never drawn a figure like that before, he went through several designs until he found one he could draw comfortably and repeatedly. Watsuki decided to give Hyottoko the ability to breathe fire, because he felt it would be natural for an "onmitsu" to be "flashy." Looking back, the author saw the character as somewhat out of place and "not really organic" to his world. According to Watsuki Hyottoko's fire breathing and Kenshin's sword spinning method to defeat it received criticism from fans, authors of dōjinshi fanzines, and personal friends. The author described Hyottoko as the guy who makes a big entrance and "then gets just as spectacularly beaten," who is "ridiculously confident" and "a bit of an idiot", but said that this is just the "natural evolution of the character, I guess." Han'nya is a skilled martial artist and was the master of intelligence for the Edo Castle Oniwabanshū. In the poor village he was born in, it is common to abandon a child at birth to reduce the number of people to feed. Han'nya survived and wandered around like an animal until Aoshi found him and trained him to be an Oniwabanshū. Thus he is extremely loyal to Aoshi, giving his life to allow Kenshin enough time to retrieve his sword to defeat Kanryū and save Aoshi. His arms have horizontal stripes painted on them, which gives them the appearance of being shorter than they actually are, thus luring opponents into a false sense of security regarding distance of attacks. He also wears steel gauntlets beneath his gloves, which help him to block attacks from other weapons. These gauntlets contain retractable steel claws, which he will resort to as a sort of trump card. Han'nya is also the master of disguise within the group; he gained his ability by removing all his prominent facial features, which is why he wears the demonic mask on his face. Han'nya burned his lips, cut off his ears and nose, and crushed his cheekbones so he could disguise himself as any individual. After the Bakumatsu, Han'nya received no prosperous government job offers because of his appearance. Watsuki was originally going to base Han'nya off of the "Elephant Man"; intending for his face to be deformed because a person stepped on it while he was still in his mother's womb. Other people would have treated Han'nya like a monster and therefore he would have