Nurugai

Nurugai is the last remaining member of the Sanka and a wrongly convicted death-row criminal. She serves as a major supporting character of Hell's Paradise: Jigokuraku. Before being sentenced to death, Nurugai became recruited to join in an expedition team where she would compete against other death row convicts in acquiring the Elixir of Life for the shogun from an island believed to be Shinsenkyō in exchange for a pardon that would exempt her of her past crimes. Nurugai has quite an androgynous appearance, with her Asaemon having only figured out that she was a girl after undressing. She has dark tanned skin and long, black, messy hair that reaches down past her shoulders when left untied; although she usually ties the hair up above her head. Later in the chapters, Nurugai's hair becomes smoother. Her body is also noticeably muscular. She is seen wearing very scrappy clothes, her top lacking sleeves, a bone necklace, and bandages wrapped around both of her wrists. She also wears black pants that end somewhere halfway down her calves, also lacking any footwear. After briefly settling in Hōrai, Nurugai changed into an orange vest with a mandarin collar and black pants. She keeps her bone necklace and carries her sword on her back. A year later, Nurugai chooses to allow her hair to flow back, continues to wear her hoop earrings, and wears a kimono. According to Nurugai, she decided to appear this way after taking note of how the girls around her look, which made her appear a lot more feminine and attractive to men, much to her fancy. Nurugai originally looked down on samurai, viewing them as stupid. Her disdain for them stems from the fact that they were partially responsible for killing her people. Because of this incident, Nurugai felt a strong guilt for leading her village's extermination, even believed that the reason why she is on a dangerous mission is because she was receiving divine punishment for her actions and accepted death. However, after Tenza makes Nurugai take her own desires into account, Nurugai realizes that she wants to stay alive to return back to her home. After being influenced by Tenza and being by Shion's side, with his task of protecting her, Nurugai's opinion of samurai may have changed and sees that not all of them are bad. Nurugai cares greatly towards the people she has a deep connection with. She cherished the time she had with her grandfather and felt that she needed to be punished for causing his death. After the death of Tenza, Nurugai begged Shion to teach her swordsmanship and his ability to sense Tao to avenge him, stating that she could not stand by and watch as more people she cares for die in front of her. During her and Shion's fight with Zhu Jin, Nurugai ran out of the Taisoku Temple with tears running down her face after Shion begged her to leave him as he prepares to sacrifice himself to kill the Tensen. However, after remembering how Tenza opened up her resolve, Nurugai returned to save Shion and counselled him into giving up his vengeance. Nurugai is also very helpful. She was generous enough to guide a group of samurai that were lost (not knowing that their mission was to execute her people). She removed Senta's flowers from his Arborified body just in time, tried to help Yuzuriha by unknowingly using the Tao restoration and assisted Sagiri in helping Shion fight Mu Dan in his Kishikai. Nurugai also showed that she has a lowest level of modesty, having no shame when she exposed her naked body to Tenza. Despite not always expressing it, Nurugai can sometimes bring out her feminine side. After being charmed by Tenza's chivalry, Nurugai vowed to make him her groom and wanted to try on new clothes with Yuzuriha.