- Gender: Male
- Age: Ancient
- Hair: Violet-Black
- Eyes: Grey-Green (human form)/Black (battle form)/Yellow (Orochi form)
- Nationality: Japanese
- From the anime series Blue Seed, property of AD Vision and Yuzo Takada
- First Appearance: Chapter 16
Murakumo is the name used by the legendary dragon Orochi in its human form. The Orochi is the most powerful of the aragami, a race of spiritual plant-like beings that inhabit objects, animals, places or people. The aragami are closely tied to Japanese mythology and folklore, and from their appearance and characteristics seem to be the origin of, or were influenced by, the animist Japanese religion of Shinto.
While individual aragami often take the guise of giant beasts or humanoid monsters, that is not their true form. In reality, each aragami is a small blue seed-like object called the mitama. The aragami refer to this as their ‘soul’. No matter how powerful the aragami, if their mitama is destroyed their body will die as their soul is destroyed. Murakumo is notable for being so powerful that his soul requires no less than eight mitama to properly contain it, a condition he ascribes to his superior status and breeding. Murakumo can implant these mitama in human beings, which grants the subject a small measure of his power. Despite the fact that he implanted all eight into human hosts (seven into Kusanagi, and one into Momiji) he is later seen having his full complement again. Exactly how he accomplished this is unknown.
Murakumo is arrogant and snobbish. He believes that aragami such as himself are inherently superior to humans, and that he personally is superior to all other aragami. His hatred of humans and desire to destroy them for their sins is only slightly more powerful than his hatred for ‘low-breed’ aragami. He will actually go out of his way to track down and destroy rogue aragami he feels have strayed from the right path. He deals with all creatures as if they were his moral and biological inferiors, and loves to speak down to them at every opportunity. Far from being a mindless killer, he prefers to present himself as cultured and urbane. He much prefers goading others into striking the first blow, so that when he humiliates them they will realise how foolish they were to challenge him.
In terms of power, Murakumo is nigh-unstoppable. In his human form he is superhumanly strong and fast, able to regenerate from injuries, produce long blades from his wrists capable of slicing through most materials and can fire bolts of energy that can easily shatter concrete. He can become more powerful by entering his ‘battle form’, which multiples his speed and strength by several orders of magnitude, allows him to fly at supersonic speeds and produce energy blasts that can level skyscrapers. Finally, he can pull out all the stops and enter his complete dragon form. In this form he is probably immune to anything short of a tactical nuclear blast, and could level Tokyo in a few hours at most. He is also larger than the Tokyo Dome, has eight heads capable of attacking independantly, and is monstrously strong.