Kihara Amata

Kihara Amata (木原数多) is an antagonist in the original Toaru Majutsu no Index series. A member of the Kihara Family, he displays a vicious nature befitting of the commander of Hound Dog. He is also a researcher, and most notably is the former mentor of the strongest esper in Academy City, Accelerator.

He is the main Science side antagonist of the Academy City Invasion Arc, as a counterpart to the arc's Magic side antagonist, Vento of the Front.

Appearance
Amata is only seen wearing a pair of pants and a jacket over his black shirt which is somewhat similar to Accelerator's black and white shirt. The most of notable of all his clothes is his long white lab coat, which makes him stand out amongst his own forces that wear all black.

He wears his blonde hair short, which compliments his strong facial features, such as his square jaw and cheek bones. Most prominently, Amata has a tattoo on the left side of his face.

Other notable apparel he wears is a pair of machine gloves known as Micromanipulators, used for high precision work.

Personality
Kihara Amata thinks little of human lives, especially those of his subordinates, calling them garbage with no human rights, even more so with espers whom he sees as nothing more than guinea pigs. This thinking allows him to kill anyone that he deems useless without remorse, and derives pleasure from taking someone's life; this thought process is comparable to him simply pulling out weeds.

However, because of his very nature, Vento of the Front's Divine Punishment does not affect him, as even with the intent to kill Vento, he shows none of the hostility required for the spell to work. She even describes Kihara Amata as being truly rotten to the core, and is at least similar to her.

Kihara Amata also has a penchant for peppering his dialogue with profanity even in non-hostile situations.

However despite his cold blooded disposition and willingness to immediatley resort to killing anyone that remotely annoys him, Amata has shown a level of mercy and self control when dealing with children or his "guinea pigs", as seen during his confrontation with Accelerator, where he stated that the sole reason why he didn't kill him during the latter's childhood having his ability developed under him was due to him being a child and his "precious" research specimen, allowing Amata to tolerate him to a certain degree despite his personality and hold off from killing him numerous times in the past.

Background
Not much is known regarding Amata, though he is regarded in Academy City as the greatest ability development researcher for development of Accelerator. Even during that time, Amata wanted to kill Accelerator, though could not because he was research material. Even so, Amata was able to train Accelerator to his specifications, discovering weaknesses to his own abilities that he could readily exploit if he desired, most notably the ability to bypass Accelerator's Redirection. Even though he is a developer of esper abilities, he believes that espers are simply experimental animals.

Some time later, Amata became the leader of the Hound Dogs under the command of Aleister Crowley.

Academy City Invasion Arc
Kihara Amata first appears before Accelerator in attempt to kill him and subdue Last Order under the direct orders of Aleister Crowley, after Vento of the Front's invasion of Academy City and crippling its infrastructure.

Here, Accelerator underestimates Amata's capabilities and is thoroughly beaten to a bloody pulp. Accelerator however, was able to catapult Last Order out of grasps of the Hound Dogs and is later saved by the arrival of Index, who distracted them. While trying to attack the vehicle that Accelerator commandeered from the Hound Dogs, Amata meets Vento of the Front who is also looking for Index as so she could kill her. Much to her mild amusement, Amata is totally immune to Divine Punishment even after attacking her. Annoyed, Amata orders the Hound Dogs to form teams to eliminate Accelerator and any witnesses, Vento of the Front, and a team to come with him at the rendezvous point. Before leaving Amata tells Vento of the Front to be more capable if she wants to face him.

Kihara Amata is later seen at the rendezvous point, intrigued at the Hound Dogs becoming unconscious due to Divine Punishment and later orders the set up the Testament machine for use on Last Order. Much later, the Hound Dogs retrieve Last Order, to which Amata uses to taunt Accelerator over the phone, however, Accelerator sees through Amata's ruse of threatening Last Order with harm, since the higher ups of Academy City(Crowley) have ordered him not to harm her, greatly angering Kihara Amata.

Later, Amata uses the Testament machine to write a virus on the captured Last Order to activate Fuse KAZAKIRI. Here, he is greatly amused by Aleister's creation of something that likens to an angel. His excitement however, is interrupted by the arrival of Accelerator. Here, Amata uses his own Hound Dogs as a shield to counter Accelerator's gunshots, and later does battle with Accelerator after he mows down all remaining members of the Hound Dog with him. Predictably, Amata easily deals with Accelerator who later runs out of power for his collar. However, Kihara Amata is later taken by surprise by Accelerator trying to stand up and fight him even though his powers have run out, with this Amata is injured by his constant attacks, in anger however, Amata takes the chip that can treat the virus infecting Last Order and destroys it, taunting Accelerator at the same time. He then proceeds to beat down on Accelerator, however, the latter is saved by the arrival of Index, who has come to discover that Last Order is the core to keeping Kazakiri's Angel form.

Amata tries to attack her while she is curing Last Order, but stopped by the constant attack of Accelerator. Amata angered by Accelerator, finally uses a grenade on a weakened Accelerator. Much to his surprise, Accelerator survives the explosion of the grenade and sees before him the black wings that sprout forth from his back. Here, he surmises that the wings are made out of AIM, and describes his form as an angel. Amata met his demise after being used by Accelerator as the projectile for his own version of the Railgun.

Legacy
Despite dying at the end of the first arc he was introduced, Kihara Amata still somewhat influences the future events, most prominently his counter that was used by other antagonists, albeit with a variable success rate. In New Testament, one of his relatives reveals that she can still use his thought patterns and mainly uses them in most cases.

Toaru Majutsu no Index (PSP game)
Kihara Amata appears as a non-playable character in the game, here he is first seen in Accelerator's story route where he kidnaps Last Order to activate angel mode of Kazakiri Hyouka, after defeating her, Accelerator regains Last Order, the final scene unlocks a CG of Accelerator about to do battle with Kihara Amata.

Amata also appears in Mugino Shizuri's story route, he gives her a traitorous Sister clone as a partner and gives her missions for her and the clone to complete.

Toaru Kagaku no Dark Matter
During the events of SCHOOL's conflict with the DA, Amata made a cameo appearance in the flashback of Yuzuriha Ringo during her time being experimented on when she was part of the Dark May Project. Where after Ringo had gone berserk upon seeing her friend, Ryuugou Tomoka death and Ringo being forcibly restrained by the the researchers, Amata was seen entering into the testing area of the lab,while grunting unhappily upon seeing the results of the experiments together with his relative, Kihara Souji and was later seen irritatingly asking the researchers if they really called upon him just to see how meager the experiment was.

From this it can be guessed that due to Amata being the primary ability developer for Accelerator, he was called in to observe the results and progress of the Dark May Project due to them utilizing Accelerator's thought patterns and feelings by implanting them into their subjects minds in order to boost their ability development. And due to him being an expert on Accelerator, he was sent to observe their research.

Abilities
As the commander of the Hound Dogs, Kihara Amata is capable of operating a anti-tank missile launcher on his own, as well as anti-personnel grenade. It is said by Kihara Enshuu, while mimicking Amata's thought patterns, that his combat pattern pattern consists in controlling hammer-level destructive power on the microscopic level. Amata's thought patterns are also the ones primarily used by Enshuu to beat down a high level esper in a close quarters brawl, showing his efficiency against espers.

Kihara Amata is also a talented researcher and power developer, capable of operating a Testament machine. He was the one who "gave" Accelerator his powers, and knew his weaknesses as a result, such as throwing off Accelerator's wind control calculations by using a soundwave that changed the factors in Accelerator's calculations. Amata himself explains that he perfectly understands that "controlling" something with vectors requires very difficult calculations, so by adding an unknown element to "wind" such as "sound", a "blind spot" in the calculations is created and properly manipulating wind for air attacks becomes too hard. In order to produce a soundwave with the proper wave and directionality Amata uses a device he carries as a strap on his cellphone.

Because of his intricate knowledge of the Accelerator's skills, Amata can bypass Accelerator's Redirection. Amata can hit Accelerator by pulling back his attack right before it is redirected by Accelerator's field, because Accelerator's redirection field simply changes the direction of the vector towards its opposite, as such anything that is coming towards Accelerator will be redirected back in the opposite direction. In this method, Kihara can use his 'Counter' to retract his fist the moment before it makes contact with Accelerator, so the vector redirection instead pulls it towards Accelerator.

Equipment

 * Micromanipulator (マイクロマニピュレータ): Mechanical gloves that allowed the wearer to perform sensitive work on a scale of 1μm (one-millionth of a meter). The gloves were reinforced with small motors and electrically contracting artificial muscles as so the wearer could perform super delicate work. . It is unknown for what purpose Amata used the gloves for, as he could easily bypass Accelerator's Redirection without it after it was destroyed.

Design Evolution
Appearing only once in the series, Kihara Amata was designed as something unexpected in the world of Toaru Majutsu no Index, and references regarding his design.

Trivia

 * Kihara Amata is the first Kihara known to have control of a military unit in Academy City. A relative of his Therestina Kihara Lifeline, also controlled a pseudo-military unit in Academy City, known as MAR. Both lost their positions, with Therestina becoming incarcerated and Amata being killed.
 * The way Accelerator "screams" Kihara's name ("KIHARA-KUN!!!") has somehow become a joke amongst internet fans.
 * In the anime Blue Exorcist, Kihara's seiyuu, Keiji Fujiwara voices Shirou Fujimoto, the surrogate father of one of the main characters, Rin Okumura. The irony here is that Rin is voiced by Nobuhiko Okamoto, Accelerator's seiyuu. Rin even shows certain distain towards Fujimoto in this possible nod.
 * According to Railgun manga editor Ogino Kentarou, he is the creator of Bust Upper, though it is confirmed to be a joke.

Quotes

 * (To Accelerator, Volume 12): “Yeah, I really didn’t want to see you again. But it was an order from the higher ups, so I didn’t have much of a choice. Something about it being an emergency situation so they have to use every available option. Sorry, but…how bout you just let me kick your ass here?
 * (To Accelerator, ibid): "I wanna kill you. I wanna kill you so damn bad. To be honest, I’ve always wanted to smash in that face of yours so bad I could barely stand it. But you were my research specimen and, more importantly, you were a kid. A terrible little brat, but a kid nonetheless. That just barely allowed me to hold back. But I shouldn’t have. I really should’ve killed you back then. Ahh…I fucked up. Ah ha ha. What was I thinking? So I’ll just have to kill you now, you damn brat."
 * (To Accelerator questioning if he developed esper powers, ibid): "Gya ha ha! No, no, that’s not it at all. Why would I experiment on myself? That’s a job for the guinea pigs. This is nothing so amazing. It doesn’t take that much to crush you even without ridiculous powers. Why would I take such a risk just to crush a single idiot like you? Well?"
 * (To Accelerator): "I know your characteristics, equations, personal reality, everything! I don't call myself your power developer for nothing!"
 * (To a Hound Dog): "Let me teach you one rule you don't seem to understand. You are one piece of crap in a pile of garbage. You don't have any human rights. We can find replacement garbage anywhere. If you get in the way of this very important plan, I have no problem of throwing you in the gutter. Get it? You're as good as dead."
 * (Upon seeing Fuze Kazakiri, Volume 13): "I can’t fucking believe this! You’re completely insane, Aleister!! I can’t even begin to understand this! What kind of scientist denies science! So all of this was about crushing Academy City’s enemies with that! Yeah, with something like that, we can handle most anyone. I don’t know who was hanging out on the outer edges of the city, but they’re fucked now! Look at that! People are gonna want more than the Three Non-Nuclear Principles once they see this angel!! When did the Bible become a pop-up book!?"
 * (To Accelerator, ibid) : "Did you think you were a total badass or something? Did you think you could make up for everything you’ve done by standing up to a giant evil organization to save a poor kidnapped brat? Gya ha ha! What a fucking joke! You’re never escaping the mud! You can crawl around and try to crawl out of it all you want, but that mud isn’t ever coming off!! You should just give up and sink in! If you start walking around, you’ll only get everything else dirty!"

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Amata Kihara