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In the G.I. Joe comic book, "Arashikage" was the family name of a group of martial artists. (Typically, in the comic, almost any martial artist was referred to as a "ninja", but most of them dressed like ninjas in bad movies anyway.) The character of Thomas Arashikage was given the code name "Storm Shadow" at some point before or during his employment with Cobra, and went by that pseudonym after leaving Cobra, including his time with the G.I. Joe team, when it again was his official codename. "Storm shadow" is a possible translation of "arashikage", though Larry Hama also intended it to possibly mean other things, based on various Japanese homonyms.
The character Snake Eyes trained with the Arashikages after he returned from service in the Vietnam war, on his friend Storm Shadow's recommendation.
The leaders of the Arashikage Dojo were the Hard Master and Soft Master, a pair of elderly but vivacious men whose nicknames were derived from their appearance - the Hard Master was a gaunt, bony man with a serious demeanor, and the Soft Master's strength was concealed by his short, pudgy body and cheerful attitude. Their real names and relation to Storm Shadow are unknown. Sadly, both were lost to the evil of Cobra: the Hard Master to Zartan's arrow, fired in a ploy to frame Snake-Eyes for Storm Shadow's murder (the Master was mimmicking Snake-Eyes' breathing behind a screen), and the Soft Master in a car explosion while escaping from Springfield, a town that was a smoke screen for Cobra operations.
Other notable figures related to the family and dojo include:
- Master Onihashi, the old swordsmith who trained Zartan in his craft, and committed seppuku when he learned that Zartan had killed the Hard Master.
- Zartan himself, master of disguise and longtime ally/contractor for Cobra.
- Jinx, one of the G.I. Joe team's few female members, and a fighter to rival the other Arashikage students.
- The Blind Master, a blind, middle-aged, African-American martial artist who trained Billy, and who was also killed by Zartan.
- Billy himself, Cobra Commander's son, who later trained with Storm Shadow and Jinx and now wears the hexagram on his arm.
- Firefly, who spent time with the family as part of Zartan's assassination plan, and later, with Slice and Dice, led a group of renegade "Red Ninjas", who used Arashikage techniques. During his time at the dojo, Firefly was known as the "Faceless Master", because of his use of a form of hypnosis (which may have actually been a device like Zartan's holograms) which caused his face to appear blurred to anyone he looked at.
The hexagram from the I Ching which is the emblem of the Arashikage family and related groups, and worn by their members as a red tattoo on the forearm, is this:
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