Sex: male
Age: 21 years old
Height: approx. 5'11"
Weight: approx 180lbs.
Birthday: 8/21
Sign: Leo
Blood Type: unknown
Nom de Guerre: Tobari Juubei
Kakei Juubei
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Sex: male
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A Few Words on Juubei: serious,
formal, straight-laced, loyal, old-fashioned, no-nonsense, doesn't get humor
overall: samurai-boy
Juubei's Story
Juubei is about as close to being a knight
as one can get without having a horse and some plate armor. Er… well,
it's Japan, so I guess that would make him a samurai, just short the swords.
He is terribly old-fashioned in speech, using word forms and phrases that
went the way of "thee" and "thou" a century ago. He
is the only anime or manga character I know of who uses the word "kisama"
not only as the curse word it presently is, but also as the highly respectful
term of address it originally was some several centuries ago. He routinely
calls Kadzuki, his best friend for years, "kisama". …drives
me nuts when I read, trying to figure out when he's being honorific and when
he's cursing somebody out.
Somewhere way back in his past, he missed out on the class on humor, too. Not that he dislikes jokes, he just never gets them, so serious is his mindset. Once he believes something, it is very hard to change his mind. One of those beliefs is the absoluteness of authority. He chooses his master, but once that decision is made, he follows orders completely, with little hint of resistance. Strict of bearing and formal in manner, Juubei is basically, just as Ban labeled him, "samurai boy".
His tobari (steel throwing needles about a foot long) serve him in far better stead than any sword, however. He is incredibly skilled with them, being a dead-on marksman with throwing handfuls at a time. Besides being just plain steel darts, Juubei has poison tobari and magnetic tobari he can make return to him from insane distances. Crazily enough, they can also function in a way vaguely reminiscent of acupuncture needles (very freakin' big acupuncture needles), to do things ranging from healing a bug-bite to changing the consistency of the flesh of his arms to that of steel.
Precisely when Juubei came to Mugenjou isn't known, but it is certain that he arrived with Kadzuki. The two have been best friends for a long time, Juubei standing #2 in "Fuuga", the gang Kadzuki led before the existence of VOLTS. When Kadzuki dissolved Fuuga to join with Ginji, Juubei went right with him, again as a second in command to Kadz's rank as one of the Four Kings. This is not to say that he did so because Kadzuki was a better fighter than he, or bossed Juubei into it. Juubei himself chose that position in order to better protect Kadz.
That all ended when VOLTS disbanded and Kadzuki left Mugenjou. Juubei did not follow his best friend, for unclear reasons. Whatever they were, it soured something in their relationship, making Kadzuki's reception back into Mugenjou during GB's assault on it far less than warm.
SPOILERS
(black on black, so just highlight to read)
During his final showdown with Kadzuki
at the end of the Mugenjou assault, Juubei pulls out the secret Master Hand
only a very few tobari-users know. Basically, it's black iron (I think
they're iron, anyway) tobari and one freakin' powerful lodestone. That
lodestone is so powerful, in fact, that it's magnetic pull is enough to disturb
the internal workings of a body standing too close to it, or, say, holding onto
it. Like Juubei must.
At the end, Juubei had little intention to survive his bout with Kadzuki, but Kadz's stubborn insistence and a little of Medicine Man Gen's magic helped him come through alive. However, the magnetism did royally screw with his nervous system, basically frying his eyesight. He can still "see" in a vague way that I think involves reading "ki" or some such. Think american comic's DareDevil, and you get a good idea.
Stepping back into the past, Juubei and Kadzuki have been friends since they were very young. Both boys' families were the heads of martial clans devoted to their unusual fighting techniques, and tradition held that the clans' successors' would be bound together as, get this, master and *personal physician*. Yup. Juubei is Kadz's doctor. ^.^ If you think about it, it makes sense. It's where his pressure point knowlege for healing bug-bites and changing his arms to steel come from. Another part of that doctoring duty involves making sure Kadz doesn't get hurt in the first place, thence Juubei's body-guard tendencies.
When Kadzuki's family was murdered
by a rival clan, Juubei followed his friend to Mugenjou. Whether the Kakei
clan met the same fate as the Fuchoin clan is unknown, but Juubei's sister Sakura
is also in Mugenjou for some strange reason, so I guess it's good to assume
that something did happen.