Yoshikage Kira
Yoshikage Kira is a male anime and manga character who features in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.
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Biography
Yoshikage Kira (Japanese: 吉良 吉影, Hepburn: Kira Yoshikage) was a male born on January 30, 1966 in Morioh Town within Japan's M Prefecture in S City. He was born to parents of old age with it being claimed that his family were close to him. His father Yoshihiro Kira was entrusted with one of the Bow and Arrows by the witch Enya who was a follower of Dio Brando. From a young age, Yoshikage held the violent tendencies of a serial killer with his first acts being the secret murder of 16 year old Reimi Sugimoto around 15 years ago where he killed her along with her entire family including the pet dog Arnold with only Rohan Kishibe who was saved by Reimi. During that time, he was still new to the act of murder and killed his victims by viciously stabbing them in the back leaving them horrific back wounds. At an unknown point, he went to the museum where he became fixated with the hands of the Mona Lisa where he developed a sexual fetish towards hands. This developed into his habit of being a serial killer as he targeted women and severed their hands that he kept with him as his girlfriend before he tired of them. At some point afterwards, Yoshihiro sought to protect his son and he later used it to pierce Yoshikage's flesh with the Arrow entrusted to him that gave his Kira access to his own mystical Stand known as Killer Queen. By the time he reached 21, his father had died with his mother passing away shortly afterwards. Unknown to anyone, his father's ghost still remained in the world and stayed in the family home where he continued to watch over his son in order to protect him from harm. He later graduated from D University in 1988 where he gained a literature degree before moving to S city for a job at Kameyu's corporate office. Eventually, he managed to get a transfer to the Morioh-cho branch in 1993.
By 1999, Kira was 33 years old and continued to live in Morioh Town where he worked at department stores till 8pm. During this time, he managed to maintain the hidden nature of his existence and secretly continued to kill people over the years in such a manner that the town was unaware of the deaths. One day, he went shopping for lunch whilst on break to deliver documents where he kept the hand of another woman with him. During his lunch in the park, he had bought a sandwich from the shop with him hiding the hand of his girlfriend inside the bag he received. In that time, he came to startled by a dog with him intimidating the animal to scare it away. Kira continued his peaceful lunch when he overheard Shigekiyo "Shigechi" Yangu with a sandwich from the same shop arguing with Josuke Higashikata and Okuyasu Nijimura about money. While writing down the IOU the two high-schoolers promise, the dog made off with Shigechi's sandwich, causing Shigechi to mistake Kira's for his own food. Kira was quick to make the discovery but could not stop Shigechi in time. Out of fear he may be discovered due to the hand wearing a ring he recently bought, he began to follow Shigechi to yank the bag from him. He eventually followed the group to Shigechi's school, and after nearly being found on three occasions he managed to retrieve his bag. However, Shigechi caught him and under the assumption it was his stolen sandwich bag that he ended up accidentally ripping open with his Stand Harvest thus revealing the hand inside. As a result, Kira's nature as a serial killer was discovered and in response he retaliated by revealing his Stand. He would successfully kill Shigechi without much of a fight by exploiting Harvest's weakness of bringing money back to Shigechi. However, Harvest manages to grab one of Kira's coat buttons and delivered it before he fully passed on.
The damage to his suit led to Kira bringing it to a tailor to get it repaired. However, the missing button came to attract the attention of investigators looking to find the mysterious murderer. Among these included Jotaro Kujo and Koichi Hirose who tracked the missing button to the tailor. Noting these pursuers, Kira dispatched his Stand's ability Sheer Heart Attack after them in order to buy time to escape, managing to get as far as a cafe without being seen. Koichi though awakened his Stand's Echoes Act 3 and trapped Sheer Heart Attack in place, transferring the same effect onto Kira. Kira returns in person and, heavily wounded, surprises Koichi by using Killer Queen and withdrawing Sheer Heart Attack. He attacked Koichi personally as revenge for unintentionally humiliating him in public, but stopped after a punch from Killer Queen knocks off one of Koichi's shoes and revealed his socks were inside out. Kira hesitated and proceeded to fix Koichi's sock, allowing time for Jotaro to get back up. Star Platinum attempts to attack Kira, but due to Jotaro being severely wounded, Killer Queen blocks the punch on time. Kira would then make fun of Jotaro by telling him that his Stand right then was very weak, and then Killer Queen would attempt to attack Jotaro, but Star Platinum attacked Killer Queen off guard, and starts beating him. After Star Platinum wounds Kira, Josuke and Okuyasu arrive on the scene. Impatient to escape, Kira asked Josuke to 'fix' him as he fixed Jotaro and Koichi while posing as an innocent bystander, only to unwittingly reveal to Josuke that he can see Stands and thus show he was their enemy. Cornered, Kira cut his own hand off to release Sheer Heart Attack from Echoes Act 3's ability and fled the scene. Josuke though used Crazy Diamond's ability to make the severed hand chase after him. During his attempted escape, he encountered Kosaku Kawajiri who had a similar build as him and kidnapped him where he forced him into the salon owned by Aya Tsuji. Once there, he forced her to use her Stand's powers to swap Kosaku's face and finger prints for Kira's allowing him to take his identity. He then had Kawajiri killed and mortally wounded Aya where he used Killer Queen to turn her into a booby trapped bomb as he was expecting Josuke along with his friends to come to the salon. They arrived at the scene where they attempted to learn of Kira's new identity from Aya but before she could do so she exploded with her being killed as a result. Josuke attempted to follow Kira who had fled the salon but he did not know of Yoshikage's new face with the serial killer blending into the crowd where he was now safe from pursuit.
Kira thus goes to the Kawajiri's house and discovers Shinobu, Kosaku's unloving wife who feels trapped in a loveless marriage, and also Hayato, the seemingly equally apathetic son of the family. When he returns home, Kira is not greeted by his wife, who says that she hasn't had time to prepare dinner and only gives him a bowl of instant ramen. Kira simply cooks himself, which impresses Shinobu despite herself. However, Kira feels his predatory instincts increase and must clip his nails. The next day, Shinobu reprimands him for leaving the cat outside and he apologizes. The landlord comes in and then demands to 260,000 yen that the Kawajiri owe him, two months' worth of rent. Shinobu presses "Kosaku" to go to their safe and open it to at least accept their savings, pushing Kira into an impossible situation as he doesn't know the combination. Kira decides to act boldly and confronts the landowner. While he apologizes profusely, he summons Killer Queen and has it steal 500,000 yen from the landlord's own bag, pretending to honestly paying the man. Shinobu has seen everything, but instead develops romantic feelings for this new, more assertive and active version of her husband, without suspecting a thing. From now on, Kira applies himself to perfect his disguise and steadily make sure nothing about him is suspect. However, his sexual frustration grows as he refrains himself from killing and one evening, he almost lets himself kill Shinobu, who fortunately mistake his gestures for mere sexual advances. Meanwhile Hayato spies on his parents, and wonders why his father would practice writing his own name over and over again.
One day as Kira returns home, he notices that Kosaku's shoes are too big for him and plan to replace them. Suddenly, he hears Shinobu cry in fear and rush to his side. Having found a stray cat in her basement, Shinobu returns to Kira and begs him for help, explaining the cat's hostility towards her. Kira is enticed upon hearing that the cat had a strange hole in its neck, deducing that it is the result of an arrow strike and that the cat is a potential Stand user. However, when Kira goes down to the basement to investigate, he finds the cat dead, having been fatally pierced by glass shards during a previous fight with Shinobu; from this, Kira determines that the cat must not have been a Stand user due to how easily it died. Kira buries the cat in his backyard. The next day, Kira comes back to the garden and notices Stray Cat, the cat-plant. He thus confirms that the cat he buried was indeed a Stand user based on Shinobu's account of what just happened to her. As Stray Cat grows in size, Kira performs a number of tests on Stray Cat. He realizes that Stray Cat is the Stand reincarnation of the cat, conceived by the arrow and brought forth from death. Shinobu, meanwhile, asks Kira if the spot he's looking at is really where he buried the cat, citing her dislike of that spot due to it being where she lost her toenail. Kira, however, is more concerned about not letting Shinobu notice the plant moving, fearing that it would allow Jotaro to trace it back to him. Thus, Kira sends out Killer Queen to discretely blow up Stray Cat and get him out of his hair, only for his bomb to dud; Kira determines that this anomaly is the result of Stray Cat's powers. Shinobu sees Stray Cat moving, but is knocked out by one of his air bubbles. When Stray Cat knocks away Kira's bomb, it goes off, allowing Kira to deduce that the plant is surrounding itself with a vacuum bubble to suppress Killer Queen's weaponry. Killer Queen and Stray Cat square off. During their fight, Stray Cat uses an air bubble to blow up a nearby cactus, covering Kira and Shinobu in cactus spines. Kira panics that Shinobu got hit, and then is stunned when he realizes that he just worried about some woman. He backpedals by stating he was only relieved that her eyes weren't struck by the spines because if something happens to her then it would be easier for Jotaro to discover his identity. Stray Cat fires more compressed air bubbles but Killer Queen blocks it. Kira says the attack is nothing against his Stand now. However, the cat-plant simply grooms itself while Kira realizes that its attack got air inside the blood vessels of his forearm. The air progresses up Kira's arm and moves toward his heart, threatening to cause a deadly embolism due to its large dosage, forcing Kira to stab his arm open to release the excess air. Stray Cat prepares to attack him again, but Kira is at a loss of how he could defeat it. Just then, he spots a golf ball on the ground and rolls it over to the cat-plant. Stray Cat notices the ball and has fun rolling it around with its leaves. Thus, Kira is saved for now as the cat is distracted from its grudge. Kira finally notices Hayato spying on him and Shinobu, noting the child's suspicious behavior during his time as Kosaku Kawajiri. After Hayato exits the house, Kira also leaves to go to work but notices that all the kids from Hayato's school wear identical yellow sun hats. Remembering that Hayato left his hat at home, Kira returns to the Kawajiri household, suspecting that Hayato is still at home and up to no good. Kira hears a noise and rushes up to the attic in a panic. However, he merely sees that Stray Cat has made a mess, probably because it was hungry. Kira left where he was reassured that he did not have to kill Hayato for knowing his true identity. Kira thus inadvertently confirmed Hayato's worst suspicion as the boy eavesdropped on Kira whilst being hidden in the attic.
Kira continued to struggle to maintain his disguise as Kosaku Kawajiri where he fought with his murderous urges that began to grow more and more. Whilst on the subway, he was pestered by a couple after he accidentally irritated them, and gets mocked by them for his bowling pin nail clipper. In retaliation, Kira decided to give in to his urges and followed the couple to their home. Whilst there, he calmly destroyed the man with Killer Queen whilst forcing the woman to clip his nails. Kira tormented the woman such as by pinning her boyfriend's earrings with his ears still attached to her before using Killer Queen to completely obliterate her except for her hand. However, Kira's moment of calm joy came to be interrupted when he realized that he was being covertly filmed by Hayato. Not wanting to be exposed, Kira destroyed the woman's hand before following his 'son' back home and confronted him in the bathroom. After a very tense time together, Kira and Hayato turned on each other when Kira confirmed that Hayato was videotaping him. Kira attempted to kill Hayato and made it look like an accident, only for Hayato to point out that all of this was being filmed as well. Trapped between a rock and a hard place, both Kira and Hayato's tensions came to a boiling point. Kira eventually came to lose his temper and proceeded to kill Hayato. Having barely managed to hide the corpse from Shinobu, Kira then learnt that Rohan and the others now had 'Kosaku' as one of their suspects. Under such desperate circumstances, Yoshihiro suggested to him to leave Morioh but Yoshikage vehemently refused to become a fugitive and lose all hope of a peaceful life. Yoshikage was then suddenly impaled by Yoshihiro's Arrow which gave his Stand Killer Queen a new power.
Overview
Personality and attributes
In appearance, originally Kira was a Japanese male with blonde hair. He tended to wear a light Valentino suit and a dark tie patterned by a column of skull emblems with upright, cat-like ears. As a salesman by profession, he wears a similar suit throughout the series, though he usually takes off his jacket at home.
He longed for a simple life and did not wish to be bothered. According to him, he did not want happiness or despair but rather wanted a quiet life akin to that of a plant. As such, he hated anything that brought attention to himself and disrupted his need for a quiet life. He becomes quite bothered when someone disrupts his simplicity, and goes to extreme lengths to get it back. Thus, he deemed anything that interrupted his simple life as a threat to him and one that he had to eliminate. He showed no hesitation in seeking to kill others and did so in order to protect his secret. However, he also claimed that he did not like to engage in battles with others as he did not like the strife it caused him. Kira was cold and calculating in his attacks where he arranged for his booby-traps to be placed and activated at specific moments to kill his foes. He was not above turning humans into living bombs to use as traps to kill his enemies where he detonated them when his foes approached them. The only exception to this was when he learnt of Josuke's Stand's ability to fix anything which was at odds with Killer Queen's power as it could restore even those that were blown up by Kira's power. Thus, he felt that it was at complete odds against his power and he could not tolerate its existence which was why he later became fixated with killing Josuke.
In his own life, Kira had carefully cultivated his history to the point that it would not draw attention. This gave the appearance of someone of low intelligence and ambition but this was a mask. All his pictures showed him in positions that did not draw attention to him and all his trophies or awards had him in third place. This was, in fact, deliberate as it drew less attention towards him and kept him hidden in society. Ultimately, Kira was said to not be hated or loved by anyone. He was also shown to hold no particular hobbies that served as an effective means of hiding any weakness in him.
From childhood, a habit of his when things did not go his way was biting deeply into his nails to the point that they drew blood. This was all in the pursuit of hiding his true nature as a serial killer. It was said that he often struggled attempting to suppress his desire to kill people. During times when he desired to kill, his nails often began to grow uncontrollably and he had to struggle with his killing instinct. Yoshikage tended to regularly cut his fingernails and kept a collection of the clippings in jars that were sorted by year with the lengths being detailed and recorded in a notebook. He believed that if the nails grew quickly then he was expecting trouble. Kira also had a sexual fetish towards hands that developed after seeing the Mona Lisa as a child. He confessed that he took pictures of the Mona Lisa's hands where he experienced an erection upon seeing them. This later developed in his habit as a serial killer as he often targeted women where he killed them and kept their severed hands. Yoshikage kept the hand with him as his 'girlfriend' where he would lick them in an erotic manner and speak to them. This remained the case until the hand began to decay whereupon he discarded the hand and began to search for a replacement. He demonstrated anger at the thought of being forced from Morioh and stated that he would not run away from the town from his enemies. He was noted to had committed his first murder on August 13, 1983 when he was 18 years old.
In addition, while normally a very cautious, meticulous man who ensures he leaves no evidence behind, there are a few occasions where he became overconfident and let his guard down, and each time has led him to a confrontation with Josuke and the others or defeat at their hands.
Kira believes that he has luck and fate on his side, exposing a superstitious façade, claiming that whenever faced with an obstacle he will be able to make it through with a combination of hard work and opportunity. He measures and collects his own fingernail clippings, using them to predict his murdering luck off of their length.
When he gained Stand powers, he was not aware of the name of these abilities or the fact that others possessed them. It was only after encountering Shigechi that he learnt of these abilities and that each Stand user was different. He then had an interest in finding these other Stand users and the nature of their powers. When Kira was pierced with the Arrow, his demeanor became much more relaxed and prone to elation due to his new-found power, which guaranteed that anyone approaching Hayato would be killed. Ecstatic to possess a power which would dispose of anyone who investigated him, Kira allowed himself one loud boast, which caused his downfall as Josuke overheard him claiming to be 'Yoshikage Kira'.
Powers and abilities
Upon gaining Stand powers, he manifested his own such ability that he called Killer Queen (キラークイーン Kirā Kuīn) that took the form of a white skinned somewhat cat-faced humanoid with fox-skull emblems on the shoulders, waists and knees. It was described as a Stand with short range melee abilities ranging from 2-3 meters that was weak in close combat with this being a reflection of Yoshikage's desire to avoid combat. As with other Stands, Kira's own ability stemmed from his desire to leave no evidence of his killings behind. Thus, the Stand's primary abilities involved explosions in some manner with the ability to turn anything it touched into a booby-trapped bomb including doorknobs, coins and even living people. Any such item that was touched was charged by the Stand's ability and had the capacity to explode. Anything that touched the booby-trapped bomb had the explosive energy conducted into it and created an internal explosion. This could be used to erase a person upon detonation leaving no trace of their body behind to find. On some occasions, Kira could simply charge the object in order to not conduct explosive energy but simply explode when the time was right allowing him to use it to create traps. When ready to be activated, his Killer Queen manifested a button on its hand that it pressed in order to trigger the explosive detonation.
His Stand also had a secondary ability that was another bomb which he called Sheer Heart Attack (シアーハートアタック Shiā Hāto Atakku) that was normally kept within the Killer Queen's left hand. Once activated, this completely autonomous bomb manifested as a tank-traded ball with a fox-skull face. Unlike his own Stand, this ability had unlimited range where it attacked its targets based on their head signature. As a result, the warmest person or object became a target for the bomb where it induced an explosion upon reaching the vicinity. Sheer Heart Attack was able to determine if it detonated by an non-living object instead of its actual prey. Thus, after detonation, it simply reformed and pursued its target once again. Another key feature of Sheer Heart Attack was that it was completely indestructible with it able to withstand countless blows from the likes of Stands such as Jotaro's Star Platinum without suffering from any damage to it.
After being pierced by the second time Arrow, Yoshikage's Stand gained a new power called Another One Bites the Dust (キラー・クイーン バイツァ・ダスト Kirā Kuīn Baitsa Dasuto) that allowed Killer Queen which was his tertiary bomb. This bomb actually took the form of a smaller version of Killer Queen that was deployed on his command. Its existence came as a result of Kira's intense desire to preserving his secret after being forced to kill Hayato. As a result, the Stand gained the ability to manipulate time to an extent to undo events that harmed the user. The miniature Killer Queen was typically placed within another person where it resided in their eyes and was tasked with defending its user from discovery. Thus, if anyone attempted to discern Kira's identity then the Stand activated and journeyed from the person's eye into those that discovered his identity. Once there, it proceeded to kill anyone that had learnt the truth by inducing an explosion that killed them brutally. Another One Bites the Dust was capable of achieving this against multiple targets so long as they had field of vision. After detonation, a brief time loop was activated that extended to either a few hours earlier or the day earlier thus repeating events of the time. Only the person that served as the tertiary bomb and Kira himself were aware of the time loop though Yoshikage was only aware of the fact that a loop occurred but not the events that triggered it. Within the loop, the deaths became a fixed point and would not change so long as the Stand's power was in place with the death of people occuring even if the events did not follow the exact order originally. An example of this was with Rohan who was killed after using his power to learn Kira's identity from Hayato. During the subsequent loops, Hayato avoided Rohan but he still died at the precise time he did in the original event as this was his destined fate so long as Another One Bites the Dust was active. The loop remained the case until it was dispelled by the Stand user which they did if they needed Killer Queen for combat as they could only maintain a single bomb at a time. Thus, Another One Bites the Dust being active prevented Killer Queen from using the other bomb abilities. It was said that the ability activated only when Kira experienced despair and felt trapped.
In the end, Kira began to make use of a new ability that was actually another Stand which was Stray Cat (ストレイ・キャット Sutorei Kyatto). The creature was placed within a small space behind the stomach of Killer Queen that was hollow. Once there, Stray Cat became hostile to anything with its line of sight. Stray Cat operated by firing balls of air pressure that were fired and did a great deal of damage to those struck by it. These bubbles were invisible even to Stand users except for the distortion they created in the air. The larger the bubble the bigger the distortion whereas smaller ones were somewhat difficult to see when launched. Through Killer Queen's power, Kira was able to turn the air bubbles into explosive projectiles that he could detonate when they reached their target. The nature of the air bubbles meant that they could bypass obstacles through cracks in the surface or if sliced in half the bubbles continued moving through Killer Queen's power. This provided Kira's Stand with a powerful ranged attack that was typically invisible to his enemies. However, the explosive nature of the Stand meant that he could not use it in close quarters as the blast could harm him as well. Stray Cat also used these air bubbles to protect itself from harm by creating air pockets to prevent physical strikes from hitting it. It did this even without Yoshikage's command thus operating somewhat independently from him. Kira retained this ability so long as Stray Cat remained in the abdomenal compartment in Killer Queen.
Notes
- Yoshikage Kira was created by Hirohiko Araki where he featured in the setting of the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure universe.
- In translations, his Stand was referred to as Deadly Queen even though the dialogue says Killer Queen.
Alternate Versions=
In other media
Television
Films
Video games
- In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle, Yoshikage Kira appeared as a playable fighter in the fighting video game where he was voiced by actor Rikiya Koyama.
- In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Eyes of Heaven, Yoshikage Kira appeared as a playable fighter and featured in the story mode of the fighting game where he was voiced by actor Rikiya Koyama.
Appearances
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable:
External Links
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