“It’s my nature that I have to kill people, but I will live happily!!”

Yoshikage Kira wants to lead a quiet life.

This is the tag that attach the works drawn about him.

Overview

A 33-year-old office worker living in Morioh.

His reputation from surrounding is not bad, but somehow he is an inconspicuous man.

He is 175 cm tall, weighs 65 kg, and his blood type is A.

He dislikes conflicts and has a love for calmness. While leading a life of an ordinary office worker who is neither outstanding nor foolish, in order to avoid useless conflicts, he has a propensity that makes himself unable to cease killing people , which makes him a mass murderer who has been murdering females with beautiful hands repeatedly for 15 years. Of course, he is also willing to deal with men if necessary.

Being also a stand user, he annihilated the evidences of him crimes using his ability. However, this existence was known by Josuke Higashikata and his fellows accidentally. In order to protect his peaceful life, Kira became busily engaged in covering up.

He is the Last Boss of part 4, and the latter half of the story mainly focuses on his life on the run.

Personality

A man who takes a peaceful and serene “life with a plant-like mind”, one that is without wild joy or deep despair, as his happiness. For this reason, he declares, “It is a stupid act to fight, because even if this fight is won, it only accumulates stress for the next fight”. He tries his best to avoid conflicts even if himself is very likely to win. Be particular about victory or defeat, avoid troubles that will require himself to hold his head, avoid making enemies that will make himself sleepless at night, these are the things he always bears in mind.

Of course, even regarding his daily life, he lives as a very ordinary, inconspicuous office worker who is neither good nor bad.

However, his ability is outstanding, and he can do almost everything flawlessly without special skills. Furthermore, most of the commendation certificates from his school days, that are displayed at his parents’ home, are the 3rd place. That is because he didn’t wish to stand out to be in the first place, and consciously kept in the third. Although he is confident that “I shall lose to no one when fighting”, thinking that “If I stand out because of taking the first place, I’ll have enemies and thus lose the peace in my mind”, he pretended to be a “normal person” in this way from long ago.

On the other hand, he has an extraordinary fetishism towards female hands. Speaking of his way of fetish, when he first appreciated Monalisa, he even “erected (from his own words) ”.

(In the poem collection Blue Cat of Sakutaro Hagiwara, there is a poem, “That hand is a confectionery”, which states the desire to eat a woman’s hand. That may be the origin.)

As a result of this fetishism rising to the highest level , Kira took the act of a serial murderer who murders women with hands to his liking one after another , which is far from a peaceful and happy lifestyle. However, there is also a kind of consideration that the murdering act itself, apart from the fetishism, is merely a hobby, so his true intention remains unsure.

Since he is only obsessed with “hands” of women, and has no interest in “women themselves”, he only keeps the hands, and use Killer Queen to demolish and eradicate the rest parts. He doesn’t care about what kind of person the original owner of the hands was; no matter how bad her personality is, if he likes her hand, he will set her as the target. And he doesn’t really care about their names, either (when he gets to know the name, he will address it).

There was a scene of him talking to the woman he targeted in order to torment her, but he only talked about what himself wanted to say. The other person is not allowed to speak without permission, like “Don’t answer a question with a question.

He always carries the cut-off hand around, play with it in ways like talking to it, buying rings and bags for it, licking and sucking it. He seems to enjoy using the hand when wiping his stool.

Then, as the hand gradually decays, he goes for the metaphor, “to cut the hand (in Japanese, it means ‘to break up’”, discards the hand easily and start to search for the next target. Or rather, when the next prey is found, he will say, “let’s break up beautifully”, and burns the hand inside a bag.

Except for the first victim, all the corpses whose hands have been cut off was blown up with his stand ability and left no trace. So, no evidence remains, and his evil act has not been revealed.

Although he looks like a ruthless person, without this propensity, he is decent. There was also a good aspect that when he pretended to be married in order to hide his identity, for a moment he concerned about the health of his “wife”.

Also, Kira, who is a bad person, but a good father (of course this depend on the angle) , and Jotaro Kujo, who is a good person but by no means a good father, forms an interesting contrast.

However, even removing this propensity, you will see some elements that make it hard to say that he is decent, such as his psychopathic side, the fact that despite saying he hates to stand out, he shows off his high-handed attitude by saying “when it comes to battle, I shall lose to no one”, and the fact that he said blatantly to the opponent, whose friend was killed by him, that “It is a stupid act to fight”. For the commendation certificate of his school days mentioned above, though if he does not wish to be noticeable, he could choose to take no commendation at all, he also has a reason that “If I take nothing and was thus ridiculed by those guys, I’ll also be angry”.

Another of his unusual hobby is to collect his own cut nails. He seems to be predicting his health condition by the growth of his nails, and seems to believe that “if it grows 30 cm a month, that’s in top shape”. The growth speed of his nails is so unusually fast that his father can tell his son by his nails.

He is also quite prissy. Seeing the socks of his opponent, who can be killed by him in one last step, was turned inside out, he said “that troubles me”, and take them off specially to correct it.

Experience and murder history

He was born in Morioh on January 30, 1966. After graduating from the Literature Department of D College, he started working at Kameyu Department Store.

His father, Yoshihiro, died of cancer 12 years ago, and his mother passed away after that. He lives alone ever since.

This is his experience on the surface. His back story, the murder history, started on August 13, 1983.

His first crime was murdering the whole family of Reimi Sugimoto. He killed Reimi, her parents, and even their beloved pet dog Arnold, which upset the public and was mentioned in the news. However, for the lack of strong evidence, this case went unsolved. Furthermore, the only one that survived from this case was an infant, who was occasionally left in the Sugimoto family for babysitting, and was saved by Reimi.

At that time, Kira hadn’t become a stand user, and use a knife as the weapon. Even after becoming a ghost, the brutal scars of that time still remain on Reimi’s back.

After that, though the timing and chance are unknown, he used the “bow and arrow”, which was obtained from Enya the Hag by Yoshihiro in Egypt, his stand ability was awakened. Since then, he uses Killer Queen to repeatedly kill without leaving evidence.

In the final battle, he confessed to a paramedic female that “Till now, I’ve killed 48 women whose hands are pretty” , but that was merely the number of female victims. In the work, he killed Shigechi and the owner of “Centipede Shoes”, who were related to the clue of his killing, to keep them silent. Besides that, there was description that he also killed those who did not seem necessarily to be killed, such as “Minako’s boyfriend” and “Rio-chan’s male neighbor” in a fit of irritation. It is estimated that the number of victims will reach three-figure if the “disturbers” excluding women were to be counted.

The number of boys and girls missing in Morioh is 8 times the national average, and according to Reimi, Kira is involved in many, if not all, of them. If the corpse is not found, it can’t be investigated as a murder case, and those concerned had no choice but to search for “the missing” fruitlessly. Thus, for more than 15 years, in exchange of his own peaceful mind and peaceful sleep, Kira had been taking away a great number of lives and the peaceful lives of others.

Action in the main story

In the mid-story, he killed Shigekiyo Yangu with a bomb because the former found out about his true identity. This was the trigger that he became the investigate target of Josuke Higashikata and his fellows (Kira himself planned to erase all traces of evidence, but the last one of Shigekiyo’s Harvest torn off a button from Kira’s clothes and handed it to Josuke. In this way, Kira was tracked).

After that, when Jotaro Kujo and Koichi Hirose was trying to get his name from the owner of “Centipede Shoes”, whom he asked for the buttoning of the clothes, Kira killed the owner with a second bomb, “Sheer Heart Attack” to keep him silent. He left SHA to take care of Jotaro and Koichi just that way, but although it successfully made Jotaro unable to fight, Koichi tracked it down, and his stand developed into “Echoes ACT3”. He then used ACT3 to disable SHA. At the same time, Kira noticed something unusual, that the damage was fed back to his own left hand. Although he was entwined by the hoodlums on his way, he finally made it to Koichi’s side and collected SHA. After challenging Koichi, Kira once drove him into unconsciousness. But when he tried to bombard Koichi, Jotaro woke up and fought with him. In a head-to-head fight with the experienced warrior Jotaro, he suffered an Oraora Rush, and received a painful counterattack, and himself became unconscious.

Right after that, he met Josuke and Okuyasu Nijimura who was requested by Koichi. When he heard that Josuke’s Crazy Diamond can cure the wound, he tried to deceive them by acting as “an unrelated normal person who happened to be involved in an explosion”, but was caught when Josuke felt him out(he said to Josuke, who could only be seen as a high school student, “Heal me quickly”), thus revealing his identity. Feeling cornered, he immediately cut his left hand off using Killer Queen’s hand blade to release SHA, and escaped from the scene. On his way of escaping, he happened to meet an ordinary man Kosaku Kawajiri, who looked like him and was almost as tall as him, and killed the man. He then threatened Aya Tsuji in the beauty salon “Cinderella” to switch his face and fingerprints with Kosaku’s. In this way, he used the face, address and name of a different people, and succeeded in completely escaping from Josuke and his fellows once (During this period, he turned Aya Tsuji into a bomb and killed her, Kosaku’s corpse was involved in the explosion and disappeared).

After that, he turned into Kosaku Kawajiri and started his life hiding in the Kawajiri family. At first, Kosaku’s wife, Shinobu Kawajiri was suspicious of her husband’s change, but he managed to completely charm her and succeeded in winning her over. However, her son Hayato Kawajiri can’t be dealt with ordinary methods, and was suspicious of his true identity. While continuing his life, he judged that the Stray Cat he encountered was useful, and kept it in the attic. However, its existence was known by Hayato. Kira quickly hid it and grumbled to Hayato, “If the kid notices me, I’ll have to kill him”. According to this, Hayato learned the fact that the man lived with them at the time was not Kosaku Kawajiri because “He has dad’s face, but he’s not my dad”.

While somehow suppressing his murder impulse and continue living, and while the stand users created by his father Yoshihiro Kira using the arrow’s power was fighting with Josuke and his fellow, his suppressed murder impulse broke out one day when a couple on the train picked a fight with him. He followed the couple, killed the boyfriend and the girlfriend Minako on the spur of the moment. That scene was recorded with a video camera by Hayato, who was following Kira. That night, he sounded out Hayato in the bathroom and believed that he knew his true identity. He then planned to deal with Hayato, but was reversely threatened by Hayato with the fact that his identity is revealed. Beside himself with rage because of that, he killed Hayato impulsively. After tricking Shinobu, Yoshihiro suggested that they should leave Morioh, but Kira refused this proposal. In a deep despair, the arrow possessed by Yoshihiro pierced his arm by itself, and gave him the power of the 3rd Bomb, “Bites the Dust”.

Using the power of Bites the Dust, he turned Hayato into a mine that “automatically bomb off those who want to know his identity”. In the time loop of Hayato reviving and repeating it, he once succeeded in bombing the whole team of protagonists led by Rohan Kishibe. However, Hayato used the 3rd loop as a chance to make Josuke arrive at the place where Kira said his real name in a loud voice, and thus revealed his identity. He tried to escape, but Josuke began to attack Kira mercilessly because “I could cure any number of injures if I got the wrong person”. Kira, who became vulnerable, had no choice but to disable Bites the Dust and began fighting with Josuke and Okuyasu (Because of this, Josuke and others avoided the fate of being killed by bomb automatically).

He used the air bomb created by a combination of the ability of Stray Cat, which was stored in the belly of Killer Queen and defeated Okuyasu, then chased Josuke, but himself was also hunted down by Josuke’s tricky tactics. Yoshihiro, who supported Kira himself, was also mistakenly killed by bombing for Josuke’s clever scheme and entered Nirvana. When in the range of the stands of both sides, he fought a fierce close-up battle with Crazy Diamond, but on the verge of defeat, Stray Cat immediately defended the fist of Crazy Diamond using air and gave Kira an upper hand. He changed the air into a projectile and released it. He was thus convinced of victory, but the space of the air bomb was cut off by The Hand, which is the stand ability of the resurrected Okuyasu. The Stray Cat was also confiscated by Okuyasu, making Kira completely unable to fight. Furthermore, Yajiuma and Josuke heard the strife, and Jotaro and his fellows witnessed him. Kira was thus completely cornered.

However, being a bad loser, Kira planned to set Bites the Dust off on the paramedic female who thought he was an injured and approached him, in an intention to kill all people present. With Koichi’s Echoes ACT3, it was prevented at the last minute. In a time-stop state, he was attacked by Jotaro’s Star Platinum and The World’s Oraora Rush, thus lost completely (The anime version emphasizes this terrible obsession over winning by picturing him struggling to activate Bites the Dust even after that). He died after being hit by an ambulance backing at the place where he was blown to. It was ironic in a sense, that the murderer who took lots of lives was ended by an ambulance whose work was to save lives (In anime version, it was depicted that the rear wheel ran over him from the head, for a moment the head was twisted to an impossible direction, so it was a more gross scene than the original work). After his death, because he did introduce himself in the real name to the paramedic female, and he did not replace his teeth, the corpse was treated as “Yoshikage Kira” instead of “Kosaku Kawajiri”. For this reason, the Kawajiri family was not notified of the accident.

Rohan, among those people before Kira’s eyes in his last moment, said “This man can’t be judge by law. This is the best way.” If Kira didn’t die at the scene and was arrested, Kosaku Kawajiri would be treated publicly as the murderer, and it is not hard to imagine that his family, Shinobu and Hayato would receive harsh bashing from the public if that happened. Considering that, just as what Rohan said, the result that it was treated as “an accidental death caused by no one” was good. Kosaku Kawajiri was thus treated as one more missing person caused by Kira, who had created many missing people.

After that, Kira’s soul was guided to a path that can’t turn around. Hearing the details of the incident from Reimi Sugimoto who appeared there, for a time he thought “the life as a ghost might surprisingly be the peaceful life I wanted”. He then changed his mind suddenly and turned around trying to eliminate Reimi, but Reimi and her pet dog Arnold turned him around instead. He was caught by a large amount of hands, and resisted with Killer Queen, but this was proved to be meaningless. His body was torn apart and dragged into “somewhere”.

As the end of the murderer who cut off hands of many women, this is quite ironic.

Afterwards, in the last episode of the anime version, new female employees of the company where Kira worked were talking about “faceless corpse of the missing Mr. Kira was found”. So, publicly, it seems that Kira’s death was treated as an unlucky accident.

Appearance

The appearance of “Yoshikage Hira”, who appeared in Hirohiko Araki’s work has 3 patterns even limited to those in Part 4. (It will be 5 patterns, if the Kira in Dead Man’s Questions and the Kira in Jojo Lion described later, are included).

Speaking of Kira in Part 4, the “original” Yoshikage Kira was painted with golden hair and eyes. According to his colleagues, “because of the elite-style look and demeanor, he is popular among female employees”. And oversea fans have pointed out that the model of his appearance might be David Bowie.

And in the middle of the story, he took the face of “Kosaku Kawajiri”, whose age and physique are close to him, and replaced Kosaku. Kosaku has a somewhat sober look with black hair and black eyes.

Further, at the end of the story, because of the discovery of “Bites the Dust”, he felt uplifted when realizing the fact that he became invincible, and the hairstyle thus changed to an all-back.

He is fashionable when it comes to clothing, and wears a jacket, which was “mincing high-class brand”, commented by Jotaro. His favorite fashion brand is Gianfranco Ferré.

He also likes to use a quirky patterned tie designed to resemble the skull of Killer Queen. Although he discarded it when replacing Kosaku Kawajiri in the beauty salon “Cinderella”, he later wore the same thing, so it might be a brand sold normally in Morioh.

This tie has actually been commercialized.

His wristwatch has slightly different shapes in the original work and the anime version. In the anime version, in order to match the tank shaped ability “Sheer Heart Attack” equipped by Killer Queen, Kira wears a “tank”-like wristwatch of the luxury fashion brand Cartier. However, Jotaro said, “if you look closely, his taste is bad”.

His basically address himself using watashi, but when talking to girlfriend (wrist) and Shinobu, he used boku. In Dead Man’s Questions, when talking to the nun, he used ore.

In addition, he sometimes calls himself using his full name instead of watashi. This habit has triggered events that have greatly disrupted his destiny.

Stand Killer Queen

For details, please refer to the entry “Killer Queen”.

Voice actor

Rikiya Koyama (JoJo's Bizarre Adventure All-Star Battle & JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Eyes of Heaven)

Toshiyuki Morikawa (TV anime version)

Yoshikage Kira in Dead Man’s Questions

Since he died at last in Part 4, he appeared in the form of a ghost.

He has lost all memories including those from part 4, except his name.

Following the instruction of a certain nun, he travels around places performing a “mission”.

The range of this activity is very wide, such as hiding cash that can only be used by himself in the pillar of the station, and travels elegantly with Shinkansen.

The reason why he clings to the world as a ghost is, “I don’t know if there really is heaven or hell”, “I believe if there were, I would probably not go into heaven”. The nun who gave him the mission appears to have denied that Kira remained in the world because of that.

He hopes to buy a small house and listen to music in a room where no one can disturb him, but being a ghost, that wish cannot be fulfilled, and he keeps performing the mission for a long time.

Appearance

Unlike Part 4, he wears a strange suit with red and yellow flashy patterns on a blue base (depending on the situation, there will be a hole instead of a pattern like a Panna Cotta Hugo suit, according to the picture).

The nature of Ghost in Dead Man’s Questions

The ghost is invisible to ordinary people, but there are cases that certain people and animals are able to see it.

Can both slip through inorganic substances and move them by touching.

If the voice is like that too, it can shake the air and make a real sound, so intercoms and telephones can also be used.

Although he can move objects, it seems inconvenient for him to carry them around because he will get in the eyes of people. He can do things like “Tear a page from magazines in the bookstore and carry it for hundreds of meters” and “Take out a 10000-yen bill hidden in the station building and buy a train ticket”, but he doesn’t always carry things need for work.

About creatures, although he can touch them if intentionally, when being touched by the opposite side, even a slight collision will cause a damage that make his limbs tear to pieces easily. It seems that even torn, he can easily attach them if the parts can be collected, but if he fails to collect, he will lose them.

It is very dangerous for ghosts to be hit by ordinary people who can’t see them, or to be attacked by animals that can see them. So, among the ghosts, some choose to stay in shadows or on top of trees out of the fear of being hit by people.

Part of the motivation for Kira to seek a home is the feeling that “I don’t want to be like that”.

The spaces that are previously occupied by others, like homes and rooms, can’t be invaded by living person or ghost. They must get permission from the owner’s soul to enter.

Yoshikage Kira in Part 8 Jojo Lion

Details⇒Yoshikage Kira(Jojo Lion)

Because a character with the same name and same stand appeared in Part 8, for the sake of distinction, sometimes he is called Kira in Part 4 among fans.

Yoshikage Kira in “EoH”

Due to the influence of the “change”, Yoshikage Kira (before reshaping) and Kosaku Kawajiri are revived, Basically, they appear together as a set.

After resurrection, he hid in the Morioh of Part 8, but was noticed by Josuke Higashikata who arrived there, and had to fight again. At this time, he said to Josuke, who happened to be present, that “I’m not the Yoshikage Kira you are searching for”. As for the battle, he failed to the combination of Josuke and Josuke, and disappeared.

Later, although foisted by DIO in the parallel world with a part of the “holy corpse”, he didn’t want to fight against Jotaro, and hid himself in the Green Dolphin Street High Security Prison. However, he was again found by Josuke, and they fought again. This time he was defeated by the combination of Josuke and Okuyasu. Leaving the line “I’ll definitely kill you guys with a bomb” after feeling humiliated, he ran away.

After that, he didn’t appear in the story, but his settlement could be in the Mission (side story). When walking in Morioh, he happened to encounter Josuke and Koichi, and there was a fight. At the end, he again faced the combination of Josuke and Okuyasu, and he gave them guidance, saying “Both of you just go to hell together”.

In his fight with Josuke, there was a dialogue to irritate Josuke: he made fun of the former saying “That head, shouldn’t it have exploded yet?”.

Related illustration

Side story

• Judging by his birth year, he speaks casually with Jean-Pierre Polnareff. That is to say, around the time of Part 4 (the summer of 1999), Polnareff is 33 too.
• It is easy to compare him with Raito Yagami from DEATHNOTE for things like the killer connection, and the fact that they are both serial murderers from a Jump work.
• The reason why the ability of his stand power “Killer Queen” is bombing can be traced back to its origin, “Killer Queen”, a song of the band Queen. In the lyrics, words about bomb are studded. There are parts that became a mishearing of “Fight! Tabuchi”, and the term gelatin here didn’t refer to edible collagen, which is used in a general sense, but to nitro-gela