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Kagerō
Ninja Scroll - Kagero
Name Information
Kanji 陽炎
Kana かげろう
Rōmaji Kagerō
Series Information
Debut Movie
Appearances Ninja Scroll
Original Dub Emi Shinohara
English Dub Wendee Lee
Personal Information
Gender Female
Relations Hanza (Leader)
Affiliation Mochizuki Clan
Kōga Team
Status Deceased

Kagerō is a member of the Kōga Team and the official food taster for the Mochizuki Clan's Chamberlain. After her team is massacred by the Eight People of Kimon, Kagerō is the only one who survives and finds herself accompanying Jūbei Kibagami and the Tokugawa government agent Dakuan as they seek to thwart the ambitions of the Shogun of the Dark. She is one of the three protagonists of the anime film Ninja Scroll.

Personality[]

As a food taster who was on her very first field mission during her encounter with Tessai, Kagerō is highly inexperienced. She has a definite lack of combat experience, particularly when compared to Jūbei, and so is forced to rely on tricking and manipulating her enemies. This includes poisoning Tessai by allowing him to rape her and holding people at knife-point to get them to do what she wants. Although she puts on an aloof facade, she is quite emotional when compared to Jūbei or Dakuan, being motivated by revenge for her dead colleagues and having some personal issues due to her work.

Kagerō is also a very broken and fragile person; due a lifetime of stern training, she shows absolute dedication to her mission and takes highly suicidal risks, with seemingly no regard for her own life. She seems to have a very hard time seeing herself as anything other than a tool to be thrown away, since that's what she's been treated as for her entire life. This brings her into conflict with Jūbei, who hates people who, in his words, "think so little of their own worth."

At the same time, Jūbei was Kagerō's romantic interest. Due to her ingestion of so many toxins and poisons, anyone who sleeps with or even kisses her therefore dies shortly after due to the poison in her body. She was very distant and everyone sees her as a ninja who is expandable, but Jūbei was the first to acknowledge her as a woman. He saw past that tough act right into in her soul and tried to make her realize that it's okay to care for herself. It didn't matter to him that she was too poisonous to be called a human and he always jumped in to protect her and treated her like a precious comrade.

Jūbei often teased Kagerō and asked her why is it so hard for her to show her feelings, making her mad so many times. Kagerō kept on convincing herself that she is sticking around just to repay the debt to Jūbei for saving her life but she didn't understand what she was really feeling until the very end. Kagerō was stubborn and she couldn't bring herself to tell Jūbei that she loved him, but after knowing from Dakuan that the poison in Jūbei's body can be neutralized by her body she offered herself to Jūbei after he saves her one last time, being unable to express her feeling. Jūbei felt that Kagerō was doing it just to pay the debt, so he refused her and walks away to deal with the rest of the Kimon ninja. When she was dying after taking a deadly hit from Genma Himuro, she finally admits to Jūbei that she loved him and he was the only one to see a woman in her and never used her for his benefits, not even for the antidote, though she wished they could have made love just once. She regretted not being honest with her feeling and they shared their only and last kiss, taking final breath in the arms of the only man who saw her as a human but not a tool.

Appearance[]

Kagerō is a beautiful young woman of average height with shoulder-length black hair, red eyes and a pale skin complexion. She wears a blue kimono with a red and white sarashi that stops at waist length and a pair of sandals on her feet with white tabi. Her most notable piece of clothing is a purple headband with a ruby in the middle.

Biography[]

Ninja Scroll[]

Kagerō is an alluring food taster and stealth ninja who has long been desired by men but cannot get close to anyone because of the poison in her body. She is instructed by the Chamberlain of the Mochizuki Clan to investigate the apparent plague that has wiped out the village of Shimoda. When the Kōga are wiped out by the Kimon, Kagerō is captured by the stone giant Tessai. He attempts to rape her, but is interrupted by Jūbei Kibagami who rescues Kagerō. She then returns to the Chamberlain and informs him of the destruction of her team; the Chamberlain then orders her to continue the mission alone.

As Kagerō nears Shimoda Village, she encounters Jūbei once more inside a shrine being attacked by Benisato. She intervenes and manages to save Jūbei and then joins him and Dakuan on their mission. They suffer numerous attacks by the Kimon but manage to overcome each of these hardships. While they appear to be hostile towards each other throughout most of their adventure, they gradually form a bond and Jūbei comes to regard Kagerō as a comrade.

When the heroes reach Kashima Harbour, they find a ship of the House of Toyotomi being loaded with caskets of gold. Jūbei and Dakuan ponder on how to sink the ship while Kagerō sends a message to the Mochizuki requesting reinforcements. The Mochizuki later arrive being led by the Chamberlain himself, but when Kagerō meets with him, he stabs her in the back with his sword. The Chamberlain is actually Genma Himuro in disguise and he reveals that he had murdered the real Chamberlain days ago.

Jūbei witnesses Kagerō's injury and goes to her rescue, fighting his way through Genma's troops and slaying many of them. He grabs Kagerō and takes her to an empty building, but he is unable to save her. Before she dies, Kagerō kisses Jūbei. Earlier in the film, Dakuan had poisoned Jūbei with a slow-acting toxin in order to force him into working with him. When Kagerō and Jūbei kiss, the poison in her body counteracts the poison in Jūbei's blood, curing him.

Abilities[]

As well as being an adept ninja, Kagerō is also the poison taster for the Mochizuki clan. Her body is naturally resistant to poisons and toxins, making her a valuable asset to the Chamberlain. Her job has exposed her to many deadly poisons which have saturated her entire body, meaning that she cannot get close to anyone. Any man that is intimate with her or so much as kisses her will be killed by the poisons running through her body. This creates great frustration as Kagerō is unable to make love with any normal man.

She has no supernatural abilities like the Kimon ninjas. On the physical field, very much like Jūbei, she is just a very skilled kunoichi, having to rely on her agility and survival skills to get the work done. However, later in the movie it's revealed that she carries a large bunch of opium-laced cherry petals in her person, which she uses against Mushizō's hornets.

Gallery[]

Trivia[]

  • The name Kagerō means "Heat Haze," which alludes to her stealthy nature as a kunoichi. Written in a different way, it can also mean "Mayfly", perhaps referring to her short life.
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