengan Association is too radically different from Purgatory for the two to fuse. At the end of the day, Idemitsu still manages to gain powerful allies and clean out Purgatory of Worms at the expense of a bit of it's reputation for losing the face-off tournament.

Alisa Shiina

"Back off, or I'll disqualify you!!"

Age: 25

The announcer and referee of the Kengan Association vs. Purgatory Tournament.

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• Authority in Name Only: The fighters don't really care about her warnings and while Idemitsu put her in charge, it feels more like forcing her to make the calls. She is not able to stop anything from going sideways and one fighter in particular even managed to get a knife of considerable size through the pad-down search and bring it to the ring.
• Blood-Splattered Innocents: Gets covered in some of Alan Wu's blood when Raian tears him in half.
• Everyone Has Standards: As a ref in an underground circuit, she has obviously seen all kinds of insanity in the ring, but even Alisa's visibly unnerved by how Toa and Julius makes the massive ring feel cramped, and lets out a squeak of terror when their first collision nearly blows her off her feet. She also shows disgust at Naidan's death and is left stunned by the extremely gruesome murder of Alan Wu.
• Foil: Word of God says that she was designed to be different from Sayaka Katahara, being light skinned with dark hair and being a referee instead of commentator.
• Male Gaze: Her dress is very open up top and very form-fitting down low, and the angling of certain panels doesn't attempt to hide it.
• Ms. Fanservice: Her evening dress really show off her curves and midriff.

Kengan Association VS Purgatory Tournament Roster

In General

The Roster of Thirteen

“You are the most powerful lineup I can imagine! Our victory is as good as assured!”

Thirteen barehanded warriors gathered by Idemitsu for the purpose of toppling the Kengan Association's stranglehold on the underground martial arts industry. Each and every one is a formidable fighting force coming from incredibly varied backgrounds; Some are former fighters for sport, some are military veterans with a specialty when it comes to hand-to-hand, some are prodigies from obscure martial arts that would find no Worthy Opponents fighting within their own discipline, and some are figures from the deepest echelons of criminal society. They are the strongest lineup Idemitsu could gather for Purgatory within the nine months between agreeing to the competition with Hideki Nogi and the fight night happening.

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• Alternate Company Equivalent: A sizable portion of the teams roster are this for the Kengan team's roster, from the more overt like Julius and Toa (two massive muscle bound behemoths of near identical size and build who value strength above anything else) and Alan and Raian (two incredibly murderous members of rival offshoot assassin clans who put killing one another over their loyalty to their respect teams), and Agito and Lu Tian (Two equally huge stone-faced men with a Split Personality who fight like beasts) and less obvert ones like Lihito and The Falcon (Two incredibly dorky (in their own ways) fighters using an unsubtle Code Name specializing in finger strikes who both seek tutorship from Gensai Kuroki) and Wakatsuki and Fei (The Wild Tiger Old Master fighting another superhuman who is fighting for the right to become the successor to the Niko (Two Tigers) Style.
• Foil: The entire team is basically made up of Foils for their respective opponents or other rival team members thus far, with many of them sporting similar fighting styles, origins, motivations and abilities that make their fights just as much a battle against their very origins and character as it is a battle of strength and skill.
• Horrifying the Horror: Zig-zagged. Some of the Kengan team members are complete unknowns to them like Ryuki or Lihito, but others have a couple people on the Purgatory team shitting themselves. Liu, a veteran Gladiator who's been with Purgatory for a long time and could be expected to lead the charge, literally invokes his (still alive) father's will forbidding him from going first to avoid getting matched up with Kaolan Wongsawat. Agito, Julius, Wakatsuki, Ohma and Raian provoke a similar reaction from the Purgatory bench in their own matches.
• The Mole: As the tournament goes on it becomes clear that the Purgatory team has been heavily infiltrated by members of Worm, with at least four of their representatives being secret Worm members or heavily affiliated with them (as is the case with Alan).
• Multinational Team: Compared to the Kengan Association Team, the 13 representatives for Purgatory is far more multinational, drawing on fighters from Japan, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, France, Mexico, New Zealand, Inner Mongolia, Singapore and the Phillipines. In contrast, the Kengan Association Team is all Japanese with the exceptions of Kaolan Wongsawat, Agito Kanoh and Julius Reinhold, Ryuki Gaoh and Ohma Tokita.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: A considerable part of the roster of 13 draw inspiration from great fighters and athletes (including ones from non-combat sports) in either name or appearance.
• Old Master: Carlos, Toa, Lu Tian and Jurota are all in their early-to-mid forties, which is practically ancient for professional fighters. Both Carlos and Jurota became so incredibly strong within their own disciplines that they had to leave them behind in search of greater foes, and by all accounts Toa was making every man in Heroic Tales' Openweight Division regret ever getting in the ring.
• Only in It for the Money: Unlike their Kengan Association counterparts (sans Tokuno’o), a lot of the Gladiators treat their participation as more of a way to earn more money and glory in cross-disciplinary fights than they could within the limitations of their disciplines.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: Most of them are absolutely amazing fighters, but matchups are everything in a fight and a lot of external factors end up affecting some of the fighters; Liu is initially off his game because of Naidan's death, Naidan, Fei and Lu Tian are all under orders to fish for specific matchups, and Toa and Yumigahama's Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy tendencies cost them an otherwise comfortable victory. Purgatory's Two Kings, Rolón and Jurota, both lose their dramatic fights as well despite putting up an amazing fight in both cases.
• Weak, but Skilled: While they are all very strong by any sane metric, a slight majority of the Purgatory fighters in the tournament are outmatched by their Kengan counterparts in raw strength and lethality, with exceptions like Jurota who actively has to prevent killing his opponents by accident via spiking their heads on the concrete ring. They make up for this through creative use of the rules and specialized skillsets.

Carlos Medel

"You would never understand the pain of being denied even a chance to fight."

El Dorado (黄金帝, Koganitei)

The Don Juan of Acapulco (アカプルコの伊達男, Akapuruko no Dateotoko)

Age: 43

A Living Legend of the boxing world who started out as a smaller-than-average Middleweight. After unifying the Middleweight belts fourteen years ago, he immediately relinquished them and moved up to the next weightclass, dominating to the point where he unified the belts there as well only to relinquish them, until he made it all the way up to the heavyweight crown... only to then disappear like a flash in the pan from the public light when his heavyweight unification bouts ended up falling through, in part due to Medel's at-this-point almost mythical reputation scaring off the other heavyweight champs, as well as the poor reputation of his promoter. After several deals for cross-disciplinary fights got scrapped as well, Medel instead went into the underworld of Vale Tudo and eventually ended up on the Purgatory roster, where he became an A-list gladiator.

He is the first to fight in the tournament against Kaolan Wongsawat.

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• The Ace:
  • He's a legend in the world of boxing, dominating everyone from middleweight to heavyweight by unifying all four World Champion belts except for Heavyweight, a total of six different weightclasses while already being undersized for Middleweight. He is the only person to be ranked pound for pound above Kaolan Wongsawat who is himself a unified Heavyweight champ.
  • The team representing the Kengan Association who know of his reputation compares him to Gensai due to his legendary status on the boxing world stage and his exile from it when he outgrew it.
  • Members of his own team believe that no one can outmatch him in striking technique, and he excels in deploying mindgames and tricks to gain a psychological advantage as well with his "Faster than Light" jab and Trash Talk, allowing him to have previously beaten the stronger Liu and secure a Ring Out against Kaolan. He is also straight up superhuman in his ability to go up and down in weight without hindrances to his performance or long-term health issues from the weight cuts^note "Belt-chasing" is a very real boxing phenomenon consisting of going up or down in muscular weight or cutting a lot of waterweight to make a lower weightclass for an advantage in size or reach, or to push one's body to it's limit to endure a weightclass it can't sustain in the long run, is hardly uncommon and sadly also detrimental to the boxer's health. That said, there is no human being alive or dead who could have made Bantamweight (52.2-53.5 kg) and Heavyweight (91kg+) that could ever feasibly become a champion and threaten a four-belt unification in both weightclasses for a number of reasons.
• And This Is for...: Bloodies Hikaru's nose before entering into the arena as payback for the big guy going too far in his fight with Jose.
• Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: He seems to rate his skills as top notch, calling himself faster than light and saying his kicks can bring down a God. Given his background, his high opinion of himself is understandable.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: Like Gensai Kuroki, he has begun to master the concept of Pre-Initiative, though it's only polished to a knife's edge if Carlos is up against boxing moves. His Foresight allows him to slip and counter Kaolan's Flash with ease.
• Blood Knight: Carlos loves fighting more than anything else to the point where he quit professional boxing because other Heavyweight champions didn't dare fight him and end up as a stepping stone on his road to becoming the greatest boxer alive. This caused him to join up with underground Vale Tudo, and eventually Purgatory to sate his fighting spirit.
• Boxing Battler: Even Kaolan, a unified Heavyweight champion, thinks of Medel as a downright mythological figure in the world of boxing. When Carlos sees Kaolan get off the bench first, he shoos off Yumigahama and slaps him on the nose, stating that it takes a boxer to beat a boxer as he walks onto the stage. He is a classic in-fighter boxer as he has neither the reach nor firepower to out-box like Kaolan.
  Kaolan: (thinking) I'm squaring off against a legend.
• Calacas: He has the Calavera symbol on his shorts, presumably due to his birthday falling on Dia De Los Muertos.
• The Casanova: His nickname as an up-and-coming boxer was the Don Juan of Acapulco and he is quite charming to Kaede. In one side-chapter, he turns down an invitation from Liu to Mahjong night to hit the red-light districts in a full tuxedo.
  Carlos: "Sorry, ése, adults got adult stuff to do. You niños can go have fun with your board games."
• Cool Old Guy: A skin-and-bone thin Mexican boxer in his forties with a penchant for booze, cigarettes and flirting with pretty much every young señora he meets, Carlos is the collective Cool Uncle of the Purgatory team.
• Crippling Overspecialization: He relies only on strikes, with boxing as his principal fighting style. Although he incorporated Capoeira and Digongquan to supplement the strength of his boxing style, he did not master them as well as Kaolan's Muay Thai and boxing combo, forcing Medel to grapple him in a Ring Out when it's clear he stands no chance in a contest of blows.
• Dance Battler: Carlos surprises everyone by throwing the first kick in his fight with Kaolan, and apparently has added Capoeria and Digongquan to his arsenal since he went underground. These additions give him powerful kicks in spite of his size and the additional option to target his opponent's joints.
• Dashing Hispanic: He's a suave and cool-headed older Mexican man who oozes with charisma and style.
• Determinator: He nearly has a kidney surgically removed from his body by a powerful uppercut from Kaolan, then proceeds to get up on the count of two. When he realizes that the difference between him and Kaolan is too great to bridge with speed and some fancy tricks, he continues to fight a losing battle to set up a scenario where he can win via Ring Out.
• Foil: To Kaolan. Both are extremely talented boxers who take immense pride in their skills, but differ in almost every aspect:
  • Kaolan is a heavyweight and looks it whereas Medel, who once put on far more muscle than his body could handle to become Heavyweight champion, now looks downright emaciated at Bantamweight despite being a natural middlweight. This inevitably symbolizes how done Carlos is with putting on muscle to go up weight classes, yet still persists with grueling weight-cuts to optimize his performance due to his Blood Knight nature.
  • Kaolan is a proud patriot who fights publicly for his country, while Medel fights only for himself and left the professional boxing behind after it repeatedly shunned him for being too strong for the very purpose of bringing out his full ability. Kaolan is also loved by the public and his king supports his endeavor while Medel had Don King for his promoter, ruining any chances at unifying the belt.
  • Kaolan is easily one of the most specialised fighters in the series while Medel literally reinvents his body to become a Heavyweight, or dropping all the way to a skinny Bantamweight to best make use of his Capoeira and Digongquan moves.
  • Most importantly Medel lacks one of Kaolan's defining features, his sense of honour. While Kaolan acknowledges for all his pride fully the ability of other fighters whom he sees as worthy, and both accepted his biggest loss and worked to improve himself, Medel refuses to accept the idea that Kaolan bested him and instead chooses to win on a technicality. To Medel's credit, he's amicable outside of the ring and doesn't really take things that happen in it personally, Kaolan's status as the unified Heavyweight champion, the one prize he could never achieve, just pushes his Berserk Button.
• Fragile Speedster: At his current weight Carlos lost all the offensive power he had as a heavyweight, but in return easily surpass his top speed when he was a heavyweight. This trade off means he is nigh untouchable, but even jabs from a heavyweight hits him hard. He later decides while recovering in the ward after his fight to stop using Capoeira because the transitions are too wasteful, and to increase his weight to featherweight, sacrificing a little speed for power.
• Glass Cannon: Being 53 kilos means he's not gonna last long against an oversized opponent if they get their hands on him, but that's a huge if; Carlos is stupidly fast and still hits hard enough to briefly shut Akoya's lights off with a precise hit to the jaw or crack Kaolan's ankle with a hammerfist.
• Gratuitous Spanish: He speaks perfect Japanese but uses Spanish instead of honorifics, calling men younger than him niño and women señora and describing José as his amigo after punching Yumigahama in the nose for nearly killing him in their last fight.
• Instant Expert: Downplayed. He is able to master Capoeira with just one reference book and 20 hours of practice. However, while this gives him a much needed boost for his striking power to make up for his reduced weight-class, he's unable to seamlessly incorporate the style with his usual boxing, and his slow transitions between the different styles is unable to overcome Kaolan's much more effective Boxing-Muay Thai combination. This forces him to try and win by Ring Out instead.
• Lean and Mean:
  • He is one of the shortest and least bulky fighters to date at 175cm and 53kg, and easily the smallest on Purgatory's roster, to the point where he looks emaciated next to the mostly heavyweight roster. This is especially jarring because the last time he fought a public boxing match, he was a 109kg heavyweight, more than twice his size in the present. Subverted in that he's anything but mean in person, however.
  • During his time boxing, he was a natural middle weight (though below average height for the weightclasses, not uncommon among Mexican boxers) who would build his body from scratch to go up a weight class, looking unrecognizable from when he started and unrecognizable in the present day. By the time he appears in the present, he has dropped weight and is a bantamweight at his emaciated state. Turns out his dropped down to a bantamweight to best accommodate the addition of Capoeira and Digongquan to his skillset, as a hyper-mobile yet muscular body is best suited for those martial arts.
• Lonely at the Top:
  • Once he cleared his way to heavyweight champion in one of the four boxing promotions, none of the other champions wanted to fight him to unify the belts, leading to him disappearing from the public eye.
  • When his fight with Kaolan Wongsawat finally swings into action, he is thrilled at being pressured by Kaolan. Subverted however when Kaolan starts kicking his ass, and he quickly resorts to underhanded tactics as losing is worse then maintaining his pride.
• Meaningful Name: His "El Dorado" (The Golden Man) epithet refers to both his legendary champion status and his shortcomings as a Glass Cannon due to gold being a "soft" metal.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed:
  • He shares last names and a similar build with José Medel, a Mexican boxer with 108 fights to his name in the lower weight classes and one of the country's most famous throughout the 50's to the mid 70's, and first names with Carlos Zárate Serna, one of only two Bantamweight champs (both Mexican) who built themselves a knockout streak of 20 or more.
  • His infamous promoter that gave him more trouble than he was worth during his boxing days is an obvious nod to Don King, One of the most horrific and prolific boxer promoters of all time who frauded a lot of the money meant to be winnings for boxers including Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, Mike Tyson, Julio César Chávez and Evander Holyfield. He's also a two-time murderer, the second time being him stomping an employee of his to death in 1967. Great Guy!
  • His "El Dorado" epithet and winning in numerous weight classes also shares similarities with Oscar De La Hoya, a Mexican-American boxer nicknamed "The Golden Boy" with 11 world titles in 6 different weight classes and a 16 year career.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: Because of Medel's ability to make weight for so many classes he is a legend in boxing and could have unified almost every belt. In underground fighting though where everything goes and there is no weight class Medel is just one of the many top fighters and slip up to B rank gladiator when trying to find balance in his style.
• Old Master: At 43, he's ancient by boxing standards, especially for a natural middleweight. Like Kuroki, the series shows just how insanely dangerous such a breadth of experience would be in the hands of a talented fighter without any long-term injuries.
• Precision F-Strike: He is usually polite and well-spoken, though he does engage in Trash Talk to try and secure a psychological edge. He saves the swearing for the flashback revealing how bitter he was about being abandoned by the professional boxing world for being too good to the point where people didn't dare fight him anymore, driving him out of fighting despite being a beloved boxer worldwide.
  Chickens who don't have the cojones to challenge me. An incompetent promoter. I gave up boxing where I was tied down by all this shit, and I devoted myself to underground martial arts where my strength makes all the difference. I couldn't live in the public eye, but I found my place in the underground.
• Pyrrhic Victory: He wins the match but no one is under the illusion that Kaolan isn't his better and Carlos only has a second to celebrate before losing consciousness with a broken nose.
• Religious Bruiser: Being Mexican means he's most likely Catholic, and invokes his faith in God when he swears to pass on any last words Fei might have.
• Ring Out: After realizing that he is out of options and can't beat Kaolan in a straight fight, he opts to lure him into a position where both of them fall out of the ring. The fight ends with both of them out, with Kaolan's arm touching the floor first, giving Carlos the win.
• Smoking Is Cool: Once he clears the medical check after his fight, he's seen chainsmoking on the Purgatory bench while keeping Fei and Rolón company.
• Super-Speed: He is able to hit Hikaru in the nose so fast he doesn't even see Carlos move, and he does the same to Kaolan in the beginning of the match. While this is apparently just a trick to shake his opponent up mentally, he's able to dance around the Lightning Bruiser Heavyweight Kaolan's attacks and fake taking them cleanly with his speed convincingly enough in the endgame of the fight to lure Kaolan to the edge of the ring.
• Token Good Teammate: One of the most affable fighters in the series who seems to have befriended more or less the entire A-list, even Rolón and Naidan. He even helps Lihito defuse a brawl between Rolón and the 9th fighters to save Nicolas and Akoya from being slaughtered by Rolón (despite the two of them being Hated by All), and has no interest in killing people. He politely admonishes Lihito for swearing in front of the Kaede and the nurse, and he vows to pass on Fei's last words when he is dying.
• Weak, but Skilled:
  • Once he cut weight from being a heavyweight, his durability and strength took a dive. His speed and experience allow him to keep up with heavier fighters. His weight cut was done to accommodate his Capoeira and Digongquan, which allows him to throw kicks strong enough to crack bones as well as target joints.
• World's Strongest Man:
  • When it comes to boxing at least, still placed first on the Pound-for-Pound rankings after a self-imposed withdrawal from the world of pro boxing, and is deemed to be a fighter with a reputation equal that of the champion from the previous Kengan Tournament, Gensai Kuroki.
  • At the conclusion of the fight with Kaolan, it becomes clear that his opponent is superior with his strength and durability, which Carlos lacks these days due to severely cutting his weight, as he was able to land damaging combos, to where Carlos had to rely on the rules to even have a chance at winning.
  • Word of God initially planned on him explicitly being this, being so strong and skilled that he would show Kaolan another dimension of strength that he couldn't comprehend at all, essentially putting him above Agito in strength before deciding that he would be too strong and too simple this way and changing the fight to be one between fighters of different weightclasses, that of a young promising and still reigning Heavyweight champion against the jaded and rejected but still improving belt-chaser who went on a cross-division tear from middleweight to heavyweight^note six weight classes, for those unfamiliar with boxing, and going by him now being Bantamweight, it's all but stated he could've gone downwards to the lower belts too, had he been given the time and public acceptance.

The Falcon

Click ^here quoteright:350: to see The Falcon in his combat uniform.

"Master Hattori. Master Jiraiya. Master Akakage. Master Kakashi. I am the heir to the legacy of these great ninja masters."

The Roving Death (羅亡, Rabō)

The King of Destruction (破壊王, Hakai-ō)

Age: 29

Real name Albert Lee, Albert is the third son of a Singaporean business magnate. He was trained in Taijiquan as a child. He eventually became a Stage Magician but, unable to make his financial ends meet, he took up work as a wrecker, beating the living tar out of people who the contractor couldn't have killed, but needed to intimidate. This made it impossible to try him on counts of murder or even pre-meditated violence, and his repute grew until the Chinese mafia scouted him for their underground MMA circuit, Heroic Tales. After becoming the undisputed middleweight champion and living the high life with the far greater paydays offered to him, a chance encounter with ninjas in pop culture through a movie showing before one of his title defenses got him hooked on the very concept. Afterwards, he took up training to become a ninja, building an entirely new system of ninjutsu from his experiences with MMA, and was later scouted for Purgatory by Idemitsu promising he'd meet a real ninja there one day.

He is the second to fight in the tournament against Lihito.

---

• Absurdly Sharp Claws: He has undergone partial training on both his hands and feet. His training is different from the partial training that Karate practitioners undergo and more akin to those of oldschool Ninjutsu masters◊, making his hands and feet look like the claws of a carnivore.
• Affectionate Parody: Of ninjas and fans of the same. While it's milked for comedy, the ninja stories Albert experienced brought genuine happiness into his life of sustained, grumpy pragmatism.
• Antiquated Linguistics: Speaks like he's straight out of a cheesy ninja movie, and even uses "Nin!" as his Verbal Tic.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Subverted. His fighting style sure looks overly fancy and facile, but his Ninjutsu is designed to catch you off-guard in that belief with misdirection and deliberately over-telegraphed moves so he can mix his opponent up and bleed them like a stuck pig. Once his opponent is tired out and injured, he'll use the same overly flashy misdirections only to deliver precise MMA moves like flying knees, spinning hammer fists and side kicks to the kidney.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: He appears alongside Idemitsu in a nice tuxedo suit in his first appearance. He's also the sixth representative chosen for the Purgatory roster, implying Idemitsu places his skills in very high regard. In his match, he dominates his opponent for a majority of the fight, ultimately clinching victory from Lihito's grasp with a rear-naked choke.
• Bait-and-Switch: From his introduction, he seems like a stoic No-Nonsense Nemesis. Then his match begins and that rapidly goes out the window.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: The description of Albert's career that Muteba gives Togo makes her think he's an absolute clown at best. Then he starts easily dominating in his match with Lihito and all doubts about his skills go silent.
  Idemitsu: "You've worked with him before, haven't you? So you know how good he is."
  Muteba: "Yeah, he's one of the three best wreckers I know. And if he's becoming even stronger by mastering Ninjutsu, then our Ripper Boy doesn't stand a chance."
• The Champion: Falcon was the middleweight champion of the Beijing underground promotion Heroic Tales before moving to Purgatory.
• Code Name: His real name is Albert Lee, but he is always referred to as "The Falcon", or "Hayabusa" in Japanese by Purgatory fighters, announcers and audience.
• Cold Ham: His entrance to the arena has him spinning like a twister while cherry blossoms fall around the arena, followed by using antiquated linguistics to dramatically introduce himself to his opponent, all done completely deadpan and seriously. Purgatory viewers note that his entrances are always theatric.
• Combat Pragmatist: His profession involved torture, after all, so he's skilled at inflicting debilitating but nonlethal wounds on his opponent despite targeting the liver, neck or spine, and even deploys slow-acting poison, though only in such a manner that he still has to land at least one toe kick for it to work. He will still respect the rules and his strikes to the eyes are all feints or at least not using his razor-sharp nails as anything more than a distraction.
• Confusion Fu: His whole fighting style revolves around misdirection using Hand Seals as well as feints and delaying his attack to throw off his opponent. It is especially effective against a skilled opponent with good insight, as attacks do not come from expected angles or land when expected. He uses this with deadly effect against Lihito, who is unable to predict his attacks.
• Character Tics: He keeps his hand raised in a crooked salute like Hand Seal at all times when he's not fighting.
• Cherry Blossoms: He uses these during his entrance to the ring.
• Chuunibyou: It is revealed that his is basically one regarding ninjas, having created his own style of ninjutsu from watching films and reading manga, as well as referring to several fictional ninjas as his masters.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: Boasts possibly the weirdest personality of any fighter in the series. He mixes together an extremely cold, logical personality which values "rationality" with an obsession with the concept of fictional ninja which dominates every facet of his world view, even referring to people who have literally nothing to do with the subject as "ninja masters" for him to defeat. The result is a character whose actions prompt confusion above all else.
• Conspicuous Gloves: Noticeably wears leather gloves which cover his hands completely whilst wearing a suit. He keeps them on in his combat uniform during his entrance to the arena. He removes them before the fight begins, revealing Absurdly Sharp Claws.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Straight after his fight with Lihito and still horribly injured, he challenges Kuroki to a fight. Kuroki easily knocks him out with one blow.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: In his fight with Lihito, Falcon manages to strike him in several vital areas with his Absurdly Sharp Claws, including his throat, side, leg and chest. Yet Lihito notes that the attacks only go skin deep, and is not comparable to the Devil Lance in terms of damage. Falcon instead relies on a combination of blows to inflict to bleed and and exhaust his opponent until he can land a decisive strike or a submission hold.
• Determinator: By the end of the fight, he had a severed pectoral muscle, over half of his fingers were broken with a kick, was reaching critical blood loss and Lihito nearly tore his arm to shreds while Albert was choking him out, and still kept going.
  Falcon: You lost by one move.
• Fingore: Late into his fight with Lihito when both are in a Race Against the Clock, he tries using his Hand Seals again for misdirection and has them shattered by a kick. When he tries to fight Gensai right after the match and uses his misdirections again, the SFX in the panel are from his broken bones creaking.
• Foreign Culture Fetish: He became obsessed with ninjas after watching a film, even developing his own style of ninjutsu. He joined Purgatory in the hope to meet a real ninja one day.
• Fragile Speedster: In comparison to his heavyweight opponent, he's far more agile and makes use of wildly acrobatic moves like flying kicks and bouncing on Lihito like a pogo stick using his talon-like toenails. In return, he's not as durable and has far less striking power, to the point where he basically can't knock Lihito out.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Downplayed since he's still a fairly amicable, if really weird guy outside of the ring, but Albert's life started with him being an estranged rich kid from Singapore with a Tai Chi background who's magic career didn't work out, to him becoming a torturer for hire and Private Detective who uses his skills at delivering nonlethal but violent beatings in an underground fighting arena.
• Hand Seals: He uses hand seals while fighting to misdirect his opponent from his attacks.
• Hidden Depths: He appears to be a very serious and rational person, yet underneath he is a massive fan of Ninjas, going so far as to develop his own style of ninjutsu.
• Hired Guns: He was a "wrecker", a mercenary who doesn't kill targets but instead gives them a Fate Worse than Death. He had previously worked with Muteba Gizenga when he was contracted in Malaysia.
• I Know Kung Fu: His homebrewed fighting style, Hayabusa Ninpo-ryuu (Falcon-Style Ninja Arts in the translation), is a fusion of Falcon's MMA skills mixed in with ninja tricks like sharpened nails and misdirection, complete with very flashy, very dramatically named and very deadly moves such as stabbing the spine through the back of his opponent's neck with a toe kick and a slow-acting poison.
• It Only Works Once: He personally lampshades how he only won against Lihito due to the element of surprise, and would likely lose if they fought again. To that end, he seeks to improve himself by challenging Kuroki Gensai. Having seen all his tricks, Kuroki ends their fight quickly by swiftly chopping him at the neck.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Several of his outbursts of the word "Nin!"^note "Have at thee!" in the Hokuto no Gun translation are rendered in shuriken-shaped speech bubbles.
• Martial Arts Headband: Wears one with his combat uniform during his entrance to the arena. He removes it before the start of the match.
• McNinja: It is revealed that he is actually Singaporean in spite of his code name or ninja appearance.
• Ninja: His combat uniform and entrance give off the appearance of being a ninja.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: A Ninja, Wrecker, MMA champion Stage Magician is as ridiculous as it sounds, but it all comes together for an A List Gladiator of incredible skill.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: A middleweight champion cagefighter who started out fighting in China, is a proud Otaku to the point where his showboating and entrances are all anime or ninja references with plenty of Hand Seals. Now stop; Was that a description of The Falcon, or Nigerian former UFC Middleweight champion Israel Adesanya?
• Not So Stoic:
  • He loses his stoic façade when it comes to the topic of ninjas, wearing a full ninja garb while reading a Naruto "Norito" expy manga.
  • He also begins to undergo this when his fight with Lihito doesn't go as easily as he expected.
• Oh, Crap!: He has a short one when Lihito gets back up from his sparrow stab, as it was his finishing move.
• Otaku: For Ninja manga and anime, to the point where he can often be seen cosplaying as one.
• Poisonous Person: Downplayed a great deal but present. He practices “the poisoned hand” style conditioning on his big toes, which results in them being coated in a hidden poison. The poison itself is very weak and can only really effect someone if it gets into their bloodstream directly and needs multiple hits to work. However, thanks to his incredibly sharp toenails he has no problem poisoning someone by piercing their skin with his strikes. Consequently, his opponents end up receiving a non lethal dose of poison that weakens them without them ever knowing.
• Pragmatic Villainy: The reason he became a wrecker was to avoid being arrested for murder or premeditated assault. A mafia based out of Beijing eventually heard rumors about him and offered him to fight in their underground fighting ring, which he accepted without thinking twice because the pay is better and fights in weightclasses are a lot safer than street fighting.
• Race Against the Clock: How his fight with Lihito turns into after the Falcon gets his chest ripped open and he poisons Lihito with his poisoned toes. In the end Falcon's poison and securing a rear naked choke just wins him the match.
• Razor-Sharp Hand: His Scratch of Death technique is this, having undergone special ninja partial training on both his hands and feet. He can cut up a tennis ball in mid-air with just a swipe of his nails, and his toe-kicks can puncture flesh. They only go in skin deep but the combination of misdirection and combinations allow him to break down his opponent and bleed them out.
• Renaissance Man: Stage Magician, private detective, mercenary and middleweight MMA champion who has rebuilt an entire system of barehanded Ninjutsu from scratch at the tender age of 29.
• Scarf of Asskicking: Wears a long one while in his combat uniform, contributing to his ninja appearance. He removes it before the fight starts.
• Set Swords to "Stun": As a wrecker and gladiator from Purgatory, his scratch of death is only skin deep as he doesn't try to kill his opponents. However, he is willing to puncture their throat with his claw-like hands and feet.
• Shout-Out:
  • The manga he is seen reading in his backstory is "Norito", a clear expy of popular manga series Naruto. He also refers to both Jiraiya and Kakashi as his "masters", in spite of clearly making his style of fighting up by himself.
  • The movie that got him hooked on ninjas has a poster design almost identical to that of Ninja Gaiden for the NES's cover art.
• Stage Magician: He was one at some point, but couldn't support himself working magic shows solely. He still gets use out of his old job by incorporating misdirection into his fighting style via Hand Seals.
• Sunglasses at Night: He appears at a Kengan Association fight with Idemitsu with sunglasses on, in spite of it being at night. He keeps them on while in his combat uniform, removing them just before the fight begins.
• Trademark Favorite Food: His favourite food is Hainanese Chicken Rice, which is not a surprise, given that he is actually Singaporean.
• Try to Fit That on a Business Card: Albert Lee, "The Wrecker", "The Roving Death", "The King of Destruction", "The Falcon". Fitting the McNinja stereotype, he's all but deliberately picking up Chuunibyou titles to build his reputation.
• Worf Effect: After two dominant matches in the preliminaries, he gets destroyed by Saw Paing during the Berserker Bowl premliminaries due to his tactics being largely useless against him and to show why Saw is considered a favorite to win.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: While the battles and fighting styles in the franchise can be rather fantastical (not to mention the mad science), Albert is not in a setting with real Supernatural Martial Arts as he'd like to pretend.

Toa Mudo

"To prove to the whole world... no; To the heavens above that I am the strongest. Then you will know that it is not the ghosts of the past you should be praising, but Toa Mudo."

The Beast of Destruction (破壊獣, Hakai-jū)

Age: 45

Centuries ago an enormous Maori warrior by the name of Jonah Mudo lived, who carved out mountains with his forearms in New Zealand to train himself, and drove off foreign invaders with tens of thousands of Maori warriors at his back time and again as their military and spiritual leader.

Jonah's bloodline survives to this day in the form of Toa Mudo, who rejected his heritage and traditions in favor of pursuing strength above all else. A former Rugby player, Toa later became a "Seeker" just like Ohma and Kuroki Gensai that simply wishes to prove himself as the strongest in the world. He dominated in the Openweight division of the Chinese mafia's underground MMA league, Heroic Tales, with his familial martial arts before being headhunted into Purgatory's folds by Idemitsu and becoming an A-list gladiator.

He is the third to fight in the tournament against Julius Reinhold.

---

• Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: He cares nothing for his legacy, only seeking to prove that he's the strongest there is, seeking to surpass even his distant ancestors and God, if the latter should come in his way. Unlike most, he both looks and acts every bit as fearsome as he is a fighter.
• Badass Boast: He seems to like making these. In his backstory he tells his brother that he will prove he is the strongest man in the world, and when his brother considers that an insult to their forefather, who's considered the Maori's guardian deity, Toa responds he will simply surpass God in that case. He tells his allies to decide among them who the last four to fight will go after him, implying not only his victory but that Purgatory is going to end the tournament with no losses.
• Badass Native: He's a TITANIC man who descends from a long line of titanic men who's forefather was considered a demigod by their fellow tribesmen in the area that now makes up Fjord National Park, New Zealand. Toa is outright referred to as the inheritor of his ancestor's warrior genes in the same vein as the Kure Clan breeding for strength and adrenal output.
• Behemoth Battle: He and Julius are respectively the two biggest fighters in among the gladiators of Purgatory and fighters of the Kengan Association and they wind up facing off against eachother.
• Boring, but Practical: Besides his special Counter-Attack, his arsenal consists of a fairly basic MMA corpus, with massive wound-up hook swings, hammer fists, palm strikes and ground-and-pound, but his and his opponent Julius' sheer scale makes it look less like a fistfight and more like a war of muscle, tearing up the ring and making the referee squeal for her life.
• Born in the Wrong Century: Even if he was born just a century ago, a man of Toa's stature and prowess would have made a super-soldier. In the distant past, he would've made for a figure of mythology like his ancestor. Unlike his brother Ronah, however, Toa doesn't have a problem with this and tells his brother that he'll become such a figure by fighting in the underground, no matter if it is considered dishonorly by his people.
• Born Winner: Being both big and strong naturally is something you see in most Polynesian sportsmen, but Toa takes it to a logical extreme by descending from the great Maori warlord Jonah Mudo. As a result, he's even bigger and about as strong as Julius without having to use steroids or similar means from just training in his family's martial arts. Carving out mountains in New Zealand with his forearms certainly didn't hurt his physique either. Ironically, he doesn't give a damn about his heritage or ancestors, only caring about seeking the strongest fighters and proving that he is the world's strongest.
• Cain and Abel: He's the Cain to his brother Rona's Abel. Having been equally matched in power for most of their lives, Rona knew the frustration of there no longer being a place on the battlefield for their immense strength just as well as Toa did. He admonishes Toa for stooping to underground fighting leagues to sate his drive for fighting and bringing dishonor upon the Maori and their family, but Toa simply does not care, and, having defeated Rona in single combat, he leaves New Zealand behind in search of greater foes.
• The Champion: Like his fellow gladiator Falcon, he was the champion for the Beijing underground promotion Heroic Tales Openweight division before being scouted into Purgatory, which gave Idemitsu some trouble with the Chinese mafia. Clearly, Toa was a fighter worth the risk.
• Cool Old Guy: Huuuuuge shredded to the gills Maori man in his mid-40's who looks like a walking Black Metal cover? Absolutely cool. His profile even has the author refer to him as Purgatory's "cool tropical barbecue uncle".
• Counter-Attack: The martial art passed down by the Mudo family is based on this. Techniques include Wai (Water), going limp to disperse the impact of a blow, Hau (Wind), to bend and divert an attack, and Maungamanawa (Breathing Mountain), an attack combining Wai and Hau thrown as a counter by diffusing the opponent's blow and then sending their power right back at them. His spinning backhand using this technique is so powerful that it sends Julius skidding across the arena, ripping up the tiled ring and leaves him on wobbly knees even after getting up on his feet the 8-count.
• Curb Stomp Cushion: He manhandles Julius thanks to his techniques and equal brute strength, then he gets too cocky and eats Julius hammer punching him at full power on the head when his Counter-Attack posture is broken.
• The Fashionista: In addition to having his entire body covered in stylish Maori tattoos called Tā moko, Toa also hires a private hairdresser to set his "pineapple" hairdo in a similar vein to Sumo wrestlers hiring a Tokoyama to set their incredibly elaborate hairdos.
• Fatal Flaw: His ego and pride. Flashbacks reveal that Toa has an intense obsession with proving himself as the strongest fighter in the world to the point of openly disrespecting his ancestors, and he consequently fights in a way meant to show off his strength. This costs him the match when he foolishly thinks he can take and counter Julius' Gött-Tötter instead of trying to set up an unfavorable position for Julius or taking the offensive. As Rolón puts it, Toa's passivity cost him an otherwise comfortable victory.
• Fighting Fingerprint: Subverted, the fighting style of the Mudo bloodline looks a lot like the Niko Style redirection and water kata but Ohma and Julius conclude it is just coincidental.
• Flawed Prototype: Played with, while his Maungamanawa technique is not related to the Niko Style Demonsbane, it still demonstrates how Demonsbane is ultimately a more efficient counter technique. Namely, it lacks the movement from the Flame Kata to check and shift his position and lacks the ability to add his own power to the counter from the Adamantine Kata (although he wouldn't need the latter normally since he has enough power to knock any man alive out). This means that Toa is unable to seriously injure or knock Julius out the first time he hits him with this technique like Ohma did to Wakatsuki, neither is he able to adjust his counter to Julius' Gott-Töter, getting his parrying posture broken by the sheer force of Julius' muscles "unwinding".
• Foil:
  • He is one to Julius Reinhold. Both stand at similar heights and weights and are easily physically strongest members of their teams, but while Julius obtained his physique through steroids and scientific bodybuilding, Mudo naturally has his thanks to powerful genetics. Julius also discards technique in exchange for physical power, while Mudo uses difficult techniques similar to the Redirection and Water Katas of the Niko Style. Of course, they face each other in the Kengan-Purgatory tournament.
  • Mudo is also a foil to Haruo, both descending from powerful tribes known for warfare and being blessed by incredible genetics, but being an example of what Haruo could have been if he had never let himself go with food and games.
• The Giant: Standing at a whopping 208cm and weighing in at 214kg, Toa is one of the biggest fighters in the series period and the heaviest Gladiator in all of Purgatory, dwarfing each and every other fighter on both teams save Julius and Terashi. Just one of his legs is bigger than Carlos, his reach is slightly longer than Julius' and he could barely fit through the staircase from his team's lounge down to the ring. He is so massive that he has to be carried out in a special stretcher by six of the ringside staff when Julius knocks him out.
  Koga: "A-AWESOME DOESN'T EVEN BEGIN TO COVER IT!! ARE THEY EVEN HUMAN?!"
• Heroic Lineage: His great-to-the-umpteenth-grandfather Jonah Mudo was an ancient religious warrior who led thousands of Maori into battle against foreign invaders and is basically seen as a demigod in his home region. Toa is the second-oldest of his brothers who directly descend from Jonah, who no longer have an army to lead or a greater purpose to fight for, and thus Toa turned to underground martial arts.
• I Know Maori Martial Arts: His martial art, simply called the Mudo Style, is a Counter-Attack heavy style that was originally used by Maori warriors to redirect spear attacks before countering with a spear of your own, if the illustrations of it's history are to be believed.
• In-Series Nickname: Ohma calls him a 'pineapple' due to his very distinct hairstyle.^note The most common racist terminology for Polynesians in New Zealand is coconut, so Ohma is in the clear here.
• Irony: A fighter taller, heavier, and as strong as Julius Reinhold ends up specializing in techniques that redirects power back to his opponents, moves that one would expect from a Weak, but Skilled fighter.
• Jerkass: He's a very intimidating and grumbly middle-aged man with very little patience for those who he considers beneath him, insulting Julius while he's down and dragging out the fight to rub it in that he feels above him. This ultimately costs him the match as Julius never lost sight of winning, and abuses Toa stancing up and waiting to parry Julius instead of trying to attack him by knocking him out with an ungodly powerful blow that goes straight through his parry.
• The Jinx: Tells his team to pick the last four to fight after him when Purgatory is up 2-0, implying they will finish the tournament by the seventh round with no losses. Not only does Toa get hit with a One Shot Kill by Julius in a fight he was otherwise handily winning, Purgatory didn't score another win that didn't come from their fighter's Kengan opponent killing them until the tenth round.
• Lightning Bruiser: He's just as strong as you'd expect such a mountain of a man to be, but like Julius, he's by no means slow.
• Made of Iron: He and Julius beat the absolute daylights out of each other, but both of them are so ridiculously tough due to their incredible muscles serving as shields against anything but the most decisive attacks that they're both practically unharmed by attacks that would kill normal-sized men instantly. His familial martial art also lets him work into this even more since he can disperse even Julius punching him in the midsection without taking any damage, but his endurance reaches its end when Julius bonks him in the head at full force with his Gott-Töter, having his entire upper body compressed by a 205 kilo man's hammerfist. This leaves him knocked out far past the ten-count.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Beast of Destruction is pretty concise among all the intimidating titles throughout the series, but it quickly gets it on the record that Toa is not to be fucked with.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: A walking Shout-Out to Polynesian heavyweight fighters in general, but Toa is based on the legendary New Zealand All Blacks winger Jonah Lomu, the youngest professional player in history on the greatest Rugby team of all time. Similarly to the 120 kilo monster on the pitch that was Jonah with his swerving tackle-defense and raw athleticism, Toa fuses insane strength, toughness and speed with a unique defense to return his opponent's power twofold back at them combined with his own. Toa's ancestor, a religious warrior hero from Fiord National Park, is even named Jonah.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • He has his first and only real one when Julius bats his arms aside with rotational energy built up in his muscles via patterned flexing, taking his punch head on and getting knockd out.
  • His team, including the New Meat Terashi, are mostly shocked at his defeat, as he is one of their strongest fighters and yet they had their streak broken by his loss to Julius.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: Subverted. He's descended from a long line of Maori warriors and appeared to take pride in this when he dismissed Julius as a "warrior", but this seems to be more of looking down on him when he's nearly knocked out by Maungamanawa for being weak. His brother assumes this as well, believing that the Mudo family has no place in the battlefields in modern times and that Toa had been using his gifts in underground tournaments to sate his warrior spirit. However, Toa says couldn't care less about his family's customs or the significance of his lineage and is purely out to prove himself as the greatest warrior in modern times.
  Toa: "Your burden is nowhere near as heavy as mine. You are no warrior."
• Punch Parry: Upon the fight being called, Toa and Julius immediately charge at each other with a roar on their faces and punch each other's fists, creating a shockwave that nearly sends Alisa flying and shakes the drinks of all those in the crowd.
• Rugby Is Slaughter: Pacific Islanders are infamous for excelling in Rugby to the point where they become feared on the pitch playing abroad, so you can bet your ass Toa used to play in the sport too. Given his sheer size and how well his martial art's skillset align with Rugby's rules, he might well have been too powerful to play without injuring the enemy team.
• Prophet Eyes: Subverted. Early on he's shown with completely white eyes as a stylistic choice to make him seem even more intimidating. It's later shown that he does have irises, they are just small.
• Red Herring: The similarities of his fighting style to Niko Style makes Ohma and Yamashita suspect he might be part of the Worm, but Julius and Ohma conclude that he's an ultimately normal, if incredibly strong underground fighter. With the Niko Style being a modern and optimized grab-bag of useful techniques and creative use of muscle control made from several martial arts, an overlap with other unrelated styles was inevitable.
• Shout-Out: His Badass Boast scene with his equally gigantic brother is almost identical to Raoh declaring he will defeat God if God stands in his way, complete with him emulating the skywards pointing pose from Raoh's iconic Dying Moment of Awesome.
• Strong and Skilled: He is a walking physical marvel able to match Julius in strength, speed and toughness all while being a top-class martial artist specializing in diverting the opponent's back at them or nullifying their power. Even Ohma and Wakatsuki are left shocked at the titanic Toa's combination of power and mastery of parries.
• Strong Family Resemblance: Except for a different set of tattoos, he's almost completely identical to Jonah Mudo, his ancestor. His brother also looks nearly identical to him and is just as massive, but has big fluffy mutton chops instead of a full beard.
• Training from Hell: Scraping rock walls apart with your forearms to condition them, while making enormous statues of your forefathers? Yeowch, but you know you wish you could do that too.
• Wild Maori: He's an absolutely gigantic New Zealander with a deeply tanned complexion, blonde hair and elaborate tattoos resembling a tribal mask all over his body. Fitting the Pacific Islander stereotype, he also played Rugby and loves a good scrap. He descends from the legendary Maori warrior Jonah Mudo, who fought off foreign invaders and was the guardian of New Zealand.

Hikaru Yumigahama

"Don't tell me you forgot. The term 'Martial Arts Savant' was made for me."

Click ^here to see Hikaru before he left Metsudo's employ.

The Sixth Fang of Metsudo

The Traitor Fang (裏切りの牙; Uragiri no Kiba)

Age 23

An A-List gladiator for Purgatory and former Kengan Association fighter. He was a rookie Bodyguard working under Metsudo during Ashura that rose directly from foot soldier to the Sixth Fang of Metsudo in the wake of Agito's retirement due to Metsudo recognizing Hikaru had The Gift and a long future ahead of him so long as he was kept on the straight and narrow. Shortly after he acquired the title, Hikaru immediately dipped out of Metsudo's faction in an incident that saw one of his Bodyguards dead for the sake of bargaining with Idemitsu Toyoda, using his title as leverage.

He is the fourth to fight in the tournament against Misasa.

---

• The Ace: Himuro considers him to be as powerful as Agito Kanoh, the fifth Fang of Metsudo, which makes sense given how he became the Sixth while being a rookie Bodyguard despite all the monstrously powerful fighters under Metsudo's employ. In reality he's just short of being the real deal. His build, instincts and ability to learn and apply martial arts are all first-class, but his own self-satisfaction and pride means that until he fixes his attitude, starts fighting seriously and with techniques that fit together well, he's hit a dead end as a martial artist.
• Awesome, but Impractical: His iaido quickdraw is a real spectacle move that also hits hard enough to cut into Misasa's chest, but as Rolón pointed out it's only good with the element of surprise and becomes predictable because he has to switch his positioning to do it with the other hand.
• Batman Gambit: He gets baited by Misasa into fighting the special rules match with a shrinking arena by insulting him. This ends up working against him as the match goes on, as his large size means that he can't move as much during the fight, as well as putting up a psychological wall where he can't fight to the best of his ability, as opposed to Misasa, who fights best in small spaces.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Under Metsudo's employ he played the humble and clean looking bodyguard until he got what he wanted.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: Word of God paints him as this. He has all the cards required to potentially be one of the best fighters in the series, hands down. He's young (in spite of his appearance), has a massive frame and is a genius at picking up martial arts. However, his greed and arrogance at how far he's already gotten with his scatterbrained skills and huge agile body led him to stop training once he swapped organisations and relying entirely on his natural gifts.
• The Brute: Fits this role on the Purgatory team. Nobody on his team likes him and he doesn't like his teammates back and even his boss seems to barely tolerate him, but he's huge, strong and always willing to pick up a fat paycheck.
• Chekhov's Gun: The punch to the liver he gave Koga is revisited in his fight with Misasa, where it's shown that he's capable of moving explosively without proper footing, such as immediately going into a shoulder tackle after missing a punch; thus explaining how he's able to generate such a potent blow without any windup.
• Combat Pragmatist: He has absolutely no scruples about fighting dirty or using his size to his advantage to immediately try to Ring Out Misasa with tackles and sumo-like palm thrusts. It's not even for pragmatic reason as much as Yumigahama wanting to disrespect his opponents by fighting cheap.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Jose's revenge match against him does not go well for the wrestler and Yumigahama proceeds to beat him three-fourths to death while only suffering some bruises and a broken arm in the process.
• Curb Stomp Cushion: In his battle against Misasa, he initially holds the advantage due to his enormous size and wide range of moves letting him keep his opponent away, but once the stage shrinks in, he's left cornered due to a lack of mobility and his reach no longer being to his benefit. His final option of grappling and crushing Misasa would probably have destroyed his opponent due to literally being twice his opponent's size, but Yumigahama's grab gets countered right before he has his face caved in by the smaller man.
• Dual Wielding: One of the styles that he collected is the Kokuki Dual Sword Style, where he imitates the movements used in dual sword wielding. Not much is seen of it though, as he is punched to the ground by Misasa during the first move he attempted with it.
• Deliberate Injury Gambit: Once he's left with no other options up close, he chooses to just take hits and eventually try to counter-grapple Misasa once he goes for the finishing blow, but Misasa stops the attempt dead in it's tracks by painfully elbowing Yumigahama in his wrists as the big guy goes for his own Death or Glory Attack.
• Evil Makes You Ugly: Given the series' incredibly dubious morals all around it could be argued that he's probably not worse than his original employer in the grand scheme of things, but Yumigahama becomes far uglier and more deformed after his betrayal of Metsudo, to the point where he could be mistaken for two different people.
• Extreme Mêlée Revenge: Yumigahama ends up being the recipient of a brutal beatdown by Misasa out of revenge for betraying Metsudo and killing one of Misasa’s underlings. By the end of the fight, Misasa dislocated his jaw, elbowed the back of his neck so hard that his spine made a bulge on his throat, then shattered nearly all of his teeth with an elbow to the face that slams his jaw back in place and then punched Yumigahama's face in. The beatdown was so violent that it might have as well be an X-Ray move from Mortal Kombat.
• Fatal Flaw: His temper, which leads him to accept a match where the rules are less and less in his favor as the fight goes on due to his enormous size, while his diminutive opponent doesn't suffer the same disadvantage.
• Foil: He is one to Agito Kanoh as the former Sixth Fang of Metsudo.
  • Kanoh wore formal suits and kept his hair slicked back and neat. Yumigahama wears casual tracksuits and looks unkempt and wild.
  • Kanoh has Undying Loyalty towards his former employer Metsudo Katahara. Yumigahama used Metsudo Katahara's reputation as a stepping stone towards a bigger payday. It pisses Kanoh off enough for him to agree to rejoin the Kengan Association as a fighter just so he can teach Yumigahama a lesson for betraying Katahara.
  • Kanoh is stoic and fairly cordial outside of the ring, only becoming bloodthirsty and arrogant when fighting. Yumigahama is openly arrogant, flaunting his wins and is considered to be a douchebag even by other gladiators, but he's strong enough that none of them want to pick a petty fight with him.
  • Kanoh's Formless ability allows him to copy and assimilate other fighters' moveset while fighting, Yumigahama takes multiple techniques from different martial art by cozying it up with masters, like how he got his Fang title. Also, Kanoh adapts his style of fighting to his opponent, while Yumigahama takes different martial arts (primarily styles with a heavy focus on the use of weaponry) and adapts them to suit his needs in hand to hand combat.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Whether it's Carlos punching him on the nose to Rolón daring him to start a fight over petty insults, it's clear that he's not liked by his fellow gladiators. The only two who do seem to keep him company are Lu Tian and Nicolas Le Banner, the latter not being above making fun of him if the opportunity presents itself.
  • Rolón decides not to warn him about fighting in the fourth match with special rules and how those rules would handicap him, risking a match for his side because he's just that unlikable.
  Rolón: "I had no duty to warn him."
• Giant Hands of Doom: Yumigahama's hands are literally big enough to circumvent Misasa's entire waist each.
• Gonk: His goofy expressions become truly warped when he fights, looking more like a hairless ape than a human. It only serves to highlight the fact that he's genuinely intimidating despite this.
• Hate Sink: Between his arrogance, generally unpleasant demeanor and nearly beating Jose to death, it's clear he's not exactly a great guy and pretty much everyone he meets notices immediately. Even his own teammates openly dislike him and make it clear that they are only barely paid enough to deal with his bullshit and will shun him back into line the moment he acts up.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: He takes any form of disrespect as an invitation to threaten or fight people. When his teammate Nicolas makes fun of him being punched by Carlos, he threatens to kill him. He does the same when Rolón tells him to shut up, only to stop mid sentence and back down when he sees Rolón is genuinely pissed off at him. His temper leads to him jumping in to fight Misasa in the fourth round after he is called a "pussy" for trying to duck the fight.
• Iaijutsu Practitioner: The third style he reveals is the Sakamori Style, in particular its Quickdraw technique, where he swings his arm in a blindingly quick chop as if he was doing an iaido draw which can cut cleanly into flesh.
• Idiot Savant: He is basically one when it comes to learning martial arts, having an incredible physique and ability to learn techniques. The author introduced him in part to show that a strong mind and a strong body aren't neccesarily linked, making Yumigahama suffer from the inverse of Kaneda's problem with having a strong mind and a frail body.
• Irony: For someone who goes out of his way to piss off and antagonise others, he himself is very easily antagonised and provoked. He spends the first few rounds of the tournament trying to duck Agito and Misasa to piss them off, only to abandon that plan once he himself gets pissed off and is provoked into a fight against Misasa.
• Jerkass: He looks and gives off this vibe, immediately transferring to Purgatory from the Kengan Association after becoming The Fang of Metsudo. In his introduction, he pretends to not know Yamashita and then "thanks him" for allowing him to use the Kengan Association as his stepping stone. He then openly mocks Jose, a fellow Gladiator, for losing to him and trying to provoke him into a rematch. When Koga manages to talk Jose out of it, he liver shots Koga, "apologizes" for "bumping into him" and continues to provoke Jose by calling Koga "small fry". It's only when Idemitsu intervenes that he stops, but only because he's on the tycoon's payroll. He later makes good on his provocations by mauling Jose in their rematch to the point that his fellow Gladiators find it acceptable to cheap shot Hikaru and laugh about it when he's around.
• Jerkass Has a Point: His explanation for leaving the Kengan Association and his position as the Fang of Metsudo for a bigger payday at Purgatory, while meant to deride Kazuo, is actually logically sound. Since he has no loyalty or attachment to the Association, jumping ship to the organization that takes better care of and pays it's fighters better is the best decision he could make in the situation. He compares it to desirable pro athletes making teams try to one-up each other with better contracts and taking the best offer.
• Kick the Dog: He's an unrepentant Jerkass who betrays his employers, picks fights and brutally beats Jose to near death, but his worst act so far is revealed during his fight. He is a murderer, killing a member of the bodyguards who served under Misasa when he ran away to join Purgatory, and it's very much implied he had no little reason to go that far. He is also completely unrepentant about it, saying he was just "taking out the trash" when he did it.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: Yumigahama enjoys insulting and disrespecting rivals, taking great pleasure in their anger and getting mad when they disrespect him. However, when he starts a threat towards Rolón Donaire after the latter shushed him for disrespecting The Falcon, he is very quick to back down upon seeing Rolón is pissed at him.
• Lightning Bruiser: At 201cm and 146 kilos, he's a bulldozer of a human being without any of it compromising of his speed and agility. He is able to easily keep up with an opponent half his size until the shrinking ring makes him basically immobile due to a lack of space to work with, is incredibly tough and hits like a truck.
• Made of Iron: Yumigahama can both dish it out and take it in spades, happily giving up his right arm to Jose in an off-screen fight so that he could one-sidedly beat him to near-death with his left. When Misasa dislocates his jaw and caves his face in, he's still spry enough to be fully conscious afterward and flail around in agony instead of being comatose, with sedatives not working on him fast enough to not give the medics trouble as they try to hold him down and carry him out.'
  Hikaru, getting hit for the several dozenth time: "THAT FUCKING ITCHES! You're really getting on my goddamn nerves now!"
• Master of All: He describes himself as a savant of martial arts and a human weapon, as he's able to use his body as it was medieval weaponry. Even with a time limit of five minutes on the match and his mobility and reach gradually being less to his benefit, he shows off the Oyayubiken punch from traditional karate used with spear techniques, dual-sword techniques for attacking the shins and adopting Iaido swings as chops able to give cutting wounds even when grazing the opponent, a flurry of Kenpo kicks as well as a solid understanding of grappling and general martial arts techniques.
• Master of None: Rolón describes him as one of these. He has so many different tricks that the commentators start to think he has an infinite variety of martial arts, but he hasn’t mastered a single one of his many martial arts and is just using them, ironically, like disposable weaponry. This makes him weaker than he should have been and shows that quantity doesn’t mean quality.
• Multi-Melee Master: Yumigahama's fighting style revolves around him collecting different styles of martial arts and using their techniques for himself. He primarily uses weapons based martial arts that he is able to adapt to unarmed combat. This includes spear, dual sword and iaido techniques.
• Nobody Calls Me "Chicken"!: Misasa accusing him of “pussying out” was all it took to get him into the ring.
• No Brows: Has none, contributing to his wild and monkey-like appearance.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: His face is basically a caricature of heavyweight MMA legend and Brazilian Jiu-jitsu wizard Fabrício Werdum◊'s, with Yumigahama spouting Werdum's trademark grin frequently. Like Werdum, Yumigahama also succeeded an undefeated man known as an "emperor" in the Japanese MMA circuit as champion/Fang, but didn't hold onto the title for long (Werdum did however actually beat the champion who had humiliated every man put in front of him so far, unlike Yumigahama who just had a fortunate promotion as a long-term investment by Metsudo in a young man full of potential).
• Oh, Crap!: Subverted. Despite his one-sided defeat by Misasa, his team shrugs it off. While an elite fighter, his 9-5 record in the A-list of Purgatory means that he's not at all an irreplaceable part of their roster.
• Only in It for the Money: He only pursued the position of the Fang of Metsudo so that he could jump ship from the Kengan Association to Purgatory under better pay conditions than he otherwise would have gotten had he started with Purgatory first.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: His raw power and fighting skills more than earned him his spot as an A list gladiator and Fang but there are enough fighters that outclass him from both Kengan and Purgatory that his decisive loss against Misasa doesn't come as a shock for his teammates unlike Toa's defeat or even Medel's last minute win.
• Roundhouse Kick: The fourth style he reveals is Hama-Style Kenpo. Unlike the other styles he collected, this style is an unarmed style of combat that relies exclusively on powerful long ranged roundhouse kicks. He uses this as a last ditch effort to keep Misasa away when the arena shrinks to a point where he can barely move.
• Slasher Smile: So far he always seems to have one, which emphasizes his role as a Troll when provoking others.
• Smug Snake:
  • He comes off as this in his fight against Misasa, constantly talking shit during the fight about how much better he is and how pathetic his opponent is, as well as expressing outrage whenever he gets hit. In spite of this, his opponent's mobility means he only manages to land only minor scratches while taking a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown from Misasa. Admittedly, Misasa simply couldn't risk taking direct hits from someone so much bigger than himself and spends a majority of the match just making sure he doesn't get hit. He is also convinced that he managed to pull the wool over Metsudo's eyes when transferring, when it is implied that he knew all along.
  • It's revealed after his defeat that in spite of his title of former Fang of Metsudo, arrogant Jerkass behaviour and constantly telling everyone how superior he is, he is actually nowhere near the top of Purgatory's A-class fighters, with 9 wins and 5 losses, putting at least five fighters who are stronger or better at exploiting the rules than him. The lack of reaction from his team after his loss only confirms it.
• Super-Strength: He is 146 kilos of muscle stuffed into a frame that actually seems able to handle it, resulting in a level of physical strength that can send his opponent flying to the edge of the ring even from a blocked punch.
• Thwarted Coup de Grâce: His last resort was to grab Misasa once he leans in for the kill, as with his size Yumigahama would have crushed Misasa with any grappling technique. Misasa saw it coming, countered it and finished him off.
• Token Evil Teammate: Initially plays this role for Purgatory as an actively malicious scumbag who has killed a Bodyguard under Misasa's command unnecessarily in the past, But it is ultimately subverted; As bad as he is, Lu, Naidan, Alan, Nicolas, Terashi and Fei are revealed to have far higher body counts and much more sinister affiliations than him, who is just there to fight and get paid.
• Troll:
  • He has done nothing but antagonizes and provoke people almost every second he's been on-panel. His first appearance involves him mocking Yamashita and provoking Jose, the former over his transfer to Purgatory and the latter over his loss. He even liverblows Koga offhandedly to provoke Jose into a fight.
  • During the faceoff with the Kengan Association he deliberately tries to duck the matchup with Agito and Misasa, not because he's scared of them, but because denying them their revenge amuses him.
• Unskilled, but Strong: DoubleSubverted, when he starts his fight he demonstrates incredible speed and strength, but uses wasteful motions, leading to the Kengan fighters to assume he's an amateur. He then reveals he's a self described Master of All and whose entire fighting style revolves around stealing techniques from other marital artists and adapting weapon based styles into workable hand to hand ones. But ultimately, his "style" proves to be no more than a massive grab bag of techniques and tricks that, although requiring skill to use in such a seamless fashion, don’t inherently mesh together and rely on Yumigahama’s incredible physical ability and intuition to work well. Once that is removed his entire style breaks down pretty quickly, as seen with how easily Misasa countered it when given perfect conditions that negate Yumigahama's advantages. His character sheet also states that unlike other fighters he does not train, relying on his gifts to fight and is confirmed to be the weakest Fang yet because of this and his mental state.
• Villain Forgot to Level Grind: His character notes explain that Yumigahama was chosen to be the next Fang because of his massive potential. During his time under Metsudo he would train hard, but once he jumped to Purgatory he became arrogant and stopped training.
• Wild Hair: His hair is shaggy and unkempt, jotting in every direction at once. Combined with the rest of his outfit, which consists of haphazard baggy clothing and sandals, it seems to be more from him not taking much care of his appearance than any stylistic choice on his part, as he had a much less wild look while he was Metsudo's fighter.
• The Worf Effect: Downplayed, as Yumigahama is a more than formidable fighter who had every advantage he possesses turned against him by the rules of the tournament match he participates in, but after his defeat by the hands of Misasa, he's revealed to have a match record of 9-5 within the Purgatory A-list, meaning there's at least a 5 fighters above him or ones able to exploit the rules better than him.
• Younger Than They Look: With his size, appearance and overall arrogant behaviour, you wouldn't expect him to be 23. Pointing out how he looks older than he should is a good way to piss him off.

Naidan Mönkhbat

"Are you still hesitating? Come on, I know you're stronger than that. This is your last warning; Come at me like you're going to kill me."

The Hawk of Ordos (オルゴスの鷹, Orudosu no Taka)

Age: 26

A massive A-list Gladiator Bökh wrestler from Inner Mongolia that joined Purgatory three years prior to Omega. He is the fifth to fight in the tournament against Ryuki Gaoh.

---

• The Ace: He's a master grappler with the physique of a Greek God and the power to match, becoming an A-lister and one of the better among them by his third match in Purgatory, and also a direct subordinate of the head of Worm who completely flew under Xia Ji's radar and accomplished his secret mission with ease.
• Anime Hair: Official colored illustrations of him reveal his spiky hair to be a bluesh-white.
• Armor-Piercing Question: He asks Ryuki why has been killing Worm members. Ryuki replies that it's because his grandfather told him the Worms are evil. Naidan then points out that if he's evil for being a Worm member, why is Ryuki not trying to kill him? He then follows up by asking Ryuki whether it's possible that his grandfather could be wrong. Ryuki becomes livid, and instantly switches to try and kill him.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: His Eye of the Sky technique functions as this. Unlike other fighters like Kaneda, Gensai and Carlos who use Foresight to predict their opponent's moves, Naidan enters a Flow State-like trance where he can survey the situation around him as if he was a bird looking down at the arena. This allows him to counter the omnidirectional attacks of Ryuki, who is a considerably faster fighter than he is.
• Batman Gambit: Like Misasa did to Yumigahama, Naidan baits Ryuki into fighting him by revealing his Worm tattoo, as well as goad him to killing him like he did to other Worm members. He later admits that he was nervous doing this as both Agito and Ohma reacted to the reveal as well, though neither jumped at the opportunity like Ryuki did.
• Character Death: Pushes Ryuki to the brink of death, at which point Gaoh reacts on panicked instinct and gouges Naidan's neck with his thumb. Naidan then forces Ryuki's thumb deeper into his own neck, killing himself, completing his objective for the Worm and winning the match.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: His flashback shows him training by having 4 horses tied to his arms and staying in place with his sheer strength, eventually overpowering them and pulling them all down.
• Combat Pragmatist:
  • He's willing to attack below the belt, something that would be a foul in Bökh competitions, as well as attack his opponent while he's resetting a dislocation. He also resorts to strangling Ryuki when he is on the ground to goad him into using lethal force.
  • A minor example can also be found in his clothing; to make his wrestling uniform's pants impossible to grab by the "sleeves", he has taped them closed around his ankles, like a boxer would tape their hands into fists.
• Dead Person Impersonation: Averted, Naidan clearly tells Ryuki that he is not a Worm imposter and that his Bökh is genuine. His backstory shows him being trained by a Worm Bökh master since the age of 15.
• Death Seeker: He plans on dying to Ryuki so "the Omega" can overcome him and prove to Worm that he's really what they sought after. Ryuki's slump due to his increasing sense of morality combined with Kiryu's misplaced mentorship making him overly rely on Awesome, but Impractical techniques taught to him by a madman later imply that Naidan's death might have been All for Nothing for Worm.
• Determinator: His reaction to being kicked in the back of the head and attacked on the floor by Ryuki, to the point where the ref was considering his disqualification? Seizing Ryuki by the neck while he's still on the ground and telling him to come get it with a chilling Slasher Smiler and eyes full of almost childish glee.
• Establishing Character Moment: Once he decides to get out the bench he reveals his worm tattoo and dares Ryuki to come and kill him to show the Kengan fighters what he is all about.
  Naidan: Is this good enough for an introduction? Come on out.
• Evil Orphan: He was a sturdily built orphan boy from Inner Mongolia who entered into the Worm of his own volition as part of a team of Bökh trainees when he was 15 years old. Six excruatingly intense years of training later, he killed his own master and became part of The Head's personal guard.
• Eye Scream: He gets his eye gouged by Ryuki once he decides to fight with intent to kill. It's injured but not put out.
• The Fashionista: In addition to wearing stylish dress shirts and suit pants outside the ring, he wears a pimped-out blue and teal Bökh uniform when he's fighting, with a fur-collared wool Zodog and unusually long Shuudag. Due to the rules at Purgatory seemingly not allowing any pieces of clothing that can be used to gain an unfair advantage, he foregoes the traditional kneepads and Gutal leather wrestling shoes, but cover art for Volume 9 show them to be part of the full garb.◊
• Foil: He serves as one to Setsuna Kiryu in certain aspects. Both were taught a highly effective but simple martial art from a master who was remote from the rest of the world; Kiryu was taught an offensive way of manipulating the senses (Blink), whereas Naidan was taught a defensive way with his Eye of the Sky. Both killed their masters in brutal single combat and have relations to the Worm. The same way Kiryu sought to awaken Ohma's berserking Advance state, Naidan is seemingly under orders to awaken something similar in Ryuki.
• Go-Karting with Bowser: He plays Mahjong regularly with Liu, Nicolas and Fei, and treats Medel to a glass of Kumis ^note a low-alcohol dairy product traditionally made in Mongolia from mare's milk when Medel visits to talk about Liu Dongcheng for Medel's upcoming match against him.
• Hidden Depths: At first he was just a jovial Bökh Wrestler in costume on the bench calling out Liu every time he said something cowardly or jerkish, then reveals himself as a direct agent of Worm and one that seems the most aware of what is to come. He also genuinely liked Liu as a person and showed much more empathy than other Worm agents, especially compared to Lu Tian and Fei.
• Implacable Man: The core teaching of his master is to be immovable, using the Eye in the sky technique to avoid being blindsided and muscle power to hold position. As such he will counter attack instead of dodging and he is the only one who decides when he moves and where. In mentality of the trope he won't stop his attacks and threats until Ryuki kills him as Naidan intends on.
• Klingon Promotion: He defeated his master as part of the final test in his training, killing him in the process and taking his place as a high-ranking member of Worm.
  Naidan: "Thank you, Master. I don't need you anymore."
• Last Words: To Liu Dongcheng: Be careful. Don't trust Nicolas
• Lightning Bruiser: Standing at 194cm and 118kg, he is fast enough to easily keep up with Ryuki and counter his techniques. Kaolan points out that in terms of pure strength, only Raian, Wakatsuki and Julius could possibly match him on their side, and that his wrestling moves and throws are performed with machine-like perfection. His punches and kicks are simple but hit hard enough to send Ryuki rolling on his ass or blur his vision.
• Made of Iron: He is unbelievably tough, able to take hits from Ryuki without flinching. Kaolan notes that he has "clingy muscles" from grappling and extraordinary resilience^note Slow-twitch muscle fibers are the muscles that aren't easily activated by normal exercise or lifting and only come into use when the surface-level fast-twitch muscles are already exhausted; Thus, well-developed slow-twitch muscle is more or less entirely unique to manual laborers and endurance athletes in the modern day. Long-distance runners, elite boxers and especially wrestlers whether it is Shoot/Pro Wrestling, Sumo, Greco-Roman and Bökh excel in using and building these muscles because grappling is extremely intensive and in the case of Bökh, matches are known to last anywhere from seconds or a few minutes to hours. A physique with well-developed slow-twitch muscle is very soft to the touch compared to say a Powerlifter's and muscle memory is almost second nature to people with such a physique; something Naidan shows with his rote-machine like perfection in his throws. It takes Ryuki heel-kicking him in the temple mid-throw for him to even stagger slightly, and the follow-up eye gouging and Fa Jin strike to the jaw barely even slows him down. His backstory shows him training his durability by tying horses to his limbs and stopping them from pulling him apart.
• Meaningful Name: Mönkhbat is Mongolian for 'Eternal firmness', denoting his Implacable Man nature.
• Neck Lift: Does this several times to Ryuki while goading him to fight with the intent to kill, showing utter dominance over his opponent.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: He shares the same last name as Jigjidiin Mönkhbat, a six time national champion in Mongolian Bökh, freestyle wrestling middleweight silver medalist in the 1968 Olympics, and father to Mönkhbat Davaajargal^note Mongolians do not use family names, and instead the "full" name is the father's name + given name, hence why the Mönkbhat changes position. otherwise known as Hakuhō Shō, the greatest Yokozuna and arguably the greatest sumo wrestler of all time.
• No-Sell: Takes a knee strike to the kidney without flinching as his clingy muscles stop the impact, his Eye in the sky technique also makes him near impossible to hit by surprise to the point where he can Lever Throw Ryuki by his arm mid-punch when's attacking Naidan from behind.
• Pelts of the Barbarian: Wears a furred sleeveless jacket as part of his Bökh uniform, called a Zodog. According to Daromeon in a livestream, it is based on Gogeta's jacket.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Naidan manages to achieve both his objective as a Worm member as well as win the match, but doing so cost him his life.
• Red Right Hand: He has a white Worm tattoo on his right forearm that seemingly only appears when he flexes it really hard. He shows it off to the Kengan side to provoke Ryuki into a fight and instantly succeeds. The tattoo being white indicates that he reports directly to Yan, the Head of the Worm.
• Slasher Smile: He gives some horrific ones once Ryuki finally gets over the things holding him back mentally.
• The Stoic: He doesn't see a problem with him having to throw away his life for the sake of Worm's plans, but he still isn't completely unaffected by Liu telling him to Get Yourself Together Man. The author describes him in his profile as the sort of man who doesn't say much but always has a lot on his mind.
• Top-Down View: What his Eye in the Sky technique functions as. He enters a state where his senses are so refined he can survey his surrounding as if he was looking down from a bird's eye view.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Boodog, a Mongolian dish made with a stuffed goat or marmot cooked steamed in milk or water over coals, usually prepared for special occassions.
• Tragic Villain: Naidan was an orphan who must have looked at the Bökh training course he signed onto under Worm as a godsend out of poverty, but it also turned him into a trained killer and bodyguard working for an Ancient Conspiracy who gives him orders that directly contribute to the loss of his life. To the spectators and those not in the know about the Worm, Naidan forcing Ryuki into intentionally murdering him was a tragic ring death, but in reality, it was Worm's way of forcing Ryuki's Start of Darkness, joining up with Kiryu and Akoya, and cleaning up unsavory elements like Lu Tian.
• Training from Hell: His training mostly involved relentless and prolonged basic body conditioning and the practice of his style's techniques for six years that either broke or killed his fellow disciples. The final test involved him having his arms tied to four horses running in opposite directions while in a deep (and literal) Horse Stance holding them from tearing him in half, before knocking them to the ground after an indefinite amount of time.
• Villainous Friendship: He is a Worm infiltrator that joined up with Purgatory years ahead of time, who in his match forces Ryuki to kill him to further their schemes, but he genuinely likes Liu Dongcheng despite them only having been friends for a year after Naidan lost to him in a match. They've only hung out half a dozen time since then but Naidan considers Liu his best friend, and he's also chummy with Carlos Medel.
• Wham Line: Says a lot of rather ominous foreshadowing during his match, but his most mysterious statement was perhaps his most clear, his last words to Liu: "Be careful. Don't trust Nicolas."
• Wicked Cultured: Since Naidan seems to come from a traditionally Mongolian background, it should be no surprise that his primary hobby is falconry.
• Willfully Weak: He ends up being this in his fight, due to his goal of getting Ryuki to kill him. He shows that he is able to easily dominate the fight, but spends a lot of taunting and pushing Ryuki's Berserk Button, allowing him to recover. His fellow gladiators notice that he's not his usual self and spending more time showboating instead of finishing the fight.
• Wrestler in All of Us: He is a Bökh practitioner, a style of Mongolian wrestling that does not allow attacks below the waist besides trips, and his stance is immediately pinpointed by Okubo to resemble the one used in Greco-Roman Wrestling. He is able to easily manhandle Ryuki with a series of throws. Noticeably, similar to the rules of Bökh, Naidan does not wrestle on the ground, only throwing his opponent down and letting him get up. In addition, he's able to perform a "hard Redirection Kata", as Ohma describes it, by putting immense pressure on both sides of the opponent's hip when he grabs it, making it near-impossible for the opponent to strike properly due to all the power the hips provide being dispersed.
  Naidan's master: "The essence of grappling lies in being immovable."

Lu Tian

"You survived the same hell as I did, so it's only right that I send you back to hell myself."

Three Demon Fists: Centipede (三鬼拳百足, Sangiken Mukade)

Age: Around 40

A huge rock-faced man from Hong Kong, where he's akin to a local celebrity, an A-list gladiator and a master of the Wuwangquan^note 'Goouken', literally "Five Kings Fist", Lu Tian is the strongest of the Three Demon Fists, Purgatory's top three Chinese martial artists and a major contender within the organization.

He is the sixth to fight in the Tournament against Agito Kanoh.

---

• The Ace: He became one of Purgatory's mainstay A-listers all while cruising on a style he's not nearly as proficient in as Formless and his incredible physique. When Lu starts fighting for real, he proves to have completely mastered the Formless style that made Agito a force of nature in the Kengan Matches, putting the Fang on his ass in both a match of Formless and then with his Martial Arts. Combined with his ability to use Guihun at a staggering 96%, his repute as simply the strongest of the Three Demon Fists was underselling him. Even Niko describes him as a prodigy, even if Lu is only useful as a disposable pawn due to being Ax-Crazy.
• Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: A local celebrity in Hong Kong for his mastery of Chinese martial arts and looks down on Agito for being a king of a small island compared to him. And that's before they fight where he sticks his tongue out and constantly boasts that he is the real successor of Niko Tokita.
  "Is this the acme of martial arts? Pathetic."
• Awesome, but Impractical: Guihun at 96%, big time: Julius level strength, faster torque, speed and no loss of fine muscle control so his Formless still works perfectly, unlike with the Advance. But the sheer strain of the technique when used by someone not bred to handle it causes him to lose his mind, and does nothing to help his durability since his entire body is under massive duress. He ultimately does enormous damage to himself and ends up needing perpetual IV treatment in the aftermath of the tournament for a huge but brief boost in power... and that boost still wasn't enough to win the fight with Agito.
• Ax-Crazy: Most of the time he acts like a stoic and standoffish man who barely sees a need to speak, but like fellow Gu ritual survivor Agito, he has a deeply disturbed and horrifically violent Split Personality that's far more ingrained in him than Agito's is since the latter was freed from the process by Metsudo and never taught the most advanced parts of Formless as a result. This includes the use of Guihun despite the damage it may cause, which Lu Tian busts out only to lose his mind from the strain.
• Back for the Dead: He returns 2 years later only to die after about a chapter and a half in a brief, if intense, fight with Akoya that ends with Akoya burrowing the butt of his flashlight into Lu Tian's skull.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: He fights in the stylish dress shirt and suit pants he wears underneath his huge coat, not even bothering to remove his white leather belt.
• Badass Longcoat: He has worn a massive trenchcoat everywhere to date, including a poolside meeting and the Purgatory stadium placed inside an active volcano. He finally throws it off before his match, revealing he is just as bulky without it.
• The Berserker: As soon as he switches to his Formless he becomes a raving beast that is constantly attacking Agito with whatever he has in reckless but incredibly refined fashion, attempting to stomp, bite and slam Agito on his head while keeping pace with the Emperor of the Kengan Association. He has the same sort of inner "beast" Split Personality to the point where he's completely possessed by a delusion that he's the singular heir to Niko's legacy.
• Beyond the Impossible:
  • He's so inhumanly flexible that he can reverse a head-down armbar by getting up into an extremely low-to-the-ground Horse Stance and throwing Agito as he's trying to sink the submission hold in fully. Early in the fight he also dodges a straight punch so close to his face at that point that it causes a visual illusion of his head becoming jello-like and slipping through Agito's fist.
  • His ability to use Guihun, a technique that the Kure (with their Removal) can only use without killing themselves because of centuries of combat-centric eugenics, is considered to be a one in a million chance...that Lu Tian took and survived.
• Body Horror: His usage of Guihun has not been good for his overall health. While not the worst the series has seen, his return after 2 years sees him stuck with it active on one side of his body permanently and needing medical attention for it via IV drip.
• Brick Joke: Agito tells him he's gonna make Lu Tian talk about Niko, The Worm and Formless by force. Lu Tian proceeds to talk shit to Agito while expositing on the topics. By the end of the fight there's not even a need to interrogate Lu, as he has already spilled the beans and Agito proceeds to shatter Lu's jaw and teeth to forcibly shut him up.
• Bullying a Dragon: He targets Kanoh Agito, calling him the king of a small island.
• Charged Attack: The essence of his Wuwang Fist, an assassination martial art that relies on long windups to deliver lethal Fa Jin-like blows. He doesn't get much use of it due to the sheer pace of his fight with Agito and resorts to using other styles instead.
• Clipped-Wing Angel: He can use Guihun, but without the Wu and Kure eugenic program, it's no different from anyone else using their unrestrained muscle power, meaning that his body is under extreme duress and can't take that much punishment. It proves fatal when Akoya brains him with a flashlight when he tries to go berserk. Raian and Edward Wu were shown to be able to shrug off laceration and stabbing in the neck under Removal and Guihun respectively.
• Confusion Fu: When he and Kanoh are using Formless and Pre-iniative on each other in the middle of the stage for a full five minutes, his moves are too advanced for fighters that aren't at his level to even comprehend. Even Koga, whose exceptional kinetic vision allowed him to see the moves perfectly as they happen, doesn't even have a clue what's going on and is barely able to comprehend that what looks like two hulking men dancing and flailing at one another is a breakneck pace battle that could end with a knockout at any second; Ohma has to point out to him at one point where Kanoh would have been immediately elbowed in the back of the head and knocked out by Lu if he completed the chop he was doing instead of side-stepping Lu Tian's incoming front kick.
  This is not limited to martial arts, it applies to all sports and even board games like Shogi, Chess and Go. The thoughts of a top-level player are far beyond comprehensible.
• Curb Stomp Cushion: His and Agito's fight is dead-even for the most part, with Lu Tian managing to seize control several times, but ultimately loses in a humiliating fashion after his use of Guihun still won't let him take back the initiative from Agito. Invoked by Agito collapsing to his kness in exhaustion after the adrenaline wears off after he goes back to the Kengan bench, but besides that he's not much worse for wear besides some bruises he'll be feeling in the morning from tanking Lu Tian's stomps and Guihun attacks.
  • Happens yet again to fatal results two years later against Akoya. He ultimately dies in less then one chapter, but not only was he obviously weakened and needing medical attention while his foe had weapons and armor but he still managed to give Akoya serious trouble, shattering his bullet proof armor and forcing Akoya to flashbang Lu with his torch to get a chance to bury it in Lu's skull, leaving Akoya exhausted and severely beaten up afterwards.
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique: Guihun is this for him: It severely damages his body since he’s not a Kure/Wu with a special body prepared to safely take the strain and using it in too high percentages makes him go berserk. Based on his thoughts, it's also implied he had never actually used it in real combat prior to his match against Kanoh. All of these flaws, especially the second one, end up being his doom.
• Dead Person Impersonation: Averted. Similar to Naidan, Lu Tian is not an imposter but the man himself. He even states that it was easy to infiltrate Purgatory because all his interactions with his fellow gladiators were genuine - he has just always been a Worm member on top of that.
• Evil Counterpart: To Kanoh, who he shares a massive imposing physique, facial structure and No Brows with, only differentiatied by their hair, which is slicked back in different ways and opposite colors, and minor facial features. Lu Tian went through the same kind of ritual as him, but unlike Kanoh, he became a formal student of the "Other" Niko and subsequently a Worm agent, thus essentially being what Kanoh would've become if he hadn't been saved by Metsudo.
  Kanoh: "I pity you. You are no more than his puppet."
• Facial Horror: Kanoh's Dragon Shot breaks his jaw and shatters a majority of his teeth. Considering the punch sent him flying through the air like he weighed nothing, it could have been a lot worse.
• Fatal Flaw: His Wuwang Fist relies on long windups and strong stances to deliver powerful blows described as nothing less than lethal, and is therefore not effective against someone who can consistently keep the pressure on him causing Lu to stop using it early in the match. His insanity turns out to be another problem, as once Kanoh reaches a level where even his perfected Formless can't adapt to in time, he goes berserk using Guihun which Kanoh easily counters by remaining cool-headed. It does him in against Akoya when he starts going full berserk on the vigilante who brains him thanks to being more equipped.
• Finishing Stomp: After slamming Agito onto the back of his head to avoid getting armbarred, Lu barrages him with heavy stomps, throwing his full body weight into each one.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Subverted within Purgatory, where he's been shown being amicable with Nicolas and Jurota among others, but Xia Ji and Worm considers him a disposable pawn at best and a threat to even their own at worst.
• Hidden Depths: His main hobby is Jazz music, which isn't that odd given his Formless Style is also based on improv and a high pace while also being a master of Wuwang Fist to give him some solid fundamentals as a martial artist; That is, his very way of fighting is the Jazz of martial arts.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: He essentially infiltrated Purgatory without anyone noticing by acting genuinely himself the entire time in his interactions, albeit an incredibly withdrawn version of himself in comparison to the jabbering lunatic that comes out when he gets serious fighting Agito.
• Hulking Out: Using Guihun at 96% (the maximum he can handle), tears his dress shirt to shreds and undoes his ponytail.
• Human Hammer-Throw: Would've killed Akoya with this if not for his full-body armor by Lu picking him up by the waist and slamming Akoya head-first into a sewer wall.
• I Am Not Left-Handed: His Kung Fu style makes him a main event of the Purgatory A List, but can't stand a serious chance against Agito's Formless attacks. When he switches to Formless and when cornered, Guihun, he's able to go toe to toe with Agito and steadily overwhelm him.
• I Know Kung Fu: Uses several of the same Bajiquan moves as Liu Dongcheng like the Leaning Mountain and spinning back-kick while using his combination of Formless and Guihun. Given Liu's previous loss to Lu Tian, he could well have learned it from him the same way Kanoh employs Kaolan's jabs and elbows, Hatsumi's Triple Strike and Okubo's soccer kick as part of his current style.
• Implacable Man: Nothing short of Agito Dragon Shot-ing him right in the jaw even slows him down. He effortlessly shrugs off a knee to the balls, soccer kicks to the head and flurries of punches from his opponent only to get up again like it was nothing.
• I Shall Taunt You:
  • He is constantly belittling Agito and talking about how perfect his Formless is, to the point where Agito tells him he talks too much.
  • He treats Liu Dongcheng as if he was an overgrown child and refers to him as trash due to having beaten him by Ring Out in the past.
• Just Between You and Me: He invokes this from Agito by pulling out a rusty old bracelet on stage and holding it up for the Kengan bench to see.
• Knife Fight: Uses a knife in his attempt to ambush Ryuki, only to get intercepted by Akoya. Afterwards they both have a knife duel, but it doesn't last long as their sheer strength causes the knives to break without any damage done to either party, causing them to simultaneously throw the knives aside.
• Lightning Bruiser:
  • Tough, strong, and fast enough to not just keep pace with Agito after a brief warmup, but even beat him onto the defensive. Despite weighing in as a 203cm 130kg walking wall of muscle, Lu moves with the flexibility and speed of someone half his size, displaying ridiculously acrobatic defensive moves like backflipping out of a palm strike to the face and dodging Agito's deadly punches by a matter of millimeters before counterattacking with dense omnidirectional barrages of heavy punches that look akin to the skittering legs of a centipede on the hunt.
  • Once he uses Guihun, he gains physical strength on par with Julius while still able to move fast enough to bob-and-weave Agito's jabs effortlessly. Unfortunately for him, he had already taken a thorough beating and nothing the Super Mode gave him would save him from a clean One-Inch Punch to the jaw.
• Man Bites Man: He attempts to take a huge chunk out of Agito's neck with his teeth and gets a wince-inducing knee to the temple bells for it.
• Meaningful Name: He is the Centipede due to his style of movement resembling them eerily, with Lu moving like his skeleton and his joints are just suggestions rather than objective reality, and to denote his allegiance to Worm by having their insignia, a centipede, tattooed on to the tip of his tongue.
• Motor Mouth: He just will not shut up about the Niko Style or how "Other" Niko abandoned it to make a better fighting style with Formless or how much of a Superior Successor he is to Agito. While this exposes an important point to the story, he just keeps on repeating himself and annoys Agito to the point where he tells him he talks too much. Agito ends up shutting him up by breaking Lu's jaw.
• My Friends... and Zoidberg: While he labels himself as Niko's heir he was never in the line up to be the Tiger's vessel like Long Min and Ranjo. He is the greatest student in Niko's second attempt at teaching Formless to see if he can overhaul the Niko Style.
• Not So Stoic: After revealing his Worm tattoo and switching to the Formless stance, he takes on the bloodthirsty personality that Agito has shown comes with it; arrogant and sure of his superiority, especially since he's supposed to be the perfect practitioner of the technique.
• Offhand Backhand: He effortlessly blocks a sucker punch from Raian with one of these for Jurota, not even bothering to take his other hand out of his pocket. Even Raian takes it as a good sign to back off.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: Lu Tian is an absolute powerhouse in both physical attributes, technique and experience... But as even the Author points out in his character profile, he shared Okubo's unfortunate fate of being put up against the human wrecking machine that is Agito in his first fight.
• Perpetual Frowner: He seems to have only one facial expression, a frown. Whether his team wins, loses or something interesting happens in the match, his face never changes.
• Red Right Hand: He has his Worm tattoo on his tongue of all places. Please don't try to imagine how painful that process would be.
• Ring of Power: He reveals a large rusty ring after stepping in to fight in the sixth round that sets off Agito to choose him as his opponent. Besides being a reference to ManoWar cover art, the ring is a bracelet that tracked the wearer's vitals during the three-month ordeal that was one of the Gu rituals, and removing it before the ritual was over would result in being declared dead. Traditionally, the surviving insect of a Gu ritual that were thought to bring luck and fortune were fed to a certain kind of caterpillar that curled up in the shape of a ring, which is probably why Lu keeps it on him like a trophy.
• The Quiet One: The only thing he ever said despite being one of the most frequently appearing Purgatory fighters was a comment about one of Nicolas' former losses. While his entire team speculates and makes observations about the matches with the Kengan Association, he remains completely silent. He breaks his silence in the confrontation between teams after Naidan's death. His stoicism also breaks not long after.
• Samurai Ponytail: Not to Fei's extent since it only goes to his shoulder, but he keeps his hair tied back, presumably to keep it out of his face for the same reason Kanoh keeps his hair slicked back.
• Sanity Slippage: It was already bad, but after the two-year timeskip he's reduced to a rambling mess that can only scream and beg for Niko's approval while furiously beating down Akoya. It says something that the most mentally coherent thing he did in that fight was attempt to get the jump on Ryuki with a knife via Death from Above.
• Slouch of Villainy: He casually sat in the middle of his match after taking a high kick to the face from Agito, stuck in thought until the 4-count before Agito tells him he recognizes Lu Tian as a student of Niko and he should stop keeping his reputation in mind if he wants to win.
• Sole Survivor: Lu Tian is the survivor of "Room 187", one of the Gu rituals ran by Worm and Niko, though while Agito was saved by Metsudo before the ritual was finished, Lu Tian truly survived all the way to the end and was then trained by "Other" Niko.
• Split Personality: Like Kanoh, the trauma of the Gu Ritual had him build a animalistic split personality to cope with what he had to do to survive, which is seemingly the missing piece that the Formless style requires to be effective. Unlike Kanoh, he actually got to be trained by Niko in how to use the Formless with this in mind, meaning Lu Tian's Formless is considerably better than Kanoh's.
• The Stoic: Not only is he near silent, but he shows no reaction to anything that happens in the matches. He drops it once he releases his Formless stance.
• Superior Successor:
  • Lu Tian's master described him as a one-in-a-million prodigy. This Master? Other Niko.
  • Claims to be this regarding the Formless technique to Agito, having genuinely survived the Gu ritual and been instructed by "Other" Niko in its usage. Some of his Formless attacks are similar to, but visibly more complex than the ones Agito used in his fight against Gaolang, and with his superior Formless is able to defeat both Agito's Formless and his Martial Arts comfortably on their own, but cannot hold up against a combination of the two.
• Trademark Favorite Food: He loves Ramen in general, but as his profile exclaims, "Tonkotsu is supreme."
• Tragic Villain: While he's hardly a sympathetic man, His fate at large is completely defined by being what Agito would have become if it wasn't for the freak stroke of luck in that he was saved by Metsudo. Without that, Lu Tian became little more than another puppet student dancing in the Other Tokita Niko and Worm's palm.
• Training from Hell: The Gu Ritual is a three-month long process of being sealed in a vault with a pulse-counter around your wrist with dozens of your fellow students and barely enough food, water and air for one person to just barely scrape it by until the door is unsealed, with the explicit order to start murdering one another with the martial arts Niko had taught them so far. Lu Tian clawed his way out of this hell, perfected the Formless style under the harsh tutelage of the man who put him in that vault and came out of it as one of the strongest men alive.
• Uninhibited Muscle Power: He's able to use the Wu Clan's Guihun at 96% despite not being part of the clan himself. It is later revealed he learned it from "Other" Niko, who was himself taught it by Edward Wu to test the limits of his best students.
• Unreliable Narrator: Says he is the true heir of the Other Niko and that the gave up on the Niko style to teach new students Formless instead. Later events show the Other Niko is still cooking up a new and improved Niko Style by using his best students for field data and Lu Tian was never gonna be his heir. Like all of Niko's students he was just lied to.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Downplayed as he has skills but they are all about maximizing his raw strength and freakily flexible physique. Severely downplayed as his fight with Agito progresses, his "Formless" is mainly him going berserk while using seemingly wild and unnatural-looking, yet extremely precise movements to put his opponent in check, proving to be much better at using Formless than Agito. This goes even further to where Agito says he has completely surrendered himself to the "Beast" within that they both gained from the Gu ritual.
• Vague Age: His official age on his profile is "roughly 40". He became a disciple of Niko's after Agito did and survived a later Gu Ritual than Agito, but he's slightly older than Agito, who is also somewhere in his late 30's.
• Wild Card: Despite being one of the Other Niko's strongest disciples, he's not a Tiger Vessel presumably due to his utter lack of loyalty to the Worm, or even his master. Xia considers him a loose cannon that should've been killed a long time ago.
• Worf Had the Flu: During his fight with Akoya he appears to have his Guihun permanently open on his right side and needed intravenous therapy. Thanks to this he ends up dying against Akoya despite being strong enough to fight Agito in the past (granted, Akoya had armor, a knife, baton and a Maglite, but Lu still got some hits in and nearly killed him with a brutal throw head-first into a concrete wall.)
• Wrestler in All of Us: At one point he attempts an elbow drop after tripping Agito's pivoting leg mid-kick and shoving him in the chest. It doesn't hit, but his elbow still leaves a crater.

Alan Wu

"I'm going to play with you until you drown in a pool of your own blood."

The King of Slaughter (殺戮王,Satsuriku-ō)

Age: 34

A member of the Occident Wu Clan hailing from France, and one of two of the 13 representative fighters for Purgatory who isn't an A-list Gladiator. He is also the vessel of the Wu and Kure's progenitor, Wu Hei, from 5000 years ago by way of generational brainwashing through the use of oral tradition.

Alan is the seventh to fight in the tournament against Raian Kure.

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• Alternate Company Equivalent: He is similar to Raian Kure in appearance and personality, except he's French of Chinese descent and working for Purgatory.
• Always a Bigger Fish: Once the other Wu Hei's go on the move, it becomes abundantly clear that Alan was definitely the runt of the litter, both in stature and skills, but also in how well he took to Huisheng.
• Ax-Crazy: Understatement of the century to even call him as much.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • He takes Edward's spot on the roster that until then seemed to be for the man himself, implying a great deal of trust between the two. In an early draft from the first fight, Edward is shown to be part of the roster instead.
  • Due to the similarity in appearance and demeanor, many readers initially thought he was Hayakuwa Samato from Fist of the Seeker, a sadistic Ax-Crazy Muay Thai fighter with a similar Super Mode to the Removal and the man who gave Cosmo's master his scar across the face by slicing it open with an elbow.
• Black Eyes of Crazy: Just like his relative Edward Wu and members of the Kure clan.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Quite literally brainwashed using the secret technique of the Westward Wu clan's, Huisheng. This has convinced him that he is actually Wu Hei, the ancestor of the Mainline/Westward Wu and Kure clans from some 5000 years ago.
• The Brute: He's part of the main muscle for the Westward Wu clan and has a higher bodycount than Edward against the Mainline Wu. At 197cm and 108 kilos, he dwarfs most people even when always walking with a hunched back.
• The Clan: He's from the Westward Wu clan led by Edward, who migrated west around the same time the Kure went to Japan. Like Edward, he is part of a faction in the Westward Wu clan that have killed several of the Mainline Wu clan, with Alan's body count exceeding even Edward's.
• Combat Pragmatist: He starts the fight before the ref even called it, activating his Super Mode and throwing haymakers that send Raian flying even when they are blocked successfully. He even brought a knife to make sure Raian wasn't leaving the ring alive, but he doesn't get to use it before Raian blinds him, beats the shit out of him and then splits him in half like he was deboning a fish.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Split down the middle starting from the mouth is a horrible way to go.
• Culture Equals Costume: He wears a sleeveless Chinese Tang suit.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: On the receiving end during his fight with Raian. When using his Guihun, Alan was strong enough to smack Raian around and put him on the defensive at the start. Once Raian got serious however, he easily dominated Alan using only his techniques and gruesomely ended the fight by tearing him in half after activating his Removal.
• Evil Counterpart: To Raian Kure. Both fighters are powerful Black Sheep of their clans of assassins, with Black Eyes of Crazy and thoroughly unpleasant personalities to match.
• Eye Scream: Blinded by Raian scratching him across the eyes in the middle of a slap.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: Raian grabs both sides of his jaw after Alan tries to bite his jugular, quite literally splitting him down the middle starting from his skull with nothing but Uninhibited Muscle Power. The referee, commentators, crowd and fighters on both sides were suitably horrified.
• Hulking Out: Using Guihun makes his muscles instantly pump up, tearing his top to pieces in the process and grossly emphasizing his veins.
• Jerkass: He stands out as a grimly violent dickhead even on the Purgatory bench where veteran fighters who are more familiar with the rules dismiss his opinions on the fight between the fact that he's an asshole and that he's New Meat.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Comments that Carlos shouldn't be talking to his opponent after "going down like a bitch" and that if he was fighting in combat, he would be dead for doing so. Liu Dongcheng fires back, pointing out that Purgatory rules make it different from real combat.
• Locked Out of the Loop: In spite of being Edward's representative and seemingly in on his plans, he doesn't know the Tiger Vessel's identity.
• Man Bites Man: Tried to take a chunk out of Raian's shoulder. It doesn't end well for him.
• New Meat: He is a new fighter put on the team as Edward Wu's representative. While he is clearly strong, he is treated as this by the other Purgatory fighters due to not being used to fighting under Purgatory rules, ranging from being ignored by most of his team to disdain by Liu Dongcheng, who sees him as an annoyance.
• Slasher Smile: Seems to be his default face.
• Smug Snake: While certainly strong, he is incredibly cocky which can be partially attributed to him thinking he's Wu Hei.
• Split Personality: The Huisheng brainwashing he's been subject to means that he essentially has three; Alan Wu, Wu Hei and the amalgamation of the two. That all three of them are genocidal braggadocious lunatics means that it's hardly noticeable from just talking to him all the same.
• Super Mode: He's the only person besides Raian so far who can use Guihun/Removal at 100%, resulting in him being disgustingly physically powerful and fast even for his hulking size.
• Super-Strength: Using Guihun, his punches are so powerful that they send Raian rolling on his ass even when properly blocked. Too bad he neglected his jaw strength.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Like other users of Guihun/Removal he gets a huge boost of power, making him far faster and stronger then the average person. However, he doesn't show any particular combat skills outside of it and no real application beyond brute force. This bites him in the ass when he fights Raian who is now Strong and Skilled. Raian overpowers him with Kure techniques alone before using his own Removal to brutally finish Alan off.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: After 40 chapters on the Purgatory bench talking trash, he is brutally eviscerated by Raian right in front of the horrified referee in just two chapters before Raian sprints off to hunt down Edward Wu. The most you can say about him is that he served to introduce the reader to the, admittedly initially confusing, concept of Huisheng and that he beat Rei's record on the fastest win in Japanese combat sports history as Raian killed him before the fight was even called to start.
• Worf Effect: A strong user of Guihun gets torn apart by Raian to show not only the latter's improvement, but also what Raian looks like when he doesn't play around.

Jurota Arashiyama

"No, It is I who am immature. Strength that can be impacted by a set of rules is hardly strength at all. All this simply means I still have a long way to go."

The Gentle King (柔王, Jū-ō)

Age: 40

Over two decades ago, a young Judo prospect easily rose to the top of the 100+ KG division in the Judo world, winning gold three times in the Japanese nationals and taking the world title before he grew out of his teens. Not long after Jurota took the world title and was mired in despair from being Lonely at the Top, he learned of Meguro's budding talent and considered sticking around to one day be challenged by him, but in the same year, Meguro killed four of the runner-ups in the nationals in his rampage, the Boy M Massacre. Undeterred, Jurota ventured to become strong enough to beat someone who he thought finally would be a challenge for his Judo and left civilization entirely behind. Practicing Judo in the mountains for a full fifteen years, Jurota joined up with Purgatory, now better than he had ever been, seven years ago.

One of Purgatory's Two Kings and the top-ranking man in the A list, he is the eighth to fight against Masaki Hayami.

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• The Ace: He is a genius Judoka who from age 16 to 18 won the All Japan Judo Championships without any difficulty and at 19 won the World Judo Championships. He only got stronger from there after completing his fifteen years of training, mastering a style of Judo that allows him to throw someone with only a few of his fingers at speeds that can only be reacted to with a high-speed camera, all while being a Made of Iron 134 kilo powerhouse. Even Rolón speaks to and of him as an equal. He becomes one of just two people to ever defeat Kanoh Agito, proving that his reputation is far more than just talk.
• Attack Reflector: It doesn't matter if you grab him first, Jurota will throw his opponent before being thrown himself. Because the speed of his motions to go into a throw are too fast for even slow-motion replays, Jurota can afford to just wait for his opponent to attack and turn the tide on them.
• Awesome Anachronistic Apparel: He dresses up in an oldschool Hakama on top of his Judogi, and wears a pair of Geta too.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: When he does speak he shows an analytical mind. He is the one who decides to call a meeting between the competing teams after Naidan and Lu Tian were revealed to be Worms, realizing something is wrong.
• Badass Armfold: Keeps his hands folded over his chest under his gi. Not even Raian trying to blow his head off with a sucker punch has gotten him to take his hands out.
• Boring Yet Practical: In a world full of fantastic and unique fighting styles, Jurota practices Judo. However, after decades of practice and experience, he has perfected his technique to the point that he can throw someone as large as Masaki so quickly that not even Kazuo or Koga could see it. Gensai recognizes that Jurota has gained a similar level of mastery within his discipline as himself, with Takakaze taking that to mean that Jurota is a monster.
• Born Winner: In addition to innate talent for judo, Jurota is naturally massive, standing a full head above the second and third placers of the tournaments he competed in during his youth.
• Challenge Seeker: He is a true legend of Judo that effortlessly dunked on the 100kg division in both Japan and across the globe who afterwards went off the radar for two decades, training every waking moment and fighting underground matches, which he brazenly calls "sparring", implying even his seven-year Purgatory career was all for the hope of one day fighting "Boy M", an at-the-time Child Prodigy who was able to throw four lifelong world-class Judoka to death. Even if the latter doesn't rely only on judo and survives far past what he would have otherwise thanks to the rules, Jurota sees it as the perfect test of his art. Even in defeat he's greatly pleased that his expectations for a showdown with Masaki were more than met.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: He perfected a traditional martial art, in his case judo, to the point of supernatural prowess, letting him use Judo throws casually from any posture to spike his opponent against the floor before they can even blink. He can manipulate his and his opponent's center of gravity so well that he can throw people as if he was swinging them like they were a sword. His opponent Masaki, also a massive Judoka, surmises that Jurota is at least three times stronger than he is, and when he puts Jurota into a triangle choke, Jurota is able to effortlessly shove Masaki's legs out of the way with his palms alone.
• Confusion Fu: This is another danger of his newfound Judo style including clumsy but extremely powerful strikes into his fighting style; Because Jurota can throw people by skin contact, him just throwing out willy-nilly punches and kicks becomes a threat in it's own right and a perfect way to sneak in a surprise throw.
• Crippling Overspecialization: He's a Judoka who insists on only using Judo to fight, despite performing in an underground ring where anything goes, and almost never uses any moves outside of his throws. Rolón calls it both his flaw and his biggest strength: his way of fighting is far more difficult to counter than regular blows, but since they are also harder to regulate than strikes, this becomes a problem when used against Masaki. Masaki doesn't feel pain, is seemingly immune to concussions and won't stay down even after being thrown a dozen times without landing right, meaning Arashiyama will have trouble defeating Masaki without killing him and disqualifying himself.
  • His fight against Agito Kanoh in their Kengan match shows that after the tournament, Arashiyama figured out this weakness himself, sealing away his Judo-only fighting style and incorporating strikes alongside his prodigious throwing ability. It's very effective, to the point where Sayaka calls this his "rebirth" into "the ultimate MMA fighter," and his punches and kicks contribute heavily to his upset victory against Agito.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: His first fight in Purgatory after training in the wilds for over 15 years was basically him walking on stage, easily judo throwing Mumon Yuzaki to the floor to knock him out cold, and giving a cheeky smirk to the crowd. He also subjects Masaki to one of these since their level of Judo expertise is worlds apart.
• Difficult, but Awesome: His Swing technique, the result of him perfecting throws for over two decades, where he is able to throw someone using only his fingers, pinching their clothes or hooking it with one finger, or using the friction of his skin. This eliminates the time required to "grab" an opponent that other grapplers require, making his Judo throws far faster than even a jab.This technique is widely praised in-universe once revealed even by the strongest fighters. Ohma notes it to be a stronger version of his own redirection kata, Agito remarks that it is inimitable, Rolón claims that this move has no weakness, and perhaps most tellingly, Kuroki states that Jurota is on his level.
• Dissonant Serenity: His interest in the Boy M Murders straddles the line between disturbing, obsessive curiosity with a barehanded murder case within his own discipline and fading hope for one day meeting the Child Prodigy who eluded him on a more official stage.
  Masaki, trapping Jurota in a Triangle Choke: "Hey, is it just me or are you happy about this?"
• Ear Ache: Denoting his experience as a master judoka, Jurota has cauliflower ears^note Cauliflower ears are caused by blood building up in the cartilage of the ear from repeated impacts to it, such as getting thrown or tackled to the ground in grappling, Rugby or other full-contact sports, observed at least as far back as the Boxer of Quirinal, which vividly depicts an anatomically accurate case of "cauliflower ear".◊
• Entertainingly Wrong: He believes in Kazuo's Badass on Paper status. First, he reminds the team that Kazuo is Nogi's right-hand man and that even Toyoda approves of him, not knowing he is a pushover they like dumping work on. He also mistakenly sees Agito, Misasa, and Koga "kneeling" before him, unaware that Kanoh just fell from his match's injuries while talking to Kazuo and the others were helping him up. He also doesn't seem to get or care to understand Hayami and Meguro aren't the same person which isn't quite off since they are clones but still puzzles Hayami since Jurota refers to him as his dead "brother".
• Exhausted Eye Bags: Combined with Dreary Half-Lidded Eyes, making him look as perpetually tired as can be.
• Facepalm of Doom: Jurota has absolutely massive hands, to the point where they're larger than his own big head. His hands are the only part of him highlighted instead of a defining feature like his hair during Purgatory's meeting before the tournament. He can also use Judo throws in this manner; after dislocating Masaki's elbow, Jurota proceeds to throw him by simply palming his face like it was no more than a ball, sending Masaki spinning in place before being slammed onto his head and back by the momentum.
• Fatal Flaw: Downplayed, as even Rolón admits Jurota is simply unbeatable in a grappling match, but the man will exclusively use Judo and never strike^note While Judo is a martial art that originally had striking as part of it's regimen, competitions are usually settled by throws ever since Judo became an Olympic sport, due to striking and ground-grappling being seen as uninteresting for casual viewers by the Olympic Commitee. Jurota's fast and extremely throw-heavy style is basically made-to-order for dominating under modern Judo rules, while Masaki's with a bigger emphasis on ground-fighting, kicks and only using throws to set up a position where he can finish his opponent on the ground is more akin to the traditional martial art envisioned by Kanō Jigorō, even in an ideal position for a ground and pound. This fundamentally locks him out of a lot of advantages to be gained in a fight just like Sekibayashi but also means that he is unmatched in his field and capable of things within it even Masaki can't imagine, much less protect himself against. After his loss to Masaki, he acknowledges this weakness and starts incorporating punches into his fighting style.
• Foil: Is one to Meguro Masaki, being someone who was also an immensely skilled young Judoka and then left the public space while still very young, but without the madness and instead propelled by an obsession fueled by being Lonely at the Top in Judo.
  • Arguably one to his teammate, Yumigahama Hikaru. Both are massive, top-class fighters in Purgatory hailed as prodigies, but Hikaru lacks the forethought to properly integrate his moves into a synthesis, and is derided for shamelessly stealing techniques from his betters. Conversely, Jurota went into isolation for fifteen years, devoting himself solely to raising his Judo skills to even greater heights until he achieves a near-unstoppable attack in the Swing. Hikaru is even criticized in his match for having powerful yet wasteful movements, while Jurota perfected his throws such that his attacks are almost instantaneous and with zero waste in his motions.
• Get a Hold of Yourself, Man!: Restrains Liu with an orthodox judo hold of grabbing his collar and bicep when he goes apeshit and nearly turns the tournament into a full-on brawl and tells him to calm down.
• Graceful Loser: He is smiling as Masaki beats him unconscious, finally meeting a nemesis to his gentle way.
• The Hermit: After he got sick of already being the best judoka on the world stage long before his prime, he went into the Japanese outback and hunted his own food, meditated under waterfalls and practiced Judo drills against tree trunks. His character profile reveals he bought a private mountain to live on with his fight winnings.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: After dunking Masaki on his head for the umpteenth time, he finally figures out how to time Jurota's swing and uses the enormous momentum of getting thrown over his shoulder to target and shatter Jurota's collarbone with his elbow.
• Honor Before Reason: Jurota has made up his mind to face Masaki, his self-proclaimed "Nemesis", using only Judo, specifically Judo throws—in an underground match where anything goes. This puts him at a severe disadvantage when his throws fail to incapacitate Masaki, who has no such restrictions and is willing to use non-Judo moves to counter Jurota. Even when Masaki breaks his right shoulder, thus neutralizing his "Swing", Jurota continues to stick to his Judo and attempts to throw Masaki with only one hand. This allows Masaki to counter with a throw of his own and finish him with a beatdown.
• I Am Not Left-Handed: Actively has to hold back on the power of his throws to not turn his opponent into a thin red slurry when he slams them into the ring. With his Swing this usually isn't an issue because his throws are so fast that people can't brace themselves in time and thus get knocked out instantly, but it also means he has basically no way to put Masaki down for good - He tries to use a Judo choke on him to get around this issue at one point but Masaki counters this by headbutting Jurota to get him off his back.
• Kind Hearted Cat Lover: One omake depicts him gently stroking a stray cat's neck with one finger while having a break during his training, while another cat is sleeping on his leg.
• The Lancer: He is one of Purgatory's Two Kings, alongside Rolón Donaire, the winner of the "Ultimate Gladiator Playoffs", and is universally respected for both his strength and personality. Terashi calls him the strongest of the A-listers and Rolón's greatest challenger.
• A Lesson in Defeat: Losing to Masaki got Arashiyama out of his angst about being too strong. Despite dominating the whole time Masaki was still able to perform one judo throw on him even if he needed to wear out Arashiyama with non-judo moves. This made Arashiyama realized he was conceited into sticking to judo even when it clearly doesn't work and perform bolder maneuvers instead of textbook throws.
• Lightning Bruiser: At 202cm and weighing in at 134 kilos, Jurota's a Judo master the size of a mountain bear and already the biggest in the 100kg+ Judo division in his late teens whose intense and single-minded training has result in his transitions into throws being so lightning fast that high-speed cameras struggle to get a shot of him grabbing his opponent. Masaki, a lifelong Judoka and clone of Judo Child Prodigy Meguro, can't even soften his falls in time as Jurota dribbles him on the concrete ring like he was no more than a basketball.
  Rolón Donaire: First the grab, then the throw. The time lag between the grab and the throw is the biggest weakness of a throw. But Arashiyama can throw without grabbing. Thus, he has no weaknesses.
• Living Legend:
  • Due to his relatively short career in competitive Judo and then dropping completely off the map for fifteen years before joining Purgatory, he's a less famous version of the trope since he only competed once on the international stage, but still remains a household name among competitive Judoka. An expy of French Judo 100kg+ World Champion Teddy Riner recognizes Jurota's name when it's brought up to him in conversation, but sheepishly admits he's never met or fought him, and Teddy would prefer it to stay that way. Within Purgatory he's a major fan favorite like Wakatsuki is for the Kengan Association, with a lot of cheering and a quiet respectful sendoff when he's knocked out by Masaki and rushed to the infirmary.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Despite being the one to bring up the Worm tattoos at a meeting between the two teams, he's never heard of the organization besides rumors and didn't know it was their insignia.
• Logical Weakness: You'd think he might struggle with gaining a firm grip on someone not having any clothes to grab, but it's immediately subverted because of Jurota being just that good at gaining a grasp on his opponent's center of gravity by this point in his career that he can throw someone from just the friction of their skin brushing against his. His Swing can also be timed to land a devastating Counter-Attack on him through his own momentum, but anyone who isn't named Masaki wouldn't get the chance to experience the technique enough for that before their brains would be liquified by his devastating throws.
• Messy Hair: His hair is unkempt, having bangs on one side of his face and sticking up on other parts of his head. He also has a light Perma-Stubble, contributing to his messy appearance.
• Made of Iron: A throw from the bottom mount from Masaki, followed by soccer kicks, a headbutt and a flying knee to the face don't even get Arashiyama winded, with him responding with a throw of his own against each of them before clearing his nose of blood while Masaki is down. He doesn't even make a sound when Masaki breaks his clavicle with an elbow, and is ultimately put away by Masaki repeatedly hammerfisting and elbowing his face into an unrecognizable mess after throwing Jurota on his head.
  • Against Agito, he easily walks through several of his wince-inducing punches and even tanks a Dragon Shot followed by a flying knee before immediately retaliating with a brutal throw.
• Nerves of Steel: Doesn't even flinch or take his hands out of his hakama when Raian attempts to sucker-punch him before the sixth match. Lu Tian of all people stepping in to block the punch implies that Raian was the one in danger in that situation, and by the time Jurota has his match it becomes very clear why he was so nonchalant.
• Nice Guy: Subtle, but still there: He has a very respectful, yet archaic, way of speaking, doesn't get mad at his rival even when it seemed like he was provoking him when saying his stance didn't matter, and is shown to be very friendly with the other gladiators. He even gets mad at Alan's death despite not knowing him; granted the way he died wasn't dignified by any means. During his fight with Agito, he apologizes for tearing his bodysuit with his insane grip strength to throw him and lets Agito take a few seconds to make an improvised belt out of his Future Spandex's sleeves. His epithet also literally means Gentle King.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: His battle against Masaki is basically a montage reel's worth of godly Judo moves no other man on earth could execute, but Masaki's freak genetics means he is straight-up immune to anything Judo-related short of being lethally thrown or being choked out. Despite a mythological effort on Jurota's part, he just can't make a man who Feels No Pain stay down while abiding his own code of honor and the Purgatory rules, where killing his opponent is not an option (and going by his general disposition implies he wouldn't have tried to kill him even if he was allowed to). In the aftermath, his fellow Gladiators admit that Jurota's defeat is probably the biggest victory for Kengan's side just yet, and Masaki's teammates treat him as a Giant Killer who caused an unprecedented upset for winning against someone he self-admittedly described as at least three times stronger than himself.
• Punch-Clock Villain: Given Jurota basically has no interest in anything but fighting and being amicable guy several of the other gladiators get along with outside the ring, he's only really a villain in that he's one of the thirteen guys fighting to merge the Kengan Association into Purgatory.
• Required Secondary Powers: Jurota's huge hands and fingers, even for his size, would give him a much easier time gaining a firm grip on his opponent for his Swings than a more diminutive man's.
• The Rival: Jurota made one for himself in Meguro Masaki, going as far as to leave society behind when the boy's murder spree occurred, training in the wild and entering the martial arts underworld in hopes of one day meeting him in a match. He gets his wish in the 8th round of the tournament.
• Spiking the Camera: During the meeting before the seventh round, he is curiously either staring at Masaki or straight into the panel's viewpoint.◊
• Strong and Skilled: Throws Masaki around so hard and fast that not only does it take until the ref's count of 8 for him to get up again, but Koga or Kazuo don't even manage to see the throw. This is because he is skilled enough to cut out the need to grab his opponent before throwing them, using just a finger or two, or the friction of his skin to effortlessly throw them. He can do this perfectly with seemingly every single Judo throw, including unorthodox ones like using a shoulder throw with his opponent's leg right after Masaki kicks him in the face.
• Super-Speed: Can chuck around men of his own size so fast that even slow-motion cameras can't catch the movement at all. It's not strictly him being just fast, but also that he has essentially eliminated all preparatory motions from his Judo, meaning that the moment he touches you, you're already being thrown.
• Took a Level in Badass: Having finally faced his rival during the Purgatory vs. Kengan play offs, Jurota no longer limits himself to judo and is willing to mix strikes to his throws. While against Masaki he would still rely on judo form and refrain from killing him, when he fights Agito he shows just how crazy his strength is, by breaking out of Kanoh's armbar just by simply lifting him with his overextended arm and hurl him away. Though its played with, as Ohma isn't sure how much is Jurota actually getting stronger during the two year timeskip and how much is Jurota finally showing his true, unrestricted power.
• Training from Hell: Did this in the mountains for fifteen whole years after winning the World Championship in Judo as a teenager, complete with meditating under waterfalls and practicing throws on trees. Despite the staggering amount of time and effort involved, Jurota describes it in the span of one page like he went out for a short hike and came back from it "sharper than ever", and not a venture of a lifetime that made him one of the greatest grapplers in the world.
  Jurota's narration: I bid the Judo sphere farewell, abandoned the world, and devoted myself to training. One year... two years... three years... I had no one to turn to but myself. Sometimes I questioned myself, sometimes I answered, and questioned again until that day came. Six years... Seven years... Eight years...
• Unskilled, but Strong: He is not at all this with his Judo, where he qualifies as Strong and Skilled. However, when he starts punching Agito during their match, Ohma internally notes that his form is "all over the place," but all the same, his punches are heavy - heavy enough to put even the former Fang of Metsudo himself on the back foot briefly.
• Unstoppable Force Meets Immovable Object: An interesting case as Arashiyama is both an unstoppable and an immovable object, standing at a summit of Judo mastery that fellow immovable object Masaki can't ever hope to defeat on his own. Masaki ends up using Jurota's own unstoppable power when they're both at their physical limits to shatter Jurota's right collarbone, rendering Jurota both stoppable and movable.
• Villain Respect: He's only a villain in the sense that he's on Purgatory's side, but he openly respects Masaki Hayami and compliments his technique, while also acknowledging his own weaknesses that stem from adhering to Judo.
• Visual Pun:
  • His last name is one of the cornerstone Judo Throws, the Yama Arashi, with the kanji reversed. He ends up dumping Masaki on the back of his head with said throw three times at the start of the match just to further invoke the trope.
  • In the brief time before the nature of Jurota's throws is elaborated on, the sound-effect used in the panel for his throws is 振り, an onomatopoeia for the sound of something flying through the air. "振り", or Swing, is actually the name of the move, and it was used as a sound effect to denote that what was happening was too fast to be understood by anyone on the Kengan side at first.
• When All You Have Is a Hammer…: Only engages his opponents with Judo; Rolón points out it's his weakness as he won't use strikes when it's more advantageous, (such as ground-and-pound when he's in Masaki's guard, where he instead opts to steadily and firmly make his way through said guard, only to be thrown and very briefly reversed by Masaki from the bottom when he gets Full Mount) but also Jurota's greatest strength since he perfected his Judo to the point where he is outright unbeatable in both standing and ground grappling.
  Masaki Hayami: "Arashiyama, you're unusually strong, but did you really think you can throw me with one arm? Thanks for sticking to Judo until the bitter end, but now I win."
• Willfully Weak: He has to go out of his way to regulate how powerful his throws are against his opponents because he is worried that he may very well kill them by slamming them into the concrete arena too hard, especially when the wide variety of styles makes it difficult to know if Jurota's opponent is even able to protect themselves from his throws. This ends up playing against him when he faces Hayami, who is able to get up continuously from his throws until the risk of him dying from further attacks becomes hard to gauge, due to his utter lack of reaction to any damage. Hayami recognises that if it was a Judo or Kengan match, he would never had stood a chance.
• World's Best Warrior: He's the single best Judoka, if not best grappler overall, established so far, due to perfecting an otherwise normal martial art to such a knife's edge that even Kuroki sees him as an equal. He swapped to the Kengan Association after the tournament and hasn't lost a match since, going 15-0 in the span of two years. He ups that to 16-0 in an extremely hard-fought battle against Agito.
• Worthy Opponent: He and Agito definitely saw each other as such from the team benches during the Tournament. In the prelims to the Real Fighting Championship, they get to test their mettle for one of the spots in the eight-man bracket and confirm it for one another.
  Agito: "Brilliant. You're brilliant, Arashiyama."
• You're Insane!: Ohma calls him this verbatum during the Real Fighting Champion prelims for his ability to throw people and control the center of gravity still being completely unmatched after a lengthy timeskip.

Nicolas Le Banner

"I won't let this chance pass me by. The Grim Reaper is not so kind. It's a good night for you to die, monsiuer."

The Grim Reaper of Paris (パリの死神 , Pari no Shinigami)

Age: 29

A former French special forces soldier, the younger brother of the French former heavyweight kickboxing world champion, and an extremely popular A-list gladiator. He is the ninth to fight in the tournament against Seishu Akoya.

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• Action Survivor: One of his special talents as a soldier involved surviving seemingly impossible missions. This ability came in handy when the original Nicolas killed their entire squad in a fit of pique while under orders from an anti-establishment wing of the government.
• Always Someone Better: His reaction time is slightly slower than Akoya, making his poison less effective since he can't react as fast as him when the paralysis sets in or he recovers.
• The Berserker: When Nicolas fights to kill he throws away his laid back demeanor and fights as ferociously as Akoya. Even when he is collected he can't stop himself from attacking a downed opponent.
• Berserker Tears: Sported these when he rushed to confront the real Nicolas Le Banner.
• Blood Knight: Even before we see him fight, he's already characterized as ruthless, out for blood, and completely uncaring about the matter of life-or-death, his epithet being the most menacing-sounding besides maybe Alan Wu to match that way of carrying himself. He can't even fight at his fullest at all if he's not fighting to kill, something which Akoya is more than pleased to indulge him in.
  • He would rather fight under Kengan rules than Purgatory rules, seeing the fights in Purgatory as a sport with no killing. He later wonders why Naidan doesn't just kill Ryuki and get the fight over with, and needs to be reminded by Fei that killing is not permitted under Purgatory rules.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: He has a poor win loss ratio and doesn't seem to care. Despite this, his teammates don't talk down to him and Rolón mentions that Nicolas, while fickle, is one of their very best when push comes to shove. Terashi finally puts two and two together during Nicolas' fight and acknowledges that Nicolas' true potential is only shown in a deathmatch.
• Broken Pedestal: Jean-Luc, the man impersonating Nicolas Le Banner, was an army friend of the real Nicolas. Jean admired Nicolas for his strength, looks, and compassion...until Nicolas killed their unit and innocent civilians in a psychotic frenzy and then attempted to kill him. Jean killed him in self-defense and then deluded himself into thinking he was the real Nicolas Le Banner and that he killed Jean-Luc.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: He immediately notices when Medel is about to get knocked out by Kaolan despite playing around with a butterfly and barely paying attention to his fight, and is the only one to notice Ryuki's murderous intent when Yumigahama slaps Koga in the liver. He also makes jokes when Naidan and Lu Tian reveal themselves to be part of the Worm, while everyone else is shocked and contemplating what to do. Naidan's last words are to warn Liu not to trust Nicolas, implying he had already figured out that Nicolas is an impersonator. He has also managed to create his own unique fighting style based off of a combination of Fencing, Savate and Karate called Sahate, and despite the oddly put-together style he manages to eviscerate his opponent with it in short order.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: He's apparently struggling in the A-list with a win-lose record of 4-9, and has even been demoted to B-tier before. When his team were talking about learning different martial arts from foreign countries, his contribution to the conversation was about how his favourite Indian curry restaurant is run by a Pakistani. He is later seen distracted and playing around with a butterfly instead of focusing on Medel's fight, and when both Naidan and Lu Tian reveal their Worm tattoos, he asks if that is because they are a couple.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Very fond of the relatively outdated French swear 'zut' and 'zut alors', which is an expletive used in the same vein as 'damn' or 'fuck'.
• Combat Pragmatism: Nicolas tends to commit fouls such as hitting before the fight starts and attacking a downed opponent. Among other things, he kicks Akoya in the head with a Sokutou while he's down, but he lays off the moment Alisa warns him.
• Cool Shades: His first appearance has him wearing a pair, all while yawning in disinterest. He keeps them on while watching the tournament take place.
• Creepily Long Arms. Downplayed. Nicolas has a 191cm wingspan on a 182cm Middleweight's frame and abusing the reach this gives him with his fencing jabs and Pressure Point attacks are a key part of his gameplan, but his arms aren't nearly as freaky-looking as someone like Terashi's or Xia's.
• Death Glare: His eyes are downright terrifying whenever he has a serious expression on his face; it's telling that he is portrayed every bit as intimidating as Akoya despite Nicolas' nonchalance.
• Dissonant Serenity: He is the only Purgatory gladiator who maintains a smile and is clearly enjoying himself even when his teammate Alan Wu is literally torn in half and brutally killed in the middle of the ring.
  Nicolas, to Akoya when they both step up to the plate: Zut, you've got a mean face. Come on, loosen up! This is a festival, remember!
• Failed Execution, No Sentence: Played with. Jean-Luc's technically not the one responsible for the genocide, even if he seems to have enjoyed it in hindsight, but the original Nicolas is a wanted war criminal for the incident and targeted by the French military for execution and so is Jean-Luc due to no one knowing he took Nicolas' place, but due to being part of an underground fighting league and his residence in Japan, he's out of their reach for the foreseeable future and so they turn to people like Terashi to get the job done.
• The Fashionista: He's a French Pretty Boy, so it comes with the territory. At one point when doubt about the straightforwardness of the competition comes up, he accuses Terashi of being a bore, which he says is a shame because the masked giant otherwise has his fashion sense on point.
• Foil: To Setsuna Kiryu, an attractive fighter with terrifying martial arts and bloodlust with an obsession to their rival going as far as seeing them as the center of the universe. A big difference is that Jean-Luc killed Nicolas in their fated battle instead of Ohma beating Kiryu, leading to Jean impersonating Nicolas to cope with the mental breakdown.
• Four Eyes, Zero Soul: The real Nicolas needed glasses and joyfully murdered his squad and civilians. Jean-Luc uses shades for fashion and as a memento of that event.
• French Jerk:
  • French and not a very nice guy. He mocks Hikaru over his bloodied nose after Carlos punched him and says Hikaru's being called out by name when Misasa enters the ring and taunts the big guy by referring to him as a bitch. He is also the only one to call Hikaru a "good guy" after he loses to Misasa. He also calls Dongcheng's rage after Naidan's death an "embarrassment".
  • When the meeting between the two teams occurs without the two teams consulting those they represent, Alisa immediately goes to Nicolas for an explanation due to his penchants for fouls and other rule violations in the ring. In his fight with Akoya, he shows off a variety of ways to abuse the knockdown rule.
• Gratuitous French: Throws some French into his sentences now and then, swearing in French as well.
• Instant Expert: Heavily Downplayed, especially when compared to fellow gladiator Carlos Medel, but Nicolas' Karate knowledge comes from a mere 6 months of online classes, yet he is able to effectively combine it with his other martial arts of Savate and fencing to create his own unique style.
• Insult Friendly Fire: When Naidan and Lu Tian reveal their Worm tattoos, he quips at Alan about their lack of taste. Alan being with the Worm on behalf of the Wu clan tells him to shut up or he'll kill Nicolas.
• Lack of Empathy: He is superficially nice to his fellow gladiators but doesn't even get why he should be upset at Naidan's death. Even Fei, who is similarly calm, rationalises his behaviour as death being an occupational hazard. Nicolas couldn't care in the least.
  Nicolas: Hmm? Well yeah, Naidan was an okay guy, but who really cares? I mean, he's dead.
• Locked Out of the Loop: He doesn't seem to know anything about the Worm, so he sees their centipede tattoos as just tattoos with really bad taste.
• Logical Weakness: Both exploit and is victim of the attributes of the Reaper's poison. Akoya's impenetrable defense is not made to stop pressure point so his guard lowers every time paralysis kicks in. But since Nicolas can't tell when and how long the paralysis sets in he needs to react to Akoya sudden recovery and he is the only one with a faster reaction time than Nicolas. It also doesn't work on someone with an advanced mastery of foresight since they can predict his attack so his precise hit aren't gonna land.
• Loophole Abuse: He's all too willing to exploit the fact that while Purgatory rules forbid attacking downed opponents, there's nothing in the rules prohibiting him from attacking while he's in a downed position.
• Made of Iron: He takes some awful hits from Akoya, including hammerfists to the back of the head, spinning kicks to the head, taking out a chunk of his shoulder with his teeth and a dozen headbutts, but keeps fighting without any hindrance to his performance. Justified since he's a former special forces soldier who lived through hellish warzones. He finally goes down when Rolón nearly blows his guts out through his back with a punch to the solar plexus.
• Near-Villain Victory: At one point in the fight where he's gaining the lead, Nicolas prepares to gouge out Akoya's throat with two fingers on each hand while he was being grappled, only for Akoya to shock him out of doing it by biting his shoulder.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: He is the younger brother of an Expy of Jérôme Le Banner, a four-time world champion French heavyweight kickboxer known as the King without a Crown^note Le Roi sans Coronne.because of his complete dominance of the sport despite never winning the K1 Grand Prix, considered to be the highest honor a kickboxer can earn. Unlike his namesake and brother, though, Nicolas is of a relatively middleweight-looking build at 182cm and 80kg. Or atleast, the original Nicolas was. Jean-Luc has no such celebrity resemblance.
• Non-Indicative Difficulty: Statistic wise he is the weakest fighter excluding Terashi that has no record in the A rank. However it is because he constantly breaks the rules and has no interest in fighting seriously if he can't kill his opponent. His reaction time, nerve strikes, reach, dynamism^note As in how much his prowess can surge if he's allowed to fight in the way he prefers; to the death. and enough striking power to rattle even Akoya when he gets a clean hit in make him a really problematic opponent for anyone.
• Offhand Backhand: He decks Akoya in the face with the back of his hand for refusing a handshake. This is actually a cover for striking a facial nerve, causing the vision in his left eye to briefly shut off.
• Outside-Context Problem: Nicolas is a notable outlier because he doesn't really have anything to do with the Worm, he's just a shell-shocked special forces soldier impersonating his Ax-Crazy best friend in the army, in such a way that happens to remarkably resembles the Westward Wu Clan's Huisheng. Naidan warns Liu not to trust him.
• Pressure Point: Nicolas can temporarily paralyze nerves with precise strikes. He can't accurately predict when the paralysis will set in or when the target will recover but the results of his seemingly harmless-looking pokes and spear hands are devastating.
• Pretty Boy: He's relatively lithe and pleasing to the eye, with earrings and a hairstyle that looks like it takes a bathtub's worth of products a day to maintain. This makes him quite popular as a fighter, especially with the female fans.
• Protagonist-Centered Morality: An unusual example in that Jean-Luc applied this trope to the original Nicolas Le Banner. He admired Nicolas due to being his best friend in the army and for his high levels of charisma and combat skills. This caused Jean-Luc to consider Nicolas to be the protagonist of a story, but Nicolas’ psychotic murder of their unit and innocent civilians caused Jean-Luc to lose respect for him and killed Nicolas in self-defense. The combination of killing his best friend and discovering that Nicolas was far from the heroic protagonist he thought he was caused Jean-Luc to delude himself into thinking that he was the true Nicolas Le Banner and that he was the protagonist of his story.
• Punny Name: He technically has Niko as part of his name in Japanese^note Nicolas is rendered as ニコラ, or 'Nikora', though this is a Red Herring as Nicolas has no known connection to the Worm or the Inside.
• Razor-Sharp Hand: Subverted. Unlike Gensai Kuroki, whose spearhand can slam straight through concrete like it was butter, Nicolas' use of the spearhand is a lot more down-to-earth, targeting sensitive areas like the Adam's apple, the temple and individual nerve endings for devastating effect and using his fists against tougher parts of the body.
• Red Herring: The sudden revelation that he’s not the real Nicolas would seem to imply that he’s another Worm infiltrator, or possibly even the Tiger’s Vessel. However, it is subsequently revealed that, in the case of Nicolas, his impersonation is completely unrelated to the Worm and is instead Jean-Luc's way to cope with the loss of the original Nicolas regardless of the fact that it makes him a wanted man and is eerily close to the MO of lower-ranked Worm infiltrators.
• Royal Rapier: Similar to Yumigahama, he has found a way to incorporate weapon techniques into his fighting style, in particular fencing, alongside Savate^note A martial art similar to modern Kickboxing invented by 16th century southern French sailors fought in boots and with a limited array of legal kicks. The boots and focus on hand-fighting were because Savateurs often fought on the decks of sailing ships, making balance very important. It was originally used without fist strikes due to the closed fist being the only body part that counted as a lethal weapon under French law at the time, but fisticuffs eventually became the standard with time. and Karate. He uses rapidfire jabs thrown from a fencing stance to open up his opponent's defenses for more dangerous attacks. Unlike Yumigahama, who Rolón considers to use those techniques ineffectively, Nicolas' body shape, particularly his long arms make his adaptation of fencing very effective.
• Shared Signature Move: He does the very same "hands raised" V-pose his older brother used to do after a win, but Nicolas instead does it while entering the ring. He also does this to hide the fact that he's about to gouge his opponent's neck with two fingers on both hands.
• Super-Reflexes: He has a reaction time of 0.078 seconds, just four thousandths of a second slower than Akoya's.
• Super-Speed: He can smack Akoya in the face faster than he can react, and attacks with an oppressive speed and range that makes him a complete menace to fight against if he takes the initiative. Due to being a Middleweight and thus way more energy-efficient than a hulking heavyweight like Akoya or Yumigahama, this speed never decreases and combined with his reflexes, he is frequently able to sneak a lightning-fast attack in on his opponent even when Nicolas is on the back foot or being knocked down.
• That Man Is Dead: Throws away his previous identity as Jean-Luc to become a Nicolas he could reconcile with his idealistic view of him.
• Token Evil Teammate: At one point, he complains about the Purgatory's "no-killing" rule, and demonstrates a lack of loyalty and concern for human life. Naidan, a high-ranking member of The Worm, says that he cannot be trusted. It is later revealed that Nicolas used to be a member of a secret military force who became a fugitive and fled to Japan after massacring a bunch of innocent civilians. However, it turns out that the man we now know as Nicolas isn't the real Nicolas, but a former teammate of his that took Nicolas's identity after killing him in self-defense. Still a really nasty French Jerk.
• Trademark Favorite Food: French salmon pie (Tourte aux abâts de saumon).
• Weak, but Skilled: Being a middleweight in an openweight fighting league, Nicolas lacks in power, but his specific set of skills allows him to take on anyone. He is able to punch pound-for-pound with Akoya and skirt right through his unbreakable defense, something none of his opponents have ever done before.
  Nicolas: "A question for you, Monsieur Akoya. What is the difference between a middleweight and a heavyweight? And don't say weight. The answer is striking power. Now, what stays the same for a middleweight and a heavyweight?"
  Nicolas punches Akoya square in the jaw, dropping him to the floor.
  Nicolas: "The answer is endurance! The human body's ability to take punishment simply peaks above a certain weight, with some exceptions of course. What I mean is a middleweight like me's striking power is more than enough to kill.
• You Are Already Dead: His nerve strikes have delayed effects, allowing him to sabotage the defenses of opponents due to how unpredictable their timing is and how he can, from his opponent's perspective, essentially shut off parts of their body at will. This, combined with his incredible speed and reach, means that most orthodox defenses in a fight are nigh-useless against him because your arms might just shut off from blocking against his Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs slightly wrong and be left with no way to defend against his more brutal attacks.

Liu Dongcheng

"Quiet it down, fresh meat. You're about to see something good."

Three Demon Fists: Serpent (三鬼拳大蛇, Sangiken Daija)

Age: 28

An veteran A-list gladiator and Kung Fu prodigy. Born deep into the Taiwanese martial arts sphere on his father's side and the Guangdong Chinese martial arts sphere on his mother's side, Liu received extensive tutorlage in eight styles of Kung Fu from his father and his mother's family, but quickly found that his family didn't love him but his talent and wanted to mold him into a martial arts Puppet King for their own factions. Wanting no part of becoming a political tool for either side, he ran away from home to Japan and instead went into the underground martial arts world and joined Purgatory not long after Idemitsu started it at age 13. As a result, he is the longest active of the current Three Demon Fists.

Liu is the tenth to fight for his team in the tournament against Tokumichi Tokuno'o.

---

• Achilles in His Tent: After Naidan's death, Dongcheng storms away from the arena, clearly unhappy about his team holding him back from taking his anger out on Ryuki. When he returns, Rolón offers to substitute him out but he declines, determined to see the tournament through.
• A House Divided: His family on his mother's and father's sides are both big entities in the Chinese and Taiwanese martial arts scenes, with all the political tension that implies, and Liu was talented enough that both sides wanted him on their side regardless of his feelings on the matter. Having absolutely no interest in becoming a martial arts Puppet King, he ran away from home and joined Purgatory in his early teens during a particularly rebellious phase.
• Animal Motifs: Snakes. He matches their viscious temper with his own, one of his Signature Moves is a Kung Fu principle to disperse the opponent's power named after a snake, and his Pint-Sized Powerhouse status and surprising toughness for his size is rather like how venomous snakes can bring down far larger and on-paper stronger animals than themselves as soon as they can sink their teeth in.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: His gameplan against Tokuno'o once he gets his head into gear. Since his opponent will inevitably try to go through his attacks to grapple him, Liu ends up just barraging him with small attacks to make Tokuno'o guard his head only to empty his lungs and nearly knock him out cold on his feet with a perfectly set up One Inch Punch to the diaphragm.
  ATATATATATATATATATATATA!
  Sayaka & Jerry: "H-He's dishing out an entire arsenal of Chinese Martial Arts!!!!!" "WOW!!! WOW!!!"
• Attack Reflector:Hua Jin^note Snake Force in Chinese, Change Of Force in Japanese allows him to divert the force of strikes and slams by going limp the moment he gets hit and then leaving him several options to get out of the attack:
  • Letting himself go flying without falling or losing his balance to disperse the impact.
  • Diffuse the power through his feet by stomping the ground and maneuvering around his opponent in the process in a lightning-fast display of footwork.
  • Using all the power and momentum in either or both of his and his opponent's attacks to deliver an incredibly heavy attack, literally bending the opponent's power right back at them while taking no damage from the opponent's otherwise clean hit in a way that remarkably resembles Ohma's Demonsbane. In the final exchange, he uses this after missing his own high kick to kick off the floor as Tokuno'o is socking him in the jaw and launch a kick powerful enough to remove Tokuno'o from the ring entirely.
• Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy:
  • The most veteran kung fu master in Purgatory and comes out as cocky at first until Naidan's death. Given he actually wins his match fair and square, against a truly fearsome opponent that put him to the test, unlike several of the on-paper stronger Purgatory fighters, any confidence on his part is well-earned in hindsight.
  • As a kid, he was way worse due to his prodigious talent and strength for his age, causing him to tell Idemitsu to put him against the strongest man in Purgatory on his debut... Which turned out to be a young, pissed-looking Rolón Donaire, who subsequently handed Liu the first Curb-Stomp Battle of his life.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: While not as open of a Jerkass as Alan Wu or Yumigahama, he has a level of contempt for some of his other teammates. He attempts to put up a front of being a perfectly calm fighter in front of his enemies, but when The Falcon comes back to his team after a close win, Liu sarcastically congratulates him for a "sucky last minute victory", clapping while he does so. Liu straight up tells Nitoku to just leave because he's a "busy man" and wants to go kill Ryuki as soon as possible in a childish attempt at revenge for Naidan.
• Boring, but Practical: The Horse Stance isn't particularly useful by itself in a fight and is more of a way to train the legs and core to the point where pretty much every martial arts school in China has their own take on it. Liu's is so stable and strong that he can stop Nitoku's tackles dead in their tracks with his Horse Stance.
• Borrowed Catchphrase: Since his mother is Cantonese, he also uses the phrase "Moumantai" - a favorite phrase of Xia Ji.
• Born Unlucky: He's abysmally bad at Mahjong, whether it be using Chinese or Japanese rules, to the point where Nicolas and Naidan, who only started playing once they moved to Japan, mock him for it.
• Blood Knight: He's one of the few underground fighters who avert this. Basically, it appears he will only fight if it seems that it's worth it. He acknowledges that Purgatory's fights are not real combat, which is something he likes. After seeing his teammates needing medical attention, even when they win, it only gives him cold feet about actually participating. He thinks only idiots fight to the death.
• Calling Shotgun: He gets somewhat annoyed at Naidan skipping the line before the fifth fight after Liu had already volunteered to go.
  "Huh? But I called dibs! Listen man, you have to respect dibs..."
• Child Prodigy:
  • His family saw he had the talent to make a name for himself and his father trained him at a young age to become a kung fu master of eight martial arts. He mastered five and while immature his mastery is so great he can defeat heavyweights like Naidan and go toe to toe with Rolón.
  • He has been part of Purgatory since it's very beginning, meaning he entered and presumably won his first underground match at age thirteen, a full year before Imai Cosmo choked out his first Kengan opponent.
• Combat Pragmatist: He only actively starts volunteering himself as a fighter once all the Kengan fighters he was personally worried about (Julius, Kaolan, Agito, etc.) have already gone, leaving only opponents he feels confident he can defeat. He rings out Tokuno'o after the latter tanks the vast majority of his attacks.
  • When Koga asks him how to get out of a rear naked choke he suggests either biting the arm or break the fingers.
• Culture Equals Costume: Wears a black Taiji uniform with white pants. This sticks out because he is more or less the only fighter on both sides who doesn't have his muscles on display at all; even Fei who mirrors this with a white Taiji and black pants strips down his top when he's about to fight for a more practical Changshan vest.
• Determinator: During his fight with Tokuno'o, he battles through multiple concrete-shattering slams, and even breaks his own arm to get out of an armbar and continue fighting.
  As long as I win today, Moumantai.
• Deliberate Injury Gambit: He risks permanent damage to his armbarred arm by using it as a lever for his Fa Jin punch to Tokuno'o's midsection, but would have been looking at a loss if Tokuno'o had come back to consciousness before he could act.
• Dirty Coward: He keeps coming up with excuses not to fight, and especially not to fight strong foes. He ducks out of volunteering against Kaolan by claiming his estranged (and still alive, for that matter!) father's will forbids him from going first in the tournament. He was also very eager to fight the diminutive Misasa before someone informed him he's a Fang, after which he immediately backed out.
• The Dutiful Son: His father was a big deal in the Taiwan martial arts scene and trained Liu from early childhood in Kung Fu. Subverted in that his father is alive and instead of being a dutiful son Liu ran away and joined the martial arts underground to avoid being used as a political tool by his family.
• Endurance Duel: The first part of his match turns into this, with Nitoku eating devastating strikes he wouldn't be able to defend against anyway from Liu only to grapple and throw him on the floor in return.
• Everyone Has Standards: He'll rather his teammate loses the match than cripple themselves permanently or murder someone. Even when he goes into his Unstoppable Rage after Naidan's death, he still doesn't try to kill his opponent Tokuno'o or even fight dirty, and instead only plans on killing the culprit, Ryuki.
• Fatal Flaw: He requires both personal motivation and coolheadedness to really perform as the absolutely horrifically strong Kung Fu master he's hyped up to be, but those two are hard to mix, making Liu very vulnerable to psychological factors in fighting such as provocation and seemingly illogical strategies.
• Foil: To Koga, they are both arrogant young prodigies with much more empathy than they let on. During Naidan's match with Ryuki both are trying to reason with the fighters by yelling at them that they should surrender instead of killing each other and rush to their friends' aid when the fight ends. The main difference between them is that Liu Dongcheng is a veteran to underground fighting who polished his talent while Koga is a rookie who only started tapping into his potential.
• Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: Constantly yells variations of this from his corner during Naidan's match with Ryuki, telling him that killing his opponent will only make him lose the match.
• Game-Breaking Injury: Downplayed. Tokuno'o tears Liu's right arm's ligaments in two places with an armbar; Liu then breaks his own arm to escape the hold. He still manages to win the match afterwards and the rest of his skills seem unaffected by having a useless arm. He does admit that he'll probably have to take some time off to recuperate after the match.
• Gathering Steam: He can't fight to the best of his ability without taking some bad hits first, on top of his temper occassionally controlling him instead of inspiring him. Medel and Naidan basically describe him as clockwork; He can fall apart or break easily but when all his gears are meshing together and turning, he's in a higher dimension and borderline unbeatable; Tokuno'o goes from keeping the fight dead even with a very unsustainable strategy in the long term to getting straight-up bullied by Liu when they're on their feet and all his grappling attempts getting systematically pulled apart at the seams by powerful Counter Attacks.
  Ohma: "Any more than this is dangerous. [Liu] got over it; he went into top gear without batting an eye."
• The Gift: This dude might very welll be on his way to be the next Kaku Kaioh; He is one of the clearest examples of finely honed talent in the series; Even in his tween years, Liu was incredibly skilled and strong despite his scrawny size and complex techniques like Hua Jin and Fa Jin are basically second nature to him. In terms of sheer potential, he's arguably one of the most talented fighters in the entire series, but even with all his experience, he is occasionally hintered from using his gifts to their full potential by his temper.
• Gonk: When he's being punched and uses Hua Jin, his entire body including his facial muscles go limp which occasionally looks really goofy, like Liu's face is turning into dough for a split-second to absorb the impact.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Liu's biggest flaw, according to his teammates. He is quick to anger as seen by his rampage after Naidan died and fighters from both sides imply that he loses most of his chances to win if he cant keep his temper in check, due to his small build and his style meaning that he has to win by punching above his weightclass via his skills. In the past, he was even easily beaten by Lu Tian who hadn't yet revealed any of his actual abilities because he got pissed and then baited out of the ring. Medel, the best striker on their team, mentions that when Liu gets his head into gear he can't lay a finger on him.
• Hidden Depths: He's more into Black Sabbath than poetry, telling Tokuno'o he prefers Zakk Wylde to Oscar Wilde when he keeps quoting poetry at him while trying to talk him out of his Revenge. He's also able to play the erdu, or Chinese violin.
  "I hate blabbermouths almost as much as I hate poets."
• Humble Hero: Despite being from an incredibly rich and prestigious family and his considerable fight earnings from his Purgatory career, Liu lives out of a relatively cheap apartment building next-door to Kaneda Suekichi and keeps it almost undecorated besides a kotatsu, stating that home is just a place to rest for him.
• I Know Kung Fu:
  • A prodigy of the Taiwanese martial arts sphere with mastery of five different martial arts. His father originally had him drilling eight, but Liu didn't get his father to teach him more before they had a falling out over politics. In his fight he uses Tokuno'o like a Made of Iron sandbag with a variety of iconic and devastating Kung Fu moves like the One-Inch Punch, Leaning Mountain, Double Jump Kick, a Bajiquan elbow check, a Rising Dragon kick to the jaw and several different Fa Jin strikes.
  • Him putting a hole in the ring and rattling Koga and Kazuo in place by simply stomping the ground is early Foreshadowing of his complete and total mastery of Fa Jin and Hua Jin, which's potency is most easily expressed in someone's stomping power. Rolón, who has Seen It All, says Liu is one of the absolute best at Fa Jin among every fighter he knows of.
• Irony:
  • In spite of him saying earlier that under Purgatory rules, Purgatory gladiators never lose, his team has lost matches precisely because of the rules in place. In particular, Yumigahama finds his movement restricted by the rules of the special match, with the shrinking arena becoming a hindrance to his large frame, and Jurota being unable to put Hayami away because he is worried he might kill him by throwing him at full force. This also takes a darker turn in the matches with Naidan and Alan, where Purgatory gets the win because both of their fighters are killed by their Kengan opponents.
  • Of the gladiators he is one that sees himself as a businessman more than a fighter, saying only idiots fight to the death and would rather avoid difficult fight that might cripple him. After Naidan's death he is willing to risk limbs for the tournament and vows to murder Ryuki.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: While he has cowardly and snide tendencies, Liu noticeably cares about his fellow gladiators. When Naidan is bleeding out from Ryuki's deathblow, he is the only one of the team to run out and try to help him, screaming at the medical staff to stop the bleeding. Naidan's final thoughts are about how Liu is a good man and how even as a Worm infiltrator, he considered him a real friend.
  • After defeating Tokuno'o in a hard-fought match, he walks over to his opponent and exchanges pleasantries, shaking hands and helping Tokuno'o back to the Kengan lounge despite his broken arm.
• Kung-Fu Kid: He was thirteen at his Purgatory debut and still somewhat looks the part of this at 28 due to his diminutive build and youthful features. Despite his size and temper problems, he's a prodigious master of, among other styles^note From his choice of moves in his battle with Tokuno'o, it can be inferred that he knows Bajiquan from his mastery of moves like the Leaning Mountain and Elbow Check, and Huaquan for his heavy use of Hua Jin, Yan-Clan Kōken and Hong-clan Baguazhang who can and has handily beat the ass of someone twice his size like Naidan or Fei when he gets his act together.
• Master of All: When it comes to Taiwanese martial arts he is a master of five styles and trained in three others. This gives him a lot of speed, power and endurance for someone his size as he can use the right technique flawlessly on the fly; when Liu is in "top gear" he is capable of fluidly comboing attacks from all his martial arts together into a dispirate unpredictable flurry of strikes. Rolón Donaire internally comments that Liu can go toe-to-toe with him on a good day, implying that Liu's prowess varies anywhere between being a Fragile Speedster Glass Cannon, to contending in World's Best Warrior territory depending on his psychological state.
• New Meat: Averted. He himself is not this, being one of the fighters on the roster who's been in Purgatory the longest, but he treats Alan Wu with a level of disdain by calling him a "freshie" and disregarding his opinions on Purgatory fights. This stems from Alan being a new fighter who Toyoda put on the team at the request of Edward Wu and his opinions being based on life and death combat instead of Purgatory fights.
  Didn't I tell you? This isn't real combat. Under Purgatory rules, Purgatory gladiators never lose.
• Older Than They Look: If you looked at him and Naidan, would you believe he's the older one of the two at 28?
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Do not be fooled by the little Taiwanese man dwarfed by everyone in the tournament except Misasa and Carlos's humble appearance! Liu was a Child Prodigy forged in the fires of a 15-year Purgatory career into a one man arsenal of eight different fighting styles he can combine and blend together at will.
• Pressure Point: Liu can break someone's grip on him or his clothes by stabbing them on the inside of their elbow with his thumb.
• Punched Across the Room: Especially notably because he does it with a Tie Shan Kao^note Leaning Mountain, sending the consideraly larger Tokuno'o skidding across the ring by Liu slamming his shoulder and back against his side while he was off balance. He ends up kicking Tokuno'o straight out of the ring from it's center as a visual Precision F-Strike to whether such a rule is valid or not; Tokuno'o was not getting up without help afterwards either way.
• Red Herring: Implied numerous times to be a Worm member. He's not, and hadn't even heard of the Worm before the events of the tournament.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The red to Wangfang's blue. Liu reacts to what happens in fights a lot more than Fei. This is best displayed with Naidan's death, where Liu undergoes Unstoppable Rage, attacking Kazuo to try and get at Ryuki and requiring his teammates to hold him back. Fei is comparably calm - while not as cold-hearted as Nicolas - he ultimately says that nothing can be done to change his death and that Naidan accepted the risks when he fought.
• Revenge Before Reason: He sees himself more as a sportsman than a fighter and views death matches as stupid. However, when Naidan dies he is so enraged he is ready to fight and kill anyone stopping him, and needs to leave the arena to fully calm himself. Even when his teammates point out Naidan was acting suspicious and seemed to have wanted to die Liu doesn't care as Ryuki still killed his friend, but eventually calms down after taking all his frustrations out on Nitoku in a close match.
• Ring Out: After a nailbitingly close fight, he kicks Tokuno'o out of the ring, putting the score at 5-4 in Purgatory's favor.
• Shockwave Stomp: As an indication of his Fa Jin mastery, Liu is able to shake Koga and Kazuo in place with a single Earthquake Foot, a stomping exercise to train the legs and core in Chinese Martial Arts.
• Shut Up, Kirk!: He tells off Rolón to his face when he expresses what Liu perceives as unwarranted pity when he gets ready to fight.
  "Who do you think you're talking to, Rolón? I'm a professional too. I'll save my revenge for later."
• Skilled, but Naive: He's a truly thoroughbred Kung Fu master with a massive arsenal of tricks and far more firepower than his size would suggest, but ends up getting slammed on his head several times by his opponents turning their bout into a dogfight of just enduring his attacks and grappling him, denying Liu a chance to dish out a combo and dishing out as much damage as Liu hits them with. His experience fighting Naidan's Bökh Wrestling end up giving him the inspiration and gameplan to defeat Tokuno'o whose Sambo works in a very similar way.
• Spirited Competitor: He's more of this than a Blood Knight which is rather uncommon among the underground fighters, simply wanting to win as effectively as possible and being annoyed instead of pleased to get to fight more when his opponent won't go down. That does not mean he won't fight as if do-or-die, breaking his already broken arm again about the elbow to use it as a lever for a Fa Jin strike to a dizzied Tokuno'o who had put him in an armbar while barely conscious. This allows him to get back on his feet and ultimately kick Nitoku out of the ring.
• Stunned Silence: The commentators' initial reaction to him sending Tokuno'o flying out of the ring from it's center in one kick.
• Super-Strength:
  • Despite being a featherweight by MMA standards, Liu packs a serious punch to the point where he can reduce far larger men to curling up in pain from just a couple of well-placed Fa Jin strikes. His core and leg strength is also great enough for him to stop Tokuno'o from tackling him by just assuming Horse Stance and then counterattacking once his opponent's momentum is dead.
  • As an early teenager, he was able to split Idemitsu's pool in half like Moses dividing the Red Sea with a single Shockwave Stomp.
• Terrible Trio: One of the Three Demon Fist alongside Lu Tian and Fei Wangfang; They are the greatest Chinese martial artists signed to Purgatory. Liu is the most veteran of the three but doesn't particularly care about the title.
• Token Good Teammate: In a sense, since he is the only member of the current Three Demon Fists that is not affiliated with the Worm. He is among the most clean and morally upright fighters in Purgatory like Carlos despite his temper.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Dongbo pork and oyster omelettes, showing that he has a taste for classic dishes popular in both his mother's native Guangdong and his father's native Taiwan.
• Training from Hell: His father had him training eight different martial arts since he was five.
  Liu: "As long as I can remember, he was making me practice eight different martial arts at the same time. Are there even eight days in a week?"
• Unstoppable Rage: After Naidan dies, Kazuo and Koga try to calm Ryuki down and send him back but Liu tells them he isn't letting Ryuki go without killing him, stomping a hole in the arena and throwing a punch at Koga and Kazuo. It takes several fighters from both sides stepping in to diffuse the situation, but Liu ends up settling for trying to kill Ryuki after the tournament.
• Weak, but Skilled: At just 172cm and 69kg, Liu is the least physically imposing fighter in the tournament besides Carlos. However, he is still able to compete in an openweight contest against much larger fighters because he is a perfect blend of long-honed training and natural talent, allowing him to punch considerably above his weightclass; he once knocked out a bull in one punch.
  • Tokuno'o exploits this at first by just bracing himself against the vital blows, since Liu's delivery of his finishers is so perfect and textbook that their target on his opponent's body becomes predictable, but once Liu gets warmed up the difference in skill between them in a stand-up fight is night and day.

Terashi

"A martial artist's strength is a waste. In order to wreck a person, this much is enough."

The Silent Nightmare (音無の悪夢, Otonashi no Akumu)

Age: ?

A B-list fighter who was originally part of Bishamon before it got absorbed into Purgatory, but even there his record wasn't anything special. The same sentiment followed in Purgatory, with him being invited to the team after only a single match that Idemitsu personally oversaw.

He is the eleventh fighter in the tournament to fight against Naoya Okubo.

---

• Artistic License – Biology: Let's just say Terashi's brain surgery is experimental for very good reason and leave it at that. Zigzagged however in that it does have certain weaknesses caused by the awesomeness it provides and his Vibroweapon abilities also have a Cooldown period after a certain amount of use.
• Attack Reflector: His ability to vibrate at such a high speed makes it so that Okubo's fists start visibly splurting blood from repeatedly hitting Terashi in the body, as if he had been punching a belt sander.
• Awesome, but Impractical: While his surgically modified kinetic vision is better than Koga's or Kazuo's it comes with a risk as his brain gets overloaded due to the significant amount of information he has to process. He has to wear his mask to reduce the strain on his vision except for in emergencies or risk brain damage, and it still renders him overly reliant on his eyes and completely unable to defend attacks from outside his field of vision.
• Bait-and-Switch: His mask, thin build and theatric Chinese ring name might make the reader think in the early parts of the Purgatory vs Kengan tournament that he might be a traditional Chinese martial artist from the Peking Circus, which regularly features martial arts demonstrations as part of it's tour. Suffice to say, that's probably his cover story but certainly far from the truth.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: Most everyone agrees that with his height and build, he would make an amazing martial artist if he put in the time and effort. Even Ohma thinks he's got talent The laziness factor comes in when it is revealed that Terashi went out of his way to enter an organization Purgatory was about to absorb to blend in better, years before the tournament against the Kengan Association, for the sake of assassinating Nicolas. In that timeframe he never bothered to put any of that time into actual learning to fight barehanded and instead taking an easy way around by having his brain surgically altered.
  Okubo: "Is it just my imagination, or does it feel like your heart ain't even in this fight?"
• Cheaters Never Prosper: Instead of taking years to be at the level of Purgatory A rank he surgically enhanced himself to give him a quick in. This backfires because while he could beat B ranked fighter with his gimmick alone he is outclassed by top fighters he can't accept a quick loss even if he doesn't care about martial art because his own self-worth is at risk.
• Cool Mask: He wears a Taijitu-patterned mask that obscures his entire face only attached by a couple of strings. Okubo inevitably punches it off.
• Creepily Long Arms: His arms seem long enough to reach his knees even when he's standing up straight.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Is on the receiving end of one from Okubo. Once the heavyweight champion figures out Terashi's unorthodox gimmicks, he systematically dismantles them and lays out a one-sided beatdown ending in a classic Guillotine Choke. Throughout the entire fight, all Terashi managed was to knock Okubo down once and make his fists bleed a little. Gets an even worse one from Shen who manage to rush past even his kinetic vision to knock him in one chop, Shen praises him for at least having seen him unlike the army he knocked out.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • He is surprised when his fellow gladiators don't help or visibly care about each other. He even lightly questions Rolón about not warning Yumigahama of the dangers he might meet in his match.
  • He ends up walking away from his hit on Jean-Luc when Terashi sees that the man he was sent to kill is a horrifically damaged mental patient talking to himself in several different voices at the same time after his match with Akoya, and not the actual Nicolas Le Banner who is long dead.
• The Faceless: His mask has no eye gaps or the like, unlike Mark Myers' or even Jose's masks, leaving very few hints of his appearance. It's a deliberate choice as to prevent his Imperial Eye from receiving too much visual information. Due to the surgery he had done, he can't go unmasked for a lengthy period of time anymore without incurring brain damage the same way the Advance or Fallen Demon does.
• Facepalm of Doom: His attack of choice due to his lack of skills. While it looks clumsy and somewhat harmless, his intense vibration makes him hit like a truck, easily blowing Okubo's guard right open and sending him to the floor with the follow-up slap.
• Foil:
  • Like Hanafusa he sees the fight as a means to an end and weaponised his body through surgical modifications instead of picking up any actual fighting skill. In fact it's Hanafusa himself who did those modifications on Terashi. However Terashi is sane and professional and works in the underworld as a freelancer while Hanafusa is a state-sanctioned assassin with the same illness as Meguro that gives him uncontrollable bloodlust.
  • He is also this to Muteba, as frightening and ruthless he has to be for his job he is rather affable to the point of showing great respect to Okubo, like Muteba and Sekibayashi. Both also have a short moment where they realize the pay is not worth it anymore but where Muteba cut it because he already got far enough to satisfy his employer Terashi keeps fighting not for his job but out of pride. Terashi also happens to be friends with Muteba; Muteba is disappointed that he couldn't see Terashi fight and Terashi immediately contact Muteba when he feels something off since he knows the blind mercenary sense can complement his.
• Foreshadowing: He reacts very dramatically during Toa's match to Rolón moving instead of just speaking, akin to how Muteba reacted to Meguro's breathing instead of him bleeding out of his eyes. In contrast to Muteba, he isn't revealed to be blind but instead have always-on super vision that puts his health at risk if he doesn't limit his vision, thus relying on other senses as well as sensing vibration with his shivering to get around.
• Graceful Loser: He admits that he completely underestimated the strength of a real pro martial artist, and leaves the ring with no hard feelings after Okubo tells him he's got potential and that he'd love to show Terashi the ropes if he's ever in Osaka.
• Hidden Depths: Terashi might look extremely creepy and enigmatic, but he has a very quirky sense of humor, is a huge fan of Yoshimoto Shinkigeki ^note  a Kansai-based stand-up comedy show similar in nature to Saturday Night Live , and finds Okubo's costume and antics hilarious.
  • Fei points out that there is a mythical Ancient Chinese assasin who has a name spelled exactly the same as Terashi's, but this is ultimately Terashi paying homage to the legendary assassin to have a decent cover story.
  • It is later revealed that Terashi is actually a freelance assassin from the Chinese Underworld who was hired (presumably by the French government) to eliminate Nicolas.
• Humble Hero: He describes himself as the weakest of the thirteen chosen, likely due to being invited to the team after only a single match in Purgatory's B-list, and he's ultimately proven right. While his quirky way of fighting proves somewhat effective at first, he's completely new to unarmed combat and only joined Purgatory to try and kill Nicolas Le Banner for a massive sum of money.
• Humiliation Conga: After feeling more than a little lost as a mysterious New Meat on the Purgatory bench, Terashi's second-ever Purgatory match has him ending up getting demasked, deciding to fight on when he's cornered because getting beaten like this could affect him psychologically in his real occupation, and then still getting choked to unconsciousness by a buzz-cutted man in a clown costume. It's remarkably how well he takes it in the aftermath.
• Insult Backfire: His insistence that martial arts are a waste of time begins ringing hollow once he repeatedly falls for basic tricks like feints or attacking from outside his field of vision. Okubo seems more disappointed than anything that the guy with the super unorthodox style couldn't back up his Trash Talk, and proceeds to teach him a lesson by choking him out on the ground.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Despite being a Humble Hero he disses modern martial artists, confident his own abilities can wreck them. This bites him in the ass hard when facing Okubo, who is not only at the peak of MMA but gets annoyed at Terashi's Trash Talk about martial artists. Okubo then proceeds to not Ring Out him on principle and instead chokes out Terashi with a Guillotine on the ground, resulting in an ultimately one-sided match.
• Lean and Mean: At 204cm and 97 kilos, Terashi is extremely tall and lanky with almost orangutan-like arms going down to his knees. It doesn't help that he's a professional hitman and not in the martial arts sense of hitman.
• Logical Weakness:
  • If he shivered his head as hard as the rest of his body, he would end up concussing himself in no time, meaning Terashi's ability to disperse strikes this way doesn't extend to there and means an insightful opponent will inevitably figure out that he only guards his head.
  • Shivering is also a function of the body to heat itself up when cold, meaning he could potentially suffer a heatstroke if he vibrates intensely for more than 120 seconds at a time. The cooldown period leaves Okubo with plenty of time to secure a choke as Terashi has absolutely no grappling skills to speak of.
  • He has no experience in modern martial arts which experienced fighters like Okubo and Wakatsuki can figure out by simply watching how Terashi defends himself against a low kick ^note by hopping backwards with both feet instead of checking, blocking or parrying it like a trained martial artist would and has no footwork to speak of. While his shivering allows him to minimize the impact of body blows and nullify attempts at grappling him while it's active, he's not used to something like Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs to the head from an experienced boxer and can't defend against it even if he knows it's coming, simply because he lacks the skill to do so. He is able to see Okubo's jabs coming when he is unmasked, but this is due to his surgically modified kinetic vision that he was hiding because it risks brain damage, but as soon as Okubo notices this, he just starts hitting Terashi from outside his field of vision before rendering him completely helpless with ground-grappling.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: His name, 赫, translates to "(the) Enlightened/Illuminated", and was the alias of a legendary masked assassin from the Spring and Autumn Warring States period of China. In an early draft his name is instead given as "God" (Kami (神).
• New Meat: He has only had a single match in the B-list that Toyoda saw before inviting him onto the team.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: According to his profile, his physical appearance under the mask is based on actor Go Ayano.
• No Name Given: "Terashi" is just a stage name and doesn't resemble anything found in modern or old Chinese or Japanese naming schemes, and in any flashbacks of him before the tournament, his real name is completely unknown. This is due to him being a hitman by trade and by him undergoing frequent facial reconstruction surgery to keep his true identity a secret.
• Outside-Context Problem: Like Hanafusa and Bando, Terashi's not a martial artist, much less experienced in a barehands fight and instead relies on weaponizing quirks of (surgically modified) anatomy to get by. While it makes him hard to figure out, he's got absolutely no fundamentals to back him up when cornered.
• Pretty Boy: It is revealed that behind the Cool Mask, he has what Okubo describes as a "chick face". Although his current appearance is a result of facial reconstructive surgery, Dr. Hanafusa (who did the surgery) remarks that he was quite good-looking even before that.
• Professional Killer: A renowned Chinese Hitman by trade, known for his discreetness and ability to take out near-impossible targets. Unlike most examples of this trope in Kengan who simply beat their targets to death, and despite apperances, he usually defaults to firearms and other weapons.
• Quaking with Fear: Weaponized. Terashi has had his hypothalamus surgically modified in an experimental procedure done by Hanafusa, allowing him to consciously control his body's shivering, which is otherwise an involuntary contraction of muscles close to the skeletal structure. By shivering fifteen times more intensely than otherwise possible for a person, he is able to dish out Fa Jin-like strikes without any form by stepping forward with no footwork or positioning in mind and swinging an open palm. Defensively, his shivering disperses the power of blows to the body and even sends some of the impact back at the attacker, though this only inflicts superficial wounds.
• Shout-Out: One omake depicts him able to use his shivering to crack open a watermelon, which is a reference to an old (and as far as can tell, sadly deleted) Japanese youtube video of an elderly man doing something similar by tapping the watermelon at a ridiculously high interval, building up pressure until the watermelon cracked open.
• Shrinking Violet:
  • He's a completely new face on the Purgatory roster, having basically no fight record at all in both Bishamon and Purgatory, and ironically the only one who is actively hiding his appearance. While he does make small talk and comment on the fights, he knows basically nothing about all the fighters except Rolón and thus stays quiet and non-confrontational. While the mask turns out to be a medical neccesity due to his Eye Powers, he has his face surgically replaced every time someone sees it even before that became a factor.
  • He keeps getting spooked by Rolón despite being part of his team, seemingly due to being new to Purgatory and not used to how intense The King is.
  Terashi: He read my mind. Once again, I'm glad he's on my side.
• Simple, yet Awesome: Terashi even lampshades this as his strategy boils down to a three-step process. Cut off his opponent's options with his Shivering and Emperor's Eye if he loses his mask, play up the intimidation factor of both his incredibly unorthodox power and disquieting appearance to make his opponent lose their cool, and then capitalize with his vibration-induced Super-Strength to score a knockout while they're off-guard. This was enough for him to beat a Purgatory B-lister with relative ease despite being an amateur fighter and gives him somewhat of a fighting chance against Okubo.
• Stealthy Colossus: He makes his entrance without a sound despite his towering build and is known as the Silent Nightmare.
• Super-Senses: His kinetic vision is even better than Koga's or Kazuo's due to his hypothalamus surgery significantly upping the speed at which he processes visual information, but to such an extent that his brain risks frying itself from the information overload if he isn't wearing something like his mask to simplify the visual input, otherwise he's suffering permanent brain damage within an hour. He is able to perceive Shen from far away in a crowd when everyone else is being knocked unconscious without even noticing the Connector.
• Super-Strength: Especially jarring considering his lean frame, but Terashi's ability to shiver intensely makes his slaps powerful enough to stun a Heavyweight MMA champion, and parry hook punches from Okubo by just tapping the fist with the palm of his hand when it otherwise would've sent him flying.
• Unskilled, but Strong: He's a complete amateur in unarmed combat, being an expert in armed assassinations despite his great physique, but his weaponized overuse of his hypothalamus still makes him somewhat of a threat in a stand-up fight because of how incredibly unorthodox it is. Unfortunately, being a newbie to martial arts trying to defend himself on the ground against a Heavyweight MMA champion is like trying to fight a shark when you're already halfway down it's throat, and he ends up being Guillotine Choked out in a pathetic position.
• Vibration Manipulation: He can shivers 3000 times per minute, 15 times more than average. This allow his strikes to be more powerful than they look, makes him immune to grappling and reduce the power of his opponent's strike by reflecting part of the damage to them. It does comes with two weaknesses: he can't use it on his head without concussing himself and he needs 20 seconds of cooldown after two minutes of use to prevent overheating.
• Vibroweapon: Through an experimental brain surgery, he basically became a human barehanded version of this. Not only does this make him able to No-Sell all body blows, it also makes him hit like a Fa-Jin using truck and causes additional smaller impacts on every strike of his. Both Hanafusa and the Kengan bench agree that if he can come to master its usage, he has the potential to break entirely new ground within martial arts.
• Victory Through Intimidation: A large part of Terashi's gameplan is made of this. His freakily intense shivering making him look like a laggy opponent in an online fighting game and with his mask and fully black garb, he deliberately plays heavily into the psychological part of fighting to demoralize his opponents and try to bag the win while Okubo is freaked out by how Terashi could possibly even fight the way he does. Once he's been fully figured out, he rapidly lags behind Okubo's shift in momentum and is summarily disposed of.
• Villainous Valour: He is an assassin with no real interest in the competition but he has enough determination to go down fighting instead of quitting when outclassed, even if the risk of him getting knocked out could interfere with his current job. Even when faced with Shen Wulong causing a Mook Horror Show he stuck to his guns, only to immediately get knocked senseless with a Finger Poke of Doom.

Fei Wangfang (SPOILERS!)

"The Possessing Spirit? That's a relic of the past. I've already surpassed gods and spririts, so allow me to show you what lies beyond that. Oppose me if you can, Human."

Three Demon Fists: Toad (三鬼拳蝦蟇, Sangiken Gama)

The Tiger's Vessel (虎の器, Tora no Utsuwa)

Age: 26

An A-list gladiator and a master of Ren-Clan Taijiquan^note Taikyokuken, lit. "Yin Yang Fist", more commonly known as Tai Chi from Sichuan and the most recent addition to Purgatory's Three Demon Fists by defeating the previous member in his debut match, Fei joined Purgatory two years before Omega...

...In reality, Fei is a Worm Combatant and Tokita Niko's last student of the Niko Style, who is using the Purgatory vs Kengan Association tournament as a way to prove himself to his master and superiors within Worm.

He is the twelfth to fight in the tournament, against Takeshi Wakatsuki.

---

• The Ace: He is the last student of the Niko Style by the Other Tokita Niko but out of them aside from Agito and Ohma, he is the only survivor among the four thousand students in the current times. He demonstrates his prowess by having his Niko Style refined to the point of having new techniques that Agito and Ohma who are familar with the Niko Style hasn't even known of. His greatest feat is combining both the Possessing Spirit (Advance) and Fallen Demon techniques at the same time into a technique called Divine Devil, which is enough to let him easily dance around Wakatsuki, who's one of the toughest fighters. Really his only flaw is that he hasn't cultivated a mindset appropriate for such prowess, leading to him taking huge risks without thinking them through because he's insane enough to think he can always get out of a bad spot via Nonchalant Dodge
• A God Am I: Shows hints of this after activating Divine Devil, even calling Wakatsuki "human".
• Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: Fei does a lot of showboating while fighting against Wakatsuki. Which bites him in the ass because his opponent is one of the biggest Determinator in the series.
• Awesome, but Impractical: His Divine Devil technique give him enough power to dominate Wakatsuki, but it relies on Fei being a one in a million individual that can handle the strain and while he can still use all of his other advanced techniques while using Divine Devil, unlike Ohma’s Advance, he ended up barely using any of them, because the ego trip that comes with the power gets to his head.
• Ax-Crazy: Becoming the Other Tokita Niko's student begins with a Gu Ritual and ends with the student learning how to overclock their heart and brain. All in all, a terrible cocktail for an impressionable youth like Fei's sanity.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: His cover is that of a humble, sportsmanlike Chinese master of a traditional style of Tai Chi. In reality, he is a narcissistic Worm infiltrator and the final student of the Other Tokita Niko. While having dinner with the Other Tokita Niko in a flashback, he feigns affection for the friends he's made at Purgatory, only to pull off a feral Nightmare Face at the thought of getting to rub his betrayal in their faces.
  Other Niko: "I don't mind. You can stay in Purgatory [after the Tournament] if you'd like."
  Fei, trying to hold in his laughter: "...Really? Because I feel kinda bad. I've made some friends who are good guys, and when I'm with them I start to wonder. Maybe I could've also led my life like this..." "Pfft, pfft... IS THAT WHAT I'M SUPPOSED TO SAY?! I'M COMPLETELY FED UP WITH THAT LUKEWARM PRETEND FRIENDSHIP!"
• Black Eyes of Crazy: When he's using his Divine Devil technique.
• Blood from the Mouth: Subverted the first couple of times he gets hit, where his Water Kata is so advanced that even his facial muscles go limp, causing him to nigh-vomit his saliva. Then played straight when he coughs up a ton of blood after ducking Wakatsuki's Blast Core with Dancing Snake. Later becomes Blood from Every Orifice as the match ends, thanks to Divine Devil making his entire cardiovascular system pop like a swollen zit.
• Bloody Murder: He can use his high-pressurized blood as projectiles when Divine Devil is active. Wakatsuki notes that the attack itself doesn't do much more than an itch, but it's still enough to throw off his concentration while preparing his Blast Core technique, since he has to worry about getting hit in the eyes.
• Born Winner: The Divine Devil technique is taxing on both the heart and brain, but Fei is able to sustain the damage without going insane or dying because he is just that gifted and even then, he's not able to use it without risk.
• Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: He manages to do the impossible and knock out Wakatsuki in a straight fight, ducking one One-Hit Kill after the other... only for his body to then violently explode from the exertion of using his Divine Devil technique at its maximum output, causing the match to be considered a draw because Fei fell over at roughly the same time his opponent hit the floor.
• Bullet Time: When he's using Divine Devil, his visual processing goes through the roof, allowing him to perceive Wakatsuki's punches as if they were approaching in slow motion, but the Niko Style Water Kata: Dancing Snake is this to its logical extreme, bridging his entire body backward to just barely duck Wakatsuki's Blast Core.
• Bullying the Dragon: His mission from Niko was to beat a top-end Kengan fighter (which is why he, for example, offers to go against Misasa early on), but it couldn't be Ohma. He decides to take on Wakatsuki, an Old Master superhuman who is already familiar with the Niko Style and a cornerstone of the Kengan Association with the biggest winning record in it's history. Although Fei is superior to him in terms of skills, techniques and has a Super Mode that lets him toy around with Wakatsuki with ease, he severely underestimates Wakatsuki's toughness, willpower of steel and more extensive fighting experience; A miscalculation that ends up costing him his life.
• Career-Ending Injury: And a self-inflicted one, no less. Even if Fei had somehow survived his catastrophic Explosive Overclocking he endured to try and beat Wakatsuki, he had effectively blown his cardiovascular system (that is his entire system of blood veins throughout his body) to absolute smithereens, through both continuous use of his Divine Devil technique and using it at its maximum output. It's frankly a miracle he even had it left in him to talk to Ohma afterwards.
• Character Death: Dies shortly after his match with Wakatsuki from the severe complications wrought on his body by his Divine Devil technique.
• Choke Holds: Niko Style: Binding Demon is one of the nastiest of these ever put on display in the series, with Fei reversing the grip of the finger lock he held beforehand to tie Wakatsuki's arms up at incredibly awkward angles so that he can't just crush Fei's limbs to break the choke. Wakatsuki ends up having to headbutt the ground like an ostrich to throw Fei off of his back, leaving him open for Fei's followup attack.
• Combat Pragmatist: First played straight during the first few moments he unleashes his Divine Devil technique, as he immediately tries to ring out Wakatsuki rather than play around with him under their new circumstances. He also weaponized his blood pressure by throwing it at high speed. Then subverted, as the ego trip that comes with the power granted by his Divine Devil technique gets to his head and he becomes an Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy who just can’t take his fight with Wakatsuki seriously until its too late and he ended up dying form the exertion of both continuous use of his Divine Devil technique and using it at its maximum output.
• Culture Equals Costume: Wears a white Taiji uniform with black pants and a sleeveless Changshan underneath.
• David Versus Goliath: Though it took an absolutely stupefying amount of blood doping to achieve, you really wouldn't think Fei is just over one third of Wakatsuki's weight from what he's able to subject the superhuman to.
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique: Divine Devil, a combination of Possessing Spirit (Advance) and Fallen Demon. While Fei can handle the strain much better than the average man, that still just reduces the risk from "Instant death or insanity and it's use is tantamount to suicide" to "Will make you pop like a water balloon after a few minutes".
• Death by a Thousand Cuts: Downplayed as his "thousand cuts" would normally knock out or kill a man in one blow, but he has to employ this strategy against Wakatsuki because even with his Divine Devil technique and both his Water and Redirection Kata, he's at risk of instantly losing the match if Wakatsuki hits him cleanly even once.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • While he remained relatively calm at Naidan's death in the heat of combat, he is visibly shaken when he sees Alan Wu literally ripped apart in the middle of the ring and insists that he is simply a "sportsperson". While Alan's brutal murder probably grossed him out for real, his lack of reaction to fatalities is because he's no stranger to it.
  • Unlike Naidan, Lu Tian or Alan Wu, he has some level of respect for the rules and doesn't try to kill Wakatsuki deliberately, to the point where he internally wishes Wakatsuki would just go down already.
• Explosive Overclocking: The Divine Devil technique is this taken to its logical extreme, allowing Fei to casually dodge Wakatsuki's attacks and punch so hard, that he can send a man 110 kilos heavier than himself, flying through the air by several meters with a single punch. Unfortunately for Fei, the human body is not made for that level of strain and once he's activated it, Wakatsuki doesn't give him enough of a break to deactivate it.
• The Faceless: For his first several appearances and whenever he's talking to himself internally at the tournament, Fei is depicted as an all-black silhouette to keep the tension of not knowing who the Tiger Vessel is, while still knowing that he is present at all times during the Tournament.
• Fantastic Fighting Style: Parodies this despite using the fictional Niko Style by incorporating well-known pop culture martial arts techniques like the crane stance, a Fa Jin strike delivered from the Hadouken pose/Heihachi Mishima's Demon Breath and Matrix-dodging into his repertoire. He also uses his ridiculously high blood pressure to throw droplets of blood like he was shooting a paintball gun.
• Fatal Flaw:
  • His envy toward Ohma, whom he sees as a failure, for still being in other Niko's agenda, is what pushes him to go above his usual output of Divine Devil.
  • He treats his match against Wakatsuki like a game and repeatedly passes up his chances to easily win since he's only there to show off how amazing he is. His use of Divine Devil to give him a fighting chance against Wakatsuki means that he's in a self-imposed Race Against the Clock that he himself doesn't even take seriously, contrasting Wakatsuki who would rather die on his feet than lose the match. Rolón describes Fei as someone who had too much power for his own good and used it half-heartedly and ineffectively as a result.
• Foreshadowing:
  • While Ohma was hallucinating under the effects of the Advance, a mysterious individual (who was later revealed to be the "Other" Tokita Niko) mentions that Ohma is unfit to be the "Tiger's Vessel". Sure enough, Fei, another master of the Niko Style, proclaims himself to be the true "Tiger's Vessel".
  • He is first seen in the final chapter of Ashura with Xia Ji and Edward Wu in a Hong Kong back alley bar, with the character 王 from his last name on one of the bar signs, where they discuss the failed operation during the Annihilation Tournament, as well as him killing Long Min with his own sword. Come Omega, he has joined Purgatory's roster to make a public display out of his strength as the Tiger Vessel.
• Humanoid Abomination: Using Divine Devil, his eyes go black, his skin stretches over his dehydrated-looking muscles and turns a deep red, and his long hair starts standing on end. Oh, and his heart starts beating so fast you can't even hear it over the sound of the resonation. You know it's bad when Kiryu describes you as this.
  Kiryu: "If it was the me of the past, I would have loved you unconditionally... How disgusting. You are a pitiful and pathetic abberation."
• Jack of All Stats: Complementing his Niko Style, Fei also knows Tai Chi, MMA, Jiujitsu and Kickboxing, which means he has an extremely versatile set of options for even the likes of Wakatsuki.
• Last of His Kind: Claimed to be the last "Tiger's Vessel" at the end of Ashura, referring to those who were gifted with the Possessing Spirit. In Omega, it's a moot point considering Ohma's survival, as well as the fact that he can still use Possessing Spirit. His claim is elaborated later on, as unlike Ohma who was taught Possessing Spirit as a kid, Fei went through the Other Tokita Niko's whole training regimen and is the only survivor of a group of talented trainees that was once four thousand men strong.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Much like Xia Ji, Fei was completely unaware that the Worm had sent another infiltrator, namely Naidan, to Purgatory.
• Logical Weakness: He's nigh-untouchable and hits like a truck while using Divine Devil, but his power comes from his increased speed, momentum and the precision at which he can move at such speeds, not raw adrenaline strength like the Removal. If Wakatsuki grapples or clinches him, Fei is effectively nearly helpless due to the sheer difference in physical strength and being unable to apply any Niko Style techniques to get the superhuman off of him. It basically forced him to overload his entire body to the point of near-instantaneous self-destruction by using his Divine Devil technique at maximum output to break out of Wakatsuki’s bear hug because he was so obsessed with being the strongest by any means neccesary, even if those means would kill him in a matter of seconds.
• Loophole Abuse: As mentioned above, he uses high-pressurized blood as a ranged attack. When the referee realizes what he was actually using, Wangfang proceeds to mockingly reassure her with the hand he used to fire his blood with, freaking her out.
• Made of Iron: Thanks to his particularly deep mastery of the Water Kata, he can absorb hits that would have otherwise knocked him out instantly. Best shown when he takes multiple knees to the body from Wakatsuki while he's in a clinch, where his Redirection and Water Katas are nigh-useless and still having a ribcage left afterwards.
• Master of Your Domain: He has ridiculous control over his body, the Divine Devil only works because he can make his heart beats like crazy and trigger tachypsychia with his brain at the same time. Not only that, but unlike Ohma's Advance, where using it while cut open will lead to its user bleeding out faster, Fei can straight up pelts someone with his blood droplets then close the wound by microflexing the muscles in his hands on the veins.
• Meaningful Name: His name "飛 王芳" roughly translates to "Flying/Swift Beautiful King", with the character for King (Wang) being the same 王 used in Ohma and Ryuki Gaoh's names. This seems to denote his Icarus-like status of letting his lust for power get the better of him through the use of Divine Devil.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Is understandably a little freaked out when his initial Counter-Attack elbow strike can't even penetrate Wakatsuki's clavicle, one of the most fragile bones in the body and his kick to the back of the head doesn't make the Tiger budge.
  • When he has his Redirection Kata completely halted by Wakatsuki forcing him into a clinch and again when he realizes Wakatsuki isn't leaning on his shoulder to rest and was instead using Fei's nonchalance to force him into a Bear Hug, where even with his Divine Devil technique he stands no chance in a test of might until he maximizes the technique’s output.
• Older Than They Look: He's 26, making him one of the youngest among Niko's students, but looks like a well-built Chinese teenager at most, especially when he's in his Taiji uniform that hide his well-built physique.
• Only Sane Man: He isn't detached from the darker turns the tournament is taking, like the two deaths and Worm agents being in their ranks and doesn't shy away from addressing them. Though this ended up being subverted, as this turns out to be little more than a front for the smug sadist he is underneath.
• Punched Across the Room: Whenever Wakatsuki so much as grazes him, Fei goes flying to try and disperse the gut-turning impacts of Wakatsuki's Super-Strength. He ends up returning the favor once by hitting him with Absolute Destruction, a two-handed palm strike thrown as a Counter-Attack and then later on, several times more with his Divine Devil attacks.
• Punch! Punch! Punch! Uh Oh...: His battle with Wakatsuki is Bullying a Dragon taken to its logical extreme; Fei realizes almost immediately that Wakatsuki's Super-Strength and insane toughness will make it almost impossible to knock Wakatsuki out, so he decides to try for it anyway after his Ring Out attempt is foiled by Wakatsuki hanging on to the ring's edge via sheer grip. But, Fei is only able to do this while using his dangerous Super Mode, whose's mere use borders on suicidality and Wakatsuki won't stop coming at him no matter how many times Fei knocks him down, culminating in Fei outright killing himself to knock out his opponent.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Fei manages to narrowly avoid all of Wakatsuki's One-Hit Kill attacks and relentlessly beat on him, avoiding his Blast Core twice, but fighting through Wakatsuki's iron will and grit by briefly maximizing his Divine Devil technique’s output, after already enduring it for so long, results in him collapsing at the same time as Wakatsuki.
• Randomly Gifted: Given that out of thousands of recruits, he is the only one who survived and learned Divine Devil, it is implied that he is akin to Yohei Bondo: a mutant with an unusual body.
• Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs: Ironbreaker: Chain is a technique Wangfang demonstrates where he delivers several powerful punches in rapid succession with the same fist.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The blue to Liu red. While Liu shows more emotional investment in the fights than his fellow gladiators, Fei is more subdued. This is best shown at Naidan's death. Liu runs to the ring and flies into an Unstoppable Rage in revenge for his friend's death. Fei, on the other hand, is calmer; he is not unaffected, but he recognizes that death is a part of their bloodsport and remains level-headed.
• Required Secondary Power: Divine Devil uses Fallen Demon and the Possessing Spirit in a way that cancels out the most obvious downside of both component techniques: Using the Possessing Spirit grants him speed and torque, but lock him out of certain Niko techniques because the body is too tense and the blood doping makes the user go berserk if overused. The Fallen Demon needs a life or death situation to be triggered so the brain experiences a rush of Tachypsychia. By combining the two, Fei triggers a critical condition since his heart beats so fast that the sound of it resonating is deafening out the heartbeat sound itself, and the Fallen Demon allows Fei to stay focused and precise enough to use the Water Kata at the same time. It also requires Fei to keep careful tabs on the technique’s outputs and how long he's been using them since his whole cardiovascular system can explode from the pressure at any moment.
  I am Tokita Niko's final student, the man standing at the peak of a mountain of corpses. It's not about why I can handle it. It's because I could handle it that I'm here now.
• Samurai Ponytail: He wears his waist-length hair in a classic high ponytail which whips around as he attacks or is sent flying by Wakatsuki. It splits into thinner and thinner thick strands and stands on end as he uses Divine Devil more and more and his hair becomes completely undone in a wild explosion of hair when he maximizes it's output to break out of Wakatsuki's Bear Hug.
• Skilled, but Naive: He has even more Niko Style techniques than Ohma and can dominate Wakatsuki but like Lu Tian he is just a promising fighter turned insane by the Other Niko. Fei has taken so much pride in surviving inhuman training it never crossed his mind he was a test subject and never a prospect for the Tiger's Vessel.
• Social Darwinist: He's glad Xia Ji killed Ranjo instead of breaking him out of prison, perceiving his failure as a sign of weakness. He also runs Long Min through with his own sword for no other reason than being annoyed at his attempts to one-up him.
• Sole Survivor: He's the last remaining student of the Other Tokita Niko's besides Agito and Ohma. The Other Tokita Niko started out gathering four thousand talented young men from China, putting them into Gu rituals and then teaching Fallen Demon and Possessing Spirit to the fifty survivors. Of those, most died from complications of the techniques and the last two besides Fei were murdered by him and Xia Ji at the end of Ashura.
• Spotting the Thread: By what was probably complete accident or Fei deciding that his cover as a Mainland Chinese underground fighter would let him pass off knowing just a bit about Worm, he asks if Naidan and Lu Tian being part of Worm means that they're doppelgangers after Kazuo deliberately leaves the part about Worm's impersonation tactics out of his explanation to the Purgatory team of what the Worm is. Ohma actually spots the slip-up, but assumes he's just overthinking things and doesn't press the issue.
• Super Mode: His Divine Devil technique, a combination of the Advance and Fallen Demon that grants the user even more explosive power than the Removal.
• Superior Successor: Like Lu Tian, he strives to show he is better than the Other Tokita Niko's first generation of students. He mixed Both Ohma and Kiryu's secret technique to prove he was superior to both and the true heir of the Niko style as the Tiger's Vessel. While he is better at the technique taught by the Other Tokita Niko and his mastery of the Water Kata is above Ohma's level, in the end, he himself concludes that he wasn't the Tiger's Vessel after violently exploding his entire cardiovascular system from using his Divine Devil’s technique at maximum output.
• Super-Reflexes: Due to the tachypsychic overload on his brain from using Divine Devil, he gets this, to the point where he internally describes Wakatsuki as if he was an action figure moving in slow-motion.
• Sympathy for the Devil: Fei was a through-and-through piece of shit, openly mocking his inferiors whenever possible and plays a part in an abhorrent Ancient Conspiracy infiltrating underground arenas, but even so Kazuo, Ohma and his Purgatory benchmates come to feel some sympathy for him during his passing on, even if he outright rejects the latter very callously when they ask if he has any spare words to pass to any loved ones.
  "Fuck off. I'm not into men. But, if you insist, bring me Tokita Ohma."
• Training from Hell: After passing the Gu ritual, he was taught the Advance and Fallen Demon and left to figure out how to increase his power with it. Out of the fifty students who survived the Gu ritual, only Fei Wangfang, Ranjo and Long Min didn't die from complication or abuse of those techniques and Fei pushed it even further by mixing both technique together.
• Trash Talk:
  • Joins in on Misasa, Nicolas and Liu's bullying of Yumigahama by offering to take the fight against Misasa for him. This ends up being the final straw for the Traitor Fang.
  • After the Other Tokita Niko appears on the monitors and tells Fei to get real, he adopts a Crane Stance, only to admit that it's a completely worthless stance and calls Wakatsuki stupid to wait and see what'd he do from said stance. When Wakatsuki attacks him in frustration, he smoothly exits his stance to transition into a Weeping Willow to avoid Wakatsuki's punch and put him in a hand lock.
• Troll: He enjoys messing around with his opponent to try and demoralize Wakatsuki and while he does succeed in provoking him, in the long run, it does not benefit Fei no matter how much he tries to rub in the superiority Divine Devil gives him, because Wakatsuki [[Determinator will not go down]] come hell or higher water.
• Unwitting Pawn: While he'd love to truly fancy himself as the Other Tokita Niko's heir, he is ultimately little more than a beta-tester for the Other Tokita Niko's martial arts experiments. He realizes as much at death's door and spends his last moments in angered delirium as a result.
• Villainous Breakdown: As he dies and realizes Ohma is likely a clone of The Connector, he starts cursing the Other Tokita Niko in delirium for using him as little more than a disposable pawn.
• Villainous RRoD: While he can handle the strain of using Divine Devil (a technique that combines both the Fallen Demon and Advance techniques) much better than the average person, the strain of both continuously using the technique with no breaks and using it at its maximum output to keep ahead of Wakatsuki, eventually causes his death.
• Walking Spoiler: Suffice to say, it's difficult to talk about Fei Wangfang without revealing the fact that he's The Tiger's Vessel.
• Weak, but Skilled: At 184cm and 83 kilos, Fei is monumentally outclassed in power and toughness by Wakatsuki, but his mastery of Tai Chi and a variety of modern martial arts gives him a wider berth of expertise than Wakatsuki's full contact karate. This turns out to be just another front for the fact that his wide expertise is due to his mastery of the Niko Style and he becomes Strong and Skilled when he uses Divine Devil.
  Fei: "If I'm gonna put on a show at tournaments like this, I gotta know modern martial arts too, you know? Although Terashi looked like he didn't know any, I'd say Jiujitsu, Kickboxing and MMA are the bare minimum."
• Wham Shot:
  • When he reveals himself as the Tiger's Vessel by performing Weeping Willow and redirecting Wakatsuki's attack.
  • When Wakatsuki tells him to use the Advance to stand a better chance against Fei's problematic Water and Redirection Katas, Fei considers it while fiddling with his wrist, then sends Wakatsuki flying across the ring with a straight punch after activating the Niko Style's new Super Mode.

Rolón Donaire

"I'll commend you for reaching that state. But it makes no difference to me."

The Monster of Manila (マニラマニラの怪物, Manira no Kaibutsu)

The King (キング, Kingu)

Age: 37

A martial arts instructor for the Philliphine Army in his teenage years, Rolón left the military after his hand-picked and trained squad revealed themselves to be Worms trying to threaten him, whereupon he slaugthered them down to the last man and then proceeded to hunt down every Worm in the Phillipine Army afterwards. In his early 20's, he became a bodyguard working in the criminal underworld, where he once fought a young Gensai Kuroki to a draw. He became part of Purgatory at it's very beginning fifteen years ago, and hasn't lost a match since, holding an unfathomable 422-0 win-loss record.

His dominance has long since gotten him the title of King, meaning only top A-listers can even hope for a match with him, and he's also the reigning champion of Purgatory's "Ultimate Gladiator Playoffs" that took place a year before Omega. Rolón leads the Purgatory team as the strongest fighter in the organization, and by process of elimination, he is the thirteenth and final fighter for the Purgatory side against Ohma Tokita.

---

• '80s Hair: Possesses a slicked-back blonde mullet. After the time-skip, he's had it trimmed down to a buzzcut.
• The Ace: He's the strongest fighter Purgatory has ever had and the sheer build-up around him shows as much. Rolón has outright called the outcome and/or turning point of several of tournament's matches despite sitting down and having his eyes closed for the first six matches. Purgatory's bench of monstrously elite fighters and bombastic personalities for the most part cower in his presence, and when Ohma has to get on stage to fight him, the Kengan bench's encouragement sound more like them reading Ohma's funeral rites than actual advice.
• Artistic License – Biology: His shoulderblade rotation should cause him really bad joint swelling yet he seems to have no drawback. It is possible that like Bando he has a really unique body^note His unusually massive trapezius and shoulder muscles, as well as having a 10-pack, would imply that he has incredibly strong core muscles, at any rate. and his philosophy of controlled power over cruising by on raw power and talent make him less prone to injury.
• Ass Kicking Pose: He has two: his normal Silat stance◊, where he keeps both palms forward, ready to block incoming shots and leaving him a lot of options for his initial strike. The other and far more dangerous one is the Harimau, or Tiger Stance, affectionally dubbed the "Manlet Stance"◊ by fans, where Rolón compresses and slouches close to the ground, giving his opponent less space to aim for on his body and setting himself up for a Counter-Attack or grappling his opponent as they approach. The latter especially allows Rolón to defend all his vitals despite being a purely offensive stance.
• Awesomeness by Analysis:
  • A notable strength of his. He's the first among the Purgatory roster to notice that Kaolan's right hand has been partially trained, and later realized right away that Toa's passive strategy to take Julius's last strike head on was the wrong choice to make. He also points out during the in-ring meeting with the Kengan fighters about the Worm that they might have infiltrators as well.
  • In one remarkable instance, he is able to accurately predict what the fully-masked Terashi is thinking, and respond to it.
  • His ability to effortlessly duck and weave Nicolas and Akoya's attacks at the last second while making sure that his own attacks hit them like counters gives an early hint that he has mastered Pre-Initiative, the ability to notice and predict attack before they start, narrowly dodging his opponent's attacks at the last moment with the least amount of motion and landing a Counter-Attack, as well as striking ahead of time if his opponent dodges ahead of time. The start of his match sees him out-predict Ohma's Pre-Initiative without having to let up or adjust the series of strikes he's throwing.
• Badass Armfold: Whether he's sitting or standing, he almost always keeps his arms folded over his chest. Unfolding them usually results in him oozing a palpable aura of pressure that is at least as overwhelming as Agito's.
• Badass Boast:
  • Pulls off a simple and confident one to reassure his benchmates that he will get the last point for Purgatory before he walks on stage without another word to fight Ohma.
  Rolón: " Purgatory will win. With me bringing up the rear, defeat is impossible."
  • He has another one after easily coming out on top of Ohma and his' first exchange where Ohma keeps trying to use Pre-Initiative and dodging to avoid his attacks instead of attacking Rolón back.
  Rolón: "Drop this pretentious master act or I will crush you."
• Beware the Quiet Ones: He speaks laconically about the fights and can scare Yumigahama into shutting up by just daring him to finish an insult-laden sentence coming his way. Medel implies that Rolón is absolutely horrific when he lets loose, and goes out of his way to help diffuse the deathmatch between Nicolas and Akoya just to make sure Rolón doesn't get the opportunity to do it himself, despite Medel being in the infirmary at the time.
  Yumigahama: "What's taking The Falcon so long cooking up this small-fry?"
  Rolón: "Shut up, Yumigahama."
  Yumigahama, flabbergasted: "Did you just tell me to shut up? Why don't you-"
  Rolón: "Why don't I what, Yumigahama? Go on."
• Blood Knight: He desires a good fight, though this is hampered due to the fact that very few can push him to be serious; He dispatched the entire squad of Worm trainees he led in the army with just his knife and bare hands because it would've been too easy to use a gun. Muteba describes him more or less like a jaded, or even lazy old lion just hoping to have his blood stirred by a Worthy Opponent.
• Broken Win/Loss Streak: He has the longest win record of any introduced characters, to the point where he has more Purgatory wins than the Kengan team has total Kengan matches combined if you don't count Agito. To even get such a record, Rolón would've had to fight every two weeks on average since Purgatory's opening night. Ohma breaks it by the skin of his teeth.
• Boring Yet Practical: His entire fighting style is this, lacking any of the more fantastical techniques seen in the series. He relies on a mastery of Silat and all round fighting perfected to the point where he is a one-man The Raid fight scene, unbeaten in Purgatory or elsewhere. His "finishing move" is an elbow strike thrown from an artificial blind angle he creates by keeping his opponent busy with his other limbs, however his elbow can easily slice through anything short of bone, making it an incredibly dangerous move if not seen coming.
• Cadre of Foreign Bodyguards: He became renowned as a bodyguard working in the criminal underworld, where he would have been part of this. Being on opposing sides as bodyguard and assassin of the same person was how he met and fought Gensai Kuroki, who called it a draw after the target was successfully assassinated and left, even though Rolón wanted to keep going because Kuroki had been the biggest challenge he'd ever faced.
• The Champion: Of a major Purgatory tournament among the A-list a year before Omega. King denotes him this title in general because he hasn't lost a match since he was part of Purgatory's opening night fifteen years ago, putting his record at a whopping 422-0.
• Character Tic: He has a habit of letting out a sharp yet deep breath immediately before attacking.
• Child Prodigy: No other way to describe someone who was teaching grown men in the army how to fight when he was a teenager.
• Close-Range Combatant: Because he's a master of Silat that makes even Misasa shake in his boots, he is able to absolutely smother his opponents up close with Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs and powerful elbow strikes that can cut through flesh to make up for his lack of reach. Combined with his Pre-Initiative, he can effectively bully anyone to the edge of the ring by forcing them to block his relentless onslaught.
• Combat Pragmatist: Since his background lies in teaching martial arts in the army, where barehanded training is done with life-or-death combat in mind, Rolón will not hesitate for a moment to slice his opponents up with elbow strikes, tackling Ohma with an elbow after a missed punch while stomping on the small bones of his foot, or using pain compliance to twist Ohma's arm while delivering vicious knees and hammer strikes in a ground-and-pound. That said, he will still respect the rules.
• Confusion Fu: He does seemingly superfluous things such as measure his opponents up with his fingertips from a short distance to distract them, only to throw an attack that lets him plant his feet next to the opponent and start wailing on them with his fast blows. Combined with his Pre-Initiative and insane speed, he essentially forces his opponent into overanalyzing and defending against Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs while he sets up a knockout blow from a blind angle.
• Consummate Professional: Doesn't engage in any of his colleagues' antics, instead sitting back and quietly observing the fights for the majority of the tournament. He also refrains from engaging in Trash Talk and will freely compliment the skills of their opponents. Tellingly, the only things that appear to truly piss him off are disregard for the rules (as seen when Nicolas vs. Akoya devolves into chaos) and personal insults directed against him.
• Cultured Badass: He possesses in-depth knowledge on Ancient Chinese history despite not being Chinese, recognizing an obscure piece of trivia about a legendary assassin from the Spring and Autumn period^note Roughly 771 to 476 BCE when Fei brings it up, with Rolón taking the opportunity to tell the story to his benchmates.
• David Versus Goliath: Notably once knocked out Toa Mudo, who is around three times Rolón's size. The absurd difference in strength, stature, leverage and toughness is lampshaded, but it was for naught; Rolón is actually just that good that he can flatline even a gigantic Old Master with every possible physical advantage.
• Didn't See That Coming: His only real weakness is that his fighting style is reliant on incredibly high-level analysis of his opponent, which makes unpredictable factors like Ohma's 1-second Super Mode counters and his anatomy-shattering tricks like Bone Consumption a hazard for him. Despite keeping control of the fight throughout, he ends up being beaten unconscious after Ohma's corkscrew elbow, Change of Scenery and several devastating counterpunches rattle him and make him focus on protecting his head, only for Ohma to punch Rolón in the chest as he's breathing in, knocking him out.
• Dramatic Dislocation: The power of his Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs comes from the fact that he can spin his shoulderblades so fast that they would normally pop out of their sockets to produce such force, yet Rolón can do it again and again and in several different ways, implying he has some kind of Hyperflexibility. The implication part more or less goes out of the window when he manages to dislocate his vertebrae to stop Ohma's corkscrew elbow to the back of the neck from instantly knocking him out. In the final exchange with Ohma he exploits his shoulder mobility to increase his reach to further than it has been all fight, allowing him to take the initiative and start hammering a kneeling Ohma with 12-6 elbows.
  Rolón, cracking his neck to relieve the pressure: "Well, this has been entertaining."
• The Dreaded: Downplayed example as most of his teammates respect his strength and leadership. However, they react towards him more as if he's a monster to appease than a person to negotiate with despite their own considerable pride. He is capable of intimidating Yumigahama into silence when he gets sick of his insults towards Albert; Fei and Liu acknowledge that the prospect of fighting him is terrifying and they'd only do it if they were paid enough; and Medel is more worried about Rolón interfering to stop the deathmatch between Akoya and Nicolas than he is about the deathmatch itself.
  Carlos Medel: "I pity the Kengan team, because you'll have to fight Rolón."'
• Early-Installment Weirdness: In the early chapters of the tournament, Rolón is drawn like he's about the same size as the other heavyweight fighters on his team, to the point where he was standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the 203cm Lu Tian during the near-brawl incident before the sixth round. Later chapters would depict him more closely to his intended large-for-a-middleweight size.
• Entertainingly Wrong: Like Jurota, he mistakes Agito collapsing to his knees from exhaustion after his fight as him bowing to Kazuo in subservience, believing in Kazuo's Badass on Paper status.
• Everyone Has Standards: He behaves like a professional and doesn't outright talk down to anyone so long as they behave around him, but lets it go unsaid that he expects others to have the same kind of dignity. He is ready to go straight for the throat at any Trash Talk coming his way but always gives a warning first, most likely a relic of his days as a Drill Sergeant Nasty and time as a criminal bodyguard. Medel appeals to the professional side of him by knocking Akoya out before he could piss Rolón off further and potentially start a scene to get him to go back to the bench.
• Eyes Always Shut: For a majority of the time, he's simply sitting with his eyes closed, having taken up an entire row of seats as his personal space, and only opens his eyes something exciting happens in the matches or someone isn't watching their mouth around him.
• Foil: To Jurota Arashiyama, the other of Purgatory's Two Kings, who has bottomless devotion and dedication towards his Judo to the point where he flipped Crippling Overspecialization on it's head by simply being that good at grappling. In contrast, Rolón's style is deliberately all-rounded with enough specialities within striking, grappling, defensive techniques and analysis that he can adapt and beat anyone on their hometurf by utilizing techniques his opponent is incompatible with, and giving him a wealth of winning strategies to bounce between to keep his opponent out of their comfort zone.
• Foreshadowing: Him having his Eyes Always Shut is eventually indirectly revealed to be him using all his other senses to sharpen his feel of the surroundings, as demonstrated when he tells Koga to read attacks by the air flow on his skin and hairs if he wants to master Pre-Initiative, instead of overrelying on his Fist Eye.
• Genius Bruiser: He's an absolute monster in hand-to-hand combat with nigh-superhuman speed and strength, but what really makes Rolón so dangerous is his incredible perception and wide-ranging skillset. He can read people well enough to correctly guess what they're thinking, and is also well-versed in history.
• Glad He's On Our Side: A majority of the Purgatory bench are relieved to be fighting with Rolón and not against him for once and most of them still give him a wide berth as to not end up as The King's pre-fight warmup. He invokes this himself by giving his teammates peace of mind in that he's their last fighter when the score is 5-5.
• Hero Antagonist: Antagonist because he is a fighter for Purgatory in the tournament to determine whether the Kengan Association will be absorbed or not. Hero because his backstory reveals he is a Worm hunter.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: Fled the Philippines after defending himself from Worms that had infiltrated his squad of trainees and then selectively hunting down every Worm in the Philipine Army, because without proof that they were terrorists, it just looked like he went on a rampage out of shell-shock rather than him eliminating the plants of an Ancient Conspiracy.
• Heroic Build: It's telling that even among the extremely muscular cast, Rolón looks like he's a walking marble statue, packed to the brim with musculature to the point where each of his shoulders are as big as his head, which is itself dwarfed by his enormous trapezius. He's also one of the few characters along with Agito depicted as having 5 bands of connective tissue on his rectus abdominus which gives him 10-pack abs^note A vast majority of people are born with 4 bands of connective tissue on their abs, making it physically impossible to train a 10-pack into existence, unlike other bodybuilding accents like the "Demon Back◊". All this makes him look considerable larger than his 180cm and 84kg. He's only antagonistic thanks to being on Purgatory's side but outside of that he is a Worm hunter.
• Horrifying the Horror: Even Akoya in a fit of bloodlust and extremely angry about his match with Nicolas being stopped does a Double Take when Rolón threatens him to back down. When he tries to swing at Rolón, all he hits is air before Rolón immediately elbows him in the face and deals with Nicolas in the same motion.
• Inconsistent Spelling: ロロン (Roron) is pretty hard to translate because Japanese doesn't really differ between R and L, but was initially thought of to be translated as Lolong after the gigantic Filipino crocodile that was given the leader of it's capture's nickname due to his sharing last names with a Filipino boxing champion, but official translation efforts uses Rolón, a name from the Britanny region of France.
• In-Series Nickname: Okubo and Ohma call him Slick-Back due to his hairstyle.
• Irony: For being the most analytical of the Purgatory team, he too falls into believing in Kazuo's Badass on Paper status after seeing Agito collapse in front of him in exhaustion after his match, mistaking it for him kneeling to Kazuo.
• The Leader: The Kengan team are slowly able to feel out that he is this for the Purgatory team, leading the team during the walkout, being referred to as "King", and being asked by his team members who he thinks will win each match. It is clear that he commands respect from his teammates. Despite his team expressing doubts about continuing the competition, Rolón putting his foot down and refusing Kazuo's offer to continue at a later date makes his entire team fall in line and silently agree to continue. It is later revealed that he is not only the champion of the Ultimate Gladiator Playoffs, but also above the A-list entirely, making him the strongest fighter on the Purgatory roster.
• Lightning Bruiser: Ohma aptly describes him as a monster in human form, with both his agility and physical power being completely otherworldly despite Rolón being a middleweight. In the past he has knocked Toa out despite his enormous advantage in strength, stature and toughness. Against someone of relatively normal size like Ohma, it's a far less pretty sight, with him being able to cut Ohma's jaw with an elbow uppercut and send him into an 8-count with Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs.
• Made of Iron: Ohma slamming him in the back of the head with a flying corkscrew elbow as a Counter-Attack, with Rolon's own power added to the strike, barely even makes him budge. He does have to brace with one hand against the floor, but it's so brief that he doesn't even get a count from the ref started and it seemed to do little more than wake him up. Ohma using the Advance in bursts to counter Rolón as he's swinging, or using it on all cylinders to slam Rolón into the ring as hard as he can with Change of Scenery, barely even slows him down either. His inhuman endurance for his size reaches it's end when Ohma caves in his chest.
• Master of All: Jurota sees him as the ultimate all rounder, he is not specialized in anything but Rolón is able to adapt so well he may as well be the best at everything. His strikes aren't the fastest or the strongest, (they are, however, still insanely powerful for his size) but since he has well-polished Pre-Initiative skills his opponent will not see the attack coming when they do hit, especially as Rolón uses a wide variety unorthodox strikes like Ridge Hand uppercuts, foot stomps, Pressure Point attacks, and a smorgasboard of multi-purpose elbow strikes.
  Carlos: "It doesn't matter how powerful or quick you are. Whoever he's up against, it's all the same to him. That's what makes him the Monster of Manila. That's what makes him the King."
• The Mentor: Joins the list of Koga's trainers after the tournament, especially teaching him not to be overreliant on his natural gifts and how to approach the learning of Pre-Initiative. Despite what his career as a Drill Sergeant Nasty in the Philipine Army might suggest, Rolón is a very encouraging teacher and able to provide thorough feedback on what Koga is and isn't doing right.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: His last name comes from the Filipino world champion boxer in every weightclass between flyweight and featherweight, Nonito Donaire, despite the fact that his first name is French.
• Nonchalant Dodge: Rolón effortlessly dodges Akoya and Nicolas' attacks at the last possible moment while calling them fools, and knocks Nicolas out with a single haymaker to the solar plexus.
• Offhand Backhand: When Akoya and Nicolas' match devolves into a killer brawl with the referee being consistently ignored to the point where she calls for help, Rolón appears as if out of thin air in the ring and separates the two men grappling for their lives with a flick of his wrists.
• One-Hit Kill: He sends Nicolas into a coma with a single uppercut to the stomach despite Nicolas being completely unbothered by all the other injuries Akoya had given him up until then.
• Pintsized Powerhouse: Only in a relative sense. He's 180cm tall which is already way above the Filipino average and hugely muscular, but dwarfed by a majority of the fighters on both sides because he's a Middleweight fighting in an Openweight league. Despite this, he is unquestionably the most dangerous gladiator of Purgatory. He even knocked out Toa once despite the huge difference in size.
• Pressure Point: He can strike acupuncture points to force his opponent to move into a worse position for themselves via pain compliance through small-joint manipulation and this trope. He does this against Ohma by Rolón stabbing his thumb into Ohma's wrist in the same spot you'd hold onto with an Aikido hold to force Ohma onto the ground in a position where he's vulnerable to Rolón's onslaught.
• Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs: Rolón's strikes are so fast that Kazuo can't see them, to the point where him and Ohma exchanging strikes and parries sound like gunfire. He does this primarily by throwing his punches by rotating his shoulderblade instead of his hip, allowing them to nearly reach the speed and density of Kaolan's Flash, lets him bend punches mid-air or strike from incredibly unorthodox angles by also putting his hips into it while constantly advancing on Ohma, and by keeping his hips low he has a far more stable stance than a normal swarming type of striker.
• Razor Sharp Elbow: His elbow strikes, especially the ones with a full windup, are powerful and sharp enough to cut someone's jaw and slash Ohma's chest open as if he had been using a machete or an axe.
• Sleeves Are for Wimps: He wears a simple white tanktop, exposing his enormously muscled shoulders and upper arms that make his head look small in comparison.
• Slept Through the Apocalypse: Ultimately subverted. Rolón is well-aware of Worm, has previous beef with them (not to mention a massive bodycount of Worms under his belt, according to Muteba) and seemingly knows they've infiltrated the team despite not doing anything about it; He just doesn't feel they are a threat to him.
• Smug Super: He's absolutely confident and views most other fighters as little more than children, and seems more than able to back it up. Tellingly, when he compliments Misasa's strength and acknowledges that fighting him wouldn't be easy, he still has no doubt that he could take Misasa down.
• Spectacular Spinning: The key to his strong lightning fast attacks is that he can rotate his shoulderblades at great speed to throw the punches from there instead of putting his hips into it. This allows him to create enough torque for these blows to hit much harder than arm-only punches like that otherwise should, as well as let him sneak through his opponent's guard with an unexpected blow by bending the punch's trajectory mid-air with his shoulder rotation.
• The Stoic: Taken to the extreme. Once the tournament starts, Rolón sits down at the back of the Purgatory fighters' lounge and just watches as fights play out, barely speaking or even moving as this happens. Him simply tilting his head slightly during Toa's match is enough to warrant genuine surprise from his teammates. He also shows no reaction to Naidan's death. Even through the ensuing tension, he walks out to the ring, effectively calms down Dongcheng with a few sentences, and then walks back, ignoring Raian's attempt to start a fight.
• Strong and Skilled: He hits hard enough to knock out Toa, has a seemingly bottomless arsenal of unorthodox striking techniques, and mastered foresight.
• Super-Speed: While both Akoya and Nicolas were admittedly tired as well as injured heavily due to their brutal fight, they both have the best reaction time in the tournament and still can't land a hit on Rolón or dodge his attacks. Kaolan remarks that Rolón's attacks once he gets riled up are about on par with his own Flash in terms of density and speed. His real speed comes into account in how frequently and quickly he forces his opponents into a new uncomfortable situation by bouncing between Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs, grappling tackles that he will immediately disengage from to throw a cheap shot if he can't complete the takedown, and a massive variety of different and powerful unorthodox strikes.
• Villain Respect: Of the Kengan Fighters, he holds Kaolan, Julius, Wakatsuki, Agito and Okubo in high regard from the getgo, and begrudgingly gives Raian respect after he ripped open Alan Wu on stage in a matter of seconds. Among his teammates, he only seems to regard Toa Mudo and Jurota as his equals and talks down as if they don't even have a say in the matter to the rest.
  • While he generally looks down on Ohma during their match, he seems to be repeatedly having to give credit where it's due on the level of skill he displays at his age. That said, for someone as confident as Rolón, he has been displaying a lot of caution in the early stages of their fight. He admits Ohma is superior to Fei and tries to end the fight as fast as he can after tanking the Heaven Shaking Supreme Fang because it stirred his fighting spirit.
  • He admits Misasa's Silat is a legitimate threat, given Rolón is also a Silat master of otherworldly prowess even compared to Misasa, it is a big praise.
• Who Dares?: His reaction to Fei trying to accuse him of being in league with Lu Tian and Naidan after they reveal themselves as part of Worm can be summed up as 'If you value your life, don't even go there'. Given Fei turned out to be the last Worm on the Purgatory team, as well as Rolón having been killing Worms since his early 20's, Rolón's deflection of his accusation was absolutely for Fei's own safety, and to spare himself making a scene in the middle of the tournament when he has a reputation to uphold.
• World's Best Warrior: He has been part of Purgatory since it's inception and has held an iron grip at it's top ever since with an unprecedented 422-0 record, with only top A-listers being allowed to challenge him at all these days. Before he joined up with Purgatory, he fought Kuroki to a draw while he worked as a bodyguard in the criminal underworld.
  Misasa: "So he's in a whole 'nother league..."
• Worthy Opponent: Ohma ends up having profound respect for Rolón's strength.
  "You were awesome, Rolón. You're still pulling out all these different kinds of attacks, even though you should have been knocked out ages ago [from my attacks]. You're really forcing me to admit just how strong the King of Purgatory is."

Other Gladiators

Jose Kanzaki

"You're the one who's gonna get hurt, pendejo."

El Ninja

The 4D Latino

Age: 27

A Super Japan Pro Wrestler and an A-list gladiator for Purgatory.

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• Badass Boast: His comment when brought in by Sekibayashi under the rules of to teach Koga a lesson says all you'd ever need to know about what's coming next, especially from a Pro Wrestler who's just been told he's not allowed to strike or do any dives on his opponent.
  "Come on, Seki, isn't this a little unfair? I'm gonna steamroll this kid with these rules. You gotta put more restrictions on me. How about I fight him with my eyes closed?"
• Bait-and-Switch: After being hinted as another representative for Purgatory in the Kengan Association-Purgatory Tournament, he ends up in critical condition after a scheduled fight between him and Yumigahama. This also leads to Sekibayashi and Haruo not being able to represent the Kengan Association, as they need to cover for him in their regular SJPW jobs.
• Berserk Button: Disrespecting Pro Wrestling. When Ryuki appears to insult Pro Wrestling as a waste of time, Jose challenged him immediately to a fight. He also flew into a rage after Yumigahama attacked Koga for convincing Jose to back down from a fight.
• Big Brother Instinct: Although he at first disliked Koga for insulting Pro Wrestling, he quickly warmed up to the younger fighter and even amicably suggested he joined Purgatory in case Koga couldn’t make it in the Kengan Association. After months of training together, he befriends and mentors Koga to the point that he grew enraged when Yumigahama injured Koga just to spite him, and worries for Koga as fully adopts his 16-hour days of training and bulking up even while he himself is still in the hospital due to his injuries from losing to Yumigahama again.
• But Not Too Foreign: He's half-Mexican, with his father being a famous Mexican Luchador.
• Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Shows some signs of this in his "fight" with Koga. He was told to tank hits for two minutes, then lay the smackdown on Koga to show him the strength of Pro Wrestling. He instead allows Koga to hit him for three minutes because he failed to keep time. This is in spite of timekeeping being very important to a pro wrestler when they are on the circuit.
• Curb-Stomp Cushion: He gets beaten to an inch of his life by Yumigahama in an offscreen one-sided rematch fight with him, putting him in life-threatening condition, but he was able to badly break Yumigahama's dominant right arm, requiring him to focus on recovery up until the tournament between the Kengan Association and Purgatory.
• Gratuitous Spanish: He uses this when insulting his opponents.
• Legacy Character: Jose is a fan-submitted character that Sandrovich was sent while creating his previous work, Fist of the Seeker.
• Lightning Bruiser:
  • Compared to Sekibayashi, Jose is a lot more mobile. Befitting of a luchador, he uses acrobatic wrestling maneuvers such as moonsaults and dropkicks. He is fast and acrobatic enough for Ryuki to not notice him jumping until he's already in the air.
  • He is 178cm tall making him one of the shorter fighters in the series, shorter than characters like Ohma, Ryuki or Koga and only a few centimeters taller than Cosmo. He offsets this by being built like a brick shithouse at 115kg from bulking up in his Pro-Wrestler training.
• Made of Iron:
  • As typical of a pro wrestler and someone who trains with Sekibayashi. He was able to take blows from Koga for three minutes without looking any worse for wear. He also took Ryuki's Earth-Crouching Dragon head-on and was ready to continue fighting, though he admits that it hurt.
  • He actually makes a safe recovery after his loss to Yumigahama, which is impressive in itself given that the guy basically turned Jose into a barely-alive and bloodied bruise with a mouthful of shattered teeth.
• Nice Guy:
  • In spite of fighting for a different underground organization, he gets on fine with his superior Sekibayashi, and offered Koga the opportunity to fight for Purgatory if his internship with the Kengan Association didn't work out, after Koga admitted he was far too cocky when he initially talked shit about Pro Wrestlers. He even challenged Ryuki to a fight when it appeared he was insulting both Pro Wrestling and Koga's training. His kayfabe persona as El Ninja however is one of an arrogant and intimidating pro wrestler.
  • He takes Yumigahama punching Koga in the liver so gravely that he was ready to start a brawl with him in the stands of the Purgatory Stadium, and only backs down because Idemitsu offers him a rematch with Yumigahama.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: He's an A-list Gladiator, dunks on Koga mentally by eating all his best hits for three minutes without faltering, and ate Ryuki's Sunday Punch like it was nothing after near-missing him with a dropkick, but between his devastating loss in a rematch against Yumigahama and not being able to make the Purgatory vs Kengan tournament, Jose falls short of a larger role more due to unlucky circumstances than any lack of prowess on his part; His previous win over the incredibly dangerous Nicolas Le Banner says as much.
• Weight Taller: Invoked when he got in the ring to teach Koga a lesson. Despite being a few centimeters shorter than Koga, Jose looks about twice his size even if not neccesarily vertically, seemingly due to him actually being twice Koga's size... in muscle mass.

Mumon Yuzaki

See Kengan Association Fighters

Mark Myers

The Monster of Illinois (イリノイの怪人, Irinoi no Kaijin)

Mark is a former criminal bodyguard for an Illinois-based mafia group with a bodycount in the hundreds, released from prison by Toyoda Idemitsu under rather dubious circumstances to join Purgatory.

A veteran C-list Gladiator who Yamashita Trading Co first learned about as his promotion match to the B-list match against Tommy "The Gun" Strummer" happened in the background of their first visit to Purgatory, where he narrowly lost against Tommy. By the time of the Berserker Bowl he's joined the B-list, where he is participating after making it through the preliminaries.

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• Attack! Attack! Attack!: His gameplan is to rush in and keep attacking until either he or the other fighter is out of commission. Once he learns how to tighten his muscles to block damage instead of using it sparsely when no evasion or conventional guard is available like Ohma and Agito he keeps tightening during the whole fight so his muscles can armor him as he pounds his opponents.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Can't land a single hit against Lihito, gets basically one-shotted by Razor's Edge as soon as he gives an opening. The stomp is acknowledged as such in-universe.
• Dark Horse Victory: During the preliminaries he is in the same pool as two Supernovas, but luckily for him they injured themselves and had to bow out of the competition before facing him and he advanced to tournament with only one win.
• Expy: While his Cool Mask is definitely a reference to Jason Vorhees, his name clearly comes from Halloween's own Implacable Man, Michael Myers.
• Facial Horror: Lihito sliced his face and a considerable portion of his pectorals in half to finish the fight against him.
• Fatal Flaw: As Ohma puts it, Mark's inexperience caught up with him in how much he overuses his muscle technique; Mark tightening his muscles gives him a great defense and a lot of striking power, but it also makes him less maneuverable and his tense muscles means his rigidity directly hinders his range of motion, allowing Lihito to easily dodge his attacks and land a Razor's Edge by forcing him to untighten his muscles.
• He Cleans Up Nicely: He still keeps the menacing mask on, but he actually gets dressed up nice in a fancy tuxedo for the Berserker Bowl tournament lot drawings.
• High-Pressure Blood: Due to tightening his muscles for their whole fight, the moment Lihito lands a single Razor's Edge against him, blood blasts out of his torso rendering him a drained mess.
• Implacable Man: As demonstrated against Tommy, he will charge right through as much of his opponent's attacks as possible to ferocious pound at them in a manner that looks less like that of a martial artist or prize fighter, and more like a shaved bipedal bear mauling its prey. He constantly tightens his muscles in order to power through his opponent's attacks; Lihito thinks even his razor attack wouldn't go through despite it cutting steel beams.
• Lightning Bruiser: Mark is 202cm tall and built like a racehorse at 142 kilos, but can still move with an uncanny speed and ferocity even if his movement is very rigid.
• Logical Weakness: His muscles might be near-invincible, but his rigid tightening off them doesn't make his joints any tougher and Mark's lack of agility means he has a hard time defending against attacks to his joints. Lihito forces him to loosen his muscles up by repeatedly delivering low kicks to Mark's knees while circling around him faster than he can keep up while his muscles are taut.
• Malevolent Masked Men: He is a former mafia bodyguard/bruiser who has killed over two hundred people who always wears a black hockey mask.
• Rank Up: After the two years time skip, he got himself established as a B rank Gladiator.
• Sizeshifter: Kazuo notices that Mark appears to inflate and shrink almost at will before his fight with Lihito, due to using a technique that resembles the Niko Style's indestructible that tightens the muscles.
• Unskilled, but Strong: He didn't even start training martial arts at all until his third year in Purgatory, before that he got by with pure brute force which he seems to always have had enormous amounts of.