Shinigami, Immortal, Meister, and Kishin. About 800 years old.

The main antagonist in Soul Eater. He was a member of the Eight Powerful Warriors, also known as the Great Old Ones, and the first Kishin to ever come into existence. Asura was, also, the first son of Shinigami, born from a fragment of his soul. His younger brother, Death the Kid, was also born from the same process and fragment.

About 800 years before the events of Soul Eater took place, Shinigami, to improve himself, created Asura by taking out the fear in his soul. Asura served under Shinigami as a member of the Eight Powerful Warriors/The Great Old Ones. He was the most valued member on the team, being the most feared and strongest member out of all of them. However, it was found that Asura was an extremely troubled person. Nearly always frightened by something or seen muttering to himself eerily. This caused the weapon, Vajra, to take it upon himself to partner with Asura to help relieve some of the shinigami's fears.

Other members began to notice Asura's strange behavior to which he, and his actions, became a subject of suspicion and wonder. An event that shows this is when the Powerful Warriors recieved a mission to end a group of Witches to the East. Upon arrival the Warriors were shocked to find that all the Witches had been slaughtered by Asura who had decided to kill them all without help.

Eventually, Asura's insecurities drove him to become obsessed with power and lead him to start collecting innocent human souls. Unable to stop him, he eventually succeeded in consuming enough souls to awaken into the first Kishin, becoming the greatest source of all Madness.

Shinigami then hunted Asura down himself to stop the Kishin. Upon finding him, Shinigami defeated Asura, and tore off all of his skin to make a bag to seal Asura's in (seeing his skin as a perfect means to lock away his soul and madness in.). After sealing him away, Death Weapon Meister Academy was founded on top of the shrine, and Shinigami rooted his own soul there to forever keep Asura in eternal sleep.

Asura had been known as person who possessed a careful soul. Having joined with the Eight Powerful Warriors, Asura had shared a friendship with Shinigami, fighting alongside him to protect the order and peace in the world. He had been the best and strongest among all the Warriors, but despite his immense strength, Asura had always been afraid of something. Constantly frightened, Asura sought, desperately, to quench this fear. He did so by dressing in 5 or 6 shirts, wrapping long scarves around his head, and finding comfort in his weapon partner, Vajra. His fear did not come to an ease, however. He found it hard to trust others in fear of betrayal, even with his weapon partner. Eventually, Asura came to a decision that the only way to relieve his fear was to gain ultimate power. He became obsessed with obtaining this power that he began to devour souls that wasn't on the list, even his own weapon partner, Vajra. Soon, he fell to his madness and became the first Kishin.

His views on true peace, of which he only knows, is that of one surrendering to Madness and getting rid of the pain and fear. He sees rationality that the world possesses as nothing more than an illusion for security and peace, when, in actuality, a void lies beyond this "order". Asura believes that mankind's greatest weakness, something his father disagrees with, is their ability to imagine answers to a question that results in a terrifying outcome, when the results of the question isn't scary at all, but the imagination running away with them. Being a strong believer of this concept, he has thrown away his ability to imagine, providing actions of fearless recklessness.

Asura is also a great disbeliever in honor. Seeing it as something that one falls enslaved to. He also sees love for other people as nothing more than a sure way to ones defeat. Despite this belief, it does not mean Asura cannot feel the emotion of love. In the anime, only, Asura finds himself fallen in love with Arachne. After realizing this, he finds no choice but to destroy the source, being Arachne, fearing that one day this feeling will lead to his own defeat. He than pursues the Witch, and swallows her soul. This act proves how desperate he is to keep the to the status of not being able to be defeated.

As the physical embodiment of Madness and Fear, Asura is shown to have erratic behavior. One minute he is completely calm and cool, the next mechanical and senseless. He is also scared by things he doesn't understand. This behavior makes him particularly dangerous. (In the manga and anime, it is interesting to notice that when he removes the Kishin Mask he is calm and cool, yet when he puts in back on he behaves erratically. This may be a trigger.)

Despite that he is the most evil person in the Soul Eater series, he has this odd, hidden, sense of humor. When awakened, instead of make some sort of eerie or sinister comment for his first comment in nearly 800 years, he shouts that "Nakedness is so wrong!!", being that he had no clothes on at the time and using his scarves as a means of temporary clothing. And before exiting the Shrine, he catches a glimpse of Free standing before him and comments " I like the macho look" and then launches himself out of the Shrine. Even Free is dumbfounded by his comment, wondering whether it had been, really, addressed at him. Finally, before escaping Shibusen, Asura seems to be amused by how much Shinigami's appearance and attitude had changed.

When speaking to Shinigami, Asura speaks very politely and formally, showing he may have some respect for his former master and father.

Asura in the anime does not actually see himself as evil. Although his intentions to drown the world in Madness, insanity and fear, he doesn't see it as an evil thing rather a normal need that will actually make the world better. When Maka tries to use her Kishin Hunt technique on him, a technique that is supposed to destroy evil, he states this is the reason it did not work. His mindset, however, is obviously deluded being that his intentions are actually immoral.

The characters that have fought against him, seem to largely dislike him. Not just because he intends to spread Madness and Insanity around the world, but because they are easily annoyed by his constant preaching on irrelevant matters that they do not care for or believe in. Shinigami points this out to him quite often in their fight, and Maka constantly screams at him to shut up.Shinigami: The two appeared to have been comrades, possibly even having a normal father/son relationship before he became a Kishin. He now appears to harbor nothing but hate for his father. He also seems to share opposite views from his father. Where he sees imagination as a weakness, Death sees it as a strength, and where he sees humans as nothing but worthless trash, Death sees great potential within them. However, he does harbor a little respect for him. He refers to him as his teacher and chatted with him shortly after being revived. Asura seems to see the act of his creation by Death, who created him by casting out the fear from his soul, as an act of tyranny.Death the Kid: As Kid's big brother, he appears to greatly look down on him. Coldly revealing to Kid his relationship to Shinigami and bluntly telling him they come from the same fragment. He also sees Kid as being foolish for following their father without question. Despite this, he is shown to want Kid to be on his side and to awaken his Shinigami powers so that they can pull the world into madness together. He was disappointed when Kid refused to join him. This should not be mistaken for brotherly feelings, as Asura had no such feeling for Kid to begin with. He only viewed him as a means to an end.

Asura was shown to be very angry when Kid didn't turn out like him upon awakening his Shinigami powers. He also has been seen constantly trying to provoke him to use the Madness Of Order for him to change Kid's viewpoints on humans and to see them as mere weaklings.Arachne: While Asura went into hiding in the Manga, only ever manipulating events to a subtle degree, he is much more prominent in the anime, in which Arachne recruits him into her organization.

Asura found himself to have fallen in love with Arachne, since the witch was acting like a motherly figure to him after taking him in to her organization. But after Asura's fight with Shinigami and embracement from Arachne, Asura remembers how Death used his love for others to defeat him, therefore assuming he could use his love for her to defeat him. This causes him to kill Arachne and consume her soul, showing that even love could not stop his fear.Justin Law: Once Asura was released from his prison Justin Law eventually succumbed to Asura's Madness, and became his most devoted follower.Crona: After being completely engulfed in Madness, Crona sets his/her sights on absorbing Asura into him/herself. Crona succeeds, and obtains temporary control over Asura before finally getting consumed him/herself by Asura.Maka: The Dutchman is a Kishin Worshiper and he collects souls as offerings to Asura.

Asura is depicted as a very tall, thin, pale young man. Before becoming a Kishin, he wore many long white scarves, encircling his entire neck and a large part of his head, and upwards of five to six shirts on his body, each of varying style and color. Even this significant amount of clothing is covered by a further layer; consisting of a red and black pinstriped blazer, as well as an extremely long pair of dark trousers, burying the black shoes worn underneath in a mass of fabric.

Asura has adopted the symbol of three vertical eyes, as he too possesses a third-eye on his forehead. Not only does each strand of dark hair on his head look like an eye, due to existence the Sanzu markings, but even his pupils feature this same eye-like shape. This signature eye symbol is tattooed to the backs of each of his hands and the long scarf that encompasses his head is embellished with multiple black images of these vertical eyes, wrapped in a very particular way to display only three at the front.

Due to the circumstances surrounding his imprisonment and later revival, Asura was left without a single item of clothing, either old or new. In order to compensate for this immediate need, he fashioned various wrappings out of his own skin to cover his naked body, even forming it to create the long scarves he originally wore with the same three signature eye-like markings.

In the anime; it is shown that the irises of his eyes are red, and he possesses a red aura.

Before it was revealed that he was Kid's older brother, he and Kid both shared physical similarities that hinted at this.

His appearance under the bandages differ slightly between the anime and the manga. In the anime, Asura's hair is a tad longer and his cheeks less pronounced giving him an appearance of a either 18 or 19-year-old. In the manga he looks to be in his twenties.

(Most of it came from Soul Eater Wiki, but edited to fit ones own words.)