Gunpei Ikari
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This man's name was Gunpei Ikari. But you take away the uniforms and the war, he became my brother. And we swore we'd never leave each other behind.
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— Lt. Hank Marlow (Kong: Skull Island) |
Gunpei Ikari is a minor character who appears in the opening flashback to the 2017 Legendary Pictures film Kong: Skull Island.
Name
Ikari's name was derived from that of late Japanese game designer Gunpei Yokoi and the character Shinji Ikari from Neon Genesis Evangelion.[1]
History
Monsterverse
Kong: Skull Island
In 1944, Japanese Zero Fighter pilot Gunpei Ikari engaged in a life-or-death struggle with American fighter pilot Hank Marlow after their planes crash-landed on Skull Island. Ikari gained the upper hand in the fight and prepared to deliver a fatal blow to Marlow with a dagger, but was halted by the appearance of Kong from over a cliff. In the following years, Ikari and Marlow, stranded on the island, forged a brotherly bond and managed to survive the island's dangerous ecosystem for a time. Using the remains of their downed aircraft, they attempted to build a boat to escape the island, but Ikari was killed by a Skullcrawler before they could complete it.
Decades later, in 1973, a stranded group of explorers found Marlow in an Iwi village and resolved to escape the island with him. When they were later attacked by Skullcrawlers, Marlow wielded a katana left behind by Ikari.
Books
Kong: Skull Island - The Official Movie Novelization
Ikari's role is expanded upon slightly in this novel. It is explained that the reason for his death was because he though he heard an Iwi child scream and went to rescue them, not realizing it was actually a Skullcrawler mimicking human sounds. Right before Marlow embraces his family once again, he reflects on a night spent with Gunpei. During their conversation, they recount their most harrowing experiences on Skull Island after a Skullcrawler's assault on the Iwi village, in which Gunpei says: "The one just before [Kong] appeared, when I almost murdered my best friend."
In other languages
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Trivia
- Gunpei Ikari is similar to Godzilla Minus One protagonist Koichi Shikishima, being a World War II Zero Fighter pilot whose role in the war is left unfulfilled after landing on a monster-inhabited island.
References
This is a list of references for Gunpei Ikari. These citations are used to identify the reliable sources on which this article is based. These references appear inside articles in the form of superscript numbers, which look like this: [1]
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Comments
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