Ryuuko Yanagi

"Out of all the gases on the planet Earth, what's the most poisonous?"

- Ryuuko Yanagi's most common question before killing someone

Ryuukou Yanagi is a character in the anime and manga series Baki. He is one of the main antagonists of the Most Evil Death Row Convicts saga.

Past
In his younger years, Ryuukou Yanagi studied the Way of the Void under Kurimatsu where he started perfecting the technique known as Poison Hand. He was later imprisoned for unknown reasons, but unlike the other escaped convicts, his crimes prior to imprisonment were not the reason he was put on death row; it was because he used fellow inmates to practice his vaccum hand techniques, killing them in the process.

Most Evil Death Row Convicts
During a moment of synchronicity, Ryuuko Yanagi and four other death row convicts escaped their prisons and headed to Tokyo for one purpose; to know defeat. The five convicts met Baki, along with Tokugawa, Doppo Orochi, Kaoru Hanayama, Kaioh Retsu, and Goki Shibukawa. Tokugawa establishes the rules for their fights that any fighting style can be used on any fighter at any given time on the streets, setting in motion the chain of events to come.

Yanagi confronts Baki at his school and starts pummeling him until Shibukawa intervenes. Yanagi later also teams up briefly with Sikorsky against Baki, but by this time Baki had become much stronger. Though both were losing to Baki, Yanagi's techniques allowed him to poison Baki without his knowledge. Baki escapes before either one of them can finish him off.

After Doyle faces defeat and decides to leave the country for a different life, Yanagi attacks him, calling him weak for losing his killer streak. Yanagi nearly kills him but Doyle gets away, though Yanagi does manage to blind Doyle in one eye.

Yanagi finally knows defeat after fighting Izou Motobe, but before Motobe can finish him off, Yujiro Hanma himself steps in, brutally decapacitating Yanagi with one strike, just barely surviving.