Kajika is a twelve chapter-long manga created by Akira Toriyama and published in Weekly Shonen Jump in 1998.
Kajika was a malicious boy who was cursed to live as a half-fox after cruelly killing an innocent fox. In order to purify himself of the curse from the fox he killed, he has to save 1000 lives. After achieving to save 900 lives, he saves professional thief Haya who was being chased by mob boss Gibachi for stealing a precious dragon egg, which legends have that drinking from a young dragon's blood will give you strange abilities.
Haya gives Kajika the dragon egg for its protection, as Gibachi sent a professional assassin to kill him named Isaza, who is a member of Kajika's extinct tribe.
This manga provides the following tropes
- A Boy and His X: Kajika is the story of a boy and the spirit of the fox he cruelly killed. After 5 years together, however, they became friends. So much so that after the cursed was lifted and the two were revived, Gigi killed himself to stay with him for long, much to Kajika's dismay.
- Camp Gay: Gibashi is a very open queer man who at one point calls Kajika his type, wearing revealing clothing.
- Chekhov's Gun: In chapter 2, Kajika offers Haya the Life Pill, a very rare medicine capable of healing anyone. He will use it later to revive the baby dragon shot by Isaza.
- Combat Pragmatist: Despite being a superior fighter to Kajika, Izasa kicks sand into Kajika's eyes to gut punch him and take him out.Izasa: There are no rules in a fight between outlaws. Only live or die.
- Half-Breed Discrimination: Isaza is a member of the Kowa clan, but he looks nothing like one of them due to his blond hair and blue eyes. He and his mother were banished from the clan because of it, as his father is a Riiba (a foreigner, although the text is vague if it means a race or a country).
- Heel–Face Brainwashing: Kajika has the ability to literally punch the evil out of people, which he does to a few villains who offend him.
- He uses the technique against Gibachi's henchmen, and to also purify an evil sheriff who was friends with a couple of crooks Kajika was handing over, because he didn't want to pay the reward.
- Family-Unfriendly Violence:
- The first sight of Izasa's ruthlessness as a profesional killer is to dislocate some crook's forearm and then kill him and his crew with his Soaring winds to their heads, this last one looking like gunshots.
- Once transformed in a dragon hybrid, Gibachi ends dislocating Isaza's arm during their fight.
- Last of His Kind:
- Kajika and Isaza come from the Kowa clan, who were wiped out by a volcano four years before the events of the story. They are known for having strange abilities, like telekinesis and stripping away the evil of someone's heart.
- The two remaining dragons of Ronron Island were killed in a giant storm, making the dragon egg the only survivor of that race.
-
No Export for You: For the Anglosphere, this is the last of Toriyama's long-form narrative series without an official release.note The way Viz Media has seemingly gone out of its way to ignore the pleas of the fandom for over two decades has nearly become a Running Gag. - Power Limiter: Kajika's powers are limited due to Gigi's curse, he can only return to normal if he saves the life of 1000 life forms, and if he endangers anything (for example, killing some bugs to feed a dragon), the count will decrease. Izasa notices he has great potential but isn't using his full power.
- Super-Hearing: Kajika has an incredible sense of hearing thanks to his pointy ears. He obtained these ears when he was turned into a Fox-man by Gigi's curse.
- Super-Speed: Donko claims to be the world's fastest guy, and his speed is certainly impressive to both Kajika and Isaza, as he manages to outrun Isaza's airplane.
- Theme Naming: The characters in Kajika are named after Japanese names for fish, for the sole reason that Toriyama had multiple tanks full of tropical fish in his workroom at the time he was drawing it.
- Kajika is named after the Cottus pollux fish.
- Gigi is named after Tachysurus nudiceps.
- Haya is a Proxinus fish.
- Isaza is named after Leucopsarion petersi.
- Donko is named after Odontobutis obscura.
- Gibachi is named after Pseudobagrus tokiensis.
- Yugoi is named after Kuhliidae fishes.
