Iron Maiden Jeanne
Iron Maiden Jeanne is a fictional character from the anime series Shaman King. She is voiced by Yui Horie in the Japanese version. She was born on March 2, 1990 in Mont Saint-Michel, France, and her blood type is AB.
An 11-year-old young girl from France and powerful shaman in her own right, Jeanne is the leader of the X-Laws. Her title of Iron Maiden refers to the fact spends nearly all her time inside an iron maiden in order to increase her strength by keeping her in a near death state. She rarely leaves it unless she is desperately needed, believing her suffering will bring justice to the world. Her iron maiden, however, was crushed most likely beyond repair.
She is known for her red eyes and very pale hair and almost fragile appearance. She is extremely charismatic; in the English anime Tamao Tamamura calls her a “princess” after hearing her speak for the first time.
Little is known about Jeanne’s history or family situation. Supposedly she is named after Jeanne D’Arc (Joan of Arc), one of the Patron Saints of France. The series states that Jeanne was a French country girl with shaman powers, who received a divine revelation at the age of ten while praying in a Catholic church. A cross of light appeared and a mysterious voice revealed to her the world was to be destroyed unless it was purged of an evil force. Recognizing the evil force to be Hao Asakura, Jeanne chose to become a shaman.
Jeanne’s passionate hatred of Hao derives from the fact she believes him to be the ultimate evil. While she believes herself to be a martyr of sorts and is still very soft-spoken and compassionate towards the X-Laws, specially towards young Lyserg Diethel (she defended and praised Lyserg several times when Marco was too hard on him), she has become detached from humanity and is unable to see that not everything is black and white.
In a way, Jeanne is like Hao, since she kills whoever stands in her way indiscriminately, if they don’t surrender to her pleas for peace. They both believe that they are helping the world and their actions will be justified by the end results. The difference is that Jeanne honestly believes she is stopping the fighting and is blinded with the belief that her fighting is helping despite the deaths caused, while Hao is fully aware of his evil and the true nature of his actions.
When in her armored form, Jeanne wears sandals with spikes going into her feet (yet they do not pierce her) and also wears a giant lock on her abdominal region, like a chastity belt. These two items seem to represent self-flagellation.Though she is seen as emotionless, her eyes will well up with tears, and the eyes on the face of the Iron Maiden will cry tears of blood when she herself feels sad and needs to cry.
In the manga, it is revealed that Jeanne was not actually a savior with an omnipotent type of purity. She was an orphan girl taken by the original leader of the X-Laws, Luchist, who became one of Hao’s followers. Jeanne, herself, is no more than an ordinary girl who was granted shamanic powers. She is attacked alongside Marco and Lyserg Diethel by Anahol, the brother of a man who was killed by Jeanne during the Shaman Fight. After being revived by Sati, she along with Lyserg, and Marco joined Yoh in the semi-finals of the tournament. She later revived Ren(for the second time), and Horo-horo after being killed by one of the patch officials. She exhausted all her furyoku and decided to stay at the plant of the valley.
