Character

Gabimaru

画眉丸

Gabimaru, born as Tsuki, is an elite shinobi assassin formerly from Iwagakure and the current holder of the infamous alias, Gabimaru the Hollow. He is also the husband of Yui, the eighth daughter to the village chief. Gabimaru served as Iwagakure's most infamous shinobi until he was betrayed by his village for wanting to abandon his role as a murderer and live a peaceful life with his wife, resulting in him being handed over to the authorities to be executed. However, after the shogun calls for convict criminals to acquire the Elixir of Life from the dangerous island known as Kotaku, in exchange for a pardon for their past crimes, Gabimaru accepts the invitation to be a part of the competition mission in order to reunite with Yui and live the life he so desired. Upon taking the mission, Yamada Asaemon Sagiri was chosen as his assigned monitor. Shortly after, Gabimaru becomes a part of a united front formed from the remaining surviving criminals and executioners to defeat Lord Tensen, work together in capturing the elixir, and have everyone escape the island. A year later after escaping the island, Gabimaru achieves his goal of reuniting with Yui and living a peaceful life with her in private. Gabimaru is a young man with a below average height. He has white, untamed hair that usually covers the right side of his face, and red eyes. After his body was negatively influenced by Zhu Jin fusing with the Banko, Gabimaru's appearance became ghastly, as his hair started sprouting flowers and had a large dark marking that spread from his left eye. These features were later reduced after he managed to stabilize his Tao, now only having little traces of pink flower petals in his hair and a branch marking across his left eye. Upon being freed from Arborification by Sagiri, Gabimaru's hair became shorter and had his original features returned back. After a year passed, Gabimaru's hair is shown to have slightly grown back to its original volume. He wears the standard Iwagakure shinobi outfit, which consists of a black robe with long sleeves that are frayed, a black tattsuke bakama, and a frayed white sash tied at his waist. He also wears a turtleneck dickey to cover the bottom part of his face as a mask when he is prepared to go into battle. He wears ninja gauntlets and sandals with gaiters tied to his legs. He is shown to be significantly muscular underneath his robe and has noticeable scars from his time in Iwagakure. Upon infiltrating Hōrai, the left side of Gabimaru's robe became torn after Ran cleaved his hand down on his shoulder, which was later healed with Plant Tao. He later replaces his robe with a new one from a fallen Iwagakure shinobi. Gabimaru is calm, level-headed and rarely shows any emotions, which was rather befitting based on his reputation. He is shown to be calm to the point where he is unfazed by any sort of crisis, such as being executed or when he was confronted and attacked by Warped Keiun, a well-known criminal sentence for death. While being attacked, he paid no mind and simply focused on retying the restraints on his hands as demanded by Sagiri. As noted by Sagiri, once Gabimaru calms down he tends to complain. When the two landed on the island, Gabimaru complained about the restraints being a nuisance and the supplies he was given by the shogun as being useless. He prefers to stick with his main objective at hand and not get tangled with anything else that doesn't involve his goals, finding his fight with Keiun to be a waste of time. During his time in Iwagakure, Gabimaru was known and admired by his peers for his cruelty and ruthless killings of his victims. After suffering from amnesia and reverting back to his old self, Gabimaru expressed his bloodlust of how he was going to kill Chōbei and decided that if Fuchi, Gantetsusai and Mei were enemies then he would kill them without question. As a Iwa shinobi he had followed their principles such as continuing forward with a mission, defeating his opponents no matter what the tactics were, and that his life had no value. His line of work has also made him immune to the sight of death. Being raised from infancy by his cruel and ruthless leader, Gabimaru was influenced into believing that having sentimentality was a sign of weakness and that he could not protect anything he cared about. Having these words committed to heart, Gabimaru would fall into a murderous, emotionless state which he refers to as being "Hollow", and focus solely on killing his target. In his own opinion, whether he chooses to kill his targets properly rather than ruthlessly would be irrelevant in the end. After being married to Yui, Gabimaru underwent a major change. Even though he was influenced by his leader's words of ridding himself of his emotions to become strong, Gabimaru was also influenced by Yui's kind and caring nature and came to believe that true strength comes from embracing one's emotions. This overwrote his cruel nature as a ninja and made him want to avoid unnecessary killing of human lives. This influence would later on stop him from killing Sagiri. However, when realizing that there is no other way out of it, Gabimaru will make the distasteful decision of killing but would feel grief for the lives he has taken. Upon being resolved by Sagiri to redeem himself as a new man, Gabimaru began to experience, and notice, gradual changes to his behavior, particularly allowing himself to embrace his emotions as the Asaemon had hoped. Even though he had his mission to solely focus on, Gabimaru started to show signs of care and concern for others. As Sagiri was in danger of being attacked by a Sōshin, Gabimaru unconsciously rushes in to save her. He later commits the same action when he steps in to protect Mei from the Dōshi, saying that he could not bear to see her cry, along with wanting to repay a debt he owes her after she helped him escape from Zhu Jin's wrath. Gabimaru also broke out of his calm composure and showed genuine anger after hearing the Dōshi talk about Mei as if she was an object. After hearing Mei's wish on wanting to see Rien and Xu Fu before leaving the island to start a new life, Gabimaru vowed to do what ever he could to make it happen when the time came to infiltrate Hōrai. Gabimaru also came to understand what it means to feel sympathy, having understood the great lengths the surviving criminals and Asaemons had to endure in order to get pass Lord Tensen and escape the island alive. After realizing that Rien was the wife of Xu Fu, Gabimaru could not bring himself to destroy her husband's gilded body, since he knew what it was like to love someone dearly, and smiled as he explained his reason to her, which allowed the Tensen to accept Xu Fu's passing. Through all his experience on the island, Gabimaru had come to completely reject the teachings of Iwagakure and allowed himself to break out of his emotionless shell. In the process, Gabimaru became able to smile and laugh genuinely for the first time in his life. Although he is viewed as being obnoxious (mainly by Sagiri), he can also be respectful and polite at times. Back when he was with his wife he advised her not to cover her scar with her hair, saying that appearances don't matter. He later gave the same advice to Mei which caused her to see the good in Gabimaru. Because he learned basic customs from Yui, Gabimaru would show his gratitude to whoever helped him. He thanked Yuzuriha's team for freeing his head from one of the Sōshin's tentacles and praised Sagiri for her strength as well as thanking her for helping him find his resolve. Gabimaru is also a very faithful husband and is immune to seduction as he did not give into Yuzuriha's advances when she attempted to have him work with her.