Sabato Rokudō (六道 鯖人 Rokudō Sabato?) is Rinne Rokudō's father. A half-human half-Shinigami who caused Rinne to become poor by transferring his debts to him, and is the president of the Damashigami Company, an illegal business where renegade Shinigami steal the souls of people who are not yet ready to die in order to pad their quotas and increase the amount of money they can earn. Rinne finds this practice disgusting, but his money loving father has no such qualms.[1]
Appearance[]
Sabato has short but slightly wavy red hair with matching red eyes, showing that Rinne got his looks from his father. His hair has a more purple tint in the anime.
His clothes consist of a white Yukata, featuring the Wheel of Reincarnation at the bottom, with an indigo belt, a cornflower blue haori over and a light blue scarf, which he started wearing after he got married. On a few occasions, mostly during his past, he is seen wearing different clothing (mainly in Hawaiin style when he and Otome were going to buy a house in the living world, and with Bijin).
Whenever he makes a robbery, he wears the traditional Japanese mask made from a folded tenugui.
Personality[]
Sabato is a greedy and unscrupulous man who hates work and would resort to any ways to get his profits, such as stealing from both his lovers and son alike. He is often seen smiling and talking in a sort of easy-going, ditzy way. He is also a moocher, often dragging Rinne into debt by borrowing money and making Rinne the co-signer. Despite that, he does seem knowledgeable on all Shinigami-related things and can be serious sometimes.
In addition to his wastefulness with other people's money, Sabato also has a great love of women. At times, he seems to have dozens of different women interested in him, yet he holds a special place in his heart for Ageha's mysterious sister, who also works as his secretary. Sabato encourages Rinne's interest in Sakura, and hopes that he will marry and take over the family business so that he can retire one day.
Biography[]
Past[]
Sabato is the son of Shinigami Tamako and a human male, whom she was supposed to reap the soul of but instead prolonged his life span for 50 years as she fell in love with him.
Inheriting his teacher's Gold License
He is shown to have been a delinquent when he was in middle school.[2] As he was lazy and not taking his assignments seriously, his License remained Bronze. But when his old teacher from high school who was a Gold License Holder expressed his desire to promote him before having to retire and challenged him to a duel, Sabato managed to defeat him in a silly way thanks to the encouragement of Shinigami Girls and legally got his license promoted to Gold.[3]
Sabato with his wife and son
Later, he met a beautiful Shinigami named Otome during a Shinigami flower viewing joint party, where they fell in love at first sight, and Sabato proposed to her on that same day. They seemed to have had a very wonderful courtship and marriage and spent their honeymoon at an inn in the countryside. He secretly pawned her Shinigami Scythe for books, which included her high school graduation book, for he wanted to see what his wife looked like back then. But when his newborn son Rinne was taking his first steps and knocked over a bag containing those books, she hurried out of the house to throw her high school graduation book in the Sanzu River to hide a secret about herself, when a herd of water buffalo suddenly stampeded through and carried her off to the Wheel of Reincarnation. No one ever knew what happened to her, but Sabato found one of her sandals on the bank of the Sanzu River and used an Emotion Dust which led to the Wheel of Reincarnation and so he deemed her dead.
Since he wasn't much of a father, Rinne was raised by his grandparents in the living world. But over the course of Rinne's life, Sabato frequently took his savings for his own uses, and he would often take out IOUs in his son's name, and continue to burden him under mountains of debt.
Conning Kain's Mother
At one point, he encountered Kain and his mother, whom he promised marriage but instead conned her out of most of her money to establish the Damashigami Company. To the present day, he sends her "love letters" which are thinly veiled requests for money.[4]
Leaving without paying
On the day of a high school entrance exam, Sabato fled from a Gyudon shop without paying and knocked Renge into a lake, which caused her to miss her exam and unable to retake it forced her to become a Damashigami.[5]
And one year prior to the events of the series, Ageha’s sister Bijin attempted to take Sabato down but in the end was seduced by him and became his mysterious beautiful secretary.[6]
Debut[]
Rinne vs Sabato
Sabato showed up to Rinne's “house” and lured him along with his Black Cat Rokumon and his classmates Sakura Mamiya and Tsubasa Jūmonji, to the Damashigami Company, to force him to marry a female Damashigami and take over. A duel ensued between father and son, and not only Sakura and Rokumon, but Tamako came to Rinne’s aid and she declared that Rinne is dating Sakura, to allow everyone to return to the living world.
In his second attempt to make Rinne inherit his company, he “offered” him an engagement ring to be given to Sakura, believing it would cut his ties to the living world. But Sakura declined, and as Rinne got angry for having purchased the ring with his own money and Ageha went mad upon learning her sister Bijin works for Rinne’s father, Sabato fled.
History[]
Subsequently, he would continue to perform unscrupulous activities for his own profit, and would encounter Rinne who, exasperated by his actions, would try to subdue him.
That much for working like a normal person
One of his schemes involved using a vacant Ramen shop called Kaedama to get students' souls, only for him to be possessed by the spirit who was haunting the shop as it wished to serve ramen and make customers happy. And so the earnest, hardworking spirit forced the shameless lazy Sabato, to make ramen all day to serve to hungry kids, much to Rinne’s surprise and Sabato’s dismay. When Rinne speaks to the spirit who promises he'll happily go on to the next world if he can borrow a body and cook for 100 years, Sabato seizes the chance to avoid being possessed and use the spirit for a scheme, but Rinne outsmarts Sabato, who then gets repossessed until 500 cups of ramen are made, to satisfy the spirit who moved on.[7]
He would make contact with Renge, who came to be what he calls his prodigy and established herself as Rinne’s neighbor at the abandoned club building at Sankai High. Though she works for him, she hopes to get rid of him.
Sabato with the Black Fox
He tried to steal a special scythe called Oihagizuki, which registers the first one to touch as its owner, at his mother’s house, but Tamako thought of putting a security barrier that electrocutes any male, and as the scythe consequently falls into the living world, it ends up being touched by Sakura, making her the owner of the Scythe. He constantly tried to retake it, only to keep being electrocuted, and he unexpectedly gets possessed by a Black Fox evil spirit, which proves to be a tough match for Rinne and Renge, and leaves Sakura as the only one who can battle him. It appears however that Sabato still had control of himself, and he gets distracted by the food that Sakura made for Rinne, giving Sakura the chance to softly tap on his head and purify the rampaging fox spirit.[8]
Rinne vs Sabato again
Another scheme was using his own Gold License to forge many counterfeited Gold Licenses, that a Damashigami would sell under the guise of a vending machine, which caused the Mortal Census Bureau to check licenses to not get swindled. Upon learning he really got a Gold License, Rinne challenged him to inherit it. Sabato retrieved his old Scythe for a proper challenge, and Rinne almost won when Sabato’s scythe broke off, only for the blade to knock on his head, allowing Sabato to escape with his Gold License. But his counterfeited Gold Licenses would no longer be bought.[9]
He visited his father’s grave and tried to take its object which is a Gold Mackerel can to sell it, which triggered a cursing Mackerel spray that Tamako set. Only by apologizing at their family altar would the marks on his face be removed, and the spirit of his father as a mackerel who was exasperated led him there to make him apologize.[10]
Sabato with Ichigo and Rinne
When his wife’s scythe was found, he used a channeling doll with her picture from her Platinum license (the only picture he could have of her), to hear the truth directly from his wife's mouth in hope of knowing what happened when she vanished, but the doll hit him with her scythe and wandered around town. As it changes back to a doll, it loses its grip on the scythe and it falls knocking a little girl named Ichigo out cold, who turns out to be his wife's reincarnation. As she remembered her previous lives, she reveals to Sabato, Rinne, Sakura and Rokumon, her identity and what happened the day she vanished, and Sabato experienced being deceived for the first time, upon learning that his wife was actually 2 years younger than his own mother. He nevertheless was relieved to learn he didn't cause his wife to abandon him by pawning her scythe, both agree that their age difference now makes it impossible for them to start over, and he'd sometimes come to visit her.[11]
Final Story[]
In the final story, he selfishly sold Rinne’s belongings to a recycle shop and stole a string bracelet featuring a boundary stone from the Sanzu river which happens to belong Rinne who lost it. He shows Rinne, who found the way to the Damashigami Company after figuring who stole his string bracelet, his most evil plan with the use of a Sanzu generator model, looking like a Nagashi Somen machine, in which water from the Sanzu river is provided through a reido within a lion headed faucet and passes through the small holes in the middle of the toy with the use of a boundary stone, which would cause small rivulets of the river to flood into the living world, and have anyone that should step across these streams be directly led to the wheel of reincarnation. Although, it was Renge who thought of it, after he promised her an increase in salary to have her not quit being a Damashigami, and she reveals to have actually double-crossed him by having the process of the generator reversed, which means that it is now sending spirits from the otherworld back into the world of the living rather than pulling the living into the otherworld, as she stood firm in her decision to quit and didn’t believe his promise, then kicks him out with the device which gets lost. He winds up at Rinne’s home, where he nonspecifically tells a confused Sakura that Rinne was mad about something concerning the string bracelet and learns that Sakura has one too, then runs away from Kain trying to arrest him after being told by Renge that he was responsible for the spirits being pulled back into the living world. He finds the generator at a large garbage collection site with its process set back to normal thanks to Yoroshiku who hoped to have it fixed to enjoy Nagashi Somen with his comrades to no avail, although the boundary stone of Rinne’s string bracelet got completely dissolved, so he tries to steal Sakura’s bracelet to use its featured boundary stone to reactive the device, but Rinne destroys them both. He was forced by his reincarnated wife, who learned that Rinne and Sakura supposedly broke up, to make up for what he caused by getting new boundary stones for them, although he could only find dolls made of multiple boundary stones and it led Sakura to almost be directly sent to the Wheel of Reincarnation as she came in contact with the lion headed faucet of the generator still pouring water from the Sanzu river which was found by Rokumon and left in Rinne's home. It got Rinne mad, accusing him of having set her up although he didn’t know about the faucet being at Rinne’s home. He is last seen, showing Ichigo a bounty of ¥5,000 for his capture, which is a cheap price to many, and as their admirers Bijin and Shōma learn the rumor that they are together, they reconfirm that they are just friends.[12]
Relationship[]
Family[]
Sabato's mother who is a full-blooded Shinigami. The two of them don't have a very good relationship with each other, due to him becoming the President of the Damashigami Company, cheating his son into debt, as well as constantly trying to steal other people's possessions. She is not afraid to smack him or even beat him down to a pulp when he does something wrong, especially when it involves Rinne, and she even considered kicking him to the Wheel of Reincarnation to have him be reborn.[13]
Not much is known about the type of relationship the two of them had with each other, except that Sabato did bother to visit his grave although he didn't hesitate to profane it by taking its object.
Sabato loved his wife very much and never stopped trying to locate her after her disappearance while Rinne was a baby. After discovering her human reincarnation named Ichigo, he was happy to meet her again, and so was she. As their age difference makes it impossible for them to start over, they remain only on friendly terms, and he'd meet her again sometimes and both enjoy reminiscing their romantic days.[14]
Ever since Rinne was a child, Sabato would take his son's savings for his own uses without remorse; which continued until his high school years where Sabato would make Rinne a co-signer for many loans and not pay for them, leaving Rinne in perpetual debt. Due of this, Rinne is extremely resentful toward his father and all Damashigami and is not above beating him when they meet.
Others[]
To be added
Among his hundred girlfriends, Bijin appears to be his "favorite" and they seem to be in a serious relationship. Her love for him is such a passion that she threw away her family's honor, and she would try to kill him if he were to break her heart.[15]
Considering her a prodigious Damashigami, he relies on her a lot. But his favorite agent, despite aiming for the top at any environment because of her pride, utterly despises working for the one who ruined her life, on top of finding him exasperating, and tries many ways to dispose of him, including starting an union rally for unpaid wages and pay raise.[16]
To be added
To be added
Equipment[]
Sabato with his Bloodsucking Wheel of Fire.
- Bloodsucking Fire Wheel (吸血烈車): It instantly turns whatever touched it into money, robbing the opponent of his/her assets. The item then is transported to a safe in his room.
- Shinigami Scythe: Back in High School, he had his own Scythe, and he had a technique called "Leaving Stroke" that could slice up a spirit enough to leave it harmless and purify it in one shot, though he let Shinigami girls do it to enjoy being thanked by girls.
Sabato with his wheel in the manga.
Abilities[]
His most common ability is to vanish while producing a storm, which makes him really hard to capture.
Like his son, he can spit out blood and can cry tears of blood, when depressed or shocked, and make himself invisible to ordinary people, although how is unclear. His usual clothes seemed to be the reason, but some moments show that it's not the case.[17] It might be suggested that he somehow got the ability to be invisible and visible at will, and can grant that ability to his followers.
Quotes[]
- "Mommy's already dead!!" (ママはもう死んじゃっただよーーーーっ！) - Chapter 31, when Rinne tells Sabato that the money he is trying to steal was for his train fare to visit his mom
- "Rinne... Papa, doesn’t want to work!" (りんね。。。パパは、働きたくないんだーーっ！！) - Chapter 84, while being forced to prepare Ramen
- "You’d sell your dad for 1000 yen?" (千円でパパを売るというのか。) - Chapter 174, when Rinne catches him
- "Mother couldn’t trust me that much?" (おかあさまはそんなにぼくが信用できなかったのですか！？) - Chapter 272, upon learning Tamako put a cursing mackerel spray under the object of her husband grave’s, because she suspected Sabato would try to steal it
- "However... there’re only good memories. I loved you..." (それでも。。。いい思い出しかないよ。ぼくはきみを愛してた) – Chapter 317, after recovering from the shock of learning how old his wife really was
Trivia[]
- Saba (鯖) means "mackerel" and to (人) means person. To put it another way, Sabato means "mackerel man". This is because his father, a human, died and was eventually reincarnated as a mackerel. His last name, Rokudō, is the word for the six realms of existence in the Buddhist religion.
- Sabato constantly wears a hokkamuri, which is a visual cue that someone is a thief or burglar in Japan, similar to a black mask and a black-and-white striped shirt in the United States. A character from Rumiko Takahashi's work Ranma 1/2 Happosai was wearing it.
- Sabato's father was an unnamed human male, therefore this would make Sabato a "half-breed" due to having both human and Shinigami blood. Interestingly Inuyasha, a main character from Rumiko Takahashi's work Inuyasha was half human and half demon.
- He shares his voice actor with Inuyasha and male Ranma Saotome.
- His personality is similar if not identical to that of Kinnosuke Kashao, a character that appeared in Rumiko Takahashi's manga series Ranma 1/2.
- As Rokumon states: even though Sabato has a tendency of tricking people, he had not experienced being tricked himself, for he could hardly bear the shock to learn that he married someone who was actually as old as his own mother.
- In the two openings of the 1st Season of the anime version, he is shown fighting Rinne with a scythe, but he has not used his scythe until season 3.
Media Appearances[]
Manga[]
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Anime[]
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Gallery[]
References[]
- ↑ http://www.furinkan.com/kyokai/anime/index.html
- ↑ Chapter 175, Episode 30
- ↑ Chapter 243, Episode 51
- ↑ Chapters 55-56, Episode 18
- ↑ Chapter 137, Episode 38
- ↑ Chapters 37-39, Episode 12-Episode 13
- ↑ Chapters 84-85, Episode 24
- ↑ Chapters 234-236, Episode 48
- ↑ Chapters 242-244, Episode 51
- ↑ Chapter 272, Episode 59
- ↑ Chapters 313-317, Episode 63-Episode 64
- ↑ Chapters 393-398
- ↑ Chapter 189, Episode 53
- ↑ Chapters 345, 384
- ↑ Chapters 253 (Episode 72), 370
- ↑ Chapter 151 (Episode 60) ...
- ↑ Episode 63, Chapters 345, 384