Bob Makihara

**Bob Makihara** is one of the main characters from the *Tengo Tenge* anime and manga.

Souichiro's friend, who is of African descent. He and Souichiro first met and became friends in elementary school. Naturally athletic, he fights using the Brazilian fighting style capoeira. Because of his ancestry, when he first arrived at Todo, some addressed him as "The Foreigner".

In the AWA fics, Bob is a student at the AWA Academy.

## **Appearance**

Bob is a large, African-decent young man with a long brown hair styled in dreads and has brown eyes. He wears a white bandanna wrapped around his forehead, a white collared shirt, black baggy pants and red & white rubber shoes.

## **Personality**

Bob is the conservative one of the pair, and unlike Souichiro, he does not let his rage overtake him, most of the time.

Bob seems to enjoy fighting, and is a very skilled fighter. He definitely has better powers of perception than Souichiro, as he almost immediately picks up on the fact that something is different about Toudou academy. He also recognizes that someone much stronger than Masataka Takayanagi and Maya Natsume is lurking around.

## **Abilities**

Bob uses the Brazilian style of martial arts, Capoeira (pronounced ka-po-ei-rah). Capoeira is dance-based as the slaves in Brazil weren't allowed to practice martial arts and disguised it as a dance. Capoeira moves strongly resemble break-dancing. Bob has also displayed some sign of above average or even superhuman strength when he and Masataka Takayanagi both kicked over a car belonging to Mitsuomi's guards. Maya has stated that Bob is the most powerful in the entire group, physically, but lacked the caliber to make him stronger than herself or Masataka. After the fight with Madoka, where he discovered his rhythm ability, it is uncertain if Bob ever grasped the concept of training his weaknesses instead of his strengths, otherwise known as "1st Eyes, 2nd Feet, 3rd Courage, 4th Power"

### **Rhythm**

Mitsuomi repeatedly stated that Bob has great potential and wants to be the one to train him as opposed to Maya. Mitsuomi even refers to him as part of his "true wing" along with Emi Isuzu and Shiro Tagami‎, as well as calling him a "True Warrior" while watching his fight with Madoka. The reason for this is Bob's ability to dance, as demonstrated by his Capoeira. Mitsuomi points out dance and martial arts are historically similar, thus good dancers tend to be good fighters as well. Mitsuomi also stated that it was the way that God was summoned back in ancient times, as rituals, and where all martial arts in the world originated from.

Bob's rhythm plays a major role as his fighting skills develop. He starts to feel vibrations through the ground and can predict an opponents movement based on those vibrations. As he feels the "beat" in the ground, his body will react naturally and move him out of harms way and such. This allows him to dodge attacks he can't even see by normal means. The problem is Bob has a tendency to think too much instead of just going with the flow of the "beat" he feels in the ground, thus it took him quite a while to awaken this skill. He was suffering blood loss when he first awakened this skill and thus was unable to truly demonstrate what he is fully capable of. He hasn't been in a fight since so his true ability and skill remains unseen. He also learns a KI based attack called: *Kikokou*

In the future he has mastered his ability to the point where he defeats Madoka with ease and having confidence that he finally caught up with Souichiro.

## **Trivia**

* His characterization to begin with is quite flat, but the manga goes some way to develop him in later chapters, highlighting his feelings about his inability to keep pace with Souichiro and the other members of the Juuken Club.
* Bob is the boyfriend of Chiaki Kounoike.