Diamond

Diamond
	; Diamond, as he appears in the manga.
Name in Kanji	ダイヤ
Name in Romaji	Daiya
Alternate spelling(s)	Dia
Fighting Style	Bōjutsu
Allegiance(s)	Shin
Position(s)	Retainer of KING
Appearances	Manga (ch. 4), Anime (ep. 3), Rei Gaiden (ch. 18)
Voice actor(s)	Daisuke Gōri (anime); Riichi Nishimoto (Sega fighting game); Peter Spellos (anime dub)

Diamond (ダイヤ, Daiya): A Kingsman who specializes in bōjutsu and wears clown-like makeup. After the death of Spade, King orders Diamond and his men to murder innocent villagers in order to draw out Kenshiro. He forces a young girl to support her father on her shoulders, who has a noose around his neck, to keep him from being hanged. Kenshiro puts an end to the torture and fights Diamond, killing him with the Koushu Hagan Ken (Face Breaking Fist).

Appearance

He is a tall, muscular man with an olive skin tone who has a mane of hair that is colored purple (red in the anime) and clown-like face paint around his eyes and mouth. He wears a leather harness on his chest that's attached to a pair of metal shoulderpads, a pair of identical spiked armguards, a pair of pants with a loincloth over them, and a pair of boots with plates of armor holstered over them.

Personality

Diamond, like many villains in the series, shows little to no empathy or remorse for his actions, and a morbidly creative sense of sadism. One of his favorite things to do is to force families into extremely dangerous situations where one could accidentally kill the other, likely because he enjoys seeing their extreme emotional distress.

TV Series

In the anime series, he is the Jack of Diamond. In another change from the manga, he and his men are forcing a man to aim a bow and arrow at his own son in William Tell fashion. Kenshiro saves the boy by using Nishi Shinku Ha to catch the arrow before it can hit him before sending it back into the shoulder of the father's tormentor, one of Diamond's men.

Other Material

Together with Club, Diamond starred in the short story, Recollection of Heavy Metal. It is said his real name was Takashi Yamamura (山村たかし) and that he ran a heavy metal band with Club prior to the apocalypse.

Video games

Hokuto No Ken 3 features Diamond as a random encounter in KING palace.

The Master system game has Diamond as the second miniboss in Shin's stage.

Diamond is represented by a generic spear commander in Shin Hokuto Muso.

Trivia

Diamond's torture of the young girl and her father upon her shoulders is a shout-out to villain Frank's most sadistic act from the Sergio Leone western Once Upon a Time in the West.