Character · Naruto
Kisame Hoshigaki
Blue skin, gill marks on the cheeks, small round eyes, and a sword that is alive and hungry.
In Otakana the clue reads: Shark-like man with a wrapped scaly sword
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Naruto
- Letters
- 6 · Hard
Kisame Hoshigaki left the Hidden Mist as a rogue and joined the Akatsuki, where he was paired with Itachi and spent most of his appearances standing behind him making cheerful threats. He is enormous, carries an absurd amount of chakra even by the standards of this setting, and was one of the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist before he defected.
Samehada, the sword, is why he is dangerous. It is wrapped in bandages, covered in scales, and it shreds rather than cuts. More to the point it eats chakra straight out of whatever it touches and feeds it back to the wielder. It also has opinions about who is allowed to hold it, and most of the time the answer is Kisame.
He is one of very few Akatsuki who seem straightforwardly comfortable with the job, which makes him better company than most of the roster. His name is 鬼鮫, demon shark, and the design commits completely: gills on the face, teeth filed to points, skin the colour of deep water. Kishimoto rarely draws a character this literally.
Spelling KISAME
KISAME hides a word inside itself. Same is the Japanese for shark, so the name reads as demon plus shark, 鬼鮫, and his sword Samehada is shark skin. Six letters, three beats, ki-sa-me, with the final E sounded exactly like the one in HOKAGE. Four of the six tiles are the animal.