Muraki, Kazutaka
Summary
Kazutaka Muraki serves as the primary antagonist in Yami no Matsuei, his angelic visage sharply contrasting with his brutal disposition. His psychological disturbances likely originated in childhood, marked by a complex relationship with his mother and half-brother Saki. Muraki’s mother was a doll collector who treated her son as though he were a living doll, a dynamic that parallels Muraki’s own habit of collecting dolls and treating real people as objects throughout the series. The anime suggests that Saki murdered their parents and attempted to kill Kazutaka when they were children, whereas the manga leaves Saki’s role ambiguous, with Muraki claiming to have murdered their mother himself. Regardless of the truth, Saki was killed by a family guard, leading Muraki to obsessively seek a way to revive him so he could kill Saki personally. This goal drives him to attempt using Tsuzuki’s body for resurrection, a plotline central to the anime’s final episodes and manga volumes 7 and 8. Operating as an expert manipulator, Muraki maintains a facade as a compassionate doctor lamenting his inability to save lives, while secretly functioning as a serial killer. He explicitly contrasts his hidden nature with the integrity of Pr. Satomi during the Kyoto Arc. His victims include Hisoka Kurosaki, a thirteen-year-old whom Muraki stripped naked and cursed with an untraceable affliction resembling a terminal illness. By wiping Hisoka’s memory of the event, Muraki ensured the boy suffered in a hospital for three years before dying. When Hisoka later becomes a shinigami, Muraki forces him to remember the night of the curse. Muraki routinely manipulates dead souls, often killing individuals himself to attract the attention of the Shinigami, particularly Tsuzuki. While the manga clarifies his dual obsession with Tsuzuki’s body for both carnal and scientific purposes, the anime censored these elements, portraying his advances as sexual harassment before later revealing his true intent to use Tsuzuki’s body to revive Saki. Despite his crimes, Muraki is a respected physician with powerful connections across Japan. He is frequently seen with his close friend Oriya and his former teacher, Professor Satomi. He also has a childhood sweetheart named Ukyou, though details about her are scarce aside from her poor health and her tendency to attract evil spirits. Although some readers speculated he might be a guardian of the GenSouKai gates due to his heterochromia, the King of Swords arc reveals that his right eye is a mechanical prosthetic after Tsuzuki knocks it out. The nature of Muraki’s supernatural abilities remains mysterious; although he is a living human rather than a Shinigami, he possesses powers such as raising zombies, sealing memories through touch, controlling Shikigami-like spirits, entering Meifu alone, and teleporting Tsuzuki.
