Kihara Souji

**Kihara Souji** (木原相似, *Kihara Sōji*?) was a member of the Kihara Family and the primary antagonist of the *Toaru Kagaku no Dark Matter* manga.

## Etymology

Similar to other Kiharas, who often have given names relating to the fields of science and mathematics, his name (相似) can be translated as 'Similarity'.

## Appearance

Souji is only seen wearing a pair of black pants, a lab coat with black sleeves over his black shirt, a pair of black gloves, and black shoes. He has short ashy grey hair and some piercings on right ear.

## Personality

At first glance, Souji is shown as a sociable young man with a frivolous and cheerful character. He is quite eccentric, drinking juice and starting a monologue about substitutes in products in the middle of a conversation with an opponent or singing in expectation of the experiment.

Like most members of the Kihara Family, he tends to neglect human lives, which allows him to commit immoral acts against his subordinates and test subjects. He no doubt brainwashed the members of DA and Yuzuriha Ringo without worrying about their mental health. He also didn't worry about the fact that they could get serious injuries, assuming that he could simply replace damaged and lost body parts with high-tech bionic prostheses of his own production. He has a pride as a researcher, in moments when someone insults his research and his intelligence, the darker side of his personality manifests itself, making him more calm and aggressive.

He is easily interested in the unusual abilities that Kakine Teitoku showed during the battle with Yuzuriha Ringo. In an attempt to explore the full potential of the Level Five and Dark Matter, he continued to analyze phenomena despite the load on his brain until he lost consciousness after reaching his limit. Subsequently, even despite his defeat and previous experience of collision, he wanted to see Dark Matter in action again and, having accepted the attack splitting his body to sand, continued to analyze the process until his death.

## Background

Souji's background and history are currently unknown, but what is known is that he was involved with the Dark May Project at some point in time and was one of its head researchers.

## Abilities

Being from the Kihara Family and much like the rest of his relatives, Souji has displayed a natural aptitude for science and technology and has displayed the same prodigious talent as a researcher, inventor and scientist as the rest of his family.

### Cyborg Technology

Originally Souji started out his career as a researcher in the field of medical science, specifically the development of cyborg technology via mechanical prosthetic's. With him having been credited to have created several highly advanced cybernetic prosthetic limbs such as arms, legs and hands. As seen where he was able to replaced the lost arms of a DA agent after his originals were completely destroyed by Kakine Teitoku and later upon seeing the damage done to Yuzuriha Ringo's body due to the reckless use of her powers, Souji was confident that he could easily create good enough "substitutes" to replace them should she completely obliterate her limbs.

After his death at the hands of Kakine, his highly advanced cyborg technology data and prosthetics was taken by Kuroyoru Umidori for her own personal use and was later implied to have been used by her to upgrade and modify herself into a cyborg in order to boost her powers. Greatly improving her esper power and even granting her a number of new abilities due to her "Kihara Brand" cybernetics.

### Brainwashing

Souji was also shown to be skilled in the usage of brainwashing. He demonstrates this skill when he was able to completely brainwash members of DA by "substituting" their sense of "Supreme Justice" into his orders, effectively making them believe that everything and anything he says and orders to them is "absolute justice",thus then causing them to follow his orders unquestionably and focus their already crazed zealously in fulfilling his orders, even at the cost of their own well being.

He was later again able to use this technology to place Yuzuriha Ringo under his complete control and successfully separate her mind from her body and force her to watch helplessly from inside her mind as she was forced to fight Kakine.

### Other Skills

Souji had also displayed a certain level of skill in fine tuning an Esper's brain in order to bring their powers to the maximum. This is seen when he was able to alter and tune Yuzuriha's brain in order to bring out the full brunt of her powers from the alteration made to her from the Dark May Project. As seen where after being "tuned" by Souji, Ringo was now able to perform and copy several of Accelerator's signature powers and abilities and use them to briefly overpower Kakine Teitoku.

Souji also displayed a level of skill in engineering and creating acoustic based technology, as seen where he was able to create a unique sound frequency that was specifically designed to agitate Yuzuriha Ringo's brain and put it in an immensely painful state of stress in order to make her powers run out of control.

Souji was also shown to have been able to analyze and understand the various "abnormal" phenomenon brought about Kakine's Dark Matter and keep track of all the hundreds and thousands of different unique phenomenon brought about by his power.