Yoshikage Kira

Personal background

Kira is unmarried and lives in the residential villa district in northeastern Morioh. He works diligently and competently at the Kame Yu department store chain. His ancestors included a samurai, but the family's fortunes began to decline in his grandfather's generation. By Kira's generation, all that remains is a tea-house-style residence in Morioh.

Appearance and clothing

Kira has blond hair and a thin face, and usually wears his work suit. Koichi Hirose describes him as more ordinary-looking than expected. Later, to conceal his identity, he takes Kosaku Kawajiri's face and fingerprints and lives under his name, acquiring black hair in the process. After awakening Bites the Dust, his supreme confidence in his ability is reflected in a new hairstyle with alternating black and white sections.

Personality

Kira longs for a quiet life and regards an existence as stable and unmoving as a plant as ideal. He avoids obsession with winning or losing, dwelling on worries, or making enemies who would keep him awake at night. To achieve this, he deliberately conceals his considerable intelligence and talents and treats everyone with disarming courtesy and gentleness. At school, he intentionally maintained third place in competitions and rankings. While posing as Kosaku Kawajiri, he resents the man's ambitions to get ahead. Despite his compulsion to kill, he remains convinced that he will live happily. His compulsive need for order extends to straightening his clothing even before committing murder.

Habits

Kira returns home no later than 8 p.m. He does not smoke and drinks only a little alcohol. He goes to bed at 11 p.m. and insists on eight hours of sleep, drinking a glass of warm milk and spending 20 minutes stretching before bed. Since 1975, he has collected his nail clippings and recorded their length, accumulating them at home. When desperate, he bites his nails, a habit dating from childhood.

Interests

Kira is a capable cook. His appearance and polished manner suggest a successful professional, making him popular with female coworkers, but he has no strong preference for women themselves and dislikes women with hair on their fingers. During dates, he thinks about how much he wants to go home. His favorite film is The Remains of the Day, and his preferred fashion brand is Gianfranco Ferré. He has a pathological fascination with women's hands, tracing his first sexual response to the hands in the Mona Lisa. This fixation drives his repeated murders. Every four or five years, his nails grow faster and his urge to kill becomes uncontrollable. He likes to talk with potential victims and ask their names and interests before killing them and taking a hand. Rubbing a woman's hand against his face gives him a sense of inner peace.

• Killer Queen: Destructive Power A, Speed B, Range D, Persistence B, Precision B and Development Potential A. This humanoid Stand can turn anything it touches with its hand into a bomb, detonated by pressing its right thumb. It has two detonation modes: it can destroy someone who touches the bomb while leaving the bomb-object intact, or make the object itself explode. Kira can choose which parts are destroyed. Destroyed matter becomes ash, and the explosions are silent. It can maintain only one primary bomb at a time, and an object turned into a bomb can explode only once. Its name comes from Queen's song Killer Queen.
• Sheer Heart Attack: Destructive Power A, Speed C, Range A, Persistence A, Precision E and Development Potential A. Killer Queen's second bomb is a single miniature tank released from the back of its left hand. It automatically tracks heat and explodes when near a target. Its exceptional durability allows it to withstand even Star Platinum, and Kira must retrieve it personally. Its name comes from Queen's Sheer Heart Attack.
• Bites the Dust: Destructive Power B, Speed B, Range A, Persistence A, Precision D and Development Potential A. Killer Queen's third bomb can be planted only in another person who has no Stand. If someone learns Kira's identity through the host, that person is attacked and explodes, and time rewinds by one hour. In the new loop, a previous victim is fated to explode at the same time even without learning the information again. If the ability is withdrawn after the death has occurred, that death remains permanent. Only the host retains memories of the loops. Events from before the reversal are fated to recur, although their exact form can vary. Its name comes from Queen's song Another One Bites the Dust.

Bites the Dust also limits Kira himself: while Killer Queen is planted in its host, he cannot summon it to defend himself. He must recall it and end that protection to fight directly, and he does not share the host's memories of the loops. His later air bombs are a combination of Killer Queen's first bomb with Stray Cat's compressed air, rather than a fourth innate bomb.

Kira's themes, composed by Yugo Kanno, appear on Diamond is Unbreakable Original Soundtrack Vol. 2: Killer, First Bomb, Second Bomb, Another face Same mind and Third Bomb.

• Against Shigekiyo Yangu — victory: Kira first uses a bomb made from a 100-yen coin to leave him near death, then turns a doorknob into a bomb and destroys him completely.
• Against Jotaro and Koichi — defeat: Sheer Heart Attack gravely wounds Jotaro from a distance, but Echoes ACT3 immobilizes it. Kira returns and nearly kills Koichi, then falls to Star Platinum's punches.
• Against Stray Cat — inconclusive: The first bomb and an attempt to stamp on the plant both fail, while Stray Cat's air control leaves Kira struggling. He eventually defuses its hostility with a ball.
• Against Hayato, Josuke and their allies — defeat: Combining his power with Stray Cat's air bullets, Kira corners Josuke and Okuyasu. Josuke turns the battle with restoration and Hayato's information. Jotaro and the others arrive, and Jotaro prevents Bites the Dust from being activated.
• Against Reimi Sugimoto and her dog: After becoming a ghost, Kira enters the alley. Reimi tricks him into looking back, and he is dragged into hell.