Who Are Kamui and Fuma?
The whole apocalypse is a friendship, told from both ends.
Kamui is a title before it is a name. Prophecy allows two of them, one for each army, and the mechanism is pitiless: the boy born to the role, Kamui Shiro, gets to choose his side, and his childhood friend Fuma Monou, born as his twin star, is assigned the other. There is no version of the story where they stand together.
Kamui, Fuma, and Fuma's younger sister Kotori were inseparable children in Tokyo before Kamui's mother took him away for six years. He returns cold, secretive, and desperate to keep the two of them out of his war, which is precisely what drags them to its center.
KAMUI SHIRO
The one who choosesHis inheritance
Kamui’s mother Toru died by fire as a shadow sacrifice, a kage-nie, burning in another’s place. His aunt Tokiko follows her, giving birth to the second Sacred Sword. The Magami family’s women die so that Kamui can decide.
His choice
Pressed by both armies, Kamui finally names his wish: not humanity, not the planet, but Fuma and Kotori safe. That wish makes him a Dragon of Heaven, and makes Fuma his enemy in the same instant.
His tarot
In CLAMP’s tarot for the series, Kamui is The Magician, the figure of will and potential, printed with the first volume.
FUMA MONOU
The one who is chosen against his willThe friend
The manga’s Fuma before the change is its warmest character: a dutiful son at the Togakushi shrine, a protective brother, the first person Kamui ever trusted.
The awakening
When Kamui chooses Heaven, the second Kamui wakes in Fuma. The new personality knows everyone’s true wish and grants wishes as cruelties. His first acts are against Kamui and Kotori, and they define the war.
The question
Whether the original Fuma can be recovered is the only ending Kamui wants. The film answers it with a sword; the TV series answers it with a sacrifice; the manga has not answered it at all.
KOTORI MONOU
The heart between themThe third child
Kotori, frail-hearted and dreaming true dreams she does not understand, is the person both boys are fighting over long before either admits it.
Her role
Her fate is the hinge of the first half of the manga: the event that fixes Kamui’s choice, wakes Fuma’s other self fully, and sets the terms of everything after.