Kurozumi Kanjuro

Kanjuro looks every bit the classic Kabuki actor. Bright red hair tumbles all the way to the floor, the front strands jutting outward and falling to his chest, while oversized lips and rosy cheek marks recall Bentham. He stands unusually tall at 347 centimeters. A ribbon cinches the middle of his traditional samurai garb, zori cover his feet, and a large brush rides on his back, ready to serve either as a tool for his powers or as a walking staff. While acting as a Kouzuki retainer, he bore that family's crest somewhere on his person.

Raised among theater performers, Kanjuro found his deepest purpose in pretending to be someone other than himself, a trait Orochi summed up by saying that his only joy lay in becoming another person. After persecutors killed his parents, he resolved to avenge his parents and then welcome death, and he played the devoted Kouzuki retainer precisely so he might perish alongside that house. In the role he came across as selfless and even-tempered, though he could also seem scatterbrained or rashly over-eager. None of it sprang from real affection, however. When Orochi finally ordered him to drop the mask and seize Momonosuke, he obeyed at once, showing no guilt for the anguish his treachery caused those who had trusted him. Freed of the act, he revealed a cruel, taunting streak, beating the captured Momonosuke senseless and mocking the deaths of Oden and Toki. His laughter ran Ka, ka, ka.

Born and brought up in a beloved theater troupe, Kanjuro lost his parents when they were slain onstage for belonging to the Kurozumi Family. Adrift, he found his relatives Orochi, Higurashi, and Semimaru, who handed him the Fude Fude no Mi and told him to live and die as a Kouzuki. Because he already longed for death, he agreed. After a youth spent stealing hair to craft brushes, he tried to rob Oden, was beaten, and then followed him, in time becoming one of his retainers and joining the ranks of the Nine Red Scabbards.

For more than two decades Kanjuro fed Orochi a steady stream of information while posing as a faithful samurai, aiding Oden in battle, helping Kin'emon escape Dressrosa, and traveling with the alliance through Zou. His fruit let him bring drawings to life, and he deliberately played the part of a clumsy artist to hide his true skill. He kept up the deception until the eve of the raid on Onigashima, when he unmasked himself as Orochi's planted spy, abducted Momonosuke, and turned on the comrades who believed in him. Wounded in the clashes that followed, he still managed to send a lifelike, explosive-laden drawing of Oden against the Scabbards, an attack that claimed Ashura Doji. Kin'emon ultimately struck him down, and with the last of his strength Kanjuro painted the spectral flame Kazenbo before he died, calling the deed his final performance.