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Kyuzo
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Kyuzo (Japanese 久蔵, long-concealed) is a character of the highly acclaimed movie Seven Samurai by Akira Kurosawa. A character of the same name appears in the homage anime movie entitled Samurai 7; that Kyuzo is a bodyguard of a local businessman/merchant and is the rival of Kambei. Character history Film version Kyuzo is unmatched in swordfighting and wants nothing more than to perfect his craft. He is quiet and not very social. He is killed in the movie when an unseen gunman shoots him. He throws his sword away in an attempt to indicate the location of his assassin as he falls dead into the mud. The young samurai Katsushiro is particularly affected by his death. Anime version He is the mysterious and quiet bodyguard of a wealthy merchant family where he appeared only as a background character in the early episodes. He is a blonde man with red eyes and wears a red coat and sometimes has the bottom half of his face covered. He is a rare master of the twin sword style of fighting. Highly skilled and strong, the only true challenge for him is to kill his rival/comrade Kambei. It was proven that he is determined to fight and kill Kambei many times and slowly builds up a protectiveness to Kambei like a wolf who guards his prey. Even though Kambei is not as strong than Kyuzo's former comrade Hyogo, he is determined to the death to kill Kambei himself and kills Tessai in an instant. Though the anime has a longer and more complex storyline, it hasn't altered much of the original story. Kyuzo is still one of the 4 samurai to die. He is killed in episode 25 by accident when Katsushiro gunned down an enemy imperial guard who was about to kill Kambei, and the bullets went through, unknown to Katsushiro that Kyuzo was standing at the back of the enemy. He will wait for Kambei in the afterlife to "settle a score" with him. Trivia James Coburn, a self-confessed fan of the original Seven Samurai when it was first released in the U.S., has said that he made a conscious effort to emulate actor Seiji Miyaguchi as Kyuzo in his portrayal of the knife-throwing Britt in The Magnificent Seven. An early idea for the anime version of Kyuzo was to have the character be a woman, but the idea was scrapped fairly early (as stated in an interview with the creators in Anime Insider). Kyuzo's slightly androgynous appearance was likely influenced by this early idea. 
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