chomiji: Cartoon of chomiji in the style of the Powerpuff Girls (Yuki-dreaming)

lady_ganesh wanted to know about "Top five characters more dangerous than they look." Because proving this about a character always involves a reveal, there are spoilers (which I have covered) in each answer.

Cho Hakkai from Saiyuki (right). On the surface, a mild-mannered, absent-minded young man. But cross him, and you'll find out that he's totally bad-ass - even before he takes off his power limiters and becomes a youkai covered with prehensile vines and whose strength and reflex speed greatly exceed those of virtually every other youkai we've seen in the series.

Sanada Saemon-no-Suke Yukimura from Samurai Deeper Kyo (in the post icon), a cheerful short guy whom we first see as a harmless drunk with a woman on each arm. A few minutes later, he's puking his guts out. Who would suspect that he's one of the only swordsmen in Japan who can give the notorious Demon-Eyes Kyo a good fight ... and can chop lesser opponents in half vertically with a single stroke?

Yoshino Dōa from Blade of the Immortal (right), a very petite, very young Ainu woman who turns out to be a ruthless, blood-thirsty swordswoman with ultra-fast reflexes who takes out male opponents much larger and stronger than herself with fearsome efficiency.

Sister Yolanda from Black Lagoon, an elderly, sweet-faced one-eyed nun who is the Mother Superior of a church outside of Roanapur, Thailand, who packs a a gold-plated Desert Eagle pistol and is efficiently running an arms-smuggling and intelligence-gathering operation. (Sadly, I have no Sister Yolanda icon ... )

Ayasegawa Yumichika from Bleach (left), a fey, vain, eccentric little goofball who's too pretty for his own good and seemingly too refined to even perspire, yet in actuality is the Fifth Seat of the notoriously combat-ready and violent 11th Division of Soul Reapers, meaning that he can whip the ass of just about any even semi-normal opponent without ... breaking a sweat.

chomiji: Cartoon of chomiji in the style of the Powerpuff Girls (Yuki)

If you aren't familiar with the manga series Samurai Deeper Kyo (SDK) and you glance at the first volume or two, you'll find some slapstick humor, a certain amount of fan service, sword fights against monstrous opponents - and a few elements of mystery and mysticism. The series actually gets a lot more serious as it goes on, and becomes rich in both characters and plot, but it's hard to tell from those first volumes. I wanted to get across some of the feel of the meat of the series, and I settled on talking about this two-issue "special," which is included at the end of vol. 11 in the U.S. edition.

"Dragon of the Blue Sky" covers a major incident in the youth of SDK character Sanada Yukimura, who is not the star of the series. Although flashbacks with tasty bits of character background are scattered throughout the series for all the major characters, Yukimura is the only one to have his own separate gaiden - so I think that mangaka Kamijyo Akimine likes him as much as I do.

Read on ... Warning: spoilers for SDK vol. 3-10 and esp. for vol. 11 ... )

That's it ... hope you enjoyed this preview of the series ... and are going to read the rest!

 

January 2026

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