Prime Minister

The Prime Minister is an elderly man. In the source novel he is pictured in a crimson robe with a grey beard reaching down to his chest; the anime trims that beard short and dresses him instead in a purple-and-black robe topped with a turban.

For three decades the Prime Minister devoted himself wholly to Redaku, with no family of his own to claim his attention, and he took real pride in that service. Beneath the loyalty, though, lies a deep arrogance: he cannot abide that leadership passed by birthright to the late king's young daughter rather than to a man of his experience. Cold and calculating, he manipulates those around him without a second thought, willing to starve a city, deceive his allies, and spend countless lives to prove his point and seize the control he believes he has earned.

After serving Redaku's previous king for thirty years, the Prime Minister travelled abroad when the monarch fell ill, journeying through the Land of Fire and its neighbours. There he saw the shinobi and jutsu his homeland treated as fairy tales, along with the peace, technology, and plentiful resources that Redaku had always lacked. Set on building a private ninja army of his own, he hired fifty missing-nin and brought in Jiji to train them. When his ally Zansūru uncovered a way to revive the dead and proposed raising a legion of immortal dragons, the Prime Minister leveraged Jiji's love for the maid Margo, offering to permit their romance if Jiji spent a year aiding Zansūru. To keep Jiji working past that year, Zansūru lied that Margo had died, and the Prime Minister forged a death certificate to sell the deception.

When the king died and his young daughter Manari inherited the throne rather than the Prime Minister, he set about proving her unfit to rule. He had allies press Manari into sending her brother Nanara off to Nagare Village, then painted the boy as a failure who had abandoned his duties. He withheld the knowledge Manari needed to control the Shuigu, so that her effort to bring rain instead ruined crops and drowned livestock, spawning a famine he blamed on a flooded river. All the while he packed the palace with his own loyalists, kept Nanara illiterate and sidelined, and had the country's libraries sealed shut. He also quietly signed the Shuigu's contract himself, readying the weapon for his personal use.

Nearly a year on, with the capital's death toll climbing, the Prime Minister steered a despairing Manari toward his true aim: taking water and resources from the peace-softened Land of Fire. He assigned his fifty missing-nin to the invasion and had cannons built, while secretly counting on Zansūru's dragon army to actually win the war. When Nanara returned for the anniversary of the king's death, he arrived with a new tutor, Kakashi Hatake, whom the Prime Minister eyed with suspicion. Nanara soon turned against the invasion, and the Prime Minister blamed Kakashi's influence.

He marched on Nagare Village with his army, pressing enlisted men into policing the villagers by holding their families hostage. When the villagers walled themselves off and then struck back, he branded Nanara a traitor, donned armour, and watched from a cliff as his forces crumbled. He wrenched the Shuigu from a hesitant Manari and turned it on her and on Nanara, only for Kakashi to shield the boy with Fire Release: Water Mist. Recognising his opponent as the Sixth Hokage, the Prime Minister pressed on, unaware that his dragon army had already been stopped. The clashing fire and water bred thunderclouds overhead, and his armour and outstretched Shuigu drew the lightning straight into him, stopping his heart. Kakashi revived him with CPR, the invasion was called off, and the Prime Minister was carried back to the capital to face trial.