Asahi Saiba  

King of the Noirs, 才波 朝陽

Asahi Saiba is a young man in his early twenties with a slender build and messy dark hair. He usually wears a striped dress shirt under a sweater vest, but when cooking, he dons a dark chief uniform, bandana around his neck, and newsboy cap. It's later discovered that Asahi is the leader of the Noir who joined Tootsuki tea ceremony and Culinary Academy as a lecturer with the alias Suzuki to challenge Yukihira Souma, the first seat of the elite ten of Tootsuki Academy. After defeating Yukihira, he reveals that what he truly needs is not his seat but the right to claim victory over him so he can move on to his next goal - marrying Erina Nakiri. Asahi has a laid-back demeanor at casual times and treats his first class lecture as more of a get-together party than a traditional lesson. He is considered charming and charismatic by most people, making him popular with women. Asahi even managed to earn the loyalty of some highly capable Noir chefs. However, he is also very arrogant about his immense cooking abilities and believes that he's the only person who can satisfy Erina and Mana's God Tongue (Erina's mother). Before facing someone, he would usually taunt them into wagering their prized cooking knife so he could add it to his collection. Asahi has a unique cooking talent called Cross Knives, which is just like Subaru Mimasaka's Perfect Trace but ten times more powerful, efficient, and effective. This technique only activates when Asahi touches the knife of a chef. After touching that knife, he can feel all the emotions, struggles, trial-and-errors, journeys, and other experiences of that particular chef. Cross Knives allows Saiba to use two or more knives stolen from different chefs and combine their skills together to create unique dishes capable of satisfying the God Tongue without making them feel bored. However, this ability is dangerous because it causes a chef to lose his own uniqueness, originality, and self-creativity. Asahi and his fellow Noir members were invited by the BLUE to participate in the competition, where they faced off against students from other Culinary Academies, including Yukihira Souma, Nakiri Erina, Tadokoro Megumi, and Takumi Aldini.