A Tribute To Kanki: Kingdom's Most Charismatic Character
Kingdom is among the most ambitious stories that have ever come out of the manga medium.
With over 750 chapters and counting, Kingdom is a retelling of a crucial time period in Chinese History: The Warring States period that preceded the Unification of China.
Now, the important characters are based on real people, and among them, the most intriguing character up to this point in the manga remains “Kanki, the Beheader”.
Ever since his first appearance in Chapter 198 of the Kingdom manga, this man has had everyone’s attention.
He is cold, merciless, and he always maintains an arrogant smirk on his face.
Definitely a villain character, but the thing that made him such an interesting character isn’t because of his coldness or arrogance, it’s his unpredictability.
I mean, we all love Wild Card type characters.
Take Hisoka from Hunter x Hunter for example or Joker from DCU.
Kanki is the same.
He makes everything about ten times more interesting.
Doesn’t matter if you’re his enemy or the reader itself, you can never really know what this man is planning.
It’s like “Let Him Cook.”
Spoiler Alert: This post is in the wake of the recent developments in the Kingdom manga.
Kanki’s past and what drives him have finally been revealed. We finally know where Kanki came from, what is the Saki clan, and everything, but we still don’t know Kanki’s actual beginning.
We don’t know what his life was like before he was found by the OG members of the Saki Clan.
This is a very interesting little detail. We know Kanki’s life from Age 13 and onwards, but we don’t know anything about how Kanki spent the first 13 years of his life.
Ordinarily, this wouldn’t be a problem, but his mentality and the view he viewed the world was already complete. Even at Age 13, he was giving off the same kind of aura.
This just intrigues you more about his early life.
At the age of 13, He was found almost dead and abandoned on a mountain road by the people who would go on to form the Saki clan. The ones who found him were all young kids just like him. They would resort to stealing and although they are barely making ends meet, they still loved and protected each other.
Like a family.
However, Kanki changed them. He taught them how to thrive against the cruelness of the world. He did this the first time by killing the men who tried to take advantage of their leader Shio, a young girl who’d become Kanki’s lover.
He did to their oppressors what the oppressors had done to them.
In a very real sense, Kanki became a beacon of hope for all of them.
Before Kanki, they were mentally enslaved, but thanks to Kanki, the OG members of the Kanki clan, his family, stopped being on the receiving end. By mutilating corpses, they were able to instill fear in the minds of those who oppressed them.
But it wasn’t enough. What we mean is, it wasn’t enough for Kanki to win against the innate unfairness of the world. He met their cruelty with his own cruelty, but where does the ceiling end?
On the day that his lover Shio endured the worst kind of torture and abuse imaginable, right before getting killed as well. Kanki left the Saki clan. He went on to found his own Kanki clan, and with them, Kanki invaded the stronghold of the lord who was responsible for the fate of Shio.
He now had an army of his own. After conquering them, he personally beheaded every single one of them. There must have been thousands, but his rage and sadness knew no boundaries.
That’s how Kanki attained the moniker: “Kanki the Beheader”.
But he never stopped there, did he?
As Shou said to Naki,
“Rage. That is what drives Kanki.
Rage that burns so strong it’s hot enough to melt even rock.”
Even back then, Kanki had a straightforward, easy to understand view of the world.
Those who oppress others are many, but there aren’t a lot of them, in fact, there aren’t even a lot of them who truly get oppressed. That’s why, the fault lies with the ones in the middle.
The middle ones who go about their lives and act like oppression, cruelty and tragedies have nothing to do with them. This is also why Kanki has no sympathy for anyone who isn’t a part of his clan.
Kanki’s rage might be overwhelming, but also kind of simple.
He hated the entire world.
When he said this, Shio was still alive. But after losing her, and the way he lost her, Kanki must’ve truly forsaken the world.
But that isn’t it either.
Shou thought that maybe it would’ve been better if Shio and Kanki never met, but Shio’s sister, the current leader of the Saki clan believes otherwise.
Kanki always had that darkness within him, but as he moved on and went further than everyone else, all the outcasts of the society followed him. If it was just because of the darkness, this would not have happened.
Which means there is still a small light in his soul that can’t be seen from the outside.
That must be Shio.
And didn’t the King of Qin, Sei, state that the nature of people is that of Light?
Ribouku could see that part of Kanki and concluded that what drives Kanki isn’t despair. It’s because that isn’t the case that his rage burns hotter than anyone.
See, it isn’t about whether what Kanki did was wrong, because undoubtly, it was wrong.
He has committed the most amount of war crimes out of anyone in the Kingdom story.
I mean just look at this.
This man has the nerve to call this “Art”.
All this time, Kanki was driven by rage, but his intellect, and how he managed to best pretty much everyone, is insane, but it is also commendable. Many characters called him a genius of warfare for a reason.
Even in his final moments, Kanki didn’t lose his spark. And surely, he didn’t lose his rage.
Riboku wanted to have some final words with him. He took back what he said about Kanki having a small heart and even called Kanki’s heart pure, but considering how divorced Kanki is to reality, Riboku cannot conceive him as anything other than the worst villain.
And what does Kanki say in response to this? He calls Riboku simply an ordinary guy,
“A chump like you can’t change anything, Riboku.
Well, that crazy King of Qin can’t change anything either.”
Kanki explains that people like Riboku exist because there’s people like the King of Qin, and people like the King of Qin exist because there’s people like Riboku.
They are both fighting for their own selfish ideals after all. But unless they personally cross swords, they will never achieve anything and just keep struggling for all eternity.
Having said this and despite being cornered to the point where his only escape is death, Kanki still tells everyone that things will turn out fine and braces himself to take out Riboku.
He tells everyone that they’ll kill Riboku and take victory for themselves.
Finally, in chapter 752 of the Kingdom manga, Kanki the Beheader dies just one step short of killing Riboku.
Through his actions and his story, Kanki is the character that showed us the true darkness of history.
Yes, he was smug and sadistic, but he made the manga wildly entertaining. Kingdom just wouldn’t be half as good as it is if there was no Kanki.
It doesn’t matter if you love him or hate him.
He is without a doubt among the best written characters in the anime and manga medium.
Simply brilliant.
Kanki was a nightmare to everyone else, but he was the Hero to his family.
He took revenge for Shou, he beheaded everyone at Kiha for the death of Shio, and of course, when Raido was killed. For Raido, Kanki had 100,000 Zhao soldiers beheaded.
The author could’ve very easily made him out to be an irredeemable psychopath, but I’m glad he didn’t take that route. It’s because the author put in so much effort in portraying the layers of Kanki’s rage and light, that Kanki has ended up as one of the most interesting manga characters.
At least in my opinion, he’s the best Kingdom character yet.
The story hasn’t ended yet though, let’s wait and see what we have next!
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