Soshi Okita

Soshi Okita
Profile
Japanese name:	沖田 総司 (Okita Sōshi)
Age:	14 (Yaiba) 17 (Detective Conan)
Gender:	Male
Date of birth:	unknown
Relatives:	Okita Sōji I (ancestor, deceased)
Occupation:	Kyoto Senshin High School student Professional kendo player
Aliases:	"No. 0444" (Nobunaga Oda Tournament)
Statistics
First appearance:	Manga: File 314 Anime: Episode 263
Appearances:	Chapters: 5 Chapters: 11 Episodes: 8 Movies: 1 Openings: 1 Chapters: 1
Cases solved:	0
Keyhole number:	Volume 94
Actors
Japanese voice:	Kōji Yusa

Soshi Okita VI (六代目 沖田 総司 ,Rokudaime Okita Sōshi) is a character in the manga Yaiba who also appears in the manga and anime Detective Conan.

Background

Soshi reminisces Yaiba and Moroha.

Soshi Okita is a descendant in the sixth-generation of the historical Okita Sōji, who was the leader of the Shinsengumi, a legendary 19th-century samurai police force, and was persuaded by his family, especially his so far unseen grandfather, to follow the path of the sword in his life. In the course of this, Soshi has to train kendo in the Okita's private dojo extensively every day, which, due to his innate talent, causes him to become the "most powerful samurai" soon, who is apparently unbeaten up until his appearances in the two series. This fate, however, isn't in his own interest at all, since he is bored of being a swordmaster when there's no one around who poses a challenge.

He has a habit of looking for a quiet place in the tall grass before a fight and dozing off there to gather his strength. Yaiba Kurogane accidentally stumbles across him sleeping in the grass. Heiji Hattori also mentions that he passed the first to rounds to sleep in the tall grass behind the hall.

Soshi currently attends Senshin High School in Kyoto, where he attends the same class as the wealthy Momiji Ooka. He also owns an Omamori, a Japanese kind of lucky charm, from the Hachidai shrine, which, according to him, has been passed down for generations by the Okita family and, as he believes, helped him to never lose a fight. He keeps a photograph of Moroha Kurogane, Yaiba's little sister, inside the charm, with whom he is secretly in love, which he cannot admit until he has beaten her brother.

Personality

Soshi Okita very often has a carefree and playful, almost childish, attitude. After mastering a sword technique called "Yokoichi Monji" in seconds solely by observing Yaiba Kurogane's failed use of it and in turn using it against him in near perfection, he is overjoyed that it actually worked and left Yaiba totally perplexed. During a murder case Conan Edogawa and Heiji Hattori are investigating in, he unexpectedly puts on the disposed armor of the perpetrator, important police evidence, because he was "curious" and shortly afterwards gives his own "deduction" about the case, which consists of accusing the blind old man Yasuoka Katsunari for the sole reason that the fictional samurai Zatoichi was blind, too. He afterwards asks Yasuoka in an excited manner if he can recite Zatoichi's catchphrase "Life is pain".

Appellations

Picture	Name	What they call Soshi Okita	What Soshi Okita calls them
	Ran Mouri	Okita-kun	Ran-chan
	Shinichi Kudo	Okita
	Sonoko Suzuki	Okita-kun
	Masumi Sera	That guy who looks just like Kudo-kun Okita-kun

Picture	Name	What they call Soshi Okita	What Soshi Okita calls them
	Heiji Hattori	Okita Okita Soshi	Hattori-kun
	Kazuha Toyama	Okita-kun	-
	Momiji Ooka	Okita-kun That kendo boy (ano kendō kozō)	Boobs (Oppai)
	Yaiba Kurogane	Asshole (bakayarō) Okita Soshi	Yaiba Kurogane A real strong guy I can't lose to Worthy rival (kōtekishu)
	Musashi Miyamoto	That boy (ano otoko) Okita Soshi Okita	-

Plot overview

Yaiba

Nobunaga Oda Tournament (Manga: 246-251 & 253, Anime: TBD)

Yaiba Kurogane vs. Soshi Okita.

During the final arc, Soshi Okita's name first appears on the contestant's bracket a couple of times as "S. Okita", participant "No. 0444".

After winning every previous round, Yaiba Kurogane and his friends Sayaka Mine and Musashi Miyamoto, as well as Yaiba's younger sister Moroha Kurogane, trudge through some sort of bamboo forest on the artificial, skull-shaped island of Yoroi, on which the eponymous martial arts tournament is held. Yaiba literally stumbles over Soshi Okita, who's sleeping in the tall grass, which extremely upsets the former. Only then do both realize that they are in the semi-finals, and are the next mutual opponents.

It quickly becomes clear however that Yaiba is remarkably inferior to Soshi, who's around his age, but way more experienced. With his precise and inescapable attacks, Soshi is constantly hurting Yaiba more and more, while he doesn't land one single hit. Musashi thinks that he recognizes the movement of Shinsengumi leader Soji Okita in the boy's fighting style. Soshi confirms Musashi's suspicion that he is a descendant of Soji and shows the back of his uniform, which he inherited from his ancestor.

But there is something else: he actually only participates in this tournament because he made a bet with his grandfather. The latter wants to raise his grandson to be a modern samurai, but Soshi has no interest in this at all, he doesn't want to live the life of a swordsman. He is even bored about the mere idea of traveling around ​and never finding anyone who could offer him a real challenge and it wouldn't gain him much money to boot, so he'd rather like to devote his life to another vocation. His grandfather made the offer that he partakes in this tournament and if he won, he was free to choose his own path in life, but should he lose, he must continue to follow the path of the sword.

At this point it looks like Soshi is going to win his bet: He continues to beat poor Yaiba to a pulp with his "Five-pieces thrust" technique and another skill sending out energy waves from the ground, which brings Yaiba in grave danger. Meanwhile, Soshi is increasingly becoming aware of the presence of mysterious phantom swords that seem to attack him. Just when Yaiba breaks down and Soshi walks past Yaiba's friends to the finale because he believes he has won, Yaiba stands up again and prepares another attack. Sorely shocked and deeply impressed by Yaiba's perseverance and his will to win this fight even in danger of his death, Soshi asks him to stop and expresses his deepest respect. From his point of view, he has finally found in Yaiba Kurogane what he was looking for all the time: a worthy opponent. No matter how the fight would go on, neither of them would give in and be ready risk their own lives.

Musashi explains that the phantom swords he sensed are the so-called "Tōjin", which manifest themselves in a battle between two swordmasters and become more numerous the more experienced they are. Soshi cedes his victory to Yaiba and technically gives up, which effectively enables Yaiba to reach the finale instead. After saying goodbye to Yaiba and his friends his joy in being a modern samurai is reinvigorated and he hopes to see him again one day for a rematch when he is stronger. According to Gosho Aoyama, this is also the time when Soshi actually first developed feelings for Yaiba's sister, Moroha Kurogane.

Yaiba later on thinks about previous challenges he had to master in his young life while fighting against Takeshi Onimaru in the finale, with one of the persons visible in the panel background being Soshi.

Detective Conan

Naniwa Swordsman Case (Manga: 314-315, Anime: 263)

During a kendo tornament in Osaka, Heiji is seen hiding in the restroom reserving his energy for a fight against Soshi in the finals. He claims that Soshi must be sleeping behind the gym somewhere doing the same thing. In a previous tournament Soshi had managed to cut Heiji behind his ear, which started bleeding heavily and the field doctor ended the match. This time a murder case occurs and prevents Heiji from participating. While Kazuha is watching the matches, she sees Soshi win against one of his opponents. Once the case is solved, Heiji and Kazuha see their defeated teammates leaving, realizing they had missed the final match.

Kendo Tournament Murder Case (Manga: 990-993, Anime: 916-917)

Heiji Hattori would like to finally have his revanche with Soshi Okita at a kendo tournament in the Tohto Gymnasium in Tokyo. Conan Edogawa, Ran Mouri, and Kazuha Toyama watch his impressing fight, in which he uses the "Five-pieces thrust", baffling Conan because Soshi's opponent has to be carried out on a stretcher. Shortly after that, a murder occurs outside the tournament hall, in which one of the referees, Shidou Nukitani, is killed and a blind man appears to be the only witness. Just when Conan examines the body and Ran contacts inspector Wataru Takagi, Soshi Okita appears out of nowhere, whom Conan first thinks to be Heiji due to his silhouette, and who explains that the cause of death looks like a so-called "Tsujigiri" (literally "Crossing murder") which was used by samurai in the past to test new weapons and techniques. Surprised and irritated by his demeanor, Conan asks who he is and he introduces himself as Soshi Okita from Senshin High School in Kyoto.

Ran, after calling the police, hears Soshi's introduction to Conan, who asks if he's the same Okita as the one Kazuha mentioned, the one with the "Five-pieces thrust" technique. Soshi doesn't answer her question at all, but immediately starts flirting and inviting her to his hometown of Kyoto. This behavior and his deductions regarding the uniform the corpse is wearing, which he identifies as one of an umpire, in turn strongly remind her of Shinichi Kudo. Soshi suddenly gets hit on the back of his head with a bamboo sword, Heiji finally arrived and exhorts Soshi to pull himself together because Ran is already his best friend's girlfriend, which doesn't bother him, by explaining that Shinichi isn't present.

When the suspects are subsequently found at the toilets, Soshi ungraciously stops the referee Nenji Norimura, who wanted to leave. While the police, including Takagi and inspector Miwako Sato, interrogate the suspects and Conan and Heiji investigate, Soshi discovers the bloodstained Dōgi (the kendo armor) of the culprit behind the toilets, which reminds him that such armor had recently gone missing. As a result of the new find, Sato wants the tournament to be canceled, whereupon Heiji asks her not to do so, because he has to win to "tell [Kazuha] the words that I have to say". Soshi immediately understands the hint that this means a victory against him and challenges Heiji to a duel on the spot.

After both getting into their battle stances and talking shop a bit, inspector Sato intervenes and promises that if they can solve the case in time, they are allowed continue their fight, since there would no longer be a need to cancel the tournament. While Conan and Heiji continue their deductions, Soshi Okita unexpectedly puts on the culprit's Dōgi because it made him "curious", which initially horrifies eberyone present, until it becomes clear that he has come across an interesting detail: The perpetrator must have carried the Hakama, the Dōgi pants, the wrong way around. Using this and other evidence, Heiji is the first to solve the case and is happy to triumph over Shinichi/Conan.

Just as Heiji is about to tell about his deduction, Soshi bursts in between and does his own "deduction show": In his opinion, the perpetrator is definitely the blind old man, Yasuoka Katsunari, since the (fictional) samurai Zatoichi was also blind after all, with Soshi's logic being that he could feel the presence of his victims. When Soshi childishly rejoices about his own conclusions and asks the old man to quote Zatoichi's typical phrase "Life is pain", Conan and Heiji wonder if they are dealing with an idiot.

Now, Heiji is finally proceeding with the correct solution and exposes Nenji Norimura as the actual perpetrator who confesses to the murder and describes his motive to be that the victim Nukitani drove Norimura's son to suicide two years ago when he and his team were disqualified because of a victory pose, which under the kendo regulations is prohibited, but when a fighter from the Kansai region won, even though he also made a winning pose, Norimura interpreted it as favoritism, since Nukitani also came from Kansai. Soshi Okita clears up the misunderstanding: the fighter from the Kansai region was one of his classmates who borrowed the Okita family's omamori, a kind of talisman, from the Hachidai shrine, which has been passed down by his family for generations and with which he has never lost a fight. Since this classmate won after just one hit, the Omamori peeked out from under the Dōgi and the boy held it, thanking God and crying, about which Nukitani commented that you should never show tears in a battle.

Norimura, who can't accept the truth, tries to attack Soshi Okita, whereupon Heiji and he return to their battle stances. Before they can defend themselves however, Ran jumps in and gives Norimura a fatal karate kick that instantly knocks him out because she has lost her patience, Heiji shouldn't be late for his fight, so he can win and then confess to Kazuha. During all this, Soshi unknowingly loses his Omamori, which inspector Sato picks up and takes with her when she notices it on the ground.

Despite the hurry, Ran, Heiji, Conan, and Soshi are too late. Kazuha tearfully tells them that the fight has already ended and that the opponents of Heiji and Soshi, Kurahiko Namakoshi and Takeshi Onimaru have won by nonattendance of their opponents. Soshi takes it easy and blames Heiji's drive to solve the murder case, while Heiji in turn blames Soshi, who allegedly wasted time with his Zatoichi monologue.

Café Rice Flower Murder Case (Manga: 994, Anime: 919)

Ran is acting weird and always thinks of Okita, which makes Conan and Kogoro triggered, so they spy on her and follow her to a café where they hide themselves. Conan listens in to Ran's, Sonoko's, and Masumi's conversation about Soshi Okita, which makes him angry and causes him to pull Kogoro back, so that they can stay and learn more about it.

Crimson School Trip Case (Manga: 1002-1003 & 1005, Anime: 927-928)

Shortly before and during their high school trip to Kyoto, Shinichi Kudo, now grown up again temporarily, is agonizing over what Ran Mouri and Soshi Okita have to do with each other. Ran had been very enthusiastic about Okita back in Tokyo, which made Shinichi as Conan Edogawa already extremely jealous of him - not without reason, since Okita was not above flirting with Ran during the kendo tournament at Tohto Gymnasium.

After the start of a series of murders apparently triggered by a supernatural tengu and the riot of other tengus in downtown Kyoto, actually masked residents who were asked to do this, Soshi Okita appears with some friends to do the demons in, causing his classmate Momiji Ooka, who is also present with her servant Muga Iori, to comment on in a dismissive way. Ran goes to Okita and talks to him about something that makes him blush, but because of the distance none of the other people present understand. Sonoko Suzuki takes advantage of the moment and takes a photo of it with her mobile phone, before sending it to Shinichi, who can now think of nothing else than Ran and Okita, which makes it difficult to concentrate for him while working deductively.

After the closing of the serial murder case and a kiss from Ran on Shinichi's cheek, this fact also gets cleared up: the Omamori Soshi Okita lost during the kendo tournament in Tokyo and found by Miwako Sato, got sent to the Mouri Detective Agency, where it was discovered by Kogoro Mouri, who thought it belongs to Ran and contains a photo of Shinichi. When he curiously opens it however and to his and Ran's surprise, who just appeared, he finds the photo of a blonde girl with kendo equipment in it: Moroha Kurogane.

As it now turns out, Soshi Okita is in love with this girl, the younger sister of his greatest rival, Yaiba Kurogane, but, similarly to Heiji Hattori and Kazuha Toyama, he cannot confess his love to her as long as he hasn't won against her brother in a kendo duel. All of this is supposed to remain secret, hence Ran should not tell Oppai (literally "breasts", Okita's moniker for Momiji), because she would tease him about it.

Missing Maria Higashio Case (Manga: 1008, Anime: 941-942)

After the press became aware of Shinichi Kudo's return through the blog entry of a fan of the Kudo family, who revealed his presence in Kyoto during the Tengu chaos and thus also revealed to the Black Organization that he is still alive, Heiji Hattori shows the journalists a photo of Soshi Okita on his smartphone, who strongly resembles Shinichi. He explains Okita was there at the time and that the media just mistook him for Kudo, a lie that is also supported by an agreement between Yusaku and Yukiko Kudo and the blogger. Rum doesn't believe in this ruse, however, and commissions Bourbon to obtain information about Shinichi's whereabouts.

Techniques

• Five-piece thrust
• Yokoichi Monji - A sword technique he learned just by watching Yaiba Kurogane trying to perform it.
• An unnamed attack summoning an energy wave from the ground - this technique is very probably only canon in Yaiba, because of its supernatural feature.

Trivia

Soshi Okita III

• He looks exactly like Shinichi Kudo.
• Gosho Aoyama confirmed in Super Digest Book 40+ that the Okita in Detective Conan is supposed to be the same person as Soshi Okita in Yaiba and that he wanted to incorporate him in this series more often in the future, but he refrained from it for a while because his hairstyle was too similar to that of Heiji Hattori. He kept the possibility open to let him appear again in the manga, since he goes to the same school as Momiji Ooka, the Senshin High School, which he made a reality from the kendo tournament case onwards.
• The "Senshin High School" is named after his ancestor's police force, the Shinsen-gumi, with the syllables switched like the "Teitan" in Teitan Elementary and Teitan High Schools did with "Tantei".
• He never appeared in the anime Kenyuu Densetsu Yaiba, since that adaption ended with the "Kaguya Arc", not even halfway through the series. Similar to Michiko and Moroha Kurogane, this makes the guest roles in Detective Conan his first animated appearances ever.
• Soshi Okita and Moroha Kurogane have been a fan-favorite couple in Japan since the Yaiba-manga ended back in 1994, despite both never really interacting with each other in that series. Gosho seemingly took note of it and made the relationship canon over twenty years later, in the world of Detective Conan at least.
• His ancestor Soji Okita is played by Heiji Hattori of all people during a film shooting in the live action drama special Shinichi Kudo and the Kyoto Shinsengumi Murder Case.
• Soshi Okita III (三代目 沖田 総司 ,Sandaime Okita Sōshi), his ancestor of three generations ago, appeared and died in episode 71 of the anime Lupin III: Part II, a source of inspiration for Detective Conan.

Different looks

Detective Conan (episode 263).

Detective Conan (episode 928).