O-Ren Ishii
O-Ren Ishii is a female film character who features in Kill Bill.
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Biography
O-Ren Ishii (Japanese: オーレン 石井, Hepburn: Ōren Ishii) was a female human who was born on an an American military base in Tokyo to Japanese and Chinese parents. At the age of nine, she witnessed her parents being brutally murdered by a Yakuza crime lord, Boss Matsumoto, while she hid in terror under her parents' bed. Ishii's father tried to fight off most of their attackers, but was stabbed in the back, and subsequently beheaded by "Pretty Riki", one of Matsumoto's men. Matsumoto then dragged Ishii's mother to the bed and stabbed her, with Rikki's sword, almost killing young Ishii as the katana's blade went through the mattress. After this, Rikki burned down the house, and little Ishii barely escaped, swearing revenge against Matsumoto. Ishii then spent the remainder of her childhood training herself to be a ruthless killing machine, vowing to extract justice; she finally gets her revenge at the age of 11, by posing as a child prostitute and stabbing Boss Matsumoto to death. As she plunged the blade of Matsumoto's katana through his stomach, she asked him if she reminded him of someone he had killed. After he died, she pulled the katana out of his body and stole his gun whereupon she began slaughtering Matsumoto's men in the process.
When she was 20 years old, O-Ren came to be one of the world's deadliest assassins and became a protégé of Bill. This saw her joining his Deadly Viper Assassination Squad where she was given the codename: Cottonmouth. O-Ren did not know it at the time, but she sowed her fate when along with Bill and the rest of the Deadly Vipers she wiped out an entire wedding party in El Paso, Texas but failed to kill Beatrix Kiddo, a former Deadly Viper who was called Black Mamba.
A year later, Bill backed O-Ren financially and philosophically in her bid to take control of the Yakuza clans of Tokyo. The take-over succeeded, and O-Ren was both a ruthless but fair leader, under her the only taboo topic was to speak ill of her multi-cultural heritage. Boss Tanaka learned that lesson the hard way, as he lost his head.
Three years later, Beatrix awoke from the coma that Bill's last bullet put her in, and now called The Bride sought revenge against all the Deadly Vipers. Her first target was O-Ren, and she was easily able to track her down. The Bride fought her way past O-Ren's personal army, the Crazy 88, her body guard Gogo Yubari, before making her way to O-Ren. Both armed with swords forged by the smith Hattori Hanzo, the two fought a duel to the death, and in the end it was O-Ren who fell.
Overview
Personality and attributes
Among the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad she came to be known as Cottonmouth.
As she grew older, O-Ren still retained the original ruthlessness and cold-blooded that she had developed as a child.
Typically, she was calm and level headed most of the time. She even encouraged her subordinates to speak their minds about her plans if they are not too convinced. O-Ren asked though that a subordinate should allow her to convince them where she promised that no subject would ever be taboo.
She was extremely proud of her heritage and would not hesitate to kill anyone who dared to insult her family heritage. It was shown that she loved her parents very much and would not tolerate being spoken to in an ill-mannered way.
Powers and abilities
O-Ren Ishii was a ordinary human being who had no special powers. Though born an American, she was fluent in speaking English and Japanese.
It was shown that she was a highly proficient swordswoman whose skills had developed over many years of practice. Her weapon of choice was a curved shirasaya that could be wielded with either one or two hands.
A highly capable sharpshooter who was capable of killing targets via sniping from a long distance.
She came to head a powerful Yakuza gang with her personal guard consisting of the Crazy 88. In this time, she came to be the queen of the Tokyo underworld with her whereabouts being well known.
Notes
- O-Ren Ishii was portrayed by actress Lucy Liu where she featured in the setting of Kill Bill.
Appearances
- Kill Bill Vol 1:
