Hiruma Kihei (比留間 喜兵衛) is the elder brother of Hiruma Gohei and, effectively, the brains behind their dastardly duo.
Appearance[]
Kihei is a short man with light colored hair that is brushed back, thin eyebrows, and wrinkles around his face.
Kihei wears a dark colored haori over a dark colored kimono, white socks, and sandals.
Personality[]
Kihei is the brain to his brother's brawn. Kihei comes up with statics to get what he wants. When things don't go his way, Kihei will use underhanded statics, like having his brother kill people to tarnish the Kamiya Dōjō's name and shot a person while they are focus on something else. Due to his heinous actions, Himura considers him to be a hopeless soul, as he has proven to be beyond redemption and had no qualm in disfiguring him.
Abilities[]
Kihei is a clever person who uses tricks to convince people to follow his command. He tried to make Kamiya Koru give him the Kamiya Estate, which tells about his persuasion abilities. He also seems to control his brother, so that Kihei is the mastermind behind their plans, and Gohei is just the muscle on them. Also Hiruma Kihei has been shown to be able to use a a bow and arrow, and a revolver.
Relationship[]
- Hiruma Gohei - Kihei is Gohei's older brother, and the two care for each other and work well together. Deep down it seems that Kihei was persuading Gohei into doing what he wants.
- Fudōsawa - Later in the story Fudosawa hired Kihei and his brother to stop Sanosuke's father, so that Fudosawa could take control of the village he lived in.
History[]
Hatching a plot to take the land upon which the Kamiya Dōjō stands in order to sell it, Kihei hatches a plan to worm into Kamiya Kaoru's trust and stays at the Dōjō as a sort of live-in apprentice immediately after the death of her father, Kamiya Koshijiro.
Tokyo Arc[]
When Kihei's attempts to persuade Kaoru to sell the Dōjō failed in the face of her pride and stubbornness, Kihei enlists the help of his brother to discredit the Dōjō by posing as the Hitokiri Battōsai and claiming to be a former student of Koshijiro's.
However, when the real Battōsai appears, the two brothers are swiftly defeated and cast out. Kihei and Gohei return shortly afterward, having hired the "Fight Merchant" Zanza to defeat Battōsai for them, but when Kihei hatches a plot to betray Zanza, the Hiruma brothers are once again defeated and he was left heavily disfigured by Himura.
Jinchū Arc[]
Later in the manga, they are employed as bodyguards by a yakuza in Sanosuke's hometown, and then by the yakuza's uncle. Sanosuke beats them on both occasions.
Development and Reception[]
Watsuki wanted "interesting villains to start things off with a bang". He wanted one as "brainy" and one as "wild". He used a manager and director of Takeshi Obata's Chikarabito Densetsu as a model for Kihei and a character he found in a magazine for Gohei.
Watsuki states that, unlike the faces of Kenshin and other characters, the faces of Kihei and Gohei are of basic shapes. In Watsuki's view, drawing the Hiruma brothers was "easy" as a result.[1]
Trivia[]
- Hiruma Kihei was a manga original character since he didn't appear in the 1996 anime adaptation. In that anime adaptation, Gohei has no brother, and his intelligence is increased to the point where he could be considered a "fusion" of the two, sometimes even performing the actions Kihei did in the manga.
- However, in the 2011 anime adaptation, Kihei formally appears.
Gallery[]
References[]
- ↑ "The Secret Life of Characters (4). Rurouni Kenshin Volume 1