Yaiba Kurogane

Yaiba Kurogane
Profile
Japanese name:	鉄 刃 (Kurogane Yaiba)
Age:	14 17 (Epilogue + Detective Conan)
Gender:	Male
Relatives:	Kenjuro Kurogane (father) Michiko Kurogane (mother) Moroha Kurogane (younger sister)
Occupation:	Middle school student Kendoka
Nicknames:	Thunder Boy
Aliases:	Legendary Swordsman
Statistics
First appearance:	Yaiba Chapter 1 Magic Kaito Chapter 18 Anime: OVA 1
Appearances:	Yaiba Manga: 255 Kenyuu Densetsu YAIBA: 52 Magic Kaito Manga: 1 Detective Conan Manga: 6 Detective Conan Anime: 3
Actors
Japanese voice:	Minami Takayama

Yaiba Kurogane (鉄 刃 ,Kurogane Yaiba) is the main character of Gosho Aoyama's second manga Yaiba. He was voiced by Minami Takayama, who also voices Conan Edogawa.

Background

Aiming to be a samurai, Yaiba and his father went to the jungle to train, but due to various circumstances they end up back in Japan and moving in with the Mine family. Yaiba only really cares about becoming a legendary samurai and loves to challenge strong opponents. He has taken up the legendary Raijin-ken and gone on numerous adventures to accomplish this. Despite this great dream, he is also bratty, frivolous, perverted, and gluttonous. He is the same age as Sayaka, although he is much shorter. Though usually not very bright, Yaiba is pretty clever when it comes to the sword and has thought up many special attacks on the spot. He is descended from the thunder god Susanoo and the heir to very wealthy Kurogane Group, although he is unaware of this until the final story arc.

Plot overview

Yaiba

Yaiba's father Kenjuro took his very young son and moved to the jungle to train him to be a master swordsman. Six years before the start of the series, Yaiba saves the young Nadeshiko Yamato from being attacked by a Jaguar during a Safari. She instantly fell in love with him back then.

One day, in their home jungle, Yaiba and his father are catching a gorilla and cooking him, which provokes a tiger to attack, because he wants his own share of it. The relatives of the gorilla appear and hunt Yaiba, his father and the tiger until they manage to try in a crate full of fruits, which unfortunately is put into a plane and transported to Tokyo. After their arrival, the trio encounter Sayaka Mine and her father Raizo, an old kendo rival of Kenjuro, who tries to challenge the latter to a duel, which doesn't happen because Kenjuro spontaneously grabs all five of them and stuffs them into a taxi, heading to the Mine family mansion to escape from the airport police. Yaiba on the other hand marvels about Sayaka, who is the first girl he has ever seen in his life.

Sayaka, who is the same age as Yaiba, is accompanied by him to middle school on the following day, where he immediately finds himself in a conflict with a teacher and several classmates well-versed in kendo, including the bald swordsman Takeshi Onimaru. Yaiba absolutely wants to challenge him and urges him to a fight, which Takeshi refuses, whereupon Yaiba sets up some extremely perfidious traps to convince him otherwise. As a result, the two do battle shortly afterwards, which leads them across a large chunk of Tokyo, causing a lot of property damage. None of them really wins the fight in the end and both end up seriously injured.

While Yaiba is now returning to school and appreciating the girls' company there, Onimaru withdraws and discovers a secret cellar right under his family's mansion, in which the sword of the Shinto god Fujin, which embodies storm and wind, is kept. To the horror of his grandfather and sister Ayame, the young man is overwhelmed by the power of the sword, which turns him into a horned devil who gathers a group of eight animal demons around him. Onimaru then conquers all of Japan and demonstrates his newly gained power by completely destroying Tokyo Tower. At the same time, Yaiba and his friends set out on an arduous journey to track down the complementary weapon to Fujin, the sword of the thunder god Raijin, to train with it and to stop the demons, with Yaiba being mentored by the 400-year-old samurai Musashi Miyamoto, who - to their inital disappointment - seems more like a thief and a pervert, than a legendary swordsman.

Together with this illustrious group, which also includes the immortal samurai Jubei Yagyu and Kojiro Sasaki, as well as two of the animal demons - Gerozaimon Geroda and Namako-Otoko - who have switched sides, Yaiba manages to put Takeshi Onimaru in his place several times during the series, finally cutting off his horns during their last battle, which turns him back into a normal human student and returning more or less everything to normality. Shortly thereafter, Yaiba meets his younger sister Moroha Kurogane and their mother Michiko, before joining a martial arts tournament organized by multi-billionaire Gakuso Shirogane, where he is pitted against the clearly superior competitor Soshi Okita. Okita, however, forfeits his sure victory when he realizes that, no matter how far he goes, Yaiba would never give up, even if it would cost him his own life. The two have been major rivals since then.

Detective Conan

Mysterious Shadow Case (Manga: 10-12)

Yaiba Kurogane first appears as a fictional character on the television of the Mouri Detective Agency in File 12, in a scene seemingly taken from his last battle against Takeshi Onimaru and Yamata no Orochi, fighting with the energy form of his Haou-ken he used during it.

Monthly Presents Case (Manga: 26-29, Anime: 7)

In File 28, Conan Edogawa finds an important clue in a videogame called "YAIBA no Daibōken" ("YAIBA's Great Adventure") he finds in the hospital, depicting Yaiba Kurogane on the cover.

Lex Vocalist Murder Case (Manga: 45-48)

The cover for File 45 shows Conan and Ran Mouri singing karaoke in front of a monitor showing Yaiba Kurogane, while the subtitles spell out "Yuuki ga Areba" - the opening song of Kenyū Densetsu YAIBA.

Great Detective of the West (Manga: 92-96)

Conan, irritated at still being small and having to visit the children's floor of Beika Library in File 96, finds two books, titled "Kaitō Boy" (= Magic Kaito) and "Samurai Shōnin" (= Yaiba), the latter one sporting a small Yaiba Kurogane holding his sword up high on the book jacket.

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

When Heiji Hattori asks Soshi Okita whether he finally takes him seriously, he just responds that this is not the case, since there actually is "another one", a "real strong guy" he can't lose to (or he "might lose to", depending on the translation), indirectly referring to Yaiba Kurogane, as will become clear during the Crimson School Trip Case.

Crimson School Trip Case (Manga: 1000-1005, Anime: 927-928)

Okita telling Ran about his rival Yaiba and his sister Moroha.

It later on turns out that a real version of the 17-year-old Yaiba Kurogane (from the epilogue chapter of his own Manga) exists in the world of Conan, whose sister Moroha Kurogane is the love of kendoka Soshi Okita, who also originally originated in Yaiba. He tells Ran Mouri that, as his greatest rival, he must defeat him before he can confess his love for her, but asks of Ran not to tell Momiji Ooka anything about this.

Lover Code Case (Manga: 1039-1042)

The Detective Boys play a platformer videogame featuring Yaiba Kurogane and Sayaka Mine in File 1039 while they are at Agasa's house. Their running pose in a line also is a little bit reminiscent of the walking pose they have on the cover of Yaiba Volume 1.

Yaiba (Epilogue)

Are You Coming? (Yaiba Manga: 255)

The last seen of Yaiba in his own series is his short appearance at the end of the final chapter of the Manga, set three years after the previous events of the story and chronologically after Detective Conan, now of high school age and looking way more mature than before. During his appearance he asks Sayaka - now attending the second year of Ekoda High School - if she wants to accompany him on new adventures, to which she agrees.

Non-canon Detective Conan overview

Yaiba meeting the Detective Boys in OVA 1.

Conan vs. Kid vs. Yaiba (Anime: OVA 1)

In the three-way cross-over OVA, Yaiba battles Kaitou Kid, whom he mistakenly refers to as "Kancho Kid" (kancho is a popular prank amongst Japanese children where you put your index fingers together and poke someone in the butt), in order to prevent him from stealing the Mine family's treasured sword. Yaiba tries to protect the sword by tying it to his headband and belt, but Kid easily tricks him into looking away so he can undo the headband. After a brief swordfight Kid uses his hang glider to escape, but Musashi has Yaiba use a kite (transported by Kagetora in the original Magic Kaito chapter) to fight him in the air until Onimaru suddenly appears shoots them down with a cannon, causing Kid to finally give up and go home. The Magic Kaito chapter ends with both Yaiba and Kid saying to themselves that they don't want to sword fight ever again.

The OVA version portrayed Yaiba as being much younger, around the same age as the Detective Boys, rather than 14. When he introduces himself to the Detective Conan characters, the Detective Boys think he is trying to be Kamen Yaiba but dressed incorrectly. Yaiba misunderstands and thinks they misheard his name and then asks what a Kamen Yaiba is. This version of the story also ends up just being a dream by Conan Edogawa, who has read too much Yaiba volumes the night before he borrowed from Mitsuhiko Tsuburaya.

Swords and techniques

• Raijin-ken (雷神剣 ,Lightning God Sword)
• Ryuujin-ken (龍神剣 ,Dragon God Sword)
• Haou-ken (覇王剣 ,Ruler Sword)
• Kusanagi (クサナギ )

Trivia

• He got the first place in the Character Popularity Poll from Yaiba Volume 23 with 4893 votes.
• The TV superhero Kamen Yaiba from Detective Conan is not only a combination of "Kamen Rider" and "Yaiba", he's also a reference to a moment from the Manga of Yaiba, when Yaiba Kurogane put on Sayaka's underwear like a mask to protect himself from the attacks of the Sugi Pollen Soldier, resembling the mask of the Rider a bit and jokingly calling himself "Kamen Yaiba".
• Yaiba is unfamiliar with English accent.