Kiratouki

"Kiratouki"

- introducing himself.

About
Kiratouki is an ambitious young Oni warrior of great strength and skill. He appears in several Alicesoft titles as an optional enemy encounter.

In the majority of his appearances, Kiratouki is portrayed as a powerful oni who intends to usurp the Oni King by attaining unbeatable strength. To achieve this goal, he carefully cultivates rare varieties of Monsters that provide large sums of experience points when defeated to rapidly increase his Level. Defeating Kiratouki will reward the protagonists with access to these monsters, allowing them to quickly gain several levels.

Toushin Toshi II
Kiratouki can be encountered by the protagonist Seed Cashima while exploring the 31st floor of Ragnard Labyrinth. He is found near the southern edge of the floor guarding a pen filled with Plum's Ghost Guy Monsters. Seed expresses interest in gaining experience from the monsters, but is refused access to them by Kiratouki, who insists that they are for his personal use. Kiratouki then challenges Seed to a fight, offering to allow him entry into the pen under the condition that he first defeat him while also warning that he will be killed and converted into experience points if he fails. Seed is given the choice to either accept or decline Kiratouki's wager, and is free to return to his location at any point to accept the challenge if he refuses.

If Seed is able to defeat Kiratouki, the oni will remark with awe and humility that there are still many people in the world stronger than him before slinking away. Along with leaving the pen filled with Plum's Ghosts free for the taking, Kiratouki's defeat also rewards Seed with a yellow crest in recognition of his victory.

If Seed purchases a home in Toushin City, a painting can be found hanging on his wall depicting the character Hakuinkyouki staring dreamily at an image of Kiratouki over a starry sky. Though no context is provided for this painting, Seed remarks that it is "very soulful".

Otome Senki
Sometime prior the events of the game's story, Kiratouki was defeated and had his body divided into 15 pieces for unknown reasons. Each of these pieces were sealed inside of mystical gourds and scattered throughout Crow's Labyrinth in southern JAPAN to prevent them from being brought back together. In an effort to be reunited with him, Kiratouki's wife Hakuinkyouki entered the labyrinth in search of the gourds.

The player's party can encounter Hakuinkyouki while traversing the eight floor of Crow's Labyrinth, where she will block the pathway to one of the elevators leading to the next floor of the dungeon. She refuses to allow the party to pass until it retrieves all fifteen gourds for her, but does not disclose her reasons for wanting them. Completing this task is not necessary to finish the game, as a second elevator can be found elsewhere on the floor.

If the party fulfills Hakuinkyouki's request and gathers the gourds for her, she will break them apart and free Kiratouki, who immediately attacks the party. After he is defeated, his body will break apart once more, forcing his wife to leave in search of its pieces and granting the protagonists use of the blocked elevator.

Rance X
Sometime prior to the events of the game's story, Kiratouki escaped from Hell in search of the Cocktail Labyrinth, a dungeon in the Kingdom of Leazas that becomes a gathering place for Lucky Can Can Gal Monsters once every three months. Intending to eventually harvest them for their experience points, he devoted several weeks toward carefully watching over these rare gal monsters and gradually formed a close bond with them.

Kiratouki can be encountered by Rance if he elects to travel through the Cocktail Labyrinth while en route to the city of Scale during the operation to defeat the Dark Lord Lexington. As Rance and his allies slaughter the dungeon's Lucky Can Cans for experience, a few of the frightened gal monsters manage to run off and alert Kiratouki of the intruders. Kiratouki angrily rushes to the scene to confront Rance and berates him for ruining his hard work by bullying the Lucky Can Cans. His complaints are met with mockery by Rance, who accuses the him of being at fault for not keeping the monsters somewhere safer. Rance's unapologetic response infuriates Kiratouki, causing him to attack the party in retribution.

While Kiratouki puts up a formidable fight against Rance and his companions, he is steadily overwhelmed by the group's attacks and forced to admit defeat. Before making his exit, he states that he will remember Rance's name and one day return to take revenge against him.

Personality and Appearance
Kiratouki is a large oni with golden yellow skin, bright green eyes, and a muscular build. While his face is relatively humanoid in appearance compared to most other oni, he possesses the distended earlobes characteristic of the species and has two large horns emerging from either side of his head, along with a third smaller horn jutting out of his forehead. The most distinguishing physical trait that Kiratouki possesses are his six arms, which each end in large fists that radiate with a glowing energy. Kiratouki does not wear clothing, but has iron bands around each of his wrists and a large ball and chain around his left leg.

Prideful and ambitious, Kiratouki is a warrior who strives to be recognized as the strongest oni, with an ultimate goal of becoming the next Oni King. He is very confident in his abilities, and will make a point of boasting about his grand objective to every person he meets. Despite this, he is also deceptively cautious and pragmatic, and approaches achieving his dream with far more practicality than his demeanor would suggest. He is aware that becoming the Oni King, a being comparable to a God in power and authority, through might alone is an incredibly lofty objective, and thus chooses to seek out ways of improving his strength as efficiently as possible instead of relying on the diminishing results of conventional training. His most frequent means of doing this is by collecting species of monsters that produce vast quantities of experience points when defeated, such as Plum's Ghosts or Lucky Can Cans, and raising them until he can maintain a stable population even after killing several, enabling him to consistently gain large amounts of experience. As a result of this behavior, he can reliably be found in locations where such creatures tend to congregate, and often sneaks away from Hell to search for more of them.

Kiratouki's outspoken arrogance belies the fundamental honorability of his character. Though he raises the monsters he gathers for the express purpose of killing them, he nonetheless treats them with the care and attentiveness of a pet owner and seems to carry a genuine sense of empathy for them. This is most clearly demonstrated during his confrontation with Rance after the latter begins attacking his flock of Lucky Can Cans, where he shows more outspoken outrage at his monsters getting bullied than he does at being deprived of potential experience points. This core of decency can be further seen in his interactions with those that draw his ire, where he shows a full willingness to forgive them for their actions should they apologize. He is also not above admitting his own limits, and will begrudgingly accept defeat against those he deems stronger than himself for the sake of living to fight another day. Kiratouki's strong sense of self-preservation particularly stands out in comparison to other members of his race, as it is customary within oni culture to embrace death as a natural consequence of battle. During both of her appearances, the female oni Hakuinkyouki is implied to possess romantic feelings for Kiratouki. While the two are never shown interacting directly, making the exact nature of their relationship difficult to determine, a painting found in Toushin Toshi II depicts Hakuinkyouki looking wistfully out into the night sky while thinking of Kiratouki. This attraction is more definitively proven in Otome Senki, where Hakuinkyouki delves into the Crow's Labyrinth for the sake of rescuing the imprison Kiratouki and refers to herself as his wife when describing their connection. As Kiratouki does not ever directly acknowledge Hakuinkyouki in either appearance, however, it is unclear if the two are truly lovers or if she is merely an admirer of his with a delusional understanding of their relationship.

Abilities
An oni who intends to claim the position of ruler of Hell through raw power, Kiratouki is an exemplary warrior with a tremendous level of fighting ability. He prides himself for being the strongest member of his clan, and wastes no opportunity to refer to himself as one of the most powerful oni; a statement he can support in combat. While he lacks the pure muscle of Suzakuki, one of the Four Great Oni that serve directly beneath the Oni King, he compensates for the difference through speed and skill, with his six arms giving him permitting him to constantly strike at his foes with an unceasing barrage of attacks. Kiratouki displayed his talents as a fighter during his encounter with the Dark Lord Extermination Squad, a group of dozens of the strongest warriors on The Continent designed to subdue Dark Lords in combat, where he was able to put up a formidable fight. Though such a feat is impressive by any metric and suggests him to be on roughly equal ground with a Dark Lord, it is still a clear indicator that he is far from reaching his dream of surpassing the Oni King.

Outside of combat, Kiratouki is quite skilled at husbandry, as he is able to care for and maintain sizable populations of monsters that are infamously difficult to find in large amounts, such as Lucky Can Cans.

Trivia

 * Kiratouki serves as the final opponent fought in the "Nakanoshima Park" challenge quest added to Rance X's After mode in its fourth post-release update.
 * Kiratouki is the only oni character introduced in Toushin Toshi II to appear in a canonical game in the Rance Series.
 * Kiratouki is the only one of the three optional oni super bosses encountered in Toushin Toshi II that does not need to be interacted with to progress through the game.
 * The kanji that spell out Kiratouki's name can alternatively be read as "yellow fighting oni"; a literal description of what he is.
 * During his appearance in Otome Senki, Kiratouki's name is written in katakana as "キラトーキ" rather than in kanji. While his name is written in kanji once again in his appearance in Rance X, it is still written in katakana during the battle against him.