Ren Tao

Ren Tao is a character in the anime and manga series Shaman King. He started out as an antagonist, but ended up becoming an ally and friend of the main characters. He's the younger brother of Jun Tao, the son of Yuan Tao and Ran Tao, the grandson of Ching Tao, the father of Men Tao, and the husband of Iron Maiden Jeanne. He is also the 43rd head of the Tao Family of Shamen.

Appearance
At the beginning of the series, Ren Tao is a short child, with long, blue hair that dangles to the back of his neck and in front of his face, (although not covering his eyes), yellow eyes, and weras a red T shirt. After the time skip he's much taller, with hair so long that it stretches down below his back.

Personality
Ren Tao started out being incredibly cruel, selfish, uncaring, and sadistic, unable to trust anyone aside from himself and the rest of his family. This was due to his father having it drilled into his head that only his family was trustworthy, and that everyone else would betray him if he let them in. After being defeated by Yoh Asakura, however, he changed his viewpoint, becoming friends with Yoh and the others, and actively standing against his oppressive father. However, he still retained some personality traits after this. He's still incredibly stubborn and arrogant. It's very difficult for him to ask others for help, and whenever he does it's always begrugingly. He's also easily irritated by the antics of Usui Horokeu and Umemiya Ryunosuke.

Powers and Abilities
As a normal human, Ren has a very strong body as evidenced by his tough and constant training. He is very skilled in martial arts and sword fighting, in addition to also learning techniques by just watching them as he was able to learn many of Asakura Mikihisa's techniques simply by experiencing them firsthand, and also learning to use Over Soul by just seeing Chrome use his. It is mentioned that Ren is skilled in more than one area of combat and is a powerful shaman capable of performing feats most shamans of his age would not be able to, such as staring straight into the heart of the Great Spirit without fainting, a feat only a handful of shamans could do.

Ren becomes one of the Five Elemental Warriors and attunes his Furyoku to that of lightning, giving him the skills to move and attack in the blink of an eye. While fighting his way through the Plants, Kyōyama Anna looked through the Furyoku values of Ren and the others. There it is revealed that his Furyoku level is about 100,001.

Weapons
At the beginning of the shaman king series, Ren fights with a guandao, a Chinese bladed-polearm that he used for both his Hyōi-Gattai and later as a medium for his first Over Soul.

However after Asakura Hao incinerated his guandao, he later switched to the Bâo-Lèi Sword, the Tao's family most treasured heirloom that was given to him by his father. With this sword, he creates two new Over Souls the "Super Bushin" and the "Bushin Fish Fin".

Spirit
Bason (馬孫 (バソン), Bason Chinese: Mǎsūn) is Ren's guardian ghost. A fierce warrior from the era of Kublai Khan, Bason has always served the Tao family, even now after his death. When Ren used the Bâo-Lèi Sword as a medium for his Over Soul it increased the strength of Bason several times and evolved him into a Seirei class spirit.

Ren used his first Over Soul for most melee attacks and later created the Super Bushin that was able to use Bason's military experience to create dozens of different weapons to overwhelm his opponent. Ren´s third Over Soul with Bason, the Bushin Fish Fin, allowed him to generate lightning and electricity to either strike down from the sky or channeled through his over soul in close combat.

After becoming one of the Five Elemental Warriors, he gains the Spirit of Thunder, which according to Pascal Avaf, follows the way of Taoism.

Trivia

 * 1) Ren's name in Chinese means "benevolent", "tough", and "edge of a knife", all of which are reflected in his character. His actual Chinese name, Lián, means "lotus" and is usually a more feminine name.
 * 2) in the anime series, Ren has an obsession with milk and the number three.
 * 3) A running gag in the shaman king series is that Ren's Tongari hairstyle grows longer whenever he gets irritated or shocked.
 * 4) It is mentioned in the interview part in the official Shaman King character book, that he would like a girl if she is smaller than him and not very annoying.