Ken Takagi

Protrusions shaped like key teeth run along Ken's fingertips, an obvious fit for the man's line of work. He stands at average height, dark-haired, wearing it in a short tightly coiled afro, with padlocks hanging from his pierced ears.

The costume runs the theme hard: a small yellow mask over the eyes, a red necklace strung with five keys, three of them in the anime, and a short-sleeved bodysuit in yellow and dark green printed to resemble a keyhole. Light gray shoulder pads carry dark keyhole shapes of their own, and he finishes with a brown belt that swings still more keys at his side, plus white boots.

Ken is pragmatic and blunt, and he sizes people up fast on whether they are an asset. Rookies and students draw the harshest read, because he stays conscious that they may be children risking their lives, and his infant son makes him feel their age more sharply than the other pros do. Inexperience irritates him, though the stakes of the mission against Overhaul may account for some of that.

The sharpness never crosses into malice. He was glad Tamaki Amajiki escaped permanent injury. He trusts himself and his allies heavily, certain the Yakuza would cower and surrender or run, and that confidence occasionally tips into arrogance: he told Sir Nighteye to aim his foresight at him and prove it fallible, sure he could escape whatever fate the man saw. Being patronized or underestimated gets under his skin, since he considers his own competence long since proven, unlike the students'.

His snap judgments are not final. When the students blew past what he expected, he was impressed and proud enough to say out loud that they were better heroes than the pros.

Lock Down immobilizes any nonliving thing Ken has touched, freezing it at one point in space. Enough force overwhelms it, and it cannot be applied across a large area.

Deadbolt, his ultimate move, has him touch a nearby surface and spin his hand through 180 degrees, locking his immediate surroundings to a single point. He first used it against Joi Irinaka. He also carries a tile he can throw and then lock in midair as a foothold.

He served on the Shie Hassaikai Raid Team and later fought through the Jaku Hospital Raid during the Paranormal Liberation War, and the Central Hospital defense in the Final War.