Katsurō Kikawa

This article, Katsurō Kikawa, is property of Zf6hellion

"At the heart of it, we are all responsible for our own ends. Take responsibility, knowing that, and give it your all in whatever cause drives you." — Katsurō Kikawa - Bleach: Days on End

Overview

Katsurō Kikawa
Race	Soul
Birthday	March 15
Gender	Male
Height	165cm (5'5")
Weight	61kg (135lb.)
Blood Type	O Negative
Professional Status
Previous Affiliation	Gotei 13, Soul Society
Profession	Shinigami
Previous Position	Captain of the 6th Division
Previous Division	6th Division
Partner	Kimurei Kuchiki
Base of Operations	Seireitei, Soul Society
Personal Status
Title	Corpse Carrier
Zanpakutō
Shikai	Kishi Kaisei
Bankai	Kishi Mikōei Jūmanokubo Senrei
First Appearance
Story Debut	Bleach: Days on End

Katsurō Kikawa (黄川 勝郎, Kikawa Katsurō) was captain of the Sixth Division, and founder of that same position as one of the original members of of the Gotei 13. His Lieutenant was Kimurei Kuchiki. After his death, he was cast into Hell where he was given the epithet "Corpse Carrier" (死体運搬人, Shitai Unpan Hito).

Appearance

Katsurō is a man of below average height with a very keenly trained physique. He has neck length dark brown hair that is completely swept back except for a few strands that hang out over his forehead. His face is somewhat gaunt, with prominent cheekbones over a short and small nose and rounded jawline. His eyes are curved and appear tired, with strained lines forming beneath them, the pupils are a silvery-blue in colouration. He has relatively well groomed and thin eyebrows. His attire is largely outside of the norm, doing away with the large majority of the Shinigami shihakushō in favour of more Roman Imperial oriented equipment. He dons a red short-sleeved and hooded linen shirt, on top of which rests the lorica segmentata, a series of segmented ferrous armour plates held on by brass fasteners and tied on the front. Over that he wears a short-sleeved Captain's haori with the insignia of the Sixth Division on its back and a roman silver underside colouration. In order to deal with chaffing caused by his armour scraping at his neck, he further wears a red scarf made from evening sun silk (夕日絹, yūhikinu), a quality fabric that is highly sought within the Seireitei nobility. He wears a red hakama, similiar to those worn by students of the Shinō Academy. Instead of waraji Katsurō wears a pair of caligae over his feet. In order to carry his Zanpakutō more easily, he wears a balteus, a simple brown strap worn over the shoulder. When going into battle, Katsurō makes use of a galea, a Roman-style helmet with a black steel frame, a red engraved peak and black horse-hair crest.

Powers & Abilities

Natural Abilities
Enhanced Strength: Capable Tactician:

Shinigami Powers & Abilities
Master Sworsman: Hakuda Expert: Shunpo Expert: Kidō Practitioner: Great Spiritual Power: His Reiatsu is Roman Silver.

Zanpakutō

Kishi Kaisei (起死回生, Wake from Death and Return to Life) is a tachi with a blade of 74cm (2'4") in length. It has a ringed tsuba with a hollow center, held in place by an attachment on either side of the sword. The hilt is wrapped in red cloth and the scabbard is made of red-wood to match. Due to the nature of its power, Katsurō often describes his Zanpakutō as multiple spirits, and refers to it in group terms as such. He has explained that when he and his fellow founders obtained their swords his was the weakest among them, but has become much stronger since then, due to the function of its ability. It is a Kidō-type Zanpakutō. Shikai: Its release command is "Grieve" (悼む, itamu). Katsurō holds his sword out to his side, and as he utters the command, energy emits from the blade's edge, pouring upward in two diverging swathes. As this energy dissipates, Kishi Kaisei is transformed, becoming a gunbai fan. It retains its sword's handle, though the tsuba is removed and the blade has been replaced by the main body of the fan which has a red frame marked by silver edges. The wings of the fan complete a ringed pattern made up of the Eight Trigrams and running up the center are the kanji 息絶える (ikitaeru; die out), each of these markings is etched onto the fan in white. Extending from the pommel of the hilt are two white cords that feed into a brush-like tassel. Though his Shikai appears to be a strictly ordinary gunbai at a glance, its silver edges are, in actuality, those of a sword. Honed and sharpened to a fine enough point to be capable of cutting through his enemies, allowing Katsurō to wield Kishi Kaisei like a small hand axe. Shikai Special Ability: Whenever someone is dealt a killing blow with Kishi Kaisei, so long as it is the blade that kills them, regardless of its form, they are "interned" within the Zanpakutō. While they are not literally trapped within Katsurō's sword, it nonetheless does contain a small sliver of their soul on the moment of their death. This allows Katsurō to summon the weapons and abilities of his victims as if they were his own abilities. The reason his Zanpakutō was the weakest of the founding captains was because he had yet to kill anyone with it, and its power grew exponentially as his number of victims grew. Katsurō summons the abilities of his victims by gesturing with his Zanpakutō and calling out commands. In order to summon the blades of dead Shinigami he calls out "Sword!" and to unleash a hail of arrows he calls out "Bow!". The weapons conjured by his ability always do so within his immediate proximity, and are usually found to be floating in the air, as if wielded by invisible, disembodied spirits. In instances where he calls out the abilities used by those without weapons, the required limbs appear instead, as was the case of Amala Kshatriya when Katsurō conjured her arms in order to make use of The Scathefire. He can summon more than one thing at a time, such as a wall of spears or an entire swathe of swords, even using them in combination if he so pleases. There is no particular limit on his ability to retain and manipulate the abilities of those slain by his sword, save for his ability to remember and thus evoke their abilities verbally himself. Bankai: Kishi Mikōei Jūmanokubo Senrei (起死栄死光十万億墓戦霊, Wake from Death Honoured War Spirits of the Million-Million Graves). To activate it, Katsurō holds his Zanpakutō out to his right side, just the same as his Shikai release. Once invoked, a large grotesque arm bursts out of the earth and clenches over Kishi Kaisei. The arm turns into a purple mud that sloughs over Katsurō's arm, eventually melting away to reveal the transformed Zanpakutō. Kishi Mikōei Jūmanokubo Senrei takes the appearance of a large jūmonji nagae yari with a red shaft and cross-shaped blade head. The two heads at either side lie horizontally, jutting out straight to the left or right rather than curving upward. The center head is double-sided and ends in a point, allowing it to be used for both stabbing and slicing. Attached to the outer heads of the spear are two large banners that reach down must of the spear's length. Both banners are black and emblazoned with golden kanji. On one banner 起死 (Kishi; "Wake from Death") and on the other 回生 (Kaisei; "Return to Life"), underneath these sets of kanji are several configurations of the Eight Trigrams arrayed in different orders, thus making the Bankai resemble a uma-jirushi. The spear has a total length of 6.6 metres (21'6"). In addition the bottom of the spear possesses the intertwined tassel of its Shikai form. When Katsurō slams his Bankai onto the ground, a series of shadows emerge from beneath him, branching out in the visage of a tree with no leaves. From the points where the branches terminate a series of hata-jirushi banners emerge, all of them white and emblazoned with no standard or emblem. The shadows then cause the ground beneath them to erupt, leaving cracked, swelling earth where an eerie black fog and purple light are seen to emanate. Bankai Special Ability: As every being ever killed by Kishi Kaisei has a piece of themselves stolen and contained within the sword, Kishi Mikōei Jūmanokubo Senrei gives Katsurō the heretical ability to revive any and all of his victims to fight on his behalf as his very own army of the dead. Emerging from the massive cracks in the earth his Bankai creates are a colossal number of autonomous corpses, each retaining the features of their living selves only marred by rot, decay, and the very wounds they suffered at Katsurō's hands. Each of these resurrected warriors possesses all of their memories and skills that they did in life, though they are made obedient to Katsurō so long as they are summoned by his Bankai. Unlike the previous release state, Katsurō does not need to memorise and command the abilities he wishes to conjure and, can, in fact, learn about abilities he previously was unaware of through the undead's usage of them through his Bankai. The powers of those used under his sway are not limited as fractions of themselves, and are instead used as extensions of Katsurō, in some cases making them even stronger than they were when he fought them. The ability of Katsurō's Bankai is similar to the technique of Genryūsai Shigekuni Yamamoto's Zanka no Tachi, Minami: Kaka Jūmanokushi Daisōjin, though how they are connected is unknown.

Trivia

Katsurō's original design.

• Katsurō is made of up of the characters 勝 (victory), 郎 (son). Kikawa contains the characters 黄 (yellow), 川 (river). Taken together, they could be read as "Victorious Son of the Yellow River". The yellow river name is a reference to his original name, as the Tiber river was known as flavus (the blonde) in ancient times.
• Before revelations to the scope of the Bleach setting came about, Katsurō was named Tiberius Regulus Armiger; these names were latin meaning "of the [Tiber] river", "prince/little king", and "arms-bearer" respectively.
• In Japanese, Katsurō would refer to himself using the pronoun sessha (拙者), an archaic word used by Samurai and Ninja during the feudal ages, it comes from a Sino-Japanese word meaning "One who is clumsy".
• Images on this article were drawn by Luminent-Soul and kuroShinozaki on DeviantArt on commission from the author.

Titles

Preceded by Title Created	Captain of the Sixth Division 1002 A.D. - ?	Succeeded by Furōfushi Saitō (Eventual)