Izou

Izou kept a pale face, wore purple on his lips, and bound his black hair in a geisha's style while a long strand hung loose across the right half of his face. The Kouzuki Family crest was inked across his back. His usual dress was a pink and purple kimono cinched with a scarlet, black-spotted obi. After the timeskip he gained a small scar above his right eye, let his hair grow longer, added a second short strand on the left, and took up a black cape, gloves, and a kimono marked with the simplified Whitebeard flag down the legs.

His devotion to Whitebeard and the crew ran deep enough that he was ready to throw his life away trying to rescue Portgas D. Ace at Marineford. As a samurai he prized a worthy death in combat, lamenting that he had let too many such chances slip by and declaring himself prepared to fall in the raid on Kaidou. Even so, he held that no one should welcome death too eagerly so long as a cause remained worth defending.

Born in Wano alongside his only sibling Kikunojo, Izou was raised in a dancing school until their father's arrest left the two scraping by on the streets of Ringo, where he honed the deadly marksmanship that defined him. When Kouzuki Oden fed the pair, they pledged themselves to him and eventually joined the band later called the Nine Red Scabbards. Izou bitterly opposed his lord's wish to leave with the Whitebeard Pirates and chased after him to drag him home, yet he gave up his protests once Oden had earned a place aboard. He stayed with the crew when Oden departed and in time was named commander of its 16th division, growing into an elite sniper whose Haki-charged rounds could shatter a sword or pierce Kaidou's hide.

At Marineford he charged the Marines beside the other commanders and stood among those who shielded Luffy from Akainu after Ace fell. He went into hiding once the crew dissolved following its defeat by the Blackbeard Pirates. Later he traveled with Marco and Nekomamushi to Wano to avenge Oden, reunited with his sister, and joined the assault on Onigashima, disarming King with a single shot. Through the long battle he suffered mounting wounds, and in the end he traded fatal blows with the CP0 agent Maha, urging Kikunojo to survive before he died. His body was laid to rest with his pistols in the cemetery at Ringo.