| Jashugan | |
|---|---|
| Battle Angel Alita character | |
| First appearance | Battle Angel Alita: Killing Angel |
| Created by | Yukito Kishiro |
| Profile | |
| Nicknames | "Emperor", "Emperor Jashugan" |
| Notable relatives | Shumira, younger sister |
| Degree of cyberization | Full cyborg |
Jashugan, known in Japan as Jasugun (ジャシュガン Jashugan), is a fictional character in the Battle Angel Alita manga by Yukito Kishiro. He is the current reigning champion of the most popular sport in the Scrapyard, motorball, a cross between Ancient Roman gladiatoral combat and speed skating. Jashugan is perhaps the one opponent whom the series protagonist Alita respects the most, largely because they are similar in many respects.[1] The two also "see each other as competitive rivals instead of hated enemies".[2] Jashugan's only family is his younger sister Shumira.
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Jashugan's background prior to his motorball career is not revealed, nor how long he has been competing in the sport. In ES 571, five years before Ido found Alita in the Tiphares junkyard, Jashugan was a rookie in the highest motorball league, the Top League. He and his rival Esdoc (better known as "Ed") were involved in a deadly accident in which Jashugan sustained massive brain damage. He would have died had not Desty Nova intervened and performed reconstructive brain surgery on him. Using a Tipharean technology called Gehirn Umbao, Nova used nanomachines to rebuild the column structure of Jashugan’s cerebral cortex and strengthen his neurons with artificial proteins. The reconstruction helped Jashugan survive and become the motorball champion. This was in stark contrast to Ed, who also survived, but became dependent on acceleration drug injections to stay competitive, which resulted in a side effect called "Terminal Frost" which forced his eventual retirement. The relationship between the two is cordial, but deep down Ed still seeks to surpass Jashugan, and tries to do this vicariously through Alita after he becomes her manager years later in ES 578.
Jashugan paid a high price for his brain reconstruction as a side effect has been the constant risk of death, and he has suffered an increasing series of spasmatic attacks that have caused his heart rate to flatline. He has recovered from these attacks on his own in the past, but during a race that is watched by Daisuke Ido, Shumira, Alita, and Ed in which he is forced to pit by one of these attacks, it takes Ido’s intervention to save his life. After this, Jashugan knows that his death is near, but cannot reconcile himself to his "absolute death".[3]
Jashugan is a master of the Maschine Klatsch, a formidable cyborg martial art of which he is the only practitioner of following the death of his master shortly before his own death. He is also adept at focusing his chi. This enables him to concentrate a lot of power into even a normal civilian cyborg body and defeat opponents in powered-up cyborg bodies. After Ed's retirement, no other motorball player can match him in combat except for Alita and her Panzer Kunst.
Jashugan is so good that when he races, he must handicap himself by removing his right arm and face three-man challenge teams. His motorball body has two grinders built into each arm capable of rotating at high speeds, which increases the deadliness of his Maschine Klatsch as they can tear through cyborg armor and dismember opposing players. Nonetheless, his flatline attacks have resulted in him participating in fewer races over time.
After she meets Jashugan, Alita challenges him to an arm-wrestling match with her heart literally as the stakes. The match appears to end as a draw, but Jashugan afterwards notes that he would have lost had it gone on for longer. To save Alita face, he proposes that they meet again on the motorball circuit on the condition that she assemble a challenge team of at least five members including herself. Knowing that he is close to death, the match is the one thing that he has to look forward to in order to fight for Shumira and uphold his honor as champion. Prior to the race, Ido, as Jashugan's personal tuner, prepared a direct interface so he could transmit Shumira's brainwaves to Jashugan's brain if necessary should he suffer another flatline as a contingency, a measure he took that saved Jashugan before. Jashugan nullifies this however, by administering a sedative to his younger sister, setting himself up for a deathmatch with Alita.
During the challenge race, Jashugan rips through Alita’s teammates in seconds, leaving the two of them alone to fight it out. Trading blow for blow, Jashugan nearly has Alita at one point, but she is saved by Tiegel (one of Alita's teammates, who manages to distract Jashugan for a few seconds). In the final moments of their battle, right when he's about to win, Jashugan suffers a flatline attack and becomes unable to move. Alita then deals him a killing blow. That should have been the end of the battle; however, Jashugan's fighting spirit is so strong that he manages to reanimate his "dead" body through raw chi power. He stands up, attacks Alita and completely defeats her before "dying" again, this time for good.
The side story "Sonic Finger" shows Alita and Jashuan's fight on TV and reveals that Alita has a poster of Jashugan on her apartment wall when she is living on her own after retiring from motorball. Twelve years after their match when Alita infiltrates Desty Nova's hideout, the Granite Inn, in search of Nova, she encounters Jashugan in a dream sequence when she is trapped by Nova’s Ouroboros program. Forced to confront her inner doubts and fears, Alita fights Jashugan again and, this time, defeats him. He congratulates her and encourages her to "aspire to reach heights I was unable to attain".[4] Alita's victory enables her to break out of the Ouroboros and confront Nova. Kishiro has said of this second fight that Alita and Jashugan "had to confront each other again", as "many things had not been said" during their first fight.[5]
Jashugan has also appeared in Alita's thoughts in Battle Angel Alita: Last Order, when she was fighting Caerula Sanguis.
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