Atsuya Kusakabe

Kusakabe stands tall, his spiky hair, brown on screen and black on the page, framing a pair of sharp, dark eyes. For clothing he layers a dust-brown peacoat above a white dress shirt, the look set off by a jade necktie and finished with black slacks plus black footwear.

On first impression Kusakabe comes across as fearful, with staying alive ranked above every other concern. He will lie to serve that goal, as the Shibuya Incident showed when he repeatedly fooled Panda into sticking close for protection while routing him away from the floor where Gojo lay sealed, all to keep clear of special grade spirits. Bravery still emerges when it counts, though, as when he put himself between Kasumi Miwa and Kenjaku's Maximum: Uzumaki. His broad command of jujutsu makes him a regular fixture in strategy talks, walking allies through techniques and plans, and for all his timidity he frequently steers those discussions, including the search for a way to kill Sukuna if Gojo were to fall.

In the raid on Sukuna he willingly stepped into harm's way to guard those with stronger survival odds, instantly shielding Hiromi Higuruma from a storm of slashes, and he stood ready to take the front himself should no other option exist. Dread still seizes him when matters turn grim, as it did when he despaired at Sukuna winning the authority to start fusing humanity with Tengen. Yet at bottom his allies see him as a decent man, evident in how he released a captive Panda to settle what he owed Masamichi Yaga, whom he honored for aiding his younger sister, and when his concern during the Sukuna battle bent toward keeping Miwa and his students safe.

Carrying no innate technique whatsoever, Kusakabe nonetheless holds his grade 1 standing and ranks among the finest blade-masters trained in New Shadow Style. Mei Mei deemed him the lone sorcerer to attain grade 1 without an innate technique, and by her assessment along with Nanami's and Gojo's, he is the strongest living grade 1 sorcerer, though Gojo cautioned that the ranking could change once the Big Three Families entered the picture. He openly concedes he has no hope against special grades and steers clear of them, while remaining confident against weaker enemies, the curse-user pair Toshihisa Negi and Manami Suda among them.

The sword is his central weapon, supported by heavy physical ability. Using Batto Sword Drawing he cut down a trio of curse-user henchmen in a flash, coating his blade in cursed energy and spinning it to produce the fastest iai draw the New Shadow Style offers. Among his arsenal is New Shadow Style: Simple Domain, an anti-domain method that robs a Domain Expansion of both its barrier and its sure-hit property, which he turned against Sukuna's Dismantle to soften it. He also fields Evening Moon Sword Drawing, weaving an automatic interception routine into a Simple Domain so his katana strikes down whatever crosses in, and Hazy Moon, which restores a piece of a broken blade out of cursed energy. His main implement was a conventional katana whose guard was gold and whose grip ran dark red, a blade that snapped during his fight with Sukuna.