Nightblade

Nightblade (Akira Tanaka), formerly known as Red Specter, is a villain turned vigilante and Blind Tiger's step-brother, the biological son of Satoru Tanaka. He was born with no skin, reminiscent of a Japanese ghost story involving a ghost that tears the skin off of children to make it seem as if they're wearing a red cloak. His parents were told he died in intensive care, but in reality he was taken by a fanatical group of demon worshippers who save his life by giving his body to a demon. As Red Specter, he is acting under control of this demon, and once freed from its control and surviving a full-body synthetic skin grafting, he picks up the sword again, this time fighting for justice as Nightblade.

Nightblade
After recovering from Opus Brand's experimental synthetic skin grafting operation, Akira dons the identity of "Nightblade", spawning the Nightblade series, which focuses on him individually, and Animal Instinct, which focuses on him, Blind Tiger, and Foxtrot.

At the beginning of Nightblade, Akira moves to Zone 11, which has a large Japanese-American community, settling in to a small apartment in the Japanese district, working at a sushi restaurant. As he develops a knack for the culinary arts and romantic feelings for the restaurant owner's daughter, Yoshimi Nanahara, he also becomes embroiled in a heated situation involving a turf war between Japanese and Russian gangs, a money-laundering strip club, and resulting action by an FBI anti-gang task force called the Enforcers. Yoshimi's estranged criminal brother, Takeshi, otherwise known as the Emerald Eye, owns and operates Flame of the Dragon, an Asian fetish strip club, which also serves as the headquarters of his criminal operations, primarily heroin trafficking, leading the Dragon's Fang gang. He has a tentative partnership with another Japanese Zone 11 gang, the Harvesters, who traffic cocaine and weapons, and are led by the sadistic Sickle, known for killing his enemies with a rusty harvesting sickle. After a hand-off between the Russian mafia, the Skinheads, and the Dragon's Fang goes awry, leading to multiple deaths, war is declared.

Abilities
Tanaka is an expert swordsman and martial artist, much like his father and step-brother, though he subscribes to a much more violent discipline taught by Master Cobra, focusing on how to kill enemies rather than subdue them.

As Red Specter, the true demon always lurked, invisible, behind him, allowing him to seemingly kill people without even touching them. He lost this ability after the demon seal was broken.