Jirou Azuma Respect Thread
By TheVivas 7 Comments
Jirou is one of the main characters of the new manga Black Torch. It's an action manga and deals with ninjas, secret government teams, and demons eating humans for power. Jirou has the power to talk to animals and comes across a black cat one day. He acts like a badass (I mean he kinda is) but deep down he cares about people and doing the right thing, so he helps out the cat only to find out that it is a mononoke named Ragou, one of the demons that inhabits the earth alongside humans. Ragou is sought out by another mononoke and although Jirou tries to help, he is outclassed and killed by being pierced through the heart. Ragou believes that he owes Jirou a debt, so he possesses Jirou's body and brings him back to life. Jirou is still in control but now has Ragou living inside of him, able to call on his power when needed or when Ragou is able to as he often sleeps a lot (he's a cat after all). Jirou ends up joining the Public Bureau of Espionage in a group called Black Torch and specializes in combating enemy mononoke.
Slight warning, some of the scans will have heavy language in them including the F-word.
This thread will be divided into the following sections:
- General Terms
- Shinobi Training
- Animal Speech
- Partnership with Ragou
- Strength
- Speed/Agility
- Durability/Endurance
- Gear/Equipment
General Terms
Mononoke
(Ch. 01) Ragou is a mononoke which is a demon or evil spirit. Mononoke usually take the shape of humans and usually live peacefully in cities but also have been known to retire to forests and mountains:
(Ch. 09) Mononoke eat humans in order to eat their life energy, which is the only thing that can increase their power:
Public Bureau of Espionage
(Ch. 02) Tee Public Bureau of Espionage was once called the Oniwaba several hundreds years ago during the Edo Period and were an organization of shinobi tasked by the shogun himself. They eventually changed rules with the Meiji restoration and are now a shadow organization that doesn't officially exist and deals with matters involving mononoke:
(Ch. 05) The Bureau is divided up into different sections:
(Ch. 09) The Bureau has changed from mononoke fighters to spies and information specialists:
Hidden World
(Ch. 03) The "hidden world" is a world inhabited by mononoke and half a step away from the real world. When a mononoke uses their aura to create a barrier of mist, everything in that mist is temporarily transported to the "hidden world":
Sealing
(Ch. 05) This is the process by which Ragou and Jirou are joined together. When a mononoke seals itself inside of a human, they must expend all of their aura to do so, which is why Ragou himself can't just undo the joining and separate himself from Jirou whenever he wants. Reiji then says that mononoke usually only possess living things but can also possess non-living things, like when Ragou was sealed in the Killing Stone for not agreeing to team up with a certain group of mononoke:
Shinobi Training
(Ch. 01) Jirou's grandpa has been teaching him shinobi techniques his whole life:
(Ch. 02) The techniques Jirou's grandfather have taught him have been handed down through the Azuma lineage for generations and are designed to slaughter both humans and mononoke. He does admit however that he's only taught Jirou the fundamentals:
(Ch. 01) Thanks to his shinobi training, Jirou is granted enhanced agility and is very competent with a sword, as pointed out by an enemy mononoke who's first reaction to seeing Jirou jump up and slice his arm is to ask him if he's related to shinobi. And even after just learning about mononoke just hours prior, Jirou manages to stand his ground at the sight of a transformed one when most other humans tremble at the sight of it:
(Ch. 01) Jirou is still able to attempt a counterattack after being stabbed through the chest by a large mononoke's claws. The mononoke in question applauds his willpower and says it's to be expected coming from a shinobi:
(Ch. 03) Shiba Ryousuke says that Jirou is more promising than the recent spies who have joined the Bureau thanks to his shinobi blood and training:
(Ch. 04) In his first meeting with fellow teammate Reiji Kirihara, Jirou takes an immediate dislike to the "four-eyed playboy" and is too eager to have a quick sparring match with him. The fight starts with Reiji's back turned, his sword on the floor, and Jirou charging at him. In one smooth movement, Reiji picks up his sword and strikes Jirou in the jaw, sending him flying back. In the next exchange, Jirou charges at Reiji again but is able to time his swing and read his movement in order to break the wooden sword and then punch Reiji away. Section Chief Shiba notes to himself that Jirou's first attack was to measure out Reiji's range and learn his attack pattern and that the counter attack wouldn't have worked unless he Jirou actually read the sword's movement perfectly:
Cicada Shell
(Ch. 01) This is a shinobi technique where Jirou substitutes himself with his jacket or a piece of clothing he is wearing. It's not shown or stated just how exactly he is able to do this, but it fools the opponent every time. The first instance we see him using it is when these thugs were attacking a cat and a crow and he intervened to stop them. He is able to switch himself out with his jacket without the thug attacking him noticing:
(Ch. 01) Jirou uses his Cicada Shell to swap places with his shirt, saving him from the deadly claws of a large mononoke:
(Ch. 10) Jirou uses his Cicada Shell to escape the gravitational grip of a large mononoke before he could crush him to death:
Animal Speech
(Ch. 01) Jirou has the ability to talk to animals. After he saves them from a group of thugs, Jirou talks to a cat and a crow:
(Ch. 01) Jirou then talks to the same crow and is informed that an injured cat is in the woods behind his house which leads him to Ragou:
(Ch. 02) Jirou asks a group of crows for help in escaping from the Public Bureau of Espionage's custody. He screams in order to bring the guards right outside his door inside and has the crows distract them while he runs away. The key thing to note here is that all he can do is talk to and understand animals, he can't control them, which is why he cuts a deal with the crows to get them candy:
(Ch. 09) Jirou talks to a group of crows and has them help him out in locating four mononoke that were taking civilians hostage inside a city:
Partnership with Ragou
(Ch. 01) When Jirou dies defending Ragou and coming to his aide, Ragou feels responsible and that he owes him a debt. To make up for that, Ragou fuses himself with Jirou, bringing the man back to life and giving him the mononoke's powers:
(Ch. 06) Ragou is different than other mononoke because he doesn't need to eat or drink to produce more aura like other mononoke do, leaving him with "unlimited power" so to speak:
(Ch. 10) Over the first ten chapters which took place over a few weeks, Ragou has been subconsciously consuming Jirou's life force and has slowly been increasing his own power:
(Ch. 11) This is the exact reason that humans and mononoke aren't fit to symbolically live together and Jirou learns from Amagi that the more aura he and Ragou use in combat, the quicker his life force will get consumed:
Offense
(Ch. 01) Now fused with Ragou, Jirou can borrow his power in combat situations. Ragou tells Jirou to punch a large mononoke as hard as he can, and Ragou's power kicks in to help, creating a massive arm that extends from Jirou's arm and punches the enemy mononoke in half:
(Ch. 03) Ragou creates another large hand for Jirou to use which punches right through the upper body of a mononoke and takes his head off in the process. This mononoke before had already tanked bullets without any trouble and just toppled a large freight truck with a punch:
(Ch. 06) Ragou creates an extremely large hand to strike at the mononoke Kouga and although it does massive damage, it only destroys most of the stone on his weapon:
(Ch. 08) In a flashback, we see Ragou firing off a ball of energy at another mononoke, and that ball of energy ravished the landscape, destroyed the shrine Ragou was at, and took the other mononoke's left arm:
(Ch. 10) Ragou uses his power to layer himself onto Jirou and, using his new and increased power thanks to subconsciously consuming his life force and Jirou removing his aura dampening armor, creates a long thin arm and cuts a large mononoke in half:
Defense
(Ch. 02) Although they share a body, Ragou can act independently of Jirou's wishes, here using a clawed arm as a shield to block a strike from Jirou's grandpa and swipe him away, all without Jirou's consent:
Sense
(Ch. 03) Ragou is able to sense the barrier of another mononoke. A barrier is mist made up of a mononoke's aura, or power:
(Ch. 09) Ragou is able to sense out the four mononoke attacking a city and gathering up civilians for food as well as sense their power levels:
Anti-Aura Training
(Ch. 07) Jirou and his team undergo anti-aura technique training in order to be able to identify illusions and hypnotic effects in the field and effectively counter it:
(Ch. 07) This technique, the Lotus Frenzy, creates illusions based on past memories, anxieties, and traumatic experiences, so being paired with each and other and with one of them being a mononoke would leave them with an extremely challenging illusion to come over:
(Ch. 07) Jirou and Ragou were sent in without any idea what to do with their only information being to escape. He did this though in order to make the training seem more real because in an actual combat situation, the enemy wouldn't tell them how to defeat their technique:
(Ch. 08) The training becomes even harder because Ragou's memories actually take control of the technique away from Fuyou. Without her there to monitor the training, Jirou and Ragou ran the risk of being overwhelmed:
(Ch. 08) After Ragou's memories took over, Jirou was shown the memory of when Ragou lived in a small village that housed the Killing Stone, a sealing stone for mononoke. He enjoyed it there because the local villagers brought him food, worshiped him, and other mononoke were scared to go near the Killing Stone so he was left alone. That changed when a group found him and asked to join their cause in order to fight back against the Oniwaban, Ragou refused saying he only fights for himself. The next day, the group's leader, Amagi, returned and killed every single villager, bringing Ragou the head of one man who was pretty close to Ragou. This enraged Ragou to the point of attack and he destroyed the village/shrine and took off Amagi's left arm with a single attack. Despite this, Amagi refused to give up and told Ragou that the Oniwaban and him were going to end up in conflict anyway so it would be better to have a group of mononoke as allies. Ragou instead chose to seal himself inside the Killing Stone to prevent anyone from using him just for his power. The memory of Ragou kept these ideals and was furious that the present Ragou had allied himself with Jirou. In a final attack, Jirou and Ragou defeated the memory/illusion of the old Ragou and broke out of their lotus flower:
Strength
(Ch. 01) Jirou kicks a man and takes him off his feet:
(Ch. 04) Jirou jumps a far distance to attack Reiji Kirihara:
(Ch. 04) Jirous is able to time Reiji's sword swing and break the wooden sword in half with a punch before sending Reiji flying off his feet with another punch:
Speed/Agility
(Ch. 01) When Ragou leaves Jirou's house, he is found by another mononoke who tracked him down and wants him to become his ally. Ragou refuses and races off into the forest to lead the new mononoke away from Jirou. When the mononoke catches up to Ragou and begins to attack him in an attempt to subdue the cat, Jirou jumps in and slices the mononoke's arm with a sword, showing that he had the speed to catch up to these supernatural beings thanks to his shinobi training and speed:
(Ch. 01) Jirou uses his Cicada Shell to save himself from a large mononoke's attack:
(Ch. 01) Jirou performs a very acrobatic and high leap in order to dodge an attack from a mononoke:
(Ch. 02) Jirou evades an attack from his grandpa who was out to kill him for becoming possessed by Ragou. Jirou's grandpa is a former shinobi and a former member of the Bureau as well:
(Ch. 04) Jirou is able to perfectly time Reiji Kirihara's sword slash in order to punch and break the sword:
(Ch. 10) Jirou easily jumps over a large mononoke's strike:
Durability/Endurance
(Ch. 02) Jirou is slapped by his grandpa with enough force to go sliding back in the dirt:
(Ch. 02) Jirou is smacked away by his grandpa with a hit that leaves him coughing up blood and gasping for breath. His grandpa then tells him that the moves he's using are designed to slaughter humans and mononoke alike:
(Ch. 02) Jirou counters one of his grandpa's strikes with a headbutt and although he is sent off his feet flying back, he remains able to keep his balance and stays conscious:
(Ch. 04) Jirou is struck in the chin with a wooden sword by Reiji Kirihara, a young man who has been training in swordsmanship for his whole life. He told Section Chief Shiba that Jirou wouldn't be living much longer after that strike to the chin but Jirou just spat out some blood and told him that it didn't hurt:
(Ch. 04) Jirou then tells Reiji that his grandpa has been working him to the bone since he was a little kid and compared to the level of strike he just received, Reiji's strike was more like a playground sword game:
(Ch. 04) After they both exchange an attack on each other, Jirou and Reiji then pummel each other in hand-to-hand until both of them black out:
(Ch. 06) Jirou is slammed into the ground by Kouga, a powerful mononoke, with enough force to crack the ground but remains conscious:
(Ch. 06) Jirou is then punched away by Kouga only to swipe at the blood in the corner of his mouth:
(Ch. 10) Jirou is pinned to the ground by a mononoke's powerful gravity manipulation and pressed down hard enough to create a crater. He is then picked up and squeezed to the point where he had to use his Cicada Shell otherwise he would have been crushed to death:
(Ch. 11) Jirou says that he definitely cracked a rib while being pushed into the ground by the above mononoke's power and Ragou tells him that his exhaustion is most likely also caused by Ragou subconsciously and unknowingly consuming his life force:
Gear/Equipment
(Ch. 05) After joining the Bureau and making up the Black Torch squad, Jirou is outfitted with Type-B Covert Operations gear. This gear has a bunch of qualities and special abilities that I'll list as bullets below:
- Heat resistant
- Temperature resistant
- Knife and bullet resistant
- Insulated
- Waterproof
- Woven with artificial muscle fibers to increase combat ability
- Quantum Camouflage: Panel on the left wrist that changes the outfit's appearance from the armor to street clothes as well as can turn the wearer invisible (other wearers of the suit can see each other) completely hiding appearance and shadow from enemies by double tapping the same panel. While this is active, the suits other capabilities aren't as effective however.
(Ch. 05) Here's the gear in action, switching from casual clothes back to the armor with the press of a button:
(Ch. 06) Reiji says that if he wasn't wearing the Type-B Covert Operations gear, he wouldn't have walked away from the fight with Kouga without any injuries despite Kouga being strong enough to tank a sword slash that should have cut him in half and slam Jirou into the ground with enough strength to crack it:
(Ch. 09) The Type-B Covert Operations gear also has an aura neutralizing effect which allows them to break through low-level barriers:
(Ch. 10) The one drawback to using this gear is that it doesn't just weaken enemy mononoke but Ragou as well:
(Ch. 10) This is explicitly shown when after the armor is removed and Ragou isn't having his aura weakened, he easily oneshots a large mononoke on accident, intending only to stop his attack:
(Ch. 10) Just earlier in the fight wen Jirou was wearing the aura dampening armor, Ragou's attack was stopped and overpowered by the same mononoke:
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