The bandit who ruled toads. Jiraiya is the shapeshifting hero of one of Edo Japan's great adventure serials — born Ogata Shuma Hiroyuki, son of a noble clan destroyed by treachery. Cast out and orphaned, he becomes a chivalrous outlaw, and then learns the good stuff: gama magic, toad sorcery taught by a mountain hermit, letting him summon and ride colossal toads and bend them to his will. His name, 自来也 — roughly "I was here" — is the tag a thief leaves at the scene. Robin Hood with a giant amphibian.

His whole world runs on a three-way magical stand-off, the old rock-paper-scissors of the swamp: Jiraiya's toad magic is preyed on by the serpent sorcery of his nemesis, Orochimaru, and the serpent in turn is undone by the slug magic of Jiraiya's ally Tsunade. It's why you'll see him locked against giant snakes — the toad-versus-serpent grudge is the engine of the entire saga. (If that trio of names rings a modern bell, it should: Jiraiya's DNA runs straight through a century of manga and anime.) Kuniyoshi clearly relished him, casting him both as a Suikoden-style outlaw-hero and, elsewhere, as a hard-bitten warrior loading his matchlock among the rocks — the sorcerer who's just as happy with gunpowder as with spells.

Ogata Shuma Hiroyuki (尾形周馬寛行) - also known as Jiraiya (自来也) - from the series Honchō suikoden gōketsu happyaku-nin no hitori (本朝水滸伝豪傑八百人一個, Eight Hundred Heroes of Our Country's Suikoden, One by One) 1830.

Utagawa Kuniyoshi (歌川国芳, 1798-1861)