Voice actors and performance
- Kazuya Ichijo - Japanese
Performance credits are listed by release language and checked against the cited release sources.
Show biography, abilities, relationships and story details — spoilers
Profile overview
Hoteye's devotion to money is a defensive simplification. Wealth promises that every separation has a price and every loss can be reversed through sufficient accumulation. Wally is the exception that exposes the belief: Richard does not truly want everything, only the brother no transaction has returned.
Nirvana complicates the usual redemption story because a magical reversal initiates his change. What matters afterward is that compassion becomes more than a temporary status effect. Richard continues to seek Wally, protect companions and choose Crime Sorciere after the external spell is gone.
Richard Buchanan is Wally Buchanan's older brother and a member of Oracion Seis under the codename Hoteye. The brothers are separated through the Tower of Heaven system, and Brain recruits Richard into a dark guild structured around six private prayers. Hoteye insists that money can purchase anything, but the prayer beneath that obsession is reunion with Wally. His magic softens and reshapes the ground, allowing him to turn stable terrain into waves, traps and crushing currents. During the Nirvana campaign, Richard battles Jura Neekis until the ancient spell reverses the balance of light and darkness within him. The formerly avaricious Hoteye becomes gentle, cooperates with Jura and helps oppose Brain. Even after Nirvana is stopped, the concern for his brother and the moral direction it uncovers remain important to him. Richard is arrested with Oracion Seis, later released during the Tartaros crisis and drawn into Jellal's test of the group. He joins Crime Sorciere and is shown caring for the injured Jellal with Meredy, making service rather than acquisition the clearest expression of his freedom.
Personality and motivation
- Initially greedy and relentlessly transactional
- Direct about the value he assigns to power and information
- Deeply devoted to his missing brother
- Gentle and cooperative after Nirvana exposes his compassionate side
- Attentive to injured companions during his time with Crime Sorciere
Abilities, powers and limitations
Abilities
- Earth-softening magic that turns solid ground into a fluid, wave-like surface
- Large-area terrain manipulation capable of destabilizing footing and separating teams
- Earth currents that pull, bury or crush targets caught within the altered ground
- The ability to bend attacks and structures by changing the terrain supporting them
- Ground-based perception used to locate movement across the surrounding battlefield
- Substantial magical power sufficient to confront the Wizard Saint Jura during Nirvana
Limits
- Richard's strongest techniques depend on access to enough surrounding earth or built terrain to reshape.
- Aerial movement and attacks launched beyond the affected ground reduce his control of an exchange.
- Jura's superior command of earth can stabilize, counter and overpower Hoteye's softened terrain.
- His fixation on profit initially makes emotional motives easy for Brain to conceal behind a material reward.
- Nirvana can change moral alignment, but it cannot by itself resolve the separation from Wally or repair Richard's past crimes.
Aliases
Hoteye, Former Oracion Seis member, Crime Sorciere mage, Wally Buchanan's older brother
Role
Earth mage whose fixation on money protects a deeper wish to find his brother, with Nirvana's moral reversal unexpectedly revealing the compassionate life he later chooses for himself
Important relationships
- Wally Buchanan is Richard's younger brother and the person his claims about money can never replace.
- Jura Neekis begins as Hoteye's opponent and becomes an ally when Nirvana reverses Richard's moral alignment.
- Brain recruits Richard, exploits his prayer and attacks him when Hoteye chooses to resist the plan.
- Macbeth fights beside Richard in Oracion Seis and later shares his transition into Crime Sorciere.
- Jellal Fernandes defeats the released group, then offers Richard atonement without denying the harm committed under Brain.
- Meredy works with Richard to care for the wounded Jellal while the other former Oracion Seis members decide their future.
Defining moments
- Declaring that money can buy everything establishes the belief Richard uses to contain the pain of losing Wally.
- Reshaping the battlefield against Jura shows that even a Wizard Saint cannot ignore Hoteye's control of the ground.
- Being reversed by Nirvana replaces avarice with open compassion and disrupts Brain's expectation of obedience.
- Joining Jura against Brain turns the dark guild's desired weapon into the source of an immediate defection.
- Asking after Wally when the fighting ends reveals the personal prayer beneath Hoteye's repeated language about wealth.
- Tending Jellal with Meredy makes care, rather than possession, the action that defines Richard within Crime Sorciere.
Symbolism and visual design
The name Hoteye suggests a gaze fixed on profit, while Richard's most important vision is the hope of seeing his brother again.
Liquid ground removes the stability beneath other people just as childhood separation removes the foundation beneath his own life.
His repeated agreement and money rhetoric function like verbal armour, making a complicated loss sound solvable.
Nirvana's black-and-white reversal becomes morally incomplete until Richard continues choosing compassion after the spell ends.
Manga-versus-anime differences
The manga gives Hoteye the clearest immediate defection within the Nirvana arc and later includes Richard among the former Oracion Seis members connected to Crime Sorciere.
The anime extends his altered gentleness, his religious mannerisms and his concern for companions, while official episode 246 specifically shows Hoteye and Meredy tending the injured Jellal. Official Kodansha and TV Tokyo guides document Nirvana's alignment-reversing power, Richard's conflict with Jura and Kazuya Ichijo's Japanese performance.
Ending and current status
The main profile avoids end-of-series outcomes and late identity or relationship reveals.
Ending and current-status coverage will only appear inside a dedicated, clearly labelled spoiler section.