Kagura
From Gintama
Kagura is a main character of Gintama, the Yato girl of Odd Jobs. She is voiced by Rie Kugimiya in Japanese and, in the partial English dubs, by Jocelyne Loewen (Crunchyroll's episodes 266 to 316 and The Very Final) and Crystal Lopez (Hulu's season 1 dub).
About Kagura
Kagura is a main character of Gintama, an alien girl from the Yato clan working at Odd Jobs. Sweet, gluttonous and terrifyingly strong, she came to Earth for work, got rescued from a gang by Gintoki and Shinpachi, and stayed as the shop's muscle and its heart. Kagura provides half the show's physical comedy and, when her family arrives, some of its heaviest drama: the Yato are the universe's strongest warriors, and Kagura is determined to use that strength for rent money and snacks instead of war.
Appearance
Kagura is a small, cheerful girl with vermilion hair worn in two buns with ornamental covers, bright blue eyes and a huge parasol she carries everywhere, rain or shine. She wears a red Chinese style outfit with gold trim, a nod to her home planet and her clan, and she is almost always eating: rice, pickled seaweed, sukonbu sour plums, anything. The design plays her as a cute mascot character until she lifts a car. The Yato are drawn delicate and pale because sunlight is their weakness, and Kagura's parasol is not an accessory: it is armour.
Personality
Kagura is blunt, greedy, competitive and completely without social brakes, a child raised by poverty and television dramas, which she quotes as life philosophy. She says exactly what she thinks, eats exactly what she wants and hits exactly what annoys her. She is also lonely in a way she handles by collecting people: the shop, Sadaharu, her rival Okita, the friends she makes across Edo. Her kindness is as unfiltered as her violence. The drama in Kagura is the fear that the Yato instinct will take the choice away from her someday, and her answer, repeated for 367 episodes, is to spend her strength on her family instead.
Background & Story
Kagura is the daughter of Umibouzu, the Yato alien hunter called a god of war, and she grew up in poverty on a dying planet with her mother, who died young, and her brother Kamui, who left to chase strength. Tired of being alone, she took a ship to Earth to earn money as a pet, in her own telling, and was put to work as muscle by a yakuza gang. Gintoki and Shinpachi helped her break free, and she moved into the Odd Jobs closet and never left. Under the comedy, her story is about the Yato blood she fears becoming: a clan whose gift is a hunger for battle that consumed her brother and her father in different ways.
Powers & Abilities
- Yato Strength: Kagura can stop vehicles, shatter walls, catch bullets' worth of punishment and duel elite warriors barehanded. She is, pound for pound, among the strongest beings in the series, and she is still growing.
- Parasol Combat: Her bulletproof parasol is a shield, a spear and a machine gun in the hands of a Yato. She fights with it the way samurai fight with swords, and it keeps the sun off her skin in the bargain.
- Healing and Endurance: Yato bodies recover from wounds that would kill humans, and Kagura tanks injuries in every serious arc that leave the rest of the cast horrified and her asking for food.
- Yato Instinct: In true danger, her clan's battle hunger surfaces: faster, stronger and crueller, the self Kagura fears. The series treats controlling it, not having it, as her real strength.
Key Relationships
- Gintoki Sakata: Her boss and found family. They bicker constantly, compete over food and step in front of each other's battles without discussing it. He is the adult who stayed.
- Shinpachi Shimura: Her fellow employee and verbal sparring partner, the brother she never had, down to the squabbling over snacks and blankets.
- Sougo Okita: Her rival. The Shinsengumi's sadist prince and Kagura compete at everything, pets, contests, fighting, and their rivalry is one of the show's longest running double acts.
- Kamui: Her older brother, who chose the Yato path of strength and left the family behind. Kagura's story with Kamui, and with their father Umibouzu, is the spine of her serious arcs.
- Sadaharu: Her giant dog, best friend and transport. Kagura is the only person Sadaharu reliably obeys, and their bond is played straight even inside the comedy.
Quick Answers
Who voices Kagura?
Kagura is voiced by Rie Kugimiya in Japanese. In the partial English dubs she is voiced by Jocelyne Loewen in the Crunchyroll dub of episodes 266 to 316 and The Very Final, and by Crystal Lopez in the Hulu season 1 dub.
What is the Yato clan?
The Yato are a humanoid alien clan famed as the strongest warriors in the universe, with superhuman strength, speed and healing, and a bloodlust that surfaces in battle. Sunlight weakens their skin, which is why Kagura carries her parasol, a weapon in itself, everywhere she goes.
Sadaharu is Odd Jobs' giant dog, an inugami Kagura adopted after finding him abandoned. He is roughly the size of a small car, eats everything including, occasionally, Gintoki's head, and only Kagura can control him, mostly.
Who is Kagura's father?
Umibouzu, the legendary Yato alien hunter feared across the galaxy, a bald, doting father whose attempts to reconnect with his daughter cause almost as much damage as his battles. Kagura's family, father, mother and brother Kamui, is the emotional core of her serious arcs.