Bunshichi Tawara (俵 文七 Tawara Bunshichi?) is a member of the early Juken Club, and the Executive Council in name only. He was also the vice president of Team KATANA, as well as the commander of the gang's special forces.[1]
Character outline[]
Bunshichi is a 20-year-old white-haired man. His parents are relatively young, since they had him at an early age, and own a rice shop that Bunshichi helps run. He has been a senior for three years, but still has not graduated. He is not unintelligent, rather he claims the Shin incident ruined his beautiful school life, causing him not to graduate.[2] After having to fight his friend and the breakup of Katana, Bunshichi prefers to stay away from the school's politics. He joined the original Juken Club solely so they would have enough members to compete in the election tournament. Later as a member of the Executive Council, Mitsuomi Takayanagi appoints him as the advisor (essentially their strategist), where he again does nothing, claiming he signed up in name only. Bunshichi is perverted, usually focusing on women with big breasts,[3] which he refers to as deadly weapons. He repeatedly threatens to rape people;[4][5] it is a joke of his own perversion, as he has not carried out those threats.
Despite his appearance and attitude, when Bunshichi actually fights, he is quite dangerous. He was ranked as the strongest fighter in Todo until Mitsuomi won the Tournament two years ago (Bunshichi did not fight in that tournament, resulting in Mitsuomi being ranked higher than him). During his time as the commander of Katana's Special Forces, he single-handedly defeated all their enemies. He became known as a so-called "God of Fighting" as a result.[1] Bunshichi is one of the few fighter capable of lasting the full 3 minutes with Mitsuomi, and one of even fewer that could beat him. He is most likely the most powerful character in the school.[says who?] However, Bunshichi seems to be on his own side; Emi Isuzu even refers to him as a possible enemy,[6] despite the fact he too is part of the Executive Council.
Despite his power, Bunshichi is frequently used as comic relief. Both his perversion and his lack of motivation are subjects of the jokes, but occasionally his actions are part of the jokes as well. He often disguises intelligent moves as humor as well.
Techniques and abilities[]
Bunshichi is a rarity in Todo academy, as he possesses no formal style of Martial Arts relying solely on street fighting methods. Despite this, he is quite possibly the strongest student in the school and has no problem defeating any formal martial artists. He even refers to himself as "Exorcist Tawara" as a running joke when fighting people with special powers. In addition to his fighting prowess, he is extremely intelligent and analytical during battle and is a brilliant strategist. Ironically, Bunshichi doesn't like to pick fights and is very lazy and compassionate. He is also revealed to possess extreme physical strength; this is proven by him being able to actually punch a car so hard as to send it over his head. He is also called "Double Impact Tawara" because he typically relies on his extremely powerful arms in battle. It has also been revealed that his legs are equally as powerful.
Muscle increase[]
Not really a technique, but when Bunshichi enters combat he increases the size of his arms, usually shredding the sleeves of his shirt in the process. This is probably done when he focuses monstrous amounts of "chi" into the muscles in his arms.
Rage[]
When faced with what Bunshichi thinks is a life-threatening situation, Bunshichi will unleash a monstrous amount of ki in his body which increases his power to an unbelievable height, even for Tenjho Tenge. Not only does his power increase greatly, but his appearance does as well. When in this "rage" Bunshichi's hair spikes up, his eyes glow bright blood red, his muscles all burst with ki so great that it surrounds his body and makes contact with whatever he hits instead of his actual fist. In this state Bunshichi is one of the most powerful fighters in the world and the only person shown to also have this power is Masataka Takayanagi. Bunshichi also has complete control over the technique and can activate it anywhere at anytime even during conversation, compared to Masataka who has lacks control.
History[]
Little is known about Bunshichi's history or how he got so strong, but about 12 years ago he became friends with Shin Natsume and joined the gang, Katana. He single-handedly won one year's tournament, when Shin did not even fight. As a result, even though Shin is the head of the group, Bunshichi was ranked number 1 in the school and Shin was number 2.
Bunshichi seems to get along well with Shin and Mitsuomi, but he is not above mischief. As Mitsuomi starts his affair with Shin's girlfriend Mana Kuzunoha, not only does Bunshichi find out and watch, he takes pictures, using them to taunt and bug Mitsuomi. When Mana provides Mitsuomi a video, he asks Bunshichi to watch it with him. Initially Bunshichi sleeps through the beginning, but is woken up by Mitsuomi for the strange part. After witnessing the video of Shin slaughtering people with the evil ceremonial nodachi Reiki, Bunshichi claims he's known Shin for ten years, but does not recognize him there. Bunshichi discovers the identity of the mysterious Katana hunter, taking out the members of their gang, and decides to hide it from the others. Since the Katana hunter is Maya Natsume, he knew the other members would go for revenge and fearing the repercussions from the unstable Shin, he had elected not to tell them.
Eventually the other members find out anyway and decide to make Maya pay. Shin picks up on this with his Dragon's Eye and severely beats and nearly kills all of them. Bunshichi takes it upon himself to end Shin's insanity, planning to beat sense into him. On the way, he spotted Emi videotaping him; figuring that she knew were Shin was, he confronted her. Scared after he reaches for her chest, she stabs him in the hand and a chase ensues. While Bunshichi is insisting that she hand over her body to him as payment for the damage to his hand, she grabs more of her blades and prepares to fight him. Before the fight can start, she moves to the side as a car slams into Bunshichi's motorcycle (it actually stays broken for two years before he can finally fix it). As he gets up, the car backs up and comes for a second hit to finish him off. This is the first time Bunshichi is shown using his true power. His arms increase in size, shredding his sleeves, and he punches the car's grill. The car is totaled; the car actually goes flying over him and explodes behind him. He gets a GPS tracker from Emi (Mana later explains she keeps three trackers on Shin at all times) and hails a taxi. The taxi driver of course sees he has a woman's unconscious body and is bleeding, and tries to keep going. Bunshichi throws Emi's body in the street to force him to stop. The taxi driver takes Bunshichi to where Shin is despite being told to pull over by some of the Takayanagi family's men.
Shin is meeting with Dōgen Takayanagi, Mitsuomi's father. Bunshichi immediately picks a fight with Shin, despite Shin having possession of Reiki, and Bunshichi is injured and unarmed. Shin's dragon eyes are activated and his aura gives Bunshichi hallucinations of being cut by Reiki. Bunshichi announces that even if he dies, he'll still find a way to kill Shin. Just then Shin stabs him through the thigh. Shin knocks him into a car, then stands on the roof of the car stabbing Bunshichi in the legs. Shin spends quite a bit of time stabbing Bunshichi's legs, more than anyone could consider necessary.[says who?] Eventually, he stops and gives Reiki to Mana. The second the sword leaves his hand, Bunshichi punches the side of the car as hard as he can, sending him flying at Shin. He hits Shin hard, sending him flying into another car. Bunshichi then announces Shin's power is second rate as he can't use his dragon eyes without Reiki (this statement is later proven false). Despite his legs being full of holes, Bunshichi stands up, albeit squirting blood and with a lot of difficulty. Shin stands back up and staggers, for which Bunshichi calls him a sissy. From that point on, the fight was entirely one-sided for Bunshichi as he completely devastates Shin. After knocking Shin down, he comments that he should be called "Exorcist Tawara" as a joke. Shin looks at Reiki; Bunshichi dares him to go for it. As Shin runs for it, Bunshichi tears the side mirror off a car and throws it, hitting Shin in the head and knocking him down. He then knocks out Shin, by smashing him into a car. As Shin regains consciousness, he starts crawling for Reiki, with the dragon eyes activated. Bunshichi then kicks him in the eye, knocking him out again and damaging his eye, forcing him to wear an eye patch for a while.
Despite all of this, Bunshichi still visits Shin in the hospital and still considers him his best friend. Later, Shin creates the Juken Club in order to compete in the school's annual tournament. Mitsuomi signs up, and Bunshichi signs up so they would have more members, but he is quite insistent that he is joining in name only. The tournament rules say you can attack at any time, you can even kill. Despite this, Bunshichi still refuses to fight, still citing that he signed in name only. At one point as Maya and Mitsuomi fight a group outside, Bunshichi is lying on the floor inside reading a magazine and scratching himself, saying it is their problem. At one point, he does do some work; a girl group attacks him and Kagesada (almost solely referred to by his nickname, Asshat). Bunshichi shatters the ends of the spears that they have and jokingly comments that anyone who wants to get raped should come closer. Naturally the girls stop their attack, thus ending what little work Bunshichi did in the tournament. In the finals, it almost looked as if he would have to fight as everyone, but Kagesada skipped. At the last second, Mitsuomi showed up and claimed all fights for himself.
In the fight between Mitsuomi and Shin which was supposed to decide who became the president of the Executive Council, Bunshichi is the first to step up to stop Shin after his dragon eyes activated. He is quickly dropped by a hard elbow. Sometime after the fight, Mitsuomi appoints Bunshichi as the Executive Council's advisor. Like before, he only joins the group in name and never does anything.