Bunshichi Tawara
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Bunshichi Tawara (俵 文七 Tawara Bunshichi) is a character in the manga and anime series tenjho tenge. He is a member of the early Juuken Club, and the Executive council in name only.
[edit] Character outline
Bunshichi is a 20 year old white haired man, who is in his 3rd year as a senior at Todou Academy. He actually is not stupid, the question of why he has still not graduated is never answered. He is without question the laziest character in the series. Bunshichi does not like to do anything, joining the Juuken Club solely so they would have enough members. Later as a member of the executive council, Mitsuomi Takayanagi appoints him as the advisor (essentially their strategist), where he again does nothing claiming he only signed up in name only. Not only is he lazy he is also perverted, usually focusing on women's breasts, and sometimes referring to them as deadly weapons. In the manga he repeatedly threatens to rape people, it is a joke of his own perversion, he has no intention to actually carry out the threats.
Despite his appearance and attitude, when Bunshichi actually fights he is quite dangerous. He was ranked as the strongest fighter in Todou until Mitsuomi won the Tournament 2 years ago. Bunshichi is likely the only character so far capable of lasting the full 3 minutes with Mitsuomi.
Bunshichi has no martial art style, he uses his own street fighting style utilizing his very strong arms. He has earned the nickname "Double Impact Tawara" for his powerful arms. He also refers to himself as "Exorcist Tawara" as a running joke when fighting people with special powers.
Despite how powerful he is, Bunshichi is frequently used as comic relief. Both his perversion and laziness are subjects of the jokes, but occasionally his actions are part of the jokes as well. A good example is in the bowling alley, he tells Mitsuomi that Souichiro Nagi is only responding to his murderous intent, and is harmless. Insisting Mitsuomi should leave him alone. Souichiro then punches Bunshichi in the face and Bunshichi wails on him. He often disguises intelligent moves as humor as well. When he interfered in that fight, by pouring water on Mitsuomi then pointing out Souichiro was only reacting to Mitsuomi, it was first thought only to be humor. However Mitsuomi later references that if Bunshichi hadn't shown up he may have hit his time limit and lost.
[edit] Anime and Manga
Little is known about Bunshichi's history or how he got so strong, but at some point he became friends with Shin Natsume and joined the gang, Katana. He single handedly won the one years tournament where Shin did not even fight. As a result even though Shin is the head of the group Bunshichi was ranked number 1 in the school and Shin was number 2.
Bunshichi seems to get along well with Shin and Mitsuomi, but he is not above mischief. As Mitsuomi starts his affair with Shin's girlfriend Mana, not only does Bunshichi find out and watch, he takes pictures using them to taunt and bug Mitsuomi. When Mana provides Mitsuomi a video, he asks Bunshichi to watch it with him. Initially Bunshichi sleeps through the beginning but is woken up by Mitsuomi for the strange part. After witnessing the video of Shin slaughtering people with the evil ceremonial nodachi Reiki, Bunshichi claims he's known Shin for ten years but does not recognize him there. Bunshichi discovers the identity of the mysterious Katana hunter, taking out the members of their gang and decides to hide it from the others. Maya Natsume is the Katana hunter, and he knew the other members would go for revenge. Shin wouldn't allow it and given his recent behavior might kill them all.
Eventually the other members find out anyway and decide to make Maya pay. Shin picks up on this with his dragon eyes and severely beats and nearly kills all of them. Bunshichi takes it upon himself to end Shin's insanity, planning to beat sense into him. On the way he encounters the cameraman of the video, Emi Isuzu, as he reaches for her chest she stabs him in the hand and runs. Chasing after her, assuming she knows where Shin is, he tells her as payment for his hand she has to hand over her body. Suddenly she moves to the side as a car slams into Bunshichi. As he gets up the car backs up and comes for a second hit to finish him off. This is the first time we see Bunshichi use his power. His arms increase in size shredding his sleeves, and he punches the car's grill. The car is totaled, in the anime the car actually goes flying over him and explodes behind him. He gets a G.P.S. tracker from Emi (Mana later explains she keeps 3 trackers on Shin at all times) and hails a taxi. The taxi driver of course sees he has a woman's unconscious body, and is bleeding and tries to keep going. Bunshichi actually throws Isuzu's body in the street to force him to stop. This taxi driver makes multiple appearances later, usually showing up at bad times. He takes Bunshichi to where Shin is.
Shin is meeting with Dougen Takayangi, Mitsuomi's father. Bunshichi immediately picks a fight, against Shin despite the fact Shin has the Reiki, and Bunshichi is injured and unarmed. Shins dragon eyes are activated and his aura gives Bunshichi hallucinations of being cut by the Reiki. Bunshichi announces that even if he dies he'll still find a way to kill Shin. Just then Shin stabs him through the thigh. Shin knocks him into a car, then stands on the roof of the car stabbing Bunshichi in the legs. Shin spends quite a bit of time stabbing Bunshichi's legs, more than anyone could consider necessary. Eventually Mana can't take it anymore and yells at Shin stopping him. She then takes the Reiki away from him. The second the sword leaves his hand Bunshichi punches the side of the car as hard as he can sending him flying at Shin. He hits Shin hard sending him flying into another car. Bunshichi then announces Shins power is second rate as he can't use his dragon eyes without the Reiki (this is later proven false). Despite his legs being full of holes, Bunshichi stands up, all be it squirting blood and with a lot of difficulty. Shin stands back up and staggers, for which Bunshichi calls him a sissy. From that point on the fight was entirely one sided for Bunshichi completely devastating Shin. After knocking Shin down, he comments that he should be called Exorcist Tawara as a joke. Shin looks at the Reiki, Bunshichi dares him to go for it. As Shin runs for it Bunshichi tears the side mirror off a car and throws it, hitting Shin in the head and knocking him down. He then knocks out Shin, by smashing him into a car. As Shin regains consciousness he starts crawling for the Reiki, dragon eyes activated. Bunshichi then kicks him in the eye knocking him out again and damaging his eye forcing him to wear an eye patch for a while.
Despite all of this afterward Bunshichi still visits Shin in the hospital, and still considers him a friend. Later Shin creates the Juuken Club in order to compete in the schools annual tournament. Mitsuomi signs up, and Bunshichi signs up so they would have more members, he is quite insistent that he is joining in name only. The tournament rules say you can attack at any time, you can even kill. Despite this Bunshichi still refuses to fight, still citing that he signed in name only. At one point as Maya and Mitsuomi fight a group outside Bunshichi is laying on the floor inside reading a magazine and scratching himself, saying it is their problem. At one point he does do some work, a girl group attacks him and Kagesada Sugano (almost solely referred to by his nickname, Asshat, in the manga). Bunshichi shatters the ends of the spears they have and jokingly comments that anyone who wants to get raped should come closer. Naturally the girls stopped their attack, thus ended what little work Bunshichi did in the tournament. In the finals it almost looked as if he would have to fight as everyone but Kagesada skipped, but at the last second Mitsuomi showed up and claimed all fights for himself.
In the fight between Mitsuomi and Shin, Bunshichi is the first to step up to stop Shin after his dragon eyes activate again. He is quickly dropped by a hard elbow however. Mitsuomi appoints him as the executive councils advisor, but as he only joined the group in name he never does anything. In the bowling alley incident, Mitsuomi says it would have been over from the start had Bunshichi taken command, his response was that the deal was he wouldn't have to do anything.
Bunshichi tells the story of the past to Chiaki, Bob Makihara and Souichiro Nagi, after he beat them down like nothing for attacking him. They of course insist he is lying when he gets to the part where he destroys the car.
After that Bunshichi is a background character, occasionally around for his humorous pervertion. Until Fu Chien returns and attacks Masataka Takayanagi and Mawari Madoka. He finally decides to help so Masataka will not be killed, and comments that it looks like Exocist Tawara Returns.
As of now Bob, Masataka, and Bunshichi are sitting on a curb waiting to see what happens. It is likely these characters will get more attention later as the manga is still incomplete.
