GARO – Kaoru Mitsuki: when a pawn is the hinge of the game, and destiny plays the pieces.

ATTENTION: Remember, if you have not seen the series yet, reading this text could frustrate you.


At chess, a pawn is a simple piece, limited in movements, used to give support to greater strategies; there are many of them; it can be sacrificed. It is also which does to progress a game; the one that can give a big surprise elimitating a greater piece or to become one, excepting the king. But it is difficult that a single pawn happen to be the goal of the greater pieces of both sides, it does not have resources to be so feared or appraised, excepting if its race to get the oposite basis line, or to the enemy king, is quite clear. Here is Kaoru: a privileged pawn.

And, be damned if she has wishes to be it! She found in this game by the will of someone else, and by the will of someone else has continued towards its end; she has not neither voice nor vote; she can not even see the board and, moreover, until late she does not realize it.



Chap. 1. The picture book with the golden knight, its empty final: these far remembrances appear in Kaoru’s dreams announcing the irruption of somthing from the past into the present. Chap. 10. Her old teddy bear: another child symbol that also materializes because it was preserved by the publisher of the book. When the teddy bear becomes threatening and makes her to awake so upset, is telling that something is not what seems, and that there is a motives to fear it. It might be announcing her hidden self, the one known and fostered by Ryuzaki: the one that makes her the right host to Meshia, the greatest horror.

A simple girl with dreams of greatness, it is so, a very normal girl that, thanks to her dreams and some events marked within her subconscious mind when she was a little girl, will find tied herself to a mortal game. She was also the daughter of a man who, somehow, found himself to, but with a lot of lesser intensity.

So, Kaoru is a master piece in the framework of destiny, a coveted pawn by both conscious and subconscious selves from both sides. All they have come into the world to make their work, in order to give more hope to mankind. But to reach it, a lot of threats will have had to soar over them to make that those predestinaded pieces could get some resources from the depth of their souls.

Kaoru, as a good pawn, was used, and sustained in the ignorance of her role, which avoided her weakening. This purpose by fate has taken different aspects in the ones that would have been able to make a revelation to her.

Barago is the most evident case of deliberation with few ethical goals, sustained for many years. Sure, he wanted to preserve her whole integrity, and approached to her as the psychologist Karune Ryuzaki. She could vent before him, he always understood her, and never pressed her; he showed to have a professional but warm interest about her; offering her support and high spirits, welcoming her when she ran away from Kouga and felt the first effects of her next agony. Plus, he believed her story. In no moment he discovered the smallest evidence of his masquerade. Luckily, when he showed it, she had completely reinstated her trust on Kouga.

Chap. 24. Kaoru has been possessed by Meshia. But she did not want to share power with anybody else and ate Barago. Kouga and Rei will not find easy to free her, since they can not to attack her . If they had not been so disposed, she would have remained as a host of Meshia forever.

Kouga is the other major piece that has Korus’s life in his hands, quite literally, and who would have to tell her. It is humanly understandable that he found difficult to notice her which, indeed, was a death sentence; but it was a duty accepted when he decided to spare her life. It seems that he intended to postpone it exactly until before accomplishing a hundred days when, predictably, she would be bad enough to accept willingly the sacrifice. But as he is brought over the moment of making it, he is still unable; he clutches at her life as if it was his own. He even risks to obtain himself the Barancas fruit which he has so few possibilities to get. Thanks to his unability to accept her fatal fate, Kaoru survived.

Even if he did not it deliberately, it is true that Kouga took advantage of her power of attraction towards horrors to do his work. But she is still alive and, in spite of her initial resistance, she finished trusting him up.


Chap. 5. When Kouga told Kaoru (chap. 3) that he wanted her to remain near him –he already had given her the ring- she interpreted it as a covered marriage proposal, and became angry. Now, being homeless due to her disastrous economy that makes her changing work often, she takes advantage of that unawary proposal: an evidence of his ignorance about some social ways. He did not remember his offer -rather, a commandment- but asked her to do some works at the house in exchange. Kaoru will not complain about his respectability and will find him worthy of trust, but she also will get some sharp remarks by him.

But it was lucky to reach this point, because this pair remained chained each to other from the very first episode. It was a pitty that this confidence, already very clear and reinforced by other feelings, was betrayed. The chain broke. She ran away, without the ring that asured her survival, and she could not be located anymore. To Kaoru it was very difficult to overcome such a disappointment. Only her nearby death gives a chance to Kouga of showing his authentic feelings by facts. A new chain builded right then will be neither a monitoring ring nor any kind of Damocles’ sword, but will be forged of love and trustfulness, and even will allow them to share feelings being apart.

Chap. 22. Her conscious alliance to two “major pieces” makes Kaoru, from a pawn, to become the king. Her moves still goes on limited, and she is still the center of the game, but no one has her in the ignorance any more.


The other great piece that would have been able to talk to her about that stuff was Rei Suzumura. He wished to annoy Kouga so much that it is surprising that he did not do it. Perhaps the reason was that he accepted Kouga as the responsible person because it was his work to kill her. We also have some details showing that he believed them to be lovers, or so. It looks as Rei did not think to have any right to talk to her without Kouga’s permision. When at last he said something, already knew a part of the story and the tie with Kouga was virtually broken.

We have the right to ask if to use her as a bait was the only reason or the main one to leave her alive after her first encounter with Kouga at the art gallery.

Later we see that the famous picture of the landscape had impressed him more than seemed, specially when they turned up in situ and when realized that she had painted herself with her bouquet in her hand. A very special inspiration, this one. Perhaps Kouga believed she had the gift to shape a moment from the future. So, when they met at the magical world in chapter 24, he tried to use its amplified forces in behalf of the picture (still not drawn) of the winged Garo. Hardly these wings could appear in the world of the humans, so, if they had to appear, it had to be in this dimension. In any case, he trusted that Kaoru might put the magic in motion.



Chaps. 24 & 25. At the magical world, Kaoru and Kouga see the pictures she has painted, plus one still undrawn: a stylized winged golden knight. His look to her is revealing: first surprise/admitation, afterwards tenderness, and later a "let’s try!" Next, he takes the picture to be absorbed by his heart, which surprised her. While Kouga fights to Meshia, Kaoru is visited by her deceased father; he advises to paint, so someone will be able to take out strength from the image. Then the elements to paint appear and soon the winged knight is shaped. Just being finished, Kouga’s body, virtually buried under lots of horrors, generates an energetic burst that melts down all of them, that brings his armor, that has given him wings and, maybe, that has expanded his fighting skills or powers.

There is another evidence of this gift. Episode 14th, she painted Garo and Zero back to back, and soon visualizes them struggling, as indeed it will happen few chapters afterwards, and she runs out to try to block it, in spite of her former failure to appease Rei’s hostility.

Another possible one? The end: Kaoru has given to Kouga one of the picture books by her father, and she has painted the last. What will she have invoked from the future, cappable to make Kouga to cry! Imagination is free.

So light evidences? Maybe. But once a horror disguised as a bad sculptor gave her an answer to the enigma of the empty page, which she ended considering it up seriously: "it’s your future", he said with a very different goal.

Another time, an infuriated Kouga brands her drawings as "scribbles", even if he does not consider them like this; but at that moment such a word has a shocking effect on her. We know that she has forgotten why she wanted to be an artist; in thoughts, she complains can not draw like before: her finger do not obey. Then it is, too, when she strolls her hand, as being a caress, on the drawing of Kouga’s hand, which is the first signal we have on her feelings towards him. In short, it is a sensitive moment.

And the one that will help her to overcome the artistic crisis will be another horror. The serial murderer that steals fingers will tell her that the magic of painting is to shape the one thing being important at a moment. Kaoru understands it.

The part of the crisis depending on Koga will not be so easy to solve. He has noticed what is happening within him, so he is in full phase of selfnegation. He considers her to be butterfingers and that makes a great fuss of everything; but she only gnores everything about him and the Makai Knights, and is an expressive person, opposite to him.


Chaps. 1 & 2. To rush a girl, to immobilize her against a column, to take her neck, to put a lighter almost on her face, and to impose her a ring –which she can not take out- to be locable everytime, is not the best way to start a relationship. But Kouga does not mind; to pursue a horror until an operating theater or until the dressing room of a girls’ high school, either. No one but him is capable of giving such absurd orders as "do not approach to watches this evening ", or "since now I want you close to me", without any other explanation, and to expect that Kaoru obeys. No wonder that she finds him quite unkind and can not see his nobility and kindness easily, well hidden under his surly façade.

Hearing such things as "... and you weighed more I guessed," or "I don’t mind anything of someone else", or "you’re in the way, get out!", are not touching to a girl’s heart. Not easy to supose what joined Kaoru and Kouga, so different as they are. But, as everybody know, falling in love is a blind thing, and anything can activate it.

I do not know if it is truth, but I feel like, even though we are often allowed to listen Kaoru’s thoughts, we have very little information to know the evolution of her feelings towards Kouga. We know, indeed, that it implies trust, easily deductible since the end of chapter 4th. So Kouga goes out without problems in the episode 11th, after she is given back her soul, some residual sensation had to remain on her lips by his kiss. She asked him if he had not made her anything weird, and he could lie with impunity.

Chap. 14. With her best purpose, Kaoru has gone to meet Rei; she gave a cake to him -he has a sweet tooth- and has asked him to make peace with Kouga, wishing they to work together. Rei does not believe her or does not want to believe; he knocks her down on his bed; only the intervention of his madou pendant avoids her to be kissed. She will run away so taught a lesson that in arriving at home she will be not able to notice that Kouga is interested (it is the first time) about what happens to her. She will reject him with roughness, leaving him like “what have I made?”.

In spite of his selfnegation, Kaoru erodes Kouga’s protective shield, and it does not take long before to see some signals. She must notice that something had changed when he came back from his appointment with the Makai priest Amon. She herself seems to be thrilled to see him. To me, it looks as they both “know”.

Pity that he was not capable to talk to her, when already there was a Barancas fruit for her. I think that to listen the truth from the mouth of an almost dead horror was a lot worse that to hear it from him. Hardly she would have become so overwhelmed if such a disappointment had not had a strong component of romantic crisis.

If Ryuzaki received her at his home or if he went to look for her as soon as he knew she was rounding over there is not important. Because he offered to her the support she needed, and took care of. His offer of letting her remain at his home must not obey just to make her to feel safe, but to mantain her under his authority, because his big stroke was nearby. But Kaoru has terryfying visions derivative from her state of victim of blood of a horror reaching a hundred days, and she runs away frightened. Barago will endeavour it, but he will not be able to find her immediately.

They had said to her that she was left some few days of life, that her death would be agonic, that it did not have any way to run away from the horrors that besieged her since several months ago, and there was a group of mad Makai people that wanted to kill her. Moreover, the one person that she had trusted the most, the one that she had learned to love, and to whom also she had seemed to like, had used her to his demon hunting, such addict at work he is. No wonder that the poor girl did not wish to live anymore.

Chap. 19. Rei had found and brought Kaoru at the Makai settlement to coerce Kouga. This one achieved to free her thanks to a stratagem, so he had to fight to death with Rei. But she does not let herself to be impressed by it, neither seeing him strongly injured, nor when the Makai priestess Jabi, who arrived in time of saving him, denied that there was bad faith by him. Kaoru will not dare to believe anything. Her wound looks deep. It will be difficult to Gonza to retain her.

Only when she starts her last journey, hope will prick to her door, because Kouga, blind to any evidence of her rejection, has a will stronger than any prevention by her. Such a great faith shows that he expects Kaoru to trust him. And, it will be so since now. Did anybody doubt about Kouga’s mental power?

Then, psychologically speaking, we might guess another theory - complementing the others- about why Kaoru was left alive. He could have seen in her his own flight from his absorbent world of darkness -if this had been the goal of his soul-, in an absolutely unaware way, and, therefore, he was the apparently unintentional instigator of this relationship. Such a vision would explain why he is capable to let her entering within his life, and to develope passionate feelings: he was of so closed nature that he was going to need many years to reach it, even more than a single life.

Then, the chain that ties them since the beginning, although it is the same one, would have two aspects: "I leave to you alive and save you from the horrors that will come towards you", and "I kidnap you so you can save me from the horrors that have kidnapped my life ". The second aspect of the chain would be the one that would go on after the series finished, the one that would mark Kouga’s dependency. His faith and his love allows her to leave to achieve her dream, but we have already seen what happens when somebody puts between them, like Barago. Kouga would not incline towards the dark side again because he learned a terryfying lesson, but he seems capable to show violent jealousy, at least until he could manage his own humanity, and until it balances his ideals. There would be another possibility, however, if he would lose his hope: he would withdraw again to his world of darkness, now as a suicidal act, which would be coherent with his introverted nature.

But we are realistic and consistent with the trend of a series finishing well: Kouga’s will/faith -which is his own magic- would do impossibe the appearance of somebody or something trully capable of breaking the psychic chain joining Kaoru and him.

Fairly corresponding, Kaoru would also have an unconscious psychological reason to build her part of the chain. These chains are always a thing between two ones. How popopularment is said, two ones do not quarrel if one does not want. Kouga would never have been able to drag her if she was not the suitable person. In the same way, Barago would never have found Kaoru or, if having meet her, symbols would not have pointed her out as the best candidate to be Meshia’s host, and he would have gone on searching. By her alliance with Kouga, she might be seeking –unaware– the means of freeing from what is dark within herself. That dark self is made evident in her contact with horrors:

1. She decided to become a famous artist, and a horror that manages an art gallery offers her a chance that, otherwise, she would not have been able to obtain. A serious warning to be realistic: to work more, to dream less (chap.1)
2. She wants to make easy money, and falls down inside the paws of a swindler. Curiously, it is not so important if that woman was possessed. (chap. 2).
3. She realizes that her pictorial milestones are passed the deadline fixed while being a little girl, and a demoniac clock/watch leaves her without time: her thought materialised because it was strong. Being so dreamy, his energy/time is lost at the mental world. At the end, even Koga says her to value it more (chap. 3)
4. Even a temporary crisis -with its corresponding shadows- can be a target of a horror. She has forgotten why she paints, and a horror gives her an answer belonging to its possessed victim. She could have left then, but instead she plays the piano (?) to the horror and falls down before it (chap. 8)
5. Her obsession with the void page of the picture book by her father leads her into the den of a horror what, logically, has an useful answer (chap. 15).

Chap. 22 Like us, also Kouga has got some troubles to understand why Kaoru has been chosen as Meshia’s host. She looks perfect, but part of the series is devoted to showing us her dark self, which does she ended up putting on the path of some horrors. The attraction horrors-Kaoru is mutual. Kouga frees her once and again without noticing the evidence in front of him. He can not help it. They both need each to other. And destiny needs them with their virtues and faults, to unleash the facts that will bring some hope to mankind. Here Kouga has the answer Amon did not give to him in chapter 16: Makai Knights fight, precisely, to offer more hope that everything could change.


Beaten Barago, Meshia and Kiva, mankind will not have so much pressure of horrors and other possibilities can be opened. The question is not if there will continue existing horrors, but if mankind will be able to generate light enough, so they have less place. Light is created when we, humans, learn lessons by the fate or, how Asians say, when we burn karma. This is the traditional mean of spiritual evolution.

And they lived happily even after? Not so much. Poor Kouga does not know how to tell Kaoru he loves her, in spite of he has shown it widely. He only said, pressed by circumstances, he needs her, and he had opened his heart to her. Maybe she understood it. Badly if not.

Chap. 25 Kaoru remains shocked hearing from him that she has talent, and going beyond with a deep bow. Really, he values her work and perhaps she did not know. We want to suppose that he does not go with her to the airport because horrors do not give him a truce.


ESOTERICAL NOTE. In real life, horrors are egregors, shapes of imperfect thought, which attract similar thoughts from everywhere. So people having this sort of thoughts will be overwhelmed and, perhaps, surpassed: possessed. Also, there are equivalents to Makai Knights, but they are not an only group of people or a single person, but many of them, by all the world. Any person who puts his/her will on purification of the human species and their environment, might be considered a makai knight. Summarizing: pure thoughts drive away harmful shapes of thought. Heaven has hope in our victory agains evil; because of that, from time to time, It sends to incarnate superior/perfect people that make an extra contribution of light and teach others to use it. Hope is the only thing that we have.

Radix, many thanks again for your help.

GARO - Kouga Saejima: a lonely hero unintentionaly searching his humanity.

ATTENTION: Remember, if you have not seen the series yet, reading this text could frustrate you.


If anything is heavy in Kouga’s life, this is his father. Or, rather, his death. It is difficult to believe that Taiga had allowed, if alive, that his son had developed without a minimum social environment which –leaving aside to allow him to save his smile– would have given him some elementary models of social behavior. So, Kouga is a bit wild, unawares a lot about the human relationships; even he is not interested at all. Moreover, he talks little, is closed, elusive and devoted to work. He is unsociable and, thanks to his basic kindness and his idealism, both combined, he is not antisocial.

But Taiga died and his son, a boy which did not have his mother either, poured his whole being into what his father had ordered him via post-mortem communication: to claim the inheritance of Garo and all what it involved about protection towards mankind. An inherited idealism, and an idealized father.

Chap. 7. Rei provokes Kouga, but only he can do him to annoy when he insults his father’s memory. It is not a soft reaction.


Chap. 12. Kouga bears, writen on his face, his stolen childhood and the heavy inheritance which was put on his young shoulders.

Perhaps at first sight it can seem that his heroic mission was accepted just as a dogmatic truth, but it had to be some degree of conviction. If not why, in episode 2nd, he asked the horror which took Kaoru’s money to return it because she needed it to accoplish her dreams, if Kouga knew that there were less than one hundred days left to Kaoru to live, and that he himself had to be the hangman?

This thing about dreams is very curious. He, who has renounced to his own, defends those of the other ones. He looks as being a sacrificial victim: after the first half of the series, we can see that he has renounced to his human life for the others to enjoy theirs. I believe that because of this, he is upset when Makai priest Amon tells –chapter 16– that Makai Knights’ fight will be eternal because always it will have wickedness inside human heart: if there is not hope, why he had to defend anybody or, as said more personally, why have him sacrificed his humanity? Right then, Kaoru’s presence was already very strong, he had just noticed that in the life everything was not about to hunt horrors.

Perhaps this is because in the following episode he asks if a human murderer deserves to be protected by him; he would have rejected such a question some few weeks before. But, when that guy chose Kaoru as his next victim, Kouga wanted to kill him. Her magnanimity spared him from being run through by Kouga’s sword, but this one did not understand why such a being must to be left alive. Kaoru had to remind him that no human is perfect. Each criminal became a mockery toward what he makes for mankind.

His existential conflict does not mix well to his increasing consciousness of feelings, just as we have seen in the case of the murderer. Their mutual effects add up or multiply; then, they are more difficult to control. His indifferent stoicism, or, his coolness, is relegated to his quiet moments. Feelings are always what shoot his emotional reactions; if they are not touched, he is capable of keeping calm because, despite everything, he believes in his cause.


Chap. 21. Shot, insulted, disarmed, injured, induced to mistrust what he believes, threatened with imminent death by a man who looks for revenge. Kouga has swallowed, but keeping his doubts for himself, without losing his selfcontrol, allows him to go out.

Such a faith is questioned in chapter 22: he notices that his work has been useful for catering Barago.

Worse: he betrays his beliefs strongly in episode 23. Excited by the events, and his personal feelings being the trigger once again –Kaoru’s kidnapping, a previous defeat against Barago, and the remembrance of Jabi’s murder – he pays the price of his lack of emotional skills, and leaves wrath to take control. His armor reaches is limit time, but he does not send it away. It becomes deformed and all what the man is, starts to be destroyed. In extremis Rei achieves to rescue him from the paws of his dark self, only because Kouga’s faith, even deeply buried, remains there. When he meets Barago again, perhaps because this experience is too recent, he does not dare to call his armor: now he respects it a lot more, actually he knows that it is a double-edged weapon. He really starts to understand what being Garo means. Especially, Kouga has not ever seen his path so clearly: darkness is not his way. His soul is safe and his faith is stronger.


Chap. 23. His personal feelings, fired and perverted by wrath, take the power at the worst time. Body, soul and ideals become twisted until they come off unrecognizable: the only way to beat wickedness is wickedness.

Yes, faith is his strong point. And allied to love, once overcome the hard test in chapter 23, it will be the strength that will expel Meshia from Kaoru’s body; the energy that will allow Kaoru to exercise her own magic and, consequently, Meshia manages to be defeated. Certainly, he owes the wings in his armor to Kaoru, but he could keep them virtually time enough to achieve his goal, even when his armor is gone.

Still more. Fighting to Kiva he could not sumon his armor. Environment is extremely difficult: a giant ring soaring and falling down on the city. There is something more than instinct of survival in front of the one that is a living legend. He is capable of facing the macabre scene that has pursued him all his life: a terrible paw turning up in front of his face after piercing his father’s body and armor. He manages to perforate Kiva’s hand, Barago’s alter ego and master. This, which entails the demystification of Kiva, has a side effect: the only stone that mediated between Kouga and his ancestors, his father’s death, disappeared. So, when at last he could to summon his armor, already in mainland, he could be conscious for the first time of all the force that descended through his bloodline from the precedents Garo to him. Koga went beyond his individuality to become a group soul. Or, explaining it in a simpler way, faith scrolls mountains.

As a good hero, Kouga never gives his idealism up, we have seen it. It was specified and demythologized, but this is which makes to show his best self. If it first was the only reason of his life, when Kaoru became another, it avoids him to be launched towards feelings and sustains balance; it is so, until there is an attempt against his feelings that, do not forget it, he is not used to take into any consideration. For him, they are like bombs. But Kouga’s idealism is the starting of his unsociability.

Service to humanity, when it does not come from a spiritual maturity, is satisfactory for a solitaire individual: it gives him a high boundary that pleases his soul and avoids any commitment and problems coming from people relationships. Kouga does not need anything else to feel well himself and to the world. Until his feelings do not color his life, he does not mind if those who he defends deserve it or not: human smallness is too under his wider vision and, of course, a forest does not let for him to see a tree.

When he forces himself to speak to somebody, interest is its cause. Chapter 4 is revealing. He starts a conversation and listen a story of a poor woman who looks for her disappeared husband after visiting a doctor-horror and, when he has got all the information he needs, he leaves wihout saying neither thank you nor goodbye. Kaoru’s case is atypical from the beginning. If he carries her at home and watches over her, after he was going to kill her, we have to understand that he accepts the responsibility of protecting her; everything tells it to us afterwards.

Kouga does a giant step on accepting Kaoru at his house in chapter 5. Sometimes he regrets this decission: when the his solitaire self rebels against this invasion, and against the subtlest erosion that her presence causes on him.

At the end of chapter 6 we have the first evidence that she is something else than a bait to him, and looks that Rei Suzumura sees it too. If we see Kouga’s fists when Rei menaces her, we can understand it as a protective instinct, but if we see signals of uneasyness when the other Makai knight insinuates that he wants her, it looks another thing. Equally, on finishing chapter 7, his anxious "where she is?" would have been colder if just it was a question of responsibility for somebody to whom it is necessary to guard from danger.



Chap. 3. To Kouga, Kaoru’s expressive exuberance is a nuisance. These screenshots show them after he saved her from a horror while she was unconscious. She awakened on his arms, and shouts, shakes her legs and arms, saying him to let go, and he lets her fall down on ground, uncerimoniously.

In episode 16 Kouga says to have observed his feelings. Sure, he realized his reactions. He never thought these feeling might manage to affect him. In chapter 5 a curious Zaruba comments about how much complicated were relationships between men and women, and Kouga declares that it does not interest him at all. So, it is not probable that feelings liked him. Since episode 8th to 11th he is the same cold and unsociable guy we know. Even, ending the 9th, when at last he tells the Kaoru the first nice thing - "you have a magnificent look today" – it seems the simple confirmation of a fact, and nothing else: she had changed very favorably her opinion on her father, and this could have provided her with a radiant aspect.

Probably Kaoru did not want to exasperate him in episode 11. She insists him on going with her to a competition of television. Curiously, his anger starts when she insinuates to make the same proposal to Rei. Maybe his look after it implied some repentance, but there is not doubt that Kouga will try hard to rescue her from the paws of the horror that takes advantage of her sorrow. Without concealing his aversion, he will allow to be convinced by the demon to play his game, even though the price of his failure is to lose both souls, Kaoru’s and his. It is not a banal bet; but he has ever not been banal. Watching over his protegée, o something else?

Chap. 11. Subjected to that for him are nonsenses -games and tests- by a horror which is a bad loser too, Kouga’s patience, wit and determination will be tested to attain to retrieve Kaoru’s body and soul... and not losing his own in the process.

The scriptwriter is an accomplice of our curiosity, his humor makes him to invent a ritual of soul refund that implies a kiss. Kouga accomplishes it scientifically: he looks so disturbed afterwards, when being seated on the stairs while Kaoru leaves leaves her head to fall down on his shoulder. Welcome this kiss, in spite to be discreetly hidden by a brilliant dot, since it will be the only one that we will see among the protagonists.

Chap. 11. Kouga recites the ancient spell as a part of the ritual of soul refunding. Curious posture. Sure that his closed eyes and that hand strolling softly on Kaouru’s head are contributions of his which not even he knows being made.

Old priest Amon spurs the ghosts from his insconscient self: his father died because he loved him, and he does not dare to love feiaring to suffer the same loss –Kaoru has few days left. Feeling ressed, Kouga gives a verbal form to his half built thoughts, and he ends up knowing what he wants: he will struggle for Kaoru as long as she had any life, and he will sacrifice her a day before making a hundred, in order to spare her the agony; his only ambition is that "her light shines all time possible". So, Kouga finishes, at last, to fight against his feelings.


Chap. 16. Kouga comes back from visiting Amon. A joyous Kaoru receives him, who has thrilled to see him. His coolness has disappeared, and his eyes do not hide anything any more.

Unfortunately, he is still unable to verbalize anything in front of her, and loses his big chance to tell her situation. So, that same day she was going to know, from the mouth of a dieing horror, that she has been used as a bait.

Kaoru’s grief to know she has been deceived is comparable to Kouga’s commotion. His secret has been put under light, and she makes him to take off the ring and runs away. His best intentions –there was already a Barancas fruit for her- fall down, and she has left exposed to the attack of any horror, just when a hundred days are about to finish.

Chap. 19. Jabi has saved Kouga from being killed by Rei, and she has taken care of him. She makes a pass at him, but Kouga neither rejects her openly nor react to it. He makes the effort of begging her to help him to save Kaoru. In spite of herself, Jabi accepts.

Since now Kouga has to arrange a situation that he himself has created, aggravated by external facts -his rebellion against the Eastern Sanctuary, the consequences of Amon’s murder-, and we will see what he can make for love: he takes Kaoru from the hands of an anxious-for-revenge Rei, so must fight to death with him; he dares, with well few chances of success, to achieve the Barancas fruit when the only two people who would have been able to help him were killed; he has to persuade Kaoru of keep her with to live, so he can get time to bring the Barancas fruit; he starts a titanic fight to save her once he knows that she become a gate for Meshia and, in this process, he will be tempted almost fatally by the dark side, and will face Barago, almost without possibilities to win; he will not be able to use other arms than faith and love to expel Meshia from Kaoru’s body and, once achieved, he will have to penetrate into the horror’s world to avoid Meshia to posses her again. Finally, he will let her to go to Italy for that starts in order to materialize her longtime dream to become a great artist. So, Kouga has become a romantic hero.

Chap. 20. Compelled by Amon’s and Jabi’s deaths, Kouga has dared to pick up the Barancas fruit needed for Kaoru’s survival, alone, in a magical place any Makai Knight has many chances. The unexpected intervention by Rei avoids that Kouga, exhausted by his fight against the electromechanical guardian of the fruit, finishes badly just when he had obtained it.

So many events have touched him so closely, and strongly, that his cold indifference has been left aside and his feelings come out in a torrential way, but through his actions. And through his eyes, I say. Even when he proposes to Kaoru, he does not seem to do it, only in an indirect way, which leaves her confused.

Chap. 21. Kouga begins to take some consideration towards the feelings of the other ones. He attempts to relieve Kaoru’s and Gonza’s worry, when they know that he goes to get consciously into a trap. "I am going to come back", he says.

His relationship with Rei is a lot tense from the beginning. Without any will, Kouga will find himself struggling for his life, pointed at a colleague with a rage he can not understand. However, specially this relationship shows us his nobility better. He does not attack him when he falls down; he does not doubt on forgetting that he has been about to kill him when there are more important things to consider, like the return of the little daggers to horrors’ world, and trusting that Rei will appraise the situation impartially too. Either he does not avoid from helping him to escape staple of a giant horror.

But he does not forget. He repproaches his previous wickedness when Rei accepts his error on attacking him. For the common good, and for Kaoru, however, he can disregard everything. Rei corresponds with a so high level of selfishness as intense as his former vindictive self, and Kouga will have a lot will to thank him.

Gonza, the steward, is undoubtedly a subordinate, and this comes off very clear, but it is a correct and respectful relationship. It is also evident that Gonza loves the boy whom he has almost bred, and he knows him well. But only about the end we see Kouga become interested in his health and having mercy of his feelings.

Chap. 18. Confronted by the possession of the little daggers from the Eastern Sanctuary, Jabi accuses Kouga of letting himself win by her when they played while being childred. "Your kindness is your greater fault"!, she says. She insults and despises him because he does not want to attack even though she puts herself hard to it.

Regarding Zaruba, the madou ring, we attend to a more complex relationship. Curious, Zaruba looks the human member in this special couple. Sometimes it expresses what we should expect from Kouga. Chapter 16: Kouga goes to visit Amon:

Zaruba: "This wind arrives loaded of remembrances".
Kouga: "Yes".

This does not mean that it is a sentimentalist. Chapter 17: Kouga already has accepted his feelings for Kaoru; they can not find a horror, even though they know it is over there.
Zaruba: "There is not alternative. You have to make Kaoru come here".
Kouga: "To be used as a bait"?
Zaruba: "Are you concerned with it now? Did you not spare her life for this"?

Zaruba has been the only friend of Kouga for many years, and its loss was felt strongly. By Rei’s reaction to it, we can know that the Makai Knights have a deep relationship with their madou jewels.


Thank you, Radix, for your graphical collaboration, again.