Kasumi (Dead or Alive)

Kasumi is a nukenin ("missing shinobi") and former member of the Mugen Tenshin clan, who debuted in the first Dead or Alive back during the 1996 arcade release. One of the original eight characters, Kasumi became the main protagonist of the Dead or Alive series (specifically in Dead or Alive, Dead or Alive 2, and Dead or Alive 5), and is often viewed as the series mascot. She was the winner of the first Dead or Alive Tournament.

Originally second-in-line for the title of clan master within the Mugen Tenshin, Kasumi became nukenin, after she ran away from home in order to avenge her older brother, Hayate. She is also the half-sister and cousin of Ayane.

Story
Childhood

Kasumi is the daughter and second child of Shiden and Ayame, and was born into the Mugen Tenshin's head family, making her second-in-line to the title of clan leader, after her older brother Hayate.

When they were children, Kasumi and Ayane - unaware that they were related - played together as best friends, although the clan saw Ayane as a "cursed child" and didn't want Kasumi to be around her. From childhood, Kasumi has lived a privileged life full of expensive clothes, servants and the respect of the rest of the Mugen Tenshin clan. According to their mother, Ayame, Kasumi and Ayane used to have fun catching fish for the family. Her relationship with Hayate was also ideal, with the two playing games and training together happily.

However, once Ayane learned of her true heritage, and the children now knew that they were siblings, Kasumi's friendship with Ayane ended due to Ayane's jealous anger over her mistreatment by the clan, centering her animosity on the "princess" Kasumi.

Running away and the First Tournament

When Kasumi was seventeen, her uncle, the rogue ninja Raidou, returned to the village to obtain the Torn Sky Blast technique; a ninpo spell used by the clan's leaders. Defeating even the prodigious Ayane, Raidou eventually manages to mimic the technique from Hayate, and rendered the boy both comatose and paraplegic before escaping. As Kasumi was not present during the attack and nobody told her what had happened, she was left clueless as to what happened until much later.

Due to Hayate's dire state and the unlikelihood of his recovery, Shiden chose Kasumi to become the clan’s eighteenth master. Her worry over her brother seemed to affect her training, but she managed to learn the Torn Sky Blast at least. Wanting to know the truth, Kasumi turned to Ayane, and believing that Kasumi will never become a great leader anyway, she tells her that Raidou was the fiend who harmed Hayate.

With the truth finally out, Kasumi decided to take possibly suicidal action and left the village without permission in order to find Raidou and take revenge on him for Hayate, although this meant she would become a nukenin and the clan will kill her if she ever tries to return home. The clan quickly found out about Kasumi's leave, and Ayane was ordered by Genra to find and kill her. Ayane tried to stop her on the bridge just out of the village, but Kasumi was saved when Christie appeared on a helicopter and separated the two shinobi with gunfire. Although Kasumi didn't know Christie, she jumped on the helicopter and they flew away from Ayane.

Now in the company of Christie and Bayman, Kasumi learned that Raidou was taking part in the Dead or Alive World Combat Championship, which was being sponsored by the Dead or Alive Tournament Executive Committee, the company they work for. They took her to the cruise liner Freedom Survivor, where the tournament would officially begin and Kasumi signed herself up.

While the start of the tournament is being officially announced, Kasumi finds Ayane in the crowd. Ayane tells her that she is there to avenge Hayate too, as well as kill her, under the orders of her foster father Genra. The girls quickly discover that Raidou is working with the head of DOATEC, Fame Douglas, but when Ayane tries to get him, even though Kasumi tries to stop her, the girl is beaten back. Fame then tells Kasumi that if she wants to face Raidou in battle, she has to come out as winner in the tournament.

Kasumi fights her way through the tournament, and does come out as the winner of the tournament, meaning that she will have to face Raidou in the Danger Zone. She manages to defeat Raidou, and was happy because she thinks she had avenged Hayate, but Raidou awakens stronger than before, with inhuman strength caused by DOATEC experiments. Their battle ends in a Torn Sky Blast duel, and with the help of Ryu Hayabusa from the sidelines, Kasumi overpowers Raidou in the end and he is finally killed.

Unfortunately for Kasumi, she is kidnapped by DOATEC, and is taken to their labs in Germany, so they can use her DNA for their experiments; as she managed to defeat their top experiment, they believe that she will be useful in their plans to create the ultimate fighter.

Escaping DOATEC and the Second Tournament

After being held captive for a while by DOATEC, Hayabusa manages to find her and sets DOATEC Germany on fire. During the chaos, Kasumi is helped out of her cell by Kasumi α, a clone created from her DNA. Although shocked by the sight of her double, she follows Alpha into one of the labs. Once there, Alpha tells Kasumi that they are "sisters", and Kasumi hasn't been a good sister because she keeps Hayate to herself, so now he belongs to Alpha. Realizing that Hayate had been taken by DOATEC, Kasumi fights Alpha. The noise leads one of the scientists, Lisa Hamilton to them and Kasumi demands to know where Hayate was. Lisa tries to silence her by threatening to shoot her, but Kasumi is saved by Hayabusa, who takes her after from the building, after Lisa and Alpha escaped.

While with Hayabusa and Irene Lew, they learn from stolen DOATEC data that Hayate was actually at DOATEC Germany at the same time as Kasumi. Worried about her brother's safety, Kasumi goes against Hayabusa's orders and runs off to find Hayate. Although Hayabusa sends Ayane after her, Kasumi manages to escape her.

Sometime later, Kasumi finds Hayate alive and well, but as Hayate is suffering from amnesia, he cannot remember her. Hayabusa appears before them and tells the two siblings to fight each other, as "once reunited in combat, fists which are bound by blood will revive the deepest soul of the shinobi", meaning that Hayate will remember his true self. During the fight, Kasumi is defeated, and Hayate remembers everything. While Hayate and Hayabusa have to fight Alpha and a brainwashed Ayane, set upon them by Genra, Kasumi presumbly wakes up and runs away, as Hayate cannot find her after the battle.

The Third Tournament

Homesick and constantly hunted, Kasumi still wishes to see Hayate, but has to go into hiding from the Mugen Tenshin clan again. She spends some time in the geisha district of Kyoto during her running, and to cover up her shinobi identity, she dresses as a normal high school girl and acts like a normal civilian in public to get by. She appears to have become ill from running and living rough, because she develops a fever. When she is half-passed out on the road, she is found by a local maiko Kokoro, but refuses her help. When she sees Ayane, she panics and runs away again.

During the third tournament, Kasumi tries to find Hayate, who is, at this time, with Ayane and Hayabusa trying to track down Genra, who has turned against the clan. Kasumi crosses paths with Ayane, but apparently her sister is focused on taking down Genra, so she isn't going to kill her; although Ayame has previously asked Ayane to help Kasumi rather then be against her. Ayane does let Kasumi try to get to Hayate, but not before she beats her up for her troubles.

When Kasumi finally meets up with Hayate, he is torn between the code of the clan to kill nukenin and his desire to see his sister again. He tries to save her, saying that they can pretend they never met, but Kasumi is prepared to fight her brother. After the fight, Kasumi escapes again and goes into hiding once more.

Zack Island

She was later given an invitation for a supposed Dead or Alive tournament that was going to be held at Zack Island. However, she discovered alongside the rest of the prior participants that it was a hoax, but decided to make the best of their situation for the two weeks on the island.

The Fourth Tournament and the Fall of DOATEC

During the time of the fourth tournament, Kasumi catches word of the Mugen Tenshin's plan to attack DOATEC and take their revenge against the company. Worried about everyone's safety, Kasumi risks her life visiting the outside of the village, and finds Hayate. As she tries to convince him to stop the war against DOATEC, Hayate remains quiet and Ayane arrives to interrupt them, providing enough of a distraction for Hayate to leave and continue on with his mission.

Although the attack is on the go, Kasumi pursues everyone to DOATEC's TriTower headquarters so she can still stop the chaos. There, she confronts Helena Douglas, the current head of DOATEC, and begs her to leave the shinobi alone. However, Helena tells her that DOATEC's latest creation - a modified Kasumi α, renamed Alpha-152 - is about to become active. Helena is about to shoot Kasumi, to stop her from being involved, but she is saved by Hayabusa, who is there helping Hayate, and Kasumi fights her way past Helena.

She then heads down to the lab to destroy Alpha-152. She fights her clone to her best efforts but in the end it appears Alpha-152 escapes in the chaos of the destruction wrought by the Mugen Tenshin invasion. After the match, having herself escaped the burning building, Kasumi is last seen watching Helena entering the blazing helipad. As Kasumi tries to stop her, Ayane prevents her from going after Helena, who by doing so saves Kasumi's life as the building starts exploding mere seconds later.

New Zack Island

Shortly afterwards, she continued trying to find Hayate, and eventually tracked his seeming last location to New Zack Island, although she ultimately decided to stay for the week despite not finding him. During her stay, she had a brief dream as a mermaid and being caught in a net while trying to pursue a fish only to wake up, an allegory to her freedom from the laws of nukenin.

The Fifth Tournament

At some point between the events of the fourth and fifth tournaments, it appeared that Kasumi went into hiding with the assistance of Hayabusa and his ally Muramasa, who made sure that no one knew where she was.

However, Victor Donovan had continued Project Alpha with his new origination MIST, and one of the clones produced managed to leave the facility - it's unclear if it was allowed to leave or it escaped. This clone believed that it was the real Kasumi and held the same desire to locate and destroy Alpha-152 as the original did. It turned to Helena for help, but turned away from her when the woman tried to get Hayate involved, believing that Alpha-152 would be too much for Kasumi to handle alone. The clone felt that it needed to face Alpha-152 by itself and left. Its behavior seemed to make Hayate suspicious so he ordered Ayane to follow.

While trying to keep away from her pursuers, the clone traveled to New York and asks Lisa where Alpha-152 was, but received no answer. After much travelling, the clone got fed up and returned to Helena demanding for Alpha-152's location. Helena reveals that Alpha-152 was hidden at an DOATEC-owned DIG oil rig, but she would be sending Hayate, Ayane, and Hayabusa there as well, much to the clone's dismay. After fighting her way past Rig and Lisa, Kasumi finds and defeats Alpha-152, but is soon found and attacked by the other shinobi, who had by then worked out that this Kasumi was a fake. The clone is slain, and the shinobi are attacked by MIST which led to Hayate's capture.

Hayabusa sent a message to the real Kasumi telling her of their problem and she finally comes out of hiding to aid them. She rushes to the oil platform and fights her way past Christie and Rig to get to Hayate, who had been forced into reactivating Project Epsilon. With Lisa's help, the shinobi succeeded in releasing him, however they are too late to stop Donovan from beginning Phase 4 of Project Alpha: mass production of the best clones. Following a long battle against Alpha-152, the clone and the lab is destroyed, with the shinobi managing to escape.

The next day, Kasumi thanked Hayate and Ayane for their help before taking her leave, swearing to defeat Donovan at all costs.

Back on New Zack Island

After her last mission, Kasumi returned to her hobby of fortune reading, that leads her again to New Zack Island. She wonders why it always leads her again to the island. In order to find out, she decides to spend some time on the island.

During the last day on the island, she found out that maybe she had come to the island in order to remember her life before running away. She wanted to stay longer, but unfortunately she had to go.

Dead or Alive Appearances
Dead or Alive VI and Dead or Alive VI Second Fight

Kasumi appears as the main protagonist once more.

Crossover Appearances
Tekken Tag Tournament 3 (TheProjectXZoneFan1997)

Kasumi appears as a Third Party character alongside Akuma, Geese Howard, Noctis Lucis Caelum, Kazuma Kiryu and Naruto Uzumaki.

Tekken X Dead or Alive

Kasumi appears as a playable characters and her rival is Kazuya Mishima from Tekken.

Tekken X Dead or Alive (TheProjectXZoneFan1997)

Kasumi appears as a playable character teaming up with her sister Ayane, both sisters decided to participate in the tournament in order to stop Jin Kazama and Mishima Zaibatsu, their rivals are Jin Kazama and Kazuya Mishima respectively.

Project X Zone 3: Sacred Destinies

Kasumi appears as a Solo Unit character.

Project X Zone 4: Fate at Hands

Kasumi appears as a Pair Unit teaming up with Alice The Rabbit from Bloody Roar.

PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale 2 (TheProjectXZoneFan1997)

Kasumi appears as a DLC character.

Dead Fantasy

She is part of the DoA cast.

Xbox Ultimate Brawlers

Kasumi is a playable character.

Krazy Krossover

Kasumi is part of the Dead or Alive Team alongside Ayane and Helena.

Marvel Warriors

Kasumi appears as part of the Collab Characters.

Super X Dimensions

Kasumi appears as a Pair Unit teaming up with Ayane.

Warriors Gilgamesh

Kasumi is a Third Party character.

Trivia

 * Kasumi is Tomonobu Itagaki's favorite character in the series.
 * The reason Kasumi, Ayane, Eliot, and Kokoro do not have listed ages in western versions of the Dead or Alive games from the original Dead or Alive to Dead or Alive 4 is because they were under 18 years old. Tecmo decided to give them undefined ages to avoid the risk of a moral backlash from western countries.