Name:  Hanya

School:  Oniwabanshuu

Weapon:  Iron claws

Technique:  Western Boxing, Kempo

Appearance: A masked man who wears a strange outfit with red and black stripes on the sleeves which cause some sort of an illusion.

Personality:  Extremely loyal to Aoshi.  He even sacrificed his life to save Aoshi.

Background:  He was born in a poor village which had famine for years.  His parents tried to eat him when he was still a child.  Somehow, he managed to escape and was forced to live in the wild, fighting with animals for food until he was picked up by Aoshi.  Aoshi trained him to become one of the best Oniwabanshuu warriors.  In order to become Aoshi's right-hand man, he even disfigured his face so that he could disguise himself like anyone easily.

The Makings of the Character - Oniwabanshuu Hanya

Hanya's motif wasn't a masked ninja (laughs) but the Elephant Man and Spiderman. In the early story, like the Elephant Man, Hanya's mother was trampled by an animal while he was in the womb and so was born disfigured. He could not come in contact with people without being persecuted, and was called a demon, and so lived alone deep in the mountains. Aoshi found him there and he became one of the Oniwabanshuu. "There is no place other than the Oniwabanshuu where I can live as a human being," I thought about him saying, and so only through fighting could he prove he was human. That was the early Hanya. But, when I had to draw it, the idea that "one's birth determines one's situation" didn't appeal to me, and at the end of a long debate with my boss about what would be the best way to end a boy's comic (the longest since the beginning of Ruroken, I'm sure) I replaced it with the present version. After this, Yamazaki Susumu of the Shinsengumi was brought to his nature. I received a lot of interesting guesses about Hanya; many people though he was actually a beautiful woman, others that he was Aoshi's double or his twin. Many of them I'd never even considered, and I thought they were very interesting. Maybe I'll have to bring them in as a new character . . . (But my plans are uncertain.) Other than the motif, his design was purely a skeleton. That his two eyes are a different shape is a holdover from the original design. This is off the subject, but as we drew Hanya's clothes over and over, my assistants kept calling him a robot or a mobile suit.

Name:  Shikijou

School: Oniwabanshuu

Weapon:  Iron Ball

Technique:  Brute Strength

Personality:  Extremely loyal to Aoshi.  He even sacrificed his life to save Aoshi.

Background:  He used to work in the government as an assassin during the Bakumatsu.  On one mission, he was defeated by a 13 yr old Aoshi who was on duty.  Aoshi admired Shikijou's skills, hence spared  his life on a condition that he join the Oniwabanshuu.  Aoshi not only trained him, but also gave him a secret medicine which helped him in the development of his muscles.

The Makings of the Character - Oniwabanshuu Shikijou

Shikijou's motif was Sanosuke. It's surprising to write this, but it's true. That is, he has the same kind of nature as Sanosuke (full of self-confidence, big-hearted), his fighting style (power fighter) is the same, and we assume his position (the number one advisor of the group) is the same. When they confronted each other, the match between Sanosuke and Shikijou threw the differences between the two groups into sharp relief. (But whether I succeeded or not I'm not really sure . . . ) You can't be sure if Hanya is really evil or not, but I tried to make Shikijou a villain. But, when we see him at the edge of death, he accidentally became cool. On top of that, as is customary for a secondary character, a section of enthusiastic readers became attached to him. (But if you think about it, all of the Oniwabanshuu are like that . . .) But, this time the best reader response was for a single page, when the young Aoshi is introduced . . . as you'd expect, all the guys look like that (bitter laughter). Other than that, I don't have much to say about the design. A power fighter needs muscles, but he looked too ordinary so I covered him with scars. But, the depiction of the muscles is a reference to American comics.

Name:  Hyottoko

School:  Oniwabanshuu

Weapon:  Flaming Breath

Technique:  The fat around his stomach cushions the blows of any attacks. Has an oil sack in his stomach and flint for teeth.

Appearance:  A tall and fat man who carries a bag of oil on his back fro a refill.

Personality: He's extremely loyal to Aoshi.  He even sacrificed his life to save Aoshi.

The Makings of the Character - Oniwabanshuu Hyottoko

There was no model for this character. However I'd already been playing with the idea of "Hyottoko" meaning "Fire Man," or a man who could breathe fire. I wanted to put this man who could breathe fire into the group of spies (ordinarily you'd say ninja, but writing "ninja" seemed sort of cheap, so I used spy (onmitsu) instead) but Hyottoko seems out of place. Maybe it's something you just don't have in this fictional world . . . As for his personality, for someone who's bang introduced and bang defeated, a conceited idiot seemed natural. By the way, as for the match between Hyottoko's Kaentoiki and Kenshin's revolving sword, everyone: readers, people at the magazine, friends and acquaintances all said, "Both of them are sideshow acts!!" Looking at it more closely, all I can say is I give up. (It was summer then and I was really tired, so please forgive me.) For the design, I again took a mutant from that popular American comic. As I said before, I needed to keep a strange characteristic in mind, and as I planned to conceal an oil sac in his stomach, I thought I'd make him extremely fat. It was the first time I'd ever drawn someone like that, and until I got used to it, it was really difficult. Once I'd gotten used to it, though, it got easier.

Name: Beshimi

School:  Oniwabanshuu

Weapon:  Poison darts which are coated with Mandaraba(Jimsonweed).

Appearance:  A man with a small build.

Personality:  Extremely loyal to Aoshi.  He even sacrificed his life to save Aoshi.

The Makings of the Character - Oniwabanshuu Beshimi

Rather than from an actual design, this character was made up almost impromptu. Actually, in drawing the Megumi story, while I was arguing with my boss, I thought that Kanryuu 's soldiers would fight Kenshin and the others. But he said, "Up till now the swordsmen Kenshin fights have just been punks. Isn't that kind of boring?" and so I made up a group that added a spy aspect to the real organization the Oniwabanshuu was. Naturally since this was while I was going ahead with the story I'd already planned, it ended up sort of haphazard. When we first see Beshimi, he doesn't show much strength, and he only exists to show that something strange is going on. I didn't plan out his character, and he ended up being an incompetent coward. Later on in the story, he shows a different face, but let's not give anything away. The design is as haphazard as his character. Except for Aoshi, all of the Oniwabanshuu are pretty weird, and he ended up being shorter than Kenshin. The fact that he's short goes along with his cowardice. My readers tend to like short character, so I heard a lot of people saying, "Oh, Beshimi's cute!" It was sort of an odd feeling, though.