Honda Tadakatsu

About
Honda Tadakatsu was one of the Racoon Dogs Youkai that worked directly for the lord of the Tokugawa House, Ieyasu Tokugawa, being highly praised as one his strongest commanders. Unlike all the other petite Racoon Dogs that serve Ieyasu, Tadakatsu has a big and robust body, easily larger than the average human.



An honorable and prideful warrior, Tadakatsu is widely respected and admired by his peers for his incredible peformance on the battlefield, which he takes great pride of. He's very silent and only talks through whispers and gestures, boasting an enigmatic and quiet disposition with a  stern and stoic appearance. He's nearly expressionless most of the time, showing little emotion and barely talking at all, creating a huge contrast with his more wacky and  rowdy companions. While in appearance he might look serious, i n reality, Tadakatsu is very  bashful and timid individual that experiences a hard time dealing with those that aren't his family, keeping to himself most of the time. However, he takes great pride in his physical strength and, weirdly enough, finds great joy in giving massages. He would regularly try to offer his massaging services to others and loves doing so with passion, though his remarkable physical strength sometimes make it painful for those receiving the  rubdown. Despite his general shyness, Tadakatsu becomes more fierce when he really wants to give massages. Rance noted that his eyes shine when requesting to massage his feet.

During the events of Sengoku Rance, Tadakatsu is first shown in the events of the Tokugawa House, where he mostly remains in silence or sometimes giving massages to Ieyasu. When they go to war with the Oda House, Tadakatsu firmly expresses his will to fight and commands an army with ferocity. Canonically, Tadakatsu was defeated and captured by Oda and invited by Rance to join his army. Despite being loyal to Ieyasu previously, Tadakatsu joined with the condition of being granted the opportunity to give massages every once in a while, which left Rance confused but agreed regardless.

He makes one last appearance in the Sengoku Rance Epilogue, where he Tadakatsu goes to the room where Kouhime and Suzume where conversing in order to hand them a Mountain Lily to place it next to the frozen Sill Plain. Suzume commented how this rare flower only blossoms deep into the mountains and that they are really hard to get, and Kou greatly praised him for it, leading him to blush a little for all the compliments and respectfully leaving the room.

Abilities
A highly skilled warrior, despite being only a commander of Ieyasu, Tadakatsu carried enough individual strength to potentially be one of JAPAN's strongest warriors. He fights by wielding a Yari, a JAPANese spear, and shows great expertise with it. Due to his obscene physical strength, he's capable of bringing tremendous amount of pain and damage to his enemies, crushing them full force by vertically wielding his Yari to the ground. He's a unit mostly focused in the offensive battles, and depends on destroying enemies through raw brute force. He's highly honorable and devoted as well, with great tenacity and ferocity, he's described by Suzume as a "true warrior". His skills on the battlefield have been recognized by many, even by someone as self-centered as Rance. His biggest weakness, however, is that he isn't a particularly impressive commander as his silent and timid personality isn't the most adequate for leading the charge.

He's also capable of giving massages, and is eager to do so to everyone around him. Due to his terrific physical strength, he's very poor at it as he mostly ends up bringing pain to them and sometimes even knocks others out, which he sees as "unavoidable".

Trivia

 * For historical reference, see Honda Tadakatsu and 本多忠勝.
 * When Rance recruits him he tells him that Honda was "too good for Ieyasu". This is most likely a reference to the real life Honda Tadakatsu, who was considered one of Japan's best samurais, and some would regularly mention how he was too skilled to be serving the real life Ieyasu.