Shimotsuki Yasuie

Yasuie was a small, slight man with a rounded, almost spherical head. Faint pink dabs sat on his cheeks, light stubble framed his lips, and a slim mustache sat just above them. A permanent grin marked his face, a side effect of eating a SMILE. His nickname sprang from a dense blue afro that bristled outward like hedgehog quills. In his Tonoyasu guise he tucked that hair beneath a purple polka-dot bandana tied into a topknot and dressed in a patched orange kimono with waraji sandals. In younger years his face was leaner and he stood considerably taller.

Cheerful and easily excited, Yasuie heaped praise on others and shrugged off insults at his own expense, even when Zoro mistakenly called him trash. Beneath the clownish manner lay deep compassion: he funneled the money his daughter sent into feeding Ebisu Town's poor and sick, often going hungry himself. His warmth won him enormous affection, and the townsfolk revered him almost as a saint. In earlier days he was a stern man who took his duties as daimyo seriously and once gave a band of young thieves, the future Nine Red Scabbards, extra coin while urging them to buy books and better themselves for Oden's sake. Proud of everything he had done, he chose with his final breath to die not as a lord but as a joyful jester of Ebisu Town.

While Sukiyaki ruled Wano, Yasuie governed Hakumai and once gave the young Kurozumi Orochi a servant's post. He sheltered the exiled Oden, pushed him to prove himself a worthy samurai, and stood with the Kouzuki cause throughout. When Orochi seized power and later executed Oden, Yasuie and the other daimyo refused to submit and were struck down by Kaidou, with Yasuie alone surviving. He then adopted the name Tonoyasu, took in an orphan named Toko, and settled quietly in Ebisu Town. Years later he befriends Zoro, then deliberately poses as the thief Ushimitsu Kozo so he can stand before Orochi at his own execution. Mocking the shogun and claiming the rebellion's crescent-moon sign was a mere prank, he is shot dead, yet his ruse buys precious time for Kin'emon, his Nine Red Scabbards, and the broader revolt.