Itsuka Kendo

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Itsuka Kendo, also known as Battle Fist (バトルフィスト), is the class representative of Class 1-B at U.A. High School and is training there to become a Pro Hero.

Appearance
Itsuka is a girl of medium height and has a slim build. She has teal eyes and long orange hair that she typically wears tied into a high ponytail on the left side of her head. Her bangs are split into three clumps around her eyes, and some of her hair sticks up in large tufts at the top of her head.

For her hero costume, Itsuka wears a turquoise knee-length, over which she has a black double-breasted , ending just below her breasts. She also sports black short pants under the qipao. For accessories, she wears a loose brown utility belt around her hips with a satchel attached at the back; a thin black around her eyes and white-heeled navy blue boots with wide vamps that reach down to her toes, filled in with white slips.

For her winter hero costume, she switches out her normal qipao for one with long wrist-length sleeves.

Personality
Itsuka is a spirited girl who is thoughtful of others. She does not hesitate to criticize even her classmates if she feels what they are doing is not right, like whenever she karate chops Neito Monoma on the back of his neck to prevent him from antagonizing Class 1-A and the rest of Class 1-B. She is also willing to pass on opportunities that would benefit her if she feels other people deserve it better. This is shown when she let Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu and Ibara Shiozaki participate in the tournament event of the U.A. Sports Festival in place of her team. Tetsutetsu has stated that because of Itsuka's cheerful personality, she can bring all of Class 1-B together, thus making her the "big sister" of Class 1-B.

Itsuka is additionally friendly to people outside her class and seems to hold no signs of ill-will towards Class 1-A, making her a minority of the 1-B students. She has displayed sympathy towards others, even if she is not particularly close to them. She showed concern for Izuku Midoriya and Tenya Ida after hearing about their run-in with Stain and helped Class 1-A by telling them what was supposed to be on the First Term Final Exam's practical portion despite it being somewhat against the rules.

In combat, Itsuka is very analytical. She is able to understand Mustard's Quirk (comparing the motion of his gas to that of a tornado) and using that logic to determine the user's location. She is also able to use her own Quirk to dispel the gas Mustard emits, allowing her and Tetsutetsu to fight without the need for gas masks.

Abilities
Overall Abilities: Itsuka has proven herself to be a highly formidable combatant, as her skills earned her 5th place in the U.A. Entrance Exam. She also has a great handle on her Quirk, Big Fist, which is primarily used during close-range and melee combat. Itsuka has enough power to break through most defenses. The sudden expansion of her hands can be used to surprise foes, assuming that they're not aware of how her Quirk functions, or to increase the power of her attacks through the momentum of the expansion. Itsuka's enlarged hands are useful not only for combat but as a method of transporting others and restraining opponents as well, making it convenient for rescues and criminal escorting. Someone wrapped by Itsuka's giant hands will become protected from certain airborne hazards such as poisonous gas, albeit just temporarily.

She demonstrated her mettle when she held her own against the villain Mustard, a member of the League of Villains' Vanguard Action Squad, while fighting alongside Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu. Itsuka not only parried the gas-producing villain with her Quirk, but was able to use the strength increasing capabilities of her Quirk to generate enough wind to dispel the toxic gas that the villain created, and give Tetsutetsu an opening to defeat Mustard. Itsuka has shown to be quite capable at hand-to-hand combat, as she could incapacitate Neito Monoma with a karate chop. Her melee combat skills were further showcased during the Joint Training Battle, where she battled Momo Yaoyorozu, a recommended student. By using her combat prowess in conjunction with the increased strength that her Quirk provides, Itsuka was able to overwhelm Momo and smash her way through the latter's defenses. While Momo was able to temporarily blindside her with a cannon, Itsuka was still more than capable of incapacitating the Everything Hero with her "Double Jumbo Fist" technique, although the recommended student did manage to tie herself to Itsuka before losing consciousness.

Keen Intellect: Itsuka is shown to be extremely intelligent and tactical, demonstrated when she theorized the location of Mustard and the pattern of his Quirk, Gas, and being able to figure out how to quickly dispel the villain's fumes. She has excellent analytical skills and a high sense of perceptiveness, and as she's ranked A-class in her official intelligence stat, her capacities in this regard are overall redoubtable. Tetsutetsu has even commented on Itsuka's quick wit, her level head in situations, and her ability to make the right decisions on the fly.

During the Joint Training, Itsuka demonstrated her incredible camaraderie and ingenuity, taking into account all of her teammates' strengths and weaknesses to effectively devise a two-fold plan for battling against the opposing team. Her first plan of action was to have Shihai Kuroiro take control of Fumikage Tokoyami's Dark Shadow and launch a surprise attack. Itsuka knew that Fumikage would use Dark Shadow to scout out her team and that the opposing team would never expect any member of her own team to take control of Dark Shadow. When Shihai inquired as to what would happen if he failed at her strategy, Itsuka revealed an effective contingency plan. If the opposing team was focused on fighting him, they would have had to use light to weaken him; and by taking advantage of that said light, Dark Shadow would not only be weakened as well, but the rest of her team would be able to pinpoint the opposing team's location, surround them, and go all out. Another part of her auxiliary strategy was to have Manga Fukidashi use his Quirk, Comic, to separate Momo from the rest of her teammates, knowing that the heroine was the opposing team's main strategist. Itsuka figured that if she brought the match to her own area of expertise, close-quarters combat, she would secure victory for her team.

However, despite her ingenuity, Shoto Todoroki realized a flaw in Itsuka's precautionary strategy in separating Momo from her teammates. He pointed out that if she really wanted to be cautious of Momo, then Itsuka would have had her entire team overwhelm the Everything Hero from the start of the match. This may simply be an indication of a strategic preference to be more broad than direct in her approach, rather than singling out the "brains" of the operation. However, Shoto's analysis further implies that Itsuka purposefully did not attempt to overwhelm Momo because she sought to personally engage with her in battle after strategically isolating her, and her confrontational sentiment is exemplified by the challenge that Itsuka had made to her self-proclaimed rival prior to the exercise. Although her team ultimately won the match, this oversight may have cost her and her classmates their victory; thus, for all Itsuka's strategic capacity, this demonstrates that she's equally inclined to make rather risky and impulsive decisions, or just generally lose sight of the bigger picture.

Quirk
Big Fist: Itsuka's Quirk grants her the ability to enlarge both of her hands to a gigantic size. With the increased size comes enhanced striking power and gripping capabilities.


 * Enhanced Strength: Itsuka appears to have strength greater than the average human since she can carry people and lift her enlarged hands without a problem, as seen in her fight against Mustard. Her enlarged hands grant her proportionally increased chopping and gripping strength. During Round Two of the Joint Training Battle, she proved to be strong enough to easily crush Momo Yaoyorozu's shields made of tungsten, the strongest metal on earth.

Ultimate Moves

 * Double Jumbo Fist: With both her hands at normal size, Itsuka strikes her enemy with them, activating her Quirk just before impact to maximize damage.

Chapter Appearances

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Anime Appearances

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Trivia

 * Itsuka's rankings in the Popularity Polls are the following:
 * Ranked 13th in the First Popularity Poll.
 * Ranked 33rd in the Second Popularity Poll.
 * Ranked 29th in the Third Popularity Poll.
 * Ranked 50th in the Fourth Popularity Poll.
 * Itsuka's Quirk is similar to the abilities possessed by hero . Though instead of full malleable control of her body, Itsuka is limited to increasing the size of her fists, albeit that is Kamala's preferred form of combat.
 * However, since Kamala's first appearance in Marvel Comics (mid-2014) is close to Itsuka's first appearance in the manga (January 2015), her powers could have also been adapted from, a founding member of the with the same powers as Kamala Khan.
 * Itsuka's surname contains the kanji for "fist" (拳) and "wisteria" (藤), while her given contains the kanji for "one, best" (一) and "excellent, beautiful" (佳).
 * Her surname is a possible reference to her Quirk and of the same name.
 * Itsuka likes black coffee and motorcycles. She's also referred to as "masculine".
 * Her last name is a homophone of Kendo Rappa's first name as they are pronounced the same but spelled with different kanji.
 * According to Kohei Horikoshi, Itsuka is very popular among his staff.
 * Itsuka came in 5th place for the U.A. Entrance Exam with a score of 25 Villain Points and 40 Rescue Points.

Quotes

 * (To Mustard) "Carrying a gun around is just another way of saying you've got no confidence in a fight. Because at least us simple minds at U.A... have grown beyond the point of ever thinking that there's no hope!"
 * (To Momo Yaoyorozu) "Ever since we appeared in those commercials during our workplace experience, we've kinda been treated like a pair, you know? They always box us together like an idol group or something. But you have better grades and a better Quirk than me, so whenever people would lump us together like that, I really couldn't stand it. I wouldn't show it though. So on a personal level, I always wanted to try duking it out with you!"

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