Age: 19
Sanosuke left home young to join the Sekihō Army, abandoning his father Kamishimoemon, mother Naname, and younger sister Uki—who absolutely adored him. When he finally returned years later, he found his mother dead, gone a couple years after his younger brother Ota was born. Ota had grown up idolizing Sanosuke's toughness and bravery, while their overprotective sister kept a tight watch on both him and their father, a local merchant and farmer who had a reputation as a fighter himself. The family name had changed to Higashidani by then, though Sanosuke never bothered using it. When he left again, Ota eventually took his advice and trained at the Kamiya Kasshin-Ryū dojo to build strength.
Sanosuke served the imperial side during the end of the Tokugawa era and deeply admired his captain, Sagara Sōzō—so much that he took the Sagara name for himself. The Sekihō Army's job was spreading word of the new government's tax cuts, but when the revolution hit financial trouble, the government threw the Sekihoutai under the bus, branding them as con artists to cover their broken promises. This was orchestrated by Shindō Tatewaki, a former imperial officer. The whole unit was marked for execution as scapegoats. Only Sanosuke and his friend Tsukioka Katsuhiro survived, though the manga and anime handled Sōzō's death differently—the manga shows Sanosuke discovering his captain's severed head on display as a warning, while the anime has a wounded Sōzō push Sanosuke off a cliff to save him before dying.
Bitter and angry, Sanosuke became a mercenary fighter under the nickname "Zanza," taken from his weapon: the zanbatō, a massive katana-style blade from the Ōnin Struggle and supposedly the heaviest ever forged in the Rurouni Kenshin world. The blade had dulled from age, so he used it to smash and crush rather than cut.
Hiruma Kihei and Gohei hired him to take out Himura Kenshin, but after Kenshin beat him and Sanosuke learned the truth about the former assassin's pacifist philosophy, he switched sides and became part of Kenshin's crew. He eventually picked up a boxing-style technique centered around the power of his right fist. His zanbatō broke during that first fight with Kenshin and saw minimal use afterward—just once more in the manga to defend the Kamiya dojo during the Jinchu arc.
By the end of the series, Sanosuke left Japan to dodge a wrongful arrest warrant and traveled abroad. Five years later, at a reunion with the Kenshin-gumi, he sent word through a letter that he was in Mongolia and planned to stay there a while before eventually heading home.
Content compiled by AnimeList.moe from publicly available sources.
