Crimson King

## As a Character

The Crimson King acts of his own accord in attempting to collect the essences hoping to break the curse placed upon him and restore the entirety of his free will. His signature weapon is a large stone club that he wields seemingly effortlessly. (A stylized Japanese kanabo, which is often associated with Oni.)

He looks down on Raikoh for taking orders and on many accounts refers to him as a "puppet". Though this seems to change into a warped form of rivalry by the second game, with him wanting to "free" Raikoh from his servitude.

He ironically acts independently trying to restore his free will which in itself proves his own free will. It takes his defeat at Raikoh's hands to realize that.

## As an Enemy

A recurring foe introduced early on in the first game, when you first meet the Crimson King you are woefully unprepared to fight him, and are better off avoiding him and finishing the stage.

When you face him again during his boss stage, you will have no choice but to fight him off. He has a variety of attacks. A two-hit combo, a charging thrust which he will often use after he blocks one of your attacks, a jumping slam attack, red fireballs, and a powerful hannya-faced magic spell.

Since he is good at blocking frontal attacks, hitting him in the back is the only reliable way to get combos on him. A fairly easy way to get an opening for this is to intentionally get blocked, than quickly dodge the follow-up charge thrust, he will likely have his back to you after this attack, so if you didn't over-dodge you should have enough time get a combo in. After taking enough damage he will jump off to a different part of the stage, forcing you to follow, but be careful, he will often charge up his hannya-faced spell as you approach, the attack is fairly slow, but very damaging if it connects.

When defeated, he will retreat from the fight entirely, not showing up again until the second game.

**Otogi 2**

As the bonus boss for the Forest of Havoc, his moveset has been enhanced. His standard combo does much more damage, his jumping slam produces a shockwave now, and he has an entirely new magic attack he uses near the end of the fight. A burning dragon spell very much like Michizane's empowered dragon spell, which does massive damage and inflicts the fire status.

Again, he can only be harmed by attacking his back. So you must maneuver around him while avoiding his attacks once again. Just like his boss fight in the first game, he also jumps around the stage as he takes damage. After his final jump to a high mountain overlook, he'll start charging and using his burning dragon attack, making it hard to approach directly. You'll have better luck approaching from the side of the mountain, take caution though, even when you reach him, while he will start fighting normally again, he can still use the burning dragon spell at any time during this phase.

When defeated, he waxes philosophical to Raikoh (assuming you beat the stage as him), and departs once again.

## Trivia

He is based off of Shuten-dōji, the real life Minamoto Raikō's mythical foe, and one of the more famous demons of Japan. His role and manner in the games is somewhat reflective of this, with him becoming a recurring foe and even rival for Raikoh over the games.

There is normally unviewable art for Crimson King in the Otogi 2 game files, which depicts his now missing left horn, the same horn that Raikoh now wears upon his left shoulder armor during Otogi 2.