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Hiruma Gohei (比留間 伍兵衛) and his older brother, Hiruma Kihei, plot to take over Kamiya Kaoru's Dōjō.

Appearance[]

Gohei is a large muscular man with short brown hair, thin eyebrows, a large beard, mustache, and wrinkles around his eyes and how his forehead.

Gohei wears a dark colored vest over a white short sleeved skirt hoodie, white pants, white sash around his waist, black armguards, black socks, bandages around his legs, and sandals. While under the disguise of the Battōsai, Gohei wore a mask that covered his entire head to hide his identity.

Personality[]

Gohei is an arrogant man, who overestimates what he is capable of. Gohei also has a habit of looking down on people that he believes are weaker then him, which just ends up with him being easily defeated.

Abilities[]

Gohei has some skills as a swordsman.

Relationships[]

  • Hiruma Kihei: Kihei is Gohei's older brother, the two care for each other and work well together.
  • Fudōsawa: Fudōsawa has hired Gohei and his brother.

History[]

After his brother manage to infiltrate the Kamiya Dōjō, Gohei, a former samurai, became a murderer under the false name of Hitokiri Battōsai.

Tokyo Arc[]

When Kaoru begins to discover the truth, Kihei and Gohei try to kill her but Himura Kenshin saves Kaoru, beats Gohei and scares Kihei to unconsciousness.

The brothers later ask Sagara Sanosuke to fight Kenshin, a battle that the former hitokiri end up winning. Revolted, Gohei shoots at Kenshin, but he is able to stop the bullet with his Sakabatō. When they try to attack Kaoru and Myojin Yahiko, Sanosuke defeats Gohei and Kenshin injures Kihei into submission.

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[]

  • In the 1996 anime, 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.
    • Gohei used to be a student in the Kamiya Dōjō, but because he kept insisting in using real swords for killing, he was challenged by his teacher, Kaoru's father, and got his right thumb crushed, preventing him from using a sword with his right hand.
    • Gohei comes back later, claiming to be Battōsai and using Kamiya Kasshin-ryū, he attacks Kaoru's Dōjō. Kenshin saves her and crushes Gohei's left fingers using his Hiten Mitsurugi-ryū, making him unable to wield a sword at all.
    • Feeling totally useless in being unable to wield a sword for the rest of his life, Gohei seeks revenge on Kenshin and hires Sanosuke (then known as Zanza fighter-for-hire) to fight Kenshin, but this fails.
    • Later, he hires the Kisaki brothers to defeat Kenshin. Though they almost succeed, Yahiko returns Kenshin's Sakabatō and the brothers are defeated.

Gallery[]

References[]

  1. "The Secret Life of Characters (4). Rurouni Kenshin Volume 1
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