Kuroko Sato (佐藤 黒呼 Satō Kuroko?), also known by her maiden name Kuroko Sanada (真田 黒呼 Sanada Kuroko?), is a retired Spirit Detective. She is the wife of Shogo Sato and the mother of Kaisei Sato and Fubuki Sato.
Appearance[]
Kuroko is a slender and very tall woman. She has jet-black hair with a dark cyan shine, all tied in a ponytail. She has a peach skin complexion. In a flashback, when she was a Spirit Detective she is shown to have had short hair.
Personality[]
Kuroko is kind and is shown to be a fun-loving person. She likes being with her family, but is also shown to drink alcohol in their presence. Kuroko met master Genkai at one point and came to trust the old woman's judgement over Spirit World's.
Likely due to never being desensitized to the concept of how demons need to eat humans to live (though Hokushin noted there were other ways), Kuroko values human life regardless of morality; it shocked her that Yusuke (who was morally grey) could be matter-of-fact with a demon about his diet. Kuroko couldn't accept the idea that a human could have such a view and blamed it on the awakening of his demonic heritage, even though demons are more likely to eat flesh than souls.
Background[]
Kuroko when she was active as a Spirit Detective
When Kuroko first started training as a Spirit Detective while in junior-high school, she was rather obese. A combination of training and a sudden growth spurt helped her lose a great deal of weight, eventually leading to her current appearance.
Ten years before the start of the series, she met Shinobu Sensui, her successor, just after she retired to start a family. She remembered him being quiet and respectful, but was suspicious of him being too rigid and suspected he was always in a precarious state of mind.
Synopsis[]
Three Kings Saga[]
When Yusuke experienced personal problems after Sensui's defeat, Genkai sent him to see Kuroko. While he was walking to her house, he was attacked by Kaisei and Fubuki who had mistaken him for a demon in disguise because of his demon energy; they only attack intruders by their energy signals.
Yusuke deliberately toys with them before Kuroko tells them to stop trying to attack him; they were about to use their spirit energy in the fight, which had surprised him.
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Kuroko Sato and Yusuke
Kuroko takes Yusuke to her house to meet her family. There, Yusuke saw some old pictures of Kuroko, when she was about his own age and how she had a growth spurt by the time she was seventeen, when she became a proficient Spirit Detective herself. Flashbacks showed that she was indeed quite a formidable fighter.
After the children are eventually sent off to bed, they sit down and are about to talk, only to be interrupted by three demon monks; Hokushin, Seitei, and Touou.
After Yusuke's conversation with the three demon monks, in which he learns of his demonic ancestor Raizen and reveals a cynical and dismissive perspective on mankind compared against the way high-class demons regard humans as little more than food, Kuroko tells him to leave her house and go to Demon World.
She had deduced his demonic state when she had first met him, but his cavalier dismissal of the implicit threat of demons regarding humans as food had made her distrust him. Amidst his protests that he would never attack her family, she reveals having been warned of him earlier that day by Ayame, the ferry girl on behalf of King Enma, and of being afraid that he would be a threat to her family.
Just as Yusuke is about to leave, however, Shogo appears. Having read Yusuke's palm earlier, Shogo now reveals that Yusuke would part from his friends in an incident stained with blood.
She is never seen in the anime or manga afterwards.
Abilities[]
As a former Spirit Detective, Kuroko has knowledge of the Spirit and Demon Worlds who has the ability to control the flow of her aura, and presumably emit it as well. As well as Yusuke Urameshi and Sensui, she too has the ability to fire spirit energy in a blast as she had taught her kids as well.
A testament to her power, is that Spirit World had the confidence to ask her to kill Yusuke, who is an incredibly powerful fighter himself. However, it is greatly implied that Kuroko would have needed to resort to underhanded tactics to have a hope of success, given that Yusuke was able to defeat Kuroko's successor Sensui, who was a vastly superior fighter and Spirit Detective, with S-Class level power.
Family[]
Shogo Sato[]
Shogo Sato
Kuroko's husband, Shogo Sato (佐藤晶吾, Satō Shōgo) is a novelist and a rather weak man, at least in the presence of people remarkably stronger than he is.
He can also read palms with considerable accuracy, which he describes as a parlor trick.
Kaisei and Fubuki Sato[]
Kaisei and Fubuki Sato
- Nine-year old Kaisei Sato (佐藤快晴, Satō Kaisei), (Kaisai in FUNimation dub) is a boy who likes to memorize television shows.
- Eight-year old Fubuki Sato (佐藤風吹, Satō Fubuki) is a girl who likes Masato Hagiwara.
Her children said that they use the family name Sanada instead of Sato, their actual family name, since Sanada is "way cooler" which appears to depress their father, though only jokingly so.
Etymology[]
- The name Kuroko means "black" (黒) (kuro) and "call" (呼) (ko).
- Kuroko's surname Sato means "help, aid" (佐) (sa) and "wisteria" (藤) (to).
- Her maiden name Sanada means "real, genuine" (真) (sana) and "field, rice paddy" (田) (ta/da).