NOTE: This page is about Yoshikage Kira from the original continuity and not his alternate counterparts. Thus, only the original Kira should be discussed here.
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Yoshikage Kira: You can call me Yoshikage Kira. I'm currently thirty-three years old. Not that you'd care, but I reside in northeast Morioh's villa district. Also, I've yet to marry. In order to make a living, I work for Kame Yu department stores. After a long day's work, I return home no later than 8 PM. I don't like smoking, but do enjoy the occasional drink. I'm always in bed by 11 PM, and I make it a point to get no less than eight hours of sleep each night. Before bed, I drink a warm glass of milk, it's always coupled with twenty minutes of stretching to decompress from the long work day. Sweet dreams are the usual result of this. I then awake as refreshed and recharged as a newborn child, ready to take on the day's challenges, and after my last checkup I was given a clean bill of health. Shigekiyo Yangu: Hey, what's the big idea, creeper? Why are you telling me this crap?! Yoshikage Kira: For as long as I can remember I've done everything in my power to live a productive life that allows me to pursue a lasting inner peace. This may be a foreign concept, but I choose not to concern my self with winning or losing, life's troubles, or enemies who bring sleepless nights. That is how I cope with this backwards life we find ourselves living. It's what brings me happiness in a world fraught with hardship and misery. Of course, if I were ever to engage in combat, I would win the battle without question.
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~ Yoshikage Kira's famous monologue.
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I never lose myself in joy... and I never lose myself in despair. I culminate a serene disposition... That's part of my goal of living a quiet life.
He is a serial killer who is obsessed with women's hands and who wants to live a quiet life with no repercussions for his killings. He is the arch-nemesis of Josuke Higashikata, Rohan Kishibe, and Hayato Kawajiri. Kira wields the Stand known as Killer Queen.
When he was 17, he murdered Reimi Sugimoto's family and dog Arnold, before brutally murdering her, trapping her and Arnold's souls into the ghost alleyway.
He went on to murder over 48 women, cut off their hands due to his erotic obsession with it, uses their hands to wipe his mouth after eating, and would move on to another one after they'd decay.
Although some of his onscreen victims were shown to be rather unlikable people, this doesn't justify the other murders he committed against those who are innocent such as Reimi Sugimoto or Shigechi Yangyu.
He wanted to live a peaceful life and still murder people, basically wanting to be a Karma Houdini. Ironically, he successfully ends up getting the prospect of a quiet life after he disguises himself as Kosaku Kawajiri and is offered the possibility of a life away from murder with a happy wife who loves him. Despite this, he still chooses to act on his murderous instincts, leading to him getting caught, proving he never once wanted a quiet life, but rather a life without consequences.
While he appeared to genuinely show concern over Shinobu after she got attacked by Stray Cat, Kira still internally rationalized these feelings instead of acknowledging them, showing that he, on a conscious level, would rather remain a serial killer than get distracted by his own feelings.
Despite growing up with Yoshihiro as a loving father who even enabled and aided him in his homicidal actions, Kira doesn't show any care back for him in any of their interactions, with him shouting at Yoshihiro when he hears him suggest them to flee Morioh, despite his father doing this out of concern.
While his fetish is a mental illness which he can't fully control, this doesn't mean he has moral agency issues, since he shows full awareness that his actions are immoral and shows no remorse for any of them, as shown when he murdered Shigechi for coming across one of his victims' hands.
In JoJolion, his heroic reboot continuity counterpart was shown and implied to have a hand fetish as well, and even then, he didn't let it turn him into a villain at all. This shows that his fetish has absolutely nothing to do with his villainy.
Despite being polite and nice to his coworkers and other civilians, he doesn't actually respect them or like them, and just is polite in order to keep his identity a secret. If anyone poses a threat to his quiet life, he drops his affable attitude and goes hostile.
While he has a few comedic moments, such as interacting with severed hands as if they were his girlfriends, putting off killing Koichi just because his socks are inside out, as well as telling the nurse he erected when he saw Mona Lisa's hands, the serious situations they are presented in nullifies this as a detracting quality, only showing how twisted he is.
While not as heinous as other main antagonists like DIO, Kars, Diavolo, or Enrico Pucci, Kira easily stands out due to the nature of his crimes and being nowhere near as powerful and resourceful as them shown by Jotaro easily defeating him.
After getting caught with one of the hands, Kira brutally blew up Shigechi Yangyu, a 13 to 14-year-old teenager and when he was severely injured and tried to open the door to warn Josuke and Okuyasu, he taunted him and then killed him by blowing him up into nothing.
Additionally, even former villains like Rohan and Yukako Yamagishi were willing to be on the lookout for Kira after Shigechi's murder.
He used Sheer Heart Attack to murder an elderly shop keeper by also blowing him up after he was about to reveal his name.
He trapped Jotaro Kujo and Koichi Hirose in the shop with intent to murder them, nearly murdering Jotaro. After Jotaro was incapacitated and rendered unconscious, he taunted Koichi if he were to call his girlfriend Yukako over for help. The fact that he already knew of her relationship with Koichi despite never interacting with them implies that he was stalking and getting ready to kill Yukako as well.
He nearly beat Koichi to death and almost killed him by using Killer Queen to punch a hole through his body for merely taunting him about his true identity.
When he was cornered by everyone, he cleaves his own hand off, knowing that Josuke would heal him. Then he runs off into the Cinderella Beauty Salon, where he changes his identity by murdering Kosaku Kawajiri and forcing Aya Tsuji to use her Stand known as Cinderella to apply his face, hair, and fingerprints onto Kira so that he could use his identity, and then murdering Aya so he can cover his tracks by turning her into a bomb. Had Okuyasu not pulled Josuke back in his attempt to heal Aya, he too would have died. He later assumes Kawajiriās identity undetected.
He once almost wanted to strangle Shinobu before restraining himself.
He sadistically murdered a couple after they unknowingly made him angry and taunted the girlfriend by having her wear her boyfriendās ears as earrings before murdering her.
He murdered Hayato after he said he was gonna expose him, but then he activated Bites The Dust after he got shot by the Arrow, so he wouldnāt get caught.
He forced Bites The Dust into Hayato so that anyone he tried to tell about him would die. This happened three times, each time resulting in Rohan and then later Jotaro, Josuke, Okuyasu and Koichi getting blown up before time reverses.
He mentally tortured Hayato, an eleven-year-old boy, about each reversal, the death of his father and the impending doom on the rest of Josukeās group, with a sadistic glee. His mental abuse of Hayato even made Hayato attempt suicide.
During the battle, Kira exploited Stray Cat by using his abilities of the exploding air bubbles.
He nearly murdered Okuyasu by using one of the air bubbles to explode a hole in his body, then nearly killed Hayato and Josuke with them.
While he was visibly horrified after he realized he had accidentally killed his father, Yoshihiro, this was most likely out of shock instead of remorse, especially since he brushed it off and spared no thoughts about him after he was dead and kept going against his advice to leave Morioh.
When he was nearly defeated and a paramedic was trying to help him, he implanted Bites The Dust into her with the plan to get away with his actions again. Knowing Kira, he most likely also planned to kill the paramedic after he got away.
While he does have a cruel death of Jotaro pummeling him and breaking several bones before his head is crushed by an ambulance, it is not played for sympathy, and the sad music playing is only played to show the tragedy that Kira had brought to the people of Morioh. If anything, his death played for karmic irony, as he died via an accident despite believing luck was always on his side.
After his death, he tries to force Reimi to turn around to get dragged into the afterlife, before karmically getting his hand bitten off by Arnold, causing him to turn round and see a horde of (presumably his victims') hands. He then tries to blow them up before they drag him away, a well-deserved punishment for every crime he's committed.
Dead Man's Questions[]
While he did nothing too heinous anymore after turning into a ghost, it was due to his mind being erased and not seeking redemption. In fact, Kira is still shown to retain some violent tendencies as toward the end he swears to murder his informant if she were lying to him.
While Ghost Kira seemed sympathetic, it doesn't count as a prevention as it is an amnesiac ghost Kira than an actual Kira.
What Prevents Him from Being Pure Evil?[]
His idea of living a quiet life and avoiding unnecessary conflict prevents him from using his resources to be as heinous as he could be. As such, he slightly fails the in-story heinous standard to Gray Fly, who killed over 300 people through plane accidents, and Cioccolata, who tortured and mutilated his patients and attempted to use Green Day's mold to destroy the entire Rome city, both of whom have similar or lesser resources to Kira's.
He felt some degree of affection/fondness for Shinobu Kawajiri, as he instinctively protected her from Stray Cat, being concerned when she was attacked by it and showing relief when he saw that she wasn't seriously injured. Later, he stayed home to make sure she was okay after the attack despite the fact it would make him late to work. This, however, is a minor prevention at the very best, as even if a part of him does care about her, he still prefers to rationalize and bury these feelings for the sake of continuing his killings.
Trivia[]
Hirohiko Araki has gone on record saying that, originally, Yoshikage Kira would have gotten a backstory which revealed that he was abused by his mother as a child, but ended up scrapping the idea as he didn't want the readers to sympathize with him. Had this come into fruition, it would have likely prevented him further from qualifying as Pure Evil.
Yoshikage Kira can be considered as an evil counterpart to Josuke Higashikata, the Near Pure Good protagonist of the part. Kira is the evil shadow hidden in Morioh while Josuke is the light that protects it; And the two also has opposite abilities: Killer Queen's ability is destruction while Crazy Diamond's ability is restoration.
He is one of the two Near Pure Evil JoJo's Bizarre Adventure antagonists that are the main antagonist of a part, the other being Kars (though Enrico Pucci and Funny Valentine were previously listed as Near Pure Evil as well).
He is currently the only main antagonist of a part to not pass the franchise's Heinous Standards.
His alternate universe counterpart from JoJolion cannot qualify as Near Pure Evil as he is much more heroic here than in the original continuity. Likewise, his Jorge Joestar counterpart is Pure Evil due to passing the heinous standards and lacking redeeming qualities or mitigating factors.
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