Okoi (お胡夷, Okoi) is a member of the Kōga Manjidani clan who is one of the ten ninjas selected by Danjō Kōga to participate in the war against the Iga Tsubagakure clan and the younger sister of fellow Kōga ninja Saemon Kisaragi.
Appearance[]
Okoi is a young woman with shoulder-length brown hair that she keeps tied up in a ponytail, brown eyes and she has very large lips and a muscular and quite a well-endowed frame, which are very prominent in the manga version.
Despite being a tomboy, she dresses in a more revealing manner than the other kunoichi, wearing a hip length, purple sleeveless kimono, a red sash tied around her waist and shortened pale hakama.
Biography[]
Before the War[]
In an anime only scene, Okoi is seen crouched in the woods with a spear, hunting a boar with Gyōbu Kasumi. She is interrupted by Jōsuke Udono, who attempts to grab her from behind while she is bending over. She screams, scaring the boar away in the process. Angered, she screams at him and he tries to escape. He rolls down a hill to where Saemon Kisaragi and Shōgen Kazamachi are fishing, making a huge splash and letting the fish get away. Okoi appears with Gyōbu, who jokingly suggests they should eat Jōsuke for dinner instead of the boar. Jōsuke unwisely joked that if Okoi ate something as fatty as himself than her hips would become too big; at which point Okoi soundly thrashed him.
Trip to Iga[]
Okoi is first seen with Saemon Kisaragi who informs her of Gennosuke Kōga and Jōsuke Udono staying at Iga Tsubagakure. Okoi is annoyed that she didn't get a chance to go as she wanted to see the inside of Iga. Okoi takes a large bite out of a fish and complains about how boring it is, due to not being able to train her ninja skills or speak to her teatime friend Jūbei Jimushi. Saemon asks when she became friends with Juubei, but she ignores him and complains about how Gyoubu can't go boar hunting either. She suggests Saemon should go boar hunting too, but he refuses, saying he prefers fishing. She jokes that he could be the bait, which causes the pair to burst out laughing. Saemon then asks Okoi to go to Iga and check on Genosuke, which she agrees to immediately. He goes with her to the woods and she waves goodbye before heading off to Iga.
As she headed through the trees, she spotted a suspicious ninja spying on her village from a treetop. When she demanded he identify himself, the ninja retreated with Okoi in hot pursuit through the branches and then along the ground. Okoi was just about to apprehend him when the ninja tricked her into falling off the edge of a sudden cliff. Okoi managed to save herself by throwing a weighted chain around a rock projection, but lost sight of her quarry. The suspicious ninja was actually Kyōhachirō Hattori; the adopted son of Hattori Hanzo the 4th who had been charged with observing the duel between Kōga and Iga.
Okoi later stops for a drink at a river, unaware she is being watched from the bushes. A group of five Iga ninja ambush her, surrounding her on all sides while Tenzen Yakushiji asks if she is Okoi of Kōga. He tells her they are from Iga and they had just left Kōga where they were attacked when trying to deliver the message of Gennosuke staying in Iga. Okoi grins and tells them they underestimated the Kōga and asks if Gennosuke is safe. Tenzen tells her she wouldn't believe what they told her and that she should accompany them to Iga to see for herself. Okoi declines the offer, leaping backwards into the trees saying she would return to Kouga to find out what really happened. Nenki Mino quickly gives chase as Tenzen, Koshirō Chikuma, Hotarubi and Rōsai Azuki watch from the ground. Nenki uses his hair to swing on the branches as he chases, allowing him to catch up with her quickly. In desperation, she turns and throws several kunai at him, cheering when they seem to hit him. However at that instant he throws his staff at her, which collides into her stomach. She looks up to see he caught the kunaiin his hair, which he throws back at her. Just then she falls through the trees, the kunai narrowly missing her and hits the ground hard. Tenzen appears in time to stop Nenki from killing her, saying they should take her back to Iga to interrogate her.
Imprisonment and Murder of Rōsai[]
Okoi was locked up in a salt warehouse, when she has now regained consciousness, Rōsai Azuki enters to question her about the abilities of her companions, Okoi appears frightened when he threatens to mutilate and rape her, but when Rōsai puts his hand on her she changes expression, at that moment he realizes that he cannot remove his hands, he realizes that his ability is to suck blood from the skin and tries to defend himself, but he is blocked and held in a vice, at which point she puts her his mouth on his neck and quickly deprives him of his blood, killing him.
After killing him, he takes a kunai out of his pocket with his foot and frees himself, then goes behind some barrels of salt to vomit the blood he has sucked, then takes stock of the situation and decides to make sure that Gennosuke is okay, notices the scroll, but at that moment he feels that someone is approaching, without wasting a moment he puts the scroll between the barrels and waits for the stranger to arrive, he turns out to be Jingorō Amayo who has come looking for Rōusai, notices Okoi lying down, gets excited looking at her curves and asks her if she has seen Rōusai, she, pretending to be tied and submissive, asks him to kill her, as she believes that a Kōga woman no longer has the strength to live once raped by an Iga, Jingorō is surprised and decides to rape her she too, telling her that "it will be better" than Rōusai, but as soon as he is about to do so, he realizes that he is attached to her and cannot move, before he can react she blocks him with her hands and knocks him down, she asks him if it hurts and if it feels like his body is falling apart and warning him that it's about to suck all his blood out of him.
Death[]
While Okoi is sucking his blood, Jingorō begins to melt and Okoi notices this, he sprints away and moves away from Jingorō, noticing him with disgust, he goes to take the Tantō but at that moment Nenki Mino enters and Okoi tries to kill him, unfortunately he he disarms and pins her, she starts sucking his blood and thinks he needs to find more skin, but suddenly she is pierced by his hair, Nenki tells her that he won't go easy on her and that even though he was told not to kill her she has tried to kill him, and since her name was on the list she would have died anyway.
After a short time "Yashamaru" (Saemon, Okoi's older brother, in disguise) enters together with Hotarubi, in shock, but hiding it well, he approaches his sister's body and holds her hand, he feels it using a kind of morse code which she manages to understand, Saemon apologizes for arriving too late, Okoi tells him that he killed Rōsai and Saemon tells her that he is proud of her, Okoi tells him that she hid the scroll behind him and he tells her that he will take it, in his final moments Okoi calls out to his brother before dying.
Personality[]
Tomboyish and energetic, Okoi represents the popular concept of the kunoichi while Akeginu and Kagerō both embody the more historically traditional version. Although a capable fighter, Okoi is not opposed to using her "ample assets" to lure men into a state of false security if she has to. She is also a very sociable person, making friends easily and it is said not even Gennosuke Kōga would get mad at her. Despite her friendly nature, she does sometimes get angry and is shown to rough people up if the situation calls for it, such as when Jōsuke Udono ruined her hunting trip.
Abilities[]
- Blood Absorption: Upon physical contact with an enemy, Okoi is able to adhere her skin onto her opponent's and then absorb their blood into herself; leaving her enemies as dried up husks. Upon completion, Okoi must then vomit out the excess blood before she can use the technique again. The reason why she dresses in a revealing way is to allow her to gain more contact with an opponent with more contact meaning faster blood absorption.
- Ninjutsu: Okoi is a master of ninjutsu.
- Kunaijutsu: Okoi's primary weapon is a knife, which she can use very effectively as shown when she fights with Nenki Mino and breaks his Bo staff. She is also shown using kunai, a type of throwing knife.
Relationships[]
Saemon Kisaragi[]
Saemon is Okoi's older brother whom she has a very deep bond with and she is one of the few people capable of making him smile.
Gyōbu Kasumi[]
In the anime, Okoi has a strong friendship with Gyōbu, who is normally a rather unapproachable man. The pair sometimes go on hunting trips together to catch wild boar in the surrounding forests.
Jōsuke Udono[]
Jōsuke, as he does with most women, continually attempts to flirt with Okoi. This, coupled with his jokes about her hip size, often irritates Okoi and can lead to Jōsuke taking a beating.
Differences Between the Manga, Anime, and Novel Versions[]
- In the Manga, Okoi's personality stayed quite the same, but her relationship with the other members of her clan is not expanded beyond Saemon Kisaragi; leaving most of her character to be underdeveloped in comparison to the other Kōga.
- In the Anime, the conversation between Okoi and Rōsai is not one-sided, she asks him what is on his mind and he replies that it is "The disgust he feels for the Koga clan" and recalls Nobunaga Oda's attack accusing the Koga, Okoi says that it is a lie and that even if they had continued the feud, the Koga would not have sunk so low and Rōsai replies that if their roles had been reversed they would have acted in the same way.
- In the Anime, instead of threatening to rape her, Rōsai threatens to cut off her breasts.
Trivia[]
- Okoi was not included in the film Shinobi: Heart Under Blade, a film based on the same source material as Basilisk.