Chief Benja

Benja, also known as Chief Benja, is the overarching protagonist of Disney's 2021 animated feature film Raya and the Last Dragon. He is the chief of Heart in Kumandra and Guardian of the Dragon Gem, a role shared with his daughter, Raya. Amidst the polarization of Kumandra's five lands, Benja believed that unity would be possible if someone were to “take the first step.”
He was voiced by , who also portrayed Jin-Soo Kwon in Lost, Johnny Gat in Saint Rows, Chin Ho Kelly in Hawaii Five-0, and Ben Daimio in Hellboy.
==Biography==
As a young Raya enters a cave containing the sacred Dragon Gem, Benja prevents his daughter from touching it. In order to prepare Raya for her adventure, Benja trains with his daughter to help her practice becoming protector of the Gem. After Raya manages to get her toe on the inner circle, he gains faith that Raya is worthy to be come a another guardian of the Gem and makes her one. He later expresses his belief to her that the tribes can be reunited with each other.
At the Land of Heart, the tribes from Tail, Talon, Fang and Spine arrive and are gathered to partake in a feast that Benja has arranged to reunite all five tribes in peace and harmony. During the event, the Chief of Heart starts to accept them to be welcomed, but later notices that Fang is making a play for the Gem after Namaari betrays Raya and sets off a signal meant for Fang to see, but that he sees as well. Upon seeing a group of Fang soldiers in possession of the Gem, he engages in a combat with multiple feuding soldiers and chiefs. However, he then tries to stop the fighting by explaining the two choice the quarreling tribes have: fight so that Kumandra would fall, or live together in harmony to make Kumandra a better place, clearly trying to implore them to choose the latter. However, an archer fires an arrow at Benja in revenge just as the tribes continue fighting over the Gem. However, this also immediately results in them dropping and breaking the Gem, breaking it into pieces, much to Benja's sadness, and just then, the Druun arrive at Kumandra and start turning everyone they make contact with into stone.
As the Druun begin plaguing the land of Kumandra, Benja tries to escape from the Druun, but ends up getting injured in progress. Raya tries to help her father escape the Druun, but he is too weak to go with her. He then tells her daughter to go without him and throws her into the water to safety just as he ends up getting petrified by the Druun, leading Raya and Tuk Tuk to embark on a quest to reunite all the Gem shards to wipe away the Druun before Kumandra falls for the next six years.
After the Dragon Gem's shards are put back in place and the Dragon Gem is restored, everyone petrified by the Druun is restored back to life. Just after Benja is brought back to life, he happily reunites with a now grown-up Raya, who, much to his happiness, reveals to him that the other tribes are there too, and that this time. they are willing to reunite and become Kumandra again. With the tribes reunited successfully, everyone walks across the bridge to their new unified land together.
==Personality==
Chief Benja was a selfless, protective and wise chief. He was an extremely skilled fighter, but despite this, he preferred not resorting to violence and sought to come up with diplomatic solutions so that the Heart tribe could put their differences with the others aside and come together to be one again, rather than keep finding reasons to hate each other. Therefore, he tried to teach his daughter how important it was to take the first step towards building trust with them, hence why he arranged a banquet and invited all the other tribes, hoping it would go a long way towards allowing them to rebuild the positive and unified relationship they once had. He even tried to reason with everyone again after everyone started fighting for the Gem upon noticing Fang's attempt to steal it, demonstrating that even in tense and stressful situations, he was capable of maintaining a levelheaded and calm disposition. As to be expected, he also loved his daughter very much and prioritized her safety over his own, as demonstrated when he made sure to get her safely away from the Druun and accepted his fate of being petrified due to believing he wouldn't be much help in his injured state. Overall, he represents the kind of attitude that if everyone shared, they could have reunited back into Kumandra without the entire plot needing to happen. Thankfully, by the end, after making everything worse for a while thanks to their continued fighting and everything only being fixed after Raya, Namaari and several others learned to trust each other and unite the pieces of the Dragon Gem to make it whole again, everyone seems to now appreciate his perspective enough to willingly come together again. 
==Gallery==
ChiefBenjafromRayaWorld.png
4kraya-animationscreencaps.com-443.jpg|Chief Benja's first appearance.
4kraya-animationscreencaps.com-475.jpg|Benja and his daughter, Raya looking at the Dragon Gem.
Raya and Benja.jpg
Raya and the Last Dragon (22).png
Raya and the Last Dragon OT (31).png
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