Mifune (ミフネ, Mifune) is a samurai warrior, and the General (大将, Taishō) of the Land of Iron.
Background[]
Mifune fighting Hanzō.
At some point, Mifune and other samurai were pitted against Hanzō. While everyone escaped in fear, Mifune stood proud against him, willing to protect his comrades. During their battle Hanzō's kusarigama broke through Mifune's sword and struck his head, poisoning him. With the battle finished, Hanzō expressed his beliefs to him, and, acknowledging his faith and strength, gave Mifune the antidote for the poison and left.
Personality[]
Mifune is a calm, disciplined and level-headed person who hardly reacted even when Danzō Shimura was found to be manipulating him. During the conferences with the Kage he is generally the one who keeps the meetings productive and on track, usually by using his lack of association with shinobi and their past conflicts to act as a neutral mediator; as such, he was able to momentarily placate and reason with the enraged Fourth Raikage using words alone, prompting the latter to switch back into composure before the other Kage. He is also very humble, having taken responsibility for criticising the Kage during the meeting, rather than attributing it all to Danzō's manipulation, asking the shinobi for forgiveness afterwards. As he clashed with a reincarnated Hanzō, he addressed him with much respect, promising him he would have spoken of him like a hero, and praising his great faith.
Beneath his calm surface Mifune is a warrior of strong ideals, devoted to the ideal of harmony (和, wa). He showed no hesitation in committing his samurai fully to fighting the threat of Akatsuki despite the Land of Iron's long held position of neutrality in ninja wars. Mifune is also shown to be a fearless warrior, even in his youth when he was the only one who dared to fight Hanzō when every one of his fellow samurai fled at the very sight of him.
In the anime, Mifune is also shown to be comically forgetful. This was shown when he borrowed a communications battery from one of his subordinates to emulate Lightning Release to neutralise Deidara's bombs. Once Deidara was re-captured, he ordered his subordinate to contact HQ only for the shinobi to point out that he couldn't due to Mifune still carrying his battery.
Appearance[]
Mifune in his samurai uniform.
Mifune has long, grey hair, which almost reaches down to his waist, with bandages wrapped around his head, possibly to cover the wound received by Hanzō in their past battle. He has black eyes with distinct wrinkles underneath them, a grey goatee and moustache. During the Kage Summit and the meetings before the war, he wore a simple purple kimono-like outfit and sandals, but when the Fourth Shinobi World War began, he started wearing samurai armour, much more traditional in appearance when compared to the ones worn by his subordinates: it's composed of a breastplate, with four plates protecting his legs attached to it, identical shoulder pads, and matching arm and leg guards. He also wears a belt, to which is attached a pouch and his sword: Kurosawa in his waist. While in the Land of Iron, Mifune doesn't seemingly carry Kurosawa with him but a regular sword instead. Underneath his armour he wears a simple dark suit along with gloves and sandals. Also, unlike other samurai, he doesn't wear a mask. In his youth, he didn't have the moustache, and his goatee was much shorter. He also wore a light green suit of armour during this time period with a breastplate that covered only the upper right side of his chest and bandages over his forearms.
Abilities[]
As a master samurai, Mifune is undoubtedly powerful in battle. As the general of the samurai, Mifune has command of the rest of them and, by extension, is a highly capable leader. An adept thinker, Mifune has also shown a sharp memory, able to anticipate and properly counter enemy tactics he has not seen in decades as showed against Hanzō. Despite his old age, Mifune has also shown great agility as shown from jumping high into the air to reach Sasuke and moving with incredible speed to attack Hanzō before he could form hand seals. He also seems to have built up a tolerance to Hanzō's poison since the two have clashed in their youth. Even during his youth, Hanzō claimed Mifune was strong enough to force him to keep his mask on on the chance his venom sac was ruptured. In the anime, Mifune proved to be a skilled teacher, having trained personally Tsubaki Kurogane.
Kenjutsu[]
Mifune stops Hanzō from making hand seals with Iaidō.
Mifune is a master swordsman who wields the katana "Kurosawa" (黒澤, Kurosawa, literally meaning: Black Swamp). He is widely renowned as a master of Iai — a style of swordsmanship which involves the user rapidly unsheathing his blade to slash the enemies, and then re-sheathing it after completing the attack. Mifune's mastery of Iai is such that Hanzō and others have stated how it was useless to try and perform hand seal-induced techniques against him, due to the fact that Mifune is capable of closing the distance and attacking within the short time it takes to make the necessary hand seals. The speed and precision of his strikes are able to inflict a lethal blow on his opponent without staining the blade with blood, and even slice open the head of a large summon creature such as Ibuse.
Due to his extensive knowledge of swordplay, Mifune can judge the weaponry skill of his opponents, telling how potent or diminished the opponent's skills are, after a single clash. Like his subordinates, he is also capable of channelling chakra through his sword to increase its cutting power or send a wave of chakra with a swift swing of his sword as a powerful long-range attack. In the anime, his precision was even able to cut off a lit candle's wick and keep it lit on the edge of one of his swords, stop his attacks at a moment's notice, produce shock-waves from his strikes to intercept enemy attacks and channel electricity through his blade by use of a battery to defend against Earth Release users.
Quotes[]
- (To the Fifth Division) "No need for assistance! If you don't want to get cut, then don't get in my way."
- (To Hanzō) "With all my loyalty to harmony, I act under the guidance of my beliefs!" (「和に忠を尽くし己の信念の下動く!」, "Wa ni chū o tsukushi onore ni shinnen no moto ugoku!")
- (To Hanzō) "People who continue to put their lives on the line to defend their faith become heroes and will continue to exist on in legends! Stop bending your faith and scraping away your body… give up trying to refine and polish yourself. Your attack doesn't have the sharpness it used to! Because of that, your blade is dirtied with blood. Bluntness will not last! People are like swords!"